My wife is an avid gardener in every sense of the word. She simply loves planting, pruning, tending, trimming, watering, and digging in the dirt. Mind you, I’m not talking “mini-yard gardening,” I’m talking “nearly half-acre of fruit trees and multiple flower-beds yard gardening.” Our running joke is that for our 35th wedding anniversary, I gave her what she really wanted—a gas-powered wood-chipper!
So, it is not at all unusual that she orders seeds from time to time from local growers, and if she can’t find what she wants locally, she orders them through Amazon. She never had a problem with this until recently.
About four months ago, during the early stages of the pandemic, she placed an Amazon order for Zinnia seeds. They were supposed to arrive within about a week, but when they didn’t arrive, we checked and found they were “delayed” by an additional four weeks. This was for all of something like a one-dollar order, so we just canceled the order and thought nothing of it. Peggy would have to find her zinnia seeds elsewhere.
Then, a strange thing happened. Two days after canceling the order, what arrives in our mailbox other than a small package of seeds from China? What made it all the stranger was the stuck-on label said “jewelry.”
By now you may have heard the stories in the media about unsolicited orders of seeds arriving in mailboxes across the country. We simply assumed that our zinnia seed order cancellation was either too late or ignored and that these were, in fact, the seeds we had ordered. But then we saw a Facebook post from a friend about the “Mystery China Seeds” and realized that these were some of them.
As of this writing, the U.S.D.A. and the Department of Homeland Security are investigating these Mystery Seeds. What they are and why they were sent isn’t clear, but the public is being advised not to plant them. One theory is that this is what is called a “brushing scam,” whereby unsolicited products are sent in order to then post fake positive ratings in your name, to boost a vendor’s overall rating.
Frankly, I don’t really understand how a brushing scam works, and I don’t buy it. The fact that this is happening on a wide-scale, pretty-much simultaneously across the entire nation and throughout much or Europe, leads me to believe this is more nefarious.
Just consider the source for a moment. China is not at all like the United States. Nothing happens in China without first being sanctioned, if not completely operated by, the China Communist Party (CCP). There are no “Silicon-Valley-like” tech companies that operate within a capitalist framework, developing products or services with the motive of profit earned by serving consumers. While that type of commerce is tolerated on the small, local scale, anything with national or international impact is strictly monitored and controlled. There is no free press, so control, government oppression, and outright abuse of the people in every sector of the social fabric persists unchecked and largely unnoticed by the rest of the world. What Western societies consider criminal behavior is status quo in China.
The CCP is happy to do business with America, so long as the transactions enhance their global power and prestige in one way or another. They are secretive and selfish, and dishonesty and criminal behavior are standard when dealing with other countries.
To suspect that there is some grand, evil scheme going on here would be no exaggeration in light of their dreadful record. First off, one only need look at how they treat their own people. The CCP and its government openly engages in overt acts of wholesale oppression of the Chinese people. They suppress any expression of liberty, allowing no free press. This totalitarian regime thinks nothing of subjecting its people to forced labor, and they brutally manage their population with draconian measures, like forced abortions and infanticide. The Chinese regime is legendary in its penchant for counterfeiting and pirating everything from technology to music to medicines.
In terms of international relations and the military, they are not content being in second position, behind the United States, and are aggressively working to become the world’s dominant power. Currently, they are testing the United States and the rest of the world with threatening and provocative actions that border on violating the Hong Kong separation treaty with Great Britain.
And then, finally there is the Covid 19 situation, or as President Trump rightly calls it, the “China Virus.” It is “officially” unclear whether the Chinese government mismanaged the outbreak, or did they, perhaps, intentionally allow it to “escape” their control in a scheme to weaken the world economy, and more specifically, America’s? The term “plausible deniability” comes to mind. Whatever the genesis of the pandemic, the outcome has been tremendously damaging to every other country outside China.
My point is simple: the CCP is not our friend. In fact they are friends to no one and they see other nations only in relation to their insatiable appetite for eventual world domination. Other countries are not only competitors, they are adversaries.
Just this morning (August 10, 2020) there was a news story where reporters were taken on a “tour” of the infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology, just last Friday, August 7, 2020. Here is the lead-in to what NBC “journalists” reported:
WUHAN, China — Cloistered off a major thoroughfare, the Wuhan Institute of Virology could pass for a college campus, its red brick buildings distinguishable from their busy surroundings only by a long, imposing driveway lined with cameras, with a security guard standing sentry.
On the neatly manicured grounds beside a small man-made lake is a newer structure with silver sidings and few windows. This, the institute’s BSL-4 lab — the first in China to receive the highest level of biosafety clearance — stands at the center of an international firestorm of recrimination over China’s role in the coronavirus pandemic.
On Friday, NBC News became the first foreign news organization to be granted access to the institute since the outbreak began, meeting with senior scientists working to pinpoint the origins of the virus. The Wuhan institute and its scientists have become the focus of intense speculation and conspiracy theories — some emanating from the White House — about China’s alleged efforts to downplay the outbreak’s severity and whether the virus leaked from the facility.
During the roughly five-hour visit, which included a tour of the BSL-4 lab, where technicians clad in bubblelike protective suits handled small vials and other equipment while sealed inside a thick-walled glass enclosure, Wang Yanyi, director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, said she and others felt unfairly targeted. She urged that politics not cloud investigations into how the coronavirus spilled over into humans.
The article continues like a perfect script written entirely by the CCP. It quotes the World Health Organization (WHO) in essentially praising the Chinese as “heroes” in their efforts to fight the virus, and as “victims” of Donald Trump’s “racist conspiracy theories.”
What can we glean from this news story? First off, we know that the reporters and news producers involved in this recent report are either willing supporters of communist totalitarianism and their evil deeds, or they are simply dimwits who know nothing about the CCP.
When I watched the televised version of the report, the reporters explained how they (NBC News) had “been requesting access to the lab for months,” and how “permission was finally granted.” Duh! Why might this be? That’s like saying they were finally granted access to the back room at the butcher shop after months of asking Tony Soprano about a missing mafia mob boss. And, because they are so thorough, they must add to their “factual report,” how clean the butcher block and meat cleaver were for their cameras, despite the conspiracy theory promoted by Trump that disparages Mr. Soprano and all Italians.
I know the mainstream press HATES President Trump, but anyone with a light on ought to ask themselves, “Why is the press so eager to believe the official statements and ‘facts’ disseminated by a repressive, corrupt authority that regularly seeks to take advantage of or harm America—one that allows NO free press in their own country—over the information gathered by our own leaders who are pledged to defend us?”
Back to the China Seed Mystery. I believe, as some have suggested, that this is just one more open attack—so bold in that it was done “out in the open”—that is being used to test us. If small packages of seeds—biological content, mind you—can be sent to thousands of addresses throughout our land by a hostile foreign power with impunity, how difficult would it be to introduce extremely harmful agents into our nation? What if these packages had contained something like Anthrax or some radioactive material?
The United States must take the lead at pushing back against China—specifically the CCP—now, while we still have the military and technological advantage. Americans—especially journalists—should never assume they are “just like us,” because they certainly are not.
A thorough investigation must be undertaken, not only into this latest “seed attack,” but into the Covid-19, Wuhan Virus. The fate of the free world may depend upon it.
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