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Global Exclusive Interview with eminent attorney Ravi Batra
By Parveen Chopra
The South Asian Times: You have been insisting that China has to come clean, to tell all about the origins of Coronavirus, but now the pandemic is already raging, how will that help?
Ravi Batra: Well, just like when a patient goes to see a doctor, the doctor wants to know the whole story because only then can he have a proper diagnosis, do the proper diagnostic tests and then come up with the right medicine. Similarly, here, the whole world is dying for the right vaccine. And unless China comes clean, how will we ever get the right vaccine? So we have to know everything from the source, from “Patient Zero” who was hospitalized on December 1, 2019, makeup of his disease, as his virus is different than the one that was subsequently released at the Wuhan seafood market on December 30-31 of 2019. So, in the early stages, there was a different protein makeup of the virus and it was the Patient Zero type. Later, when the second virus was released at the seafood market, by mid-January that started to take over and overpower in terms of quantity, the types of viruses being diagnosed. So, we had one virus for Patient Zero. We have a different virus for the Wuhan seafood market – and the 2nd one was delivered by China to the world. They never released the genome and all related information of Patient Zero. But they’re out there. It is somehow mixed in. Viruses mutate, so we need to know.
You want to know why China’s infection rate is so low, and whether they have a vaccine?
Ravi Batra: If this virus does not discriminate between Caucasian, Mongoloid or Negroid, or earth-location, then is it that China kept her infection rate low because of the vaccine that they gave in early 2019, the so called TB vaccine, whether it was for tuberculosis or something else mixed with it? And if that inoculated most of their population, well then, the doctor would like to know because that would help us come up with the right vaccine. So, it comes back to the culpability of China. Our number one issue is not forcing China to pay, nor embarrassing or humiliating China. Our number one issue is to get the right vaccine. If China helps us in finding the correct vaccine by being honest and candid and truthful and open, well then, that’s a mitigating factor for their culpability because that points more towards a negligence based mistake, but their obstruction and blocking suggest that it was not a mistake, but part of a plan.
But currently instead of cooperating, Beijing seems to be on the offensive.
Ravi Batra: Correct, they are on the offense and this is perhaps the biggest miscalculation being made in China. The Chinese are great people. They have a history of a great civilization. But even great nations make miscalculations. And this is probably the biggest miscalculation being made by China after releasing the Coronavirus. Not to come clean, not to immediately notify the WHO and the whole world about what happened. It’s like Chernobyl — nobody planned it, but it happened. You have to let the world know, so they can take precautions. We had the Three Mile Island accident in the US, we didn’t hide it. We said this is what’s happened because you want to protect your citizens. You want to protect the world’s citizens, so that’s where China is failing.
What can America or the world do to press China to come clean?
Ravi Batra: Right now, they are obstructing and they’re being belligerent. This week the Chinese foreign ministry issued a statement that American politicians were “bald-faced liars.” This kind of attitude and action is creating a perfect storm because instead of China being receptive to the world’s inquiry and welcoming the world’s scientists and biochemists and epidemiologists, they are actually blocking them. In fact, in China they are censoring their own people who have the knowledge and skill sets that can help. This is the perfect storm occurring because in 2016 we dealt with the issue of Russian interference in our election which turned into this horrible situation that consumed our country for three years. Now we have China and her Coronavirus. It came from China; it was released by China. China allowed their tourists from Wuhan to go all over the world and spread it, so community spread was first done – knowingly – by China. They went to Europe, they came to America, they went to Japan. Corona was the unhappy plague which the Chinese tourists themselves did not know they were spreading. So, the Chinese tourists are not guilty of anything as they didn’t know, but China knew. So, when China knew that some of these people have the virus and there is going to be a community spread, they had an obligation to prevent their tourists from going out or to tell the world, hey, our tourists may bring you this virus, this disease which could become an epidemic or a pandemic. China didn’t do that. And every country that happily hosted the Chinese tourists ended up with this Frankenstein plague. This is a horrible of China.
A Perfect Storm
The reason it’s a perfect storm – because in 2020 election, China, instead of assisting the world’s inquiry to get the vaccine as quickly as possible, is blocking; so they’re inviting a confrontation. They are even insulting the victims of Coronavirus. So now you have a party which did the wrong, actually insulting the victims. And, domestically, our presidential candidates are compelled to prove they are not a Manchurian Candidate. (Manchuria is in China.)
A confrontation with China will not help…
Ravi Batra: I was very happy to talk 3 years ago with the distinguished Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who answered ‘no war, no war.” But now, after China has allowed the Coronavirus to escape its borders and infect the world, they are being belligerent. So, the question in my mind is, does China really want a war with the West because that’s what they’ve been seeking – and that’s what they’re going to get – if somebody doesn’t wake up in their country and say, “This is wrong. What are we doing?”
New Yalta Conference
So, my hope is for a different ‘Yalta Conference’ of 1945 after World War II by the winning parties. It was between FDR, Stalin and Churchill. This time it should include China – a summit of President Xi, President Trump, President Putin. Also include Boris Johnson as a Winston Churchill successor, and an indispensable Coronavirus survivor to personally speak for the 3 million plus victims. I’d suggest we also get someone like Shinzō Abe from Japan, because of the problem of South China Sea and East China Sea having these disputed islands and China belligerently asserting possession and title unilaterally. And because India is part of the Indo-Pacific, that Prime Minister Modi should be part of it. Three from Europe and three from Asia. Summit can occur in Minsk or Nur-Sultan. If these leaders get together – as fiduciaries of the world – their first job is to get China to open up, so humanity gets the perfect vaccine. We must put this Frankenstein genie back in the bottle. Then the issue of compensation can be handled in a civilized, peaceful way. But the way China is acting, this belligerence, this ‘wolf warriors’ mentality, I am very offended by this, and Pearl Harbor led to war.
Post-Covid, in which way is America going to change? Start manufacturing here and be less dependent on China?
Ravi Batra: Globalization always existed and was always welcome throughout history when goods were being transported. But migration of people is a little different, especially if they don’t “do as the Romans do.” But now, given what’s happened with China, it is clear that supply lines have to be domestic. We are a continent-wide country, and when we do globalization it is optional. It’s essential for other countries – for if they don’t export, they don’t have an economy. So American consumerism is the 12-cylinder turbo engine that runs the whole world’s economy. Once we can make everything here, well then, we don’t have to worry about many of those problems. But other countries will have to figure out where does their wealth come from. I mean China as well, because they have sold so much stuff to America, right. If America starting with President Nixon hadn’t opened up the world for China, she would not be a superpower today trying to play an even worse Hitler.
The sentiment among people all over the world is rising against importing goods from China even as Beijing is busy enlarging its sphere of influence. So, in the long run, will the pandemic hurt or help China?
Ravi Batra: There is a growing sense of an ‘emotional embargo,’ which is natural. People see China not being helpful in solving the Coronavirus problem, instead only blocking and being belligerent. China now has developed a pretty big domestic market. However, it is still export-driven. And the world’s citizenry is rightfully enraged and hurt, an emotional embargo against Chinese goods will occur; there will be consequences. When people have an emotional reaction, that becomes domestic politics for every country, which the country’s leaders have to listen to. That in turn becomes geopolitics. So, all this is not helpful to China as the world is not her vassal state.
Planned Pearl Harbor?
Well, there’s another aspect to it. China does not do anything which is not well-digested and well deliberated and part of a long-term master plan. So, what’s coronavirus? An accident? Was it part of a plan which included the trade war with the United States? By decimating the Western economies, did they want to Pearl Harbor us? I sincerely want China to understand that they have this moral obligation to come clean, so we know they did not mean to Pearl Harbor us. Staying nasty, then, they did.
How is this pandemic going to affect international institutions like WHO and the UN?
Ravi Batra: Well, the role of the United Nations is unique. It is an ideal. The UN Charter came after the United States’ exceptional documents of Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The next document that advances human history is the UN Charter. It is ‘to form a more perfect world.’ So, the UN is needed. However, the WHO had a role to play, which it did not play properly. World leaders rely on WHO for sounding the alarm. They listen to it and make their policy knowing that WHO is awake as forensic fiduciaries. WHO’s job is as medical cops. Their job is to keep an eye on the world public health. If they see something wrong, they have not only the obligation to report but go into any country to see what it is, because every country has signed on to the WHO Treaty. In fact, in 2003, when SARS came out, China did not share the information. But that was not a lab created Frankenstein like 2019-nCoV. It was 2 bat-based viruses. Luckily, it died out quickly. But as a result, there was a treaty signed in 2005 to which China is a signatory, America is a signatory, that each country would give full access, full information about virus outbreaks. What has happened now is China is violating her treaty obligations, not sharing the information fully, timely and candidly.
Why this pandemic spread because China did not tell WHO the truth. But WHO which should have known better, they simply accepted the word of China. President Reagan taught us well dealing with Gorbachev, “Trust but verify”. So, WHO should have trusted China but checked and – they didn’t do it. This is a cataclysmic breach of the WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, which is why he has to go. WHO, we can debate whether it remains or there is a new entity. But if the director general has any semblance of personal honor, he’s got to go out of shame because he didn’t do his job right. I’ve proposed a new UNSC for Public Health: UN Pandemic Council, to replace Trusteeship Council, with powers of R2P, OPCW & new WHO.
How will the shifting geopolitics affect India? If manufacturing is diverted from China, will India land a windfall?
Ravi Batra: Every time you shake the dust, it resettles in a different way. And so that may benefit some countries. But the benefit to them is going to be limited by the supply chain being domesticated, because there is now a desire to prevent global supply chains. It is not a certainty that whatever exports came from China will now go to the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, India, Bangladesh or Pakistan. That’s not going to happen because there is an overlay of the need to domesticate supply chain. Jared Kushner said this week that we want to eliminate any foreign government influence on White House policy by domesticating our supply chain because when your supply chain is not domesticated, it robs you of sovereignty. We must control things that are strategic, nonstrategic things doesn’t matter.
Why are you taking so much interest in China’s role in this pandemic, so much so that after your recovery from Covid-19, you spent weeks researching the virus and its trail like a forensic expert?
Ravi Batra: Like Boris Johnson, I understand coronavirus. But Boris Johnson has to represent his nation and people. I am duty bound to protect myself, my family, my law firm employees, and as a citizen-lawyer, duty bound to protect these United States from enemies foreign and domestic. Coronavirus I knew anecdotally only before I did any research, and I called it a ‘Trojan Horse’ when I first wrote about my personal experience. I didn’t know where I got infected, how I got it. How is it possible that it got into my body without me knowing. You know, when you get sick, you may have walked in the rain without a raincoat. Or you have a bout of food poisoning, you know there’s a cause. Here I had no cause, but I had an effect. I felt from my own experience that after the virus got into my body, my autoimmune system was my ‘Walls of Troy.’ And if it beat my autoimmune system, it would then feast on my organs. On the other hand, if my Walls of Troy held firm and I was able to repel the virus, then I would survive.
But as in every war, there are prisoners of war. Post surviving the Coronavirus, I have side effects in my body as a result of my episode. Yes, I beat the invasion of Coronavirus into my body, but some of the Coronavirus cells are still in my body for a side effect. Now, Press is full of stories of folks with heart problems or blood clotting – side effects that some of the survivors are suffering from. My primary interest is, we need a vaccine, a correct vaccine, which we can all take so I can get rid of my prisoners of war, which are still in my body. And this is true of everybody. There are millions who are asymptomatic, but they are community spreaders. There are three million people who have been infected. Let’s not forget the people who have died and they left behind families fractured and destroyed. But the people who have survived and the people that are asymptomatic have this Coronavirus in them. And our heroic healthcare workers risking their lives. So we need this vaccine. And since this is a cross-species virus (because it is lab-based), I call it a Frankenstein. Mother Nature has one-species rule. The survival of the fittest, as in Darwinism, is within your species. This particular virus violates that rule. So a dog can get it, a cat can get it too. So, not only do we need a vaccine for human beings, we need to vaccinate animals (maybe, birds). And this becomes complicated, because some animals are not domesticated, they are in the wild. In particular, rats, they go into a lot of homes all over the world. So if they pick up the Coronavirus, can you imagine who they’re spreading it to?
So we need a vaccine that allows us to survive and allows the ecosystem to survive. Otherwise, this is Armageddon. Forget about the economy. This can be the destruction of life as we know it. Because it violates the Mother Nature’s rule of one species. So we’re back to job number one, which is to find a vaccine. China ought know what George Washington said: Americans would rather die on their feet than live on their knees.
Confucius Embarrassed
There is greatness in openness. No great man was great because they were nasty. No great man was great because they were belligerent. A great man is great because they were compassionate, magnanimous, forgiving. So I don’t have to be Confucius to say to China: Confucius is embarrassed with what China is planning and doing. China needs to honor Confucius’s wisdom. So whoever is advising President Xi, whoever his subordinates are, he needs to get rid of them and replace them with people who are Confucius-wise, not arrogant and belligerent.
That’s my interest in this. I want to do everything possible to convince China to open up. So we do our job one – get the right vaccine. Because without the right vaccine, we will never be able to return to normal. Because if we don’t manage this, as I already said, between the domestic politics, the geopolitics, and China’s belligerence we will end up in a bad place. By the way, does the war give us a vaccine? No, because a war only means that however long it takes — days, weeks or months or years — we will be without the correct vaccine. War is a bad solution China is causing in slow motion. Sir Alec Guinness as Prince Faisal in “Lawrence of Arabia” spoke of the old men who make the peace – vices of peace: caution and mistrust. That’s what we need at a new modified “Yalta Conference.”
For full view of “Open Letter to President Trump about Covid-19 Origin”, Please download this pdf.
