The Will Power of a Fantasy World

President Donald Trump (Evan Vucci/The Associated Press)

"The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry. And there's nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you've re-calculated."

"So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state."

"[There was] no way [I lost in Georgia]."

U.S. President Donald Trump

"If any other person did this ... there is no doubt in my mind that at the very least a criminal investigation would be opened right away."

Anthony Michael Kreis, law professor, Georgia State University

"Trump's contempt for democracy is laid bare. Once again. On tape."

"Pressuring an election official to 'find' the votes so he can win is potentially criminal. And another flagrant abuse of power by a corrupt man who would be a despot, if we allowed him."

"We will not."

Representative Adam Schiff, chairman, House intelligence committee

On Sunday, U.S.President Trump publicly revealed he had had a telephone conversation about voter fraud with Georgia's top election official, fellow Republican, Georgia Secretary of State Paul Raffensperger. "He was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the 'ballots under table' scam, ballot destruction, out-of-state 'voters', dead voters, and more. He has no clue!", the president informed his public through his usual mode of presidential official communication: Twitter.

Trump alternately flattered, begged and threatened Raffensperger  The Washington Post

 

This is a man irreconcilable to fact and reality for he is accustomed to inventing his own to suit his very personal narrative. He appears to believe, irrationally, that conspiracies exist for the sole purpose of foiling his plans to continue representing the best interests of the United States. His fate conjoined with that of America. There must be a reason that the global community of former U.S. allies will breathe a sigh of relief at his forthcoming departure.

"Respectfully, President Trump: What you're saying is not true. The truth will come out", responded Mr. Raffensperger. Who had earnestly attempted to dissuade his president from his self-serving fantasy world of fake news and skulduggery. All revealed through a recording of an hour-long call that had been released to the U.S. media. The call shared between the two the day before represented clear evidence of Mr. Trump's fantasy world that voter fraud has deprived him of a second term in office.

Mr. Raffensperger and the general counsel to his office informed the president outright throughout the call that his assertions had no basis in reality. Joe Biden won the presidential election by a margin of 306 to 232 in the state-by-state Electoral College vote, and in the overall general vote by over 7 million. Figures that are real and accounted for. All of which place Mr. Trump in the rare category of a one-term president, a well earned rejection of another four years of chaos overwhelming some successes.

 

Trump demands of Georgia's Secretary of State that additional votes be 'found'

When Electoral College results are set to be formally tallied in Congress on January 6, several of President Trump's allies in a long-shot effort to disrupt formal recognition of Mr. Biden's presidential win is scheduled to take place, led by U.S. Senator Ted Cruz. The narrow victory realized by Mr. Biden in Georgia represented the first by a Democratic presidential candidate in a normally Republican state.

"[This recording captures] the whole, disgraceful story about Donald Trump's assault on American democracy."

"We now have irrefutable proof of a president pressuring and threatening an official of his own party to get him to rescind a state's lawful, certified vote count and fabricate another in its place."

Bob Bauer, senior adviser, President-elect Joe Biden

False Conspiracy Mongering : China's Novel Coronavirus

"The Chinese Communist Party sees itself as engaged in a global competition over the narrative surrounding COVID-19, its origins and government responses."
"The disinformation, the conspiracy theory peddling and the wild and unsubstantiated accusations are prime examples."
We have not seen the last Li Wenliang. The question his case raises is whether the next Li Wenliang will even have the opportunity to send that first message."
Julian Gewirtz, The Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies

"People of the world have all witnessed that it is under the leadership of the CPC [Communist Party of China] that the Chinese people achieved independence, freedom and liberation and made enormous progress in national development."
"It is also under the leadership of the CPC that the Chinese national united as one and speedily fought against COVID-19, buying precious time for the global response."
Chinese Embassy, Ottawa

A doctor examines a patient who is infected by the coronavirus at a hospital in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province.

STR/AFP via Getty Images

A University of Toronto Internet watchdog, The Citizen Lab, had reported the blocking of key words by a Chinese livestreaming platform in late December, related to the coronavirus outbreak. Following that, a broader censorship followed. And Wuhan, the epicentre of the novel coronavirus outbreak in China, was sealed into military-style lockdown on January 23. Its eleven million people were virtually prisoners in their own homes, as the frightening new virus leading to pneumonia and death for many, swept through the city and the region.

To the world's misfortune, that lockdown came too late. China's attempts to shield knowledge of the new coronavirus from the outside world led it to ignore the impending disaster, to allow millions of Wuhan residents to fan out from the city during the Chinese New Year in the customary tradition of returning home to visit with family. Those visitors took with them an alarming infectious rate, not only within China, but to the world outside as well.

In Canada, the first case of COVID-19 emerged a mere three days later, on January 25 when a traveller who had been to Wuhan returned to Canada. More latterly, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Lijian Zhao, has used the specious auspices of a Montreal-based, conspiracy-theory group called Centre for Research on Globalization to 'legitimize' its contention that COVID-19 did not emerge in China, at all. It was deliberately brought by U.S. soldiers last November to Wuhan with the intention of initiating a vicious viral war.

A pangolin, mammal thought a possible intermediate host for the coronavirus.

This conspiracy-pushing group that honours decrepit versions of 9/11 that not Islamist terrorists but the CIA conspired to destroy the World Trade Centers, delighted Mr.Lijian in its take on the Wuhan virus, who then tweeted "It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent!"
Beijing followed up by recent suggestions the virus could have originated in Italy. And now Beijing is ennobling the doctor they first criminalized, who was arrested after alerting his colleagues about a mysterious new type of pneumonia showing up in Wuhan hospitals.

And while China receives praise from the World Health Organization over its self-described timely and efficient halt to the spread of the novel coronavirus, the U.S. is shaping up as an epicentre of the viral contamination, following Italy's and Spain's ongoing crisis in trying to control the runaway contagion. This new virus is a close cousin of SARS, so much so it is classified as SARS/cov-2. SARS, another high-death-rate virus which originated in a Chinese wet-market, did not have the astonishing infectious impetus of COVID-19.

Closed Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, Wuhan.  Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images

With the emergence of the novel coronavirus and patients admitted to hospital with a mystery pneumonia, health care workers wee infected, among them eight doctors, including ophthalmologist Li Wenliang, all who were brought in by police to be accused of spreading false rumours, and forced to humbly recant. Li contracted the virus and died of it in February. When, eventually officials made public acknowledgement of the virus they claimed it was not serious. Which led to a holiday banquet attended by 40,000 people taking place in Wuhan on January 13, and the rest is history.

Between the banquet and the millions of holiday-goers leaving Wuhan the explosion of infection began globally. Live wild game sold at 'wet' markets spawned over the years various zoonotic transmissions from animal host to human victim. This was just another one, with an explosive spread, and a deadly message. Beijing has been busy crafting a new version of events; not only that the virus originated elsewhere, but that Chinese authorities took immediate remedial action to counter its spread.

A worker in a protective suit at the closed seafood market in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, January 10, 2020. The seafood market is linked to the outbreak of the pneumonia caused by the new strain of coronavirus, but some patients diagnosed with the new coronavirus deny exposure to this market. (Stringer/Reuters)