Who Are You Gonna Believe?
By Steve Sailer • Unz Review • July 29, 2020
From the NYT opinion page:
Help Me Find Trump’s ‘Anarchists’ in Portland
The president has his politically driven narrative. And then there’s reality.
By Nicholas Kristof
Opinion ColumnistJuly 29, 2020, 4:23 p.m. ET
PORTLAND, Ore. — I’ve been on the front lines of the protests here, searching for the “radical-left anarchists” who President Trump says are on Portland streets each evening.
I thought I’d found one: a man who for weeks leapt into the fray and has been shot four times with impact munitions yet keeps coming back. I figured he must be a crazed anarchist.
But no, he turned out to be Dr. Bryan Wolf, a radiologist who wears his white doctor’s jacket and carries a sign with a red cross and the words “humanitarian aid.” He pleads with federal forces not to shoot or gas protesters.
“Put your gun barrels down!” he cries out. “Why are you loading your grenade launchers? We’re just standing ——”
And then they shoot.
Dr. Wolf, an assistant professor at Oregon Health Sciences University, helps at a medic stand operated by volunteers from the medical school. Could they be radical-left anarchists? No, they’ve imposed order on the anarchy of the street by establishing qualifications for field medics and a hierarchy among them, so that any badly injured protester will immediately get the right kind of care.
See, they are organized so they can’t anarchists!
Also, they are anarchists so they can be an organization, and thus they are not liable under the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization law!
Accomplishing all this while tear gas is swirling and impact munitions are whizzing by, without even asking for insurance cards — that seems the opposite of what fanatical anarchists might do.
Maybe the rioting anarchists were in front of the crowd, where there are discussions about Black Lives Matter? I found musicians and activists and technicians, who were projecting a huge sign on the wall of a nearby building — “Fed Goons Out of PDX” — that seemed a bit geeky for anarchists.
Oh, wait, there was a man using angry language about the federal “occupation” and calling it “abhorrent.” Lots of protesters don’t seem to like him, so could he be a crazed anarchist rioter?
Oops, no, that’s just Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, sputtering after being tear-gassed by the feds.
Listen up, people, we at the New York Times spent the last six years telling you in excruciating detail about the menace posed by the radical right. If the radical left were important, wouldn’t we have, you know, gotten around to mentioning them? So, logically, they don’t exist.
Sky News Miss the Story
By Craig Murray | July 27, 2020
Sky News are today carrying the story that Nicola Sturgeon attended a meeting with Salmond’s former Chief of Staff, Geoff Aberdein, about a historic sexual allegation made against Alex Salmond on 29 March 2018, several days before she claimed to parliament that she first heard of it. It will prove in the long term still more significant that this meeting also contradicts Sturgeon’s claim that it was Alex Salmond who first told her of the existence of the allegations.
This all appears to come as news to James Matthews, the Sky reporter. The extraordinary thing is, that both he and I sat through the testimony under oath on this point of Geoff Aberdein at the Alex Salmond trial.
On 8 to 9 March 2018 … had contacted him to say she was involved in a process of looking at complaints about Alex Salmond. He had spoken to Kevin Pringle and Duncan Hamilton by conference call to discuss this. On 29 March 2018 he had held a meeting with Nicola Sturgeon in the Scottish Parliament to discuss this. On 2 April he had attended a further meeting in Sturgeon’s home.
Matthews obviously thought it of no significance – but then again, it was defence evidence and Matthews, in common with the entire mainstream media, reported virtually zero of the defence evidence. Today’s Sky News article helpfully gives links to the headlines of their Salmond trial stories:
As you will see, lurid allegations from the prosecution witnesses – lurid allegations which were untrue – were prominently featured as the headlines. You will search those reports in vain for detail or even a bare outline of the defence case. The verdict is treated as a shock, and then we are straight in to stories querying the verdict.
Matthews and all the MSM hacks came for a hanging. They thus missed the real story, which is of a conspiracy at the highest levels of the Scottish Government to frame Alex Salmond. This finally seems to have penetrated even James Matthews’ thick skull. Had he been paying attention to the defence evidence, he could have published today’s article two months ago.
This relates to the single allegation in the Salmond trial which was about a real incident which actually happened, as opposed to a fiction, a distinction the jury appears to have made by finding only this one “Not Proven” and the others “Not Guilty”. Salmond stated it was a case of working very late together and drinking, getting intimate and going a bit too far with a cuddle. At the time he made a formal apology through a civil service process, which was accepted, and given the choice of transfer the official continued to work closely with him.
The separate official who contacted Aberdein about weaponising this initial Salmond allegation is somebody extremely close to Nicola Sturgeon and very senior in her office. She first contacted Aberdein on 8-9 March – almost a full month before Sturgeon claims she first knew of the allegation.
Anybody who knows how Sturgeon operates would find it extremely improbable that a senior member of her office would be undertaking such discussions without her knowledge. It is simply impossible that the staff member would then go on to arrange a meeting with Sturgeon herself on the subject, without Sturgeon’s prior knowledge and agreement. So we can be extremely confident that Sturgeon knew about the allegation before 29 March, and very probably before 9 March.
It seems from the Sky article that Sturgeon’s defence is to call Geoff Aberdein a liar.
A Scottish government spokesperson told Sky News that Ms Sturgeon does not dispute that the 29 March meeting took place but refutes the suggestion that it involved discussion of the Scottish government’s Salmond inquiry.
This may be difficult for Aberdein as at the 29 March meeting the only other person present was the senior official from Sturgeon’s office, a person whose truthfulness I am by no means alone in holding in great doubt. But in his sworn evidence Aberdein stated that he had a teleconference to discuss the development with Duncan Hamilton and Kevin Pringle, both persons of considerable probity.
I was deeply shocked, indeed shaken, on Friday evening when I was shown a new letter from the Crown Office, denying the existence of a document relevant to my own defence which I know for certain to exist and to be held by the Crown – it was one of those documents, proving the wider conspiracy, excluded from the Salmond trial by the judge as “collateral evidence”. I am now just as shocked by the above Scottish government statement about the 29 March meeting. Lies, evasions, sophistry and denials are perhaps to be expected from politicians, but they are being communicated by civil servants, which says something about the degree of corruption in Scotland today.
I am very sorry, but Scottish politics are about to get very dirty indeed. The degree of penetration and influence by the UK security services behind these events must not be underestimated.
Slate: The First Undeniable Climate Change Deaths
By Eric Worrall | Watts Up With That? | July 25, 2020
When record breaking cold occurs it is just weather, but according to Slate, climate attribution, the science of retrofitting explanations to unusual weather events after they happened, can demonstrate that a single unusual heatwave is evidence of climate change.
The First Undeniable Climate Change Deaths
In 2018 in Japan, more than 1,000 people died during an unprecedented heat wave. In 2019, scientists proved it would have been impossible without global warming.
By DANIEL MERINO JULY 23, 20205:45 AM
uly 23, 2018, was a day unlike any seen before in Japan. It was the peak of a weekslong heat wave that smashed previous temperature records across the historically temperate nation. The heat started on July 9, on farms and in cities that only days earlier were fighting deadly rains, mudslides, and floods. As the waters receded, temperatures climbed. By July 15, 200 of the 927 weather stations in Japan recorded temperatures of 35 degrees Celsius, about 95 degrees Fahrenheit, or higher. Food and electricity prices hit multiyear highs as the power grid and water resources were pushed to their limits. Tens of thousands of people were hospitalized due to heat exhaustion and heatstroke. On Monday, July 23, the heat wave reached its zenith. The large Tokyo suburb of Kumagaya was the epicenter, and around 3 p.m., the Kumagaya Meteorological Observatory measured a temperature of 41.1 degrees Celsius, or 106 F. It was the hottest temperature ever recorded in Japan, but the record was more than a statistic. It was a tragedy: Over the course of those few weeks, more than a thousand people died from heat-related illnesses.
On July 24, the day after the peak of the heat wave, the Japan Meteorological Agency declared it a natural disaster. A disaster it was. But a natural one? Not so much.
In early 2019, researchers at the Japan Meteorological Agency started looking into the circumstances that had caused the unprecedented, deadly heat wave. They wanted to consider it through a relatively new lens—through the young branch of meteorology called attribution science, which allows researchers to directly measure the impact of climate change on individual extreme weather events. Attribution science, at its most basic, calculates how likely an extreme weather event is in today’s climate-changed world and compares that with how likely a similar event would be in a world without anthropogenic warming. Any difference between those two probabilities can be attributed to climate change.
…
Read more: https://slate.com/technology/2020/07/climate-change-deaths-japan-2018-heat-wave.html
The Slate article quotes Yukiko Imada of the Japan Meteorological Agency. The abstract of Yukiko Imada’s study;
The July 2018 High Temperature Event in Japan Could Not Have Happened without Human-Induced Global Warming
Yukiko Imada, Masahiro Watanabe, Hiroaki Kawase, Hideo Shiogama, Miki Arai
The high temperature event in July 2018 caused record-breaking human damage throughout Japan. Large-ensemble historical simulations with a high-resolution atmospheric general circulation model showed that the occurrence rate of this event under the condition of external forcings in July 2018 was approximately 20%. This high probability was a result of the high-pressure systems both in the upper and lower troposphere in July 2018. The event attribution approach based on the large-ensemble simulations with and without human-induced climate change indicated the following: (1) The event would never have happened without anthropogenic global warming. (2) The strength of the two-tiered high-pressure systems was also at an extreme level and at least doubled the level of event probability, which was independent of global warming. Moreover, a set of the large-ensemble dynamically downscaled outputs revealed that the mean annual occurrence of extremely hot days in Japan will be expected to increase by 1.8 times under a global warming level of 2°C above pre-industrial levels.
Read more: https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/sola/15A/0/15A_15A-002/_article/-char/ja/
Climate attribution science would be a little more believable if it could predict unusual events in advance, say give a year or two warning that Japan was about to suffer an extreme heatwave. Providing explanations of events which have already happened does not demonstrate skill.
It’s not Russia, China or Iran who ‘undermine confidence’ in US democracy; for that, ODNI needs to look closer to home
By Nebojsa Malic | RT | July 25, 2020
With 100 days to go before the November election, the US intelligence community issued warnings about foreign ‘influence measures’ such as media reports. The actual challenge to US democracy, however, comes from within.
Foreign countries “continue to use influence measures in social and traditional media in an effort to sway US voters’ preferences and perspectives, to shift US policies, to increase discord and to undermine confidence in our democratic process,” said a statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) on Friday.
China is seeking to “pressure political figures it views as opposed to China’s interests” which “might affect” the presidential race, says ODNI. Iran is trying to divide Americans by “spreading disinformation on social media and recirculating anti-US content.” And Russia “continues to spread disinformation in the US that is designed to undermine confidence in our democratic process” and “denigrate what it sees as an anti-Russia” establishment.
When you parse the political language of this, it boils down to all three countries offering news and opinions in the US media space that disagree with the mainstream US media coverage. How dare they!
Who could forget the Chinese propaganda campaign to reimagine American history as one of irredeemable racism, starting not in 1776 with the Declaration of Independence but long before that, with the arrival of first slaves from Africa? Oh wait, no, it’s the New York Times’s Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘1619 Project’ that did that.
What about the Iranian disinformation that President Donald Trump’s Independence Day speech was “dark and divisive”? Except that was the Times again – and the Washington Post, and CNN, and MSNBC, and other “foreign agents” all the way down.
Well, then, how about the Russian effort to declare Mt. Rushmore a monument to racism and the 4th of July event there a celebration of white supremacy? Erm, hold on, that was the… Democratic Party. Oops.
Also, how dare Russia think there is an “anti-Russian establishment” in the US? No one here would uncritically believe the New York Times story about Moscow offering “bounties” to the Taliban to kill US troops in Afghanistan… would they?
The irony here is that ODNI’s job of warning Americans about “foreign threats” was created in the first place by a domestic actor falsely claiming “Russian meddling” to justify the unanticipated defeat in 2016. Time and again, Hillary Clinton’s assertions of President Donald Trump’s “collusion” with Russia have been debunked with actual evidence. In the real world, the FBI and the Justice Department used dodgy British and Ukrainian rumors as grounds for spying on Trump’s campaign and launching sham prosecutions of his aides, like General Michael Flynn.
Indeed, the fact the FBI could no longer be trusted with counter-intelligence briefings of campaigns was the reason the job was recently entrusted to the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC) Director William Evanina at the ODNI, who signed Friday’s statement.
For continuing to carry water for the “foreign meddling” narrative, Evanina was rewarded with criticism from the Democrats, who complained he did “not go nearly far enough in arming the American people with the knowledge they need about how foreign powers are seeking to influence our political process.”
This statement of disapproval was signed by House Speaker Nancy “All roads lead to Putin” Pelosi; Senate Minority Leader Chuck “Spies have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you” Schumer; Rep. Adam “I have evidence of Russia collusion!” Schiff; and Senator Mark “Steele dossier pusher” Warner. In other words, the very crowd that’s got the US into this very mess to begin with.
Nebojsa Malic is a Serbian-American journalist, blogger and translator, who wrote a regular column for Antiwar.com from 2000 to 2015, and is now senior writer at RT. Follow him on Twitter @NebojsaMalic
Russia Report… A Triumph of Orwellian Bombast
By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | July 24, 2020
The sensational headlines screaming on the front pages of British newspapers this week showed that the parliamentary Russia Report was a triumph of bombast.
The Daily Mail led with “Damning Russia Dossier” while The Times heralded “MI5 to get more powers” and “Tough new laws will combat threat of Russian spies”. The Times also splashed its front page with a large photograph of Russian President Vladimir Putin seemingly lurking behind a curtain, which just goes to show how much British journalism has descended into cartoonish trivia.
There is sound reason why the British government delayed until this week publication of the so-called Russia Report by a cross-party parliamentary committee. That’s plainly because there is nothing in it that could in any way substantiate lurid claims of alleged Russian interference in British politics.
The 55-page document was neither “damning” nor “devastating” as The Daily Mail asserted. The groundless hype suggests that the headline writers simply were looking for something to sell to readers regardless of facts.
Boris Johnson, the prime minister, received a copy of the report 10 months ago, but decided to postpone its publication until after the general election that was held in December. That delay led to claims that his Conservative government was hiding something sinister. There were procedural hiccups from the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) being replaced with new members. However, now that the report is published any rational reader can see that the real cause of the delay is down to the report being a dud, despite all the breathless speculation. It is an empty vessel, with no evidence or substantive detail. It consists of entirely prejudiced assertions that Russia is “a hostile state” and the UK “is clearly a target for Russia disinformation campaigns and political influence”.
The nine lawmakers on the committee and their nine predecessors acknowledge among their sources for the report the following individuals: Anne Applebaum, William Browder and Christopher Steele. All of them are zealously anti-Russia and are prodigious purveyors of “Russian interference” narratives to anyone who will listen to them. Steele is the notorious former MI6 spy who cooked up the ludicrous “Russia Dossier” for the Democrats to smear Trump with in the 2016 elections. That dossier fueled the bogus “Russiagate” scandal.
Of course, the main sources for the parliamentary committee are British intelligence agencies, MI6, MI5 and GCHQ. Candid admission of all those sources should underscore with redlines that the so-called report is nothing but a propaganda screed. Yet the British media treat it with deference and respect as if it is a credible, objective assessment.
What is rather laughable is the unrestrained prejudice of the authors who are, in reality, propagandists more suited to being frozen in Cold War mentality than offering any kind of “expertise”. They claim Russian politics is “paranoid” and “nihilistic” driven by “zero-sum calculation”. All those attributed defects are merely self-projection by the authors of this report and their sources.
It is rather telling that in place of anything resembling substance of alleged Russian interference, the parliamentarians refer to “open sources” of media influence by Russian state-owned RT and Sputnik. They accuse these media of “direct support of a pro-Russian narrative in relation to particular events”. Oh, how shocking! And the British state-owned BBC does not also do the same?
Again referring to “open sources” – meaning public media reports – the parliamentarians claim that the Kremlin interfered in the Scottish referendum on independence back in 2014. So just because Russian news media featured that subject in its coverage is supposed to be “evidence” of Kremlin interference. The absurd accusation is also a convenient way to smear Scottish pro-independence.
Oddly enough, the report says there was no manifest Russian interference in the 2016 Brexit referendum. Well that’s handy. The Tory government wouldn’t want to smear its ambitions of reviving the British empire, that’s for sure.
The ISC publication is a self-serving dud that is “not worth a penny”, as Russian lawmaker Aleksy Chepa put it.
It is loaded with complacent British self-regard and knee-jerk Russophobia.
The parliamentarians repeatedly rebuke the British government and state intelligence for not taking the “threat” of alleged Russian meddling seriously enough.
A more plausible explanation is because there is negligible Russian meddling in British politics, as Moscow has consistently stated. If the British government and its spooks fail to get excited – in private – about allegations of Russian malfeasance it’s because there is actually nothing to the allegations. Still, the parliamentarian anti-Russia ideologues assume to know better. They are convinced that Britain is a target for Kremlin hostility and they lambast the government and intelligence services for “not making it a priority issue”.
The Orwellian plot thickens when the authors of the boilerplate Russian Report then conclude by urging MI5 to be given more secretive powers to collaborate with social media networks in order to control information in the name of combating a “hostile state threat”. This is a sinister, anti-democratic call worthy of a dictatorship for censoring and blackballing any dissenting views under the guise of “defending democracy”.
One area where the ISC document begins to deal with reality – but only superficially and misleadingly – is on the subject of super-rich Russian expatriates living in London, which is dubbed “Londongrad”. Many of these oligarchs are beneficiaries of looting Russian state assets during the privatization-robbery frenzy under former President Boris Yeltsin. They are not “friends of Putin” as the British lawmakers make out. These shady oligarchs are often big donors to the Conservative party, not because they want to inject pro-Russian influence, but rather because they are typically opposed to the current Russian government and are seeking to destabilize it. If there is any Russian “influence” in British politics it is that which promotes illegal regime-change policies in opposition to the Russian state.
In every aspect the much-vaunted Russia Report is a worthless pile of propaganda. Even a glimmer resembling something real – the Russian oligarchs in Londongrad – turns out to be an inversion of reality. And yet, pathetically, the British media amplify the nonsense with reverence and gravitas.
Why the Russia Report tells us more about Britain than anything else
By Johanna Ross | July 24, 2020
The long-awaited UK ‘Russia Report’, whose publication was delayed by 10 months by Boris Johnson, was finally released this week by the Westminster Intelligence and Security Committee, much to the excitement of those keen to demonstrate alleged ‘Russian interference’ in the 2016 EU referendum. However Britain’s ‘Russiagate’ has been something of a damp squib compared to the detailed, long-drawn Muller report across the Atlantic. In fact, anyone who was expecting any detail regarding the allegations of Russian interference would be sorely disappointed.
The reality is that the report contains nothing in addition to what has long been printed in the mainstream press about so-called Russian ‘support’ of the Brexit campaign. No evidence is provided in the report, other than references to ‘open source’ material – in other words, what we ourselves have read online and in print. For example, ‘40. Open source studies have pointed to the preponderance of pro-Brexit or anti-EU stories on RT and Sputnik, and the use of ‘bots’ or ‘trolls’, as evidence of Russian attempts to influence the process.’ So we have an allegation that a media organisation may have a particular editorial line? Shocking! Yes, a glance at the RT and Sputnik websites would confirm that they seem to adopt a position close to that of British newspapers such as The Daily Telegraph or Daily Mail, and that would be correct. RT and Sputnik have a broadly right-wing, conservative editorial line, more in keeping with Russia’s conservative values. Hardly surprising – it’s Russian media after all. Every media outlet has its editorial line. Every. Single. One.
But having worked at Sputnik over the time of the EU referendum, I cannot in any way support the allegation that it was promoting a pro-Brexit position. One of the shows I produced – ‘Brexit or Fixit’ – invited each week a guest from opposite sides of the debate – both Leave and Remain – in order to ensure balance. In no way was I – or anyone else for that matter – encouraged to promote an anti-EU stance. The same cannot be said for the mainstream media unfortunately. It was apparent in the run-up to the election, that the media was firmly in the Remain camp. The balance on the BBC, Sky News and Channel Four, for instance was weighted towards remaining in the EU, in my opinion, and I can say that as a supporter of Remain, not Brexit. Even after the result, Sky News openly ran a campaign for a second referendum to be held – the ‘People’s Vote’ as it would be called. Opponents of the Leave campaign and the Brexit result which followed have been desperate ever since to prove some kind of anomaly took place. It just couldn’t be that the British people voted to leave the EU. And this is where the idea of Russian interference came along, and conveniently fitted the narrative.
Just as in the US, the establishment and liberal elite is completely out of touch with the general population, and has been for years – hence the election of Trump and the bid by Democrats to oust him. Populist governments and their messages have resounded with people, and the media, politicians and expert class have yet to catch up. Russia, in this way has become a useful scapegoat for those who aren’t willing to accept the social evolution which is taking place. It’s Democracy in action, but the establishment can’t hack it. After all, look at the Mueller report – what evidence did that provide of Trump’s supposed links to Putin? Nothing. Zilch. Nichevo. Evidence isn’t really important here. Because the accused has already been found guilty, long ago. Russia hasn’t had a fair trial, and isn’t going to get one – it has been painted as evil incarnate for years now to the extent that even the word ‘Russia’ or ‘Russian’ seems to have taken on negative connotations in the public domain.
It’s sad because it stinks of injustice. The idea that Russia is out to subvert the West really is a hypothesis which has yet to bear fruit. Indeed, a recent fascinating paper by renowned Russia expert and historian Richard Sakwa debunks the idea that Russia seeks to undermine the West. He does admit that it would like to influence it, however. The US and Britain should know something about this, given the desire both countries have had over the generations to spread ‘democracy and human rights’ across the globe, from the Christian missionaries of the 19th century to the modern day Voice of America news agency.
Fundamentally, the Russia report highlights two rather pessimistic facts about British society today: i) our intelligence services are inadequate and need an overhaul but more importantly ii) the British public is so used to being spoon-fed information that it cannot be relied upon by politicians to think for itself when it comes to deciding on how to vote in an election. What on earth does it say about the general public if it is the case that it could be completely manipulated by a particular media campaign, paid for or not by a foreign power? Do our politicians really think we are that stupid? Or do they think we require all our information to be censored, as if we are children? Unfortunately I fear by the time we will have this conversation, it will be too late.
Johanna Ross is a journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
‘US must stop slander and smearing’: China rebuffs allegations it stole Covid-19 vaccine data
RT | July 22, 2020
Beijing has accused the US of waging a global smear campaign, after Chinese nationals were accused of hacking foreign companies that conduct Covid-19 vaccine research.
The US must “immediately stop its slander and smearing of China on cyber security issues,” spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry Wang Wenbin told reporters. “The Chinese government is a staunch defender of cyber security, and has always opposed and cracked down on cyber attacks and cyber crime in all forms.”
Wang said that “cyberspace must not become a new battlefield,” because upholding “peace and stability” in cyberspace is in the common interest of all countries.
The US Justice Department earlier accused two Chinese nationals of targeting companies around the world, including biotech firms in Maryland, Massachusetts, and California that are conducting research related to vaccines for the coronavirus.
The Covid-19 pandemic remains one of the areas where the US is accusing Beijing of misconduct. American officials, including President Donald Trump, claimed that China accidentally released the coronavirus from a laboratory in the city of Wuhan, where the disease was first recorded, and initially tried to hide the scale of the outbreak.
Another line of attack involves allegations that Beijing is influencing the World Health Organization (WHO). British media reported that on Tuesday that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told MPs at a “private meeting” in London that China had “bought” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus by helping him to get elected.
“There was a deal-making election and when push came to shove, you get dead Britons, because of the deal that was made,” Pompeo was quoted by the media as saying.
The Trump administration has heavily criticized the WHO over its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. The US officially initiated its withdrawal from the organization this month.
Beijing has repeatedly denied having concealed any information about the outbreak and slammed suggestions that the virus came from one of its labs as false.
American-Chinese relations hit a new low on Wednesday, when the US demanded that China shut down its consulate in Houston, Texas. The US State Department explained that this decision will help to protect American intellectual property and the personal data of US citizens. Beijing blasted the move as “escalatory” and promised to retaliate.
I Don’t Always Believe CIA Narratives. But When I Do, I Believe Them About China.
By Caitlin Johnstone | July 22, 2020
My social media notifications have been lighting up the last few days with virulent Chinagaters sharing a video which purports to show Uighur Muslims being loaded onto a train to be taken to concentration camps. It’s actually an old video that had already surfaced last year, but it is magically making the rounds again as a new and shocking revelation in 2020 now that western China hysteria has been officially kicked into high gear, at exactly the same time the US enacts one of the most dangerous and incendiary escalations of recent years in the South China Sea.
Everyone tagging me in this video presents it as a self-evident “gotcha” moment, in exactly the same way Russiagaters spent years tagging me in every HUGE BOMBSHELL WALLS ARE CLOSING IN item of thinly sourced narrative fluff in their debunked conspiracy theory that the Kremlin had infiltrated the highest levels of the US government.
They are one hundred percent certain that the video shows Uighurs being loaded onto a train to go to a concentration camp, solely because that is what the bit of text over the video tells them that that’s what they are seeing. They aren’t looking at the actual data and thinking critically about it, they’re looking at the narrative and believing it on blind faith. Which, in a post-Iraq invasion world, is an absolutely insane thing to do when presented with information about a nation that is targeted by the US-centralized empire.
In reality there’s nothing in the video which tells us that these are Uighur people being sent to a “re-education camp” and not merely a conventional prison transfer of convicted criminals, the likes of which take place in the far more populous US prison system all the time. It’s an unknown. We are told by the BBC’s Andrew Marr (the same Andrew Marr whose phony journalism Noam Chomsky derided years ago) that it has been “authenticated by western intelligence agencies and by Australian experts”, which in practice are the same thing, and that’s really the extent of the evidence. Again, this is an insane source to take on faith in a post-Iraq invasion world.
There are in fact an abundance of reasons to be highly skeptical of the establishment narrative about what is happening to Uighurs in Xinjiang. But that isn’t the point that I am trying to make here.
The point I am trying to make here is that the only sane response to any narrative that is being promoted by western intelligence agencies and their media stenographers about governments which have resisted absorption into the imperial blob is intense and unrelenting skepticism. These organizations have such an extensive and well-known history of lying about exactly this sort of thing that they have left us no choice but to withhold belief from anything they say absent a mountain of independently verifiable evidence if we want to have a fact-based relationship with reality.
None of this means that China has a wonderful government. It doesn’t even mean that all the bad things we’re being told about what the Chinese government is doing are false. It’s entirely possible that that video shows exactly what we’re being urgently told to believe it shows. There’s simply no way to be sure one way or the other in an information ecosystem that is so severely tainted by propagandistic narrative manipulation.
Surely the Chinese government is far from sinless. It seems to be a constant that power structures which keep secrets and use propaganda will always wind up doing ugly things. But this doesn’t mean you go believing whatever cold war-facilitating story we are fed by western power structures about it. Not if we want to avoid being duped into serving as pro bono CIA propagandists, unwitting tools of a murderous war machine.
There is a slow-motion third world war underway between the US-centralized power alliance and the nations like China which have resisted being absorbed into it, and that war is being largely facilitated by propaganda. If one doesn’t wish to become a propagandist themselves, one ought to withhold belief from the stories they are told about the terrible, awful things the unabsorbed nations are doing which require extensive sanctions, subversion and interventionism in response.
This doesn’t mean you believe the opposite of what you’re told, it simply means you refrain from believing either way and remain agnostic until presented with hard verifiable proof. Believing damaging narratives about US-targeted governments is exactly as stupid as believing the words of a known compulsive liar about someone you know he hates.
China is such a curious anomaly in the narrative matrix. Many who are normally skeptical of claims by western governments immediately swallow anything they’re told about China. They not only believe all such claims, it never even occurs to them to seriously question them. Like they seem to be genuinely unaware that skepticism of establishment China narratives is even an option. The claims just slide right into the “believe” file in their mind, completely unchecked by anything resembling critical thought.
I argue with people all over the political spectrum about China online, and an astonishing percentage of them have clearly put exactly zero research into critically examining these claims, even if they’re people who are normally relatively critical of western foreign policy. They’re often completely unaware that whatever claims they’re advancing are not just disputed but have large amounts of evidence against them. This is because they’ve done no research whatsoever into finding out what they were told is even true. They’ll do that research on Iran, they’ll do it about Russia, they’ll do it about Syria, but with China all skepticism immediately goes right now the window. It’s the weirdest thing.
Always be intensely skeptical of claims made about governments targeted by the known liars who run the US-centralized empire. Always, always, always, always. If you advance imperialist propaganda, then you are just as culpable for the bloodshed and suffering they help facilitate as the people who are actually launching the missiles.
Stay skeptical, my friends.
‘Russia Report’: Once-mighty British intelligence has been reduced to regurgitating sensationalist Buzzfeed stories
By Paul Robinson | RT | July 22, 2020
The ‘Russia Report’ gives us an insight into the dearth of genuine expertise available to British officials on Russia. It also introduces a new style of investigation: Seeking evidence to support predetermined judgements
On Tuesday, the British Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee issued a 50-page report detailing its views on the danger Russia poses to British security. “The security threat posed by Russia,” the report says, “appears fundamentally nihilistic… It is clear that Russia poses a significant threat to the UK on a number of fronts – from espionage to interference in democratic processes, and to serious crime.”
The report further argues that the British intelligence community “took their eyes off the ball” and the government “badly underestimated the Russian threat.” In particular, the government and its intelligence agencies failed to investigate claims that the Russian state had interfered in the 2016 Brexit referendum. The government, however, has rejected the committee’s demand that such an investigation now take place.
The reports’ claims are alarming at first glance. When examined, however, they can be seen to lack evidentiary support. Instead, readers are repeatedly told that there have been “widespread allegations” and that “it has been widely reported” that the Russians are up to no good. But allegations are not evidence, and time after time the report fails to substantiate the suspicions it raises.
For instance, the report declares, “There have been widespread public allegations that Russia sought to influence the 2016 referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU.” But the only evidence it provides to show that those allegations might be true is a reference to “open source studies” which point to pro-Brexit bias by the Russian broadcasters RT and Sputnik.
The committee neither names the studies nor discusses whether their conclusions are valid. Apparently, the committee asked MI5 for evidence, but all it got in reply was “six lines of text” based also on ‘open source studies’. In short, no secret intelligence supporting the claims that Russia interfered with Brexit has been provided.
This is rather embarrassing. The committee has drawn a blank. But still, it presses on. “There has been credible open source commentary suggesting that Russia undertook influence campaigns in relation to the Scottish independence referendum in 2014,” it announces. The relevant footnote fails to say what this credible commentary is. Instead, it merely says that it “was widely reported” that Russians who had observed the Scottish referendum had suggested “that there were irregularities in the conduct of the vote.”
But Russians complaining about the conduct of the vote do not constitute Russians trying to influence the campaign. After all, the observers in question said these things after the vote, and so their statements could hardly have been an attempt to affect the outcome.
This faulty mode of argument is pretty much par for the course. “It has been widely alleged” that Russia was responsible for a computer hack on the French presidential election in 2017, the report says. “It has been widely reported” that Russians were responsible for the hack and leak operation against the Democratic National Committee in the US in 2016. And so on.
Perhaps the nadir of the report is the statement that “on 15 June 2017, Buzzfeed News published the results of its investigation into 14 deaths in the UK of Russian business figures and British individuals linked to them” (Buzzfeed implied, without supporting evidence, that all 14 people were murdered by the Russian intelligence services). This, then, is what the might of British intelligence has been reduced to – regurgitating sensationalist stories from Buzzfeed. It gives you a sense of what the committee considers a ‘credible’ source to be.
The committee goes beyond repeating unsubstantiated claims to making unspecified ones. In the UK, it says, numerous “lawyers, accountants, estate agents, and PR professionals have played a role, wittingly or unwittingly, in the extension of Russian influence which is often linked to promoting the nefarious interests of the Russian state.” No names are named, no evidence produced. All the committee provides is a quote from long-time anti-Russian campaigner William Browder, as if his bold assertions amount to incontrovertible proof.
In 50 pages warning us of the evil ‘influence’ Russia has over the UK, the report fails to provide a single documented example of this influence at work. In short, the entire premise of the report (that Russia poses a significant threat to the UK) is not only not proven, but also not even demonstrated in any tangible way.
That perhaps explains why the committee has chosen to be so harsh on the British government, accusing it of failing to live up to its responsibility to defend the nation. It appears that the committee knows in its bones that all these things are true, but also knows that it lacks any evidence to prove them. The evidence is there; it’s just that the government has failed to do its job and provide it.
A proper intelligence investigation first finds the facts and then comes to a conclusion. It would seem as though the Intelligence and Security Committee wishes to go about it the other way – it has already reached its conclusion; now it wants the government to provide the evidence. The government should not indulge this.
Paul Robinson is a a professor at the University of Ottawa. He writes about Russian and Soviet history, military history, and military ethics.
US’ War Tactics Might Not Be Useful Anymore
By Prof. Zamir Ahmed Awan | One World | July 21, 2020
The US’ typical war tactics of the past may not be useful against China, Russia, or North Korea. Let us review the Iraq War as a typical case. The first step was the media war by building an anti-Saddam narrative. The BBC reported on the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and termed them a threat to regional and global peace. UN inspectors were dispatched to verify their existence, but could not confirm anything. When the US was sure that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and capability of resistance or retaliation, that was when it decided to attack the country. Later on, the BBC apologized for spreading fake news, but only after the destruction of Iraq.
Simultaneously, the media distorted the image of President Saddam Hussein and instigated the public against him. The US intelligence identified individuals disgruntled with the Saddam regime, provided them training, equipped them, liberally funded them, and organized systematic agitations, demonstrations, and insurgency against the Saddam government.
After the US established a strong network against Saddam Hussein and agents providing them with ground intelligence, they felt comfortable attacking Iraq.
The preparatory work that was undertaken before the attack included spreading anti-Saddam sentiments, supporting insurgencies, spreading fake news, and creating an environment for a smooth attack. Media and intelligence agents were the tools to achieve all of this.
Then the US, along with its allies, launched airstrikes, carpet bombed, and dropped unlimited explosives. After destroying the control and command, dispersing troops, telecommunications, power plants, fuel storage facilities, hospitals, airports, government buildings, and other important installations, they were assured of no resistance or retaliation from the Iraqi forces.
The airstrikes were made as a result of high-tech warfare, jamming radars, and disabling Iraqi defense systems. The US used bombers at a very high altitude where Iraqi anti-air crafts defense systems could not reach so that there were no casualties on the American side. After damaging the whole country so badly, and when they were 100% sure of no resistance from the Iraqi forces, the ground troops conquered Baghdad almost without any resistance or loss of lives.
The Libyan War was a similar case. They tried to do the same thing in Syria. However, this did not succeed because Russia rescued Syria, while it was quite a different story in the case of North Korea. The US could not penetrate into Korea, reach disgruntled individuals, or lobby against the Kim regime. The media war was not successful either. On the other hand, North Korea really has nuclear deterrence. That is why the US never attacked North Korea. In the case of Iran, the US understands the potential of resistance and retaliation. Iran demonstrated its capabilities well when the US assassinated General Soleimani in Baghdad.
I am pretty sure that the US will never come into direct confrontation with China. Although the US tried its best to destabilize China by creating issues like Hong Kong and Xinjiang, China has almost fully overcome such disturbances. The media war is also under the control of the Chinese government. China is officially recognized as the second-largest economy just after the US, but the realities may be different. In the case of weapons, China is not behind the US. In high-tech and advanced technologies, in some respect, China is ahead of America. China might not compete with America in conventional warfare, but it can move swiftly, decisively, and with its most modern advanced defense systems.
At the same time, the US is losing its reputation worldwide because it was — and in some cases, still is — involved in countless killings in South America, the Middle East, Vietnam, Japan, Africa, Korea, and many other parts of the world. Some people say that “when you have America as your friend, you do not need any enemies”. Even close allies of the US are not satisfied. Anti-American sentiments are growing globally. While this is happening, China is engaged in connectivity, infrastructure development, and the promotion of understanding and harmony among various cultures. The Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) is a message of peace, stability, development, and prosperity. As a result, China enjoys an immense amount of goodwill.
In order to preserve this message of global peace, we must always struggle to avert any conflict in any part of the world and resolve all issues amicably, diplomatically, and politically under the UN Charter.
Prof. Engr. Zamir Ahmed Awan is a Sinologist (ex-Diplomat), Editor, Analyst, Non-Resident Fellow of CCG (Center for China and Globalization), National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Islamabad, Pakistan. (E-mail: awanzamir@yahoo.com)
Pro-Israel news outlets ran ‘deepfake’ op-eds in ‘new disinformation frontier’
MEMO | July 20, 2020
Pro-Israel news agencies have run “deepfake” op-eds, in what is said to be “a new disinformation frontier”. Details of the “hyper-realistic forgery” were uncovered by a Reuters report this week, which uncovered the mystery around the identity of Oliver Taylor.
Taylor has been writing for a number of well-known publications, including Israel National News, the Jerusalem Post, and the Times of Israel. However, his article in the US Jewish newspaper the Algemeiner, which accused a London based academic Mazen Masri and his wife, Palestinian rights campaigner Ryvka Barnard, of being “known terrorist sympathizers”, exposed his true identity.
Mystified by Taylor’s accusation, Masri and Barnard alerted Reuters to their suspicion over the anti-Palestinian writer. The senior lecturer in law said when he pulled up Taylor’s profile photo, he couldn’t put his finger on it, but he explained that something about the young man’s face “seemed off”.
It seems as though Masri had drawn the ire of Taylor over his work in late 2018 when the lecturer helped launch a lawsuit against the Israeli surveillance company NSO on behalf of alleged Mexican victims of the company’s phone hacking technology. The spyware company has been accused of being “deeply involved” in carrying out mobile phone hacks of 1,400 of its users.
Taylor’s identity was finally uncovered. Rather than being a real person, Taylor appears to be a “deepfake”, or a hyper-realistic forgery, created in part to criticise Mazen. Reuters interviewed six experts who conclude that it had the characteristics of forgery that would not be detectable to the naked eye.
In their report raising concerns over “the marriage of deepfakes and disinformation”, the Reuters report warned deepfakes like Taylor are “dangerous” because they undermined public discourse.
Taylor is just one of several deepfakes. Earlier this month, the Daily Beast, reported that 46 conservative news outlets, including some reporting on the Jewish community, were duped into publishing Middle East “hot takes” by 19 non-existent authors as part of a massive propaganda campaign that appears to have started in July 2019.
Only a few of the news outlets covering Israel are said to have removed articles that later turned out to be deepfakes.
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From the Archives
The 9/11 “Double-Cross” Conspiracy Theory
BY LAURENT GUYÉNOT • UNZ REVIEW • SEPTEMBER 6, 2022
Is it true that “9/11 was an inside job”? Yes, insofar as Israel is “inside” the U.S. But for the 9/11 truthers who have identified Israel as the main perpetrators, “9/11 was an inside job” is at best a half-truth, and at worst an integral part of the Zionist operation, like a secondary flag sewn as a lining under the false flag of Islamism. Victor Thorn (1963-2017) wrote in his book 9/11 made in Israel: The Plot Against America (2011): “In essence, the ‘9-11 truth movement’ was created prior to Sept. 11, 2001 as a means of suppressing news relating to Israeli complicity. . . . The slogan ‘9-11 was an inside job’ was quite possibly the greatest example of Israeli propaganda ever devised.” In milder terms, it is “controlled opposition”.
A genuine truth movement would have pointed to Israel as the prime suspect from the start. From day one, it was obvious who would benefit. … continue
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