Facebook Hired Ex-CIA, FBI Agents to Censor Content That Deviates From Official Narrative

So many ex-government workers are now employed by Facebook that it’s difficult to view Meta as a private company instead of a government partner, intent on silencing anyone who speaks out against the official narrative.

By Dr. Joseph Mercola

Source: The Defender

Story at a glance:

  • Many of the people in charge of moderating content at Facebook have been recruited from the government, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), FBI and the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD).
  • So many ex-government workers are now employed by Facebook that it’s difficult to view Meta as a private company instead of a government partner, intent on silencing anyone who speaks out against the official narrative.
  • In January 1977, Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein’s 25,000-word article was published in Rolling Stone, detailing the close relationship between the CIA and the press.
  • The program was known as Operation Mockingbird and involved the CIA paying hundreds of journalists to write fake stories and spread propaganda instead of real news.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has stated that Facebook’s values are based on the American tradition of free expression. Yet, censorship on social media has gone mainstream as part of the campaign to control what you see online, and therefore what you think and how you perceive reality.

In an official Facebook video, a Meta employee identified as “Aaron” states that he’s the manager of “the team that writes the rules for Facebook,” deciding “what is acceptable and what is not.” These gatekeepers effectively dictate what the platform’s 2.9 billion active users see when they’re scrolling their feeds.

In all, 40,000 individuals are part of Facebook’s content moderation staff, yielding incredible power over public information. Writing for MintPress News, journalist Alan Macleod explains:

“It is here where decisions about what content is allowed, what will be promoted and who or what will be suppressed are made. These decisions affect what news and information billions of people across the world see every day.

“Therefore, those in charge of the algorithms hold far more power and influence over the public sphere than even editors at the largest news outlets.”

But according to Macleod’s MintPress investigation, many of the people in charge of moderating content at Facebook have been recruited from the government, including the Central Intelligence Agency, FBI and DOD, to the extent that, he says, “some might feel it becomes difficult to see where the U.S. national security state ends and Facebook begins.”

‘Aaron is CIA’

Facebook employee Aaron, featured in their marketing video, formerly worked for the CIA, up until July 2019, though this isn’t disclosed by Facebook. According to Macleod:

“In his 15-year career, Aaron Berman rose to become a highly influential part of the CIA.

“For years, he prepared and edited the president of the United States’ daily brief, ‘wr[iting] and overs[eeing] intelligence analysis to enable the President and senior U.S. officials to make decisions on the most critical national security issues,’ especially on ‘the impact of influence operations on social movements, security, and democracy,’ his LinkedIn profile reads.

“None of this is mentioned in the Facebook video.”

Meta is teeming with ex-government agents

Berman is not the only ex-CIA agent working at Facebook — far from it. So many ex-government workers are now employed by Facebook that it’s difficult to view Meta as a private company instead of a government partner, intent on silencing anyone who speaks out against the official narrative.

Macleod’s investigation, for instance, uncovered the following ex-CIA agents at Facebook:

  • Deborah Berman, a trust and safety project manager for Meta, was an intelligence analyst at the CIA for 10 years.
  • Bryan Weisbard, now a director of trust and safety, security and data privacy for Meta, worked as a CIA intelligence officer from 2006 to 2010 before becoming a diplomat.

While at the CIA, his job involved leading “global teams to conduct counter-terrorism and digital cyber investigations” and “Identif[ying] online social media misinformation propaganda and covert influence campaigns.”

  • Cameron Harris, a trust and safety project manager at Meta, was a CIA analyst until 2019.

Former members of other government agencies are also common at Meta. Macleod revealed:

  • Emily Vacher, who Facebook/Meta recruited to be a director of trust and safety, worked at the FBI from 2001 to 2011, becoming a supervisory special agent.
  • Mike Bradow, employed as a misinformation policy manager at Meta since 2020, worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) from 2010 to 2020.

“USAID is a U.S. government-funded influence organization which has bankrolled or stage managed multiple regime change operations abroad, including in Venezuela in 2002, Cuba in 2021, and ongoing attempts in Nicaragua,” Macleod noted.

  • Neil Potts, Facebook’s vice president of trust and safety, is a former intelligence officer with the U.S. Marine Corps.
  • Sherif Kamal, trust and safety program manager at Meta, worked as a program manager at the Pentagon until 2020.
  • Joey Chan, trust and safety program manager at Meta, worked as a commanding officer for the U.S. Army until 2021, where he oversaw more than 100 troops in the Asia Pacific region.

Ex-intelligence officers in control of what you see

Meta is appearing increasingly like another branch of government put in place to mold the views of society, as with a workforce composed of ex-intelligence agents, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to remain impartial.

Macleod wrote:

“Hiring so many ex-U.S. state officials to run Facebook’s most politically sensitive operations raises troubling questions about the company’s impartiality and its proximity to government power.

“Meta is so full of national security state agents that at some point, it almost becomes more difficult to find individuals in trust and safety who were not formerly agents of the state.

“Despite its efforts to brand itself as a progressive, ‘woke’ organization, the Central Intelligence Agency remains deeply controversial.

“It has been charged with overthrowing or attempting to overthrow numerous foreign governments (some of them democratically elected), helping prominent Nazis escape punishment after World War Two, funnelling large quantities of drugs and weapons around the world, penetrating domestic media outlets, routinely spreading false information and operating a global network of ‘black sites’ where prisoners are repeatedly tortured.

“Therefore, critics argue that putting operatives from this organization in control of our news feeds is deeply inappropriate.”

CIA history of control and corruption

For instance, U.S. intelligence agencies kept watch on Ukrainian nationalist organizations as a source of counterintelligence against the Soviet Union. Declassified CIA documents show close ties between U.S. intelligence and Ukrainian nationalists since 1946.

After WWII, Stepan Bandera, the leader of the most radical section of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which was founded in 1929 and had the ultimate goal of creating an ethnically pure, independent Ukraine, and other Ukrainian Nazi leaders fled to Europe, and the CIA helped protect them.

The CIA later informed the Immigration and Naturalization Service that it had concealed Bandera and other Ukrainians from the Soviets.

While the Nuremberg trials brought justice to the leaders of fascist Germany, “the Ukrainian Nazis were spared the same fate, and some were even granted indulgences by the CIA.”

According to the film “Ukraine on Fire,” “By 1951, the Agency [CIA] excused the illegal activities of OUN’s security branch in the name of Cold War necessity.”

In another disturbing example, one of the first scientists assigned to Fort Detrick’s secret biological warfare laboratory during WWII was bioweapons expert Frank Olson. In 1953, Olson died after plummeting to the ground from a high-rise hotel room window in Manhattan.

Days earlier, he had been secretly drugged by the CIA, which claimed Olson’s death was a suicide. Decades later, however, it was revealed that Olson didn’t jump from the window — he was deliberately murdered after the CIA became concerned that he might reveal disturbing top-secret operations.

This includes the CIA’s top-secret MK-Ultra project, which engaged in mind control experiments, human torture and other medical studies, including how much LSD it would take to “shatter the mind and blast away consciousness.”

Controlling the media is the ‘CIA’s dream’

The collusion of the media with government agencies is nothing new. In January 1977, Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein’s 25,000-word article was published in Rolling Stone, detailing the close relationship between the CIA and the press.

Bernstein described full-time CIA agents who worked as journalists and more than 400 U.S. journalists who secretly carried out assignments for the CIA over a 25-year period.

The program was known as Operation Mockingbird and involved the CIA paying journalists to write fake stories and spread propaganda instead of real news. Activist Post added:

“Implementing a fact-checking solution that is a centralized mechanism powered by journalists they could easily control is certainly the CIA’s … dream, as a CIA director was once quoted stating that once the public’s perception is confused about what is real and what is propaganda then their mission would be complete.

“Now you might think the CIA owning journalists is conspiratorial, but it happened with MKultra’s Operation Mockingbird.”

As further noted by Monthly Review, the situation has only gotten worse, as evidenced by the steady stream of ex-CIA agents now heading up policy and content moderation at Facebook. “The CIA used to infiltrate the media. Now the CIA is the media,” the news outlet noted, adding:

“Back in the good old days, when things were more innocent and simple, the psychopathic Central Intelligence Agency had to covertly infiltrate the news media to manipulate the information Americans were consuming about their nation and the world.

“Nowadays, there is no meaningful separation between the news media and the CIA at all.”

Social media infiltrated by government agencies

To be clear, it’s not only Facebook that’s relying on former CIA agents to decide what you can see. Other social media giants are similarly affected, employing individuals from a multitude of government agencies.

“In previous investigations,” Macleod wrote, “this author has detailed how TikTok is flooded with NATO officials, how former FBI agents abound at Twitter, and how Reddit is led by a former war planner for the NATO think tank, the Atlantic Council.”

However, he says, “the sheer scale of infiltration of Facebook blows these away. Facebook, in short, is utterly swarming with spooks.”

What does this mean for the information you see on a daily basis, assuming you’re one of the billions who take a peek or two at Facebook during the day? Macleod explained:

“The problem is that having so many former CIA employees running the world’s most important information and news platform is only one small step removed from the agency itself deciding what you see and what we do not see online — and all with essentially no public oversight.

“In this sense, this arrangement constitutes the best of both worlds for Washington. They can exert significant influence over global news and information flows but maintain some veneer of plausible deniability.

“The U.S. government does not need to directly tell Facebook what policies to enact. This is because the people in decision-making positions are inordinately those who rose through the ranks of the national security state beforehand, meaning their outlooks match those of Washington’s.

“And if Facebook does not play ball, quiet threats about regulation or breaking up the company’s enormous monopoly can also achieve the desired outcomes.”

Emily Oster’s Plea Bargain

Shuck-and-jive from America’s broken thinking class, the people who pretend to know better than everybody else.

By James Howard Kunstler

Source: Kunstler.com

By now, everybody and his uncle has seen Emily Oster’s plea for “pandemic amnesty” in The Atlantic magazine, a house organ of the people in America who know better than you do about… really… everything. Emily’s wazoo is so stuffed with gold-plated credentials (BA, PhD, Harvard; economics prof at Brown U) it’s a wonder that she could sit down long enough to peck out her lame argument that “we need to forgive one another for what we did and said when we were in the dark about COVID.”

Emily wasn’t “in the dark.” She had access to the same information as the Americans who recognized that everything the public health authorities, the medical establishment, and many elected officials shoveled out about Covid and its putative remedies and preventatives was untrue, with a patina of bad faith and malice — especially when it was used to persecute their political adversaries.

These dissenters turned out to be “right for the wrong reasons,” she declared, the main reason being that they were not aligned in good-think with the Woke-Jacobinism of her fellow “progressives” at Brown U, and academics all across the land, who were righteously busy destroying the intellectual life of the nation, making it impossible for the thinking class to think.

Let’s face it: every society actually needs a thinking class, a cohort able to frame important issues-of-the-moment that require argument in the public arena to align our collective thoughts and deeds with reality. America used to have a pretty good thinking class, with a pretty good free press and many other platforms for opinion — all animated by respect for the first amendment to the Constitution.

The thinking class destroyed that by vigorously promoting a new censorship regime in every American institution, shutting down free speech and, more crucially, the necessary debate for aligning our politics with reality. Hence, America’s thinking class became the torchbearers of unreality, in step with the Party of Chaos which held the levers of power. This included the powers of life and death in the matter of Covid-19.

These were the people who militated against effective early treatment protocols (to cynically preserve the drug companies’ emergency use authorization (EUA) and thus their liability shields); the people who enforced the deadly remdesivir-and-ventilator combo in hospital treatment; the people who rolled out the harmful and ineffective “vaccines”; who fired and vilified doctors who disagreed with all that; and who engineered a long list of abusive policies that destroyed businesses, livelihoods, households, reputations, and futures.

How did it happen that the thinking class destroyed thinking and betrayed itself? Because the status competition for moral righteousness in the sick milieu of the campus became more important to them than the truth. In places like Brown U, what you saw was an escalating contest for status brownie-points, which is what virtue-signaling is all about. And the highest virtue was going along with whatever experts and people-in-authority said — the pathetic virtue of submission. Anything that got in the way of going along — such as differences of opinion — had to be crushed, stamped out, and with a vicious edge to teach the dissenters a lesson: dissent will not be tolerated!

Some thinking class. The case of Emily Oster should be particularly and painfully disturbing, since she affects to specialize, as an economist, on “pregnancy and parenting” (her own website declares), while the Covid regime of public health officialdom she supported instigated a horrendous pediatric health crisis that is ongoing — it was only days ago that the CDC added the harmful mRNA “vaccines” to its childhood immunization schedule for the purpose of conferring permanent legal immunity for the drug companies after the EUA ends, a dastardly act. Where’s Ms. Oster’s plea to the CDC to cease and desist trying to vaccinate kids with mRNA products?

The CDC is still running TV commercials (during World Series ballgames!) touting its “booster” shots when only weeks ago a top Pfizer executive, Janine Small (“Regional President for Vaccines of International Developed Markets”), revealed in testimony to the European Union Parliament that her company never tested its “vaccine” for preventing transmission of SARS CoV-2. The CDC under Director Rochelle Walensky is still extra-super-busy concealing or fudging its statistical data to obfuscate the emerging picture that MRNA “vaccines” are responsible for the shocking rise of “all-causes deaths” in the most heavily-vaxxed nations. In short, the authorities are to this minute still running their whole malign operation.

Notably, Ms. Oster’s plea for amnesty and forgiveness, showcased in The Atlantic, omits any discussion of accountability for what amounts to serious crimes against the public. A whole lot of people deserve to be indicted for killing and injuring millions of people. At the heart of her plea is the excuse that “we didn’t know” official Covid policy was so misguided. That’s just not true, of course, and is simply evidence of the thinking class’s recently-acquired allergy to truth. The part she left out of her petition for pandemic amnesty is: we were only following orders.

What Is To Be Done?

By Paul Edwards

Source: Information Clearing House

Not an original title for a piece that will assert we are in a unique moment in world history?  No, Lenin used it to expose the cruelty and villainy of the empire that ruled Russians like a slave master.  Claiming we are in a “unique moment” is not original, either.  We Americans, with our caudal appendage, Europe, have been told time and again we are in “unique moments”, unmatched in its peril, so that it’s now routine to say it of every asinine Presidential election. 

I have spent a lifetime reading and listening to the best minds in journalism and reportage bemoan, attack, mourn, and decry the encyclopedia of lunacies and disasters our system has inflicted on our country, the world, and ourselves, its naive, ignorant people.

Since the Gulf War, and the rolling chain of shameful absurdities that followed—Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, et.al.—in the idiotic dirty joke of the bumbling “War on Terror”, I have seen the mainstream press devoured by the Capitalist Monster to the point where all voices of integrity have been marginalized and expelled, then denounced and vilified by the diseased whores who slunk into their places.

Now, with America’s ridiculous, transparent, and contemptible falsity so obvious in every aspect of governance at home and abroad, I have seen the entire press converted into an organ of crude and dishonest propaganda for the Capitalist War Machine that is coldly, inhumanly  dictating our demise.  The viciously dishonest and relentlessly stupid storm of juvenile horseshit disseminated by all mainstream outlets— print, tv, and internet—is an ethical crime of diabolical dimensions.  Our government, with its cadre of vacuous, degraded simpletons, men and women of no intellectual size, depth, or scope, profoundly ignorant yet arrogant in their smarmy inadequacy, is restricting and distorting knowingly all truth that conflicts with the malign intentions of the War Lobby to pursue nuclear war with Russia until they get it.  And, of course, they need a second enemy and so must tell China what it can and can’t do. Where do these moronic fuckers get the brass to try that shameless madness with Xi and his power? 

And this is done while the few strong voices of courage and integrity that, against all the power of money and corruption of The Empire, continue to try to provide an educating effect through reason and evidence, are exiled and suppressed from platforms of influence.

I have long wondered at their dedication and staying power in the face of the cynical, unwarranted abuse they get, including, of course, from their supposed colleagues who, collectively, aren’t worth the powder to blow them to hell, as my Dakota Grandpa used to say.  I can only assume they are held together, in place, by the unbreakable fiber of integrity in them that they have no choice but to honor.  

And yet, though those few and proud speak out against false America and denounce it where denunciation is richly warranted, I feel, even in their most blistering analyses that there is a conviction, a certainty, an honest, incontestable statement of truth, that is missing.  I had hoped to hear it expressed by those who have great credibility, and great reputations, profiles and followings, but I have been disappointed.

My list of heroes is not long.  I acknowledge them as the heirs to the great ones before: Ed Murrow, Eric Sevareid, David Brinkley, Walter Cronkite, Sy Hersh, David Halberstam.  I include among the present greats Chris Hedges, John Pilger, Aaron Mate, Michael Brenner, Max Blumenthal, Patrick Lawrence, Glenn Greenwald, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and Julian Assange.

All of them have done honest, deeply informed work to counter the rampant imbecility and cruelty of the American government and its stenographers, the press.  The one conclusion none has plainly stated, that all have suggested, is neither obscure nor complicated.

It is this: America can not be reformed or improved under Capitalism. Its corrupt, rotten burlesque democracy must and will be destroyed.  Not by any action of the torpid, gelded, stupid people.  It will come, and soon, by financial chaos and meltdown, or by nuclear war.

We are told that unless bold action is taken, unless we find the moral courage to act, unless we come together, get money out of politics, vote for better candidates, unless we do this, that, or the other thing, disaster will follow.  Sadly, that is all nonsense.   In fact, it makes no difference what we do: America, as a viable state, is finished.

This is intolerably painful to admit.  Every instinct of self-preservation, every human yearning for safety and justice rejects it.  All our training, our education, our immersion in bullshit propaganda screams against it but, admitted or not, it is fact, it is truth, and collapse of America’s baselessly arrogant, obscene, punishing oppression of the compliant world, already tenuous and strained, is coming.   And soon…

It is said to be easier for people to imagine the end of the world, than the end of Capitalism.  This will end soon when it will no longer be necessary to imagine either, because both will have happened.  In the same way that socio-political truth has been screened out by official deceit, environmental truth has been obscured and denied by our own and the world’s rulers.   What Capitalism has done to humans is trivial beside what it’s done to the earth and all living things.  In this, too, we are told that if we can just do this or that the world will recover and all will be well.  It won’t.   No matter what we do.  And that will almost certainly be what we have done up to now: nothing. 

Humans, mostly, are large, dull children.  They have a great need to feel loved, protected, pardoned, saved.  That’s why they were given religions by elites that have always owned them.  All dogmatic religions are bullshit by definition, their fatuous fraud shown up by every advance of knowledge from Galileo to the Webb Telescope.  

I, like all my kind, wish for mercy and grace, but I don’t look for it in a ludicrous infantile fantasy, or in deluded hope where there is clearly none.  Both religion and science, in the hands of priests and hustlers, have set us up for unavoidable misery and suffering, and arranged for the suicide of our species and the murder of the living world.  There is nothing you can do about this.  We have the ability to love those we hold dear, and the world we have known.  Let that be enough, for it is all you will ever have.

Deafening Silences: propaganda through censorship, smearing and coercion

By Dr Piers Robinson

Source: Off-Guardian

There is a case to be made that the most important part of any propaganda campaign is the drive to ensure that certain voices, claims and arguments either never see the light of day or otherwise remain contained within “fringe” or “alternative” circles.

Since the start of the COVID event, authorities around the world have sought to implement quite extraordinary policies including the so-called “locking down” of entire populations, compulsory masking and coercion through, for example, the mandating of multiple ‘vaccine’ injections. Many of these policies fly in the face of long-established and well-evidenced public health approaches to dealing with respiratory viruses whilst the scientific cogency of these measures – including lockdowns, community masking and “vaccine” injections – is coming under increased scrutiny.

At the same time, the catastrophic consequences, the so-called “collateral damage” (a military euphemism for wartime civilian casualties), of these extreme policies for populations around the world is becoming well-established. Randomised controlled trials of the injections to date have not shown net overall benefit, while accumulating evidence from passive reporting suggests they may be a cause of significant levels of harm. A central part of selling these extreme, and ultimately highly destructive, policies has involved the use of propaganda.

One of the problems with researching and writing about propaganda is that many people believe it to be alien to democratic states. However, as Edward Bernays, considered by many to be a key figure in the development of 20th century propaganda techniques, explained and promoted…

the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.

At least to an extent, this belief in propaganda rests upon an assumption or belief that people are ultimately selfish, egotistical, power-hungry and hedonistic beings who require guidance and incentive; it therefore follows that propaganda is required by powerful actors in order to provide a degree of structure, order and purpose to a given society. In contrast, if one assumes that humans are ultimately good and well-inclined towards each other and to the natural world, and that they are capable of great things if conditions permit, propaganda emerging from self-interested and powerful actors equates to a parasite within the human mind that seeks to lead humans away from their better instincts [1].

To this one might add the propensity of those with power to define themselves as the arbiters of truth and morality:

The moral attitudes of dominant and privileged groups are characterised by universal self-deception and hypocrisy. The unconscious and conscious identification of their special interests with general interests and universal values […]. […] the intelligence of privileged groups is usually applied to the task of inventing specious proofs for the theory that universal values spring from, and that general interests are served by, the special privileges which they hold.[2]

Whatever one’s position on the justifiability of propaganda, and although we usually call these techniques by different names today, employing euphemisms such as “public relations” or “strategic communication”, it is a fact that techniques of manipulation are part and parcel of contemporary liberal democracies.

PROMOTING THE NARRATIVE

In the case of the COVID-19 event, propaganda has been deployed across democracies on an unprecedented scale. In order to gain compliance with the unorthodox and intrusive measures adopted during the COVID-19 event many forms of “non-consensual persuasion” have been employed, ranging from manipulated messaging designed to increase “fear levels” through to coercion.

Indeed, very early on it came to light that behavioural scientists were providing advice to the UK government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE). UKColumn reported that this group, named the “Scientific Pandemic Influenza group on Behaviour (SPI-B)”, was (re)convened on 13 February 2020. One document produced by this group identified “options for increasing adherence to social distancing measures” which include persuasion, incentivization and coercion.

In the section on “persuasion” it states that the…

perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging

The document also referred to using…

media to increase sense of personal threat.

Many of these “behavioural science” approaches to manipulation used in the UK context have been documented in Laura Dodsworth’s influential work State of Fear whilst Dr Gary Sidley has written about the remarkable reluctance of anyone in authority to accept responsibility for the deliberate manipulation of the public. Dr Colin Alexander has, for some time, been tracking the propaganda output across the UK public sphere.

More widely, and as described by Iain Davis, these approaches have been paralleled at the global level. In February 2020, according to Davis, the World Health Organisation (WHO) had established the Technical Advisory Group on Behavioural Insights and Sciences for Health (TAG);

The group is chaired by Prof. Cass Sunstein and its members include behavioural change experts from the World Bank, the World Economic Forum, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Professor Susan Michie, from the UK, is also a TAG participant*.

Since then, Susan Michie has taken over as chair.

CREATING DEAFENING SILENCES

One aspect of the COVID-19 event propaganda has been the aggressive promotion of official narratives; but just as important has been the suppression and censorship of those questioning authorities. Indeed, there is a case to be made that the most important part of any propaganda campaign is the drive to ensure that certain voices, claims and arguments either never see the light of day or otherwise remain contained within “fringe” or “alternative” circles.

Part of this process of suppressing arguments and opinion involves superficially well-meaning attempts to manage what has been increasingly labelled as “misinformation” and “disinformation”. Elizabeth Woodworth documents the emergence of the so-called Trusted News Initiative (TNI) prior to the 2020 COVID-19 event and which involved a coalition of mainstream/legacy media establishing a network that would serve to combat “misinformation” and “bias”. She quotes the then BBC Director-General Tony Hall:

“Last month I convened, behind closed doors, a Trusted News Summit at the BBC, which brought together global tech platforms and publishers. The goal was to arrive at a practical set of actions we can take together, right now, to tackle the rise of misinformation and bias … I’m determined that we use [the BBC’s] unique reach and trusted voice to lead the way – to create a global alliance for integrity in news. We’re ready to do even more to help promote freedom and democracy worldwide”

By 2020, according to Woodworth, the TNI had incorporated “Twitter, Microsoft, Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, Reuters, and the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism” and, predictably, adopted the role of tackling “harmful coronavirus disinformation”.

In the UK at least, there has also been military involvement with the 77th Brigade operating as part of the COVID-19 communication strategy. 77th Brigade activities include information warfare and “supporting counter-adversarial information activity” which includes…

creating and disseminating digital and wider media content in support of designated tasks.

Tobias Ellwood, who is both a Member of Parliament and Chair of the House of Commons Defence Select Committee, is, remarkably, a reservist with 77th Brigade. In an answer to a written question in parliament it was confirmed that “members of the Army’s 77th Brigade” are…

currently supporting the UK government’s Rapid Response Unit in the Cabinet Office and are working to counter dis-information about COVID-19.

The Rapid Response Unit itself was established in 2018 in order to, according to its head Fiona Bartosch, counter “misinformation” and “disinformation”, and “reclaim a fact-based public debate”.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has also followed a similar tack cautioning the public about “misinformation” and “disinformation”. In a release titled “Let’s flatten the infodemic curve”, they advise people to refer to “factcheckers” and legacy media:

When in doubt, consult trusted fact-checking organizations, such as the International Fact-Checking Network and global news outlets focused on debunking misinformation, including the Associated Press and Reuters

The WHO describes in detail its involvement with social media and “big tech”:

“WHO has been working closely with more than 50 digital companies and social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, Twitch, Snapchat, Pinterest, Google, Viber, WhatsApp and YouTube, to ensure that science-based health messages from the organization or other official sources appear first when people search for information related to COVID-19. WHO has also partnered with the Government of the United Kingdom on a digital campaign to raise awareness of misinformation around COVID-19 and encourage individuals to report false or misleading content online. In addition, WHO is creating tools to amplify public health messages – including its  WHO Health Alert chatbot, available on WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Viber – to provide the latest news and information on how individuals can protect themselves and others from COVID-19.”

AN INSTITUTIONALISED CULTURE OF CENSORSHIP AND SUPPRESSION OF “WRONG THINK”

These developments, along with others to be documented in due course via work at PANDA, would appear to have had major consequences in terms of suppression of debate. A preliminary examination of events over the last 2.5 years indicates this suppression has operated in at least three different ways:

  • direct censorship through removal of content and deplatforming;
  • sponsoring of hostile coverage designed to smear and intimidate anyone raising critical questions regarding the COVID-19 narrative;
  • coercive approaches involving threats to livelihood and employment.

I shall deal with each in turn.

• Censorship and deplatforming

Formal approaches to censorship via state-backed action were seen early on in the UK context with the regulatory body OFCOM issuing guidelines to broadcasters.

Dodsworth (p.31) reports that broadcasters were instructed to be alert to:

health claims related to the virus which may be harmful; medical advice which may be harmful: accuracy or material misleadingness in programmes in relation to the virus or public policy regarding it”(Dodsworth p. 31).

One possible manifestation of this policy was the remarkable instruction issued to Oxford professor Sunetra Gupta. On October 14, 2020, she appeared on BBC News to talk about the lockdowns imposed in the north of England. It is claimed that just before she went on air, one of the producers told her not to mention the Great Barrington Declaration, a document signed by eminent scientists setting out an alternative policy that would avoid lockdowns and other unorthodox measures.

Across social media, from almost day one of the COVID-19 event, tech giants (“big tech”) were willingly signing up to a strategy of censorship.

In April 2020 it was reported that YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki had declared that it would act to remove anything going against World Health Organization” recommendations. Notable removals from YouTube included interviews with Dr John Ioannidis of Stanford University and British physician Professor Karol Sikora whilst US Senator Rand Paul’s speech questioning the efficacy of facemasks in August 2021 was removed by YouTube. Dr Robert Malone, inventor of part of the MRnA technology used in the COVID-19 injections, and who has become a notable critic of official policies and narratives, was also removed from Twitter.

A large part of the policing of debate across social media platforms has involved issuance of warnings that a given post violates “community standards” in some way and some, such as LinkedIn, state that content at variance with authorities can lead to censoring. As Dr David Thunder has documented, the exact wording of Linkedin’s policy on “misinformation” states: “Do not share content that directly contradicts guidance from leading global health organizations and public health authorities.“

Thunder notes:

What does this actually mean, in practice? It means that some select persons, just because they got nominated to a “public health authority” or a “leading global health organization,” are protected by Linkedin from any robust criticism from the public or from other scientists.

Furthermore, censorship and suppression of academic debate has been reported with respect to academic journals whereby articles and research running against the so-called scientific consensus appear to have been unfairly removed or blocked. For example Dr Peter McCullough reports unjustified censorship of a peer reviewed and published article relating to COVID-19 whilst, more broadly, undue suppression of legitimate research findings was reported by Dr Tess Lawrie with respect to Ivermectin trials. All of these are worrying indications that academic processes themselves have become subject to nefarious censorship and control.

The censorship continues unabated and it might even be intensifying. Whilst detailed and systematic research should be conducted in order to identify the scale and range of the censorship that has been occurring, it is reasonably clear now that, relative to pre-2020, the levels are unprecedented and represent a normalization, or routinization, of censorship.

• Character Assassination through Smearing

Suppression of debate is achieved not only through formal censorship, but also through indirect tactics whereby attempts are made to destroy the reputation of those challenging power. Although perhaps not widely appreciated, the tactic of character assassination appears to have become more prevalent in recent years and it appears to be an important feature of contemporary propaganda and our ‘democratic’ landscape.

Broadly speaking, smear campaigns are designed to avoid substantive rational debate and instead denigrate the person making the argument – ‘playing the man rather than the ball’ or ‘shooting the messenger’. A feature of smear campaigns is the use of identity politics sensibilities such as concern (legitimate) over racism and the deployment of pejorative and tendentious labels. For example, those questioning COVID-19 policies have sometimes been described as far right or fascist whilst pejorative use of the term “conspiracy theorist” is frequently employed to describe those questioning official narratives.

Smear campaigns can be justifiably seen as underhand and disreputable approaches to challenging dissenting voices and they frequently pass off without observers or even the victims being fully aware that they are being targeted: those ordering or enabling the smears have good reason to avoid being uncovered whilst those executing the smears, i.e. the journalists, will defend their hit pieces as legitimate critique.

In the case of the COVID-19 event, however, at least one high level smear campaign has been identified.

At the time of the release of the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) during autumn 2020, the authors were only aware of a barrage of hostile media attention such as the above noted instruction by the BBC to Professor Sunetra Gupta to not mention the Declaration during an interview. But at least some of the hostile coverage was not simply a spontaneous reaction by journalists but had been initiated by high-level officials. When the GBD was published, leaked emails showed Anthony Fauci and National Institute of Health director Francis Collins discussing the need to swiftly shut it down. Collins wrote in an email that this…

proposal from the three fringe epidemiologists … seems to be getting a lot of attention … There needs to be a quick and devastating published takedown of its premises.

Rather than a civilised and robust scientific debate, a smear campaign followed.

Other prominent instances, unproven but which bear the hallmarks of a directed smear campaign, include repeated attacks on the popular US podcaster Joe Rogan. In the European sphere, Professor Bhakdi, an early and prominent critic of COVID-19 policies has been repeatedly accused of anti-semitism and is now being prosecuted by the German authorities for inciting hatred (*see Endnotes for alt. link -Ed.). None of the accusations made in these attacks appear to be reasonable. Rogan, for example, was chastised for promoting the use of Ivermectin with many journalists referring to it, misleadingly, as “horse dewormer”. The vast bulk of Bhakdi’s work and output concerns the COVID-19 policies and, relatively speaking, his references to any issue related to Judaism is at most vanishingly small.

A subtle and arguably more widespread form of smearing involves the routine labelling of information by social media companies as harmful; for example the independent UK-based outlet OffGuardian has its tweets subject to a blanket warning suggesting their output might be ‘unsafe’ and contain…

violent or misleading content that could lead to real-world harm.

Such labelling is, arguably, defamatory.

• Coercion

Suppression of inconvenient opinions works through both the realm of information – censoring a person’s voice or ad hominem attacks – but also through action in the real, “material”, world via coercion. This could be the creation of conditions that deter people from speaking their mind by offering material incentives or, alternatively, threatening to deplete someone’s material circumstances. Put simply, the threat of loss of earnings.

In the case of the COVID-19 event the role of coercion can be seen through the threats to employment experienced by those challenging the narrative.

For example, Professor Julie Ponesse was forced from her position at Western University in Canada because of her refusal to receive the COVID-19 injection following the issuing of “vaccine” mandate there whilst a similar fate was suffered by Dr Aaron Kheriarty (Professor at University of California Irvine, School of Medicine and director of the Medical Ethics Program). Other academics have cited lack of institutional support with respect to their academic freedom, such as Professor Martin Kuldorff.

The coercive nature of mandates is particularly pernicious in that their implementation in universities forces ‘dissident’ academics to either go against their beliefs and opinions and comply or otherwise leave their posts. The disciplining effect is, of course, much more widely felt across the academy: the few who lose their posts serve as a warning to everyone else to reconsider their beliefs and actions. In particular, younger academics and those completing their PhDs will come to understand that compliance with the dominant narrative is the only realistic option if they are to realise their goal of an academic career.

The tactics of censorship, smearing and coercion are synergistic and help construct an environment in which self censorship becomes ubiquitous: Deplatforming of dissident scientists sends a clear warning as to the subject matter and issues that are off limits whilst examples of smearing highlight the potential unpleasant consequences of discussing such issues.

Coercion acts as a final hardstop for anyone entertaining the possibility of risking talking about censored issues and riding out the smears that will result: loss of job and income is simply too much to bear. Overall, the role of authorities in enabling censorship and coercion results in, broadly speaking, an institutionalised culture in which suppression of opinions and debate becomes the norm.

THE DANGERS TO DEMOCRACY AND RATIONAL DEBATE: ONLINE HARM LEGISLATION AND DIS/MISINFORMATION ‘FACT CHECKERS’

Clearly this situation has deleterious consequences for rational debate and democracy. John Stuart Mill explained that silencing the expression of an opinion robs us all of the opportunity to either hear an argument that might turn out to be true, or refine or reject an opinion that is faulty. There are very good reasons for this, as Mill notes:

First: the opinion which it is attempted to suppress by authority may possibly be true. Those who desire to suppress it, of course deny its truth; but they are not infallible. … All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.

And:

if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

Scientific and scholarly research demands such openness to questioning and critique and, behind concepts such as tenure, is the core grounding for the academy that scholars need to be allowed to present what might appear to be controversial and even offensive (to some) opinions.

Of course, there are well argued and established limits to freedom of expression – incitement to violence for example – but we are not talking about the usual areas of debate and controversy that lie at the limits of permissible speech. Rather, we are talking about the right of people to raise questions and concerns about policies that directly affect them, such as lockdown, masking and ‘vaccinations’, and, moreover, the right of credentialed experts to raise such questions in the public sphere. That the censorship, smearing and coercion of such people has come to be tolerated is a clear indicator of how far our democracies have slipped into an authoritarian abyss.

And things are, potentially, about to become even worse with the pushing through of so-called ‘online harm bills’ including in the UK, Europe and Canada. In the UK, the proposed bill creates a category of legal but ‘harmful’ speech: as described by the pressure group Big Brother Watch:

Under the threat of penalties, the legislation will compel online intermediaries to censor swathes of online discussion including in matters of general discourse and public policy. Harmful content is defined entirely by the Secretary of State who is also granted a host of executive powers throughout the legislation.

Liberty has explained further the potential dangers of such developments:

We are concerned that the ‘legal but harmful’ category set out in the OSB is inadequately prescribed by law and risks disproportionately infringing on individuals’ right to freedom of expression and privacy. In particular, we are concerned about the wide definition of online harm as meaning “physical or psychological harm” (clause 187). This is an extremely low threshold, and encompasses innumerable kinds of harm, the extent of which in our view far exceeds the qualifications on Article 10 provided by the ECHR and HRA.

And, as Lord Sumption points out regarding the proposed UK online harm bill:

The real vice of the bill is that its provisions are not limited to material capable of being defined and identified. It creates a new category of speech which is legal but ‘harmful’. The range of material covered is almost infinite, the only limitation being that it must be liable to cause ‘harm’ to some people. Unfortunately, that is not much of a limitation. Harm is defined in the bill in circular language of stratospheric vagueness. It means any ‘physical or psychological harm’. As if that were not general enough, ‘harm’ also extends to anything that may increase the likelihood of someone acting in a way that is harmful to themselves, either because they have encountered it on the internet or because someone has told them about it.”

It is likely that such legislative developments will operate in tandem with so-called “fact checking” entities and algorithms that work to define and then exclude what is defined as “misinformation”, “disinformation”, and now “malinformation”.

The latter two are being defined now as, respectively, false information spread in order to mislead or cause harm and accurate information which is used out of context in order to harm or mislead. These terms are so nebulous that they will enable authorities to proscribe virtually any serious debate or criticism in the public sphere.

Here we see the continuing development and entrenchment of the mis/disinformation fact checking industry noted earlier. During the COVID-19 event the United Nations itself started working with the public relations entity Purpose to “combat the growing scourge of COVID-19 misinformation” which is described as a “virus spread by people”.

Purpose states:

[t]hrough Verified, we are leveraging the UN brand, as well as popular brands that connect audiences online and offline: from Cartoon Network in Brazil to Flipkart in India.

UNESCO, similarly, is promoting education about so-called “conspiracy theories”. Remarkably, and in apparent contradiction to rhetoric regarding inclusiveness and community-driven decisionmaking, the WHO actually asks people to report on people spreading “misinformation”: As such, an un-elected international organization is actively advocating for the suppression of free speech in democratic societies.

Entities tasked with deciding what is true and what is false, as opposed to allowing ideas and arguments to be openly debated as Mill would suggest, are already creating the link between dis/misinformation and harm. For example, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a state-sponsored think tank, attacked the disparate groups questioning the COVID-19 response with a publication titled “Between Conspiracy and Extremism: A Long COVID Threat?” The institute tweeted:

Today we launch a new series of reports on the global anti-lockdown movement, beginning with this paper examining how COVID restrictions have brought together a broad church of activists in a conspiracy-extremist movement we call a ‘hybrid threat’

On the issue of coercive measures, the recent passing of a bill in California, that will enable doctors who spread ‘false information’ to be charged with ‘unprofessional conduct’ and have their licenses revoked, is a worrying sign of just how aggressive authorities are becoming.

The trajectory here is clear to discern and it entails the move to a world where the truth is defined by factcheckers and authorities, and legislation provides the underlying coercive framework to ensure any deviance is punished. This is entirely at odds with basic principles of open debate, objective scholarship and freedom of expression and is not compatible with democracy.

THE END OF DEMOCRACY?

There is nothing new about censorship, smearing and coercion in western democracies. For some time now, those questioning, for example, western foreign policy have been subjectedto such tactics whilst the broader 9/11 global war on terror spawned wide ranging examples of censorship, smearing and coercion in order to shore up official narratives and the belligerent wars that have been fought under its banner.

Indeed, in the realm of foreign policy and war, the prevalence of propaganda and associated drives to marginalise dissent are well known to researchers in these fields. And, today, in 2022, we are witnessing a preeminent example of coercion as we see the Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, facing the prospect of deportation to the US and the rest of his life in prison. His crime was to reveal accurate information about the 9/11 wars, especially those in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is little reason to doubt that authorities in the West are seeking to make a powerful example of Assange; a warning to the rest of us as to the price of questioning our governments when they commit illegal wars of aggression.

What is new with the COVID-19 event is a combination of the spread of these strategies of suppression and a sharp uptick in awareness amongst increasingly large swathes of the population as to the existence of propaganda in democracies. The spread can be seen in how it is now a large number of medical scientists who have been at the receiving end of drives to suppress debate, whereas before it was often just a handful of relatively unknown dissident social scientists researching foreign policy issues.

Regarding public awareness, attempting to censor high profile researchers from the medical sciences alerts more of the public as to what is going on.

And, of course, as we rapidly see the dissident scientists now being vindicated by the facts – lockdowns don’t work, the “vaccinations” can harm etc – more people become aware of the basic truth that the official COVID-19 response has been underpinned by ferocious propaganda campaigns designed to silence any experts speaking truth to power.

It is also apparently the case that trust in mainstream, or legacy, media continues a sharp decline whilst, presumably, increasing numbers of people seek out the new independent media platforms and go to organisations such as PANDA and HART for reliable information on COVID-19 related issues and more widely. [3]

And yet the broader trajectory for our public spheres looks ominous.

Further legislative measures to redefine free speech, networks of sponsored factcheckers defining what is and what is not, resources poured into censoring, smearing and coercing dissident voices all parallel what some analysts argue is a wider drive to restructure Western societies.

Ending any semblance of democracy may indeed be the goal, starting with the ending of freedom of expression. There are likely to be dark days ahead and it has never been so important for there to be a robust and uncompromising defence of freedom of expression.

Endnotes:

  1. Thanks to Colin Alexander for comments on the justifiability of propaganda and to David Bell, Maryam Ebadi, Gary Sidley and David Thunder for other comments and feedback.
  2. Niebuhr, R., (1932), Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics. New York: Charles Scriber’s Sons.
  3. The array of new and independent media and organisations is vast; some of those, with which the author is most familiar, include media such as OffGuardianMultipolarthe GrayzoneUnlimited HangoutUKColumn; and Organisations such as Brownstone InstituteWould Council for HealthChildren’s Health DefenceGlobal Collateral.

The Biotech Plan To Destroy Us

By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

Source: LewRockwell.com

Covid has generated a great of controversy, but one thing can’t be doubted. Covid, and the misguided attempts to combat it, have wreaked havoc since March 2022.  How was the Covid virus created? An answer, devastating in its implications, has just come to light. (Thanks to the heroic Ron Unz for tipping us off on this). What you’re about to read sounds like something you would expect from one of our authors at LRC, authors whom the Left is quick to dismiss as “conspiracy theorists.” But the person we’re talking about has impeccable leftwing credentials. He’s the economist Jeffrey Sachs, famous for his work on “sustainable development” and “third-world poverty.” You couldn’t miss reading about him in the mainstream media—at least until recently.

In an interview published online in Current Affairs, on August 22, “Prof. Sachs explains how he, as the head of the COVID-19 commission for a leading medical journal, [The Lancet] came to the conclusion that powerful actors were preventing a real investigation from taking place. He also explains why it is so important to get to the bottom of the origins of COVID: because, he says, there is extremely dangerous research taking place with little accountability, and the public has a right to know since we are the ones whose lives are being put at risk without our consent. “

The “official” view is that the Covid virus was an accident that came from contaminated animal parts in the Wuhan market in China. Sachs suggests that studies that purport to confirm this account have been faked. “Well, the funny thing is those scientists who are saying that said the same thing on February 4, 2020, before they had done any research at all. And they published the same statement in March 2020, before they had any facts at all. So they’re creating a narrative. And they’re denying the alternative hypothesis without looking closely at it. That’s the basic point. “

That’s the “official” truth, in other words the government lies, about Covid. What does Sachs think was really going on? “The alternative hypothesis is quite straightforward. And that is that there was a lot of research underway in the United States and China on taking SARS-like viruses, manipulating them in the laboratory, and creating potentially far more dangerous viruses. And the particular virus that causes COVID-19, called SARS-Cov-2, is notable because it has a piece of its genetic makeup that makes the virus more dangerous. And that piece of the genome is called the ‘furin cleavage site.’ Now, what’s interesting, and concerning if I may say so, is that the research that was underway very actively and being promoted, was to insert furin cleavage sites into SARS-like viruses to see what would happen. Oops!”

It gets worse. The “scientists” who published the “accidental market mishap” theory knew it was false, but they circulated this lie to cover up biotech research they didn’t want disturbed. “At the beginning, which we could date from the first phone call of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with a group of virologists on February 1, 2020, the virologists said ‘Oh my god, that is strange, that could well be a laboratory creation. What is that furin cleavage site doing in there?’ Because scientists knew that was part of an active ongoing research program. And yet, by February 3, the same group is saying ‘No, no, it’s natural, it’s natural.’ By February 4, they start to draft the papers that are telling the public, ‘Don’t worry, it’s natural.’ By March, they write a paper—totally spurious, in my view—called the proximal origins paper that is the most cited bio paper in 2020. It said: it is absolutely natural. [Note: the paper’s conclusion is ‘we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.’] But they didn’t have any of the data that you read about in the New York Times. They didn’t have any of this. They just said the labs weren’t working on this alternative. But you know what, they don’t know what the labs were working on, because they never asked, and NIH hasn’t told us.”

Sachs is emphatic about this: “So my point is, there is a huge amount of reason to believe that that research was underway. Because there are published papers on this. There are interviews on this. There are research proposals. But NIH isn’t talking. It’s not asking. And these scientists have never asked either. From the very first day, they have kept hidden from view the alternative. And when they discuss the alternative, they don’t discuss the research program. They discuss complete straw men about the lab, not the actual kind of research that was underway, which was to stick furin cleavage sites into SARS-like viruses in a way that could have created SARS-Cov-2.

What I’m calling for is not the conclusion. I’m calling for the investigation. Finally, after two and a half years of this, it’s time to fess up that it might have come out of a lab and here’s the data that we need to know to find out whether it did.”

When you read this, you of course want to know more details about motives for the plot Sachs has uncovered. Sachs has an answer: “One thing that is rather clear to me is that there is so much dangerous research underway right now under the umbrella of biodefense or other things that we don’t know about, that is not being properly controlled. This is for sure. And that’s happening around the world. And governments say ‘don’t poke your nose into that.’ That’s our business, not your business. But it’s actually our business. It’s our business to understand what is going on with this. This is not to be kept secret. We don’t trust you.

Let me put it this way: I don’t trust them right now. I want to know. Because even what we know of the dangerous research is enough to raise a lot of questions of responsibility for the future. And to pose the question: ‘Hey, what other viruses are you guys working on? What should we know?’ Because no matter what the truth is on SARS-Cov-2, what is pretty clear is we’ve got so much technological capacity to engineer dangerous pathogens right now. And a lot of that is being done. And it’s classified. It’s secret, and we don’t know what it is. And I don’t like that feeling at all. I don’t recommend it for us and for the world.”

LRC readers won’t be surprised that the monster “Dr.” Anthony Fauci is in this up to his neck. “The alternative that is the right one to look at is part of a very extensive research program that was underway from 2015 onward, funded by the NIH, by Tony Fauci, in particular NIAID [National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases], and it was to examine the spillover potential of SARS-like viruses. The champions of this research explained in detail their proposals. But after the event, we’d never asked them, ‘So what were you actually doing? What experiments did you do? What do you know?’ We somehow never asked. It was better just to sweep it under the rug, which is what Fauci and the NIH have done up until this point. Maybe they could tell us, ‘Oh, full exoneration,’ but they haven’t told us that at all. They haven’t shown us anything.

So there’s nothing ‘kooky’ about it, because it’s precisely what the scientists were doing. And then you can listen to the scientists on tape describing why they think the research program is so important, because they say these are dangerous viruses, and therefore we have to prepare broad spectrum vaccines and drugs. They explain it’s not good enough to test one or two viruses. We have to test all of them. And then they came to realize, as I said earlier, that just having a SARS-like virus, if it doesn’t have this piece of the gene, it’s almost surely not going to be that effective. So they got around to the idea. ‘Well, let’s put these in,’ if you can imagine that. To my mind, it’s mind-boggling.’

Sachs compares the biotech danger to the threat of nuclear war. “I can tell you one thing that I’ve learned from talking to a lot of scientists in the last couple of years: the technological capacity to do dangerous things using this biotechnology is extraordinary right now. So I want to know what’s being done. I want to know what other governments are doing, too, not just ours. I want some global control over this stuff.

We’ve kind of understood the nuclear risk—even that, of course, is in a lot of ways hidden from view. But this is a clear and present risk. And there’s reason to believe we’re actually in the midst of it, not just hypothetically. So come on: it’s time to open the books everywhere. It’s time to find out. Maybe it was the marketplace. Maybe it wasn’t a lab. But we need to get real answers, now. Not the kind of misdirection that’s been going in since February 2020. Enough nonsense! Enough New York Times stories saying, ‘Oh, it’s this, it’s that,’ without looking closely at the very plausible laboratory hypothesis.

There’s more. As the great Murray Rothbard would have said, “Get this!” “The most interesting things that I got as chair of the Lancet commission came from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits and whistleblower leaks from inside the U.S. government. Isn’t that terrible? NIH was actually asked at one point: give us your research program on SARS-like viruses. And you know what they did? They released the cover page and redacted 290 pages. They gave us a cover page and 290 blank pages! That’s NIH, for heaven’s sake. That’s not some corporation. That is the U.S. government charged with keeping us healthy.

What I found is that we have a lot of data which we’re not finding right now. And I don’t want to have to rely on FOIA and leaks, though those can be incredibly informative. I want clear, independent scientific investigation and transparency. One way to do this would be a bipartisan congressional oversight investigation that had subpoena power. Give us your lab records, your notebooks, your data files of virus strains, and so forth. There are many questions that we need independent scientists to define, to tell us exactly the kinds of information. But we know right now we’re operating in an environment in which the government is working to hide the data that we need to make a real assessment.”

In the past few years, Sachs has also called for a ceasefire in the Ukraine and an end to US economic sanctions against Venezuela. Somehow, I suspect you won’t be hearing much about Sachs anymore in the organs of the kept press.

Journalists who challenge NATO narratives are now ‘information terrorists’

By Vanessa Beeley

Source: Vanessa Beeley Substack

A US state department sponsored round table on ‘countering disinformation’ was recently held at the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine.

“Information terrorists should know that they will have to answer to the law as war criminals” Andrii Shapovalov

According to the press release – “NGOs, mass media and international experts” took part in the round table discussions. Delegates discussed ‘disinformation methods’ used in Ukraine and abroad. On the agenda was legal and state prevention of ‘fakes and disinformation in the context of cyber security’.

Andrii Shapovalov, head of the Ukrainian Centre for Combatting Disinformation emphasized that those who ‘deliberately spread disinformation are information terrorists’. Shapovalov recommended changes to the legislation to crack down on these terrorists – reminiscent of the pre-WW2 Nazi Germany suppression of media and information channels. Shapovalov determined that ‘information terrorists should know that they will have to answer to the law as war criminals’.

It goes without saying that the crushing of dissent is essential for public support for NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine to be maintained. Russian media has already been wiped from the Western-controlled internet sphere. Ukrainian ‘kill lists’ such as the infamous Myrotvorets already include the courageous Canadian independent journalist Eva Bartlett and outspoken Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters.

Bartlett was also doxxed on Twitter by former UK Conservative Party MP Louise Mensch who alerted Ukrainian Special Forces to her presence in Donetsk. A few days later an attack was carried out on the hotel in Donetsk housing multiple journalists including Bartlett – coincidence?

German journalist Alina Lipp has been effectively sanctioned and threatened with prosecution by the German government for reporting on the daily atrocities committed by Ukrainian Nazi forces against civilians in Donetsk and Lughansk. Lipp told Stalkerzone:

“They just closed my bank account. Then they closed my father’s account. A month ago, I noticed that all the money disappeared from my account – 1,600 euros. I realised that something was happening in Germany. A few days ago, I received a notification from the prosecutor’s office, and a criminal case was opened against me for supporting the special operation. In Germany, special operations are considered a crime, and I am also a criminal. I face three years in prison or a huge fine.”

British journalist Graham Philips has illegally been sanctioned by the UK regime without any investigation or Philips being given a ‘right to reply’. Most mainstream media reports on this violation of his human rights describe Philips as ‘one of the most prominent pro-Kremlin online conspiracy theorists’. A familiar smear deployed by NATO-aligned media outlets to dehumanise and discredit challenging voices.

Philips like many other journalists being targeted lives in Donbass which has been threatened with brutal ethnic cleansing by the NATO proxy Ukrainian Nazi and ultra-nationalist forces since Washington’s Victoria Nuland- engineered coup in 2014.

These journalists transmit the voices of the Russian-speaking Ukrainians who have been subjected to horrendous war crimes, torture, detention and persecution for eight years and ignored by the West. For this they are now to be designated ‘information terrorists’ – because they expose terrorism sanctioned by NATO member states.

Organisations are springing up in the UK like Molfar Global whose ‘Book of Orcs’ project employs 200 alleged volunteers to identify ‘Russian (Orcs) war criminals’ and to compile a legal ‘kill list’. The ‘Orc’ terminology is another dehumanisation process, converting Russian citizens and military into fantasy science fiction monsters to soften western publics to the measures being taken to silence and punish them for…being Russian or speaking Russian. They state on their website homepage:

“Every Russian occupier must be identified and punished according to the law. War crimes and and crimes against Humanity have no statute of limitations. That is why we set ourselves the goal of finding everyone and preventing them from escaping justice”

Who determines who should be put on the list? Who determines their fate? What justice? In a country like Ukraine seeped in corruption – where executions or the disappearance of dissidents and political or media opposition is a regular occurrence – who is to be made accountable for action taken against those listed on the ‘Orc hit list’? This is lawless justice that falls under the umbrella of US “rules based global governance” – comply or die and newly furnished legislation will make your death or state-sanctioned assassination a legal one.

The organisers of the round table were the National Security Service Academy, the US State Department/Department of Defence-funded Civilian Research and Development Fund (CRDF Global Urkaine), the International Academy of Information, the US state department-linked National Cyber Security Cluster.

The tentacles of US and UK dominated intelligence agencies are spreading further and deeper into society trying to strangle kick back against their respective regime oppressive domestic policies and foreign policy perpetual war objectives. We are all under attack, we are all facing the same fate as Julian Assange if we do not break the cycle and start to fight back.

If you oppose imperialist wars, racism, Nazism, terrorism, violent extremism, global health tyranny, technocratic supremacy, predator class elitism and pharmaceutical-controlled Eugenics- you are a ‘terrorist’. We are all ‘terrorists’.

Never Let A Good Crisis Go to Waste

Relentless Ukraine reporting helps conceal other conflicts

By Philip Giraldi

Source: Information Clearing House

It is astonishing how many observers of war in Ukraine who should know better have been inclined to take at face value the assertions of “sources” that clearly originate among the various governments that are involved in the conflict. Those leaders who are engaged in the inexorable march by the US and its allies to turn the Ukraine crisis into World War 3 surely have learned the lesson that managing the narrative of what is taking place is the greatest weapon that the war hawks have in their possession. One recalls how post-9/11 and leading up to the Iraq War the George W. Bush White House and the neocons in the Pentagon lied about nearly everything to convince the public that Saddam Hussein was a terrorist supporting megalomaniac armed with weapons of mass destruction, inevitably describing him as a man in some ways comparable to Adolf Hitler. Nevertheless, many observers of what was occurring were not fooled and there were large scale demonstrations in a number of cities prior to the invasion in March 2003, which, of course, were rarely reported in the mainstream media in order to control the message.

Iraq in some ways was a learning experience for those in government and also for those in the media who did the heavy lifting by propagating the deception to a largely unsuspecting public. What we are seeing now relating to Ukraine and Russia, however, makes the Iraq experience look like child’s play in terms of the sheer audacity of the alleged information that makes it, or does not make it, into the news. I note particularly the recent terrorist car bombing of Russian activist journalist Dalya Dugina by a Ukrainian assassin made the news for roughly forty-eight hours before disappearing, but not before the lie that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was responsible was firmly planted in a number of places in the mainstream media.

Now that Joe Biden is about to designate a two or three star general to head the Ukraine campaign and has pledged billions of dollars more in aid, Ukraine will be all the news all the time. The US involvement will also feature a catchy name. I would suggest Operation Empty Wallets, which is what Americans will soon be experiencing due to government bailouts and other profligate spending, or maybe Operation Give Me a Break. And it will also create a new dimension to the narrative-shaping in that Ukraine reporting’s domination of what comes out of the newsrooms already is effectively killing much of what else might otherwise be appearing on TV or in the newspapers. That selective management of information provides cover for neglecting stories that might prove embarrassing for those in power. It in effect means that there has been plenty of room for the usual players to engage in business as usual with hardly any scrutiny by the public over what is going on outside Ukraine in secondary theaters like the Middle East and Africa.

All of which leads one to examine what the two countries that have unilaterally declared themselves to be rules makers and enforcers have been up to. Those two countries are perhaps not surprisingly the United States and Israel. The US is, in fact, increasing its combat role in Africa featuring airstrikes in Somalia, all of which have taken place since US President Joe Biden approved the redeployment of hundreds of special forces troops to that country in May, reversing a decision by former President Donald Trump to reduce troop levels in AFRICOM. The two latest attacks killed at least twenty Somalis, all of whom were of course described as “terrorists” by the US command. Independent sources state that US forces have bombed Somalia at least 16 times under Biden, killing between 465 and 545 alleged al-Shabaab militants, including no less than 200 individuals in a single drone plus ground forces strike on March 13th.

Describing the paucity of reporting on the issue, Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, a senior adviser at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, observed “If you were unaware that we were bombing Somalia, don’t feel bad, this is a completely under-the-radar news story, one that was curiously absent from the headlines in all of the major newspapers…”

And then there is Syria, where a paucity of information in the media reflects White House policy. The United States, which has possibly as many as a dozen illegal bases in Syria, has a major airbase located in the al-Omar oil field in Syria’s northeastern Deir Ezzor province. Several weeks ago, three US soldiers were reportedly slightly wounded in rocket attacks directed at the base by alleged “Iranian-backed militants.” The US responded to the claimed attacks by launching strikes from Apache helicopters against three vehicles belonging to an Afghan Shia militia, killing between six and ten “militants,” and there are reports that more tit-for-tat exchanges of fire are likely. CENTCOM afterwards claimed that President Joe Biden personally ordered the strikes in “self-defense” and justified them by citing Article II of the US Constitution. But the Constitution was never intended to cover illegal activity in a foreign land where US forces are occupying a country with which it is not at war and which has a functioning government that opposes the American presence. The US reportedly has its illegal bases mostly located in the oil producing and agricultural bread basket of the country. Both the grain and oil are routinely stolen by the US and much of the oil winds up in Israel.

So, one inevitably comes to Israel, which has used the cover provided by Ukraine not only to bomb Syria frequently but also to kill Palestinians both in Gaza and on the occupied West Bank. Recently the pace has accelerated with the Israeli Army and police killing on average several Palestinians every day, very little of which is reported in the US media, a fatality rate five times higher than that which prevailed in 2021. It is clearly a deliberate policy to step up the pressure on the Palestinians and a vital part of the process is to let it happen with minimal scrutiny by the media and public, so Israel is widely publicizing the support it is giving to Ukraine to draw attention away from what it does locally.

In short, Israel is increasing efforts to make the historic Palestine Palestinian-free by rendering life so miserable that many Arabs will decide to leave. The use of selective violence and constant harassment is all part of that effort and Palestinians have found that describing Israel as an “apartheid” state does not accurately describe the intensity of the indiscriminate punishments and killings by soldiers which have become all too common.

Israel meanwhile is also doing its best to delegitimize Palestinian national identity by labeling Arab human rights groups as “terrorists.” Israeli police recently raided the offices of seven such groups, confiscated their office equipment and communications, and ordered the premises to be shut down completely. Ironically, a CIA assessment of the groups determined that they were not in any way terrorist linked. The Joe Biden administration characteristically responded to the development by indicating that it was “concerned” but did not condemn the Israeli action.

So, if you open a newspaper or turn on the television and watch or read the international news, you will be told what to think about what is going on in Ukraine. And it will be from the Ukrainian/US government point of view. If you are interested in what the US and Israel are up to in the Middle East, you will most often be out of luck as “defending democracy” in Ukraine while also demonizing Russia is providing cover for Washington and Jerusalem to get into all kinds of mischief. It is a reality derived from how the media and government work collectively to shape policies that in no way benefit the American public. Instead, powerful interest groups with plenty of cash drive the process and are the ones who gain still more power and money through it. It is the sad reality of what has happened to our “land of the free and home of the brave.”

The Drumbeats of War and US-NATO Propaganda: “China is Bad” and “They are Coming to Enslave Us”

The Truth about China’s Imperial Ambitions, the Uyghurs and What the West Really Fears

By Timothy Alexander Guzman

Source: Silent Crow News

Western media outlets are playing the drumbeats of war by warning the public that a new Chinese empire is going to develop into an unstoppable force capable of ruling the world with an iron fist.  They claim that under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), they will control every country and human being on earth.  Overall, it’s an absurd claim.  It is fair to say that China under the leadership of the CCP has several issues that concerns the Chinese public with a social credit score system, Zero Covid policy rules and a nation-wide surveillance system that is Orwellian to say the least.  China also had a one child policy that has led to a decline in its population which was and still is problematic for its future when it comes to their labor force and economy, but they ended that policy in 2016.  Whatever faults China has, it is not looking to rule the world despite what Western countries claim especially the United States who say that Beijing’s policies reflect a growing appetite for imperial expansion.  On May 25th, 2017, Reuters published ‘China says new Silk Road not about military ambitions’ reported on what China’s Defense ministry had said about China’s future “China’s ambition to build a new Silk Road is not about seeking to expand its military role abroad nor about seeking to set up foreign bases.” The Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Ren Guoqiang told a regular monthly news briefing conference that China’s Silk Road was not expanding militarily nor setting up bases in any sovereign country and that the accusations were “groundless.” Guoqiang said that “the new Silk Road is about cooperation and trade” and that “The Belt and Road initiative has no military or geostrategic intent. China is not seeking the right to guide global affairs, or spheres of influence, and will not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.”

According to a report from September 23rd, 2020, by the National Herald India titled ‘China will never seek expansion, has no intention to fight either ‘Cold War’ or ‘hot war’, says Xi Jinping’ as Xi Jinping declared in a pre-recorded video sent to the United Nations meeting that “We will continue to narrow differences and resolve disputes with others through dialogue and negotiation” he continued “We will never seek hegemony, expansion, or sphere of influence. We have no intention to fight either a Cold War or a hot war with any country.”   The report also mentioned India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s surprise visit to the Ladakh region a few months prior where he said that “the era of expansionism is over and that the history is proof that “expansionists” have either lost or perished” in what the report described as a “clear message” to China.  “Xi, also the General Secretary of the ruling Communist Party of China and the Commander-in-Chief of the Chinese military, said his country will not pursue development behind closed doors.” Xi made it clear that a new plan for development for growth domestically and internationally will create more opportunities for China’s economy.  Xi said the following:

Rather, we aim to foster, over time, a new development paradigm with domestic circulation as the mainstay and domestic and international circulations reinforcing each other. This will create more space for China’s economic development and add impetus to global economic recovery and growth

The report also mentioned that during the Covid-19 pandemic, US President, Donald Trump ramped up tensions with China and “demanded that China, where the coronavirus emerged, be held accountable for failure to control the virus and for allowing it to spread across the world” he continued, “As we pursue this bright future, we must hold accountable the nation which unleashed this plague onto the world: China”.  Trump’s rhetoric including his administration slapping tariffs on China’s goods surely increased tensions between Washington and Beijing.  The National Herald India quoted what Xi had said about China’s own decisions that will benefit its own economy and path of development and that it should be respected, “one should respect a country’s “independent choice of development path and model.”  Xi made a point that the world is diverse, and that it can inspire human advancements:

The world is diverse in nature, and we should turn this diversity into a constant source of inspiration driving human advancement. This will ensure that human civilisations remain colourful and diversified

Conflicts and Disagreements: China, India, and the Soviet Union

The history between China and India involved conflicts over border issues.  In 1962, China had a dispute with India over Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh borders.  The conflict was mostly among ground troops of both sides which did not involve any Air force or Naval forces.  What started the conflict was China’s construction of a road that connected the Chinese regions of Tibet and Xinjiang.  However, Aksai Chin was claimed by India.  So, in the months of October and November the Sino-Indian War began.  Several violent conflicts also occurred between China and India after the 1959 Tibetan uprising due to India’s recognition of the Dalai Lama, or who is known as Gyalwa Rinpoche to the Tibetan people.  In an important note to consider, the Dalai Lama was supported by the CIA for many years.  The CIA financially supported the Dalai Lama from the late 1950s until the mid-1970s with more than $180,000 a year for the CIA’s Tibetan program to support anti-China activities and to create foreign offices within Tibet to lobby for international support which was a concern for China. 

In 1960, India had constructed a defensive policy to disrupt China’s military patrols and its logistics in what was called Forward Policy  that placed Indian outposts along the borders in the north of the McMahon Line, the eastern portion of the Line of Actual Control.   However, China did try to implement diplomatic settlements between 1960 and 1962, but India rejected the proposal allowing China to abandon diplomacy and became aggressive along the disputed borders. China defeated Indian forces in Rezang La in Chushul in the west and Tawang in the east.  China declared a ceasefire on November 20th, 1962.  The war ended as China withdrew to its areas claimed in the ‘Line of Actual Control.’  Matters became complicated when the Soviet Union sold MiG fighter aircrafts to India in a show of support since the US and the UK refused to sell arms to India.  However, tensions between China and the Soviet Union were also high during that time which was known as the ‘Sino-Soviet split’ over ideological differences in Marxist-Leninist theories during the Cold War.  There were various agreements between China and India with no progress for peace until 2006.   Although Indian officials were concerned with China’s growing military power and its relationship with Pakistan (India’s main rival), China’s Silk Road opened the doors for peace between both nations.  In October of 2011, China and India formulated border mechanisms regarding the Line of Actual Control as both resumed bilateral army exercises between China and Indian troops by early 2012.  In 2013, what was known as the Depsang standoff, India had agreed to demolish and remove several ‘live-in bunkers’ in the Chumar sector along with the removal of observation posts built along the border among other things that made the resolution of the dispute a success, so the Chinese military withdrew it forces, ending the dispute in May 2013.  Although there are some disagreements between both countries still exist over their borders policies, today China and India are part of the BRICS coalition.

The Sino-Vietnamese War of 1979

On December 21st, 1978, Vietnam launched an attack on the Khmer Rouge.  After more than 10 years of fighting, Vietnam had successfully defeated the Khmer Rouge ending Pol Pot’s reign of terror.  Then in February 1979, China had declared war with Vietnam over its borders.  Now Vietnam was facing a two-front war. China’s invasion was a surprise to the world because China supported Vietnam with its wars against France and the US.  From 1965 until 1969, China had more than 300,000 troops in the Vietnam war with more than 1,000 members from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) who were killed with 4,300 wounded. 

However, it all changed due to China’s domination of Vietnam for centuries which created animosity among the Vietnamese government and its people towards Beijing thus creating tensions between both countries.  Conflicts on the border also developed between China and the Soviet Union in 1969 during the Sino-Soviet split, so Vietnam had a dilemma, it had to choose one of them as an ally.  On November 3, 1978, Vietnam signed the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with the Soviet Union that offered security assurances.  Since tensions were high at the time, more than 150,000 Chinese who were living in Vietnam had fled. Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping and CCP officials viewed Vietnam as ungrateful and traitorous.  The Chinese saw the treaty as a threat since the Soviets had a similar treaty with Mongolia which in a way allowed the Soviets to surround China.  On December 7, 1978, China’s Central Military Commission decided to launch a “limited war” along their borders and at the same time, Vietnam had invaded Cambodia to destroy the Khmer Rouge.

Since Vietnam had border clashes with the China-backed Khmer Rouge in Cambodia along with Beijing’s decision to cut aid to Hanoi, it decided to partner with Moscow.  On January 29th, 1979, for the first time, Chinese Vice-premier Deng Xiaoping went to the US and reportedly told President Jimmy Carter that “The child is getting naughty, it is time he got spanked.”   A couple of weeks later, on February 15th, China terminated the 1950 Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance and Xiaoping declared that China was going to attack Vietnam to support its ally, the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia among other reasons including the plan to reclaim the Vietnamese occupied Spratly Islands.  China wanted to prevent the Soviet Union from intervening on Vietnam’s behalf, so Xiaoping warned the Soviets that China’s forces were prepared for war.  Declaring an emergency, China deployed all of the PLA forces along the Sino-Soviet border and set up a military command station in Xinjiang, they also evacuated more than 300,000 civilians from the area.

China eventually suffered a defeat by the Vietcong since its military was not prepared to fight an experienced fighting force who previously defeated two Western powers, France, and the US.  It was reported that experienced Vietnamese ‘tank-killing teams’ destroyed or damaged more than 280 tanks and armored vehicles during the war.  China avoided the use of its Air Force and Navy since it promised the Soviets and Americans a limited war against Vietnam.  China also knew that Vietnam had an experienced military as well as having one of the best anti-air capabilities in the world.  After two short weeks of fighting, China began withdrawing its troops.  By March 16, Chinese troops had a ‘scorched-earth campaign’ in Vietnam destroying bridges, factories, mines, farms, and crops.  It is estimated that China had between 7,900 to 26,000 troops killed and between 23,000 to 37,000 wounded.  Vietnam had between 20,000 to 50,000 troops and civilians killed and wounded.  China clearly had a difficult time with Vietnam. 

China’s history with its neighbors shows that it may be difficult even today if they decided to become an imperialist power subjugating the world to its demands because it would face an uphill battle that will become economically and politically costly and that will collapse its economy and society.  Before the US became a global empire, they made sure they contained and controlled its own backyard and that was the Caribbean and Latin America after the Spanish-American War of 1898.  China would have to control its own backyard against several nations including Russia, India, Vietnam, and others.  China understands that imperial projects to dominate the world is a risk not worth taking. 

Remember, China was on the receiving end of Japanese Imperialism that practically destroyed its society.  In 1931, Imperial Japan had invaded the Chinese province of Manchuria for raw materials to fuel its industries, and by 1937 they controlled many areas of China.  The Imperial Japanese war crimes mounted against the Chinese people.  China understands the consequences of war because it sees what has happened to the US and its military adventures which has led to its decline.  It knows it will not benefit anyone, in fact wars can destabilize regions, destroy economies, and disrupt societal norms and China is not at all interested in any of that.  They want to rebuild their civilization.      

The age of empires is over.  A new multipolar world is needed now more than ever before where no single entity or centralized power could rule over any country who wants to remain sovereign.  That would start an era of lasting peace around the world.  Of course, there are no guarantees that total peace would prevail in a multipolar world because there will be bad actors who will prefer a globalized world order over countries who want sovereignty, but in a multipolar world order, wars can be avoided.  It would be a good start where sovereign countries would respect each other’s boundaries and work out their differences.  That’s the way it should be instead of a group of globalist psychopaths making geopolitical and economic decisions to change the social fabric of every country on the planet.         

Inside China: The Surveillance State

China’s internal problems is a stain on its reputation.  China’s surveillance state is indeed problematic.  In 2018, the CCP installed more than 200 million surveillance cameras with an increase in facial recognition technology nationwide.  Surveillance cameras and facial recognition networks would add to the social credit system already in place that gives Chinese citizens a score based on their “social behaviors.”  Going back to 2003, China began its Smart City pilot programs to track and analyze air quality, traffic, wastewater disposal systems, social behaviors of its residents and other areas of urban life.  We can fairly say that China’s surveillance state is rather extreme and unnecessary.  The Chinese people will increasingly voice their concerns to the CCP’s leadership in the future to scrap its surveillance capabilities because it can get out of control, but the question is, will it happen?  Only time will tell.   

The Uyghurs: China’s Problem with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM)

One issue that has been mainly ignored in recent years by the Western mainstream media is the terrorism committed in China by the Uyghurs. Why? The Western view of China’s human rights abuses when it comes to the Uyghurs has two sides of the story.  First it benefits the Military-Industrial Complex and its future of selling arms to its allies throughout Asia including Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan.  Second, it’s the demonization of China to gain support among the American people for a future war with China because they are “bad.”  Former US President Barack Obama supported his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her ‘Pivot to Asia’ agenda that she had published in Foreign Policy magazine titled ‘America’s Pacific Century.’ Clinton made it clear that the US goal is to remain a global hegemonic power especially in the Asia-Pacific region:

As secretary of state, I broke with tradition and embarked on my first official overseas trip to Asia. In my seven trips since, I have had the privilege to see firsthand the rapid transformations taking place in the region, underscoring how much the future of the United States is intimately intertwined with the future of the Asia-Pacific. A strategic turn to the region fits logically into our overall global effort to secure and sustain America’s global leadership. The success of this turn requires maintaining and advancing a bipartisan consensus on the importance of the Asia-Pacific to our national interests; we seek to build upon a strong tradition of engagement by presidents and secretaries of state of both parties across many decades. It also requires smart execution of a coherent regional strategy that accounts for the global implications of our choices.

What does that regional strategy look like? For starters, it calls for a sustained commitment to what I have called “forward-deployed” diplomacy. That means continuing to dispatch the full range of our diplomatic assets — including our highest-ranking officials, our development experts, our interagency teams, and our permanent assets — to every country and corner of the Asia-Pacific region. Our strategy will have to keep accounting for and adapting to the rapid and dramatic shifts playing out across Asia. With this in mind, our work will proceed along six key lines of action: strengthening bilateral security alliances; deepening our working relationships with emerging powers, including with China; engaging with regional multilateral institutions; expanding trade and investment; forging a broad-based military presence; and advancing democracy and human rights

FOX News is one of the US mainstream media outlets that jumps into the defense of the Uyghurs when it comes to the CCP and its alleged abuses.  However, FOX News ignores the daily abuses of the Israeli regime against the Palestinians or the abuses by the Saudis against the people of Yemen who have been bombarded with US-made weapons since 2015.  To be fair, not only FOX News demonizes China, but so does the liberal media such as CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times that includes the BBC and others throughout Europe.   

One situation that is rarely discussed in the West is the terrorism incidents caused by certain groups and individuals in the Uyghur community not only against the CCP, but also against the Han Chinese, the largest ethnic majority in China.  In Violent Separatism in Xinjiang: A Critical Assessment by James Millward from the East-West Center based in Honolulu, Hawaii and Washington D.C. documented terrorist activities since the early 1990’s that accelerated after the September 11th attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C. Millward wrote the following concerning terror groups originating out of the Xinjiang region in China:

Since the 1990s, concerns about Uyghur separatism have received increasing official and media attention. These concerns have heightened since the events of 9-11 with the advent of a more robust U.S. presence in Central Asia and Chinese attempts to link Uyghur separatism to international jihadist groups. A steady flow of reports from the international media—as well as official PRC releases (a document on “East Turkistan” terrorism, a white paper on Xinjiang, and a list of terrorist groups)—have given the impression of an imminent separatist and terrorist crisis in the Xinjiang region

Some of the terror attacks that were documented occurred in as early as 1992: 

February 5, 1992: Urumqi Bus Bombs. Three were killed and twenty-three injured in two explosions on buses in Urumqi; the PRC’s 2002 document claims that other bombs were discovered and defused around the same time in a cinema and a residential building. Five men were later convicted in this case and reportedly executed in June 1995.

February 1992-September 1993: Bombings. During this period there were several explosions in Yining, Urumqi, Kashgar, and elsewhere; targets included department stores, markets, hotels, and centers of “cultural activity” in southern Xinjiang. One bomb in a building of the Nongji Company (apparently a firm concerned with agricultural equipment) in Kashgar on June 17, 1993, killed two and injured six. One bomb went off in a wing of the Seman Hotel in Kashgar, though no one was hurt in this explosion. The PRC’s 2002 document claims that in the 1993 explosions two people were killed and thirty-six injured overall

On March 9th, 2008, Reuters published an account on what took place during an attempted terrorist attack on a passenger jet on its way to Beijing China foils attempted terror attack on flight.’  The report said that “China foiled a bid to cause an air disaster on a passenger jet en route to Beijing and the plane made a safe emergency landing, an official said on Sunday, in what state media called an attempted terrorist attack.”  According to Reuters sources, “The China Southern flight originated in Urumqi, capital of the restive far western Chinese region of Xinjiang, where militant Uighurs have agitated for an independent “East Turkestan.”  On September 8th, 2011, the BBC reported that a militant Islamic group was behind a terrorist attack in the Xinjiang region that resulted in dozens of people dead.  The BBC report Islamic militant group ‘behind Xinjiang attacks said the following:

A militant Islamic group has released a video saying it was behind recent attacks in China’s Xinjiang region which left dozens of people dead, a US internet monitoring group says.  The video was made by a group calling itself the Turkistan Islamic Party.  The group, which is fighting against Chinese control of Xinjiang, says the attacks were revenge against the Beijing government.

One of the deadliest attacks experienced in China occurred on March 1st, 2014 in the Kunming Railway Station in Kunming which is located in the Yunnan province.  The BBC reported on the incident and said that ‘China separatists blamed for Kunming knife rampage’ and said that “Chinese officials have blamed separatists from the north-western Xinjiang region for a mass knife attack at a railway station that left 29 people dead and at least 130 wounded” and that “a group of attackers, dressed in black, burst into the station in the south-west city of Kunming and began stabbing people at random.”  The report also said that “Images from the scene posted online showed bodies lying in pools of blood” and that the “State news agency Xinhua said police shot at least four suspects dead.”  There were other terrorist attacks that involved the Uyghurs that only pushed the CCP to move forward with facial recognition and a social credit system associated with a criminal offending database.  By 2021, the CCP’s surveillance system expanded in the southern city of Guangzhou that allowed incoming passengers to walk through a biometric security checkpoint. 

In Xinjiang, security checkpoints and identification stations were in many places where people must show proof of ID with their faces being scanned at the same time by various cameras before they enter any supermarket, train stations or any other public place.  China’s security concerns do go beyond what is needed to protect themselves from terrorism. 

However, I do not justify any form of police state tactics against any population despite China’s extreme measures that resembles George Orwell’s 1984, however, at the same time, there are legitimate concerns involving the Uyghur population and their use of terrorism that has caused numerous deaths and injuries of innocent people.

From China to Syria: ETIM joins Al-Qaeda and the Syrian “Moderate” Rebels

One piece of information the Western media usually ignores is the fact that since 2013, there have been thousands of Uyghurs who have traveled to Syria and joined terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda, the Syrian “Moderate Rebels” and others to fight against Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian army.  One western media news agency reported on the Uyghurs in Syria and their affiliation with US-backed terrorists who were trying to overthrow or kill Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and that was the Associated Press (AP) who published an Exclusive story Uighurs fighting in Syria take aim at China admits a fact about the Uyghurs and their ties to terrorist groups from the Middle East and Africa and how they are using their experiences to fight China:

Since 2013, thousands of Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority from western China, have traveled to Syria to train with the Uighur militant group Turkistan Islamic Party and fight alongside al-Qaida, playing key roles in several battles. Syrian President Bashar Assad’s troops are now clashing with Uighur fighters as the six-year conflict nears its endgame

The AP mentioned a Uyghur by the name of Ali who said, “We didn’t care how the fighting went or who Assad was,” said Ali, “we just wanted to learn how to use the weapons and then go back to China.”  That’s what Chinese officials needed on their hands, Uyghurs traveling to Syria to learn how Al-Qaeda and others use terrorist tactics and techniques then bring that knowledge back to China.  The CCP had its hands full with the threat of terrorism on Chinese soil.  The AP outlined the facts that the Uyghurs have committed numerous crimes in China over the years: 

Uighur militants have killed hundreds, if not thousands, in attacks inside China in a decades-long insurgency that initially targeted police and other symbols of Chinese authority but in recent years also included civilians. Extremists with knives killed 33 people at a train station in 2014. Abroad, they bombed the Chinese embassy in Kyrgyzstan in September last year; in 2014, they killed 25 people in an attack on a Thai shrine popular with Chinese tourists

In a report from June 2016 by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission titled China’s Response to Terrorism’ by Murray Scot Tanner and James Bellacqua clarifies what China has been facing when it comes to terrorism:

While tracking the nature and magnitude of China’s terrorist challenges is difficult, it is clear that China faces some level of domestic terrorist threat, and that its citizens have been victims of terrorist attacks both at home and abroad.

Between 2012 and 2015, China suffered multiple domestic terrorist attacks. Reported incidents became more frequent during this period, and they also became more dispersed geographically, with major incidents occurring in Beijing and other eastern cities, in addition to China’s mostly Muslim western regions. Several of these incidents were also targeted at high-traffic urban areas, resulting in indiscriminate injury or death to civilians

In an unusual fashion, in what they call a backgrounder, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a bi-partisan establishment think tank based in New York City published ‘The East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM)’ explained who and what is ETIM and its longtime affiliations with terrorists: 

Reportedly founded by Hasan Mahsum, a Uighur from Xinjiang’s Kashgar region, ETIM has been listed by the State Department as one of the more extreme separatist groups. It seeks an independent state called East Turkestan that would cover an area including parts of Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR). After Mahsum’s assassination by Pakistani troops in 2003 during a raid on a suspected al-Qaeda hideout near the Afghanistan border, the group was led by Abdul Haq, who was reportedly killed in Pakistan in 2010. In August 2014, Chinese state media released a report stating that Memetuhut Memetrozi, a co-founder of ETIM who is serving a life sentence in China for his involvement in terrorist attacks, had been indoctrinated in a madrassa in Pakistan. The report, which said Memetuhut had met Mahsum in 1997 and launched ETIM later that year, marked a rare public admission of Pakistani ties to Uighur militancy. 

Some experts say ETIM is an umbrella organization for many splinter groups, including ones that operate in Pakistan and central Asia. The Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP), for instance, is one of the most prominent groups, formed in 2006 by Uighurs who fled to Afghanistan and Pakistan in the 1990s. That group took credit for a series of attacks in several Chinese cities in 2008, including deadly bus explosions in Shanghai and Kunming. According to U.S.-based intelligence firm Stratfor, the TIP’s “claims of responsibility appear exaggerated, but the threat TIP poses cannot be ignored.” Stratfor also said that the TIP had expanded its presence on the Internet, issuing videos calling for a jihad by Uighurs in Xinjiang. Ben N. Venzke, head of the U.S.-based independent terrorism-monitoring firm IntelCenter, says it is unclear whether the TIP is separate from ETIM, but notes that the groups’ objectives are both Islamist and nationalist

In the last year of the Trump administration, despite the proof from various reports including those produced by the US and its think tanks that ETIM committed multiple terrorist attacks in mainland China, the US government removed ETIM from its terror list.  According to Germany’s Deutsche Welle (DW) US removes separatist group condemned by China from terror list reported that The United States said it would no longer designate a Chinese Uighur separatist group as a “terrorist organization” on Friday, sparking sharp condemnation from Beijing.”  This was a clear indication that Washington is doing everything it can to destabilize China.  It is a move that will allow newly trained Uyghurs to use their newly acquired skills to cause more chaos in China.  It’s basically a slap in the face:    

The East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) was removed from Washington’s terror list, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced in a notice posted in the Federal Register.

“ETIM was removed from the list because, for more than a decade, there has been no credible evidence that ETIM continues to exist,” a State Department spokesperson said, news agency AFP reported

This is a typical turn of events for Washington and its long-term objective of destabilizing China by whatever means necessary to try stop its rise to power. The New World Order is becoming a multipolar world order with China, Russia and others who will compete with declining Western powers who are basically responsible for many of the wars, economic exploitation, and the colonization of the global south and that’s what Washington and its European allies are afraid of. 

US Government Propaganda on China’s Internment Camps for the Uyghurs

In an important investigation by Ben Norton and Ajit Singh of The Grayzone ‘No, the UN did not report China has ‘massive internment camps’ for Uighur Muslims starts off with an introduction on how mainstream media propaganda has claimed that China has imprisoned more than 1 million Uyghurs in designated “internment camps” but as the facts makes itself clear, it is a fabrication by the CIA and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) that is funded by Washington’s armchair warriors:

A spokesperson from the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) confirmed in a statement to The Grayzone that the allegation of Chinese “camps” was not made by the United Nations, but rather by a member of an independent committee that does not speak for the UN as a whole. That member happened to be the only American on the committee, and one with no background of scholarship or research on China.

Moreover, this accusation is based on the thinly sourced reports of a Chinese opposition group that is funded by the American government’s regime-change arm and is closely tied to exiled pro-US activists. There have been numerous reports of discrimination against Uighur Muslims in China. However, information about camps containing 1 million prisoners has originated almost exclusively from media outlets and organizations funded and weaponized by the US government to turn up the heat on Beijing

On August 10, 2018, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination conducted a review for 179 countries who were signed on to the convention which is a process that takes place annually which also included a review for China’s compliance.  “On the day of the review, Reuters published a report with an explosive headline: “U.N. says it has credible reports that China holds million Uighurs in secret camps.”  From CNN, FOX News to the New York Times, all echoed the same propaganda that the UN had investigated China’s actions against the Uyghurs and accused Beijing of genocide, but it was all a lie.  The UN did conduct any investigation into the Uyghur internment camps “and this committee’s official website makes it clear that it is “a body of independent experts,” not UN officials.”  One individual that The Grayzone report focused on is Gay McDougall, a member of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR):

What’s more, a look at the OHCHR’s official news release on the committee’s presentation of the report showed that the only mention of alleged re-education “camps” in China was made by its sole American member, Gay McDougall. This claim was then echoed by a Mauritanian member, Yemhelhe Mint Mohamed.

During the committee’s regular review of China, McDougall commented that she was “deeply concerned” about “credible reports” alleging mass detentions of millions of Uighurs Muslim minorities in “internment camps.” The Associated Press reported that McDougall “did not specify a source for that information in her remarks at the hearing.” (Note that the headline of the AP news wire is much weaker than that of Reuters: “UN panel concerned at reported Chinese detention of Uighurs”)

The Grayzone received an email from the OHCHR spokesperson Julia Gronnevet “confirmed that the CERD was not representative of the UN as a whole.”  She said that “You are correct that the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is an independent body,” Gronnevet wrote. “Quoted comments were made during public sessions of the Committee when members were reviewing State parties.”  The report confirmed that McDougall’s claims were false:

Thus the OHCHR implicitly acknowledged that the comments by McDougall, the lone American member of an independent committee, were not representative of any finding by the UN as a whole. The report by Reuters is simply false

The mainstream media has tried to cover up McDougall’s lies with an “Activist group” called ‘Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD), but the problem with this network is that it is supported by US regime-change operators based in, you guessed it, Washington D.C:

In addition to this irresponsible misreporting, Reuters and other Western outlets have attempted to fill in the gaps left by McDougall, referring to reports made by so-called “activist group” the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD).

Conveniently left out of the story is that this organization is headquartered in Washington, DC and funded by the US government’s regime-change arm.  CHRD advocates full-time against the Chinese government, and has spent years campaigning on behalf of extreme right-wing opposition figures

CHRD is supported by one of the most notorious organizations involved in Regime-Change operations around the world, and that is the National Endowment for Democracy (NED):

However, tax documents uncovered by The Grayzone show that a significant portion of this group’s budget comes from the US government’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a CIA-linked soft-power group that was founded by the Ronald Reagan administration in the 1980s to push regime change against independent governments and support “free markets” around the world.

In 2012, the NED gave the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders $490,000. In 2013, it got a $520,000 grant from the NED

The list of funds given to CHRD from the NED continued in 2015 with $496,000, and another $412, 300 was added to its budget in 2016. 

Behind the CHRD is its international director, Renee Xia who is an anti-China activist who in the past has called upon Washington to impose sanctions on CCP officials.  She is an advocate for the release of a neoconservative Chinese dissident by the name of Liu Xiaobo:  

While Liu Xiaobo became a cause celebre of the Western liberal intelligensia, he was a staunch supporter of colonialism, a fan of the most blood-soaked US military campaigns, and a hardcore libertarian. 

As writers Barry Sautman and Yan Hairong reported in The Guardian in 2010, Liu led numerous US government-funded right-wing organizations that advocated mass privatization and the Westernization of China. He also expressed openly racist views against the Chinese. “To choose Westernisation is to choose to be human,” Liu insisted, lamenting that traditional Chinese culture had made its population “wimpy, spineless, and fucked up.”

While CHRD described Liu as an “advocate of non-violence,” he practically worshiped President George W. Bush and strongly supported the illegal US-led invasion of Iraq, as well as the war in Afghanistan. “Non-violence advocate” Liu was even a fan of America’s wars in Korea and Vietnam, which killed millions of civilians

The Grayzone mentioned an article published by The Guardian in 2010, Do supporters of Nobel winner Liu Xiaobo really know what he stands for?’ written by Barry Sautman and Yan Hairong state the fact that Liu supports Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinians and has claimed that they are the provocateurs:

Liu has also one-sidedly praised Israel’s stance in the Middle East conflict. He places the blame for the Israel/Palestine conflict on Palestinians, who he regards as “often the provocateurs”

Overall, the accusations by the CHRD against China and its imprisonment of the Uyghurs is brought to you by the CIA and its propaganda news networks from around the world:

A look at the sourcing of the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders’ research raises many doubts about its legitimacy. For one, the most-cited source in the CHRD report, accounting for more than one-fifth of the 101 references, is Radio Free Asia, a news agency created by the CIA during the Cold War pump out anti-China propaganda, and still today funded by the US government.

Even The New York Times has referred to Radio Free Asia as a “Worldwide Propaganda Network Built by the CIA.” Along with Voice of America, Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Radio y Televisión Martí, and Middle East Broadcasting Networks, Radio Free Asia (RFA) is operated by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a federal agency of the US government under the supervision of the State Department. Describing its work as “vital to U.S. national interests,” BBG’s primary broadcasting standard is to be “consistent with the broad foreign policy objectives of the United States.”  The near-total reliance on Washington-linked sources is characteristic of Western reporting on Uighurs Muslims in China, and on the country in general, which regularly features sensational headlines and allegations

China’s Threat to the ‘New World Order’ is the Multipolar World Order

The US and its European allies are afraid of China’s economic growth and of its political influence on the world stage, not of its supposed “imperial agenda” they consistently claim.  China is becoming part of a multipolar world where more than one country has the economic and diplomatic influence instead of the Old-World Order where a unified Western power structure led by the US and its European allies that has brought nothing more than death and destruction to most of the global south.  Their imperial expansion accelerated after World War II to become a global empire, but the world is tired of the same old political establishment from the West telling the rest of the world what to do and who they can become allies with.  China is a target of the West, but China will protect its sovereignty at all costs.  China is ready for a war. 

China will be a force economically for centuries to come with their Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that was introduced in 2013 as a global investment project to develop an economic infrastructure strategy to invest and trade with more than 150 countries who participate in the project.  The US is worried about that, so, like spoiled children, the US House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi and then later on, fellow Democrat Senator, Ed Markey from Massachusetts and other Democrat Representatives including John Garamendi and Alan Lowenthal from California, and Don Beyer of Virginia with Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen of American Samoa, who is a Republican with more politicians to follow suit in the future, all defiantly went to Taiwan in an effort to antagonize China to see how far will the CCP go knowing that the One-China Policy is what Beijing takes seriously, in fact, it’s the red line for them.  It was an insult, but China did not take any serious actions against the move that would have led to a world war.     

China has human rights issues and to be fair, so does the US government, for example, the US has more people in prison than any other country on the planet.  There is no doubt that the CCP has serious issues when it comes to its internal security policies, but hopefully the Chinese people and their government will work something out in the future when the threat of terrorism and other security issues are no longer a problem.  Perhaps a new beginning can emerge that will benefit China’s society.  But one thing is certain, China and its people will not be bullied by the West.  They experienced an invasion by Imperial Japan during World War II, so it is guaranteed that China will not allow something like that to happen again especially if the US planned to install a military base in Taiwan.    

China was and still is a great civilization.  China had periods of history where they flourished, for example under the Tang Dynasty (618-907), although not a perfect example because there were internal conflicts and rebellions for political reasons, but it was considered China’s golden age.  Under the Tang Dynasty, China had a rich, highly educated society that was well-governed. The Tang Dynasty has a rich history of poetry and numerous innovations with political and cultural influences throughout Asia.  China has the potential to become a great civilization once again.  

Today, China is not a threat to world peace.  What the West fears is China’s rise as an economic powerhouse along with its Russian counterpart and others who challenge US and European hegemony.  Now the rest of the world (especially the global south) can pick and choose who they trade with and who they choose as an ally.  In other words, most countries around the world will now have a choice.  They don’t have to listen to Washington anymore, they can choose whoever they want that will benefit them the most without giving up their sovereignty in doing so.  The US and Europe as a partner is risky, especially for smaller countries who in some cases, have natural resources but don’t have a formidable military that can protect themselves from western powers.  However, China, Russia and Iran have that power to challenge the West, and now the global south sees what is happening geopolitically and they feel more optimistic about the future.  A future without Uncle Sam waving his big stick and telling governments what to do will be a new start for the world.  The era of empires is over with a multipolar world order is on the horizon and that’s a fact the West is not willing to accept. 

We are closer to World War III than ever before, but the question is, where would it begin?  In the South China Sea, in the Middle East or in Eastern Europe? I believe that World War III will begin in the Middle East between Israel and Iran, but it’s hard to tell at this point, but one thing is guaranteed, China will be involved in the next world war.  They want China to become another puppet state that they can control and dominate economically and politically forever and that’s not an exaggeration.  The US and its European allies have been the dominant power on the global stage for centuries and they are not willing to give that up anytime soon, but there is a new multipolar world emerging and that would end the threat of Western hegemonic powers that has only brought misery and pain around the world.