JW Insider

There's another side to this story too. I don't trust the NYT as far as a delivery boy can throw it, but the other side should still be noted. (Side Note: Although all coronaviruses so far have been known to come from animal species, I don't doubt the possibility that it could have come from a lab, either in the US or China. A very recent Newsweek article attacks Fauci, but appears to do so as a way to blame him for funding a lot of gain-of-function research on as many bat coronaviruses as they could manage. The fact that a lot of coronavirus research in Wuhan was funded by Fauci could have been one of the reasons that the US (and NYT) so quickly denied the possibility of a lab leak.) There are still quite a few good scientific reasons to doubt the leak story, and also to doubt the virologists story. Strong rumors have also emerged that the same original strain has been found in blood samples from Italy going back into early 2019. But a leak still seems possible to me. Anyway the NYT story probably didn't like the virologist because her story was made part of a Trump - Steve Bannon project. I've mentioned Bannon's involvement in anti-China media projects before, and he has made a lot of money from the Pentagon for it. So has Falun Gong/NDTV, where the story continues to be repeated. Here is what the NYT (and others) made of the Chinese virologist story: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/20/business/media/steve-bannon-china.html How Steve Bannon and a Chinese Billionaire Created a Right-Wing Coronavirus Media Sensation Increasingly allied, the American far right and members of the Chinese diaspora tapped into social media to give a Hong Kong researcher a vast audience for peddling unsubstantiated pandemic claims. . . . . Dr. Li-Meng Yan wanted to remain anonymous. It was mid-January, and Dr. Yan, a researcher in Hong Kong, had been hearing rumors about a dangerous new virus in mainland China that the government was playing down. Terrified for her personal safety and career, she reached out to her favorite Chinese YouTube host, known for criticizing the Chinese government. Within days, the host was telling his 100,000 followers that the coronavirus had been deliberately released by the Chinese Communist Party. He wouldn’t name the whistle-blower, he said, because officials could make the person “disappear.” By September, Dr. Yan had abandoned caution. She appeared in the United States on Fox News making the unsubstantiated claim to millions that the coronavirus was a bio-weapon manufactured by China. Overnight, Dr. Yan became a right-wing media sensation, with top advisers to President Trump and conservative pundits hailing her as a hero. Nearly as quickly, her interview was labeled on social media as containing “false information,” while scientists rejected her research as a polemic dressed up in jargon. Her evolution was the product of a collaboration between two separate but increasingly allied groups that peddle misinformation: a small but active corner of the Chinese diaspora and the highly influential far right in the United States. Each saw an opportunity in the pandemic to push its agenda. For the diaspora, Dr. Yan and her unfounded claims provided a cudgel for those intent on bringing down China’s government. For American conservatives, they played to rising anti-Chinese sentiment and distracted from the Trump administration’s bungled handling of the outbreak. Both sides took advantage of the dearth of information coming out of China, where the government has refused to share samples of the virus and has resisted a transparent, independent investigation. Its initial cover-up of the outbreak has further fueled suspicion about the origins of the virus. An overwhelming body of evidence shows that the virus almost certainly originated in an animal, most likely a bat, before evolving to make the leap into humans. While U.S. intelligence agencies have not ruled out the possibility of a lab leak, they have not found any proof so far to back up that theory. Each saw an opportunity in the pandemic to push its agenda. For the diaspora, Dr. Yan and her unfounded claims provided a cudgel for those intent on bringing down China’s government. For American conservatives, they played to rising anti-Chinese sentiment and distracted from the Trump administration’s bungled handling of the outbreak. Both sides took advantage of the dearth of information coming out of China, where the government has refused to share samples of the virus and has resisted a transparent, independent investigation. Its initial cover-up of the outbreak has further fueled suspicion about the origins of the virus. An overwhelming body of evidence shows that the virus almost certainly originated in an animal, most likely a bat, before evolving to make the leap into humans. While U.S. intelligence agencies have not ruled out the possibility of a lab leak, they have not found any proof so far to back up that theory. . . . Dr. Yan, through representatives for Mr. Bannon and Mr. Guo, declined multiple requests for an interview. So did Mr. Wang, citing The New York Times’s “reputation for fake news.” ... ----------- I don't trust much of either side on this issue. And I don't always trust "science" either. Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine completely blew it by running fraudulent reports with obviously fraudulent data. Even "peer review" doesn't mean much when so much greed is at play.

I love the fact that you often take a refreshingly different stance from the typical narrative that the world wants us to hear. You deserve a lot more up-votes for that fact alone. But I have this bad habit of giving up-votes and then thinking that, in order to be fully honest, I should to explain what parts I was up-voting and what parts I still question. When people give their own experiences about fleeing, escaping, and their horrible experiences, I don't doubt that such things might have happened. But I do have to remember, as others have pointed out, that it's a well-known fact that humans tend to create unwarranted generalizations from anecdotal experiences. This is why it is so important for news media to pick and choose whose interviews get on the air. And it is also a well-known fact that "state media" outlets with an obvious political ideology like CNN, MSNBC or South Korean media (just a couple examples) have completely faked certain types of interviews, or sought out biased activists who they know are willing to lie. Also I have watched highly-paid, well-known persons in US media like Joy Reid, Christiane Amanpour, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Rachel Maddow, etc., just tell straight-up lies, which they obviously knew were lies because they had contradicted themselves on the same lie in the recent past. There are tapes of the most well-known Univision reporter, Jorge Ramos, secretly deliberating about how they will manipulate an interview with the Venezuelan president to knowingly create a false narrative. South Korea has been caught creating "experiences" by getting actors and activists willing to lie about their experiences in North Korea, even if they had never been there. This doesn't mean that NK doesn't actually create those experiences for some. And just because Falun Gong has faked supposed photographs and supposed documentation about experiences in China doesn't mean that they aren't persecuted in China. So everyone knows that producing an "experience" is the best way to get people to believe, and this is why it bothers me so much that the most well-known and oft-repeated interviews with persons who gave their Uyghur experience chose to massively change their experience when they (or the people paying them?) realized the potential impact. This doesn't mean that the same thing doesn't happen in North Korean news about the West, for example. This doesn't mean that China also doesn't exaggerate the problems of the West in their media. But I've had my son translate a lot of local Chinese state media for me when they discuss the United States, and I haven't seen the negativity that goes on the other direction. In fact, I had him translate a recent speech that their President Xi made, which had been reported as "the most belligerent speech ever made by a Chinese leader." The actual speech was extremely non-belligerent, and required a very disingenuous out-of-context translation to make one line in the speech to appear that way. And I know that you are aware of such things happening, especially in the area of the fear-mongering, exaggerations, and counter-narrative censorship related to the Covid-19 issues. I understand the second part of this, because the Pharma-Media relationship is obvious and it's well-documented. And of course, billionaire companies like Amazon are also media companies (Washington Post). The boards of Reuters and Pfizer have had overlapping members. I saw a list, showing that Bill Gates has spent half-a-billion on PR campaigns that can be repurposed as "news" without admitting that it's just PR. When you add up how much Gates has donated to hundred of various news media outlets, the totals are about the same. However, I have not seen the evidence (yet) for these Chinese cover organizations. If you are right, I would expect to find them in areas of Africa where China's influence is growing. Or maybe India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Russia where they would hope to create sympathy for their projects or along shared borders. I don't doubt that something could exist, but all I have heard so far are claims from media "giants" like Falun Gong,(Epoch Times, Cable TV channels, etc.) which itself benefits from the massive anti-China propaganda expenditures of the Pentagon. (Reports from behind the scenes of the Steve Bannon, Falun Gong, Radio Free Asia connections mentioned earlier, for example.) I have resigned myself to the idea that any defense of China will be taken as excusing Mao, or people thinking that I think China is some kind of utopia, or even thinking that the CCP can do no evil. The best I can do here is to repeat myself that China has had an especially messy and ugly history. Mao made terrible mistakes that resulted in the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands. (I know most people think I should have said "millions" here, and this will be taken as a complete "whitewash" of Mao. But remember that millions of persons died of starvation before 1950, too.) China is still a poor country with a lot of backward thinking by most of the population. China has done bad and stupid things. The West has done bad and stupid things. Looking at the problems in the West as if the reason they are now getting worse is because they are imitating China reflects an exaggerated "seed" of anti-China prejudice that the West has cultivated (in my opinion).

If I were you, I wouldn't just believe everything I read based on the headlines. There was a headline like this in the Washington Examiner earlier this year: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/chinese-born-chemist-convict-stealing-trade-secrets-selling-ccp Chinese-born chemist convicted of stealing $120M in US trade secrets for CCP If you just read the headline, you'd get the idea that a Chinese person was probably working in the US, as a kind of spy for the CCP, who stole and sold $120 million worth of trade secrets to the CCP. Right? But when you read the actual story, you see that it was a US citizen, born in China, but who had worked in the US for 30 years, who thought that a Chinese company might buy trade secrets she obtained from Coca-Cola where she had worked as a chemist. The amount of money she thought she could get is not stated. For all we know she thought she could get $10,000. Or perhaps she wanted no money at all, but just wanted the Chinese company to know that Coca-Cola had been using a toxic BPA coating on the inside of its cans for years, and was now doing this research on BPA alternatives which were less health risky. The $120 million figure is the value that Coca-Cola said they spent on the research for alternative can-coating technologies. Also note that the headline mentions the CCP, the communist party itself. It doesn't mention that she thought there were a couple of companies in China who might be interested, and that it was only the court that decided that this meant that her intent was to help China and therefore help the CCP. That said, I would say that the stealing of trade secrets happens a lot. It's just that it is not specifically a Chinese thing. As you probably know Astrazeneca's primary research is headquartered in China, and they worked on Covid virus technologies with Oxford and pushed to have this technology shared freely with the world. Bill Gates interfered and pushed for Astrazeneca NOT to give away the technology because it would have reduced the profits from other Pharma companies. It also turns out that those very few and rare blood-clotting issues that Pharma/Fauci took advantage of (to gain market share for Pfizer and Moderna) were actually nothing in comparison to the 40,000+ adverse effects (from a 3-month period) that mostly showed up within 24 hours of the Pfizer vaccine, as now shown in the first FOIA release of the Pfizer/FDA documents. There were dozens of questionable deaths that raised no flags to Pfizer, and were not made public, while the president of Pfizer had been claiming that there were 0 deaths. I don't expect US companies and Chinese companies to be all that different with respect to stealing trade secrets. But there is a tendency when one speaks of the topic, to immediately think not only of China, but to blame it on the CCP.

Since you brought up the issue of trading secrets, I wanted to point out the hypocrisy and prejudice that's so often involved in pushing cliche propaganda that this is a China-specific issue. China is already well ahead of the US in a lot of technologies including some used in military, satellites, quantum computer technology, bullet trains, physics research, etc. It's also well-known that there is a common complaint that China requires foreign companies who do business in China to be willing to transfer technology and trade secrets over to China as a condition of doing business there. Of course, these companies will cry foul when China actually makes use of the technology transfer. But here is an interesting point from the video Carl Zha gave on Taiwan's history, just last month: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXTZuZWTSPo&t=3678s It's one of the videos I already linked to earlier, and I'm sorry that both the interviewer and interviewee have a little trouble with English or clarity. So I doubt that anyone made it to the 58-minute mark when the topic of a bill in the US congress came up. I'll quote/paraphrase about three minutes of the conversation, because it bears directly on how a certain imperialist country might attempt a technology transfer: Interviewer: Question: What is the US Innovation and Competition Act, recently . . in Pentagon budget, Pelosi trying to take it to conference without bill in the House, with its companion bill supposed to be the Eagle Act [trying to pass it without putting it to a vote.] The Bill has to do with many things; it's huge. One thing is military funding for the Asia-Pacific. Provisions for more joint military exercises and operations with "the Quad" [US, Australia, India, Japan]. It has anti-China propaganda --funding for propaganda: $500 million for Radio Free Asia and outlets like that, such as the US Global Agency for Media. Provisions for "McCarthyist" surveilling of Chinese students and researchers. (Edited to add {not in video): Just last month, a Harvard professor lost funding for his research, and Harvard also went after American Harvard students of Chinese ethnicity working on research projects. I think this is what interviewer had in mind by adding the term "McCarthyist."] And then it has a lot of funding for science and research including microchips. So there is a Taiwan connection. Can you talk a little bit about that? Interviewee [Carl Zha]: Yeah let me talk about the semiconductors. Even John Oliver [HBO] talked about semiconductors. Taiwan manufactures most of the world's semiconductors. During the Trump administration, he forbids Taiwan to export semiconductors to mainland China (companies like Huawei). So now it's positioned like this, that "Now China might invade Taiwan because they need semiconductors." Now there's a shortage worldwide. Why? Because Trump, the US, also placed sanctions on semiconductors manufactured on mainland China, so that for any company that has a US business in China . . .e.g., General Motors a US company in China making cars for the Chinese market, can't use [local] Chinese semiconductors. The US artificially created a semiconductor shortage by US policy. US policy certainly made it a lot lot worse. [1:00:22] The US also demanded that the Taiwan semiconductors manufacturers will hand over their trade secrets to the US. They demanded a technology transfer. And Taiwan semiconductor [manufacturers] complied. This is kind of the fate of a US colony. You don't have a say. The US wants something from you; you have to submit, whether that means you have to pay for expensive useless high tech weapons or if it means you have to hand over trade secrets.

Yes. I also know about many Chinese teachers who live in China who were also part of this crackdown. China is cracking down on a whole industry that is being built up just to teach the passing of SAT tests, AP tests, etc. It moves much of public schooling into a private testing industry. Even in the USA it creates a kind of elitist system where richer families can afford to have children basically "tutored" into Ivy League colleges. Ultimately, this is to the detriment of a fair public schooling system. But I also I know one US citizen who still teaches English in China (and this is where my info about the China crack-down comes from). Also my youngest son who was given two semesters of physics research in Beijing also considered a teaching job offer in China to supplement a low-paying research job there.

For all I know, North Korea is a terrible place with a terrible government. Personally I suspect that N. Korea or perhaps some very stupid N Korean policemen) took advantage of an opportunity to get back at the US (or West) for continued spying along with economic and military harassment. I have noticed Max Blumenthal make exaggerations and mistakes on China. I think his reporting is much better on Central and South America. His Spanish is definitely better than his Chinese, which is pretty much non-existent. But I don't think he lost any credibility in his mention of N.Korean defectors specifically. Several of those S.Korean presentations have actually turned out to be completely faked. But the case of the imprisoned student in N.Korea truly was horrible. I think that the N.Korea story was not about stealing a flag, but trying to steal a propaganda poster for his church back home (?!?). Getting 15 years hard labor for that is pretty crazy. BBC reported it this way: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40335169 A month after his arrest, he appeared at a news conference tearfully confessing to trying to take a sign from his hotel as a "trophy" for a US church. "The aim of my task was to harm the motivation and work ethic of the Korean people," he said. [Edited to add: Sounds to me like a very unlikely motivation, as if someone put those words in his mouth, as a kind of plea-bargain, but without any bargain.] "The way his detention was handled was appalling and a tragedy like this must never be repeated," it [the Chinese company the student was touring with] said in a statement. . . . North Korea said last week that it had released Mr Warmbier "on humanitarian grounds". Shortly before he was freed, his parents told the Washington Post newspaper they had been informed by the North Korean authorities that their son had contracted botulism, a rare illness that causes paralysis, soon after his trial. But a team of doctors assessing him in Cincinnati said they had found "no sign of botulism". Doctors confirmed that there was no sign he had been physically abused during his detention, based on scans. They believe respiratory arrest led to his condition, which is caused by a lack of oxygen and blood in the brain.

Just look at the hong kong issue - you have a short memory! This is exactly the kind of issue juggling I mentioned earlier. It keeps people from even taking the time to look at the details of any one single issue, because it's too easy to say, in effect: "Oh, you think I should look at the evidence about Taiwan? I don't have to. Just look at the Hong Kong issue." If the issue was Hong Kong, the same persons can say: "Oh, you think I should look at the evidence about Hong Kong? I don't have to. Just look at the Taiwan issue."

Show me where and I'll believe you. If you start here, for example (below), show me the claimed Chinese source of the information: https://toysmatrix.com/chinese-regime-publicly-prices-human-organs-to-normalize-what-has-partly-been-black-market-trade-experts/

No. China is not on the cusp of assimilating Taiwan. China wants the status quo here, just as most of Taiwan wants. The Taiwanese are fear-mongered about an attack daily by US media. The US makes Taiwan pay for a lot of surplus non-working military equipment because it serves as kind of a symbol that the US will back Taiwan in case they try to start a war of independence from China. The US has also used their bullying power in Taiwan to "steal" proprietary chip manufacturing technology from Taiwan. In fact, the current chip shortage is largely on account of Trump making it illegal for Taiwan to sell its chips directly to China without the threat of sanctions by the US. This has hurt American companies that rely on China for much of their manufacturing. Much of this comes through sources like Radio Free Asia (run under Trump by Steve Bannon). The attempt to propgandize Taiwan has had an effect, of course, and literally millions are spent on this fear-mongering. I've read some interesting documentation on the way that the US still uses "Voice of America" "Radio Free Europe" and "Radio Free Asia" for propaganda. An interesting article from supposedly "neutral" NPR, that barely touches on the actual problem, will still raise some eyebrows just for the names it mentioned right there in the title: https://www.npr.org/2021/04/14/986982387/falun-gong-steve-bannon-and-the-trump-era-battle-over-internet-freedom Falun Gong, Steve Bannon And The Trump-Era Battle Over Internet Freedom ...The group's profile rose sharply in the U.S. during the Trump era. People with close ties to Falun Gong own The Epoch Times, which has promoted pro-Trump conspiracy theories in its pages and in videos posted to Facebook and YouTube. Falun Gong provided ballast for Trump's rhetoric against China. . . . The article actually highlights (inadvertently, I think) one of the ways that millions of dollars were funneled to the Falun Gong cult because of their vicious attacks on communism. (Falun Gong is documented to have committed many knife attacks and murders in China, btw). Back to Tiawan . . . The best way to understand the Taiwan issue, I think, is to understand its history. Carl Zha has made a very long version of Taiwan's history in 4 parts (each too long) on YouTube. However, I think the most pertinent one is the one he made for an activist group called Code Pink which condenses some of the information down to about an hour. (Half hour if you can understand his accent at double-speed.) In it he mentions the chip shortage relationship near the end. But I think the main point shows how the US has long accepted Taiwan as part of China proper even before communism in China ever existed, even though the US recognized the KMT government until Nixon affirmed that Taiwan was part of China in the 1970's. Carl Zha showed just how hilarious the recent HBO John Oliver special actually was, when one looks at the map to see the actual "no fly" zone that China encroached, and which was blown up internationally a potential attack warning against Taiwan. It turns out that this supposed "no fly" zone actually includes much of mainland China itself, as if China can't fly over China. I think you'll be surprised when you see even where John Oliver's chart admitted that China was flying, and see just how far it was from Taiwan, and how close it was to mainland China's own shoreline. Also, he points out that China's flight over it's own airspace was actually not even intended for Taiwan to notice, but that it was more likely a notice from China to the United States which was at the time doing joint military maneuvers in the China Sea with several western countries. Ironic, I'd say. You'll probably want to ignore the anti-Imperialist rhetoric which provides the backdrop to the video, but I don't think there is any historical point in the video that anyone can rightly disagree with.

A good article, imo, about the World Uyghur Congress can be found here: https://thegrayzone.com/2020/03/05/world-uyghur-congress-us-far-right-regime-change-network-fall-china/ Inside the World Uyghur Congress: The US-backed right-wing regime-change network seeking the ‘fall of China’ https://thegrayzone.com/2020/03/26/forced-labor-china-us-nato-arms-industry-cold-war/ ‘Forced labor’ stories on China brought to you by US gov, NATO, arms industry to drive Cold War PR blitz Also, one of the (leftist) journalist/activists who is responsible for the first article just mentioned made a quick overview of the Uyghur issues (as he sees them) here. Starts about 5 minutes in:

Yes, these claims have also been debunked (IMO). However, getting to the bottom of such claims is a time-consuming process. Also, it is nearly impossible to penetrate through the layers and layers of propaganda that the Western media has flooded us with, especially in Australia and the United States. Even if one could start to be convinced about the outright lies told about Taiwan, and/or a certain tennis player being harrassed by Western media, and/or the Hong Kong riots, for example, there will still be a steady stream of additional claims about people disappearing, organ harvesting, China Sea incursions, Uyghur "concentration camps," water rights in Tibet and India, etc. Also, the people responsible for decisions at various levels in the Chinese government have undoubtedly done bad things and made bad decisions, imo. So, it's likely that many of these issues are based on actual problems that can then be exaggerated so that persons who want to believe them will do so more easily. As things get worse in the West, people will want (and need) to believe that things must be so much worse in the "East." As Westerners learn about terrible things their own governments are doing, it becomes all the more important to project and amplify the problems of non-Western governments. As I've said before, to study an issue like this, I first like to see what things that each side will admit is true about the claims of other side. Most "third" sides of an argument are most often merely a compromise between the claims of the two primary sides. This is often just an easy way out that makes the "third" claimant seem more reasonable, but it can merely adds some unwarranted credibility to false claims. And then of course those so-called "more reasonable" claims just get driven right back up to unreasonable levels anyway. Just like the original idea, probably true, that there were thousands of Uyghurs in prison, which then got quickly driven up to a million, then 10 million, then "genocide." (All during the same time period when the population of Uyghurs was still rising in the disputed regions.) So, in this case we still have primarily two sides: The claims of Adrien Zenz who claims to be on a Christian apocalyptic mission from God against China et al, and a still very small number of persons who are relatives of (or associated with) persons in the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, the ETIM. The ETIM was listed as a terrorist organization by George W Bush in 2004. Under Trump, Mike Pompeo announced that he was removing them from the list of terrorist organizations. Almost all "documents" have turned out to be sourced from Adrien Zenz, and most "witnesses" claim to have experienced a version of the story given by persons like Tursunay Ziawudun. (The current version of her story, not the original version that she gave when first interviewed.) If one traces down the claims of activists, human rights groups, and China pundits, they will still find that their claims are sourced by these few witnesses, no matter how many additional witnesses are claimed, or how many hundreds of thousands of pages they have supposedly gone through. On the other side, there is China's version of the story and most of the 54 mostly Muslim nations that China invited into the disputed region to show them what was going on. Those nations have expressed agreement with how China has been dealing with the ETIM and related issues. And, of course, there are many who claim to be experts on China who amplify whichever side they agree with on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. Curiously the NYT just did a "hit piece" on Chinese social media account owners who support China's version of the issue. Some of these are English-speaking persons living and working in China. These persons often have their accounts banned and flagged, at least temporarily. Even while trying to get some links for this response, I found that Twitter claimed, for several of these account owners, that the account owners had limited the number of people who could read their posts. That made absolutely no sense, but further reading on the Twitter explanation page showed that it was actually Twitter that was limiting the number of persons who could read certain posts on these accounts. When Twitter says "This account owner limits who can see their Tweets" it's actually a clever way of disingenuously expressing the idea that the account owner is limiting their viewability by not changing their view when Twitter doesn't want those views publicized. Naturally, I was only hit with Twitter warnings and YouTube warnings when accessing accounts that supported China's version. ------------ So what's a person to do? As I said above, I start out accepting what the ETIM supporters admits is true about the claims of China, and accepting what China admits is true about the claims of the ETIM. Since I don't read Chinese (and only one person in my family does) I will have to temporarily settle for online proxies for each side. One good place to start is the interview of a well-known Uyghur activist who has been viewed by millions, as interviewed by Daniel Dumbrill, an English-speaking man who works in China. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gygxrdNmzUQ&t=1743s In the interview, the Muslim Uyghur activist obviously supports the goals of the ETIM, but he admits that 5,000 to 10,000 Uyghurs have engaged in and supported terrorism to reach these goals. He has interviewed many of these even in Turkey where he now lives, and admits that thousands of Uyghurs came from many countries, not just China, to fight as terrorists in Syria and elsewhere. He decries the fact that so many of these young men didn't know the first thing about Islam or the Quran, but that they just wanted to fight for Muslim freedom. He indicates that they should have stayed in "East Turkistan" to fight the Chinese. A few years ago, when I first heard US officials claim that even Chinese persons were there fighting in Syria, I actually didn't believe this was accurate at the time. The Muslim activist also admits that the many Muslim-majority nations who were invited to China actually did approve of the methods that China used in order to try to de-radicalize Islamic terrorists. (But he also claims that many of these same countries won't even stand up for Palestinian rights, so why should we have expected them to stand up for Uyghur rights.) The Muslim activist says that his own father, a well-known actor in China, had to spend 10 months in the camp, and was released only 17 months prior to this interview in 2020. There were several more things admitted by him, and several things that would make persons question the accuracy of the accounts and claims of this activist. But there were also a few things admitted by the interviewer, Daniel Dumbrill, who is also an journalist/activist promoting China's version of the story. He admits, for example, that he himself has heard and interviewed Uyghurs who are racially profiled in various parts of China, and how some travel restrictions have made it more difficult for Uyghurs to travel in and out of the country. And there were several other things that he either admitted or seemed to tacitly agree with as possible or probable. The video interview I mentioned is below, but the description section also contains a lot of additional information (just below the video) for anyone curious enough to hear Daniel Dumbrill's further research supporting his own side of the issue. Look at the actual description on the YouTube page to see the following links and descriptions in their entirety, formatted correctly: In todays episode I speak to a famous Overseas Uyghur activist who is one of the top sources of information for many people in the English world about what is happening in Xinjiang. Carl Zha's interview can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf7PZ... Arslan's Twitter: https://twitter.com/arslan_hidayat Resources: New video of Arslan's father in law: https://twitter.com/DanielDumbrill/st... A motive for deliberately instigated unrest: https://twitter.com/DanielDumbrill/st... Economics of anti-China Xinjiang propaganda: https://www.workers.org/2019/12/44963/ US Air Strike on Uyhgurs in 2018 - https://twitter.com/DanielDumbrill/st... Information about Adrian Zenz's comments: https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/sta... Detailed information on Adrian Zenz: https://chollima.org/who-is-adrian-ze... Tursunay Ziyawudun's changing story: https://twitter.com/DanielDumbrill/st... Uyghur activist who blocked me is funded by ASPI (military industrial complex): https://twitter.com/DanielDumbrill/st... Population data from Adrian Zenz report doesn't add up: https://twitter.com/Hubei_Peasant/sta... While America is sanctioning Xinjiang companies based on assumptions they are involved in atrocities against Muslims, their own companies who have been confirmed to be involved in atrocities against Muslims are winning multi-billion dollar deals: https://twitter.com/DanielDumbrill/st... An example of how stories are suddenly fabricated by ordinary people in the West as well: https://twitter.com/DanielDumbrill/st... Journalist very active in the Xinjiang story searches for only Xinjiang ethnic minorities who agree with his story and tell the rest to F off: https://twitter.com/DanielDumbrill/st... Rushan Abbas admitting to her time in Guantanamo Bay and calling it a nice place: https://twitter.com/DanielDumbrill/st... Some of the problematic Douyin posts mentioned in our chat: https://twitter.com/j_bigboote/status... Example of fake missing people: https://twitter.com/DanielDumbrill/st... Example of another Uyghur activist's story changing on me: https://twitter.com/DanielDumbrill/st... 4 corners Xinjiang documentary issues: https://twitter.com/Ethan_Parallels/s... A thread debunking a lot of the Xinjiang propaganda: https://twitter.com/LassPeaches/statu... More statistics from government data in Xinjiang: https://twitter.com/izak_novak/status... Where the name East Turkistan came from: https://twitter.com/CarlZha/status/11... Chinese culture has been in Xinjiang for a long time: https://twitter.com/CarlZha/status/11... Number of Mosques in China: https://twitter.com/LassPeaches/statu... Xinjiang propaganda is recycled failed Tibet propaganda: https://twitter.com/DanielDumbrill/st... Countries that support China's policy in Xinjiang: https://twitter.com/DanielDumbrill/st... More government documents on Xinjiang in this thread: https://twitter.com/isgoodrum/status/... The World Uyghur Congress talking about their sources and a thread on John Oliver's Xinjiang piece: https://twitter.com/DanielDumbrill/st... A good video debunking John Oliver's piece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unpUS... More information about the World Uyghur Congress: https://thegrayzone.com/2020/03/05/wo... In this thread there are 3 must watch documentaries on the terrorism problem in Xinjiang: https://twitter.com/ml_1maria/status/... Some of the sources behind the forced labour claims: https://thegrayzone.com/2020/03/26/fo... Example of HRW NGO not being able to back up their stories when critical questions are asked: https://twitter.com/DanielDumbrill/st... More debunked propaganda against China: https://www.reddit.com/r/communism/co... Uyghur speaking up about other Uyghurs being brainwashed into fighting with ISIS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXCbM... Example of the fake testimony about Iraq: https://twitter.com/Seanboy63800243/s... Document that covers the propaganda against Xinjiang: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d... NED funded journalism: https://twitter.com/DanielDumbrill/st...

Socialism is no panacea. But it should be noted that the primary problem that capitalists and imperialists have with socialism is that its policies are designed to produce better health care for all, better education, better infrastructure and to bring as many persons out of poverty as possible. This means that both global corporations and local corporations who wish to exploit oil, gas, metals, minerals, bananas, cheap labor, produce, etc., will not be able to keep huge profits for themselves. It is for this reason that imperialist countries like the United States will do everything they can to sabotage socialist and communist countries by exploiting and magnifying problems in those countries. This is why imperialist countries send in persons trained to create civil unrest as the US did in Hong Kong. It's why the US has troops and weapons in the China Sea, Taiwan, etc. It's why the US supported Al Qaeda in Syria. It's why economic there are sanctions against Venezuela, North Korea, Syria, Cuba, etc. The hope is that enough people will starve to death so that a revolution of some sort will result in a turnover of power that the US can take advantage of. At the very least it will supposedly reveal dissatisfaction with socialist governments. And, of course, its the reason that Westerners have been trained in anti-socialist propaganda so deeply that a meme like the one above from @Equivocation can be produced. Without a shred of awareness about the irony, the person making the meme will have picked a picture taken from a capitalist imperialist nation and use it to pretend that socialism caused the problems. For example. I decided to look up "Kim's Lounge" on Google and immediately discovered that it's from Detroit in 2015 https://www.flickr.com/photos/raymondhaddad/20308429103 The grocery store picture I recall being used as if it were from Venezuela at a time when many such pictures were being taken from Miami and elsewhere just before a hurricane. I believe I already noted on this very forum a few years ago that one of them had all the shelf signs and labels that were 100% in English and yet it was being spread around as if from Venezuela. On Twitter, people had already identified many of these Venezuela pictures as actually coming from Florida. I didn't try to find where the hospital picture is from, but it is typical of poor countries that are actually rich in resources, but whose resources have been exploited by imperialist countries. And for the last picture, I don't think anyone would doubt that it could more easily have come, NOT from a socialist country, but is probably a good example of the disparity of wealth between the richest and poorest in typical capitalist countries. There are hundreds of houses that opulent on the north shore and east end of Long Island. I'm sure they are like that in many US neighborhoods. These memes are easy to make, and easy to spread. But they should make us think twice about what's really behind them.

Not babies, per se. Only when they are becoming "publishers." But it is true that this is where most of the newly baptized ones come from.

That's a great topic. But I am signing off for the weekend. Actually, yes. I have looked into that because I thought it was crazy too. It is crazy in an economy like ours, but I do understand why it was done. Tempting as it is to give an opinion, I'm still signing off for the weekend though. 😉

I never said Russia wasn't totalitarian. But I will say that totalitarianism has often been exaggerated for geopolitical purposes. But I have seen enough Hollywood movies to know that Russia is evil. (Actually, one of my best worldly friends from work came from Russia after '95 and has a sister-in-law who won an Oscar, also Russian for best costume design and now I notice the name in the credits of several historical movies. I worked with this Russian from 1995 to 2012 and we even ate at their house a couple of times. He was a physician and she was a math PhD. We got an excellent historical review of Russian history from a St Petersburg family who lived it personally. It was useful to learn about a range of issues, both good and bad, from someone who mostly hated living there, but understood the politics and the trouble with "intellectuals" who were too reluctant to show support for the party. Both countries (Russia and China) have problems with human rights for many of their own people. For comparison, the USA appears to be much, much worse on human rights against persons in other countries, however. The USA pushes for starvation, war, and civil war to keep many countries weak. When the US promotes a coup and leaves the country in chaos (Libya, Nicaragua, Iraq, Afghanistan, Venezuela, etc.) it isn't a failure, it is a success in creating the chaos an weakness intended. When the US promotes economic sanctions against a country it is really for the purpose of creating, not only dissatisfaction, but actual starvation. And where "aid" is offered, it is often only offered with military and imperialist motivations. Almost anything one hears about China's supposed military bases, especially in Africa, turn out to be non-military ports infrastructure beneficial to both countries. When the West does it, it's always asymmetrical. The same is true of the loans for infrastucture from the World Bank and the IMF. Yet all that guilt from the West is projected on China because China also loans money to many countries. Basically the only remaining countries with a death penalty are the USA, China, and some Middle Eastern and majority-Muslim countries. I believe that China thought it was OK to donate the organs of executed prisoners until just a few decades ago. I don't know if this has completely stopped, but I see that even those "China experts" who still believe it goes on admit that they haven't seen any evidence of it for several decades. Yet, I still see it debated in American academic journals for promoting the practice in the USA. (It's been illegal in the US, to accept even voluntary donations from death-row prisoners since 2013.) I was only sharing something I was reading about a tech company that wanted to set up facial recognition to solve some crime problems in China. I read that it was abandoned. Not that it won't come back, perhaps on a larger scale. But, so far, I think more global companies and governments are salivating for this in the West. I understand from sites like this: https://sipri.org/sites/default/files/2021-04/fs_2104_milex_0.pdf that China has nearly 5 times the number of people that the USA has, and yet spends only a third of what the USA spends on military. That means that the US spends about 15 times as much as China, per person. And with a GDP of about 15 trillion, they spend about 252 billion on military. About 1/60th. The US GDP is about 21 trillion, and the US spends about 750 billion on military, or 2/60 -- twice as much. And the amount China spends on surveillance is much, much less than the USA. China is not imperialist, as the US is, and does not need the control over other countries that the US apparently feels it needs. The US has bombed the following countries since WWII: (according to the site: https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/heres-a-list-of-all-the-countries-the-us-has-bombed-since-world-war-ii-172786/ China 1945-46 Korea 1950-53 China 1950-53 Guatemala 1954 Indonesia 1958 Cuba 1959-60 Guatemala 1960 Belgian Congo 1964 Guatemala 1964 Dominican Republic 1965-66 Peru 1965 Laos 1964-73 Vietnam 1961-73 Cambodia 1969-70 Guatemala 1967-69 Lebanon 1982-84 Grenada 1983-84 Libya 1986 El Salvador 1981-92 Nicaragua 1981-90 Iran 1987-88 Libya 1989 Panama 1989-90 Iraq 1991 Kuwait 1991 Somalia 1992-94 Bosnia 1995 Iran 1998 Sudan 1998 Afghanistan 1998 Yugoslavia – Serbia 1999 Afghanistan 2001 Libya 2011 Iraq and Syria 2014 – Somalia 2011 – Iran 2020 – Compare that to the number of countries that China has bombed or invaded since WWII. So if you are using military expenditure to identify totalitarian countries, China doesn't compare all that well. And of course, these numbers use a very conservative method of counting military expenditure. There is also the amount of military equipment sold to police departments, the weapons sold to Saudi Arabia to help them bomb Yemen. Undocumented "aid" to dozens of countries to help them build up borders against countries the USA doesn't like. And foreign aid with strings attached to allow the US to build military bases. Anything is possible. But why do you always sound so sure that things are so much worse there than they are in say, the United States, for example? Are you sure there have not been many more persons silenced in the USA, even though the US population is so much smaller? Agreed. And I agree with the issues respecting the misuse of philanthropy, etc. You are wrong there. I think you get that idea because I don't believe in all these end-time scenarios that you often predict are really necessary. Anything is possible in an unpredictable and chaotic world, but I think it's dangerous to start concerning ourselves with various scenarios that are expected to happen in the next few years. There is no guarantee this system will last that long. It gets back to the old problem of "looking for a sign." I think about why Jesus said that a wicked generation keeps looking for a sign. When Jesus' disciples asked for a sign the first thing Jesus said is not to be misled by wars, reports of wars, earthquakes, pestilences, famines, etc., because those things can take place at any time, and aren't necessarily tied to the "end." The real thing comes as a thief, as if without warning. Not that this applies to you personally, of course, but there is always a danger of other persons becoming complacent when they think the end can't happen yet because a certain expectation hasn't happened yet.

I agree, of course, that China is not a utopia. People often claim that China was the testing ground for new policies like "social credit scores." This wasn't true. There were some businesses that wanted to try something related to this, and there were a couple of cities that tried and abandoned it. It had already been tried in many ways and in much deeper fashion in the West through Internet tracking data, continued bank redlining, housing policies, credit card expenditure tracking, private prison policies, credit score abuses, arresting and harrasment of leftist and environmental activists, facial recognition tracking, the "New Jim Crow," "canceling" of social media accounts of those who try to discredit mainstream media, etc. It's true that China has had some specific problems not so well known in the West, such as people rushing onto trains at the last second to try for a free ride. (Like NYC turnstile-jumping but onto more expensive, long-distance trains.) Facial recognition was supposedly going to make it easier to catch and punish this crime. At any rate, even when most of these tests were short-lived and abandoned, there seemed to be a new policy in the West to exaggerate them. They made it look as if they not only started in China, but had become ubiquitous there. Thousands of memes and videos about Chinese social credit scores were spread with made-up claims. In my opinion, China is not totalitarian. There are those who would like us to think so because that would provide Western policy maker with a comparison so that anything can be attempted with the claim that 'at least it's not as bad as it is in China." In fact, vaccinations in China are still voluntary, in spite of false claims that they are being forced in the way that many Western nations have threatened to do. China has tried some stupid policies. So has the West. China is still a fairly backward and relatively poor country. But the average person is doing better in terms of services, education, health, housing, etc., and the poorest have all been pulled out of poverty levels. Communist policies are loved by the majority but are probably "painful" to those who now have less in order to help pay for the "rising tide" that helps the majority. But the majority love their government because they feel represented by them. In the West, a small minority of millionaires and billionaires will fight tooth and nail politically to avoid having their taxes go back to the levels in the time of Eisenhower and even Kennedy. And their tax breaks take away from the services that would otherwise be available to the poor in the US for example, who therefore feel they are not democratically represented. Lifespans among the poor in the US were already decreasing well before Covid-19.

Consider the source, though. This is the Epoch Times, a newspaper run by a cult that was banned for its violence in China. This included hundreds if not thousands of knife attacks in China. Even murders. Because they declare themselves to be so vehemently anti-communist they find that they can get US and Western funding for their media projects which are guaranteed to intersperse ridiculously false claims against the CCP. In every major "state of the union" speech, the CCP leadership always emphasizes and celebrates the number of different ethnic groups and cultures found in China. They also regularly publicly declare against the tendency of the Han Chinese majority to act superior or prejudiced against minority populations. Muslim customs and culture are celebrated, and the use of their own local language is promoted in areas where those local languages are used. (I was surprised to learn that Mongolian has been dying out among Mongolians outside of China, yet Mongolians in China are encouraged to use and learn their customs and language, and you can see this in the bilingual signs in Chinese Mongolian neighborhoods and schools.) The same is true among Uyghur populations as you can see from the bilingual signs the Chinese government provides in their neighborhoods. The CCP has been supportive of Muslim populations all over China, supporting the building of mosques, etc. Muslim populations have grown in China because China never imposed the one-child policy on ethnic minorities. The Uyghur population itself has grown in spite of false claims of genocide. Their language and culture is supported in spite of claims. Of course, many Uyghurs are terrorists and nationalist/separatists who have killed persons in attacks in China and thousands have also crossed the border to fight alongside Al Qaeda in Syria and other places in the Middle East. So it's true that many have been put in prison, and the Chinese prison system apparently forced radicalized Muslims to get "re-education" propaganda to "appreciate" the Chinese government, along with the usual job training and rehabilitation training that Chinese prisons are known for. I have a feeling that the United States loves it when various bandwagon activist groups promote the claims of Falun Gong, Adrien Zenz, and ex-patriate families of Uyghur separatists/terrorists. This is because it deflects from western civil rights abuses, and the fact that the USA has continued to promote the killing of millions of Muslims through sanctions and war in Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, etc. Also, just a few years ago, the US had a 70% positive view of China, which has now quickly dropped to 30% with a very high percentage of Americans feeling we should actually invade China. The regular anti-China news stories are often comical. Often they are debunked within days, but repeated again so often that the majority of Western audiences will not realize it. Here are just a couple of examples: The NYT just ran a repeat of the debunked story of a Chinese tennis star who never claimed she was sexually assaulted, but the story repeated that phrase several times. The most recent version of the NYT story even printed the original post from the tennis player in Chinese, but naturally, the NYT wouldn't include a translation, which would have ruined the claims of the NYT story. The story also made claims that those who continued to support her had numbers in their social media names and are therefore "bot-like" without admitting that this is also common in the United States (jw-tj-1914, john316, tess04211967) but that it is even more common in China because the "tone" of certain number combinations when spoken aloud actually produce an echo of common phrases in Chinese. Even stupider was the claim that she shows a picture of herself with stuffed toy animals,. implying that she must be trying to prove she is OK when she isn't. That just shows how uninformed the writer was about the popularity of stuffed toy animals in China, or it shows how uninformed the writer hopes the readers of the article will be. I understand that CNN just recently ran another interview with one of the infamous Uyghur women who has made claims about harsh conditions in a Chinese "concentration camp." In the interview she claimed that they took away and replaced her passport so that she couldn't leave the country. CNN even printed a picture of the passport as if it was some kind of evidence. But someone noticed (and reported elsewhere) that the passport proved she was lying because the dates on it showed it was still valid during the time she claimed to be imprisoned and made the claims that she couldn't travel. So what did CNN do? They didn't correct the story, or remove that part of the interview, or remove the picture of the passport. Instead, CNN decided only to black out the dates on the passport, but keep the picture. The 60 Minutes TV program aired last week with another anti-China story, as they seem to do every other week or so. It was mostly about how Xi is scaring the West by cracking down on excessive capitalism and capitalists. This last one tried to appear more balanced by offering nearly equal time to a Chinese spokeswoman who gave reasons and evidence for why this was a reasonable approach to the excesses and abuses. But their "equal time" was balanced by an expert whose basic tactic was not to give any evidence but just ended up with: "Well, they can say what they want, but can you really trust them?" In other words, just an appeal to prejudice rather than worrying about facts and evidence.

This might often be true. But more often it brings a polite "no thank you" from those who don't want to listen. The proportion of countries where there is outright persecution and banning of our work has actually improved. In most countries of the world the reaction to our message is non-violent, even peaceful. And sometimes, it is obviously still quite enthusiastically positive. The 8.6 million plus publishers in 2019 conducted 9.6 million Bible Studies, and 300,000 new ones were baptized. That's nearly a third of a million new persons. And shows that on average there was more than one Bible Study conducted per publisher. Of course, you picked the numbers from 2020 which dropped from 2019. @Witness already pointed out that they actually dropped .6% (which is based on the average monthly publishers, not just the "peak" which you quoted above). But the bigger drop from 2019 to 2020 was the number of Bible Studies which dropped 20%. 2019: Average Bible Studies * Each Month: 9,618,182 2020: Average Bible Studies * Each Month: 7,705,765 They dropped by nearly TWO MILLION in one year! (Partly because we were asked not to keep studying with persons if there was no apparent progress.) But notice that they weren't replaced by new studies, so that the average is now much less than one Bible Study per publisher. Also note the number of new ones baptized also dropped by 20%: 2019: Total Number Baptized *: 303,866 2020: Total Number Baptized *: 241,994 And unfortunately, this also means that over 300,000 persons left the Witnesses between 2019 and 2020 for there to still be a decrease even though so many were baptized. Some leave by death or disfellowshipping, but the vast majority of these 300,000 must have decided to leave. And the 2021 numbers are already in, and the Society was not able to report an increase in publishers this year, except in a few individual branches. This also means that there is no need for additional congregations, so I'm guessing that the number will continue to remain about the same, or more likely decrease. I wouldn't look for a 20% increase in congregations to 144,000 even though you think that number of congregations is somehow significant. Anecdotally, I already heard about a couple special language congregations (New York and Los Angeles) that are being dropped and reverting to their original congregations. You are telling people that this system will go on for another 20 years, which is very unfaithful and indiscreet in light of Jesus' warning that the end could come at any time, as if without warning, like a thief in the night. The response appears to be diminishing, but wasn't your original point about how violent and hostile we can expect the response to be? There is nothing about this in the Bible. Paul wasn't speaking of an outbreak resulting in a proclamation, he was just agreeing with 2 Peter 3:3 that there have been ridiculers since the first century saying they don't believe this parousia is coming because they can still talk about the relative peace and security that allows them to eat, drink, get married, etc. Adding to the Bible that we should wait for a proclamation by political kings shows a lack of discretion and a lack of discernment. Remember that Jesus, too, spoke of the time coming as a time of relative peace and security when he compared it to a time when you might be asleep in your house, or working in a field, or grinding at a mill, or doing any of the things that people were doing in Noah's day or in Sodom when the end came, essentially without warning. Just like Jesus, both Paul and Peter added that it would come "as a thief in the night." This way, no one would get the impression that we should look for some "proclamation by political kings" of peace and security. (Nor wait for some specific proclamation by ridiculers that "things are going on [peacefully and securely] just as from creation's beginning.") For the same reason, there can be no specific time when any of us (GB included) can declare in advance that it is now time for a "final message of divine destruction." That would only show a level of presumptuousness and indiscretion. It would make us wise in our own eyes, and completely unfaithful to Jesus' words that "no one knows the day or the hour" because "it will come as a thief in the night." Ah! Something we can agree on! 😊

Underhanded or at least backhanded.

I am posting most of the main article from the link above, but without the comments below that article. The writer linked to it, but did not include the entire translation of the original Chinese post by Peng Shuai, which is an open letter to the person she had the affair with. As always, there are some phrases in Peng's original post for which Google Translate can produce questionable meanings, but Peng herself made sure that she included the fact that it was all consensual, even using that word, so that there would be no misunderstanding and so that no one would get the idea that she was accusing the man of anything sinister. ------------------------------- The 'Missing' Star Athlete Peng Shuai Is Not Missing At All The New York Times has falsely claimed that the Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai accused her former lover of sexual assault. She did not do that. In her post on the Chinese website Weibo (English translation) Peng Shuai only lamented that the relation with her old lover had come to an end. She did not accuse him of anything that could be considered an assault. The NYT made that up. Peng Shuai did write: Romantic attraction is such a complicated thing that explain it clearly. From that day on, I renewed my love for you. Throughout my time with you after that, purely based on our interactions, you were a very good person, and you treated me well. We talking about recent history, as well as ancient eras. You educated me on so many topics, and we had discussions about economics, politics. We never ran out of things to talk about. We played chess, sang, played table tennis, played pool and also played tennis together. We always had endless fun. It was as if our personalities fit perfectly together. What an 'assault'! Still the Times has continued to wrangle the non-issue into various 'news' pieces and editorials. It is obviously using it to bash China. On today's front page we find this nonsense. bigger The women’s professional tennis tour announced Wednesday that it was immediately suspending all tournaments in China, including Hong Kong, in response to the disappearance from public life of the tennis star Peng Shuai after she accused a top Communist Party leader of sexual assault. With the move, the Women’s Tennis Association became the only major sports organization to push back against China’s increasingly authoritarian government. Women’s tennis officials made the decision after they were unable to speak directly with Peng after she accused Zhang Gaoli, a former vice premier of China, in social media posts that were quickly deleted. Peng Shuai did not disappear from public life. She has sent an email to the WTA which asked to respect her privacy. She has posted pictures of herself and video showed her taking part in a public tennis event and going to dinner in a public restaurant. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has held a 30 minute video conference with her and found her well and happily alive. Despite that the WTA and especially Steve Simon, its chief executive, have instead gone public with the issue and continue to intrude her privacy. The IOC in contrast has been discrete and has shown respect for Peng Shuai's privacy. A short clip of their video call was published with her consent. And today the IOC announced that it had another video call with Peng Shuai: We share the same concern as many other people and organisations about the well-being and safety of Peng Shuai. This is why, just yesterday, an IOC team held another video call with her. We have offered her wide-ranging support, will stay in regular touch with her, and have already agreed on a personal meeting in January. Unlike the NYT and loudmouth Steve Simon the IOC knows how to behave itself: There are different ways to achieve her well-being and safety. We have taken a very human and person-centred approach to her situation. Since she is a three-time Olympian, the IOC is addressing these concerns directly with Chinese sports organisations. We are using “quiet diplomacy” which, given the circumstances and based on the experience of governments and other organisations, is indicated to be the most promising way to proceed effectively in such humanitarian matters. It is no wonder then that Peng Shuai does not want to talk with the WTA's Steve Simmon but stays in contact with the IOC. The IOC again confirms that Peng Shuai is safe and well: The IOC’s efforts led to a half-hour videoconference with Peng Shuai on 21 November, during which she explained her situation and appeared to be safe and well, given the difficult situation she is in. This was reconfirmed in yesterday’s call. Our human and person-centred approach means that we continue to be concerned about her personal situation and will continue to support her. If the NYT were a decent paper it would stop its Peng Shuai campaign and delete its false claims of 'sexual assault' accusations and the 'missing' athlete. But unfortunately it isn't. Posted by b on December 2, 2021 at 11:30 UTC | Permalink

This story is still getting coverage on the news. (It was usually reported that a Chinese tennis player had accused a high-ranking Chinese government official of sexual assault and then suspiciously "disappeared.") Yesterday, I heard the same story repeated on our local NPR news station and there was an interview with a representative of the WTA (Women's Tennis Association) saying they would pull out of China for all the final tournaments because even though they have spoken with her and she confirms she is OK, they don't think she is "really" OK. That wording sounded oddly typical, but I could understand a legitimate concern for such a person, too, just as I would for a situation like this anywhere else in the world. But then the conversation took an interesting turn. They said they were hoping to use her example to try to get other sports to pull out of the Winter Olympics in China, and that this case can help draw attention to civil rights abuses, and the genocide of Uyghurs. I didn't even know there was an upcoming Winter Olympics in China, and there is so much money in sports that I had my doubts that the politics the WTA was pushing would really win out over financial incentives for other sports (and other countries) to mount a boycott. The NPR interviewer praised them for this altruistic goal. I have already seen a lot of evidence about how the "genocide of Uyghurs" has been massively exaggerated. And I had just read evidence that Western media had purposely lied to create a false story about a few, small "social credit" experiments that had been tried in a couple of Chinese cities but were abandoned. So I was all the more suspicious that this story had been exaggerated, too. I had already heard that there were pictures of her going out to dinner and even playing tennis and giving autographs to young persons. But I didn't really look into it in any depth until yesterday and quickly discovered that the most likely scenario here is that it was entirely fake news. Peng Shuai had never even accused anyone of sexual assault. I read several full translations of the original post that she wrote on her social media site, Weibo, and which she later took down. I wanted to see why people were reading "assault" into it. I'll provide a link to a pretty good summary of the entire affair, and copy major portions of it below. https://www.moonofalabama.org/2021/12/the-missing-star-athlete-peng-shuai-is-not-missing-at-all.html

I remember that. It was pretty funny. I always got the impression that the first thing you must always type in any response is the term "that being said" and then you work your post before and after that expression, just to make sure it's in there. But then again, you probably already know that there is another person, not nearly so active, who has never used that particular expression here, but who has used at least half a dozen other terms and definitions that would otherwise have been mostly unique to you.

SM probably was using JB1 as shorthand for "4Jah2Me." That was the name you took just after "John Butler." It was very easy to identify you --you didn't try very hard to hide the fact-- but I understand why you thought it necessary to avoid admitting directly to being the reincarnated (re-insiliconated) "John Butler." But you have already admitted previously that "4Jah2Me" was the name you had when you changed it to "Patiently waiting for Truth." That means, by the transitive property of multiplication of identities, that you are now admitting that both the previous names were re-instances of John Butler. But that should be no big deal to any of us. It's just an interesting observation that helps to understand your issues and concerns more clearly: like noticing all the points in common between "Cesar Chavez" and "NoisySrecko."

Looking back for a moment to those comments about Rittenhouse. I had said: To which you responded, in part: I based what I said mostly on his false claim to be an EMT which you can see in the video. But I must admit that it was also partly based on the types of people often drawn into such violent confrontations. We now know the sketchy background of the person who began chasing Rittenhouse shortly after pushing a dumpster fire, who was taunting and yelling at people to shoot him while using the n* word multiple times. That man's "friend" actually shot a gun while joining him in chasing Rittenhouse, and we learned more of the sketchy background about him too. But I also admit that it was based partly on Rittenhouse' own claims of support for the "Proud Boys," some of whom have declared themselves to be White Supremacists. Shortly after pleading not guilty Rittenhouse also flashed the common W "white power" hand signal while apparently posing in a picture with the Proud Boys (which was evidently while he was underage drinking at 18 in a bar with them.) I put no trust in the Washington Post, where I saw the above picture, but it fits a view of him that can make better sense (to me) of the overall circumstances surrounding the case. Often there are outside bits of evidence that paint a picture of the person that even the jury is not supposed to see, so that they can better focus on the circumstances of the particular case, instead of being prejudiced by the actions of the person outside that particular case.

I caught a glimpse of Judge Schroeder saying that he'll think twice about ever letting the media in his courtroom again. If someone had only followed the terribly biased reporting of MSNBC, CNN, and the usual NBC,ABC,CBS TV news and their late-night comedy shows (Colbert, Kimmel, etc.), they would have come away with the idea that Rittenhouse was the white supremacist Trump supporter who crossed state lines with an assault rifle to kill BLM protesters and then turned himself in to the police who let him go. Even NPR, up until the day of the verdict, kept using the expression "the man who shot and killed Black Lives Matter protesters." They later corrected this to "the man who shot and killed protesters at a Black Lives Matter demonstration" to be slightly more correct, but still avoid the outright admission that all his 'victims' were white. The trial gave them even more optics for the narrative since Rittenhouse and Judge Schroeder both have Germanic names. I even saw people spelling the name as Rittenhaus. A very interesting experiment for casual news consumers to do now is to watch a 10-minute video by Matt Orfalea which provides a very clear review of the case, making use of all the evidence in favor of a not guilty verdict. It's here, but might be hard to play because of YouTube's warnings about controversy and community standards. Be warned; it does contain the sometimes grainy video of the shootings. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkTnQfjRvk0 -------------- When I was looking for this video, I didn't remember how to spell Matt Orfalea's last name, so that I also found a Matt Taibbi report --political reporter for "Rolling Stone" who is often wrong-- which covered this case correctly. It's here: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-rittenhouse-verdict-is-only-shocking I didn't watch the accompanying video, which appears to be related to the one above (per the byline). But the article mentions the MSNBC employee who was stopped for speeding through red lights while chasing the dismissed jury's bus from the courthouse, and who claimed in defense that MSNBC had ordered him to get pictures of the jury. This could have been jury tampering, but I suspect they only wanted to be able to say, in case of acquittal, that it was an all-white jury. Instead, they reported that it was a "mostly white jury as far as they could tell." There is a racial element to the story, in my opinion. Video shows lots of guns among the white protesters. And it also shows many white protesters instigating the burning and destruction of property. Even the initial confrontation was due to Rosenbaum (first victim) literally pushing a dumpster fire towards a gas station. Pouring gasoline on a dumpster fire was probably a good analogy to what MSNBC and other MSM were doing. I have a feeling that Rittenhouse might have been far too anxious to give the impression that he was an important, heroic good-guy protecting a "white town" from BLM overreach. The gun was carried for protection, yes, but it was overkill, even if it was the only gun he had access to (from his local friend's father-in-law). I believe his involvement in the confrontation with a crazy white supremacist-look-alike backfired. By "crazy," I mean in the medical sense of the word, because this man (the one chasing Rittenhouse) had just been released from a hospital after bloodying his girlfriend and trying to commit suicide.. But this victim truly looked and acted the part of a crazed white supremacist, and by shooting him, even in self defense, it triggered a few whites in the racially charged crowd to turn against Rittenhouse, as if Rittenhouse were a BLM sympathizer. This seems likely, even though unintended, from the Matt Orfalea video. But it would turn the whole narrative on its head from the perspective of the MSM spin.