Tag: human rights

How U.S. Financed ‘Human Rights’ Organizations Create Anti-Chinese Headlines

Now that Trump and his cabal of war-mongering neocons have packed their bags and are being ridden on a rail out of Washington, their “machinery of war” is all winding down. In the still quiet, the sheeple blink their eyes and crawl out of the fog. “What?” they ask? Suddenly all the clamorous, 24-7, non-stop noise about the evil Chinese is all ending. It’s just a few trailing articles here and there. The onslaught has stopped, and …

…people notice.

Well, at least the more alert do.

The few remaining articles still exist. You’ve got [1] the “Uighur issue” which is still on “life support” (and will probably be a staple of the “news” for decades to come), and the mainlined China=Bad articles. Usually [2] something about Christian church prosecution (to grab the attention of the Religious Right), and [3] China “covering up” Coronavirus anything (a staple of Mike Pompeo’s CIA).

Like these that were posted on Drudge today (31DEC20) …

And numerous bloggers outside of the alternative media are picking up on this insane anti-china narrative. It doesn’t take much, you know, just a memory greater than a few months, and a remembrance of what life was like prior to Donald Trump.

Remember, boys and girls, all American media is controlled or financed by the US government. And that includes your most beloved "alternative" "news" sites.

None of the government controlled “news” sites are reporting on the idea that the anti-China narrative is an intentional fabrication as a prelude to a world war…

  • Mainstream (FOX, MSNBC, ABC, Yahoo!)
  • Alt-Left (Politico, The Huffington Post)
  • Alt-Right (Hall Turner, Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh)

For this brief period of time, before the narrative changes to Russia! Russia! Russia! the political machinery is busy “changing gears”, and it’s a quiet dwell. News about the covid-19 fiasco in the United States dominates, with a distraction about more money being dished out to the sheeple. And, of course, the higher debt load.

Oh, sure…

The sheeple still walk around in a daze. Chanting “China Bad”, “Democracy Good”, “Need to protect American way of life”… yada, yada, yada. But soon that will be redirected to new mantras, followed up with new assaults in the news, and new villains to distract their attention from the terribly corrupt and evil military empire that they inhabit.

In this relatively quiet period, a period where the “fire hose” of disinformation has been turned off for a spell…

… we can notice that others are also paying attention. And they are writing about what they see.

Here’s one such site, and one such article.

MoA is much like MM in that they really are not connected to the “big money” out of Washington DC. Just a few guys writing about what they see, and maintaining a following of like-minded folk. MoA has done a pretty good job on a number of areas, and they are one of the sites that I visit pretty regularly. Some of their articles are timely and the organization of them are pretty sweet. Personally, I like their website design better than MM’s, but that’s all just a matter of aesthetics.

Check it out…

The following is an article titled “The ‘Mighty Wurlitzer’ – How U.S. Financed ‘Human Rights’ Organizations Create Anti-Chinese Headlines” it can be found HERE on Moon Over Alabama. Reprinted as found. The only editing is to fit this venue. All credit to the authors.

The ‘Mighty Wurlitzer’ – How U.S. Financed ‘Human Rights’ Organizations Create Anti-Chinese Headlines

During my daily skimming of the main stream media I at times detect news items that seem of little public interest but are widely published. These pieces are often suspiciously similar to each other and seem to come from the ‘Mighty Wurlitzer’:

In 1967 the magazine "Ramparts" ran an expose revealing that the Central  Intelligence Agency had been secretly funding and managing a wide range of citizen front groups intended to counter communist influence around the world. 
...
CIA official Frank Wisner called the operation his "mighty Wurlitzer," on which he could play any propaganda tune.

Today’s ‘Mighty Wurlitzer’ song is played simultaneously by all major outlets:

From the BBC’s version:

A Chinese citizen journalist who covered Wuhan's coronavirus outbreak has been jailed for four years. Zhang Zhan was found guilty of "picking quarrels and provoking trouble", a frequent charge against activists.

 The 37-year-old former lawyer was detained in May, and has been on  hunger strike for several months. Her lawyers say she is in poor health.
 Ms Zhang is one of several citizen journalists who have run into trouble for reporting on Wuhan. 
...
In  a video interview with an independent filmmaker before her arrest, Ms  Zhang said she decided to travel to Wuhan in February after reading an  online post by a resident about life in the city during the outbreak.

 Once there, she began documenting what she saw on the streets and  hospitals in livestreams and essays, despite threats by authorities, and  her reports were widely shared on social media.

 The rights group Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders  said her reports also covered the detention of other independent  journalists and the harassment of families of victims who were seeking  accountability.

 "Maybe I have a rebellious soul... I'm just documenting the truth. Why can't I show the truth?" she said in a clip of the interview obtained by the BBC.
 "I won't stop what I'm doing because this country can't go backwards."

The “Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders” seems to be the source of much of this reporting.

Who are these people?

The About page of the CHRD’s website does not reveal the people behind the organization nor who is financing it. Curious.

Two years ago a Grayzone report took a deeper look into the organization:

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 has used its generous funding to provide grants to opposition activists inside China, bankrolling dozens upon dozens of projects in the country.

 On its tax forms, CHRD lists its address as the Washington, DC office of Human Rights Watch. HRW has long been criticized for its revolving door with the US government and its excessively disproportionate focus on designated enemies of Washington like China, Venezuela, Syria, and Russia.

 Human Rights Watch did not respond to an email from The Grayzone inquiring about its relationship with CHRD.

Human Rights Watch’s overpaid permanent leader is of course part of the ‘Mighty Wurlitzer’:

Kenneth Roth @KenRoth - 8:22 UTC · Dec 28, 2020

Beijing's selection of the sleepy period between Christmas and New Year's suggests even it is embarrassed to sentence citizen-journalist Zhang Zhan to four years in prison for having chronicled the uncensored version of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan. https://nytimes.com/2020/12/25/wor...

The U.S. government funded CHRD lists Zhang Zhan on its ‘Rights defenders’ page. Its portrait of her includes some interesting details:

A former lawyer, Zhang Zhan, born in the 1980s, has long been active in speaking out about politics and the human rights situation in China. She has been repeatedly harassed and threatened by the authorities. In 2019, she spoke out on the Hong Kong protests by posting comments, writing articles and holding up placards to support the protesters. In  September 2019, she was summoned by Shanghai police and was later  criminally detained and arrested on suspicion of “picking quarrels” for  her support for Hong Kong. Police released her on November 26, 2019. 
...
Zhang  Zhan had travelled to Wuhan, the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak, in  early February. She reported numerous stories including the detentions  of other independent reporters and harassment of families of victims  seeking accountability from the epicenter via her Wechat, Twitter, and  YouTube accounts. Pudong procuratorate indicted Zhang Zhan on September 15 and  transfered her case to Pudong New District Court. The indictment accused  Zhang Zhan of traveling to Wuhan on February 3, 2020 and that she “sent a large amount of false information” on WeChat, Twitter, and YouTube and “accepted  interviews with overseas media Radio Free Asia and Epoch Times and  maliciously stirred up the Wuhan epidemic situation.”

(Note: I have found no hint why Zhang Zhan is called a ‘former lawyer’. Was she disbarred? Why?)

ChinaAid, an anti-Chinese Evangelical lobby group which is also financed and awarded prices by the U.S. government’s National Endowment for Democracy, identifies Zhang Zhan as a ‘Christian lawyer’. That is of interest because Chinese authorities are concerned about U.S. financed underground Evangelical groups which defy the requirement to register as social organizations.

ChinaChange, which is another ‘human rights’ outlet in Washington DC, also took note of Zhang Zhan:

Zhang Zhan (张展), a lawyer who practiced in Shanghai, went to Wuhan in  early February, determined to document the coronavirus outbreak in the  city that was the epicenter of what would soon become a pandemic around  the world. In the three months she stayed in the city, she made 122 posts on YouTube. It was not a coincidence that her first post was “My Claim for the Right of Free Speech.”  Zhang Zhan was arrested in May, brought back to Shanghai, indicted in  September on charges of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,”  China’s all-in-one charge for suppressing dissent. She is being tried on  Monday, December 28, in Shanghai.

Wuhan, where the first large outbreak of Covid-19 occurred, was put under lockdown on January 23. One wonders why a ‘former lawyer’ and ‘citizen journalist’ would go there despite official advice to not enter or leave the city.

A video published in late March by the Epoch Times, a right wing U.S. based paper associated with the anti-Chinese Falun Gong cult, gives a hint:

Dissident Protests ‘Animal-Like’ Treatment of Chinese Citizens
 
Zhang Zhan, a female dissident living in Shanghai, put  herself in harm’s way to go to Wuhan after the city was locked down. Her  plan was to investigate and broadcast the local situation as a citizen  journalist. She is outraged that the Chinese government casually  deprives the basic rights and freedom of Wuhan residents in the name of  epidemic control.

In the video Zhang Zhan is standing at a light traffic barrier that blocks access to a quarantined housing block. She is ranting in a weepy voice at white clad guards and passerby. The Epoch Times translated the dialog:

Woman:
 Let me ask you,
 Do you think the government can treat citizens like animals?
 Lock them when the regime is willing to,
 Send them out to work when they need these people to work.
 Aren’t you treating them like you treat cattle and horses?
 When animals need to graze you let them out
 And take them back when they are done eating.
 Is that for real?
 And if they do not obey, whip them.
 Is that how it should be?
 Is it justified to treat civilians like this?
 
Man: What are you doing?
 
Woman: I want to express my protest against the government, persistent protest.

Shortly before the man asked Zhang Zhan what she was doing she had knocked over the traffic barrier.

Holding libertarian rants against pandemic measures and knocking over quarantine barrier while providing videos for anti-Chinese outlets is presumably ‘citizen journalism’.

Wuhan had soon defeated the pandemic. But a few new infections in early May again raised alarm. The U.S. government financed Radio Free Asia reported hearsay of it:

Wuhan Locks Down Residential Compounds Amid Citywide Test Rollout
 
Wuhan, where the virus that causes COVID-19 first emerged,  is also in the process of implementing a city-wide order to carry out  free nucleic acid tests on the entire eleven million population. Wuhan-based citizen journalist Zhang Zhan said six new cases of coronavirus had been confirmed in the city's Sanmin residential compound, home to some 5,000 people.

 "I went there to find out more about the situation, but it has been  placed under quarantine," Zhang told RFA on Thursday, adding that local  news reports said six new cases had been confirmed, with 180 contacts  now in isolation.

 "There are police outside on the street now guarding the place, and  no vehicles are being allowed through," Zhang said. "I asked a nearby  resident how many people were taken away in ambulances, and he told me  that 180 people were taken away for isolation."

 Sanmin residents stranded outside the compound when lockdown was imposed are not being allowed to return.

 A similar lockdown was being imposed at the Sanyanqiao residential compound, also in Wuhan, Zhang said.

 "The barriers have been put back and the place is under lockdown,"  Zhang said. "There is also an online announcement saying that delivery  drivers aren't being allowed to enter certain compounds."

 "There are signs of a resurgence of the epidemic in Wuhan."

There was no resurgence of Covid-19 in Wuhan. Just a few, mostly asymptomatic cases were found during the city-wide testing.

Shortly after her ‘reporting’ for Radio Free Asia the notorious grumbler Zhang Zhan was arrested. As this was not the first time she got herself into trouble she did not receive any clemency.

China did manage the news about the Covid-19 pandemic. It suppressed false reports. That is, according to the World Health Organization, what any government should do. A recent WHO Call to Action explains why:

An infodemic is defined as a tsunami of information—some accurate, some  not—that spreads alongside an epidemic. If it is not managed  accordingly, an infodemic can have direct negative impacts on  the health of populations and the public health response by undermining  the trust in science and interventions. We are also seeing that infodemics hinder the cohesiveness of societies by increasing existing social inequities, stigma, gender disparity and generational rift. 

...

As  outlined in the Resolution on COVID-19 adopted by consensus at the 73rd  World Health Assembly and the G20 Health Ministers’ Declaration at the  Riyadh Summit, we need to provide populations with reliable and  comprehensive information on COVID-19 and take measures to counter misinformation and disinformation. The response to this infodemic demands the support, development, and  application of efficient solutions that equip individuals and their  communities with the knowledge and tools to promote accurate health  information (upstream) and mitigate the harm that misinformation and disinformation causes (downstream).

Zhang Zhan did her best to feed the infodemic with rumors and false outrage. The Chinese government took appropriate measures against the ‘rebellious soul’. It also took the right measures to completely defeat the pandemic.

But the CIA’s congregation of Washington based anti-Chinese ‘human rights’ organizations disagrees with those measures and it is jealous about China’s success.

Thus the ‘Mighty Wurlitzer’ springs into action and the ‘western’ media dutifully follow its lead by lamenting about the fate of a ‘citizen journalist’ provocateur in China.

Meanwhile the U.S. government has criminalized investigative journalism by its continued torture of Julian Assange and arrested more than 100 journalists this year.

End of Article

While this article is quite interesting, the comments are also full of insight and curiosity.

1

A study done a few years ago showed that over 2/3rds of international affairs stories in major European newspapers were basically reprints of NYT articles, tweaked lightly for localization purposes. The major media outlets all sing from the same hymn sheet and the CIA and other western intel operations knows that any story they feed into the system will be reproduced around the globe and taken as ‘fact’ by most of the newspapers’ readers.

The media’s incestuous nature and its infiltration by the intelligence services really became apparent during the Syrian Civil War and the Trump presidency. It is now clear that the western mainstream media works with the spooks to shape and mold opinion, and manufacture consent, rather than innocently informing its readers about world events.

The rise of the now often used insult “conspiracy theorist”, which is really code for “dissenting opinion”, is closely related to this. The western liberal democracies are going totalitarian in real time as the window of “acceptable” opinion continues to shrink and the establishment finds new ways to censor, ban and stifle heretical thinking.

Posted by: Dork | Dec 28 2020 18:53 utc | 1

2

Kenneth Roth @KenRoth - 8:22 UTC · Dec 28, 2020

Beijing's selection of the sleepy period between Christmas and New Year's suggests even it is embarrassed to sentence citizen-journalist Zhang Zhan to four years in prison for having chronicled the uncensored version of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan.

This information is false. China doesn’t celebrate Christmas because it isn’t a Christian country, and its New Year is celebrated according to the lunar calendar, not the solar calendar. As a result, the “Chinese New Year” is celebrate somewhere between the end of January and the first half of February (depending on the year).

In other words, the period between Christmas and (solar) New Year is not a “sleepy period” in China.

—

About the subject in general:

The first thing we should notice is that this Zhang Zhan is not a journalist. Therefore she’s not press. Therefore she’s not free press.

The second thing we should noticed is that, even if she was a journalist, we would have to discover if she’s a journalist or a “journalist”, i.e. a propagandist disguised as a journalist. Propagandists are not journalists in the spirit of the word: they are propagandists. Otherwise, having a Journalism degree would give one license to lie at will. Adding a ridiculous epithet (“citizen”) to the term doesn’t free you from real world consequences.

The third thing is that she’s a lawyer. Her rant is typical of a petit-bourgeois/middle class ideologue: freedom of the individual above the collective good; moral values above social values. The CIA is good in finding those wackos even in nations we don’t think they exist.

Posted by: vk | Dec 28 2020 19:01 utc | 2

4

Looking at her latest YT video, she doesn’t deserve 4 years of jail, but in a mental institution for being an anti-lockdown nutter in Wuhan.

Posted by: J W | Dec 28 2020 19:45 utc | 4

6

This post suggests that she may be involved with the Eastern Lighting cult, also known as the Church of Almighty God.

ZHANG ZHAN’S ABUSE OF SOCIALIST FREEDOM BROUGHT TO AN END! https://supportnewchina.blogspot.com/2020/12/zhang-zhans-abuse-of-socialist-freedom.html

Posted by: LC | Dec 28 2020 19:58 utc | 6

8

Zhang Zhan’s venture into Wuhan, defying lock-down orders for which she should have been punished, reminds me of the stunt pulled by Navalny’s eye doctor groupie Dr Anastasia Vasilyeva in April this year attempting to transport PPE from Moscow region to Novgorod region in a convoy of three cars during lock-downs in those regions.

Vasilyeva, self-styled head of a doctors’ union (which curiously has very few members and no branch offices in other parts of Russia, as far as I could tell from a TV report broadcast by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on its channels), disobeyed lock-down orders in both Moscow and Novgorod regions and was arrested and imprisoned in sensational style as recorded by her camera crew and lawyers travelling in the convoy. Curiously there seem to have been no other medically qualified people in the cars and there was a total of 12 people in the convoy so each car was carrying four people. (There goes the social distancing!)

I later saw an article on RT.com that the PPE Vasilyeva attempted to carry to Novgorod region did reach the intended recipient hospitals but they could not use the masks and gloves because … there was no certification in the boxes … so the hospitals had no way of knowing if the equipment had been legally obtained or met required medical standards. I do not know what the hospitals did with the equipment.

I would not be surprised if Zhang Zhan turns out to be a “lawyer” in the same sense that Sergei Magnitsky was a “lawyer” (he was an accountant chef hired by Bill Browder to cook his accounts) and Alexei Navalny is a “lawyer” (he initially qualified in real estate law but does not seem to have practised). No need then to wonder if Zhang had to give up a licence to practise law, if she was a “lawyer” in the loopy stretched-out cartoon definition the US State Department, the CIA and Hollywood would have us believe.

Posted by: Jen | Dec 28 2020 20:02 utc | 8

16

“Human rights” agitprop has long been a staple of US imperialist propaganda. As the Grayzone website pointed out earlier this year, “HRW was founded during the height of the Cold War as Helsinki Watch, an anti-Soviet lobby group closely linked to the US government and funded by the Ford Foundation, which served as a CIA passthrough.”

Billionaire-backed Human Rights Watch lobbies for lethal US sanctions on leftist governments as Covid crisis rages

The hysterical propaganda against communist nations and fighters goes hand in hand with the bombs, torture and assassination that are US/British/French/NATO specialties. The modern version of “human rights” campaigning was born out of the US defeat in Vietnam, and the spate of revelations that came out of that period about US crimes (Pentagon Papers, Church Senate investigations, Winter Soldier, etc.) in an attempt to rebrand the Vietnam war criminals as some sort of humanitarians. The Helsinki Accords were a US propaganda program that the misguided leaders of the USSR, along with Tito, etc. approved with the vain hope of detente and peaceful cooperation between nations. In reality, the US never wanted such peaceful coexistence.

Thanks, b, for bucking the anti-China propaganda campaign. The Pentagon and CIA still lick their wounds from the last time they faced Chinese forces in battle. Their dream of anti-Communist conquest of China and North Korea (assisted by their supposedly docile Japanese assistants) is as dangerous as their dream of dismembering Russia and turning all of the Eurasian landmass into a colony for US (and Japanese) exploitation. There lies the fuse for WW3, and the end deaths of hundreds of millions.

Now is the time for every person of clear mind to oppose these mad dreams of conquest! The lies that have and are being told about Russia and China (only occasionally rooted in some actual injustice) are being churned out daily by the CIA and Pentagon propaganda machine. Their purpose is to rally the population for war. Soon the hammer will drop harder on the US and West Europe/Australian population, as the persecution of Julian Assange suggests, as the ruling elite tighten up the repression needed to pull off their genocidal war.

Posted by: Jeffrey Kaye | Dec 28 2020 21:03 utc | 16

Conclusion

It’s a great article on a great site. I would suggest you all visit it when you get a chance and go through the comments there. They have a higher-order of commenter that frequents the site.

The “fire hose” of disinformation has been drenching everyone with vile hatred towards of China. Now the spigot has been turned off, and the alert sheeple are wondering what is going on. Soon a new flood will begin. It will be against Russia. It will start slowly and after two years it will reach the same kind of crescendo that the Chinese experienced.

I anticipate a balkanized American civil war in the interim period, with scant reporting. Followed by American attempts to start a war for “freedomTM“, “democracyTM“, and all that similar nonsense. The children of the American serf/slave sheeple will march off with gusto to be slaughtered in mass.

And with all of Asia retaliating.

In nuclear fashion.

And I pretty much expect it to be along the lines of what John Titor predicted.

The Climax of the Fourth Turning – 2025

Buckle up.

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