We are just a group of retired spooks that discuss things that you’ll not find anywhere else. It makes us unique. Take a look around. Learn a thing or two.
"Trying to wade through the muck that passes as news today IS a fools errand."
A “sheeple” is a person who has very strong, visceral, and vibrant emotions about a subject that they have NO FIRST HAND EXPERIENCE about. That is how you can define what a “sheeple” is. It is an easily manipulated person that follows various “shepherds”, and listens to their “pied piper” song and dance. Even to their deaths.
In American, and conservative media you can often hear the term “sheeple” bantered about commonly. It tends to be a disparaging title directed towards others who seemingly, and mindlessly repeat narratives without thinking.
In conservative media, “sheeple” tends to represent everyone else outside of the “conservative news media”. It’s a rather catch-all phrase that is used to describe anyone else who believe anything else other than the conservative narrative.
In liberal media, while the term “sheeple” is used, the more common phrase is to “avoid the electric kool aide“, which refers to both the Reverend Jim Jones group suicide (by drinking poisoned Kool Aide punch), and the 1960’s counter-culture practice of lacing kool aide with LSD.
Combined, it features the words “sheep” and “people” to describe a human that maintains herd-like concepts of self.
As interesting as this is, the fact is that people of all political alignments qualify as sheeple. It’s not just “the other guy”. Probably you too, dear MM reader. It’s so very easy to get snookered in; sucked in a heavily promoted lie. (I’ve been sucked in. Many times in fact. So do not get too hot and bothered about it. It happens.)
"Simply put, the collective West--led by the America and the Anglosphere--resembles a civilization of paranoid schizophrenics, whose delusional ravings will drive them towards world war--total war."
Moreover, the method to determine whether or not you are a sheeple is very simple.
Here is the litmus test;
A "sheeple" is a person who has very strong, visceral, and vibrant emotions about a subject that they have NO FIRST HAND EXPERIENCE about.
For instance…
Buying a used car
You buy a used car. After two months the motor dies, the transmission fails, and the bumper falls off. You get angry about this. And when you go to talk to the man who sold you the car, and he refuses to talk to you. Instead he responds that "all sales are final".
You get angry at him. Your anger is real, and full of anger and emotion.
Not a sheeple. Just a man who is angry at a man who swindled him.
Eating at a restaurant
You go into a restaurant, and order the "blue plate special". After you pay for the meal and leave, you notice that your stomach starts to churn. By the time you get home, you are vomiting uncontrollably. You spend the entire night on the toilet, and the next day your spouse has to cart you off to the hospital to have your stomach pumped.
You are angry at the restaurant, and vow never to eat there again.
Not a sheeple. Just a man who is angry at a restaurant that poisoned him.
Dating a person
You go on a date and that person is rude, obnoxious, and has terrible body odor. They refuse to pay for the meal, and makes a big "scene" inside the restaurant, and then afterwards demands sexual favors when you are clearly repulsed by them.
You are angry at this person and vow never to repeat this mistake ever again. From this moment forward, you never date anyone who even remotely reminds you of this "date from Hell".
Not a sheeple. Just a person who had a bad experience on a data and vows never to repeat that mistake ever again.
Reading about Slavery
You read an article about forced sexual slavery in a particular nation. Then two articles later, you read about how they are injecting malware into your computer. The next day the newspapers describe how they have caused the deaths of thousands of innocent cats and dogs, and how their children are trained to lie, cheat, and trip people.
You are angry, and whenever you calm down, there is yet another article that keeps your anger alive and fresh.
You are a sheeple. You are angry about something you have read, NOT at what you experienced.
Unless you have experienced the events that generate your anger personally, you are being manipulated by those that own the media companies that you use.
Summary
The 0.1% of the population that own 99.999% of the media use it to manipulate.
The manipulations turn normal thinking humans into creatures that maintain herd behaviors.
There are many, many variations on their techniques and on the subjects so utilized. The techniques are honed after decades of utility, and supplanted by artificial intelligence for improved efficiency.
No one is immune from these manipulations.
Most people are unaware that they are being expertly manipulated.
The most dangerous and effective manipulations are those that we WANT to BELIEVE.
The only way to guard from these manipulations is to perform a self check…
Self Check
Have you lived in the nation that you are angry about? (Yes / No)
Have you personally met a person that described to you a situation (that they experienced) that you are specifically angry about? (Yes/No)
Have you shared a meal, been to a hospital, or dated a person associated with the issue you are angry about? (Yes / No)
Is the beliefs that you hold about an issue from personal experience, or from something you read, or watched on the internet? (Yes / No)
Be very careful in what you read about.
The world is filled with evil, and powerful people that take absolute pleasure in manipulating people for their own gain.
Examples
Let’s take a look at an article found on “Free Republic”.
Forced COVID-19 Vaccination Widespread in China, Sources Say
4/4/2021, 3:16:34 AM · by SeekAndFind · 10 repliesEpoch Times ^ | 04/03/2021 | Frank Yue
Mounting evidence shows the Chinese Communist Party has been imposing vaccinations upon the public, despite concerns over efficacy and health implications. A female netizen named Duan Da Dan posted in Chinese on social media site Weibo on March 31: “I’m really annoyed that my employer forces me to receive jabs even if I’m planning to get pregnant. [They] never consider the possible impact on the fetus.” Another internet user claimed in Chinese-language Weibo post on March 30 that she had contracted hives twice, meaning she suffers from allergies. However, she was upset that her employer was pressuring her every day...
Of course, most people reading this article would believe it. As they have nothing to compare it against.
.
“forced vaccinations are widespread”
“sources say”
“posted on a social media site”
“upset her employer is pressuring her every day”
Damn those evil Chinese!
Further, if they are inclined to hold an anti-VAX stance, they would be infuriated that the evil Chinese would be so aggressive about forcing people to get vaccines.
Um. Yeah. Sure. What ever you say.
Let’s do a sanity check.
I’m here in China.
And the vaccinations take place inside the malls.
So, here’s what the vaccinations in China actually look like. It looks like a normal, everyday visit to the mall. This is a mall next to my house. The vaccinations are being conducted on the fifth floor, right off the elevator. It’s free for everyone (Chinese residents that show their ID card, and non-residents that have a residency stamp in their passport.) between the ages of 18 and 60.
I suppose that exceptions can be made if you are older or younger, but you will need to consult with the doctor first.
Here is a short video I took of the line on the fifth floor (from the fourth floor) for the vaccination process. You can see the people clearly lined up, calm. Patient. Unhurried.
You can also see the instruction cards (those three white rectangular marquis). On the other side would be the QR code that would automatically link your ID with the hospital and then log in your vaccination with your social scoring. ,You can see the registration counter and the injection area off to the right.
Do you see evil Chicom police forcing innocent people to get injections? Do you see people freaking out and “demanding their rights”? Do you see the horrors and anger that is so characteristic of how the Chinese are portrayed in American media?
Doe it resemble anything, at all, like the images you get in your “mind’s eye” regarding what China is like?
Are there crowds of hungry, starving, angry people? Is it dirty, filthy and disease ridden? Is the air so full of smog and filth? What about the infrastructure? Is it falling down? What about the police and military presence? Do you see police dogs, anyone with an AK-47?
I wish that I would have gotten a picture of one of those cute roving robots that are all over the place. But that’s the luck of the draw don’t you know. They respond back to you. If you go up to them you can see what they see on the video and they will ask you if you need anything. Then they will answer using your actual name! I guess the face recognition and the AI enables them to converse to you as a person.
And here’s another…
And for a strong comparison, let’s compare what my FIRST HAND, up front and personal video with what is written inside the American media…
"Chinese Communist Party has been imposing vaccinations upon the public, despite concerns over efficacy and health implications. "
Does the video, in any way what so ever, reflect what was written in America? Does the videos show people being coerced, being forced, or being made to do anything that they don’t want to do?
Can't see the videos? Then you can download a ZIP file of them HERE.
Conclusion
Most Americans are sheeple whether they like the title or not.
If you find yourself getting upset with something that you cannot verify with your own two eyes, or touch with your hands, or smell with your nose, then you are being manipulated.
If you believe those manipulations, then you are a sheeple.
Dangers of such manipulations
You might end up believing…
The President “has your back” if you decide to riot in Congress.
The United States is capable of fighting and winning World War III.
Using a 3G cell phone will not only give you brain cancer, but it will cause gasoline pumps to explode.
Social Security deductions from your pay are put in a “lock box”.
Unless you update your computer software with the new government approved version, the Y2K will rampage through your house and kill you.
Pizza is a vegetable. Coital silver supplements will give you a healthier life. And most vitamins are fake.
Eating a hamburger will turn you into a drooling moron though mad cow disease.
Using an e-cigarette will cause you to die of vaping.
Angry Zombie Killer Wasps (imported from China) will kill you.
Florine in your water is a way of altering your precious bodily fluids.
Senator Sessions is going to throw Hillary Clinton in jail, he has a plan with his enormous mind that is playing 54-d strategy.
The economy is roaring. Unemployment is way down, and America leads the world in satisfaction.
Do you want more?
I have more posts that might be of interest. Go ahead and check out my Happiness Index here…
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.
The world is moving ever forward. Such as this notice on MoA. This and these kinds of things are becoming more and more common in the West these days…
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/
Maintenance mode
Temporary Blog Closure
March 24, 2021 in Uncategorized by craig
In view of our understanding that the High Court has found some articles on this blog to be in contempt of court, and in view of the fact that the Crown Office had sought to censor such a large range of articles, this blog has no choice but to go dark from 15.00 today until some time after tomorrow’s court hearing, when it will be specified to us precisely how much of the truth we have to expunge before we can bring the blog back up.
This is a dark day for the entire team here. We will be looking to appeal this to the Supreme Court and if required (though we very much doubt it will be) to the European Court of Human Rights.
-Posted by: Bluedotterel | Mar 24 2021 16:46 utc | 1
Bang, bang, and then bang. One after another things have started to happen faster and faster. It began in Alaska with a stunning, just stunning insulting display of ignorance and rudeness from the United States. Followed quickly by the military, social, industrial, and cultural realignments between Russia and China. With then Iran getting on board, creating the combined enormous Asian block.
Belt and Road isn’t going away. China is making more rigorous lending decisions while focusing somewhat less on heavy-duty construction and more on digital technology, says a Council on Foreign Relations task force report released on March 23. The 190-page report, titled China’s Belt and Road: Implications for the United States, was written by Jennifer Hillman and David Sacks of the CFR based on the findings of an independent task force chaired by former Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew and retired Admiral Gary Roughead.For the U.S., calibrating an effective response to Belt and Road is tricky. The Obama administration pursued constructive engagement with China. As Belt and Road ramped up and became more of a threat, the Trump administration was more confrontational, but without allies’ support. The Biden administration aims to build more of a united front of nations to counter Chinese influence. Reflecting the difficulty of striking the right balance, the Council on Foreign Relations report says the U.S. response “has been too little, too late,” but also says “its blanket condemnation risks alienating partners.”
The American leviathan has set up the pieces, and is going full bore toward international global conflict. All stops have been pulled. All fail-safes have been removed. And now, it’s a matter of getting the minions and toadies in line so that the wars can be fought on their national geography instead of inside of America.
Um…
It’s not going to happen that way, but you just cannot reason with idiots.
I always knew there was something fundamentally wrong with the world.
-Posted by: William Gruff | Mar 24 2021 19:57 utc | 36
The Article
This is a great article. Just great.
As Patrice says…
It's clear from the tone of the author, which mirrors much of independent, assaulted and outraged humanity, that many observers are waiting with bated breath...
...for the emergence of a powerful and invincible countervailing alliance...
...(one that is) capable of finally stopping the reign of brutal violence and disgusting hypocrisy imposed by the US empire.
And that alliance, perforce, as to be the sinorussian alliance.
The blood-curdling hypocrisy of the West leaves truly decent and sovereign nations no choice.
As Pepe Escobar puts it in this remarkable and indispensable dispatch:
One has to applaud the gall of the “Western partners”. It’s 18 years since Shock and Awe – the start of the bombing, invasion and destruction of Iraq. It’s 10 years since the start of the total destruction of Libya by NATO and its GCC minions, with Obama-Biden “leading from behind”. It’s 10 years since the start of the savage destruction of Syria by proxy – complete with jihadis disguised as “moderate rebels”. Yet now the “Western partners” are so mortified by the plight of Muslims in Western China!
This is a complete reprint of a most excellent article from Pepe, and reproduced from HERE. All credit to the author. Please kindly note that it was reformatted to fit this venue but aside from that left intact in all of it’s glory.
With a Russia-China-Iran triple bitch slap on the hegemon, we now have a brand new geopolitical chessboard
It took 18 years after Shock and Awe unleashed on Iraq for the Hegemon to be mercilessly shocked and awed by a virtually simultaneous, diplomatic Russia-China one-two.
March 2021: The FMs of the two greatest powers defying Washington meet for close strategic consultation.
How this is a real game-changing moment cannot be emphasized enough; 21st century geopolitics will never be the same again.
Yet it was the Hegemon who first crossed the diplomatic Rubicon. The handlers behind hologram Joe “I’ll do whatever you want me to do, Nance” Biden had whispered in his earpiece to brand Russian President Vladimir Putin as a soulless “killer” in the middle of a softball interview. [Conducted by ABC News maggot, George Stephanopoulos, although media stenographers and propagandists in the Western bloc are all fully interchangeable. —Ed]
Not even at the height of the Cold War the superpowers resorted to ad hominem attacks. The result of such an astonishing blunder was to regiment virtually the whole Russian population behind Putin – because that was perceived as an attack against the Russian state.
Then came Putin’s cool, calm, collected – and quite diplomatic – response, which needs to be carefully pondered. These sharp as a dagger words are arguably the most devastatingly powerful five minutes in the history of post-truth international relations.
In For Leviathan, it’s so cold in Alaska, we forecasted what could take place in the US-China 2+2 summit at a shabby hotel in Anchorage, with cheap bowls of instant noodles thrown in as extra bonus.
China’s millennial diplomatic protocol establishes that discussions start around common ground – which are then extolled as being more important than disagreements between negotiating parties. That’s at the heart of the concept of “no loss of face”. Only afterwards the parties discuss their differences.
Yet it was totally predictable that a bunch of amateurish, tactless and clueless Americans would smash those basic diplomatic rules to show “strength” to their home crowd, distilling the proverbial litany on Taiwan, Hong Kong, South China Sea, “genocide” of Uighurs.
Oh dear. There was not a single State Dept. hack with minimal knowledge of East Asia to warn the amateurs you don’t mess with the formidable head of the Foreign Affairs Commission at the CCP’s Central Committee, Yang Jiechi, with impunity.
Visibly startled, but controlling his exasperation, Yang Jiechi struck back. And the rhetorical shots were heard around the whole Global South.
They had to include a basic lesson in manners: “If you want to deal with us properly, let’s have some mutual respect and do things the right way”. But what stood out was a stinging, concise diagnostic blending history and politics:
The United States is not qualified to talk to China in a condescending manner. The Chinese people will not accept that. It must be based on mutual respect to deal with China, and history will prove that those who seek to strangle China will suffer in the end.
And all that translated in real time by young, attractive and ultra-skilled Zhang Jing – who inevitably became an overnight superstar in China, reaping an astonishing 400 million plus hits on Weibo.
The incompetence of the “diplomatic” arm of the Biden-Harris administration beggars belief. Using a basic Sun Tzu maneuver, Yang Jiechi turned the tables and voiced the predominant sentiment of the overwhelming majority of the planet.Stuff your unilateral “rules-based order”. We, the nations of the world, privilege the UN charter and the primacy of international law.
So this is what the Russia-China one-two achieved almost instantaneously: from now on, the Hegemon should be treated, all across the Global South with, at best, disdain.
An inevitable historical process
Pre-Alaska, the Americans went on a charming offensive in Japan and South Korea for “consultations”. That’s irrelevant. What matters is post-Alaska, and the crucial Sergey Lavrov-Wang Yi meeting of Foreign Ministers in Guilin.
Lavrov, always unflappable, clarified in an interview with Chinese media how the Russia-China strategic partnership sees the current US diplomatic train wreck:
As a matter of fact, they have largely lost the skill of classical diplomacy. Diplomacy is about relations between people, the ability to listen to each other, to hear one another and to strike a balance between competing interests. These are exactly the values that Russia and China are promoting in diplomacy.
The inevitable consequence is that Russia-China must “consolidate our independence: “The United States has declared limiting the advance of technology in Russia and China as its goal. So, we must reduce our exposure to sanctions by strengthening our technological independence and switching to settlements in national and international currencies other than the dollar. We need to move away from using Western-controlled international payment systems.”
Russia-China have clearly identified, as Lavrov pointed out, how the “Western partners” are “promoting their ideology-driven agenda aimed at preserving their dominance by holding back progress in other countries. Their policies run counter to the objective international developments and, as they used to say at some point, are on the wrong side of history. The historical process will come into its own, no matter what happens.”
As a stark presentation of an inevitable “historical process”, it doesn’t get more crystal clear than that. And predictably, it didn’t take time for the “Western partners” to fall back into – what else – their same old sanction bag of tricks.
Here we go again: a US, UK, EU, Canada “alliance” sanctioning selected Chinese officials because, in Blinken’s words, “the PRC [People’s Republic of China] continues to commit genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang.” [sic]
The EU, UK, and Canada didn’t have the guts to sanction a key player: Xinjiang party chief Chen Quanguo, who’s a Politburo member. The Chinese response would have been – economically – devastating.
Still, Beijing counterpunched with its own sanctions – targeting, crucially, the German far-right evangelical nut posing as “scholar” who produced the bulk of the completely debunked “proof” of a million Uighurs held in concentration camps.
Once again, the “Western partners” are impermeable to logic. Adding to the already appalling state of EU-Russia relations, Brussels chooses to also antagonize China based on a single fake dossier, playing right into the Hegemon’s not exactly secret Divide and Rule agenda.
Mission (nearly) accomplished: Brussels diplomats tell me the EU Parliament is all but set to refuse to ratify the China-EU trade deal painstakingly negotiated by Merkel and Macron. The consequences will be immense.
So Blinken will have reasons to be cheerful when he meets assorted eurocrats and NATO bureaucrats this week, ahead of the NATO summit.
One has to applaud the gall of the “Western partners”. It’s 18 years since Shock and Awe – the start of the bombing, invasion and destruction of Iraq. It’s 10 years since the start of the total destruction of Libya by NATO and its GCC minions, with Obama-Biden “leading from behind”. It’s 10 years since the start of the savage destruction of Syria by proxy – complete with jihadis disguised as “moderate rebels”.
Yet now the “Western partners” are so mortified by the plight of Muslims in Western China.
At least there are some cracks within the EU illusionist circus. Last week, the French Armed Forces Joint Reflection Circle (CRI) – in fact an independent think tank of former high officers – wrote a startling open letter to cardboard NATO secretary-general Stoltenberg de facto accusing him of behaving as an American stooge with the implementation of NATO 2030 plan. The French officers drew the correct conclusion: the US/NATO combo is the main cause of appalling relations with Russia.
These Ides of March
Meanwhile, sanctions hysteria advance like a runaway train. Biden-Harris has already threatened to impose extra sanctions on Chinese oil imports from Iran. And there’s more in the pipeline – on manufacturing, technology, 5G, supply chains, semiconductors.
And yet nobody is trembling in their boots. Right on cue with Russia-China, Iran has stepped up the game, with Ayatollah Khamenei issuing the guidelines for Tehran’s return to the JCPOA.
1. The US regime is in no position to make new demands or changes regarding the nuclear deal.
2. The US is weaker today than when the JCPOA was signed.
3. Iran is in a stronger position now. If anyone can impose new demands it’s Iran and not the US.
And with that we have a Russia-China-Iran triple bitch slap on the Hegemon.
In our latest conversation/interview, to be released soon in a video + transcript package, Michael Hudson – arguably the world’s top economist – hit the heart of the matter:
The fight against China, the fear of China is that you can’t do to China, what you did to Russia. America would love for there to be a Yeltsin figure in China to say, let’s just give all of the railroads that you’ve built, the high-speed rail, let’s give the wealth, let’s give all the factories to individuals and let the individuals run everything and, then we’ll lend them the money, or we’ll buy them out and then we can control them financially. And China’s not letting that happen. And Russia stopped that from happening. And the fury in the West is that somehow, the American financial system is unable to take over foreign resources, foreign agriculture. It is left only with military means of grabbing them as we are seeing in the near East. And you’re seeing in the Ukraine right now.
To be continued. As it stands, we should all make sure that the Ides of March – the 2021 version – have already configured a brand new geopolitical chessboard. The Russia-China Double Helix on high-speed rail has left the station – and there’s no turning back.
Conclusion
Oh, Pepe said it so clearly and so wonderfully. Today there is a massive new Geo-political alignment, and it is the direct result of insanity and poor leadership from the West. And they are so very incompetent that they have no idea with the kind of “fire” that they are playing with.
Even with an enormous military, control of all media and communication, and some hidden ultra-powerful technology, the leadership is so seriously incompetent, the systems so hopelessly flawed, and the participants so absolutely corrupted that a catastrophic collapse of their government is imminent.
I hope and pray that I am wrong.
That all this will “blow over” and just go away, and I can fall into the “dust bin” with the rest of the “doom and gloom” predictors throughout history. Let’s hope the MM is wrong.
Meanwhile, the insanity of what the West is today is gearing up. It’s the same-old, same-old. Only on a bigger scale. So the carpet bombing of China by biological weapons dis not work. So the aggressive attacks on trade and technology did not work. So the enormous armada of ships to the South China Sea did not work. So the riots and revolution in Hong Kong did not work…
…and neither will “boots on the ground” in Xinjiang either.
…nor “saving” Taiwan from China.
…nor a strong QUAD.
But they still have dreams of conducting “the rape of Nanjing” in modern Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Shanghai. They still have dreams of invading and seizing Chinese held islands. They still have the dreams of sinking all cargo ships on the high seas. They still believe that all this can be ignored…
…as long as they control the American media.
EXCEPT…
Only Americans read American media.
They do not control the thoughts of the world. And the world is getting mightily pissed. Gosh! It’s going to be one fuck of a year.
As a reminder. This is what a “double tap” looks like. As this video from Boston, Massachusetts clearly shows…
Be careful of your neighbors when you shovel your driveway.
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.
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:
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.
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 Asiareported 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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
“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.”
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.
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.
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