"You take Reporters sans frontières at face value"
From the RSF website today: "@RSF_inter
06/28/2021
As Julian Assange's 50th birthday approaches, I'm joining the call to #FreeAssange. The case against him should be dropped and he should be immediately released. Let this be the last birthday he spends in prison! #HappyBirthdayAssange"
Is that false as well? I certainly don't agree with everything RSF claims. But there are numerous other organisations with evidence showing that China routinely imprisons journalists and bloggers who reveal what the government wants kept secret. The Committee to Protect Journalists, for example:
"In its annual global survey, the Committee to Protect Journalists found at least 274 journalists in jail in relation to their work on December 1, 2020, exceeding the high of 272 in 2016. China, which arrested several journalists for their coverage of the pandemic, was the world’s worst jailer for the second year in a row. It was followed by Turkey, which continues to try journalists free on parole and arrest new ones; Egypt, which went to great lengths to keep custody of journalists not convicted of any crime; and Saudi Arabia...
... Within the United States, no journalists were jailed at the time of CPJ’s prison census, but an unprecedented 110 journalists were arrested or criminally charged in 2020 and around 300 were assaulted, the majority by law enforcement."
Your cynicism reminds me of something CS Lewis once wrote about people who claim to see through everything eventually see nothing at all. In your rightful desire to support Mr Assange and to expose the egregious state crimes of Australia, USA and the UK, you run the risk of ignoring the often-equal or worse crimes of other governments. It's entirely possible to condemn repression wherever it occurs.
Funny, I don't recall ever writing that *nothing* claimed by RSF (or HRW or AI or CPJ etc) was ever true. What I suggested is that no such Western NGOs should be taken at face value without question. What they claim should always be evaluated based on their inherent biases and incentives, their past record of truthfulness or falsity, alternative on-the-ground sources from within the country in question, whether what they reveal is an "admission against interest," etc. Your default appears to be to believe everything you read in corporate media unless proven otherwise. Perhaps the following link will help: https://roundingtheearth.substack.com/p/gell-mann-amnesia-dissonance-and
You and I believe exactly the same, only that I apply that principle also to state propaganda by the governments of China, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, Turkey et al. Are you still claiming that those governments are not imprisoning journalists, and in conditions likely to be much worse than the vile conditions being endured by Mr Assange right this moment?
There is only so much we as ordinary citizens can do to check if information is true. There is a danger that you will pass into the complete cynicism of anti-vaxxers, climate science deniers and so forth.
Because China is such a repressive state, there is not the same level of information available from relatively objective sources. The Chinese government routinely closes down parts of the internet to avoid socially-divisive or politically-embarrassing news or debates. Are you denying this? For example, perhaps this is completely untrue:
"Former world No 1 tennis star Naomi Osaka has joined the growing calls for answers on the whereabouts of Chinese player Peng Shuai, who has not been heard from publicly since she accused the country’s former vice premier of sexually assaulting her... Peng’s post went viral on Chinese social media, despite it being taken down by censors within minutes. Subsequent posts and reactions, even keywords such as “tennis”, also appeared to be blocked, and numerous references to Peng were scrubbed from China’s internet."
I have little idea what's going on in "China, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, Turkey et al," and don't pretend to know based on reports in Imperial media. This is especially true for designated enemies like China. Our MIC and the bankers that fund the Pentagon need an enemy. Both neo-cons and neo-libs love to play that game for the MIC, and are paid well for their services at think tanks. Corporate media is also on the take through military and Big Pharma ad revenues.
I see you drink the swill of "anti-vaxxers" and "climate science deniers." I had little distrust of vaccines before 2020, but the lies the CDC, WHO, FDA and NIH told, to generate fear and panic, opened my eyes. There's nothing cynical in that or in questioning climate "science," unless of course you believe that even the dissidents are FOS.
Oh, "The Chinese government routinely closes down parts of the internet to avoid socially-divisive or politically-embarrassing news or debates?" Maybe it does, and maybe it doesn't, because we surely can not trust reports in our own corporate press. But why are we throwing stones? Our own government uses the monopolies it has encouraged like Facebook, Twitter and Google (which owns YouTube) to do exactly the same thing to suppress dissent from its own narratives. Say, whatever happened to UK Channel and Del Bigtree on YouTube? Why was the NY Post crippled on Twitter just before the 2020 election? You want to talk about conditions? A few years back, a Florida inmate was scalded to death by prison guards, and the UK can't trust the US prison system not to kill Assange, just like they did Epstein, or do you believe they drove him to suicide? We have political prisoners languishing in a DC jail for misdemeanors.
You do read Caitlin's essays, don't you? The Guardian is one of the worst. So bad that some dissidents felt compelled to start the Off-Guardian to expose its lies and distortions.
Off-Guardian is a notoriously right-wing propaganda sheet closer to Sp!ked than to anything socialist. It seems that, as I suspected, you are so cynical that you see nothing at all. You are so unwilling to believe anything in the Western media that you have become blind to the reality of the world. It's entirely possible to oppose the lack of democracy and repression in China as well as that in the West. It's also a little odd that you think that scandal-sheet the NY Post would be targeted by the US state, when it's a newspaper that uncritically supports that state.
As for prison conditions, I spent six years in English & Scottish prisons between 2000 and 2017. All reports from nations such as China, Iran, Egypt, Bahrain etc are of conditions considerably worse.
Your views seem rather inconsistently held. You question the science of climate change yet consider yourself a free thinker. You're on the side of Donald Trump and his cronies.
LOL. Now you're implying I'm a Trumpista? You have no argument, so you resort to labels and epithets. There's no such thing as "the science of climate change." Science is a process, not a consensus. It REQUIRES questioning, to test theories and come closer to Truth as theories are refined or discarded.
You totally miss the point. I discourage pointing fingers at China because there's nothing we can do about what happens in China short of war. We CAN do something about the fascist collaboration of corporations with government in the West, which is now reaching totalitarian levels. China is a distraction, which is why I doubt the narrative spun by Western media. They want us to waste time, energy and money on China. Are you prepared to don fatigues and march off to liberate Xinjiang for the ETIM? Do you even read Caitlin's essays or are you here just to make contrary comments?
I never mentioned "conditions, ... in English & Scottish prisons," just what I have read about US prisons, all Western "admissions against interest," hence thoroughly believable. Here's what's happening in DC jails where dozens of Jan 6 political prisoners guilty of nothing more than misdemeanor trespass have been held for over 6 months: https://crimeandjusticenews.asu.edu/news/standing-human-sewage-reported-dc-jail
What are your criteria for labeling a website or newspapers "right wing" or a "scandal-sheet?" Do they apply to all the corporate media that took the Steele dossier at face value and claimed unequivocally that "the walls are closing in" on Trump? And no, I don't support Trump's version of imperialism any more than I support globalist totalitarians. I support efforts to elect 3rd party candidates and perhaps a few anti-imperialist Republicans like Thomas Massie or Justin Amash.
You're not the first interlocutor who has expressed this view: "I discourage pointing fingers at China because there's nothing we can do about what happens in China short of war." That is isolationism and a callous disregard for the fate of other humans "in faraway places of which we know nothing", to quote a certain pre-WWII British PM called Neville Chamberlain as an excuse for handing Czechoslovakia to the Nazis.
I'm a socialist. Central to that credo is internationalism. You're saying to journalists and others languishing cells in China, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and elsewhere: "Sorry, nothing we can do, it's your own hard luck for living in countries that are even less democratic and free than the UK/USA etc". That's disturbingly close to the America First ethos that has resurfaced lately and which was so notorious in 1939-41.
Should all the organisations campaigning on behalf of oppressed people around the world shut up shop because there's supposedly nothing we can do? Should the BDS movement, or Palestine Action which occupies premises of apartheid Israel's UK-based weapons company Elbit Systems abandon their work? Because that's what you're saying.
As for prison conditions: I'm an abolitionist, so of course I'm aware of what happens in UK & US prisons. But I am also aware that prisons in Iran, Turkey, China, Saudi Arabia and so on are almost certainly considerably worse. This doesn't bother you?
"You take Reporters sans frontières at face value"
From the RSF website today: "@RSF_inter
06/28/2021
As Julian Assange's 50th birthday approaches, I'm joining the call to #FreeAssange. The case against him should be dropped and he should be immediately released. Let this be the last birthday he spends in prison! #HappyBirthdayAssange"
Is that false as well? I certainly don't agree with everything RSF claims. But there are numerous other organisations with evidence showing that China routinely imprisons journalists and bloggers who reveal what the government wants kept secret. The Committee to Protect Journalists, for example:
"In its annual global survey, the Committee to Protect Journalists found at least 274 journalists in jail in relation to their work on December 1, 2020, exceeding the high of 272 in 2016. China, which arrested several journalists for their coverage of the pandemic, was the world’s worst jailer for the second year in a row. It was followed by Turkey, which continues to try journalists free on parole and arrest new ones; Egypt, which went to great lengths to keep custody of journalists not convicted of any crime; and Saudi Arabia...
... Within the United States, no journalists were jailed at the time of CPJ’s prison census, but an unprecedented 110 journalists were arrested or criminally charged in 2020 and around 300 were assaulted, the majority by law enforcement."
https://cpj.org/reports/2020/12/record-number-journalists-jailed-imprisoned/
Your cynicism reminds me of something CS Lewis once wrote about people who claim to see through everything eventually see nothing at all. In your rightful desire to support Mr Assange and to expose the egregious state crimes of Australia, USA and the UK, you run the risk of ignoring the often-equal or worse crimes of other governments. It's entirely possible to condemn repression wherever it occurs.
Funny, I don't recall ever writing that *nothing* claimed by RSF (or HRW or AI or CPJ etc) was ever true. What I suggested is that no such Western NGOs should be taken at face value without question. What they claim should always be evaluated based on their inherent biases and incentives, their past record of truthfulness or falsity, alternative on-the-ground sources from within the country in question, whether what they reveal is an "admission against interest," etc. Your default appears to be to believe everything you read in corporate media unless proven otherwise. Perhaps the following link will help: https://roundingtheearth.substack.com/p/gell-mann-amnesia-dissonance-and
You and I believe exactly the same, only that I apply that principle also to state propaganda by the governments of China, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, Turkey et al. Are you still claiming that those governments are not imprisoning journalists, and in conditions likely to be much worse than the vile conditions being endured by Mr Assange right this moment?
There is only so much we as ordinary citizens can do to check if information is true. There is a danger that you will pass into the complete cynicism of anti-vaxxers, climate science deniers and so forth.
Because China is such a repressive state, there is not the same level of information available from relatively objective sources. The Chinese government routinely closes down parts of the internet to avoid socially-divisive or politically-embarrassing news or debates. Are you denying this? For example, perhaps this is completely untrue:
"Former world No 1 tennis star Naomi Osaka has joined the growing calls for answers on the whereabouts of Chinese player Peng Shuai, who has not been heard from publicly since she accused the country’s former vice premier of sexually assaulting her... Peng’s post went viral on Chinese social media, despite it being taken down by censors within minutes. Subsequent posts and reactions, even keywords such as “tennis”, also appeared to be blocked, and numerous references to Peng were scrubbed from China’s internet."
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/nov/17/naomi-osaka-expresses-shock-over-missing-chinese-tennis-star-peng-shuai
That level of censorship is simply not the case in the West. It is possible and indeed desirable to expose and oppose repression wherever it occurs.
No, we do NOT believe in the same thing.
I have little idea what's going on in "China, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, Turkey et al," and don't pretend to know based on reports in Imperial media. This is especially true for designated enemies like China. Our MIC and the bankers that fund the Pentagon need an enemy. Both neo-cons and neo-libs love to play that game for the MIC, and are paid well for their services at think tanks. Corporate media is also on the take through military and Big Pharma ad revenues.
I see you drink the swill of "anti-vaxxers" and "climate science deniers." I had little distrust of vaccines before 2020, but the lies the CDC, WHO, FDA and NIH told, to generate fear and panic, opened my eyes. There's nothing cynical in that or in questioning climate "science," unless of course you believe that even the dissidents are FOS.
Oh, "The Chinese government routinely closes down parts of the internet to avoid socially-divisive or politically-embarrassing news or debates?" Maybe it does, and maybe it doesn't, because we surely can not trust reports in our own corporate press. But why are we throwing stones? Our own government uses the monopolies it has encouraged like Facebook, Twitter and Google (which owns YouTube) to do exactly the same thing to suppress dissent from its own narratives. Say, whatever happened to UK Channel and Del Bigtree on YouTube? Why was the NY Post crippled on Twitter just before the 2020 election? You want to talk about conditions? A few years back, a Florida inmate was scalded to death by prison guards, and the UK can't trust the US prison system not to kill Assange, just like they did Epstein, or do you believe they drove him to suicide? We have political prisoners languishing in a DC jail for misdemeanors.
You do read Caitlin's essays, don't you? The Guardian is one of the worst. So bad that some dissidents felt compelled to start the Off-Guardian to expose its lies and distortions.
Off-Guardian is a notoriously right-wing propaganda sheet closer to Sp!ked than to anything socialist. It seems that, as I suspected, you are so cynical that you see nothing at all. You are so unwilling to believe anything in the Western media that you have become blind to the reality of the world. It's entirely possible to oppose the lack of democracy and repression in China as well as that in the West. It's also a little odd that you think that scandal-sheet the NY Post would be targeted by the US state, when it's a newspaper that uncritically supports that state.
As for prison conditions, I spent six years in English & Scottish prisons between 2000 and 2017. All reports from nations such as China, Iran, Egypt, Bahrain etc are of conditions considerably worse.
Your views seem rather inconsistently held. You question the science of climate change yet consider yourself a free thinker. You're on the side of Donald Trump and his cronies.
LOL. Now you're implying I'm a Trumpista? You have no argument, so you resort to labels and epithets. There's no such thing as "the science of climate change." Science is a process, not a consensus. It REQUIRES questioning, to test theories and come closer to Truth as theories are refined or discarded.
You totally miss the point. I discourage pointing fingers at China because there's nothing we can do about what happens in China short of war. We CAN do something about the fascist collaboration of corporations with government in the West, which is now reaching totalitarian levels. China is a distraction, which is why I doubt the narrative spun by Western media. They want us to waste time, energy and money on China. Are you prepared to don fatigues and march off to liberate Xinjiang for the ETIM? Do you even read Caitlin's essays or are you here just to make contrary comments?
I never mentioned "conditions, ... in English & Scottish prisons," just what I have read about US prisons, all Western "admissions against interest," hence thoroughly believable. Here's what's happening in DC jails where dozens of Jan 6 political prisoners guilty of nothing more than misdemeanor trespass have been held for over 6 months: https://crimeandjusticenews.asu.edu/news/standing-human-sewage-reported-dc-jail
What are your criteria for labeling a website or newspapers "right wing" or a "scandal-sheet?" Do they apply to all the corporate media that took the Steele dossier at face value and claimed unequivocally that "the walls are closing in" on Trump? And no, I don't support Trump's version of imperialism any more than I support globalist totalitarians. I support efforts to elect 3rd party candidates and perhaps a few anti-imperialist Republicans like Thomas Massie or Justin Amash.
You're not the first interlocutor who has expressed this view: "I discourage pointing fingers at China because there's nothing we can do about what happens in China short of war." That is isolationism and a callous disregard for the fate of other humans "in faraway places of which we know nothing", to quote a certain pre-WWII British PM called Neville Chamberlain as an excuse for handing Czechoslovakia to the Nazis.
I'm a socialist. Central to that credo is internationalism. You're saying to journalists and others languishing cells in China, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and elsewhere: "Sorry, nothing we can do, it's your own hard luck for living in countries that are even less democratic and free than the UK/USA etc". That's disturbingly close to the America First ethos that has resurfaced lately and which was so notorious in 1939-41.
Should all the organisations campaigning on behalf of oppressed people around the world shut up shop because there's supposedly nothing we can do? Should the BDS movement, or Palestine Action which occupies premises of apartheid Israel's UK-based weapons company Elbit Systems abandon their work? Because that's what you're saying.
As for prison conditions: I'm an abolitionist, so of course I'm aware of what happens in UK & US prisons. But I am also aware that prisons in Iran, Turkey, China, Saudi Arabia and so on are almost certainly considerably worse. This doesn't bother you?