DISPATCHES FROM MOON OF ALABAMA, BY "B"
This article is part of an ongoing series of dispatches from Moon of Alabama
During my daily skimming of the mainstream media at times I 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.
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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:
- Zhang Zhan: China jails citizen journalist for Wuhan reports - BBC
- Chinese Citizen Journalist Sentenced to 4 Years for Covid Reporting - NYT
- China sentences citizen journalist to four years in prison for Wuhan lockdown reports - Washington Post
- China jails citizen-journalist for four years over Wuhan virus reporting - Reuters
- Chinese citizen journalist Zhang Zhan sentenced for reporting early on COVID in Wuhan - CBSNEWS
- COVID-19: Chinese citizen journalist Zhang Zhan jailed for four years over Wuhan reporting - SKY
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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Posted by b on December 28, 2020 at 18:28 UTC | Permalink
Select Comments: “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.” https://thegrayzone.com/2020/ 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 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. 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 notice 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; [subjective] moral values above social values. The CIA is good in finding those wackos even in nations we don't think they exist. India is also very active in the disinformation game, including this massive and long term operation - mainly for anti-Pakistan, but also anti-China: Posted by: d dan | Dec 28 2020 19:48 utc | 5 This post suggests that she may be involved with the Eastern Lighting cult, also known as the Church of Almighty God. https://supportnewchina.blogspot.com/2020/12/zhang-zhans-abuse-of-socialist-freedom.html”>ZHANG ZHAN’S ABUSE OF SOCIALIST FREEDOM BROUGHT TO AN END! Posted by: LC | Dec 28 2020 19:58 utc | 6 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 Well, it's no way to run a country, lying your ass off all the time, as the results show. I have long been mystified by the political hacks here faith in the efficacy of bullshit for running a country. But then I realized that is not what they want to do, they want to exploit the country and get rich, and then depart like their 3rd world collaborators. And bullshit is what they do. Posted by: Bemildred | Dec 28 2020 20:13 utc | 9 I might have added @ 8 also that another Navalny groupie follower, Lyubov Sobol, also a lawyer, was arrested recently for invading the apartment of supposed FSB employee Konstantin Kudryavtsev's mother-in-law (after entering the building on false pretences) and filming around the apartment. Sobol was accompanied by people illegally wearing Rospotrebnadzor uniforms. To date there's no clear evidence that Konstantin Kudryavtsev actually did speak to Navalny on the phone and the entire phone interview (during which Navalny was told that the FSB tried to kill him a second time by putting Novichok on his underwear) may have been a stunt pulled by people who stole parts of a phone database and the metadata attached to phone transactions on that database. Der Spiegel, CNN, another media outlet and Bellingcat apparently paid Bitcoin or cryptocurrency of some sort to access the data from sources to whom the phone database information was "leaked". Interestingly the British Lancet magazine released a report which reveals that 31 hours after Navalny was admitted to hospital in Omsk, a German medical crew had access to Navalny. This gives a whole day and seven hours for the FSB to do its dastardly work of trying to kill Navalny a second time while he was in intensive care and receiving (supposedly) intubation. Posted by: Jen | Dec 28 2020 20:34 utc | 11 > "Wuhan, where the first large outbreak of Covid-19 occurred" .. ahem .. where a detection was first made public. (not the location of the first outbreak) Posted by: mijj | Dec 28 2020 20:35 utc | 12 The tendency for multiple news publishers to all use the same article on even major stories presumably reflects budgetary considerations, so the fact that there are (at least) six distinct pieces from different writers on this situation is of interest. The organist doth protest too much, methinks. Posted by: farm ecologist | Dec 28 2020 19:34 utc | 3 News publishers are all loss leaders. Their goal is to provide the daily bread of propaganda to feed the masses. As Craig Murray recent tweet puts it "the Press is not a genuine commercial enterprise. It is a loss maker on which billionaires are happy to splash money to produce propaganda for tax, regulatory and governmental regimes that aid billionaires' wider interests.". The Epoch Times has recently been spending a lot of money on ads on youtube and I received in my mail box a copy of their rag just before Christmas. Propaganda works and you can see the results with "half of the US population chanting Russia did it and the other half China did it". This sort of stupidity could get us all killed. Posted by: Tom | Dec 28 2020 20:41 utc | 14 Former senior CIA official John Stockwell discusses how the CIA would place false reports in newspapers around the world, including in the Washington Post. Stories that were complete fabrications, that were attacking their enemies, like Cuba. What a courageous man Stockwell is, to give up his career, his support network, and invite attacks from one of the most dangerous organizations around. Posted by: Antiwar7 | Dec 28 2020 21:19 utc | 17 Here's a good 48-minute YouTube video documentary from the end of October that was put together by some 20 expat YouTuber vloggers living in China. I came across it about a month ago. The expats are Canadian, American, British, and other European, Asian nationalities. Blaming Wuhan - The Documentary In adddition to that one, this 20-minute video from an Israeli expat in China also provides a counterweight to the Mighty Wurlitzer media machine's designated portrayal of Wuhan. From Lockdown to Rebirth: What is Wuhan like in November 2020? Guess these YouTubers could be called "citizen journalists", too, not in the sense of nationality but of ordinary people doing the job not being done by the West's professional so-called "journalists". Posted by: Canadian Cents | Dec 28 2020 21:32 utc | 18
John Stockwell interview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46DfBFWxTuM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clrRRWge8Kg
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"b" is Moon of Alabama's founding (and chief) editor. This site's purpose is to discuss politics, economics, philosophy and blogger Billmon's Whiskey Bar writings. Moon Of Alabama was opened as an independent, open forum for members of the Whiskey Bar community. Bernhard )"b") started and still runs the site. Once in a while you will also find posts and art from regular commentators. You can reach the current administrator of this site by emailing Bernhard at MoonofA@aol.com.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
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