Media Gassing on Syria Conspiracy Theories (Again)

The Largest Conspiracy Theory Peddlers Are MSM and the US State Department

by Caitlin Johnstone - Rogue Journalist

December 8, 2018

The US State Department has issued a statement accusing the Syrian government of having carried out a false flag chemical weapons attack in northwestern Aleppo with the intent to blame it on the jihadist factions in the region, citing “credible info” that the public has not been permitted to see.

Never mind the known fact that there are actual, literal Al Qaeda affiliates who have admitted to using chemical weapons in Aleppo, and who are known to have used chemical weapons throughout Syria even by the State Department’s own admission: the Official Narrative is that only the Syrian government uses chemical weapons, so the chemical weapons usage must necessarily be a false flag staged by Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

Except they didn’t use the words “false flag”.

Despite the accusation being the exact definition of the thing that a false flag attack is, you won’t see the US government using that term, nor will you ever see it used in this instance by any of the authorized mainstream narrative-framing institutions like CNN or Fox News. This is because the term “false flag” is reserved solely for mention when referring to crazy, kooky Kremlin propaganda, as in the insane, unhinged, tinfoil hat belief that terrorists in Syria might possibly have some kind of motive to stage a false flag chemical attack in order to get the US, UK and France to act as their air force in a retaliatory strike against the Syrian government.

That kind of false flag would be completely inconceivable to any right-minded empire loyalist, and is forbidden to even think about. 

OffGuardian

@OffGuardian0

#MSM trying to link the #GiletJaunes protests to #Russia and #Putin.

Only surprising thing is how long it took.https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-08/pro-russia-social-media-takes-aim-at-macron-as-yellow-vests-rage?srnd=technology-vp …

6:20 AM - Dec 8, 2018

Pro-Russia Social Media Takes Aim at Macron as Yellow Vests Rage

Among 600 Twitter accounts known to promote Kremlin views, the top hashtag now is #giletsjaunes, the French name for the so-called Yellow Vests protest movement, according to the Alliance for...

bloomberg.com

At the same time we are seeing a push from the mass media to advance a narrative that the Yellow Vests protests in France are due to Russian influence, with Iraq-raping neocon Max Boot publishing a column today in the Washington Post that is based entirely around the talking point that two trending Russian topics on social media have been “giletsjaune” and “France,” and Bloomberg putting out an article blatantly titled “Pro-Russia Social Media Takes Aim at Macron as Yellow Vests Rage”. Their entire theory is that since there are people in Russia talking about a major event that everyone else in the world is also talking about, the protests against Macron’s unpopular centrist policies are therefore the result of a conspiracy seeded by Russia.

But you’ll never hear this theory about a Russian conspiracy referred to as a “conspiracy theory” by the mainstream press. The theory that Russian elites have conspired to infiltrate the highest levels of the US government has been given serious treatment at the top echelons of media and political influence, despite its lacking any discernible evidence whatsoever, but when they talk about these alleged conspiracies they always make a point of using the word “collusion” instead. There is no actual difference between the words collude and conspire when used in this way, but the former is used because a deliberate effort has been made to stigmatize the word “conspiracy” while the word “collude” remains effectively neutral in the public eye.

But the fact of the matter is that conspiracy theories have gone mainstream, and there is no legitimate reason to call the authorized, power-manufactured conspiracy theories by a different name than the grassroots narratives like those about 9/11 or the JFK assassination. Indeed, due to the nature of populist folk narratives there is a lot more publicly available evidence contradicting the official 9/11 and JFK assassination stories than there is for the establishment Russia conspiracy theories, because those narratives often boil down to nothing more than secretive intelligence agencies saying “This is true because we said so.” Since grassroots conspiracy theories are unable to rely on empty assertions from authority, they tend to be built upon information that is publicly available.

Some people get annoyed with me for using the term conspiracy theory at all, but I insist that the phrase is itself intrinsically neutral: a theory about a conspiracy. The problem is not the phrase, it is the stigma that has been attached to that phrase by establishment media and establishment politicians; shifting to a different phrase to describe theories about conspiracies would only ensure that that phrase becomes stigmatized in the exact same way by the same sort of campaign. This would only ensure the survival of the tactic of regurgitating a pre-stigmatized label in the war of ideas instead of advancing actual arguments. The fact of the matter is that powerful people do indeed conspire, those conspiracies do indeed need to be talked about, and the largest promulgators of conspiracy theories are not Infowars or RT, but mainstream media and the US State Department.

Those who dismiss an idea by calling it a “conspiracy theory” without providing further argumentation are simply admitting to you that they have no argument, and it is right to point this out when they do it, because something being a conspiracy theory doesn’t mean it’s not grounded in facts. Some conspiracy theories are good and are backed by solid evidence, some are stupid and are circulated for intellectually dishonest reasons. Once upon a time you would be called a conspiracy theorist for saying the west is arming terrorists in Syria or the DNC is conspiring to ensure the primary victory of Hillary Clinton; those things are now conspiracy facts, as history has vindicated the solid theories which predicted them. Other conspiracy theories are promulgated by dim-witted partisan loyalists for no other reason than dim-witted partisan loyalty, like the aforementioned Russiagate conspiracy theory, or the QAnon conspiracy theory which claims Donald Trump is leading a rebellion against the Deep State as cryptically reported by an anonymous user on 8chan.

Other conspiracy theories are subscribed to simply because they help people escape the cognitive dissonance of conflicting beliefs. For example, a strong believer in capitalism who sees the undeniable signs that a plutocratic class has control of their government, but who cannot accept that this plutocratic takeover was facilitated by a rampant capitalist system which ensures that the greediest sociopaths rise to the top, may avoid cognitive dissonance by explaining the existence of the corrupt dominator class with conspiracy theories about Jews or pedovore cults. A liberal who cannot accept that neoliberal empire loyalists like Macron have failed to “make centrism cool” as Max Boot predicted will avoid cognitive dissonance by explaining the failures of the Church of the Status Quo with conspiracy theories about Russian social media campaigns.

Conspiracy theories, in reality, are nothing more than people’s attempts to explain what is going on in their world. Why Trump got elected. Why things stay shitty despite our perfectly rational attempts to change them. Why voting doesn’t seem to make much difference in the actual behaviors of one’s government. Why we keep marching into stupid wars, Orwellian dystopia and climate collapse despite having every incentive not to. Why the wealthiest of the wealthy keep getting wealthier while everyone else gets poorer and poorer. Some attempts to explain these things will come from a well-informed and intellectually honest place, and some will come from a myopic and intellectually dishonest place. Their individual merits can only be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

And in my opinion the conspiracy theories coming from the world’s most powerful institutions are the most dishonest by far. I saw a recent post by the WikiLeaks Twitter account which referred to the corporate media as “the narrative business pretending to be in the news business,” which is in my opinion a perfect way to phrase it. The real currency of the world is not gold, nor is it bureaucratic fiat, nor even raw military force; it’s narrative control. The ability to control the stories people tell about what’s going on in their world means the ability to control how they think, how they vote, how they behave, and how they all agree money and power itself operates within our society. Since society is made of narrative, controlling the narrative is controlling that society.

Conspiracy theories are a way for those in power to manipulate the narrative without actually giving the public any hard facts and evidence, and the world’s most powerful institutions are increasingly relying on conspiracy theories because they don’t have facts and evidence on their side. And why would they? The same power establishment which deceived the world into destroying Iraq is obviously far too depraved to be able to justify its global hegemony with factual evidence. All they have is narrative control, and they’re starting to lose even that.

________________________

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Hijacking Meng Wanzhou: Huawei Hostage of "Gangster" Nation

The kidnapping of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou

by Andre Damon - WSWS

8 December 2018

On Wednesday, the world was shocked to learn that Canadian authorities had arrested and confined without bail Meng Wanzhou, the deputy chairperson of the Chinese smart phone giant Huawei, on charges brought by US prosecutors of violating American sanctions against Iran.

Washington is calling for her extradition to the US.

The claims by US officials that the move has “nothing to do with a trade war” are transparent lies, dismissed even by the media defenders of the action.

Meng’s arrest on December 1 and confinement on tendentious and opaque charges potentially carrying a sentence of 60 years amount to little more than a kidnapping.

The British Financial Times, obviously unnerved by its ally’s action, called the move “provocative,” describing it as,

“the use of American power to pursue political and economic ends rather than straightforward law enforcement.”

It is, in other words, an act of gangsterism, intended to send a message to “allies” and “enemies” alike: do the United States’ bidding or you will end up like Meng, or worse. In pursuit of its geopolitical aims, the United States functions as a rogue state, violating international law with wanton abandon.

It is the chief protagonist in an international descent into lawlessness that recalls the conditions of great power conflict and criminality that led to World War II. The US imposes unilateral and illegal sanctions on any country it deems an obstacle to its hegemonic agenda, and then employs the methods of terror to punish those who defy its dictates.

But after news of Meng’s arrest stunned the world, the New York Times dropped another bombshell the next morning. As Donald Trump was sitting down to dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping last Saturday to arrange a “truce” in the US-China trade war, the US president was unaware that the unprecedented arrest was about to take place.

This was despite the fact that figures such as Democratic Senator Mark Warner and Republican Senator Richard Burr, as well as National Security Adviser John R. Bolton, were alerted to the arrest.

Asked why he did not tell the president, Bolton, who was with Trump at the meeting with Xi, declared inexplicably, “we certainly don’t inform the president on every” notification from the Justice Department.


Meng’s arrest has upended any prospect of a truce in the trade war between the United States and China. The Financial Times warned that,

“That entente already looked likely to come unstuck. After Ms. Meng’s arrest, the deadline for progress looks like a time bomb.”

The fact that such a provocative action could take place, according to the semi-official narrative, without the knowledge of the American president, makes one thing abundantly clear: The US conflict with China is not the product of Trump’s personality or his particular brand of “America First” populism. Rather, a substantial section of not only Trump’s administration, but of the permanent or “deep” state of the intelligence bureaucracy, as well as leading lawmakers, have signed on to Trump’s aggressive anti-China policy.

Responding to news of the arrest, Senator Warner, a leading proponent of internet censorship by US technology companies, praised the action, declaring:

“It has been clear for some time that Huawei… poses a threat to our national security.”

He added, “It’s my hope that the Trump administration will hold Huawei fully accountable for breaking sanctions law.”

Other figures close to the Democrats were quick to praise the move, even going so far as to condemn Trump for not being hard enough on China.

“For too long, American leaders have failed to respond adequately to China’s increasing assertiveness,” wrote New York Times columnist David Leonhardt.

“A more hawkish policy toward China makes sense.”

None of the three leading American newspapers—the Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal —published a single commentary in the least bit critical of the White House’s criminal action.

COP24: Sky Not the Limit for 2018 Global Carbon Emissions

Global Carbon Emissions Set to Hit Record High in 2018

by TRNN

December 7, 2018

Global carbon dioxide emissions have reached a record high this year, according to a new Global Carbon Project report released Wednesday. Worldwide carbon emissions are expected to rise by 2.7 percent this year. Last year they grew by 1.6 percent. The report came during the UN’s climate talks, or COP24, for which nearly 30,000 participants from almost 200 nations have convened in Katowice, Poland.

Joining me to talk about this new report and COP24 is Naomi Ages. Naomi is the senior climate and energy campaigner at Greenpeace USA, and she’s joining us from Katowice, Poland. Thanks so much for being here today.

From COP24 in Poland, Greenpeace USA’s Naomi Ages says that carbon emissions are set to rise by 2.7% in 2018 due to more coal use in Asia, and that to combat this trend nations need to do more than what they agreed to in the 2015 Paris Accord 

Huawei Head Arrest in Canada Resonates Around the World

Huawei chief faces US fraud charges relating to Iran sanctions

by MiddleEast Eye

December 7, 2018

Earlier this year, Huawei topped Apple to become the second largest smartphone maker in the world

Prosecutors in the United States want a top executive of China's Huawei Technologies to face fraud charges linked to the alleged skirting of US sanctions on Iran, a Canadian court heard on Friday.

Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou, 46, who is also the daughter of the company founder, was arrested on 1 December in Vancouver at the request of the US.
The arrest, revealed by Canadian authorities late on Wednesday, was part of a US investigation into an alleged scheme to use the global banking system to evade US sanctions against Iran, people familiar with the probe told Reuters.

Hauawei CFO Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Canada
on 1 December at US government request

Canada's Justice Department has declined to provide details of the case. A judge on Friday lifted a publication ban Meng had secured that curbed the media's ability to report on the evidence or documents presented in court.

Meng is charged with setting up a subsidiary called Skycom to evade sanctions on Iran, according to Canada's CBC News. The US government alleges that Skycom is a part of Huawei, not a separate partner.

From 2009 to 2014, the court heard, Huawei used Skycom to transact business in Iran despite US and European Union bans.

If extradited, Meng would face charges of conspiracy to defraud multiple financial institutions, with a maximum sentence of 30 years for each charge.

The news of Meng's arrest roiled global stock markets on fears the move could escalate a trade war between the United States and China after a truce was last week between President Donald Trump and China's leader Xi Jinping.

Trump did not know about the arrest in advance, two US officials said on Thursday.

Chinese Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said on Friday that neither Canada nor the United States had provided China any evidence that Meng had broken any law in those two countries, and reiterated Beijing's demand that she be released.

Huawei said on Wednesday that "the company has been provided very little information regarding the charges and is not aware of any wrongdoing by Ms. Meng".

Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland told reporters on a conference call that China had been assured by Canada that due process was "absolutely being followed".

Chinese state media have slammed Meng's detention, accusing the United States of trying to "stifle" Huawei and curb its global expansion.

Earlier this year, Huawei topped US manufacturer Apple to become the second largest smartphone maker in the world behind Samsung.

NeoCon Insider Infamy: Trump Blindsided by Arrest of Huawei's Meng Wanzhou

Neocons Sabotage Trump's Trade Talks - Huawei CFO Taken Hostage To Blackmail China 

by Moon of Alabama

December 7, 2018

CNN reports that White House chief of staff John Kelly is expected to resign soon. There have been similar rumors before, but this time the news may actually be true. That is bad for Trump and U.S. policies. Kerry is one a the few counterweights to national security advisor John Bolton.

His replacement will likely be whoever Bolton chooses. That will move control over Trump policies further into the hands of the neo-conservatives.

It was Bolton who a week ago intentionally damaged U.S. relations with China.

The U.S. Justice Department arranged for Canada to arrest the chief financial officer of Huawei, Meng Wanzhou, over alleged U.S. sanctions violations with regards to Iran. The case is not over the sanction Trump recently imposed, but over an alleged collision with the sanction regime before the nuclear deal with Iran. The details are still unknown.

Meng Wanzhou is a daughter of the founder and main owner of Huawei, Ren Zhengfei, and was groomed to be his successor. The company is extremely well regarded in China. It is one its jewel pieces and, with 170,000 employees and $100 billion in revenues, an important political actor.

The arrest on December 1 happened while president Trump was negotiating with president Xi of China about trade relations. Trump did not know about the upcoming arrest but Bolton was informed of it:

"While the Justice Department did brief the White House about the impending arrest, Mr. Trump was not told about it. And the subject did not come up at the dinner with Mr. Xi.

"Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, John R. Bolton, said on NPR that he knew about the arrest in advance, ..."

Bolton surely should have informed Trump before his dinner with Xi, in which Bolton took part, but he didn't.

 bigger

It was a trap. The arrest is a public slap in the face of China and to Xi personally. It will not be left unanswered. Whatever Trump may have agreed upon with Xi is now worthless. John Bolton intentionally sabotaged the talks and the U.S. relations with China.

Huawei is Chinese manufacturer of telecommunication equipment. It is the world leader in 5G wireless technology that will soon replace the wireless networks we know today with much higher data capacities, faster response times and many new features.

After Huawei was founded in 1987 it copied technology from Cisco and other U.S. manufacturers. Today it is a technology power of its own. It is one of the leading inventor in the 5G field and over the last years filed thousands of patents related to it. Its success in the field is genuinely self made:

"With 5G, Chinese companies started developing know-how early. Huawei has invested $600 million in 5G research since 2009, according to a company spokesman, and has committed an additional $800 million for this year. The company is testing 5G equipment with European telecom operators including BT, Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone.

"As of early 2017, 10 percent of the 1,450 patents essential for 5G networks were in Chinese hands, according to analysts with Jefferies, who wrote that they expected the figure to rise. That number includes intellectual property rights held by Huawei; another Chinese equipment maker, ZTE; and others."

Huawei's share in 5G patents has since risen further. Right now it is the only true 5G supplier that can build a complete network.

The company is still depending on computer chips manufactured in Singapore, Taiwan and the United States. But Huawei and other Chinese companies are now investing in their own chip manufacturing technology. They plan to use the 7 nanometer process which only few other companies in the world provide. Huawei is also investing in qantum computing.

The December 1 arrest of Meng Wanzhou and a number of other incidents on that day gave raise to a number of interesting conspiracy theories in the Chinese web sphere (via Peter Lee, links added):

Red @OmeletteRed - 19:09 utc- 6 Dec 2018

A great explanation of the Huawei Kidnapping, written by a comrade in the Deng Gang Central discord. There may be a lot more than meets the eye in Canada’s shock arrest, at US behest, of Huawei’s CFO and heir apparent Meng Wanzhou (link below).

Chinese sources have assembled the following facts: 

• April 2017: A director of Chinese tech giant Huawei personally escorted famed Shanghai-born physicist Zhang Shoucheng from the latter’s hotel in Shenzhen. Jackson & Wood Professor of Physics at Stanford University, Zhang was in town to attend an IT summit.
• Sept. 2018: Prof. Zhang receives a European physics award, one of his many honors. His work in quantum physics is expected to revolutionize the global semiconductor industry. Yang Zhenning, the first Chinese scientist to receive the Nobel Physics Prize (1957), had predicted that Zhang would be the next one.
• Dec. 1, 2018: Prof. Zhang and Meng Wanzhou are expected to attend a dinner in Argentina, where the G20 summit is being held.
• Dec. 1, 2018: On her way there, Meng is arrested in transit by the Canadian government.
• Dec. 1, 2018: Prof. Zhang falls to his death from a building in the US, allegedly a suicide. Said to be suffering from depression, he was 55.
• Dec. 1, 2018: A nighttime fire breaks out at a factory of Holland’s ASML, the world’s leading manufacturer of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography technology. EUV is crucial to the production of the next generation of semi-conductors, which US and Chinese tech firms as well as Korea’s Samsung are competing to be first to bring to market. Leading Chinese semiconductor producer SMIC is known to have ordered EUV technology worth US$120 million from ASML, for scheduled delivery early in 2019. After the fire, ASML announced that it expected delays in shipments of its products, notably early 2019.

Prof. Zhang (right) was also a venture capitalist. He was a founding partner of a Silicon Valley-based fund investing primarily in early-stage technologies. Danhua Capital, also known as Digital Horizon Capital, holds shares in Silicon’s Valley’s start-ups who work on artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and drones. Danhua is backed by Zhongguancun Development Group, a state-owned entity funded by the Beijing municipal government. The company has come under scrutiny of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) which suspects (pdf) that its purpose is to pilfer critical U.S. know how and to transfer it to China.

Zhang's family says that his death had nothing to do with U.S.-China tensions.

The U.S. spy services and military do not like Huawei. They can no longer easily hack the equipment it sells. Convincing Cisco or some other U.S. company to leave back doors in their equipment is quite simple. One can always threaten the management or board of these companies with some tax investigation or over other shady activities.

That is not so easy when the company is hosted in China. It requires the NSA and others to use more expensive efforts to reach their aim:

"The National Security Agency breached Huawei servers years ago in an effort to investigate its operations and its ties to Chinese security agencies and the military, and to create back doors so the National Security Agency could roam in networks around the globe wherever Huawei equipment was used."

The U.S. is lobbying various countries not to use Huawei equipment. It claims that the Chinese government could use it for spying. That thought was obviously born when the U.S. spies looked at what they are doing themselves. Australia, New Zealand and Japan already agreed to keep Huawei out.

Today the EU tech commissioner Andrus Ansip also warned of using Huawei. Ansip was previously the prime minister of the U.S. protectorate of Estonia. He is known to be a U.S. mole and is not taken too seriously:

"Germany, meanwhile, said it opposed excluding any manufacturers from the planned construction of 5G mobile networks."

Meng Wanzhou, the arrested Huawei CFO, will have her bail hearing in Canada today. It is likely that she will fight her extradition to the United States. Staying in full compliance with U.S. sanctions is difficult and Huawei may indeed have not always done so. Then again - U.S. allegations of sanction violations can always be made up from hot air.

They are certainly not the real reason why Meng Wanzhou has come under fire. The White House even admitted such.

 bigger

Meng Wanzhou was taken hostage to be used as leverage in China trade talks. The 'leverage' could also be used to push Huawei into providing the NSA with back doors to its equipment. The ruthlessness of this blackmail operation is breath taking. It is typical of neo-conservative behavior to use such extreme measures. Trump's foreign policy is run by neo-conservatives and they are again, like when they laid the grounds to invade Iraq with fake intelligence, creating huge damage:

"Melania was right when she told an interviewer in Africa that her husband is surrounded by enemies within his administration. These are people who either opposed him during the 2016 campaign season or who signed up early in the campaign with an expectation that they could get jobs in a Trump Administration and in both cases understood that a president not accustomed to thinking seriously about other than business hustle could be manipulated or deceived in pursuit of their own agenda rather than his or that of the "deplorables."

"These people are the neocon incubi and succubi who seek an even more dominant hegemonic role in the world for the US. They are out and out imperialists of a kind not seen since the time of McKinley and the US-Filipino War.
...
"Bolton, Pompeo, his new helpmate Mary Kissel, dozens and dozens of Obama globalist holdovers, and people who find Trump's boorish ways repulsive, they all are undermining the administration from within and Trump does nothing about it.
...
"Is Trump competent in such matters as tax policy, regulatory reform and trade negotiations? I think he is, but he is allowing the neocons to destroy the possibility of rational political relations in Europe and the Middle East."

... and with China.

Kelly is leaving. Bolton and Pompeo have Trump's ear and will manipulate him into selecting one of their friends as Kelly's replacement. Secretary fo Defense Mattis is the next one to be kicked out. When Bolton's selected persons are in place, U.S. foreign policy will become even more radical than it already is.

Taking the CFO of one of China's premier companies hostage to gain control over its technology and as leverage in trade talks is already an extreme measure which will have long term damaging effects on U.S.-China relations. Imagine what else can be done when the little that is left of lawful behavior and decency in U.S. foreign policy gets completely thrown out.

Insect Armageddon: You Won't Miss Them Long When They're Gone

The Deathly Insect Dilemma 

by Robert Hunziker - CounterPunch

December 7, 2018

Insect abundance is plummeting with wild abandon, worldwide!

Species evolve and go extinct as part of nature’s normal course over thousands and millions of years, but the current rate of devastation is off the charts and downright scary. Moreover, there is no quick and easy explanation for this sudden emergence of massive loss around the globe.

Something is dreadfully, horribly wrong. Beyond doubt, it is not normal for 50%-to-90% of a species to drop dead, but that is happening right now from Germany to Australia to Puerto Rico’s tropical rainforest. Scientists are rattled. The world is largely unaware of the implications because it is all so new. It goes without saying that the risk of loss of insects spells loss of ecosystems necessary for very important stuff, like food production.

Farmland birds that depend upon a diet of insects in Europe have disappeared by >50% in just three decades. French farmland partridge flocks have crashed by 80%. Nightingale abundance is down by almost 80%. Turtledoves are down nearly 80%.

In Denmark (1) owls, (2) Eurasian hobbies, and (3) Bee-eaters, which subsist on large insects like beetles and dragonflies, have abruptly disappeared. Poof, gone!

Krefeld Entomological Society (est. 1905) in Germany trapped insect samples in 63 nature preserves in Europe representing nearly 17,000 sampling days (equivalent to 46.5 years). Krefeld consistently found massive declines in every kind of habitat they sampled. Up to 80% wipeouts.

As for one example, Krefeld data for hoverflies, a pollinator often mistaken for a bee, registered 17,291 hoverflies from 143 species trapped in a reserve in 1989. Twenty-five years later at the same location, 2,737 individuals from 104 species or down 84%. (Source: Gretchen Vogel, Where Have All The Insects Gone? Science Magazine, May 10, 2017)

A shortage of insect pollinators in the Maoxian Valley in China has forced farmers to hire human workers at $19 per worker/per day to replace bees. Each worker pollinates 5-to-10 apple trees by hand per day.

Jack Hasenpusch of Australian Insect Farms, which collects swarms of insects, says: “I’ve been wondering for the last few years why some of the insects have been dropping off … This year has really taken the cake with the lack of insects, it’s left me dumbfounded, I can’t figure out what’s going on.” (Source: Mark Rigby, Insect Population Decline Leaves Australian Scientists Scratching For Solutions, ABC Far North, Feb. 23, 2018)

According to entomologist Dr. Cameron Webb/University of Sydney, researchers around the world widely acknowledge the problem of insect decline but are at a loss to explain the causes.

Functional Extinctions

Today’s Sixth Extinction is so prevalent that scientists prefer to designate species loss as “functional extinctions,” which means functionally extinct animals and plants are still present but no longer prevalent enough to affect an ecosystem. Not only, seed dispersal and predation and pollination and other ecological functions are also lost.

“More than three-quarters of the world’s food crops rely at least in part on pollination by insects and other animals,” (Source: Pollinators Vital to Our Food Supply Under Threat, FAO/UN).

But, already some insect populations have dropped by as much as 90%, e.g., (1) the Monarch butterfly in North America and (2) the great yellow bumblebee in Europe.

One of the biggest drivers of decline is loss of wild flowers. Here’s the problem: Low-intensity farming of small fields lined with weeds and flowers (think: “American Gothic” by Grant Wood circa 1930) have been overrun by vast industrial crop monocultures with fields stretching to the distant horizon with not a weed or a flower in sight, which paradoxically serves as evidence that the overused maxim “the good ole days” shows true grit.

The Insect Apocalypse is Here

Photo illustration by Matt Dorfman.

Source photographs: Bridgeman Images.

Additionally, herbicides like glyphosate (Roundup) allow industrial farming to grow perfect monocultures of crops, as everything else is wiped out. But, where does the glyphosate ultimately go? Breakfast anyone?

The world is rapidly filling up to its brim with insecticides that are toxic to pollinators. For example, neonicotinoids (agricultural insecticides) are meant to kill specific insect pests but invariably get into plant tissue and nectar and pollen and kills insects carte blanche, across the board. Thus, ironically, farmland ecosystems are poisoned by industrial farming practices.

Neonicotinoids are a divisive issue worldwide:

“The European Union today expanded a controversial ban of neonicotinoid pesticides, based on the threat they pose to pollinators. The decision pleased environmental groups and was greeted with trepidation by farming associations, which fear economic harm.” (Source: European Union Expands Ban of Three Neonicotinoid Pesticides, Science Magazine, April 27, 2018)

As of August 2018, the EPA has scheduled “planned completion” of a “Review of Neonicotinoid Pesticides” for sometime in 2019. A coalition of food safety and environmental groups delivered 219,210 public comments to EPA earlier in the year, urging the agency ban neonicotinoid pesticides, which they view as a leading cause of pollinator decline. Additionally, more than 4.4 million Avaaz members have called for a ban on neonics (Avaaz, est. 2007, is one of the world’s largest most powerful online activist networks).

“People from around the country have made it clear: The EPA must act now to save our pollinators. No matter what Scott Pruitt’s industry friends say, this is a problem we can’t ignore. The health of our food system depends on it,” said U.S. Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-OR). (Source: Environment America, News Release, 219,210 Americans Call on EPA to Ban Bee-Killing Pesticides, April 21, 2018).

“Neonics are 5,000 to 10,000 times more toxic than DDT,” according to Jean-Marc Bonmatinof of The National Centre for Scientific Research in France,” Ibid.

Rachel Carson (Silent Spring, 1962) would be horrified. As far back as the 60s she warned about indiscriminate use of pesticides and accused the chemical industry of disinformation, and she scolded public officials for accepting the chemical industry’s claims; ultimately, her efforts led to a nationwide ban on DDT and inspiration for creation of the EPA. (The ban on DDT saved America’s national bird since 1782, the bald eagle.)

Similar to concerns about use of synthetic pesticides, sensitivity of insects to global warming has only recently been exposed in new studies published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showing alarming losses of insects in pristine tropical rainforests over a multi-decade study that has rocked the science world.

Over that same 40-year time period, the average high temperature in the rainforest increased by 4 degrees Fahrenheit. Which negatively impacts insects because after a certain thermal threshold insects will no longer lay eggs, and their internal chemistry breaks down.

“Without insects and other land-based arthropods, EO Wilson, the renowned Harvard entomologist, and inventor of sociobiology, estimates that humanity would last all of a few months,” Ibid.

Well then, the number of insects still out there qualifies as one of the most puzzling questions of the 21st century.

Postscript: “Our planet is now in the midst of its sixth mass extinction of plants and animals — the sixth wave of extinctions in the past half-billion years. We’re currently experiencing the worst spate of species die-offs since the loss of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Although extinction is a natural phenomenon, it occurs at a natural “background” rate of about one to five species per year. Scientists estimate we’re now losing species at 1,000 to 10,000 times the background rate, with literally dozens going extinct every day.” (Source: The Extinction Crisis, Center for Biological Diversity, biologicaldiversity.org) Whew!

Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

More articles by:Robert Hunziker

Canadian Lap Dog Nips Master's Nuisance: Trudeau Gov't Enjoins US World Sanctions War

At Washington’s Behest: Canada arrests top Chinese executive for “sanctions busting”

by Keith Jones and Roger Jordan - WSWS

7 December 2018

Acting at Washington’s behest, Canadian authorities have arrested a senior executive of Huawei Technologies, the Chinese telecommunications giant, for allegedly violating US economic sanctions against Iran. The arrest and impending extradition of Meng Wanzhou to the US is a diplomatic and geopolitical provocation. Asian and other global stock markets fell sharply Thursday, due to expectations that the US effort to seize and prosecute Meng will roil US-Chinese relations and torpedo the 90-day “truce” in the US-China tariff war that US President Trump and Chinese President Xi agreed to on the sidelines of last weekend’s G20 summit.

Meng is not just the chief financial officer and one of four deputy chairs of China’s largest private company and the world’s second largest maker of mobile phones. She is the daughter of Huawei’s founder and current head, Ren Zhengfei.

Meng was reportedly arrested in Vancouver last Saturday, while changing planes. However, her arrest was made public only on Wednesday evening. She is to appear at what Canadian authorities have described as a bail hearing today.

That Meng’s arrest was a calculated provocation is underscored by its timing. US National Security Adviser John Bolton has said that he was aware Meng was in the process of being apprehended when he joined Trump for his Saturday evening dinner meeting with Xi and other top Chinese officials. Yet the Americans breathed not a word about the bombshell they were about to burst, with Canada’s assistance.

As Li Daokui, a prominent scholar at Tsinghua University put it,

“Imagine that Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg was detained in Japan or Korea at the request of the Chinese government. Imagine what the political response would be in the US.”

US officials and Republican and Democratic Congressional leaders have all hailed Meng’s arrest, which is fully in line with American global strategy—both in targeting China’s high-tech sector and in using US sanctions to threaten and bully states, political leaders, and US corporate rivals around the world.

“Americans are grateful that our Canadian partners have arrested the chief financial officer of a giant Chinese telecom company for breaking US sanctions against Iran,” enthused Republican Senator Ben Sasse, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Chinese authorities, as would be expected, have vehemently protested Meng’s arrest.

“Detaining a person without providing an explanation has undoubtedly violated her human rights,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang.

“China,” said Geng, “has made clear its stern position to the Canadian side and the US side respectively on this, demanding them to immediately clarify the reason for the detention, immediately release the detainee and earnestly protect the legal and legitimate rights and interests of the person involved.”

Meng arrest has huge global geopolitical implications

• First, it underscores Washington’s determination to enforce its punishing, illegal sanctions against Iran. In recent months, top US officials have repeatedly threatened to personally target corporate executives and bankers, including those from SWIFT and other European-based firms, if they refuse to serve as conscripts in Washington’s economic war on Iran.

• Second, and even more importantly, it represents a significant escalation in the ever deepening economic and military-strategic conflict between the US and China.

For both commercial and military reasons, Huawei is a major US target in this conflict.

Washington has been demanding that its partners in the US National Security Agency-led Five Eyes global spying network—Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand—take action to limit Huawei’s role in their cellphone networks, and to outright exclude it from the development of 5-G mobile communications.

This is being justified on security grounds, that is, on the claim that Chinese authorities could work with Huawei in the same way the NSA does with Microsoft, Apple and other US computer and telecommunications giants to create “backdoors” that facilitate state surveillance.

But there are also huge commercial and military-security motivations for the US offensive against Huawei and China’s other major telecommunications manufacturer, ZTE. The latter has been subject to US financial and other penalties for allegedly violating US sanctions on Iran and North Korea.

Washington is determined to prevent Beijing from realizing its goal of becoming a leader in the production of high-tech goods by 2025, because this would eat into the market share and profits of US high-tech companies and threaten America’s military superiority.

The United States, Australia and New Zealand have already banned Huawei from their respective 5G networks.

On Wednesday, British Telecom announced that it would exclude Huawei from its 4G operations, two days after the head of Britain’s secret service MI6, Alex Younger, warned that London had to take a decision about how far it was willing to go in its dealings with the Chinese tech giant.

Japanese media are reporting that Tokyo will announce today a ban on government purchases of Huawei and ZTE equipment.

Canada has come under increasing pressure from Washington to take action against Huawei.

“I continue to strongly urge Canada to reconsider Huawei’s inclusion in any aspect of its 5G development, introduction and maintenance,” said Republican Senator Marco Rubio, in welcoming Meng’s arrest.

In October, Rubio and Democratic senator and vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee Mark Warner co-authored a letter to the Canadian government that said Canada’s access to intelligence-sharing through the Five Eyes could be jeopardized if it did not exclude Huawei and all other "Chinese state-directed telecommunications companies” from the development and deployment of the country’s 5G network.

In a statement that suggested all major Chinese firms should be viewed as national security threats, Warner and Rubio declared,

“There is ample evidence to suggest that no major Chinese company is independent of the Chinese government and Communist Party—and Huawei, which China’s government and military tout as a ‘national champion,’ is no exception.”

Sections of Canada's military-security apparatus, including two former heads of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and a former head of the NSA’s Canadian partner, the Communications Security Establishment, have seconded these calls. Meanwhile, the country’s most influential newspaper, the Globe and Mail, has published a series of lurid reports, based largely on innuendo and unsubstantiated claims, complaining about growing Chinese political influence in Canada.

This campaign has been aimed not just at prodding the Liberal government to take action against Huawei, but also at putting the brakes on its plans to pursue a free trade agreement with China.

Yesterday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed that he knew in advance of Meng’s arrest, before making the absurd claim that it was a purely administrative-judicial matter and that he and his government played no part in a decision with huge consequences for Canadian-Chinese and global interstate relations.

Trudeau and his Liberals have been bending over backwards to accommodate the Trump administration, with the aim of securing a revised North American Free Trade Agreement that preserves largely unfettered US market access for Canadian big business and the Canada-US military security partnership on which the Canadian bourgeoisie depends to assert its imperialist interests around the globe.

As part of the revised NAFTA (or the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, as Trump likes to call it), Canada agreed to a US demand for a provision prohibiting if from concluding a free trade agreement with a “non-market economy”—a clear reference to China—without prior approval from Washington.

The Canadian government’s complicity in Meng’s arrest underscores that with the rapid escalation of economic, military and geopolitical tensions between Washington and Beijing, Ottawa is lining up four-square behind US imperialism. Indeed, the Canadian military now touts the South China Sea and Strait of Malacca, likely key battlegrounds in any US-China clash, as of vital strategic importance to Canada.

This shift is motivated above all by the understanding, which has guided Canadian imperialist policy for the past three-quarters of a century, that it can best pursue its own predatory global interests in alliance with Washington and Wall Street.

Absent the revolutionary intervention of the international working class, the logic of American imperialism’s increasingly desperate drive to thwart China’s rise and thereby shore up its global power is a catastrophic war.

In a bellicose speech in October, US Vice President Mike Pence accused Beijing of,

“pursuing a comprehensive and coordinated campaign to undermine support for the president, our agenda, and our nation’s most cherished ideals.”

In terms reminiscent of the anti-communist tirades of the Cold War, he denounced China for “military aggression” and outlined a strategy for diplomatic, economic and military confrontation with China, declaring ominously,
 

“We will not stand down. We will not be intimidated.”

Terror Tourism Anyone?

Canadian Jewish News: Promoter of Terror Tourism?

by Yves Engler - Dissident Voice

December 5th, 2018

What should we make of a media outlet that praises those who join or give money to a foreign army, which occupies territory belonging to another people, terrorizes the local population by destroying houses, restricting their movement, subjecting them to military courts and shooting unarmed protestors?

What should we call the Canadian Jewish News, an unfailing flatterer of Canadians who join or finance a military subjugating Palestinians? Would “promoter of terror tourism” be an appropriate description?

Over the past month the CJN has published at least four pieces celebrating Canadian support for the Israeli military.


On November 22 it reported,

“Bayli Dukes, who recently won the Israel Defence Forces’ Award of Excellence for the Southern Command of the IDF, was a biology student at York University in Toronto less than two years ago. Tired of sitting on the couch and posting on Facebook about the situation in Israel, she decided there was more she could be doing.”

A day earlier it posted an article titled “Hand-knitted tuques – a very Canadian gift for IDF soldiers” described 80-year olds in Toronto knitting “for charitable causes, such as IDF soldiers in Israel.” Through the Hats for Israeli Soldiers initiative “more than 50,000 hats have been made for combat soldiers on Israel’s front lines”, the CJN reported. The paper quoted IDF soldier Dovid Berger’s thank you letter.

“I’m currently a chayal in the 51st brigade of Golani. We are now on our way to a week-long drill in the cold and wet [occupied Syrian] Golan Heights, and last night we received our beautiful black hats you sent us. Thank you so much, some of us have been borrowing each other’s hats and now there’s enough for everyone to have at least one. It really makes a big difference to us to see how people from Canada and the U.S.A. (and everywhere in the world) are really caring about us.”

A photo in its November 14 print edition was titled “Honouring IDF veterans”. The caption read: “former Israeli defense minister Moshe Yaalon … makes presentation to Montrealers who served in the Israel Defence Forces…. during the Canadian Institute for Jewish research’s 30th anniversary Gala.”

An October 30 piece in the community paper reported,

“former NHL player Keith Primeau was among more than 100 Canadians who cycled through Israel over five days this month, to raise funds for disabled veterans in that country. This was the 11th Courage in Motion Bike Ride, which is organized by Beit Halochem Canada.”

The CJN regularly promotes that organization. A search of its database for “Beit Halochem” found dozens of stories about fundraisers and other initiatives supporting Aid to Disabled Veterans of Israel. A 2009 story titled “Israeli veterans enjoy 24th visit to Montreal” reported, “the annual visit was sponsored by the 25-year-old Beit Halochem Canada (Aid to Disabled Veterans of Israel), which raises funds for Israel’s Beit Halochem, a network of centres that provide therapy and support to more than 51,000 disabled vets and victims of terror.”

Another military initiative CJN promotes is Israel Defence Forces Widows & Orphans, which is partly funded by the Israeli government. “I served three years in the Nahal Brigade. I was in Lebanon, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip”, Shlomi Nahumson, director of youth programs at Widows and Orphans, told the paper in advance of a Toronto fundraiser for the group.

Another military initiative popular with CJN is Sar-El, which was founded by Israeli general Aharon Davidi in 1982. “Toronto brothers volunteer for Sar-El at height of war”, “91-year-old volunteers on Israeli army base” and “Toronto artist’s mural unites Israeli army base” are a sampling of the headlines about a program in which about 150 Canadians serve each year as volunteers on Israeli army supply bases.

At least a dozen CJN stories have promoted the Association for the Soldiers of Israel in Canada. “IDF represents all Jews, female general says” and “Community shows support for Israeli soldiers”, noted headlines about a group established in 1971 to provide financial and moral support to active duty soldiers. The later story quoted a speaker claiming, “the IDF saves lives, and not just in Israel — all over the world.”

CJN has published a series of stories sympathetic to Tzofim Garin Tzabar, which recruits non-Israeli Jews into the IDF. A 2004 article about a program supported by the IDF, Israel Scouts, Jewish Agency and Ministry of Absorption was titled “Canadian youths serve in IDF: Motivated by zionist ideals, love of Israel.”

It reported,

“[Canadian Yakov] Frydman-Kohl is attending tank school at an Israeli army base somewhere near the West Bank town of Jericho. He recently completed a course in advanced training before his first deployment somewhere in the Gaza Strip.”

CJN lauded Heather Reisman and Gerry Schwartz’ Heseg Foundation for Lone Soldiers. “Philanthropists aid Israeli ‘lone soldiers’”, was the title of one story about the billionaire Toronto couple providing millions of dollars annually for these non-Israeli soldiers.

More generally, the paper has published numerous stories about Canadian ‘lone soldiers’. “Going in alone: the motivations and hardships of Israel lone soldiers”, “Parents of ‘lone soldiers’ discuss support group” and “Lone soldiers: young idealists and worried parents”, detailed Canadians fighting in the Israeli military. They’ve also publicized numerous books about Canadian and other non-Israelis joining the IDF.

In one CJN quoted Abe Levine, an Ontarian who helped drive Palestinians from their homes in 1948, saying,

“what I don’t understand is why Israelis don’t send 10 rockets back for every one fired from Gaza.”

The story continued, “during his time in the Machal, [overseas military volunteers] Levine saw most Arabs as ‘the enemy.’ Though he said he had lines he would not cross – ‘I wouldn’t kill an Arab if I just saw him standing outside his house.’”

CJN promoted Nefesh B’Nefesh’s (Jewish Souls United) recruitment of Canadians to the IDF. “Nefesh B’Nefesh brings aspiring soldiers to Israel”, noted a headline about a group that facilitates “Aliyah” for those unsatisfied with their and their ancestors’ dispossession of First Nations and want to help colonize another indigenous people.

While CJN provides positive publicity to groups promoting the Israeli military, these groups (often registered Canadian charities) finance the paper. The previously mentioned story about Nefesh B’Nefesh ended with “the reporter’s trip was partly subsidized by Nefesh B’Nefesh.” More significantly, these organizations regularly advertise in the paper. “Express your Zionism by serving as a civilian volunteer on an Israeli army supply base”, read a Sar-El ad while another noted “the Association for the soldiers of Israel invites you to show your support for the brave youth of the IDF at our gala dinner.”

Yet, while it promotes joining and financing a military actively killing Arabs, CJN accuses Palestinian Canadians of supporting terrorism. An August headline noted, “Canadian Arabic-language newspaper criticized for pro-terrorist op-ed” while a 2017 one stated, “B’nai Brith wants a Mississauga teacher fired for backing terrorists”.

The hypocrisy is glaring. While CJN accuses others, it may be this country’s biggest promoter of “terror tourism”.

Yves Engler is co-author of Stop Signs: Cars and Capitalism on the Road to Economic, Social and Ecological Decay. His latest book is Left, Right: Marching to the Beat of Imperial Canada.

Read other articles by Yves.

Guarding the Limits of Acceptable Discourse: Greenwald & the Guardian

Limits Of Dissent - Glenn Greenwald And The Guardian

by Media Lens

6 December 2018

When we think of prisons, we tend to think of Alcatraz, Bang Kwang and Belmarsh with their guard towers, iron bars and concrete.

But in his forthcoming book, '33 Myths of the System', Darren Allen invites us to imagine a prison with walls made entirely of vacuous guff:

'Censorship is unnecessary in a system in which everyone can speak, but only those guaranteed not to say anything worth listening to can be heard.'

Is this true?

For example, how easy is it to encounter genuinely uncompromised analysis locating the Guardian within a propaganda system designed to filter news, views and voices to serve powerful interests?

It is a key issue because the Guardian is the best 'centre-left' newspaper we have. If The Times and Telegraph define the limits of thinkable thought on the 'mainstream' right, then the Guardian does the same at the other end of the 'spectrum'. In other words, the Guardian defines corporate media limits in accepting left views and voices. If it's not in the Guardian, it's not going to be anywhere else in the 'mainstream'.

Are the Guardian's famous in-house dissidents willing and able to address this crucial issue? How about leftist firebrand Owen Jones? In November 2017, Jones lamented on Twitter:

'I'm barred from criticising colleagues in my column. Weirdly this doesn't seem to work the other way round.'

Jones can tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the corporate media, as long as he doesn't dish the dirt on his employer. Ironies inevitably abound. Last April, Jones commented:

'The main thing I've learned from working in the British media is that much of it is a cult. Afflicted by a suffocating groupthink, intolerant of critics, hounds internal dissenters, full of people who made it because of connections and/or personal background rather than merit.'

Even as Jones was speaking out on this 'suffocating groupthink', his comment was being suffocated by his obligation to spare his colleagues' blushes.

In December 2014, former Guardian journalist Jonathan Cook challenged George Monbiot:

'@GeorgeMonbiot Guardian, your employer, is precisely part of media problem. Why this argument [on the need for structural reform] is far from waste of energy. It's vital.'

Monbiot brazenly stonewalled:

'@Jonathan_K_Cook that's your view. I don't share it. Most of my work exposing corporate power has been through or with the Guardian.' 

The Guardian - 'Solid And Reliable'

The first rule of Guardian club, then: you do not criticise the Guardian. The second rule of Guardian club... etc.

Far greater hope for the kind of serious criticism we have in mind seems to lie with renowned dissident Glenn Greenwald who worked for the Guardian for more than a year and who helped secure a Pulitzer prize for the paper's reporting on the NSA story. After all, unlike Jones and Monbiot, Greenwald certainly is willing to criticise the Guardian.

The latest example is his response to the paper's recent, front-page claim that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange met former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort at least three times in the Ecuadorian Embassy. The Guardian article, which appears to be a stellar example of 'fake news', was apparently intended to bolster claims that Assange had conspired with Trump, and with Trump's supposed Russian allies, to fatally damage Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign to become US president.

Greenwald commented:

'The reason it will be so devastating to the Guardian if this story turns out false is because the Guardian has an institutional hatred for Assange. They've proven they'll dispense with journalistic standards for it. And factions within Ecuador's government know they can use them.'

Speaking to The Canary, Fidel Narváez a former consul and first secretary at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, insisted that the Guardian's claims are entirely false:

'It is impossible for any visitor to enter the embassy without going through very strict protocols and leaving a clear record: obtaining written approval from the ambassador, registering with security personnel, and leaving a copy of ID. The embassy is the most surveilled on Earth; not only are there cameras positioned on neighbouring buildings recording every visitor, but inside the building every movement is recorded with CCTV cameras, 24/7. In fact, security personnel have always spied on Julian and his visitors. It is simply not possible that Manafort visited the embassy.'

The Washington Post reported this week:

'one week after publication, the Guardian's bombshell looks as though it could be a dud.

'No other news organization has been able to corroborate the Guardian's reporting to substantiate its central claim of a meeting. News organizations typically do such independent reporting to confirm important stories.'

WaPo noted that the Guardian 'has stood by the story, albeit somewhat halfheartedly. It has said little to defend itself amid mounting criticism'.

Indeed, the Guardian has so far merely commented:

'This story relied on a number of sources. We put these allegations to both Paul Manafort and Julian Assange's representatives prior to publication. Neither responded to deny the visits taking place. We have since updated the story to reflect their denials.'

But in fact WikiLeaks did deny that the visits took place in a tweeted response to one of the Guardian authors of the article.

In an attempt to encourage a more serious response, Greenwald sent a series of excellent, challenging questions to Guardian editor Kath Viner and journalist Luke Harding. Greenwald has pointed to huge holes in the story and condemned the paper's hatred of Assange. However, Greenwald has also commented that, apart from the issue of Assange, 'the Guardian' is 'an otherwise solid and reliable paper'. He has repeatedly affirmed this view:

'Like I said, I think the Guardian is a solid paper that has good journalists and does good work, and I wouldn't derive any pleasure from seeing its reputation obliterated by a debacle of this magnitude, though I do think it'd be deserved if the story proves to be false.'

He even said:

'I think the Guardian is an important paper with great journalists. I hope the story turns out true. But the skepticism over this story is very widespread, including among Assange's most devoted haters, because it's so sketchy. If Manafort went there, there's video. Let's see it.'

Former Guardian journalist Jonathan Cook responded:

'And finally, in a bizarre tweet, Greenwald opined, "I hope the story [maligning Assange] turns out true" – apparently because maintenance of the Guardian's reputation is more important than Assange's fate and the right of journalists to dig up embarrassing secrets without fear of being imprisoned.'

Cook indicated the clear limits of Greenwald's dissent by providing the kind of rare, honest analysis that explains the Guardian's role within the propaganda system:

'What this misses is that the Guardian's attacks on Assange are not exceptional or motivated solely by personal animosity. They are entirely predictable and systematic. Rather than being the reason for the Guardian violating basic journalistic standards and ethics, the paper's hatred of Assange is a symptom of a deeper malaise in the Guardian and the wider corporate media.

'Even aside from its decade-long campaign against Assange, the Guardian is far from "solid and reliable", as Greenwald claims. It has been at the forefront of the relentless, and unhinged, attacks on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn for prioritising the rights of Palestinians over Israel's right to continue its belligerent occupation. Over the past three years, the Guardian has injected credibility into the Israel lobby's desperate efforts to tar Corbyn as an anti-semite. See here, here and here.

'Similarly, the Guardian worked tirelessly to promote Clinton and undermine Sanders in the 2016 Democratic nomination process – another reason the paper has been so assiduous in promoting the idea that Assange, aided by Russia, was determined to promote Trump over Clinton for the presidency.

'The Guardian's coverage of Latin America, especially of populist leftwing governments that have rebelled against traditional and oppressive US hegemony in the region, has long grated with analysts and experts. Its especial venom has been reserved for leftwing figures like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, democratically elected but official enemies of the US, rather than the region's rightwing authoritarians beloved of Washington.

'The Guardian has been vocal in the so-called "fake news" hysteria, decrying the influence of social media, the only place where leftwing dissidents have managed to find a small foothold to promote their politics and counter the corporate media narrative.

'The Guardian has painted social media chiefly as a platform overrun by Russian trolls, arguing that this should justify ever-tighter restrictions that have so far curbed critical voices of the dissident left more than the right.'

On November 29, we tweeted Greenwald:

'Hi @ggreenwald, you have consistently soft-pedalled your criticism of your former colleagues at the Guardian, most recently describing the paper as "solid and reliable'" Will you respond to @Jonathan_K_Cook's astute and rational criticism of your position?'

At time of writing the tweet has received 57 retweets and 82 likes. Greenwald has been tweeting and must have seen some of these responses and yet has chosen not to reply. We would guess that he finds himself in a pickle: if he attempts to defend his false claim that the Guardian is 'solid and reliable', he will be shot down in flames for the reasons described above by Cook. And if he agrees with Cook's analysis, he risks alienating former colleagues and important allies on the paper.

The conclusion, then, is that Greenwald is following so many Guardian and other 'mainstream' journalists before him in simply blanking reasonable, rational questions.

Greenwald And The Progressive Left

Despite defending us against critics in the past, and despite the fact that we are writing from a similar political viewpoint inspired by Noam Chomsky, for whom he has expressed immense admiration, Greenwald has almost completely ignored our work. We cannot remember that he has ever retweeted our media alerts or retweeted any of our tweets (there may have been one or two exceptions). Our Twitter search 'from:ggreenwald "medialens"' suggests very little interest or interaction from his side. We saw no point in sending him a review copy of our new book, 'Propaganda Blitz', about which Chomsky has said: 'Great book. I have been recommending it.' (Email to Media Lens, November 22, 2018) We, on the other hand, have cited, praised and tweeted Greenwald's work many times.

One might certainly ask why Greenwald would bother with a two-man, tinpot operation? Who are we? But it does seem extraordinary to us that Greenwald comments so much on the UK press whilst apparently ignoring writers who are indisputably the most honest, important and popular critics of the UK press, and of the Guardian in particular.

John Pilger is arguably the finest political journalist of our time and certainly the most high-profile critic of UK corporate media, especially the Guardian. No-one else who has appeared regularly in 'mainstream' newspapers and on national TV comes close to matching the honesty and accuracy of Pilger's criticism. As far as we are aware, Greenwald ignores Pilger's work. Using the Twitter search engine, we checked for mentions of Pilger, 'from:ggreenwald "pilger"', and found zero mentions in any of Greenwald's 50,000 tweets. This is exactly like a UK dissident critically analysing US media without mentioning Chomsky or Edward Herman.

In 2011, Jonathan Cook won the prestigious Martha Gellhorn special award for journalism. We have cited above his powerful criticism of the Guardian, lent even more weight by the fact that he worked as a staff journalist at the paper for five years. Cook tells us he has never seen Greenwald mention or retweet anything he has written. In 2014, Greenwald did make a positive comment in response to criticism from Cook:

'I've long been a fan of your work as well...'

Curiously, this 'fan' does not even follow Cook on Twitter.

The British historian Mark Curtis is another rare, honest critic of corporate media. Chomsky commented on his book, 'Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam' (Serpent's Tail, 2010):

'Unearthing this largely hidden history is a contribution of the highest significance, and could hardly be more timely.'

Curtis is also highly critical of the Guardian. Last month, he tweeted:

'All decent writers must now reflect: do you really want to contribute to an outlet producing utter fabrications in service of the state? Even retweeting G [Guardian] articles should stop, IMO.'

Curtis told us he has never seen Greenwald mention or tweet his work.

By contrast, Greenwald can often be found applauding and retweeting Guardian journalists and commentators like Owen Jones and George Monbiot, and of course former New Statesman political editor and Guardian contributor, Mehdi Hasan, who now publishes in The Intercept alongside Greenwald. Is Greenwald so reluctant to alienate the Guardian that he is steering clear of UK media analysts who are strongly critical of the paper?

None of this is intended as condemnation of Greenwald, perhaps he is right to maintain friendly relations with powerful allies when facing so many heavyweight political enemies in the US. But it is a rare form of cognitive dissonance that praises both the Guardian and Chomsky.

The key point, for us, which has nothing to do with lefter-than-thou sniping, is that this indicates the extraordinary extent to which the best, supposedly 'centre-left' media are protected from rational criticism. Even a comparatively honest, Chomskyite journalist like Greenwald is either not willing or not able to tell the whole truth about a paper that has done enormous harm in supporting Blair (still now), attacking Corbyn, and in promoting Perpetual War with endless nonsense about 'our' supposed 'responsibility to protect' civilians in oil-rich countries like Iraq and Libya. The Guardian has, at last, begun responding to the climate extinction crisis with some urgency, but it has long downplayed the gravity of the crisis and the truth of corporate denialism, while simultaneously promoting high status consumerism and fossil fuel advertising.

And this is why the Guardian and other liberal media are held in such absurdly high regard – very few journalists indeed are willing to subject them to the serious criticism they deserve.

DE