POST MODERN FALSE FLAG

U.S. Energy Department believes lab leak was most likely the source of COVID, report says

The conclusion is due to new intelligence, but the department made its judgment with “low confidence,” according to people who have read the classified report, The Wall St. Journal said.

By Olivia Konotey-Ahulu

Bloomberg
Mon., Feb. 27, 2023

A laboratory leak was the most likely origin of the COVID-19 virus, according to findings by the U.S. Energy Department, The Wall Street Journal reported.

A classified intelligence report provided to the White House and key members of Congress said the virus likely spread due to a mishap at a Chinese laboratory, The Journal reported on Sunday.

The Energy Department had previously been undecided on the source of the virus. The conclusion is due to new intelligence, but the department made its judgment with “low confidence,” according to people who have read the classified report, The Journal said.

U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Sunday there’s “a variety of views” in the U.S. intelligence community about whether the virus originated naturally or in a lab and he “can’t confirm or deny” the Wall Street Journal report.

President Joe Biden has asked the National Laboratories, which are part of the Energy Department, to be part of the assessment, Sullivan said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“And if we gain any further insight or information, we will share it with Congress and we will share it with the American people,” he said. “But, right now, there is not a definitive answer that has emerged from the intelligence community on this question.”

China has long hit back at any suggestion that the COVID-19 virus originated in a lab. The Chinese Embassy in Washington didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular working hours.

China Must Be 'More Honest' on COVID Origins, Envoy Says

By Reuters
Feb. 27, 2023

Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns attends the World Peace Forum at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China July 4, 2022. 

REUTERS/Yew Lun Tian

By Michael Martina and David Brunnstrom

WASHINGTON/BEIJING (Reuters) -China must be more honest about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. ambassador to China said on Monday, after reports that the U.S. Energy Department concluded the pandemic likely arose from a Chinese laboratory leak.

Nicholas Burns, speaking by video link at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce event, said it was necessary to push China to take a more active role in the World Health Organization (WHO) if the U.N. health agency was to be strengthened.

China also needed to "be more honest about what happened three years ago in Wuhan with the origin of the COVID-19 crisis," Burns said, referring to the central Chinese city where the first human cases were reported in December 2019.

The Wall Street Journal first reported on Sunday that the U.S. Energy Department had concluded the pandemic likely arose from a Chinese laboratory leak, an assessment Beijing denies.

The department made its judgment with "low confidence" in a classified intelligence report recently provided to the White House and key members of Congress, the Journal said, citing people who had read the intelligence report.

Four other U.S. agencies, along with a national intelligence panel, still judge that COVID-19 was likely the result of natural transmission, while two are undecided, the Journal reported.

The Energy Department did not respond to a request for comment.

President Joe Biden's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said on Sunday there were a "variety of views in the intelligence community" on the pandemic's origins.

"A number of them have said they just don't have enough information," Sullivan told CNN.

Asked to comment on the report, which was confirmed by other U.S. media, China's foreign ministry referred to a WHO-China report that pointed toward a natural origin for the pandemic, likely from bats, rather than a lab leak.

"Certain parties should stop rehashing the 'lab leak' narrative, stop smearing China and stop politicizing the origins-tracing issue," foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said.

'A LITTLE BIT ORWELLIAN'

Burns told the Chamber event that it was a difficult moment for U.S.-China relations, with Beijing seeking to deflect blame after the U.S. military this month downed an alleged Chinese spy balloon that drifted across the continental United States.

"We're now in this surreal moment where the Chinese, who I think lost the debate over the balloon globally, lost influence and credibility around the world because of what they've done - they're now blaming this on us," Burns said.

"It's a little bit Orwellian. And it's a little bit frustrating, because I think everybody knows the truth here."

China reacted angrily when the U.S. military downed the balloon on Feb. 4, saying it was for monitoring weather conditions and had blown off course.

Burns added that it was the obligation of the United States to maintain its military strength "in and around Taiwan" to ensure the self-governed island claimed by Beijing has the ability to deter any kind of "offensive action" by China.

"It's also ... our responsibility to galvanize the rest of the world to make sure that the Chinese cannot get away with coercion or intimidation against Taiwan itself," he said.

(Reporting by Michael Martina and David Brunnstrom in Washington and the Beijing newsroom; Editing by Don Durfee and Alistair Bell)

China Responds to 'Politicized' Wuhan Lab Leak Theory

BY JOHN FENG ON 2/27/23 

China said Monday that studies into the origins of COVID-19 "should not be politicized" after a new assessment led to fresh scrutiny into a possible laboratory accident in late 2019 in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.

Mao Ning, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, pointed to the March 2021 findings of a joint WHO-China report that called the lab leak theory "extremely unlikely." That verdict was "a science-based, authoritative conclusion," she said at a regular press briefing in Beijing.

"Certain parties should stop rehashing the 'lab leak' narrative, stop smearing China and stop politicizing origin tracing," Mao said after The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times reported that the United States Department of Energy concluded, with "low confidence," that SARS-CoV-2 had emerged as a result of a lab mishap.

The DOE, which oversees U.S. national laboratories, was previously undecided about the virus's origins. It now joins the FBI's own "moderate confidence" assessment as only the second agency to side with the lab leak theory. Four other agencies still lean toward natural transmission as the most likely explanation for the initial outbreak, while two remain undecided.

This aerial view shows the P4 laboratory on the campus of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China's central Hubei province on May 27, 2020. China has said that studies into the origins of COVID-19 "should not be politicized."

HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

The WHO-China report published almost two years ago was the only authoritative assessment the United Nations health agency was able to produce about the start of the pandemic. Beijing appointed half the researchers on the mission, restricted the team's access to critical data, and blocked WHO attempts to conduct a phase-two study that included a review of Wuhan's surroundings.

Beijing's decisions went some way toward undermining the report's eventual findings, which were largely dismissed by American officials. As a result, the phase-one mission report lacked "extensive recognition from the international community," contrary to China's claim.

Four months after taking office, President Joe Biden ordered the U.S. intelligence community to determine the likely origins of the virus behind the disease that has now killed at least 6.8 million people worldwide, including upward of a million Americans. The report after 90 days was inconclusive, but the agencies judged the virus was not a biological weapon and wasn't released with Beijing's knowledge.

Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO's technical lead on COVID, said at a press conference on February 15 that the unsuccessful phase-two plans later morphed into the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO), a multinational panel that included Chinese experts, announced in October 2021.

"I think we need to be perfectly clear that WHO has not abandoned studying the origins of COVID-19. We have not and we will not," Van Kerkhove said in Geneva. "But let me also be very clear that we continue to ask for more cooperation and collaboration with our colleagues in China to advance studies that need to take place in China."

"We will follow the science. We will continue to ask for countries to depoliticize this work, but we need cooperation from our colleagues in China to advance this," she said.

"We will not stop until we understand the origins of this. And it is becoming increasingly difficult because the more time that passes, the more difficult it becomes to really understand what happened in those early stages of the pandemic."

Republicans React to Energy Department’s Reported Finding That COVID ‘Likely’ Leaked From Wuhan Lab

By Gary Bai
February 27, 2023

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) questions Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, former head of security at Twitter, during Senate Judiciary Committee on data security at Twitter, on Capitol Hill in Washington on Sept. 13, 2022. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Republican lawmakers responded to a news report saying that the U.S. Energy Department had concluded the lab leak theory was “likely,” saying that the finding supports what many have long suspected.

A Wall Street Journal article on Feb. 26 reported that a classified intelligence report by the Energy Department said that the virus likely leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

“So the government caught up to what Real America knew all along,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) wrote in a Twitter post on Sunday.

The responses came as GOP lawmakers ramp up investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and allegations of government-big tech censorship of the debate.

The Energy Department was previously undecided on the issue but now joins the FBI in corroborating the lab leak hypothesis, according to the report. Several people who have read the report said the Department’s judgment was made with “low confidence,” the Journal reported.

Responding to the report on Sunday, White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan told CNN that the intelligence community does not have a “definitive answer” on the matter at this point.

Republican lawmakers have been vocal about the theory that the virus leaked from the Wuhan laboratory soon after the onset of the pandemic in 2020. Initially, some health professionals and legacy media outlets dismissed the theory, labeling the theory’s proponents as racist and conspiracy theorists.

Fauci

Some lawmakers also accused Anthony Fauci, former head of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), of colluding with big tech companies, such as Facebook and Twitter, and censoring stories about the lab leak theory via what these companies describe as a crackdown on “misinformation.”

“Fauci knew this immediately but dismissed it because of funding for the Wuhan lab,” Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) wrote in another post. “We know what happened next — when Fauci spoke Big Tech censored. I exposed this collusion as AG and I’ll work to ensure this type of censorship never happens again.”

“Americans knew this from Day One,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) wrote on Twitter on Sunday. “Unfortunately, Big Tech and Big Government silenced them.”

Republicans and critics of Fauci have raised concerns about the NIAID’s funding of the Wuhan Institute of Virology via the non-governmental organization EcoHealth Alliance, including for research described by experts as gain-of-function. The NIAID issued about 3.4 million in grants to EcoHealth.

Gain-of-function research makes the virus more deadly by enhancing its pathogenicity, its ability to cause disease and harm the host, or transmissibility, how easily it spreads.

The NIH has denied that the grants were for gain-of-function research, while Fauci has defended the decision to issue the grants to EcoHealth.

“More evidence continues to mount that COVID came from the Wuhan lab. We’ve uncovered emails showing Dr. Fauci was warned that the virus looked man-made & came from a lab, but he may have acted to cover it up. Why? We need answers & accountability,” wrote the official Twitter account of the House Oversight Republican Committee.

Republicans on the committee previously disclosed internal NIH emails that showed Fauci was informed by senior scientists early in the pandemic that the theory that COVID-19 had a natural origin was “highly unlikely,” even while Fauci was publicly promoting the natural origin theory.

Additional Responses

Republican lawmakers such as Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) took issue with what he described as a lack of transparency in government investigations related to the origins of COVID-19.

“The American people deserve the full truth about #covid origins. No more whitewash. I will again introduce legislation to make the US government’s intelligence reports on covid open to the people,” Hawley wrote.

Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) echoed Hawley’s view.

“The elites and academics owe everyone who had legitimate questions and concerns about the origins of COVID an apology,” Buck wrote in a Twitter post. “The American people deserve to see all the information concerning the Chinese lab leak and the origins of COVID. This won’t be forgotten.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) says the United States should focus on the further implications of the report, namely, the need for the U.S. government to act to hold the Chinese regime accountable for the pandemic.

“Re. China’s lab leak, being proven right doesn’t matter,” Cotton wrote in a Twitter post. “What matters is holding the Chinese Communist Party accountable so this doesn’t happen again.”

The Epoch Times contacted the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy for comment.

From The Epoch Times

Ankara: The Officious Intermedler in Paris Attacks Against Kurds

by Seth J. Frantzman
The Jerusalem Post
December 27, 2022

This is an abridged version of an article published originally under the title "Turkey Exploits Paris Attack on Kurds While Claiming to Be 'Anti-Terror.'"

Protests erupted in Paris following the murder of three people at a Kurdish cultural center on December 23, 2022.

A 69-year-old Frenchman has been charged with killing three people in Paris last week.

The attack targeted a Kurdish culture center, and three Kurds were murdered. Even though government authorities were quick to condemn the attack at the highest levels, there were days of protests and some riots and clashes after the killing.

Turkey's ruling party and pro-government media have led a campaign to exploit the attack, not sympathizing with the victims but condemning the protesters as "terrorism supporters."

Turkey has also summoned France's ambassador, claiming protesters spread anti-Turkish propaganda. This is a new type of exploitation, where an extremist murders members of a minority, and then a foreign country condemns the minority and bashes the country where it took place.

This is the latest incident of extremism in France. In the past, migrants have been attacked in racist assaults, and other people have been attacked by extremists and terrorists. For instance, a kosher deli was targeted in 2015, and media figures, teachers, a priest, a Jewish school and other people and institutions have been attacked in recent years.

Turkish presence in Paris' internal politics

Turkey has meddled in France's internal politics in the past. After a French teacher named Samuel Paty was beheaded by an extremist, Turkey slammed France for "Islamophobia" – in essence, inflaming the tensions after the beheading.

Ankara's new critique of France comes as Turkey has tried to get Sweden and Finland to crack down on dissidents and critics of Ankara. This often results in the targeting of Kurds, especially Kurds on the Left. Sweden and Finland want to join NATO, but Turkey, which is a member of NATO, has prevented them from joining until they agree to crack down on critics of Ankara. Recently, a court in Sweden appeared to prevent a dissident from being extradited.

"The shooting at a Kurdish cultural center and a nearby hairdressing salon on Friday sparked panic in the city's bustling 10th district, home to numerous shops and restaurants and a large Kurdish population," France24 reported. "Hundreds of people marched in Paris on Monday to pay tribute to the three Kurds shot dead."

In contrast to French media and most international coverage of the attack, Turkish media quickly began to criticize the protesters. Turkish pro-government media called the protesters "terrorists." This narrative was picked up by Ankara's Islamist media and online supporters.

Why would Ankara seek to exploit this case in France?

Turkey claims it is fighting "terrorism" even though there is no evidence of the kind of claims Ankara makes. Ankara wants support for a new invasion of Syria. In Syria, Turkey claims to be fighting the "YPG" and "PKK," two Kurdish groups. It claims that the US-backed SDF, another group, is the same as these "terrorists."

This is a kind of Orwellian rhetoric that condemns every critic and group as "terrorists" as a way to excuse targeting them. For instance, after a recent bombing in Istanbul, Turkey carried out dozens of attacks on Syria, even though there was no evidence linking the bombing to Syria.

By quickly using the media to claim any protesters in Paris were "terrorists," Ankara sought to prevent any criticism of Turkey and to prevent Kurds in France from being able to organize a protest.

Ankara fears Kurdish dissidents and any Kurdish groups abroad. It often works to target the Kurdish language, Kurdish music and flags. Ankara also knows that its opponents will sometimes use these events to raise their flags and voices, so it's easier for Ankara to claim "terrorists" are protesting than to try to segment out the organized critics from the innocent average people.

Major media in the West didn't portray the protesters as "terrorists" and generally sympathized with the Kurdish victims, even if some felt the riots were unacceptable.

The danger that Ankara's intervention represents is that Ankara is always willing to exaggerate and even willing to summon ambassadors of European countries, or try to force NATO not to admit democracies like Sweden, in order to force European countries to suppress critics and minorities in the same way that Ankara does at home.

So far, it appears that France's judicial system is doing the right thing and that peaceful demonstrations are now the norm in Paris. However, it should be noted that this incident of Ankara meddling in internal politics in France, just as it tried to do in 2020 with protests in the US, is a new escalation.

Ankara is seeking to exploit issues in Europe and the West to its benefit. Under the guise of claiming to be against "terrorism," it has warped language to an Orwellian degree.

This is a remnant in some ways of the US "global war on terror" and the way countries such as Turkey took this to mean it could do whatever it wants as long as it labels its adversaries "terrorists."

Seth Frantzman is a Ginsburg-Milstein Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum and senior Middle East correspondent at the Jerusalem Post.

US Attack on Yemen Exposes the Lie of Supposed “Rules-Based International Order”


Antony Blinken’s lofty rhetoric about “rules” and “rights” is emptier than ever after Biden’s illegal attack on Yemen.

By Norman Solomon , 

SALON

PublishedJanuary 13, 2024

A Yemeni man inspects a house that was destroyed in an airstrike carried out during the Yemen war by the Saudi-led coalition's warplanes, on February 5, 2021, in Sana'a, Yemen.

MOHAMMED HAMOUD / GETTY IMAGES


Have you heard the one about the U.S. government wanting a “rules-based international order”?

It’s a grimly laughable premise, but the nation’s major media outlets routinely take such claims seriously and credulously. Overall, the default assumption is that top officials in Washington are reluctant to go to war, and do so only as a last resort.

That framing was in evidence when the New York Times published this sentence at the top of the front page: “The United States and a handful of its allies on Thursday carried out military strikes against more than a dozen targets in Yemen controlled by the Iranian-backed Houthi militia, U.S. officials said, in an expansion of the war in the Middle East that the Biden administration had sought to avoid for three months.”

So, from the outset, the coverage portrayed the U.S.-led attack as a reluctant action — taken after exploring all peaceful options had failed — rather than an aggressive act in violation of international law.

On Thursday, President Biden issued a statement that sounded righteous enough, saying that “these strikes are in direct response to unprecedented Houthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea.” He did not mention that the Houthi attacks have come in response to Israel’s murderous siege of Gaza. In the words of CNN, they “could be intended to inflict economic pain on Israel’s allies in the hope they will pressure it to cease its bombardment of the enclave.”

In fact, as Common Dreams reported, Houthi forces “began launching missiles and drones toward Israel and attacking shipping traffic in the Red Sea in response to Israel’s Gaza onslaught.” And as Trita Parsi at the Quincy Institute pointed out, “the Houthis have declared that they will stop” attacking ships in the Red Sea “if Israel stops” its mass killing in Gaza.

But that would require genuine diplomacy — not the kind of solution that appeals to President Biden or Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The duo has been enmeshed for decades, with lofty rhetoric masking the tacit precept that might makes right. (The same approach was implicit all the way back to 2002, when then-Sen. Biden chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s hearings that promoted support for the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq. Blinken was the committee’s chief of staff.)

Now, in charge of the State Department, Blinken is fond of touting the need for a “rules-based international order.” During a 2022 speech in Washington, he proclaimed the necessity “to manage relations between states, to prevent conflict, to uphold the rights of all people.” Two months ago, he declared that the G7 nations were united in support of “a rules-based international order.”

But for more than three months now, Blinken has provided a continuous stream of facile rhetoric to support the ongoing methodical killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Days ago, behind a podium at the U.S. embassy in Israel, he defended that country’s actions in the face of abundant evidence of genocidal warfare, claiming that “the charge of genocide is meritless.”

The Houthis are avowedly in solidarity with Palestinian people, while the U.S. government continues to provide massive arms supplies to the Israeli military as it massacres civilians and systematically destroys Gaza. Blinken is so immersed in Orwellian messaging that, several weeks into the Gaza slaughter, he tweeted that the U.S. and its G7 partners “stand united in our condemnation of Russia’s war in Ukraine, in support of Israel’s right to defend itself in accordance with international law, and in maintaining a rules-based international order.”

There’s nothing unusual about extreme doublethink being foisted on the public by the people running U.S. foreign policy. What they perpetrate is a good fit for the description of doublethink in George Orwell’s “1984”: “To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it …”

After news broke about the attack on Yemen, a number of Democrats and Republicans in the House quickly spoke up against Biden’s end-run around Congress, which flagrantly violated the Constitution by effectively going to war on the president’s say-so. Some of the comments were laudably clear, but perhaps none more so than a statement by then-candidate Joe Biden in January of 2020: “A president should never take this nation to war without the informed consent of the American people.”

Like that disposable platitude, all the Orwellian nonsense coming from the top of the U.S. government about seeking a “rules-based international order” is nothing more than a brazen PR scam.

The vast quantity of official smoke-blowing now underway cannot hide the reality that the U.S. government is the most powerful and dangerous outlaw nation in the world.


NORMAN SOLOMON is the national director of RootsAction and the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His lastest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, was published in the summer of 2023 by The New Press.

PAKISTAN

Battle with ‘alternative facts’

Abbas Nasir

Published April 24, 2022

The writer is a former editor of Dawn.

ECONOMIC stabilisation through tough, unpopular measures such as withdrawal of the fuel subsidy or a cut in development expenditure, against the backdrop of public mobilisation by the Imran Khan-led PTI, seems a daunting challenge for a new coalition government with a wafer-thin majority.

The latest fuel subsidy was given early last month in a desperate gamble to remain in the saddle by a government facing a united opposition, desertion of allies and dissension in the ranks of its own parliamentarians as a no-confidence motion was around the corner.

Although when it announced the subsidy, instead of a regulator-recommended increase, the government said it would manage the cost of the nearly Rs400 billion subsidy till the summer from higher than expected revenues and savings in other areas.

But the widening deficit in less than two months since the subsidy was awarded is sounding alarm bells in the corridors of power as it is abundantly clear the gamble was meant to thwart a likely no-confidence move at the time, and would have been withdrawn as soon as the danger was averted.

Read: Lessons from Lanka: How can Pakistan's policymakers avoid economic pitfalls?

Two things have happened since. One, the vote was successfully carried and the prime minister, despite trying every trick in the bag, including some constitutionally questionable ones, could not stay in office, and one of his arch rivals was elected and sworn into office.

Miftah Ismail’s credentials are not in doubt; how much elbow room he has is.

Second, the former prime minister has not taken kindly to his constitutional ouster from office and has embarked on an aggressive mass mobilisation campaign, relying on incendiary, populist slogans and is threatening to take to the streets to force an immediate election.

Editorial: Imran's narrative seems to be working for him, and yet he needs to change it

This week, the government categorically said that parliament would complete its term and elections would only be held next year, but Imran Khan’s aggressive campaign, seemingly backed by some renegade elements in a key institution, continues to cast doubts about the incumbents’ longevity.

And this element makes any possible attempt to balance the books fraught with danger. The withdrawal of the fuel subsidy will further spur the back-breaking inflation, particularly for the poor and middle classes, and the voting public will likely punish those it sees as responsible.

When your life is a relentless struggle to put food on the table, it is not surprising that the short-term, rather than the long-term memory, informs your reactions. Who will remember the PTI’s mismanagement and decisions that brought the economy to this pass?

The most likely target for the people’s wrath would be the hand that signed the withdrawal notification. That is why Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif shot down the first summary for a fuel price rise. But this can’t be sustained for too long, as the widening deficit and Islamabad’s commitment to the IMF dictate a changed course.

Perhaps mindful of the consequences of raising this poisoned chalice to its lips the government may consider other options as well to reduce the deficit. And these include a cut in development expenditure.

The proponents of this course argue that roads and bridges and other infrastructure can wait and all the savings from these areas be used to provide targeted relief to the most needy. However, this path isn’t easy either.

Even if parliament is able to complete its term, it has some 16 months to go. Can the governing coalition afford to stay development expenditure in the country, including in swing constituencies, where such projects will likely deliver a political dividend and may be a determinant of who forms the next government?

Some independent economists have high hopes of Finance Minister Miftah Ismail. Even then, given the very few options at his disposal, one wonders if he can pull a rabbit out of his hat. His credentials are not in doubt; how much elbow room he has is.

If meeting these challenges was not enough, the government may have to address another issue that may be equally, or even more, important. Let me explain what I mean. In the Jan 31, 2021, issue of the Dawn’s magazine ‘Eos’ centre spread Carmen Gonzalez, my partner who has been a BBC and Instagram editor, and I covered the topic of ‘fake news’. Here are a few paras from that piece:

“In January 2017, the 45th president of the United States of America was being inaugurated in front of a crowd that — let’s say — wasn’t as large as expected. The live TV images spoke for themselves. The new president’s press secretary swiftly declared this was the ‘largest audience to ever witness an inauguration (…) on the globe’. Challenged about her blatant lie, her response was truly Orwellian. She said her views were ‘alternative facts’.

“Entering truly dystopian territory, Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani told an astonished Chuck Todd of NBC, ‘Truth isn’t truth!’ And to complete the Orwe­l­­lian scenario, Trump gave a speech in July 2018, where he said: ‘What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening’. Like Orwell warns in 1984, once you are told ‘to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears’, you can expect total alienation.

“The ‘alienated’ assaulted the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, provoked by Trump’s ‘alternative facts’ in a reminder of our very own 2014 ‘D’ Chowk dharna. Trump claimed to have won the November 2020 presidential election. Official data shows Joe Biden got seven million votes more than Trump, giving him 51 per cent of the vote, and 306 seats of the US Electoral College.

“But these ‘alternative facts’ resulted in five dead, dozens arrested; lawmakers’ and their aides’ children terrorised in the crèche inside the Capitol and the US legislature besieged by an inflamed mob. A recent Reuter/Ipsos poll showed 68 per cent of Republican voters still believe the election was rigged, which means a whopping 50 million Ameri­cans have no faith in their democracy anymore.”

Need I say more about what we need to tackle head-on?


abbas.nasir@hotmail.com
Published in Dawn, April 24th, 2022

Why Putin Is Hell-Bent on Capturing Ukraine’s Nuclear Reactors

The takeover of Ukraine’s nuclear facilities is a vital part of the Kremlin’s “fear and control” strategy in the war.

Photo Illustration by Kristen Hazzard/The Daily Beast/Getty

Jeremy Kryt
Published Mar. 13, 2022 8:47PM ET

The world watched in horror as shelling by Russian forces set fire to part of the Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant in southeastern Ukraine. Immediate catastrophe was averted when the flames were put out, but the plant—which is home to six separate reactors—was captured by the Kremlin’s forces on March 4.

Russia has also taken control of the nuclear facility at Chernobyl, which although inactive, still houses deadly radioactive materials. The situation at Chernobyl took a dramatic turn for the worse on March 9 when the power supply was cut off and the electricity-dependent cooling system for spent nuclear rods was endangered. A partial outage at Zaporizhzhya followed a day later.

Ukraine is home to three additional nuclear facilities totaling nine more reactors, and some observers have theorized those are also likely to be targeted as Russia seeks to gain control over the nation’s power supply.

“The Russians will want to secure the other three Ukrainian nuclear facilities as part of this strategy,” Dr. Robert J. Bunker, research director at the security consultancy ℅ Futures LLC, told The Daily Beast. Bunker hypothesized that an “airborne assault could be utilized as an early component of a ground force offensive drive” to seize one or more of the remaining plants. If or when Russian forces are able to regain the offensive, “the three reactors at the South Ukraine facility would be the next logical target in this regard.”


A satellite image shows military vehicles alongside Chernobyl nuclear power plant on Feb. 25, 2022.
BlackSky via Reuters

So what’s behind the Russians’ obsession with Ukraine's nuclear plants?

Let’s start with Russia’s own stated reason for going after the plants, which is that Kyiv had been using material at the sites to build a thermononuclear bomb.Those charges escalated on March 9, when Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharaova told Russian media that Ukraine intended to use its alleged nuclear arsenal against Russia.

The Foreign Ministry Twitter account recorded Zakharova as saying that Russia had occupied Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhya “exclusively to prevent any attempts to stage nuclear provocations, which is a risk that obviously exists.”

U.S. experts interviewed by The Daily Beast pushed back hard on those claims.

“That was a baseless invention by Moscow to justify its invasion and seizures of nuclear power plants,” said retired military intelligence officer Hal Kempfer.

Kempfer, who formerly directed a coalition task force that studied weapons of mass destruction [WMDs], accused Russian president Vladimir Putin of “creating information or ‘facts’ to fit an official narrative, no matter how fake, illogical, ridiculous, unsubstantiated or easily refuted they may be,” said Kempfer, who called the claim that Ukraine had intended to use WMDs “truly Orwellian.”

Fear is a very powerful weapon in warfare.

Bunker, a former professor at the U.S. Army War College, agreed.

“I think the Russian narrative is meant to obscure Putin's strategic objectives as well as use propaganda to make the Ukrainian defenders appear as aggressors and war criminals that must be stopped,” he said. “Also, if a radiological release or nuclear event took place the Russians might try to label it as part of a false flag Ukrainian or even NATO backed plot.”

There might not be a WMD plot afoot, but that doesn’t mean the reactors aren’t valuable targets, in particular because about 50 percent of Ukraine’s electricity is generated by nuclear power.

“There is strategic operation value in controlling energy and communication centers and choke points,” said retired Marine Colonel G.I. Wilson, whose writings originated the popular concept of Fourth Generation Warfare. “That aspect has considerable merit [for the Russians].”

According to Kempfer, part of that merit comes from the fact that such control over the electrical grid would allow the Kremlin to turn the lights off at will over vast swaths of Ukraine.

“Turning off the power nationwide—as [Russian force] have done on a smaller scale in Mariupol—in the middle of winter creates mass hardship and suffering for the Ukrainian population, and that is apparently a weapon Putin feels free to utilize,” Kempfer said.

Such a move could also have a chilling effect on the nation’s commerce.

“The industry and economy of Ukraine can’t function if 50 percent of its power generation capabilities are either controlled by Russian forces or disabled,” said Futures’ research director Bunker, who also pointed out that the reactors could serve as immense “bargaining chips” in any future ceasefire or peace negotiations.

The reactors are also positioned near major railheads that transport nuclear fuel. Those same shipping hubs could be easily repurposed by the Russians for moving armored vehicles and munitions to battlefields around Ukraine, especially since their tanks have been running short on gas.

The targeting of nuclear facilities—including the wanton shelling that set part of Zaporizhzhya ablaze and the ongoing power outages at the plants—also sends a deliberate message that this is a kind of no-holds-barred warfare in which even the risk of nuclear devastation can’t be ruled out.

“It’s a psychological weapon being used to terrorize the population,” said intelligence officer Kempfer. “They’re [targeting nuclear plants] as a way to put tremendous pressure on the Ukrainian government to capitulate. That’s their endgame.”

Kempfer also said the takeovers were a way to warn the U.S. and NATO and against their potential involvement in the conflict.

“[The Kremlin] is able to raise the specter of radioactive calamity without ever introducing nuclear weapons. Putin is a calculating guy and he realizes that we get very concerned any time a nuclear plant is threatened. The world saw Chernobyl, the world saw Fukushima, and we don’t want to see that again.”

Kempfer likened the tactic of going after Ukraine’s nuclear plants to that of Rome sewing salt into Cartheginian soil at the end of the Punic Wars, so that nothing would ever grow there. “They’re saying [...] we might irradiate a big chunk of Ukraine so it’s dead earth and you can never use it again. That’s the implied threat. That they can turn all of Ukraine into one big Chernobyl.”

Ukraine: Putin Plotting False-Flag Chernobyl Terror Attack


Taking risks that could lead to a catastrophic accident might be intended to show Russia’s disregard for the consequences of radioactive fallout, but Bunker said there could also be an even darker, more deliberate motive for going after reactors.

“If the Putin regime wants to play ‘authoritarian hardball’ it can threaten to release radiological material into the atmosphere from the Zaporizhzhia facility under its control,” Bunker said. Such a move could be used to force Kyiv to accept Russian rule or “as a deterrence measure to inhibit Ukrainian forces from retaking the facility.”

Marine Colonel Wilson called such behavior “Russian brinkmanship” designed “to give the impression of upping the ante in a very high-stakes encounter” in which “everything is targetable and nothing is safe.”

“Fear,” Wilson said, “is a very powerful weapon in warfare.”

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for CHERNOBYL 

Noted business expert explains what America is teaching us about the willful ignorance of a failed state


Umair Haque, Dc Report @Rawstory
November 02, 2021

Alabama AG vows to revive law protecting Confederate monuments after it's struck down by judge
Confederate flag supporters rally in Alabama (screenshot/Twitter)

It's a peculiar pattern of history. Like the axis around which a cycle of ruin spins. Societies — even civilizations — don't see their own collapses coming. And not seeing them coming, they can hardly take steps to avert them. They're left like deer in the headlights. And you know what happens next. If anything, curiously, societies tend to lean into their collapses.

So why don't societies see their own collapses coming? Why do they accelerate and intensify them? It's an especially relevant question, because, well, look around. Things aren't exactly going too well for our civilization. We're threatened by everything from global warming to ecological implosion to mass extinction to the pandemics and poverty and fascisms they're already breeding.

If I think about it, four reasons jump out at me. In this little essay, I'll use the examples of everyone's favorite collapsing societies, America and Britain, to illustrate them.

The first reason's simple: entrenched elites want to preserve the status quo. Think about America. The average American's life is in freefall. Every single social indicator imaginable — from longevity to trust to happiness to income — is either flatlining or plummeting. Every single one. As a result, it's not too hard to see why Americans are turning to hatred, superstition, fanaticism and other assorted forms of stupidity. They're literally losing their minds as their lives fall apart.

And yet the really curious thing is that that's been going on for decades now — and the whole while, America's ruling classes have pretended that everything's OK. Which classes are those? Well, there are the political class, the intellectual class and the capitalist class. None of these three classes can even brook the idea that America is in serious, deep trouble, which adds up to a collapsing society.

Hence, American pundits will say, on cue, every quarter, that the "economy's roaring" and that "confidence is rising" and all the other flavors of canned doublespeak they're renowned for. Meanwhile, life keeps on falling apart.

The Soviet Union's laughing in its grave, because it's seen all this before. Why do entrenched elites want to preserve the status quo? You're right to say that it preserves their power. But in a subtler way than I think is often understood. To say that a society is collapsing would be for elites to admit they mismanaged them. They'd have to admit they were badly, badly wrong — ideologically, theoretically, paradigmatically. Who wants to do that? And that, of course, would probably cost them. Fancy sinecures and "consulting" contracts and high office and all the rest of it.

So entrenched elites go on pretending nothing's wrong — even in societies like America, where social collapse has reached breathtaking proportions. Kids shoot each other in schools, people just…die…because they can't afford insulin which is profiteered on…the average American lives and dies in debt, with little to no real freedoms or choices. And elites just whistle, shrug and walk away.

I have to give a special mention to intellectual elites. America's in a funny place. It thinks of itself as having the finest thinkers in the world — and yet practically none of these fine thinkers can see that America's collapsing, much less explain why, much less offer many ideas to stave it off. Intellectual elites, too, are complicit in the game of self-preservation, perhaps most of all so — because a collapsing society means their ideologies and theories were all badly wrong, too. Just ask the Soviets.

That brings me to the next reason that societies don't foresee their own collapses. If elites want to preserve the status quo, then why don't people…do something about those elites? Because elites in collapsing societies are entrenched. That means they're dug tight into impregnable bunkers — and nobody can force them out and regain control of a society's resources and decisions.

Corruption Run Rampant

Why can't elites be forced out? How do they end up entrenched? Well, again, take a hard look at America. It has probably the most openly corrupt set of elites since the Soviet Union. In Europe, if politicians took "donations" the way American politicians do, it'd be a scandal every hour for decades. But in America, it's just business as usual. The pervasive corruption of elites is another grand theme in collapsing societies. Who cares if Rome falls — as long as you've got your villa and your servants? That seems to be the feeling among elites when it comes to American collapse, too. Corruption saps incentives for elites to do anything but aggressively pursue self-preservation in the most antisocial and corrosive ways imaginable.

And yet it's not just corruption that entrenches elites. That's necessary, but not sufficient. A deeper force is at play: the disempowerment of the demos, as in, the democratic unit that is "the people."

Think about that mouthful this way. The average American is completely disenchanted with their elites. Nobody much likes Biden or Pelosi or McConnell or any of the rest of them. But the problem is that Americans don't have the time or energy or spirit or willpower to do anything about their failed elites. The American demos has little to no power over its elites.

Why not? Because they're too busy just trying to survive. Just trying to make it through another day in America is a wearying affair. Life is an endless game of brutal competition, right down to death. Lose that job? Whoops, there goes everything, from health care to a home. So Americans, caught in the trap of capitalism, have to work every single day, to the bone, just to make ends meet. And even then, they can't. Remember, the average American dies in debt — "credit card debt," "medical debt," "mortgage debt" and so on.

Trapped in Debt

To a good economist, societies where the average person dies in debt are also societies incapable of forcing entrenched elites out — at least short of a grand revolution. That's the trap Americans are in. Elites have made sure they're indebted…to elites…so Americans, worn out, broken, defeated, having to fight each other every day, over and over again…to pay off those debts…don't have the energy or power left to dislodge those very entrenched elites.

Why don't Americans protest? At least the way, say, the French famously do? It's not just a cultural thing, though any proper Frenchman or woman is practically born waving a placard and shouting non! It's also, more to the point, a matter of political economy: the French have time and energy left over to protest, like Europe and Canada generally do. From an American point of view, those societies hardly work at all — Americans work twice as long and receive less in return. No wonder Americans are indebted — and don't have the energy left over to remove their entrenched yet failed elites from power.


If you're working 80 hours a week at some crap job — like many Americans are — what time or energy do you really have left over for serious reflection about your society? Protesting? Giving "voice," as political scientists, call it, to your discontents? Who's going to organize and coordinate and fund all that, anyway? Maybe you see the problem. America's ended up a democracy in name only, one without a demos exerting any real power over entrenched, failed elites.

Result? The grim, disheartening choice between Biden and Trump.

And yet there's an even starker, darker path to collapse. Often, there is someone who sees a society's in trouble, serious trouble, even beginning to collapse. The demagogue. The demagogue sees that a society's not doing well, that things are beginning to break and crumble and fall apart. But he or she then scapegoats the most powerless groups in society for those problems — instead of fixing them. The obvious result is that the problems afflicting a society only get worse, while people are incited to hate, and so the vicious cycle of collapse only accelerates, usually hard and fast. Societies like this lean into their collapse — baffling and bewildering those around them, usually, too.

Britain Turns on Europe

It's modern-day Britain that exemplifies this weird, sinister path to social collapse best. Britain was beset by problems after the financial crisis of the 2000s. But those problems came from a bungled bank bailout, which simply shifted costs to the public balance sheet, and led to a decade of austerity. In this vacuum, demagoguery arose — an entire generation of British leaders blamed Europe for Britain's woes. Europe had nothing — nothing whatsoever — to do with British austerity, which led to falling living standards. And yet this class of demagogues — expertly scapegoated Europe, to the point that you'd turn on the BBC, and see someone called an "economist" or "analyst," with no credentials whatsoever, just spouting folly, lies and hate…every day.

The catastrophic result was Brexit. And the consequences of Brexit, today, are as funny and absurd as they are shocking. Brits can't get food — they see cardboard cutouts of food at supermarkets. The country's running out of beer. Raw sewage is floating down waterways because the chemicals to treat it can't be found. All that stuff came from Europe. And now it doesn't come from anywhere.

Meanwhile, nobody in Britain, at least in a position of power, is allowed to say the word "Brexit." It's Voldemort, at idiot Hogwarts. Even the leader of the opposition, Keir Starmer, won't say the obvious, which is that Brits can't get food or fuel or, shortly, medicine, because it all used to come from Europe, and Britain is still busy picking fights with Europe, instead of trying to figure out how to supply itself with basic goods.

Meanwhile, Europe's baffled — and at this point, infuriated — with Britain. It has little appetite left to be scapegoated. Give Europe some credit — it took Britain's insults for five years, with grace and kindness, just out of friendship. Shortly, though, Europe's going to do things like stop supplying Britain with power and gas, because Britain keeps on provoking it, demonizing it, attacking it. And then the real chaos will begin.

In this form of social collapse — let's call it the Brexit Pattern — nobody sees collapse coming because they're too busy cheering it on. The demagogue's lies appeal to people because their lives really are hurting — and it's always easiest to blame it on a scapegoat. Hence, Britain became literally a "hostile" country to foreigners — as its own government puts it — and especially to Europeans.

But attacking and insulting and provoking Europeans didn't fix Britain's problems. It only created far, far bigger ones — ones that have led Britain squarely to the point of collapse. What else do you call a society where people are given…cardboard cutouts of food…raw sewage is floating down rivers…where the lights are likely going to go off in the winter…while the people who created this mess are riding higher in the polls than ever…because, still, idiotically, astonishingly, it's all someone else's fault? Britain's still so busy blaming Europe that it can't see it's collapsing because it began blaming Europe from the start.

It's hard to unpack and unpick the layers of stupidity and irony therein, so many abound.

Five Decades of Decline

America took about half a century to collapse. Incomes began stagnating in the '70s, social mobility began to stall in the '80s, living standards began to flatline in the '90s, by the end of the '00s, America's famed middle class was a minority and an underclass. That was the point at which debt, drugs and despair began to ravage (even white) America in earnest. That's a pretty standard form of social collapse — it took the Soviet Union about three decades of stagnation and falling living standards to come undone.

Britain, though, is something closer to Weimar Germany. It took Weimar Germany a decade, maybe 15 years, depending on how you count it, to really implode into Nazi Germany. Britain's much closer to that pattern, that form of collapse. Just 20 years ago, it was the envy of the world, with one of the world's highest living standards, finest healthcare system, most renowned public broadcaster. Today? All that's in tatters, precisely because Britain leaned into collapse even harder than America did.

In that respect, Britain and America teach us different lessons about how societies collapse. America teaches us that time, neglect, ignorance and poverty can slowly crumble the foundations of even the mightiest empires until they totter and fall. Britain teaches us an even darker lesson: Give a society a crisis, a demagogue and a scapegoat — and it takes just a decade or two of stupidity and anger to turn into hate and venom to the point of total and utter self-destruction.

America teaches us that small amounts of the social poisons of greed and indifference and inequality can add up to a very big collapse, in the end, given time. But Britain teaches us that societies can implode with lightning quickness, too; that even wise and gentle people like the British are not immune to the Big Lies of hate and nationalism and intolerance and unkindness, that anyone can be seduced by a demagogue offering a nation growing poorer a convenient scapegoat for its ills.

Does that get us a little closer to understanding why societies don't see their own collapses coming? Perhaps it does — you'll have to tell me. In the end, the answer may be as simple as this. Societies don't see their own collapses coming because they grow weak, blind, dull, defeated in the spirit, corroded in the heart, hubristic in the mind. They've been warned, time and again, that it can't happen here — and left too weary to fight it much, anyways. That's America's case. But that's the kind case. Even more revealing, some societies, like Nazi Germany, end up leaning aggressively into their own collapse, cheering it all on in a frenzy, attacking every scapegoat in sight, provoking newly made enemies, instead of fixing their own problems. A weird Orwellian freedom-is-slavery perversion of reality takes place. That's Britain's case right about now.

Which one, I wonder, will hit which nation next?

Umair Haque is a London-based consultant. He is director of Havas Media Lab, founder of Bubblegeneration and frequent tweeter and contributor to the online Harvard Business Review. Haque's initial training was in neuroscience. He studied at McGill University in Canada, went on to do an MBA at London Business School and is the author of The New Capitalist Manifesto: Building a Disruptively Better Business (2011).

PAKISTAN

Harassing journalists

DAWN
Editorial 

Published May 24, 2023

THE state has cast a wide dragnet to haul up all those allegedly involved in the May 9 rioting, while also using the opportunity to weaken the PTI. However, there can be no excuse for the hundreds of journalists that have been hounded by police just for carrying out their professional duties on the day of the mayhem.

Sadly, the methods are straight out of the colonial playbook; the state has used these tactics for decades to teach all those who have come in its way a lesson. According to the Lahore Press Club president, around 250 journalists and other media workers have complained of police harassment post-May 9.

It is likely that the media personnel were identified through geo-fencing when they were in the field covering the protests in key areas of Lahore after Imran Khan’s arrest. Particularly disturbing is the fact that family members of some media workers have also been picked up. The Lahore High Court has been petitioned to stop this flagrant abuse of authority, while the caretaker Punjab administration has also formed a committee to look into the matter.

While the wholesale crackdown on all PTI sympathisers cannot be condoned, the targeting of journalists who were simply doing their jobs has no justification whatsoever. The federal energy minister has described the ongoing actions as the “process of filtering the criminals from the onlookers”.

This cannot be used as an excuse to harass journalists and media workers. As it is, the media fraternity faces a difficult working environment in Pakistan, and journalists often put their lives on the line in the course of discharging their duties.

Using the anti-PTI crackdown as a cover to threaten journalists is not to be tolerated, and the Punjab government must stop this campaign of fear. The administration must also reveal the whereabouts of anchorperson Imran Riaz Khan, who has been missing for the last two weeks.

RSF, Amnesty ask Pakistan to find pro-Khan anchor Imran Riaz

The prominent journalist and supporter of ex-PM Imran Khan was detained by the Pakistani police, but the authorities then failed to present him in court.

Haroon Janjua in Islamabad | Darko Janjevic
DW

May 23, 2023

Imran Riaz, a well-known TV anchor and YouTuber, was among thousands of Imran Khan supporters who were detained following the former premier's arrest and violent protests in Pakistan earlier this month. The journalist was reportedly taken into custody from the airport at the eastern city of Sialkot on May 11 on suspicion of inciting violence. He was due to appear before court in Lahore this Monday.

But then, the story took an an usual turn — authorities failed to present Riaz during the hearing, and Punjab police chief Usman Anwar told the court he was "clueless" about his whereabouts.

The chief justice of the Lahore High Court warned the authorities that "no one will be spared if anything happened" to the 47-year-old reporter.

Riaz's wife Arbab Imran told DW she is worried for her husband's safety.

"The arrest of my husband is deeply troubling. He raised voices for the vulnerable people and for the truth. My four children are concerned about him and we don't know the whereabouts of him. He was taken off air many times and I demand from authorities for his immediate release," she said.

Imran Khan granted bail and protection in Pakistan  02:01

 

RSF points to Pakistan's military intelligence

Pakistan is going through a deep political crisis marked by a power struggle between Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party and the current government led by Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, with the military and the judiciary also being affected. Khan has recently stepped up his attacks on the military, accusing it of working against him. Riaz is a wellknown media figure among Khan's supporters.

On Tuesday, Reporters Without Border (RSF) representative Daniel Bastard said it was "clearly Pakistan's military intelligence agencies that abducted Imran Riaz," after the Punjabi inspector spoke of unspecified "agencies" during the court hearing.

"According to confidential diplomatic sources consulted by RSF, the government's silence about the TV anchor's fate suggests that he may have fared badly since his abduction and may even have died in detention," the watchdog organization said.

Separately, Amnesty International called for Riaz's immediate recovery.

"On 22 May, the police told the Lahore High Court that there is no trace of him in any police department in the province."

The organization said the events amount to "an enforced disappearance" under international law.

"Punishing dissenting voices using enforced disappearance has been a worrying trend in Pakistan for many years and must be ended," Amnesty said.
Riaz missing, Sharif killed in exile

Riaz's lawyer Azhar Siddique says that the arrest is a "blatant violation of freedom of expression."

Riaz has decried Imran Khan's ouster from power in April last year, linking it to "regime change" and amplifying Khan's claims that the military was involved in ending his government. The anchor was already arrested twice, in July 2022 and in February 2023. The latter saw Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency suspect him of hate speech and criticism of the military.

Exclusive: Imran Khan speaks to DW from his besieged home

07:46

The disappearance of Riaz prompted some in Pakistan to draw parallels with the killing of veteran reporter Arshad Sharif last October. Sharif was well-known for criticizing the Pakistani military and was forced to flee Pakistan in August 2022 to avoid arrest. He was killed in Kenya in what a team of Pakistani investigators described to be a "targeted assassination." The background of the murder remains unclear.
Bad optics for freedom of speech?

With the country on edge, a disappearance of a prominent journalist is sure to chill other reporters in the country. Journalist Javeria Siddique, the widow of late Sharif, told DW that Riaz's arrest was "really alarming and a bad optic for freedom of speech in Pakistan."

"The government is arresting journalists over their stories and being vocal," she said, pointing to her husband's killing in Kenya. "Then we have seen the same pattern for Imran Riaz," she added.

"I am requesting from the authorities that they should immediately and unconditionally release the journalist Imran Riaz Khan. Criticizing the ruling elite of Pakistan is not something which falls in hate speech," Siddique added.

Legal expert Osama Malik notes that the freedom of information and the freedom of expression are guaranteed by the Pakistani constitution.

"Imran Riaz's brand of journalism may not be palatable to everyone, but that is certainly not a reason for the state to spirit him away," he told DW. "It is highly condemnable that despite the province's highest court asking about his whereabouts, the law enforcement agencies are unable or unwilling to present Imran Riaz in court or divulge his location."

Edited by: Shamil Shams

‘Orwellian doublespeak’: Journalists, rights activists call out Marriyum Aurangzeb for remarks on Imran Riaz’s disappearance

Following backlash, the minister claims she did not justify enforced disappearances and had categorically condemned the issue of missing persons.

Dawn.com 

Published May 23, 2023 

Journalists and human rights activists have strongly criticised Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb’s comments regarding the case of anchorperson Imran Riaz Khan, who has been missing for more than a week after his arrest.

Riaz was among those apprehended in the wake of the protests that erupted following the arrest of PTI Chairman Imran Khan. Later, his lawyer had told Dawn.com that a writ petition was filed on May 12 over the anchorperson’s arrest and the Lahore High Court had directed the attorney general to present the anchor before the court the same day. But, after its orders were not followed, Sialkot police were given a 48-hour deadline to recover Riaz.

A day ago, Punjab Inspector General Dr Usman Anwar revealed there was no trace of the journalist at any police department across the country.

Separately, journalist Secunder Kermani, a Channel4 News foreign correspondent, had shared a video of an exchange with the information minister about the missing anchorperson.




He questioned Aurangzeb about journalists going missing and being detained, adding that these were the same issues that the PML-N had raised as matters of concern when in opposition during the previous PTI government.

In response, Aurangzeb asked Kermani to name even a single journalist who was missing. When Kermani mentioned Riaz, the minister responded, “Imran Riaz is a political party spokesperson now. You really have to draw [a] distinction.”

She further said, “You have to differentiate between journalists and the journalists who have joined political parties. Once they have joined political parties, they are inciting violence, they are spokespersons of that political parties.”

In a brief back and forth between the two, Aurangzeb mentioned former prime minister Imran being termed a “media predator” during his tenure and asserted that press freedom in Pakistan had improved by “seven points” during the past year.

When asked again about the issue of a person being missing despite his political leanings, she said she condemned anyone being missing, whether it was herself or Riaz.

Aurangzeb’s response elicited severe criticism from several journalists and rights activists, who reminded the minister that a person’s disappearance was an issue of basic human rights irrespective of what political party they favoured.

Lawyer and social activist Jibran Nasir said that Aurangzeb believed Riaz “should be seen as a supporter of PTI and hence considered a sub-human who deserves the treatment being meted out to them.

“Now just imagine the plight of ordinary citizens suffering military trials,” he added.







Pakistan Initiative at Atlantic Council’s South Asia Centre Director Uzair Younus said Riaz’s status as a journalist or not should not matter.

He said that Riaz had fundamental constitutional rights granted to him on account of his Pakistani citizenship.

“Stop violating his rights and those of countless others. These disappearances are heinous!” he tweeted.







Senior anchorperson Maria Memon pointed out the lack of an “honest answer”.







Journalist Roohan Ahmed tweeted: “It doesn’t matter if Imran Riaz Khan is a journalist or a ‘propagandist’, as Information Minister Aurangzeb calls him. What matters is that a Pakistani citizen is missing and being denied the right to defend himself in the court of law.”







Journalist Mehreen Zahra Malik called the information minister’s response “Orwellian doublespeak”, adding that it was “unacceptable” and that the government must answer for the missing anchor’s whereabouts.







Senior journalist Raza Ahmad Rumi commented that Riaz’s status as a journalist or party activist did not matter and that his being denied due process was a violation of the law.







Researcher Abdul Basit analysed much the same, saying that “under no circumstances you can arrest a person extrajudicially and refuse to produce him before a court of law. This is an affront against democracy and the rule of law.”







Journalist Murtaza Solangi, while expressing his differences with Riaz, also said: “A human being, a Pakistani citizen is missing and that is and should be a cause of concern. Regardless of the circumstances of his disappearance, it is the job of the state to find him and tell the people about the circumstances of his disappearance. Period.”





Meanwhile, journalist Matiullah Jan — who was himself abducted in Islamabad in July 2020 — said it was a “disappointing response” from a politician and spokesperson of the government, adding that it was “shameful to justify a possible enforced disappearance on the basis of someone not being a journalist.”

His harsh rebuke prompted a reply from the information minister who said she had not justified enforced disappearances and had condemned them.

“I have categorically stated that if a person is missing, any person, whether that person is me or Imran Riaz, I condemn that,” she said.

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