A Small Tapestry of Lies
Two Canadian Lies
Freedom Lets You Live Longer
Democracy Makes you Happy
Revolutions Also Make You Happy
Hurray for India, Twice
Bad Russia
Nuts to You, Too
The Missing Half
The Fingers Were Live, but the Strings Were Fake
80% of Chinese Scientists use Google
Let's Win an Olympic Medal
China's Pollution Problem
China Copies Everything
The Dark Side of the Moon
Propaganda, Media, Lies
Cropping, Cutting and Pasting
Toppling of Saddam Hussein's Statue in Baghdad
China Brutalises Tibetans (Again)
Tiananmen Square
China’s Jasmine Revolution
A Lie of Omission is Still a Lie
China: Bullying to Prosperity
China Imprisons yet another Human Rights Lawyer
Jessica Lynch
The Death of Osama bin Laden
By Larry Romanoff, October 11, 2022
Credit Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Obama_and_Biden_await_updates_on_bin_Laden.jpg
One of the conditions of Western society today in which all citizens are immersed, is that the lie has become the truth and the truth a lie. The lies that have become the truth, emanate primarily from governments and corporations, while the truths which are lies are on the part of the people. These latter are at the very least "misinformation" bordering on domestic terrorism, the telling of which is attracting increasingly onerous and even frightening repressive and punitive measures. We seem to be 80% of the way to the end game.
I cannot be certain but, delving back into my memory, this condition seems to have appeared or at least gained enormous vigor around 1980, the time of "The Great Transformation" of Western society. That was the time when all of the West took an alarming turn to the extreme political Right. There have always been lies of course, from governments, militaries, corporations, religions, and by the media themselves but, prior to 1980, such events would have been rare, scandalous, and considered unforgivable, and possibly heads would have rolled somewhere. But today, lies are the norm, the accepted response to all challenges, and the media are absolutely in the front lines. Today, the lies are so common they seem to elicit no response. We Westerners have become so inured that we no longer resist or protest although, in fairness, our protests today would be futile.
If you're an American or Canadian, you won't want to hear this, but no government official at the national level in China has been known to tell a lie, at least not in recent memory. Any senior government official in China exposed in a single lie to the people, would lose all credibility and respect and would be immediately removed. Even at lower government or corporate levels, any hint of a lie to the public would almost inevitably result in media condemnation, widespread protests, and major changes. If things like this occur in China, and they do occasionally, prison sentences and huge fines are virtually automatic. The culture in China has a number of exemplary features. This is one of them.
I have assembled here for you a small tapestry of lies of many different kinds, done for different reasons by various parties. Some are humorous, some not so humorous, while others downright nasty and some criminally psychopathic.
Two Canadian Lies
These are from Canada, although similar examples exist everywhere in the West. The city of Toronto has a famous (in Toronto) tower named the CN Tower, a high structure with viewing platforms at the top. One day the media reported that a down-escalator from the mezzanine floor had suddenly accelerated markedly and dumped a load of passengers unceremoniously in a heap at the bottom, with minor injuries. The tower management strenuously denied both the fact and possibility of such an event, accusing the tourists of slanderous lies to gain attention. The event repeated several times with the same results. Then one day a group of nuns called a press conference after experiencing the same circumstance. The tower management hadn't the courage to accuse the nuns of lying, and so admitted that indeed their escalators had been misbehaving for some time but the cause could not be determined. The libelous lies against the victims were openly justified as "protecting the reputation of the tower".
Another instance, also in Toronto, involved a woman returning home from a supermarket to find her grocery bags crawling with cockroaches. She concluded they originated on the city bus which she used to return home; a fact picked up by the local media. The Toronto Transit Commission immediately held a press conference and thoroughly trashed the woman as a dirty housekeeper attempting to blame her failings on the city's pristine buses. But this one quickly exploded because hundreds of locals immediately testified to the media with similar experiences. The Transit Commission then admitted their bus barns had had cockroach infestations for years, with all eradication attempts failing. No apologies for the libel against the poor housewife, again justified as protection of the reputation of the Transit System.
Freedom Lets You Live Longer
Few people are aware that democracy and freedom will add years to your life. This is something we always suspected was true, and now we finally have proof from a live test case. Reuters released a statistical study on Germany, covering the period since the reunification of East and West in 1990, confirming that former East German citizens had added an extra 6 years to their lifespan for men, and 4 years for women. The study claimed breathlessly that the life expectancy of East Germans had "risen sharply since their communist state crumbled and they [joined] the more prosperous West in 1990". Tobias Vogt, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, did the calculations himself and released the results, claiming, "The gain in longevity is thus one of the biggest – albeit often overlooked – achievements of German reunification".
But then in 2000, the Health Affairs Journal published a large international study of longevity which revealed that the entire world - all nations - had, on average, added 6 years to their life spans during a similar time frame, so it seems democracy and freedom played no part in the improvement in East Germany. Even worse, the German women should have gained six years of extra life but gained only four, leading to the sad but necessary conclusion that, at least for women, democracy and freedom will shorten your life. As a point of interest, both studies ignored the fact that while all other nations gained 6 years of longevity, the US experienced no gain at all - zero - during that 25-year period, one of the few nations in this position.
Democracy Causes Happiness
In related news, many reports have been published on the happiness and success of the East German people "since their communist state crumbled" and they joined the "more prosperous" West. But in all those reports, it seems nobody actually asked the East Germans how they felt about it. Finally, someone did. A new study was released in 2014 resulting from interviews and a poll of many East Germans, and it seems that a great majority of those over age 50 claim to have been "much happier" under communism, and more than 40% of all younger people shared that sentiment. We are now faced with the sad revelation that democracy and freedom will neither make you happier nor let you live longer. And, if you're a woman, you will not only die sooner but will be unhappy until you do. Even worse, if you're an American, your freedom and democracy are killing you off at a faster rate than the Axis of Evil members. Such a shame.
Revolutions Also Bring Happiness
In the same vein, James Zogby wrote an article in the Huffington Post titled "The Unraveling of the Arab Spring Narrative"[1] in which he so beautifully wrote "A spark had been ignited in Tunisia that would catch fire across the region bringing fundamental social and political transformation in its wake. It was a simple linear trajectory from dictatorship to democracy." Sounds wonderful. All those people in a bright future filled with freedom, democracy, and GM food. But then he noted that in repeated surveys, virtually the entire population of these nations believe they are now worse off than they had been before. Zogby wrote "what emerges is a region deeply conflicted ... What had been presented as a simple story-line of progress at the beginning of the Arab Spring has become a troubling tale of more steps backward than forward."
I shouldn't have to point out that the reason for these dismal results is that freedom and democracy were never even on the agenda of the Americans and the Jewish bankers in the City of London pulling the revolutionary strings. It was just all about money, political obedience and freedom to continue plundering. And these aren't the only countries in this position. Ukraine may never recover from the heavy dose of freedom and democracy ladled onto it by Victoria Nuland and her Jewish banker friends, and nobody even bothers asking the people in Iraq or Libya how they are enjoying their new "freedoms" which include an 80% drop in living standards and a 4,000% increase in hideously deformed births.
Hurray for India, Twice
Former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice testified to Congress as follows: "India’s society is open and free. It is transparent and stable. It is multiethnic. It is a multi-religious democracy that is characterized by individual freedom and the rule of law. It is a country with which we share common values. India is a rising global power that we believe can be a pillar of stability in a rapidly changing Asia. In other words, in short, India is a natural partner for the United States."
Sounds good. But then her own State Department issued a report the very same day that said: "... numerous serious problems ... include extrajudicial killings, disappearances, custodial deaths, excessive use of force, arbitrary arrests, torture, poor prison conditions and extended pretrial detention. Societal violence and discrimination against women, trafficking of women and children for forced prostitution and labor, and female feticide and infanticide remained concerns. Poor enforcement of laws, widespread corruption, a lack of accountability, and the severely overburdened court system weakened the delivery of justice." Are they talking about the same India? American leaders nevertheless spoke warmly of "the world’s largest democracy", as if India's corrupt American-style political system were the only measure of a nation.
Time Magazine ran a story containing comparative references to the political systems in India and China, noting among other things the truly disheartening level of poverty throughout India, including the fact that 70% of the population have no access to a toilet and most often just defecate in the streets. But then, every cloud has a silver lining. According to Time, the Chinese may have toilets but the Indians are the much more fortunate people because they have "democracy", and democracy is more important than toilets. I want to write something here, but I can't think of anything to say.
Bad Russia
There is a huge library of fake political stories created by various branches of the US government, all designed to cast one nation or another in an unfavorable light, partly to stoke the ideological narrative at home and partly to create international pressure on these nations to capitulate to US demands for increased freedom to interfere and plunder. I have many such endearing stories about Russia, China and other countries.
In one recent case the US media published a flurry of articles that spitefully condemned Putin's re-election as President, since the Russian people refused to vote for a pro-US candidate. The articles documented the mass protests that occurred everywhere in the country, virtually the entire population rebelling against the "fraudulent election of a hated leader". Unfortunately, those mass protests actually occurred only in Moscow, and local TV cameras filmed the so-called 'spontaneous' protestors filing into the US embassy grounds after the protests, to collect their pay. Perhaps not so spontaneous after all. But the best part was the photos accompanying the US media articles, definitely depicting many thousands of Russians in the streets of many cities. However, much of the world immediately recognised the images which had been copied and pasted from 1991, when Russians took to the streets to complain about the dissolution of the USSR.
According to Fox News, Russia had experienced many protests in reaction to the results of the Russian election. But poor Fox News has trouble doing anything right. They fabricated the story of Russians protesting against Putin's election, but had no video. That would be a problem for most TV stations, but not for American TV and certainly not for Fox who used video footage of Greek citizens rioting against IMF-imposed austerity in Greece. Of course, the Americans were too clueless to wonder why Russian citizens protesting in Moscow would write their protest signs in Greek.
On this same topic, when you watch news videos on street protests in foreign countries, have you ever wondered why all the protest signs are in English, why people in Iraq, Libya, Greece, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and so many more nations would make English signs to express their displeasure instead of protesting in their own language? Did it ever occur to you that those "protests" might have been staged by the US government with hired "dissidents" performing for a Disney made-for-US-TV news bulletin? If it didn't occur to you, it should have done, because that's what you were watching: "free press", American style.
Nuts to You, Too
Few of us may remember that pistachios used to be dyed a pretty red, with a powdered food coloring that happily transferred itself to hands and clothing, but we still sometimes see them at Christmas, festively dyed in red, green and white. The American marketing machine tells us that Iran dyed its pistachios because the hulls contained unappetising splotchy stains from primitive and backward Iranian harvesting methods, covering their sins by dying them. No evidence was presented for this accusation, but then California produces large volumes of pecan nuts which have naturally splotchy hulls and which the Americans have bleached and dyed for generations, and still do today, to disguise their unattractive appearance. So, when patriotic, god-fearing Americans dye pecans, they are simply employing modern agricultural best practices while making the world safe for democracy, but when Iran dyes pistachios this is precisely the kind of deceitful conduct we would expect from those primitive non-Christian ragheads. Americans are such a pain in the ass.
The Missing Half
In June of 2013, China's President Xi Jinping, accompanied by his wife Peng Liyuan, visited the US for a series of top-level meetings that were expected to inject a bit of warmth into China-US relations. In these high-level diplomatic events, the wives of the leaders traditionally have their own meeting agenda with public chats and photo opportunities for the media, but in this case the US first lady Michelle Obama was unfortunately unable to attend due to unspecified 'domestic responsibilities' like mopping the floors and finally cleaning out those closets. Also, she had a conflict with her daughter's school and there was nobody available to pick up the kid to drive her home. That's a rather lame excuse for avoiding such an important event and causing an unprecedented violation of diplomatic etiquette.
China’s first lady Peng Liyuan is an exceptionally elegant and charming woman, who impresses everyone she meets with her grace and charm in a way that places her in a class with the world's royal families. As well, her exceptional poise and exquisite taste in clothing have attracted global attention, earning her a place on Vanity Fair’s annual International Best-Dressed List. The American first lady, on the other hand, was a housewife. I have no wish to offend Michelle Obama, but the visual contrast of a cleaning lady sharing a media stage with a woman like Peng Liyuan would have presented the disparity in a most unfortunate light, something the Americans were unprepared to contemplate. So, rather than permit the world to make that comparison, Obama's handlers pulled Michelle off the stage, saving her the stress of competition and of being cast into the shadow of Peng Liyuan, even at the regrettable expense of a deliberate snub to China and obvious damage to the American reputation. So petty. So juvenile. And so American.
The Fingers Were Live, but the Strings Were Fake
The US media had a field day in 2008 when they could gleefully report that organisers had superimposed the voice of a sweeter-singing little girl on that of a 9-year-old performer featured at the opening ceremony of Beijing's Olympic Games. But then we discovered that for Obama's Presidential inauguration ceremony, the entire musical performance was faked, the musicians appearing to play while the live and TV audience listened to a recording. And suddenly the august New York Times changed its own tune to claim that performing along to recordings was "a venerable practice". The dictionary defines 'venerable' as "commanding respect by virtue of dignity and character, and deserving of reverence", noting that "there was no shame in it". Well, if the practice is so honorable, 'venerable' and morally righteous when done by Americans, why is it wrong, dishonest, and deserving of shame if done by someone else?
Carole Florman, a White House spokeswoman said "No one's trying to fool anybody", and blamed the musicians, whom she claimed made the decision to fake their own performance because it was "too cold". "We couldn't have any technical or instrumental malfunction on that occasion. A broken string was not an option". Broken strings and other malfunctions are a possibility at any occasion, indoors or outdoors, including expensive philharmonic performances. Florman said further that "it would never have occurred to me" to tell anyone because "it didn't seem relevant", but it sure seemed plenty relevant when China did it.
Regardless, the best part was the puerile propaganda that was quickly overlaid on this dishonest bit of theatre. Raising itself to a new height of moral righteousness, the White House confided that the real reason the Americans held their fake philharmonic was to not draw attention away from "the real news", which was that they were having "a peaceful transition of power". I can picture 300 million Americans with their hands on their hearts, resplendent in their gullibility and ignorance, all wisely nodding their heads and saying, "Oh, yeah. Right. Fake music necessary for Peaceful Transition. Got it". These ceremonies are always held on January 20, and the White House blamed the cold weather as justification for faking the performances. I don't want to seem petty, but one might think that after more than 50 inauguration ceremonies spanning more than 200 years, and all held in subzero temperatures, it might have occurred to some innovative American that maybe an important ceremony shouldn't be performed outdoors in the middle of winter. In any case, the White House regularly fakes performances at these ceremonies, most performers lip-synching to their recordings, the justification being "This is about the president. We want to make him and the country proud". So, we 'make the country proud' by faking performances. Crazy-making at its finest.
80% of Chinese Scientists use Google
Or, maybe not. In one of the many attempts by the US to pressure China to back off on Google, the supposedly-renowned UK magazine Nature published results of a survey of "Chinese scientists" who apparently overwhelmingly claimed they used Google for almost all of their Internet searches, one of them quoted as ridiculously claiming "A day without Google is a day without sunshine". However, the article was strangely silent on the location of their respondents, saying only that "Nature surveyed Chinese researchers ...", then cleverly led in with a quote which led readers to believe the entire research poll was done inside China. But having carefully reviewed that article, it appears almost certain that Nature simply polled scientists living (and probably born) in the UK (if indeed they actually polled anyone at all) until they found three or four who used Google. The study dishonestly inferred to the world that 80% of scientists living in China used Google and risked being disadvantaged by their own government. This clever and entirely disingenuous misrepresentation was given much play in the Western media, and served mostly to indicate the long reach of US political pressure, the extent to which the international media are pawns in America's ideology war, the total lack of ethics of all Western magazines, and the importance of Google as a tool in the US government's aggressive and meddlesome foreign policy.
In related news, one series of lies I do recall from my childhood was the Coca-Cola and Pepsi wars, where the courts revealed that either firm would diligently search until obtaining the names of 9 people preferring their brand, then add in one for the opposition, and launch an ad campaign claiming "9 out of 10 people prefer . . ."
Let's Win an Olympic Medal
Nobody in China will forget for many years the tasteless and libelous accusations by the American John Leonard about the gold medals won by Chinese swimmer Ye Shiwen in the 2012 Olympics. According to Leonard, her gold medal performance was "unbelievable", "disturbing", "suspicious" and "outrageous", adding that "Any time someone has looked like superwoman in the history of our sport they have later been found guilty of doping. ... every time we see something, and I will put quotation marks around this, "unbelievable", history shows us that it turns out later on there was doping involved." Leonard went on to say, "You can't call it racism to say the Chinese have a doping history. That is just history. That's fact." Leonard failed to mention that the US has the most pronounced history of cheating in Olympic sports.[2]
The BBC's Clare Balding began the accusations and the Americans continued with a vengeance. But after Ye passed all the tests and the Americans couldn't defend their doping accusation, they then insinuated Ye must have been a product of some kind of genetic engineering. It was unforgivably cruel to label a 16-year-old as a cheat in front of the whole world, which both Balding and Leonard did with no evidence of any kind. This young girl's career will be forever tainted because whenever Westerners hear her name their first thought will not be 'gold medal', but 'cheat'. Even the UK Guardian was so classless in a headline announcing Ye's second gold medal, writing, "Ye Shiwen calmly takes another gold amid drug claims". They just wouldn't let it go until all possible harm was done, precisely the same thing they did to 15-year-old Kamila Valieva, perhaps ruining her forever.
At the same Olympics, American Michael Phelps completed his swimming career by winning two more gold medals for a lifetime total of 19. But however "unbelievable" Phelps' medals were, and regardless of how he "looked like a superman", Leonard saw nothing "suspicious, outrageous or disturbing". I think it needs to be said there is easily more reason to suspect that Phelps was doping or otherwise cheating, to have obtained his unusual successes. Have we already forgotten Lance Armstrong?
China's Pollution Problem
While China's pollution once made almost daily headlines in the US, India seemed to rate a pass. We might legitimately ask why, since that country's pollution indices on, for example, December 16, 2013, for several major cities like Delhi and Mumbai were 999, 867 and 857. Compared to India, China's numbers look relatively benign, but even pollution numbers are a political weapon for the Americans. I have photos taken in 2013 of various US cities, among them Birmingham, Alabama, where the smog and pollution were so bad one literally could not clearly see buildings across the street, and where the particulate count was well over 1,000.
In March 2014, the city government in Paris, France warned its citizens that breathing outdoors could damage their health. It wasn't so many years ago that much of Northern England had a toxic pollution level without equal in today's world, with many days when the smog was so severe that a few hours' outdoor exposure would create holes in clothing from the sulphuric acid in the air. Los Angeles was almost as bad as England, and far worse than Beijing is today. I can recall flying to Los Angeles during the 1970s and invariably seeing a cloud of ugly yellow-brown pollution resting on the city like a huge inverted bowl. Things may have improved since, but for LA residents to criticise other more polluted cities is to have a very short memory and less than objective motives. Tokyo in the late 1960s and early 1970s was almost always worse, though we hear nothing of these comparisons. Another good friend of the US, Israel, is far more heavily polluted than is China though we are told nothing about it. As one recent example, from March 3, 2014, Israel's 2.5 PM count was 550 in Be'ersheba, 599 in Jerusalem, and 755 in the Negev. Almost as bad as India, but when the above pollution numbers were published on a popular website in the US, they were promptly deleted.
Criticisms of China by the New York Times and the Economist are like those emanating from spoiled children with nasty dispositions and a meanness resulting from poor breeding. It is like a 6-year-old boy mocking and ridiculing his 2-year-old brother for wetting his pants when it was only a short time ago that he was doing the same. And let's not forget that it wasn't so long ago that Americans were eating squirrels, mating with sheep, and relieving themselves on the streets and in public parks. Many still are.
China Copies Everything
China's original moon satellite orbited while making a comprehensive photo record of the moon's entire surface, publishing some of those photos in the media. The Americans were jealous, so they published one photo from China's satellite next to a similar US photo, claiming that China's mission had failed and that to save face China just published a copy of a NASA photo taken 20 years earlier. And of course, many Americans now believe that China's satellite took no photos.
The Dark Side of the Moon
I didn't plan to include this topic in my list of fake stories, but there are a few details about the original Apollo moon landing that are really annoying and deserve to be discussed. For those Chinese readers who don't know, there has been constant speculation about the Apollo 11 moon landing of July 20, 1969 never having occurred and the NASA photos of the event being fakes. Many of the photos do indeed appear to have problems, one being of shadows inexplicably trailing in several very different directions even though the moon has only one major light source and all shadows should be parallel. There are too many photo anomalies to list here. The fluttering flag in a no-atmosphere environment, the nonsense shadows that can be created only by powerful multiple light sources, many photos where the American flag and the words "United States" are always brightly lit, even when the entire surrounding area is in jet-black shadow. And all the perfectly focused and exposed photos made by cameras that had no adjustment mechanisms and no way to even know what was actually in the viewer. In other words, impossibly perfect outside a studio setting.
NASA and a grand assortment of so-called experts have posted dozens of senseless explanations which depend on the public's ignorance for credibility. Perhaps the most pronounced criticism and disbelief were generated from photos of the landed lunar module which clearly showed the spacecraft sitting on the moon's surface with no heat-scorching of the landing site and the surface dust lying completely intact rather than having been blown away by the rocket blast as we might expect. Below is an official NASA photo of the lunar module on its landing site. You can see from the footprints the kind and depth of the dust layer on the lunar surface, and you can see that nothing has been disturbed in the area under the landing craft. The high velocity of the rocket exhaust would blow away any loose matter and the intensity of the heat would scorch the hell out of anything it touched. But there is no evidence of this in the NASA photos.
Some "experts" have told us that the lunar lander was drifting sideways looking for a good landing spot and therefore didn't remain over one spot long enough to scorch it. Others have written that the rocket engine was turned off before landing, and we've seen scores of less credible explanations. I won't bore you with long refutations of these claims, but you might want to ask any helicopter pilot about the wisdom of drifting sideways while landing. Even a slight lateral motion will scare the bejeesus out of most pilots because a drifting touchdown inevitably results in a rollover and destruction of the aircraft. And to suggest turning off the rocket engine on a 17,000-pound aircraft at a high enough altitude before touchdown to avoid blasting and scorching the surface, is merely stupid.
Those same so-called experts have told us that due to the moon's reduced gravity the lunar lander required only about 3,000 pounds of thrust for landing, suggesting that this 'trivial' amount wouldn't disturb the moon's surface. But 3,000 pounds is the weight of a small car, and you can't drop that onto a hard surface from even one meter without likely irreparable damage, and the lunar lander was infinitely more delicate than a car. We must remember we can't call a taxi to take us home after our crash landing. We have only one chance; we do it right or we die. A moon landing is not like coming down in a hot-air balloon and bouncing along the ground for 50 meters, after which everybody walks to their car. These same non-conspiracy theorists also seem to be telling us that the requisite thrust wouldn't be sufficient to affect loose surface dust. But 3,000 pounds of thrust is a great deal more than nothing. Given the absence of an atmosphere and the almost-zero gravity, that thrust would likely be sufficient to blow that dust halfway around the moon and maybe halfway to mars.
Examine the first photo to see the total absence of evidence of any disturbance on the surface under the lunar lander. This photo, and many similar, were no sooner released than the suspicions and challenges began. And for 45 years NASA and its various marionettes have defended these photos and patiently explained to us that lunar landers do not blow away surface dust and their rocket blasts do not scorch the landing surface. And if NASA had stopped there, I would have left this topic alone.
But then in 2011 NASA released a new set of photos with the stated intent of "putting to bed forever" the disbelief about the moon landings. But they didn't put it to bed; instead, they made everything worse. The newly-released photos are apparently taken from the lunar orbiter and purport to show the moon landers resting on the moon's surface - proof positive that man really did land on the moon. But look at the second photo, which is one of the official NASA photos from this series purporting to show the Apollo and Challenger landing sites. In the photos, the landing site is the black area; the white blob in the center is the lunar lander sitting on the moon's surface. Notice if you will, the entire landing site scorched as black as the Ace of Spades - which is what we would have expected all along. So what is happening here? For 45 years NASA defended their original photos to convince us that lunar landers don't scorch the landing site. Then as proof, they offer us photos of scorched landing sites. It would seem that somebody has to be lying, somewhere.
To make matters worse, it is documented that the wife of Stanley Kubrick, the man who made "2001 - A Space Odyssey", prior to her own death, confided to several media types that her husband had been retained by NASA at that time to produce realistic photo scenes of landers and men on the moon. So, is it Kubrick's photos that NASA published? It's difficult to know what to think, but the only theory that seems to fit the facts is that the moon landings may have been real, but the original Apollo mission photos were propaganda fakes filmed on a sound stage. It is possible the authorities, desperate to obtain popular public support in their space race with the USSR, couldn't afford an expensive public relations failure, and so they had Kubrick create simulated photos.
Government Propaganda and Media Lies
It may sadly be true that most governments lie at least some of the time, but these occasions are normally defensive in the sense of stemming from a desire to prevent knowledge of government misbehavior from escaping into a domestic population. It seems to be only, or at least primarily, the Western countries that take the offensive in this area, and not only the governments but the media themselves taking the initiative to fabricate disparaging stories (lies) about other nations. It has become almost a sport. All the Western countries do this, but the US seems to have the lead here by quite a margin, to the point where all news items involving non-Western nations should be viewed with suspicion, especially those presenting photographic "evidence".
We are subjected – more often than we might imagine – to news articles that were entirely fictitious, reporting on news events that either never occurred, or where the description bore no resemblance to the actual event. One of the most common ploys is to fabricate an event – usually an atrocity tale of some nature – and use an unrelated and misleading photo as evidence. CNN is famous for this tactic and, when challenged, invariably offers one of two responses: (a) ‘So we accidentally mis-captioned a photo. Big deal.”, or (b) “It doesn’t matter. The photo was editorially relevant.” These are not accidental; they serve as vital evidence for the fabricated story, and depend immensely on the ignorance of Americans and Westerners generally. These tactics are by no means limited to CNN, and are seldom if ever "mis-captioned".
Cropping, Cutting and Pasting
A quick glance at the above photo clearly indicates the options available by simple cropping, whether that photo is staged or genuine.
The photo below fills an empty stadium with fans.
The White House and US media are famous for cutting and pasting a photo of full seats at the UN when a US official gives an ideological speech to a nearly-empty house. They do the same in reverse too, pasting in a photo of an empty assembly room when Iran’s President gives a speech to a full house. In the above photos, US President speaking on the left, Iran’s President on the right.
Toppling of Saddam Hussein’s Statue in Baghdad
One of the more famous was the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Tahrir Square, ostensibly celebrating the freeing of Iraqis from tyranny. The cropped photos and video released by the CIA and Pentagon showed a number of Iraqi citizens pulling on ropes tied to the statue, eventually bringing it crashing to the ground. It was a pathetic, but successful, fabrication. The Square had been cleared and a crane brought in, from which the ropes were tied to the statue. Then, a group of Iraqis pulled on the ropes while the crane pushed the statue off its pedestal, at which point several hundred clearly bewildered Iraqis did what they had been paid to do, and cheered loudly as the statue fell. Just another Hollywood production, but one which apparently satisfied the bulk of the American population that their military’s destruction of Iraq was a deed of honor. American war marketing at its best. Donald Rumsfeld called the video "breathtaking". The British called it "an historic moment", while the BBC thought it was "just amazing".
China Brutalises Tibetans (Again)
One of many that may be well-known was the flurry of stories of Chinese policemen brutalising the poor Tibetans. But a close look at the photo reveals that neither the policemen nor the ‘victims’ were ethnic Chinese but were Nepalese, clearly in Nepal police uniforms. This was not a real event. It was staged, with the videos and still shots produced by the CIA from their Disney-scripted propaganda narrative meant to increase worldwide disaffection for China. It was entirely a made-in-Hollywood fabricated action scene. No such event had ever occurred.
Still with China but changing the topic. With a bit of photography intended for ignorant audiences, the US government (or CIA) and the media jointly produced a story "proving" that China already had a massive outbreak of COVID-19 in August or September of 2019. They used photos from a surveillance satellite of a hospital parking lot that was half-empty on one time frame and completely full a short time later, this presented as proof that hundreds of people were suddenly visiting the hospital - for reasons that could have been only for COVID treatment. But a more detailed photo showed that much of the parking lot was under construction at the time and was "suddenly and inexplicably" filled with cars shortly after being paved over.
Tiananmen Square
Certainly, the most successful of these completely false propaganda victories was the story of the “Tiananmen Square Massacre”, perhaps the most famous event that never occurred. If this is news to you, you might want to say, “But I saw the photographs”. Yes, well, I saw the same photos and anyone with even a passing familiarity with Beijing would know that none of those photos were taken in Tiananmen Square. They were of an entirely unrelated event, a series of terrorist measures arranged by the CIA and coordinated by the US Embassy in Beijing.
As evidence of this latter claim, the leaders of that intensely violent episode were unable to escape Beijing and took sanctuary in the US Embassy, the Chinese government media for weeks decrying the American protection of these terrorists and demanding their release. It didn’t happen; the US found a way to spirit all those men out of China unharmed. The photos you should have seen – also not of Tiananmen Square, were of the violence perpetrated by those terrorists, including the burning to death of a great many young Chinese soldiers – which was when the military was sent in. This story is still almost too surprising to believe even today, but it was entirely – 100% – a lie, but so successful it has been celebrated by the Western media in ‘anniversary’ remembrances for more than 30 years.
One fact deeply buried was that a Spanish TV crew was in the Square for the entirety of that night, and filmed the peaceful clearing of the Square – film that has been vigorously suppressed for more than 30 years and is only now becoming available on the internet. Much too late to affect memories or convictions. I have covered this in an article which is extensively documented, and with all the details, an article which I believe is generally accepted as the definitive work on this topic in both English and Chinese. You can read it here if you are interested.[3]
It’s worth noting that even today, websites like WordPress or Google’s Blogger will not permit the real photos of this 1989 event to be displayed, indicating that rather severe censorship of this event is still operative. I am including here two photos that may never have been seen, of some of the carnage inflicted by these American terrorists in Beijing, and one of the many soldiers burned to death by the thousands of petrol bombs unleashed. There was indeed an event in Beijing on June 4, 1989, but the details were viciously suppressed while an entirely false story was propagated by the media worldwide, heavily supported by photographs that were in no way what they purported to be. It is worth a moment of thought to consider the power of those behind this event, to have accomplished what they did.
China’s Jasmine Revolution
Polls have repeatedly revealed that 90% to 95% of the people in China have a high level of trust in and respect for their national government and leaders, China ranking first in the world in this regard while the US is near the bottom. Such polls were taken, for our purposes, in January of 2011, widely reported at the time, with an article in the Economist bemoaning the fact that “a disconcertingly high percentage of China’s population appear very happy with their government”, or words to that effect.
However, in 2011, our International Cabal of Gangsters (ICG), fronted by the US and disbelieving these statistics, attempted to provoke the Chinese people to a “Jasmine revolution”. At that time, the entire Chinese social media landscape was flooded – and I mean flooded – by what were almost certainly CIA sock puppets calling on all Chinese to protest against their “brutal totalitarian government”. The calls were for these gatherings to occur in 13 major cities but with the focus on Beijing where all citizens were urgently entreated to gather in Wangfujing (a major downtown shopping area) to “peacefully protest”. Unfortunately for the Americans, the Chinese had no such interest and nobody showed up, other than the usual shoppers. The only participant was then-US Ambassador Jon Huntsman who came to view the (non-existent) results of his handiwork. Huntsman was immediately recognised, confronted and so ridiculed by the crowd that he put his tail between his legs and ran for cover.[4]
The attempt to incite a color revolution in China was an abject failure, but for those who spin the news this didn’t qualify as even a minor setback. If CNN can run a fake story and support it by ‘accidentally’ mis-captioning a few photographs, surely the US Embassy and the CIA, with their unlimited resources, can do better, thus ‘capturing the hearts and minds’ of good people everywhere. Here are a few of my favorites:
This is an article that ran in the Norwegian newspaper VG and its online edition, displaying Chinese people rioting in the streets, demanding ‘freedom’ and ‘human rights’. Even if you can’t read Norwegian, you can understand the headline telling you of the ‘revolution in China’. But, if you examine the green placards, and you can read Chinese, you’ll recognise the words for “Taiwan”, and the political party slogans on the banners, with text indicating this was a political rally in Taiwan. Nevertheless, it was borrowed by our media moguls and circulated worldwide as proof of the violent political demonstrations in China.
This is from an article in the Ireland Independent, on February 20, 2011, telling us people were shouting, “We want food, we want jobs” – All slogans that highlight ‘common complaints’ among ‘ordinary Chinese’. According to AP, the photo shows “Chinese authorities cracking down on activists amid a call for ‘Jasmine Revolution’ protests”. (AP) Unfortunately, this Reuters photo was taken at an anti-Japanese demonstration in Lanzhou city (Gansu province) on December 24, 2010.
In another case, CNN clipped a photo from Taiwan’s Liberty Times to show yet more proof that the Chinese are rioting in the streets, yelling “we want food’, we want jobs”. However, the photo was of a job fair in Shenzhen more than a year prior, and those who could read Chinese saw that the placards said things like “Seeking workers” and “Hiring people today”. But the photo was ‘editorially relevant’ to the fabricated story, and few Americans or Europeans can read Chinese.
This one is my favorite. For background, you should know that Beijing’s climate in winter is not quite as bad as Inuvik, but it’s not exactly Tahiti, either. The article is from a German newspaper that featured a story on China’s internal turmoil, containing a purported photo of the police crushing a demonstration in Beijing in front of the McDonald’s at Wangfujing at the end of February, 2011. Unfortunately, they cropped the photo so we can’t see the good parts of the ‘beaten-to-a-pulp’ protestors. But if we examine the photo we note some odd features. For one, the policemen are wearing short-sleeved shirts, and if we look in the background we see green grass, pretty flowers, and tropical trees. This, in Beijing, in the middle of winter? Not bloody likely. The photo is actually of some young police recruits receiving training for civil disturbances in a parking lot next to a police station in Nanjing in the summer of 2005. But once again, editorially relevant to a fake story.
A Lie of Omission is Still a Lie
Here are two examples selected from many hundreds in my files, where the US media reported on a real event but omitted crucial details to enable them to spin a story that was a full 180° from the truth. All media lies are evil, but I find this kind of lie especially reprehensible because this kind of untruth requires a Satanic craftiness to plan the twisting of a story so that the details of a crime that I commit appear in the press as an indictment of a crime committed by you instead. I cannot explain why this seems so much worse than a simple flat-out lie, but it does. There is something here about "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor". These instances are difficult for American readers to identify without some research, and few care to take the time.
Virtually every article appearing in the Western media about China is either false or so corrupted by the twisting of facts and/or the omission of critical details, as to give uninformed readers a perception that is completely false. This applies not only to China, but to all nations on the current ‘Axis of Evil’ list. Here are two very typical examples.
China: Bullying to Prosperity
John Bussey was the American Associate Editor of The Wall Street Journal, and also a commentator at Fox News. In an article in the Wall Street Journal titled, “China: Bullying to Prosperity”[5], Bussey won a Nobel Prize for dishonest and unethical reporting. (The WSJ seems to have deleted this article, but it has been archived on other websites and still available). This was his article in part:
“Watching China bully Wal-Mart Stores this week – and watching Wal-Mart prostrate itself under the beating – is an embarrassing reminder of a simple fact: China, the world’s fastest growing major market, has the upper hand with U.S. business. Its array of protectionist barriers, weak rule of law, and siren-like market make events like this all but inevitable. In the company’s stores in the city of Chongqing, nonorganic pork was labeled “organic.” This was the mistake. The pork was otherwise fine. Seizing on this error at a time when inflation is a hot-button issue in China, officials accused Wal-Mart of cheating the public by charging premium prices for regular meat. They fined the company, shut down all 13 Wal-Marts in the city and jailed a number of Wal-Mart employees. The actions played well in the national media. There’s little if any recourse in authoritarian China when something like this happens to a U.S. company. There aren’t regular courts. Like many other U.S. firms that have run afoul of nationalist sentiments in China, Wal-Mart could only beg forgiveness. It has nearly 350 stores in China with revenue of $7.5 billion. So, Wal-Mart dropped to its knees.” He finished with an astonishing claim where he cleverly quoted a (non-existent) “American executive in Beijing who watches these matters” who supposedly said Wal-Mart had done far more than Chinese companies “to secure the safety of the [country’s] food supply.”.
Bussey’s story is not exactly how it was. Wal-Mart is a famous criminal corporation in China, the authorities having had years of trouble with Wal-Mart repeatedly seeming to violate most laws on the books. Those same stores had for years been selling ordinary pork labeled as organic, each time being caught and fined a trivial amount, 8 times in the prior 7 months alone. It was so bad that when the inspectors were leaving the store with the confiscated illegal products, Wal-Mart’s staff were already busy labeling yet more ordinary pork as organic. It was just a game where the retail price was several times higher and the profits so huge that the nuisance of inspectors was trivial. What changed the game was that this last time the inspectors made a wrong turn as they were leaving the store, and found themselves in a refrigerated locker with 75,000 kilograms of ordinary pork labeled as organic. That was when they decided enough was enough, arrested all the senior executives and shuttered the stores. But according to the WSJ’s Bussey, a low-level clerk made an innocent “mistake” and mislabeled a few packages of meat, the Chinese authorities ‘playing to the public’. And of course, because China has no courts, Wal-Mart could do no better than beg forgiveness and fall to its knees.
China Imprisons yet another Human Rights Lawyer
In a similar instance, the Western media stridently reported ad nauseum, that a Chinese human-rights lawyer had (once again) been imprisoned by “The Communist Party”, ostensibly for daring to be a human-rights lawyer in China. But once again, that’s not exactly how it was.
It was true this lawyer had on one occasion acted for someone with a complaint about the system, the story being weaved in the Western press that he was unjustly tossed into prison for daring to assist a challenge against the “authoritarian Chinese dictatorship”. I followed this one closely and in only one article of nearly 100 that I read on this particular case in the Western press, was there even a suggestion of an extenuating circumstance. In only one article, the very last sentence made vague passing mention of a tax problem.
That “tax problem” was a bit more than nothing. In China, there are various classifications of purchase receipts, only one of which is usable for corporate expense tax deductions. In many Western countries, even a cash register receipt is usable in this regard, but in China we must have an official receipt containing a government stamp. Since these receipts are equivalent to a tax credit of 25%, they are valuable and are sometimes traded. If I have official tax receipts my company cannot use, I can sell them to you at 10% of face value and you can still save 15% on your corporate income taxes.
In this case, this ‘human-rights lawyer’ and four of his friends, all lawyers, had been for years running a business of printing counterfeit tax receipts and selling them to unsuspecting businesses, in total more than $300 million worth. All five were arrested and thrown into prison but, according to the media, only this lead lawyer was imprisoned not by the courts, but by “the Communist Party”, and not for a massive counterfeiting fraud but for defending the poor and helpless. I was told that US reporters rummaged through the client records of the lead lawyer in this case until they discovered a minor civil matter that would permit them to categorise this man as a human-rights lawyer, and it was around this that they built their story.
I have nearly 1,000 such stories in my files, enough to fill a thick book, all reprehensibly dishonest in their presentation and all the daily diet of all Westerners who "know" how bad China is and who would welcome a third World War to crush China.
Jessica Lynch
Jessica Lynch was a 19-year-old US Army clerk who served in Iraq during the 2003 US invasion. Her military vehicle was hit by a grenade, and crashed. Lynch was seriously injured, with a broken leg and hip, and some of her comrades were killed. But Jessica, being a typical American hero, crawled out of her vehicle while fighting the intense pain from her broken bones and, with one automatic weapon in each hand, she stood erect with both guns blazing, mowing down enemy soldier after enemy soldier, until all her ammunition was exhausted and she surrendered to unconsciousness from the pain. Jessica was shot multiple times, captured and repeatedly stabbed, then was taken prisoner and carried off with all her broken bones and bullet holes to a dirty Iraqi hospital where she was chained to a bed and held for eight days by vicious Iraqi guards who slapped and abused her and raped her.
A bit later, she was rescued by a group of very handsome and strong US Army Rangers and Navy Seals who shot up the entire hospital just to get her out. Her courageous rescue was recorded on live video, heavily promoted by the US military and State Department, and widely circulated by the US media as evidence of the incomparable courage, resourcefulness and strength of character of Americans.
Waiting until midnight, the Rangers and Seals stormed the hospital, their “daring assault” captured by the military’s night-vision camera, the entire rescue filmed by a video team that conveniently happened to be on the scene. “It was like a Hollywood film, an action movie with Jackie Chan. They cried, ‘Go, go, go’, with gunfire and explosions, jumping and shouting, breaking down doors.” Her rescuers had come under withering gunfire, but they survived because they were tough Americans, and they whisked Jessica to a helicopter and brought her to safety.
Newspaper headlines across America roared “Captured Jessica was fighting to the death”. US General Vincent Brooks breathlessly told the world, “Some brave souls put their lives on the line … they will never leave a fallen comrade” (except maybe in Vietnam where there are no TV cameras). President Bush announced that both he and America were “full of joy for Jessica Lynch”, her rescue presented as a testament to American values. Jessica “The Terminator” Lynch became an overnight American war-marketing hero, complete with Jessica fridge magnets, T-shirts, ashtrays and underpants.
Cute story, except that none of it happened.
Jessica Lynch was in an accident and did suffer a broken leg and hip, but no stab wounds, no bullet holes, no assault and no rape. In fact, she was rescued by the Iraqis, taken to a hospital and her road injuries were attended to. Jessica later testified to a Congressional Committee, “I am still confused as to why they chose to lie and tried to make me a legend”. She testified that she had never fired even one shot, that her M-16 (like all M-16s) had jammed anyway, that she passed out from the pain and awoke in a hospital where she was treated very nicely, with the nurses often singing to her to improve her spirits.[6] A doctor at the hospital put Jessica into an ambulance and drove her to the American sector but, when the ambulance approached, the Americans opened fire on it so it had to retreat. He then contacted the media to inform the Americans of Jessica’s location and condition, with a request to collect her.
In response, the Americans ordered the section of the hospital evacuated, and sent in their “Rambo” team and film crew to make yet another Disney wartime TV special. The entire Jessica Lynch story was juvenile and faked. The Pentagon refused all requests for interviews with Jessica, claiming she had been so badly injured and traumatised that she had no memory of the event and probably never would have. Unfortunately for the Pentagon, Jessica did have her memory and chose to report – in public – to the US Congress, leaving the military caught in a huge lie yet once again.
The Death of Osama bin Laden
Let’s see. We have six US military helicopters carrying 77 marines flying 600 kilometers into a country to a small town which contains 7 military bases and is less than 35 minutes from the nation’s capital. The helicopters land at a housing compound situated only a few hundred meters from the main military base, but the local military doesn’t know anything happened because the US has new secret “stealth helicopters” that would prevent the millions of local inhabitants from either seeing or hearing the aircraft anywhere during their 3-hour flight. And besides, they flew “low, between the hills, to avoid the radar”. I know they can do that, because I saw that once on TV.
Then we have the 77 marines jumping from their helicopters and launching “a ferocious assault” on a small unfortified house in the center of the compound, the home of Osama bin Laden, the occupants consisting of bin Laden, his three wives, a few children, and maybe (not confirmed) one other man, none of whom were armed. According to the White House, the marines were then engaged in an “intense 40-minute firefight” in their attempt to reach and kill bin Laden. The brave US Marines eventually succeed, then casually take another 30 minutes to clean up their mess a bit and to collect “a treasure trove” of computers and data, on the way out apologising to the women and children for killing their husband and father. They grab bin Laden’s dead body by the ankles, drag and bump him down three flights of stairs and toss him into a helicopter. Then they blow up one of their (apparently damaged) aircraft, climb aboard the others and retrace their several-hundred kilometer flight out of the country.
After a total foreign military excursion lasting more than seven hours and taking place right in the middle of seven military bases, the local military still didn’t know anything happened. Nobody heard all those aircraft coming and going, nobody heard the tens of thousands of shots extending over 40 minutes, and nobody heard the massive explosion that destroyed the helicopter. That’s real “stealth”, by anybody’s definition. Nobody realised that six aircraft and almost a hundred soldiers had carried out an intense, hour-long armed assault next door to the city’s largest military base. Nobody saw anything, nobody heard anything, nobody knew anything, until long after the Americans were safely out of Pakistan. As the BBC would say, “That’s just amazing”(*). And while the brave marines were carrying out this heroic and dangerously challenging 77:1 murder assault, the White House staff were watching intently the “live satellite feed” of the entire operation. Obama was very anxious, Hillary Clinton was biting her nails and gasping for breath, and Dick Cheney wet his pants.
(*) That was the foolish BBC comment when televising the faked pulling-down of Saddam’s statue.
When the helicopters were safely aboard ship, US military officials, noted worldwide for their deep respect for human life even when it’s dead, gave bin Laden a funeral which consisted of “performing traditional religious rites for Islamic burial” on the deck of the American aircraft carrier, where “A military officer read prepared religious remarks, which were translated into Arabic by a native speaker”. Bin Laden’s body was washed, his hair shampooed with Head & Shoulders, then he was shrouded in a white sheet, his body placed in a weighted bag, put on a flat board, tipped up and “eased into the Arabian Sea”. That’s a good story.
What proof do we have that bin Laden was really there and was actually killed in this exercise? Well, first and most importantly, we have the DNA match. We’re told that “Hours after bin Laden was killed, his corpse was flown to Afghanistan to be identified through DNA analysis”. Readers may not be aware that every well-equipped US commando team carries a genetic lab on almost all missions and are fully trained to do DNA matches over a campfire on a moment’s notice. Readers may also not be aware that DNA testing normally requires at least two weeks, and that a horde of scientific authorities immediately dismissed the DNA testing claim as “unadulterated rubbish”, but let’s let the Americans tell their story.
Bin Laden’s 11-year-old daughter confirmed that she saw her father killed, though we were not told to whom she made this apparent confirmation, and unfortunately she was immediately “taken into custody” – no idea why – by the local authorities and seemed to have disappeared. We also had bin Laden’s wife who was there and saw her husband killed, but she also was quickly taken into custody and also disappeared. We also had the testimony of one of bin Laden’s other wives, the brave one who single-handedly attacked the 77 marines trying to kill her husband, but she’d been shot and was unavailable for an interview. Sadly, we had no witnesses.
Of course, we had the body itself, but according to Hillary the photos were “too gruesome” to ever show anyone – much more gruesome than all the torture and other photos we’d already seen. Plus, the photos couldn’t be shown because that might inflame “Anti-American sentiment”, and heaven knows we don’t want that. We also had live video of the consecration, rites and burial of the body at sea, but unfortunately that video wouldn’t be released either. But this raises questions. The US reveled in publicly displaying the corpses of Saddam Hussein’s two sons whom they killed in their invasion of Iraq. Why weren’t those photos too gruesome for the public to see? Saddam Hussein was taken alive, mocked and ridiculed, put on public trial and subjected to a public hanging. The US was delighted to display the video of Moammar Khadaffi being captured, sodomised with a huge knife, and then shot in the head. If that wasn’t gruesome, I don’t know what would be. But Osama bin Laden’s body, penetrated by a single bullet, would have been too disturbing to see.
So we have the US, which is well-known to have the world’s most humane, respectful, and religious military that always treats its entire trail of dead (and live) Arab bodies with the utmost reverence, “taking into custody” the corpse of bin Laden. They lovingly wash him, reverently conduct a Muslim funeral rite, then slowly ease his body into the Sea of Question Marks. Are these the same people who ran Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib? Of the hundreds of Arabs whose deaths at US torture prisons have been documented (and only God knows how many deaths were not documented), were “traditional procedures for Islamic burial followed” for any of those? And why did they toss bin Laden’s body into the sea, other than to destroy the only evidence that existed? Well, US officials claimed they didn’t feel any country “would accept his remains” for a proper burial but, in the heat of the moment, they probably forgot to ask his parents in Saudi Arabia.
What proof do we have that there was actually a firefight? Well, one “Pakistani citizen” conveniently tweeting from CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia, told us he could hear gunfire. But everyone else in the city must have been busy praying or watching the goats, oblivious to all the gunfire and explosions only meters from their homes. There is no credible documented record of any awareness whatsoever of all this activity by any local residents including the Pakistani military at the seven nearby army bases. It is worth asking readers: "Do you have any idea how much noise six helicopters would make, especially together in a tight formation?"
Just so it doesn’t go unsaid, Hillary’s claim of the “intense, 40-minute firefight” would probably also have created a bunch of noise. I mean, we have 77 Marines firing automatic weapons for more than half an hour. “Intense”, in the dictionary, is defined as “excessive, extreme and protracted”, which does not mean each Marine firing one shot per minute, but maybe 30 shots per minute. For 40 minutes. Times 77 Marines. That’s more than 100,000 shots, more than enough to wake my dog but apparently insufficient to be heard by the 50,000 Pakistani soldiers who were a few minutes away. I’m with the BBC on this one. That’s just amazing.
It should occur to most readers that for this kind of military operation conducted in close proximity to 50,000 armed and hostile soldiers, the safely permissible in-and-out time is more likely to be two minutes rather than two hours. Anyone needing two hours for a commando raid should stay at home. It should also occur to most thinking people that a 77-person, “intense 40-minute firefight” seems a bit excessive to kill an unarmed man and shoot one of his wives, especially in such a small building where one grenade would end the battle by killing everybody. We were told repeatedly of the long running gun battle, but then the White House, in its eagerness to plug the holes in its story, claimed the commandos went straight to bin Laden at the beginning of the exercise. So they walked upstairs to the top floor, killed their man, then had their intense 40-minute firefight on the way out? What were they doing? Shooting each other?
Then we had the strange trouble with the destroyed aircraft that apparently crashed while landing for the raid (a “heart-stopping moment”, according to Hillary), and that the commandos destroyed with explosives before departing with bin Laden’s soon-to-be-shampooed body. At the risk of appearing picky, the published SEAL photos of the destroyed aircraft raised some questions. Most explosives of my acquaintance tend to rip things apart and scatter the pieces all over hell, but these SEALS apparently had a new “stealth” explosive that totally destroys an aircraft and then gathers all the leftover bits into a neat little pile for the trash man to take away in the morning. Again, just so it doesn’t go unsaid, the US military must have a new silent ‘stealth’ explosive that blows everything up just by whispering, since none of the nearby military bases heard anything. But then, if they didn’t hear 100,000 gunshots, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised.
More disturbingly, the various explanations behind the White House version of the helicopter crash were clearly nonsense, and anyone with even a small amount of flight experience or knowledge of basic aerodynamics would know the presented “facts” could not be true. First, we were told the helicopter crashed because it was trapped in “vortices” behind the compound wall. But the only vortex would be that caused by its own rotor blades, the air cushion into which every helicopter descends on every landing. There is no way a chopper can create vortices in an open space so severe as to cause its own destruction. Or, to put it another way, if one aircraft can do this, they will all do it.
When that explanation drew ridicule, the story changed and we were told the crash was due to the chopper being “hot and high”, which is a reference to reduced lift being caused by thin air, either due to very high air temperatures or very high altitude. In these conditions, an airplane’s wings or a helicopter’s rotors cannot produce as much lift because the air is less dense. This usually means it cannot fly as high, or carry as great a load as at a lower altitude or lower temperature. But the aircraft had already supposedly made the trip from Afghanistan to Pakistan in that same temperature and at the same altitude, and would now be carrying a lot less fuel and would be much lighter. Senator Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the Senate Misinformation Committee, clarified that “The air temperature in the compound was hotter than expected and the helicopter was too heavy to stay aloft under that condition”, which is just patent nonsense. If the helicopter wasn’t too heavy to have flown hundreds of miles to its destination, it certainly wasn’t too heavy to land.
In response to massive public skepticism, the White House admitted that its initial account of the killing of bin Laden had been riddled with errors, but claimed they were trying to provide as much information as possible while “in the heat of the moment” during an “intense battle”. But who was in that intense battle? The White House PR staff? The “battle”, if there was one, was taking place 15,000 Kms away on the other side of the world, but we are to believe the ten-year-olds in the White House and State Department were so excited at watching someone die they made hundreds of errors in crafting their little tale.
One of the more comical, if unforgivable, lies in this narrative was the widely-publicised photo of President Obama, Hillary Clinton and about a dozen White House and Military staff gathered in front of what purported to be a TV screen, all watching “by special satellite link” the live action by the SEAL team in bin Laden’s compound. When experts quickly detailed this as a ridiculous impossibility, the White House abandoned the claim but the fake photo will exist forever. Initially, the White House claimed they had live video but chose not to release it, but in the face of Obama’s shaky story the White House had to admit there was no video and that the entire White House “Bin Laden Situation Room” photo session was indeed a fake. Neither Obama nor Clinton ever apologised for this astonishing lie.
The irregularities did not end there. Three months later, a Chinook helicopter was shot down at a US military base in Afghanistan, apparently killing all 38 people on board including the entire US Navy SEAL Team six, the same ones that supposedly entered Pakistan and killed bin Laden. The Chinook is an old, vulnerable, and largely useless helicopter, but if we need to destroy an aircraft for show, no need to waste a good one. A multitude of eyewitnesses claimed the helicopter was brought down by fire from within the US military compound, but US officials desperately insisted this was not the case. In a continuing run of bad luck, American officials claimed the bodies were so badly burnt that they were forced to cremate them immediately since they were under a tight deadline to make all the evidence disappear. As with both 9/11 and the Bin Laden raid, there are no survivors, no bodies, no photos, and no evidence to prove the government’s creative version of events. There is no evidence that any persons were aboard that Chinook helicopter but, to strengthen the narrative, we’re told the families of the non-existent but nevertheless dead Navy SEALs sued the US government, claiming the shooting of the helicopter was planned as part of a cover-up for its own lies.
But challenges to the story still wouldn’t die, and the Americans continued inventing new details in their desperation to plug the holes. In July of 2013 we learned of a “Confidential Top-Secret Special Report” – attributed to Pakistani authorities but actually written by the CIA – which was “obtained and leaked” by Al-Jazeera, the US government’s newly-purchased Middle East mouthpiece. The report made a desperate attempt to lend credibility to the increasingly shaky official US narrative by pretending official (if secret) Pakistani admission of the fabricated “facts”. It particularly noted that the Pakistan Defense Forces failed to detect six American aircraft entering and remaining in Pakistani airspace for hours, and that the first Pakistani fighter jets were scrambled 30 minutes after the Americans had already exited Pakistan with Bin Laden’s body – in other words, more than three hours after the escapade had ended. “The extent of incompetence, to put it mildly, was astounding, if not unbelievable”, the report said, purporting to represent Pakistani admission of their own stupidity, but this was just more nonsense because no Pakistani would express those sentiments in that way. The expression itself and the words used were 100% American.
It was unclear how tiny al-Jazeera would have gotten a copy of such a report unless it were given to them by the CIA authors who also happened to be their owners. Pakistani government officials refused to comment on the veracity of the Al Jazeera report. Al Jazeera officials refused to comment on the veracity of the CIA report. The US State Department refused to comment on anything.
In a too-clever-by-half comment, the report criticises the US for its failure to have captured bin Laden earlier, although to be fair to the Americans the report claims bin Laden was a master of disguises, having once worn a cowboy hat to avoid detection. That would do it. If you want to disappear in Pakistan, the best way is to wear an American cowboy hat which works like a Harry Potter invisibility cloak.
But the irregularities still didn’t want to end. In October of 2013, we had Navy Seal team six – the same one that killed bin Laden and was itself killed in the helicopter crash – magically resurrected and launching a failed raid in Somalia in search of “terrorists” who orchestrated a bombing in Nairobi. These Americans are like zombies; we keep killing them but they won’t remain dead. At last report, lawyers for the families of these un-dead vampire SEALs were uncertain how to proceed with their lawsuits.
Then more challenges. Under a recent court order, some internal US military emails on this bin Laden matter were released, but were heavily blacked out and provided no useful information except to deny that any evidence exists. It seems that the US Defense Department “looked everywhere” but could not locate any photographs or video taken during the raid or aboard the ship, and no photos at all of bin Laden’s body. This lack of evidence results in part from the fact that “Nobody was permitted to watch Osama bin Laden’s burial at sea.” No idea why. As well, the Pentagon had also looked everywhere, but was been unable to produce an autopsy report, a death certificate, or the results of the DNA tests.
To ensure continuation of this state of affairs, the US ordered all files about the bin Laden raid to be purged from Defense Department computers and sent to the CIA where they could be “more easily shielded from public scrutiny”. What evidence do we have that anything actually happened in Pakistan? None whatsoever. But the story still wouldn’t die. Not long after these above events, journalists and others began filing numerous reports from sailors aboard the US naval vessel where bin Laden’s body was supposedly tidied up prior to disposal, and apparently they claim to a man that the entire story was a hoax, that their ship had experienced no such event.
A long list of individuals including former CIA and military officers, foreign government officials and heads of state, and even former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had testified that bin Laden had been dead for years but that his “death” would only be announced at a politically expedient time. “In April 2002, CFR member Steve Pieczenik, who served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance, and James Baker, stated in a TV interview then that Bin Laden had already been “dead for months”. He stated what many already knew, that bin Laden had severe kidney disease that forced him to travel with dialysis machines, and that he had died of renal failure in 2001.”
More seriously, Pieczenik also stated that the December 2001 video of a Bin Laden look-alike “taking responsibility” for 9/11 was “just a hoax” designed to “manipulate” people about the real perpetrators of 9/11. Even the respected veteran newsman Walter Cronkite labeled that entire bin Laden video a farce and called it “a Karl Rove-orchestrated set-up”. A CIA official said, “It is quite possible a false or partial narrative was given of how bin Laden was found. Intelligence can only function in silence and in the dark. In this case, it was a PR operation, not an actual military one, but the value to Washington was seen as even greater than an actual military victory on the field”. A simpler translation is that the whole story was just another Hollywood-scripted fabrication, a PR stunt used to create a nationally-celebrated event to bolster support for an increasingly unpopular war.
US officials were surprisingly stubborn in their persistence with this tale, and surprisingly imaginative too. The CIA paid someone in Hollywood a lot of money to produce a simplistic trashy movie about the raid and the killing of bin Laden, and must have exerted enormous pressure on someone to have this boring and non-descript film put in the cinemas. It appears that Osama bin Laden is indeed dead, but there is no evidence of any kind that his death was related to the made-for-TV American version of events. Why did the US media continue to support this outrageous tale? On the subject of a newspaper openly challenging the official White House story of bin Laden, one reporter said, “it wouldn’t be worth their life to try”.
But the story still wouldn’t die. In the end, after almost all was lost and Obama and the establishment had vacated virtually all claims made, we had yet another attempt to preserve at least the contrived fiction of the Americans ‘bringing down’ bin Laden. Seymour Hersh produced a fine book that trashed all the original White House story details, to no particular purpose since those details had already been thoroughly eviscerated by multiple writers for years. But the book and its surrounding publicity did have a purpose – to perpetuate the myth of the valiant SEALS killing bin Laden and, in a particularly mean-spirited fit of afterthought, noting the confiscation of bin Laden’s (hitherto non-existent) library of porn. Talk about kicking a man when he’s down.
When insiders in the State Department and intelligence agencies confirm independently that bin Laden had been dead for years, it takes a special kind of anti-conspiracy theory conspiracy theorist to continue the conspiracy theory that Captain America got his man. The question that needs to be asked is what motivated Hersh to write that book, but nobody wants to ask.
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Mr. Romanoff’s writing has been translated into 32 languages and his articles posted on more than 150 foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well as more than 100 English language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. (Chapt. 2 — Dealing with Demons)
His full archive can be seen at
https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/ + https://www.moonofshanghai.com/
He can be contacted at:
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Notes
[1] The Unraveling of the Arab Spring Narrative
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-unraveling-of-the-arab-spring-narrative_b_6359442
[2] Kamila Valieva – The World’s Ice Angel
[3] https://www.moonofshanghai.com/2020/04/tiananmen-square-failure-of-american.html
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/feb/27/china-jasmine-revolution-beijing-police
