Ex-CIA director Pompeo: 'We lied, we cheated, we stole'
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo: "I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment." - Pompeo said this at an event at Texas A&M University on April 15, 2019. Here is the official State Department transcript: https://www.state.gov/secretary/remar..
Illustration: Chen Xia/GT
When the heads of CIA and MI6 appeared together publicly for the first time in their 77-year intelligence-sharing partnership over the weekend, they warned of an "unprecedented array of threats." Surprise, surprise, China is included. Immediately following that, reports indicate that the US House may vote this week on more than two dozen China-related bills aimed at addressing the alleged national and economic security threats posed by Beijing. The "masters of deception" are once again orchestrating and fueling a new wave of anti-China McCarthyism.
On Saturday local time, CIA Director Bill Burns and MI6 Chief Richard Moore made an unprecedented joint public appearance at the Financial Times Weekend Festival in London. They stressed that the global order is under threat, and after discussing some regional conflicts, they expressed a continued need to focus their attention on China. On the same day, they also published a jointly authored commentary article, articulating that for both the CIA and MI6, "the rise of China is the principal intelligence and geopolitical challenge of the 21st century."
The CIA and MI6, known for being among the world's largest sources of misinformation and disinformation, clearly will not stop fabricating lies to stir up tensions. The reason is simple: If the world were peaceful and stable, they would be among the first to face job losses. They would lose their grip on a fractured international landscape and miss out on the profits they make from ongoing chaos.
"I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole ... We had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment." This is a line from a speech by former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo in 2019. The intelligence agencies of the US and its allies have long been the hidden hands behind American hegemony, orchestrating wars, coups, and fabricating lies to further their objectives. Now, with China's rise, these agencies have turned their attention to hyping up the "China threat."
How has China's rise become a threat? Even the US cannot provide a credible example to support this claim. The truth is that China is focusing on addressing pressing global challenges, from pursuing green transformation to mediating the ongoing conflicts between Russia and Ukraine and that in the Middle East, which are being prolonged and exacerbated by Western interventions.
China has consistently stressed that both China and the US can achieve mutual prosperity and peaceful coexistence. However, this idea seems almost inconceivable within the toxic political environment in the US.
Some American politicians are gearing up to pursue "decoupling" to the fullest extent. Take the US House, for example. It is set to kick start "China week" with fast-track approval of a slew of China-related bills, beginning on Monday, "to be aggressive in confronting the threat that China poses."
The bills include The End Chinese Dominance of Electric Vehicles Act; a ban to stop China from purchasing US farmland; DHS Restrictions on Confucius Institutes and Chinese Entities of Concern Act. The series of bills are largely rooted in unfounded accusations and baseless fears. In US politics, truth has become irrelevant, and lies have become the norm. Much of US political focus on China is based on falsehoods.
What US lawmakers should be focusing on are domestic issues and approaches for advancing economic development. Hyping disinformation, such as the "China threat," won't fix US' own issues or reinforce American hegemony. Promoting a rational and pragmatic China policy is the option that best serves US long-term interests. A mutually beneficial outcome can only be realized through dialogue and cooperation, rather than confrontation and hostility.
Check the latest update: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-coronavirus-cases-world-map/ Mapping the Coronavirus Outbreak Across the World
https://youtu.be/C0IRZW3V9oM - Western Media Lies about China // 关于中国的谎言
China is Getting Smarter // 中国越来越聪明了！https://youtu.be/do8nnDOzxZk
I'm in the World's Safest Country // 全球最安全的国家
https://youtu.be/J88mrZMcN28
West’s sense of superiority caused failure to act promptly
An ambulance sits outside the US Capitol in Washington, DC, Monday. Photo: AFP
West’s sense of superiority caused failure to act promptly
Over the past few weeks, the COVID-19 outbreak has accelerated across Western countries with blistering speed. As of the start of April, there are over 189,000 cases in the US, with the European continent also suffering hefty growth rates, especially in Italy and Spain. The crisis has prompted a growing level of heated rhetoric in some circles suggesting China should now "atone" or "pay a price" for the virus and the economic damage it will inflict on these countries.
Most graphically, an anonymous figure in the British government says that there ought to be a "reckoning" for Beijing once the crisis comes to an end. Solutions proposed have ranged from sanctions, to boycotts, to outright decoupling of societies and descending into nationalist indignation and finger pointing.
The argument for this is that China has not been transparent enough in dealing with the virus, and underreported the scale of the epidemic and therefore exacerbated its spread catching Western countries "off guard." This was the line with what US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo mouthed over the past few weeks.
Their response should serve as a template for an unreasonable argument, as it epitomized the politics of privilege and deflection. Some Western countries are effectively trying to offload its own governance failures onto China, making it a convenient international scapegoat. In doing so, they are making priori assumptions that China could not have been legitimately successful in handling the virus, and then in turn used this to downplay their own inability to prepare for epidemic, saying Beijing could not be trusted.
For many decades, the West has lived in a state of privilege. Not since World War II has the majority of its population experienced any kind of serious hardship, instability or detrimental chaos that has regularly afflicted the developing world and transformed life into a struggle for survival itself. Developed countries have not faced internal conflicts, poverty, and famine nor disease outbreaks. As a result, this has ingrained a perception within the Western psyche that relative security, prosperity and order constitute as benign "normality" in contrast to the rest of the world, which does not have such privileges.
People in the West are inclined to believe that disease outbreaks are something that only happens in "foreign," "oriental" and "exotic" countries that don't share the so-called civilized and superior Western way of life. The idea that something like that could happen in privileged country is inconceivable and an injustice, and someone or some country must be held accountable.
As a result of these underlying beliefs, Western governments did not take the COVID-19 outbreak seriously. They observed it for two months, yet did little to prepare. An example of this on a political level is the behavior of the Trump administration, which imposed massive spending cuts on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, failed to acquire testing infrastructure on time, downplayed multiple intelligence reports warning of a potential pandemic and repeatedly sought to dismiss it out of hand for the sake of the country's economy.
On a social level, the Western public did not respond well either. Few in Europe have worn masks and few were willing to observe adequate social distancing recommendations until they were forced to, by which point the outbreak was already serious. Yet as it hits hard, suddenly these countries want to absolve themselves of responsibility and point fingers at Beijing. Given the overwhelming criticism of China's governance structure from these same countries, it seems unreasonable for them to suddenly pretend they were deceived.
Distrust is usually taken as a mandate to be more cautious, not less. Claiming ever increasingly nonsensical exaggerations of China's own reported case numbers reveals their own inability to act and deprive Beijing's virus fight of any legitimacy. It's curious that none of China's neighbors have suffered as must as the US and Europe. Most Asian countries don't have a mind-set of cultural privilege and complacency and take all potential pandemics seriously.
The West is trying to deflect blame, exacerbated by a mind-set which interprets disease outbreaks not as an inevitable aspect of the human condition, but something belonging to exotic, oriental and poorer nations.
This unwarranted sense of privilege has caused Western countries' complacency, and only they are to blame for the tragic results.
By Tom Fowdy - The author is a British political and international relations analyst and a graduate of Durham and Oxford universities.
CIA is US govt’s pawn to fabricate lies about China
Photo: IC and AFP
Bloomberg published an article on Wednesday saying that the US intelligence community concluded in a "classified report" to the White House that China has "concealed" the extent of the COVID-19 outbreak, "under-reporting" the confirmed cases and deaths of the virus. Two US officials who asked not to be identified said the report concludes that "China's numbers are fake."
The US has failed to whitewash its incompetence in fighting the epidemic on its home soil, so the US intelligence agencies are dispatched to do the dirty jobs. They have been forging and disseminating false information just to save face. They have no reputation at all. The CIA is completely a shame of intelligence.
Do US intelligence agencies have enough evidence to prove more people have died from COVID-19 in China? It seems that for the intelligence agency of the most developed country, lying and smearing are the only things that the CIA is capable of. It first released a so-called classified report and then refused to disclose more information, saying it's "confidential." This is political hooliganism.
The CIA, the so-called professional intelligence agency of the US, has many scandals. It is accustomed to forgery, monitoring and lying. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo once said: "I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole…We had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment." That was one of the few times when he was telling the truth.
The timing of the release of Bloomberg's report is noteworthy. Both the number of confirmed cases and deaths of COVID-19 are rising rapidly every day worldwide, including the US. Over 210,000 confirmed cases have been reported in the US as of press time. On Tuesday, the number of COVID-19 deaths of the US surpassed that of China. Precisely on the second day, many Western media started to question whether China's data was trustworthy. Now, US intelligence agencies have come out to further blacken China. Isn't their intention much too obvious?
All of these explain one fact: US politicians cannot accept that China has had a better control of the COVID-19 epidemic than the US does. After seeing that the US' death toll of the virus has surpassed that of China, their last psychological defense has collapsed.
According to Bloomberg, in addition to China, Western officials also pointed to Iran, Russia, Indonesia, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, saying that these countries may also be "playing down their numbers" as well. None of these countries is a typical "Western country," and thus have been regarded as "exotic" countries. The US believes that ideology is much more important than the reality and fact. We can imagine that no matter how many deaths China reported, US intelligence agencies will not accept the data, unless the number meets the standards they have had in their mind.
Thus, the CIA is not a so-called independent agency of the US federal government at all. It only acts as a pawn of the US government, chasing and attacking those it regards as rivals, with its eyes blinded by an ideological frenzy.
Zhong Nanshan, 80, China's revered infectious disease
expert, warned on Thursday that if the COVID-19 outbreak continues to
worsen in the US, it could become a global issue, since the number of US
confirmed
The US has had the highest number of coronavirus infected
cases in the world. It is time for Washington to abandon its
exceptionalism, spare no efforts to learn successful countermeasures and
experience from other countries, and cooperate with any country that
can get it through these tough times. This is the only way the US can
effectively curb the deadly virus.
Masks can help prevent people from being infected. The
suggestion is scientific and Asian countries have a lot of experience in
this regard. However, excessive cultural confidence has hindered the US
and European countries from giving due attention to the experience of
their Asian counterparts.
Pompeo and other US elites must be responsible for
damaging superpower cooperation if the pandemic worsens, while China
cannot join hands with the US due to the war of words. Politicians like
Pompeo focus too much on their personal political interests. They will
eventually be remembered as negative role models in the history of
mankind's battle against
COVID-19.
Balanced views: The print house of the daily
newspaper Le Monde in France. When print media and television dominated
the distribution of information, media could be trusted to give a
balanced view to enable the reader to judge what is correct. — AFP
We live in an information age, or more likely, a disinformation age.
Growing up in a world that worships technology and knowledge, we have now entered a phase when we no longer are able to trust what information we receive is fake news or not. Worse, we don’t know whether the provider of the information is trustworthy or not.
Fake news has many definitions. Basically, fake news are manufactured with an intent to mislead, damage someone or to attract attention to a cause, and gain either financially, politically or higher media attention. Such information could be outright sensational, partial, incomplete, provocative, false or fabricated, with some journalists even paying for leaks or gossips. Today’s fake news also include tampered photographs and videos, or encouraging people to “act” in front of the cameras.
Up until the 1970s, when print media and television dominated the distribution of information, media could be trusted to give balanced views, setting out different sides of the argument to enable the reader to judge what is correct. Newspapers and television channels were rich enough to finance investigative journalism in uncovering the “truth”.
But with the arrival of digital information, these traditional channels lost advertising revenue to social media, so the quality of journalism deteriorated, and in order to attract attention, newspaper and television content became more and more sensational, as well as more biased to one side.
The battle over readership also affected social media, where the value (advertising revenue) of the media outlets depends on their ability to attract viewers and readers.
How important is fake news? When you click “fake news” in Google search, you get 1.48 billion results, versus 380 million for “Jesus Christ”. Trump gets 2 billion, which goes to show how successful he is in social media.
Is fake news damaging and should it be regulated?
Canadian think-tank Centre for International Governance and Innovation (CIGI) conducted an online survey in 25 countries on Internet Security and Trust and found that Facebook was the most commonly cited source of fake news, with 77% of Facebook users saying they had personally seen fake news there, followed by 62% of Twitter users and 74% of social media users in general.
The vast majority think that fake news is made worse by the Internet, with negative impact on their economy and worsened polarisation of views.
Significantly, one-third (35%) pointed to the United States as the country most responsible for the disruptive effect of fake news in their country, trailed significantly by Russia (12%) and China (9%).
There are clearly lots of bad online trolls & social media platforms who act to spread fake news, but it is very difficult to agree on who should regulate fake news and decide what is fake or not. Some people believe in self-policing by the social media platforms, but others want governments to be involved, but are also wary of censorship.
My own view is the apparently spontaneous protests in Hong Kong, Barcelona, Santiago, France, Indonesia and in the Middle East are clearly associated with the rapid spread of social media, including the tools to protest, organise and riot.
What is particularly disturbing is the huge divide of opinions, including violent action to stop the other party from presenting their points of view.
The opposing view is often labelled fake news with even the courts being questioned if they rule against the prevalent views.
Is free speech turbo-charged by social media promoting hate and divisions that increasingly verge on violence and social breakdown?
Australian philosopher Tim Dean has recently questioned whether free speech has failed us?
As he rightly points out, “Free speech is not an absolute good; it is not an end unto itself. Free speech is an instrumental good, one that promotes a higher good: seeking the truth.”
The real problem is that if we do not have facts, we cannot have rational debate on what is truth.
The rule of law works on the principle that if there is dispute in society, it is resolved civilly either through the courts or through the political process. But once violence is involved, the rule of law breaks down.
As Professor Dean says, “free speech only fulfils its truth-seeking function when all agents are speaking in good faith: when they all agree that the truth is the goal of the conversation, that the facts matter, that there are certain standards of evidence and argumentation that are admissible, that speakers have a duty to be open to criticism.”
If however, one side blocks out the opposing view through intimidation, insults, threats, violent action and the wilful spread of misinformation, then civil discourse disappears, as does the rule of law.
This is clearly the age not of information but of anger. As a result of financial capitalism, huge inequalities have been allowed to fester, breaking down rational discourse, engendering distrust of the establishment and old order, and pushing hate and divisions.
Should we allow social media to turbo-charge this process, not of healing but polarisation?
Singapore takes step to regulate fake news
The Singaporean government has taken the bold step of regulating fake news through the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (Pofma), which came into effect this month. Under the act, the Singapore government can take action on false information on the Internet, either ordering that it be taken down, corrected or order technology companies to block accounts that are spreading untruths.
A wise friend told me that we are actually living in a fractured generational divide. The old wants to maintain the old order of stability. The young thinks that this is rigged against them and want to change the system that they will inherit. But something is seriously wrong when school children think that it is right to throw petrol bombs and that it is cool to beat up policemen and anyone that they think stand in their way.
For even reputable channels such as the BBC to start glorifying such action, one wonders whether fake news has truly won.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo: "I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment."
Pompeo said this at an event at Texas A&M University on April 15, 2019. Here is the official State Department transcript:https://www.state.gov/secretary/remar....
‘Glory of American experiment’: What did Pompeo mean by that?
https://youtu.be/OrthGnb_mlc
Mike Pompeo is loved by the Koch brothers, big oil, Islamophobes, people
against marriage equality, and of course, Donald J. Trump. Narrated by
Judy Gold.
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With business ties to foreign governments, connections to the defense
and oil industries, nonchalance towards torture, and hatreds of entire
cultures, it’s no surprise Mike Pompeo’s run as Trump's CIA Director was
short lived – but his time in the White House continues on as U.S.
Secretary of State and head of all U.S. diplomatic relations.
Pompeo: 'I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole'
https://youtu.be/qfrhATD4nM0
'I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. It’s – it was
like – we had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of
the American experiment' - Pompeo
Mike Pompeo says, “Lying, cheating and stealing reminds you of the glory of the American experiment”
https://youtu.be/Lc8oDNaDlek
Pictured above: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, telling it like it
is: lying, cheating and stealing are the glory of the American
experiment. It's what the capitalist West does best. He was adored by
the audience like a success guru.
