Stephen Karganovic
The world is watching the flustered hegemonists being made to eat delicious crow and publicly admit to the bankruptcy of at least some of their lies.
For those unfamiliar with this colourful American idiom, "eating crow" means "to undergo the humiliation of having to retract a statement or admit an error." It is a rough equivalent of the Biblical practice of putting on a sackcloth and covering oneself with ashes.
Something of the sort has indeed happened with two major collective West narratives, the war in Ukraine and the "genocide" Xinjiang. The Ukraine narrative maintained that the conflict that started in February 2022 was an unprovoked act of "Russian aggression." The equally bogus Xinjiang narrative rested on the groundless premise that the Chinese government was conducting an extermination campaign targeting the Uyghurs, a Turkic Muslim ethnicity, in its Northwestern province of Xinjiang.
Both assertions have now been debunked as completely false. That was accomplished in part by those who were aggressively promoting those narratives. The one misrepresenting the conflict in Ukraine imploded with a huge bang, whilst the Xinjiang genocide fabrication did so with a whimper. But it hardly matters; they are both effectively dead now.
The key ground of the Russian aggression claim was debunked recently by its most prominent promoters. In pursuing dialogue with Russia as a means of settling the conflict in Ukraine, the new Trump administration, in the face of fierce vested interest and deep state resistance and however grudgingly, has finally made an important admission. It is that the operational premise of the hostility to Russia which at several junctures had brought the world to the brink of war was in fact false.
That is the plain meaning of President Donald Trump's remark, addressed to the Ukrainian leadership with reference to responsibility for the war: "You should have never started it. You could have made a deal."
As if on cue, administration officials are also changing their tune. The President's adviser and special envoy Steve Witkoff articulated Washington's new position in no uncertain terms: "The war didn't need to happen. It was provoked." But who provoked it?
The key takeaway from Witkoff's remarks concerns the genesis of the conflict, although what he said may strike informed people as merely conceding the obvious: "It doesn't necessarily mean it was provoked by the Russians. There were all kinds of conversations back then about Ukraine joining NATO. The president has spoken about this - that didn't need to happen. It basically became a threat to the Russians, and so we have to deal with that fact."
There is an immense difference between "unprovoked full scale aggression," which was the party line until a few days ago, and the new position consisting of the explicit recognition that Russia's military operation was provoked, because it occurred in response to a threat.
The acid test of Trump administration's commitment to the revised view of the conflict was the way it would vote in the UN on the resolution proposed by Ukraine, regurgitating the three-year "Russian unprovoked aggression" propaganda claims. Refreshingly, this time round the US snubs UN resolution condemning Russian invasion of Ukraine | ABC NEWS .
The lie concerning the Chinese "genocide" in Xinxiang has now also been laid bare and once more the truth has been affirmed by the most authoritative source, the original slanderers themselves.
It should be recalled that Great Britain not only spearheaded the charge that China was committing genocide in Xinxiang but had also made its facilities available in 2021 to an NGO specifically set up for the purpose of conducting a kangaroo court trial in order to give the charge a veneer of legitimacy.
The veneer was rather short lived, as it turned out, because Dr. Alena Douhan, the UN Human Rights Rapporteur, evidently intrigued by the Xinxiang genocide frenzy, actually Why are the UN asking the USA to lift Sanctions on Xinjiang? In her findings she reported that no evidence of genocide was detected and asked that UN Rapporteur to USA: REMOVE SANCTIONS on XINJIANG! #UFLPA
Easier said than done because the Xinxiang controversy has nothing to do with verifiable human rights abuses, much less the crime of genocide, and everything to do with the Chinese province's pivotal position on the Great Chessboard. Quite simply, as we had stated before, "Xinjiang happens to be the most convenient land route corridor which China's Belt and Road Initiative must inevitably take if it is to be viable. Accordingly, make Xinjiang a sufficiently hazardous place and for all practical purposes B&R trade goes up in smoke. Chinese products cannot reach their foreign destinations, and neither can the products of foreign partners be reliably delivered to the Chinese market."
Economic warfare against China is therefore key to the importance that is suddenly being attributed to the goings-on in the formerly obscure Xinxiang. A U.S. think tank policy planning paper makes that crystal clear. It is noted there that Xinxiang is "a pivotal source of products, including cotton and refined silica, that feed into global supply chains." The authors consequently urge that "a variety of economic and diplomatic policies... be brought to bear in order to both ameliorate conditions in Xinjiang and ensure that global consumers are not accomplices to these abuses by buying products produced with forced labor." A good start in implementing these pious sentiments would be to begin paying attention to the situation closer to home, by ameliorating the condition of inmates in U.S. prisons who are typically paid one cent per hour for the labour they are "encouraged" to perform, which is of great benefit to the bottom line of many corporations which use their captive services. How that generous remuneration compares to Xinxiang wages is a good research question.
In that context, a landmark recently adjudicated defamation lawsuit in Great Britain acquires special significance. Frustrated with being subjected to punishing sanctions over alleged forced labour issue in Xinxiang, whence it obtains cotton for the merchandise it produces, Hong Kong shirt manufacturer Smart Shirts Ltd. filed a defamation suit in London High Court against Sheffield Hallam University. The plaintiff alleged that the University's Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice had caused it economic harm by attributing without evidence complicity in supposed human rights abuses in Xinxiang, focusing on several suppliers, including Smart Shirts.
Whilst not discarding categorically the theoretical possibility that the plaintiff may have been implicated in human rights abuses, the UK court ruled - and this is the key point - that the defendant failed to prove its allegations. The court determined that Sheffield Hallam University's public reports linking Smart Shirts to unethical labour practices were defamatory at common law, as they could adversely affect the attitude of others towards Smart Shirts. The judgment emphasized that defendant's publications were misleadingly presented as factual findings based on extensive research, which was not the case, thus influencing their perceived credibility to the economic detriment of the plaintiff.
The London proceedings did not directly address the veracity of genocide and forced labour allegations with regard to Xinxiang, but they did establish, or rather reaffirm, the paramount legal principle that scurrilous accusations unsupported by evidence are defamatory and that the party whose character is so impugned must be regarded as innocent until proven guilty.
The principle that the UK court found operating in favour of Smart Shirts logically must operate in exactly the same manner for China, the country that has been sullied with the heinous and unproven accusation of genocide. After the High Court's ruling, bare allegations of genocide and forced labour in Xinxiang can no longer be regarded in the same light as before.
The significance of these penitential stirrings in the collective West should not be overestimated, but they do carry weight. Both retractions were motivated by utilitarian considerations, specifically the tactical need to engage Russia and China in some form of dialogue, or at least to better manage the accumulated tensions. In neither case was there a genuine change of heart, or even an enduring policy change, but only a reversible shift in the propaganda posture.
Nonetheless, the fact that in relation to these two somewhat narrow issues both the U.S. and Britain were obliged, by circumstances and the failure of previous arrogant policies, to drop their lies and make at least tentative concessions to reality should be noted, though not necessarily celebrated with excessive enthusiasm. The collective West's belligerent position vis-à-vis both Russia and China had been based in very large measure precisely on the fictitious accusations of "unprovoked aggression" and "genocide," respectively. Both "indictments" have now been practically set aside at the source. The real international community, which stands for the overwhelming majority of mankind and not just the shrinking 14% portion of it, and which is developing its own mechanisms of participation in global affairs, will have greeted with satisfaction the crumbling of both these mendacious narratives.
At a minimum, that signifies a moral victory for Russia and China. It must also be a comforting spectacle for the world at large, as it watches the flustered hegemonists being made to eat delicious crow and publicly admit to the bankruptcy of at least some of their lies.