How China is controlling the COVID origins narrative — silencing critics and locking up dissenters

John Garrick, Charles Darwin University and Yan Bennett, Princeton University

Just over a year has gone by since the novel coronavirus first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan and the world still has many questions about where and how it originated.

The World Health Organisation is sending a team to China this week to investigate the origins of the virus — which has now claimed nearly 2 million lives globally — but one health expert warns expectations for the visit should be set “very low”.

The Chinese government has greatly restrained any attempts to investigate the origins of COVID-19 — both internally and by foreign experts — while at the same time advocating alternate theories that the pandemic originated elsewhere.

The top leadership sees control over this narrative as vital to its hold over the Chinese population and the boosting of its international reputation.

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Read more:
Murky origins: why China will never welcome a global inquiry into the source of COVID-19

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The stakes could not be higher because Beijing has presented the Communist Party’s strong, centralised rule as the key to the country’s success at controlling the pandemic and reviving its economy.

This has been contrasted with disastrous efforts to control the disease in the US under the Trump administration. The state-run Global Times has called the US a “living hell”.

Against this backdrop, Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, says the WHO investigation team

will have to be politically savvy and draw conclusions that are acceptable to all the major parties.

Citizen journalists disappear after reporting the truth

Part of controlling the Communist Party narrative has entailed the detention of many citizen journalists who sounded the alarm about the virus in its early days, exposed the government’s attempts to cover it up and criticised its early response to control it.

In late December, one of these independent journalists, Zhang Zhan, was sentenced to four years imprisonment for the crime of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”.

A former lawyer, Zhang travelled to Wuhan in February to talk to people about how they were coping in lockdown. She shared videos and talked about what she observed, at one point noting the fear people felt toward the government was actually greater than their fear of the virus.

In an interview before her detention, she said

Maybe I have a rebellious soul … I’m just documenting the truth. Why can’t I show the truth?

Some of Zhang’s video reports from Wuhan.

Zhang is just one of many critics whom the government has attempted to silence.

Chinese law professor Xu Zhangrun was detained by police for a week after writing articles critical of Chinese President Xi Jinping, and then fired from his position at a university. He remains under surveillance and has been banned from leaving Beijing, but he continues to write.

Others have simply disappeared. The outspoken lawyer and citizen journalist Chen Qiushi went missing in February after reporting from Wuhan and didn’t reappear until late September. He also remained under “strict supervision” by the authorities.

And Wuhan businessman Fang Bin, who was detained in early February after posting videos purporting to show COVID victims inside hospitals, hasn’t been heard from since.

Using the security system and courts to target civil society

Under Xi’s leadership, the Communist Party has become increasingly vigorous in guarding the official propaganda around party ideology and Xi’s rule from any form of criticism.

While Xi emphasised in a 2013 speech the importance of the propaganda and “ideological leadership” to the country, the pandemic has allowed China’s party-state to extend its ideological control over the courts, eliminating any pretence of judicial autonomy.

This manipulation of rule-of-law institutions can be seen in the prosecution of citizen journalists like Zhang Zhan and anyone else who questions or criticises the official party line.

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Read more:
China has a new way to exert political pressure: weaponising its courts against foreigners

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Marxist scholars and party propagandists argue there are no contradictions between party ideology and “rule of law”. In China, they say, there is no need for a legal separation of powers to ensure justice because the party is the ultimate expression of the people’s will when it comes to law and order.

In essence, the Communist Party is the rule of law, with Chinese characteristics.

The party has long used the security system and courts in this way to “kill chickens to scare monkeys” (a Chinese idiom meaning to punish an individual as an example to others).

In the past, the targets have typically been prominent political dissidents, such as Liu Xiaobo and Wei Jingsheng, and human rights lawyers.

What is new and disturbing is the use of this tactic to eradicate all dissent and perceived threats to the party’s rule from civil society. Those targeted in recent years include Chinese-Australian writer Yang Hengjun, Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai and Chinese-Australian journalist Cheng Lei, as well as many foreigners.

Jimmy Lai (centre) is charged with alleged foreign collusion under Hong Kong’s new national security law.
Kin Cheung/AP

Forced silence does not mean public belief

This domestic political context makes it unlikely the WHO researchers will be allowed to fully investigate all hypotheses as to the origins of the coronavirus, such as the claim it could have been caused by a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Although China’s so-called “Bat Woman”, virologist Shi Zhengli, has said she’d welcome a visit by the WHO team to the lab, leaked government documents tell another story.

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Re-creating live-animal markets in the lab lets researchers see how pathogens like coronavirus jump species

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According to the documents, published by the Associated Press this month, the government is monitoring scientists’ findings and requiring any research to be approved by a new task force under Xi’s direct command before publication.

Zhang’s case reveals how challenges to official narratives are now being dealt with in China. It also shows that Chinese citizens do not always find official narratives convincing and propagandists cannot force them to believe in ideology. The forced silencing of critics does not equate to people believing in the official party line.

With the origins of COVID-19, China’s citizens — and the world — deserve truth, not politically convenient spin.

John Garrick, University Fellow in Law, Charles Darwin University and Yan Bennett, Assistant Director, Princeton University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How can we understand the origins of Islamic State?

Reema Rattan, The Conversation

Since announcing its arrival as a global force in June 2014 with the declaration of a caliphate on territory captured in Iraq and Syria, the jihadist group Islamic State has shocked the world with its brutality.

Its seemingly sudden prominence has led to much speculation about the group’s origins. How do we account for forces and events that paved the way for Islamic State’s emergence?

Do the answers lie in the 20th century, which saw the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the creation of new nations in its wake and their struggle for independence as well as articulation of national identities? Is it hidden in the debris of the Gulf and the Iraq Wars? Or do we have to look deeper in history – to the fundamental tenets of Islam, the Crusades, or the so-called Assassins of the 11th to 13th centuries?

Which of these – if any – can be said to have created the conditions necessary for the rise of Islamic State? In the article kicking off our series on the genesis of the group, professor of modern Middle Eastern history James Gelvin cautions against easy answers. Just because one event followed another, he says, doesn’t mean it was also caused by it.

It is far better to look at the interplay of historical and social forces, as well as recognising that outfits such as Islamic State often cherry-pick ideas to justify their beliefs and behaviours.

Heeding his advice, our series on understanding Islamic State attempts, in a dispassionate way, to catalogue many of the forces and events that can arguably have played a part in creating the conditions necessary for these jihadists to emerge. We have tried to spread the net wide, but make no claim to being comprehensive or having the final word on Islamic State’s origins.

After Gelvin’s broad introduction to the group and warnings about the misuse of history, we turn to Islam and its theology.

Historian of Islamic thought Harith Bin Ramli explains how Islamic State fits – or doesn’t – in Muslim theological tradition, before religious studies scholar Aaron Hughes asks why, given the jihadist group is based on religion, is it so violent?

In a further contribution, Hughes discusses the plurality at the core of Islam, accounting for why the religion is so different in different countries.

Next, we turn to medieval history, as both the Crusades and the so-called cult of Assassins have been linked to Islamic State.

Farhad Daftary discusses the Nizari Ismailis – romanticised as Assassins by the Crusaders and in The Travels of Marco Polo – who killed, among others, two early caliphs. Could they really be thought of as an earlier incarnation of the most vicious terrorists in recent history?

Professor of religious studies Carole Cusack considers the Crusades themselves, and what contribution they could have had in Islamic State’s origins.

Leaping to the 20th century, we start looking at the more proximate causes of the group’s rise.

First, a look at the fateful Sykes-Picot agreement, which craved up the Middle East into English and French spheres of influence, and was denounced by Islamic State in the first video it released. James Renton argues the group’s self-declared political aim in establishing its caliphate speaks directly to the deal, and is an attempt at post-colonial emancipation.

Addressing an issue raised in the comments to the articles in the series, Harith Bin Ramli considers the long 20th century endured by the Middle East. He explains how the crisis of political authority in the Muslim world between the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the 1991 Gulf War contributed to Islamic State’s rise.

The series concludes with a look at more proximate events – the role of the recent wars in the region and their aftermath. Greg Barton points out that to understand Islamic State, we need to look not just at the Middle East itself but also at the complicated role the West has historically played in it.

Download our special report: Understanding Islamic State

Reema Rattan, Series + Specials Editor, The Conversation

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Commentary: Stephen Hawking’s junk science atheism

Commentary by Matthew Cullinan Hoffman

LifeSiteNews.com

World-famous physics professor Stephen Hawking is making waves and headlines by claiming in his new book, The Grand Design, that God is not necessary to explain the existence of the universe because, in his words, "as recent advances in cosmology suggest, the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing."

"Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist," he adds. "It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."

Although the book is not yet available to the public and only a few paragraphs have been quoted in the commercial media, it appears that Hawking is playing the same game he played in his celebrated work, A Brief History of Time, which established his fame in the 1980s and has sold millions of copies worldwide. He takes theories that he admits are unproven, then uses verbal sleight of hand to begin treating them subtly as fact. Even worse, however, is his method of spinning ludicrous philosophical conclusions from such theories, implying that they simply follow from the science.

Hawking makes hay out of the theory of the "vacuum fluctuation" to imply that matter can simply spontaneously appear, created out of "nothing." A vacuum fluctuation is an event in which the forces of nature manifest themselves briefly as "virtual particles," so briefly they cannot be directly observed, and then disappear. Such theoretical entities seem to be well supported by experimental evidence. However, physics has not abandoned the principle of the conservation of mass and energy, and the "nothing" that such particles receive their mass from is in fact something very real, known as "vacuum energy," which permeates all of space.

"Quantum cosmologists," such as Hawking, have made a cottage industry out of speculating that events like vacuum fluctuations could result in the creation of entirely new worlds, although they have no direct experimental proof of such events occurring. This is in keeping with Hawking’s general obsession with highly theoretical constructs that have little hard data to support them. He has, for example, spent many years theorizing on the properties of black holes, entities whose very existence remains unproven. This is why, despite his great fame and unquestioned ability, he has never received the Nobel Prize in physics.

In his latest bid for publicity, Hawking appears to be employing his usual shell-game verbiage to imply the "spontaneous" appearance of the physical world, with Nothing itself as a creator. His theory emphasizes vacuum fluctuations, but it apparently slips his mind that the law of conservation of energy remains an axiom of physics. He defines "nothing" in a very peculiar way — apparently the energy of the vacuum is "nothing." Moreover, Hawking cites two particular "nothings" to justify his something-from-nothing theory, which are the laws of gravity and quantum mechanics (the laws governing microphysical particles). He says that these laws make such events possible. Are gravity and quantum-physical laws "nothing"?

Hawking’s current statements are similar to those he made in his Brief History of Time, where he tried to imply that the universe came out of nothing because research suggests that the positive and negative energy of the universe balance each other out. Gravity, which is an attractive force, is understood as "negative energy," and the expansive movement of the universe is seen as "positive energy."

Of course, if you add together a negative number and positive number whose absolute values are equal, you get zero, but so what? Are we to conclude that because these two variables sum to nothing, that they had their origin in nothing, or perhaps that they don’t even exist because they cancel each other out? If so, how could one place them as terms in the equation in the first place? Hawking never bothers to answer basic questions like that, apparently hoping that his naive and sympathetic audience won’t ask them.

 

Selective science?

While making selective use of new and untested theories to make his case, Hawking conveniently forgets to mention that the most commonly-accepted interpretation of quantum physics has a tendency to dramatically undermine his position. That interpretation is known as the Copenhagen Interpretation (CI), popularized by Nobel Prize winning physicist Niels Bohr. The CI postulates that particles don’t really exist until they are observed — they only exist in a potential way, as probabilities. Indeed, if one is to take the ultra-empiricist position that Hawking takes, in which perception and reality are naively equated, this is the most logical conclusion one can draw from modern quantum physics, which uses probabilities to address the trade-off between the precision of our knowledge about the location and momentum of particles.

However, if it is true that particles don’t exist until they are observed, then human beings themselves would not exist, and therefore the whole universe would not exist, unless there were a non-physical observer outside of the universe causing it to exist. This is one reason that some physicists who initially embraced the CI because it dovetailed with their empiricist worldview, have backed away from it. They don’t like the conclusions it tends to lead them to. The non-physical observer outside of the universe, causing it to exist by observing it, sounds too much like God.

Not surprisingly, Hawking has rejected the CI in favor of another, less popular interpretation called the "many worlds" interpretation. According to Hawking’s own review of the book, he applies this interpretation of quantum physics as if it is something that flows out of the science itself, rather than being an unproven (and currently unprovable) supposition that is rejected by large numbers of physicists. He then uses this fanciful theory, which claims that every quantum event spawns new, alternate universes where all possibilities are realized, to reject the strong anthropic principle, which argues that the fine-tuning of the universe suggests the existence of a Creator. Hawking argues that with so many parallel worlds, one is bound to be friendly to life, and so no further explanation is needed.

 

Natural science vs philosophy and religion

However, the errors in Hawking’s thinking run deeper than the inconsistencies and speculations in his use of modern physics. They imply a fundamental misunderstanding about the differences between the natural sciences and the sciences of philosophy and theology. While the natural sciences can give answers to questions about the precise nature of physical objects and their behavior, they cannot answer questions about the origins of the physical world itself, which is an area addressed by metaphysical philosophy, theology, and religion.

In fact, Hawking openly characterizes his new book as a challenge to philosophy itself, claiming that modern physics is capable of answering all of the questions addressed by the philosophic sciences, thus rendering the latter obsolete.

The absurdity and arrogance of such a proposition is immediately obvious when one considers that physics and other physical sciences don’t have non-physical reality as their subject matter. Physics studies physical things. It doesn’t study purely abstract concepts according to their nature, like the formal sciences of logic, mathematics, and geometry – which are ironically sciences on which physics depends. Physics therefore cannot tell us about the origin of all physical things, which would take it to an extra-physical realm outside of its own sphere of competence.

Hawking’s incredible naiveté and ignorance about the nature of philosophy and its relation to the natural sciences becomes evident when reading his Brief History of Time, which makes embarrassing blunders about Aristotle, even claiming that he denied the validity of the senses (he is famous for affirming the opposite). However, Hawking’s seemingly total ignorance about philosophy also leads him to breathtaking errors in reasoning, which would inspire pity in the reader if it weren’t for the fact that he will never be held accountable for them.

Hawking and his fellow-travelers want to attribute the beginning of the universe to physical laws, while ignoring the issue of their source. A law is a concept, a principle, it is not a physical thing. How do such laws exist without a lawgiver? How do concepts exist without a mind to conceive them? If so, where and how do they exist? Are they floating around in the mythical ether?

More problematical is the very existence of things that do not exist by their nature. There is nothing necessary about the laws of physics as we find them, nor the physical objects of our universe and their properties. We can conceive of an infinite number of possible universes, each with their own set of laws, objects, and internal conditions. So why does this universe exist and not others? If others exist, why do they exist instead of not existing? This is known in philosophy as the contingency problem, and it is one that physics cannot begin to answer. The finite things of our world do not exist by any internal necessity. Therefore they must depend on something else for their existence, and ultimately all things must depend on a being that exists by its very nature, that exists per se. Christians, Jews, Muslims and others call that being God.

Other philosophical problems arise with Hawking’s belief in "spontaneous," uncaused events. Although the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which is a fundamental element of quantum physics, requires scientists to use theories of probability and "randomness" when creating mathematical models of the physical world, this does not translate automatically to the conclusion that the world is truly, metaphysically random, and lacking in design.

Randomness is a meaningless concept without a preexisting probability function to define it, along with rules and objects to which it applies. Moreover, randomness itself is only a way of dealing with a lack of complete knowledge about a set of circumstances, much as we deal with a deck of cards that has been shuffled. The idea that the world could be the product of some primordial "randomness" and fundamentally uncaused is absurd on its face, and flies in the nature of science itself, which is the study of causes and principles. If the existence of the universe can be "random" and uncaused, so can any event that takes place within it, which would utterly eliminate science, and the ability to rationally understand the world we live in.

Hawking’s thought is symptomatic of the disciplinary hubris that often overcomes academics, especially physicists and other practitioners of the natural sciences, who forget that their respective fields are, after all, limited. The natural sciences in particular seem to attract large numbers of people who are convinced that only physical reality exists, despite the massive edifice of arguments that have been raised against such a worldview for over 2,300 years by philosophy and theology. They are often laboring under the most primitive kinds of philosophical errors, especially empiricism, a long-refuted doctrine that lives on only in the naive minds of otherwise brilliant scientists, whose myopic vision of the world drives them to great achievements in their own fields, while leading them to utter failure in answering the great questions of life.

Jane Hawking, Stephen Hawking’s ex-wife whom he left to marry his young nurse, probably put it best when she said of her husband, "Stephen has the feeling that because everything is reduced to a rational, mathematical formula, that must be the truth. He is delving into realms that really do matter to thinking people and, in a way, that can have a very disturbing effect on people — and he’s not competent."

Unfortunately, this brilliant physicist and incompetent philosopher is likely to have quite a disturbing effect on our already confused society, unless other, more responsible physicists raise their voices. Let us hope they do.

Report from the Christian Telegraph

Origins: John Macarthur on Origins

TURKEY: ANCIENT MONASTERY THREATENED

Muslims’ legal action against 1,600-year-old structure called ‘malicious.’

ISTANBUL, January 22 (Compass Direct News) – Syriac Christians in southeastern Turkey say a land dispute over the historic Mor Gabriel Monastery is part of a larger system of discrimination against the religious minority in this overwhelmingly Islamic country.

Muslim residents of southeastern Turkey dispute the boundary lines of an ancient Christian monastery dating to the fourth century as being unnecessarily large for the needs of a religious community. Islamic village leaders from Yayvantepe, Eglence and Candarli are attempting to confiscate one-third of the monastery’s property, claiming it was wrongfully appropriated and that they need it for their livestock.

Area Muslims also say the land in question is forest and thereby registered as land belonging to the State Treasury.

“Our land is being occupied by the monastery,” said Ismail Erlal, village leader of Yayvantepe, according to Cihan News Agency. “We make use of the forest there and pasture our animals; we won’t give up our rights.”

Among the most contentious issues are the monastery walls built around its perimeter, rebuilt 15 years ago. Village leaders complain in a lawsuit to obtain the land that the monastery has gone beyond its rightful bounds. In August the land survey office of Midyat said it had determined that 270 hectares of the monastery’s 760 hectares were government property, including land inside and outside the monastery’s walls.

A court in Mardin originally scheduled a hearing for Friday (Jan. 16) to determine the legal status of the monastery walls, but it was rescheduled to Feb. 11 to allow the court more time to examine the case. At the February hearing the court will determine if the 270 hectares of land belong to the government or the monastery.

Metropolitan Timotheos Samuel Aktas, leader of the monastery, answered in a report that the monastery has the right to leave its land uncultivated and has paid taxes on the property since 1937.

The state originally charged the monastery with being founded illegally, but it dropped those charges by canceling a hearing originally schedule for Dec. 24. Rudi Sumer, the attorney representing the monastery, said that the claim was groundless since the monastery has foundation status dating back to modern Turkey’s origins, not to mention centuries of existence beforehand.

The mayors of Yayvantepe, Eglence and Candarli also charged the monastery with attempting to proselytize young children (illegal in Turkey) and carrying out “anti-Turkish” activity.

Metropolitan Aktas said in a report that these claims were groundless and of the same provocative nature that has historically sparked violence against Turkey’s Christians.

“All the allegations are frivolous and vexatious, devoid of any logic or evidence, solely aimed with the malicious intent of rousing anti-Christian sentiments by the surrounding Muslim villages,” he said.

 

Europe Watching

Mor Gabriel Monastery, founded in 397, is the most revered monastery for Syrian Orthodox Christians. It is inhabited by 15 nuns and two monks and is the seat of Metropolitan Bishop of Tur Abdin Diocese.

In recent decades the monastery has turned into a religious and social center for the country’s remaining Syriacs by offering schooling to children and teaching their ancient language of Syriac, a variant of the language spoken by Jesus.

“The monastery is everything for us,” said a Syrian Orthodox Christian who grew up in Turkey’s southeast. He added that many families in the area had named their children after Mor Gabriel. “Syriacs would give up everything for the monastery.”

An international outcry from the European Parliament and numerous Assyrian organizations throughout Europe arose in response to the charges, according to the Assyrian International News Agency. A member of the German consulate said his country would monitor the case closely, as Turkey is attempting to join the European Union and its human rights record has come under close scrutiny.

Many Syrian Orthodox Christians have left southeast Turkey in the last 30 years as violence escalated between the military and Kurdish terrorists. In the last five years, however, some Syriacs have begun returning home – only to find their property occupied by others.

Residents who fled Mardin province in the mid-1980s returned to find two of their village’s Syriac churches converted into mosques. And the demographic shift from Syriacs to Kurds has increased pressure on the monastery.

“Turkey must protect its Assyrian community,” said Swedish parliamentarian Yilmaz Kerim to the Hurriyet Daily News. He visited the monastery as part of a delegation in December. “There are only 3,000 left in Midyat.”

The lawsuit has the support of a local parliamentarian who claims Christians relished their opportunity to leave Turkey. Süleyman Çelebi, member of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), said Syrian Orthodox Christians had never come under pressure, despite their claim that they were exploited, and even emigrated away from Turkey “with joy” in previous decades.

The three villages that brought the lawsuit against the monastery overwhelmingly supported the Islamic-rooted AKP in last year’s national elections. Çelebi claims that the official boundaries of the monastery were established in Ottoman times but not properly observed by the Syriac Christians.

According to the 1923 Lausanne Treaty, Turkey grants full protection to churches, synagogues and other religious establishments to freely practice their own religions. But this treaty only designated Greek and Armenian Orthodox Christians and Jews, creating complications for groups such as the Syrian Orthodox and Protestants to open schools and churches.

Syriac Christians claim to be one of the first people to accept Christianity in the Middle East. Their historic homeland stretches through southeastern Turkey, but their numbers have dwindled to 15,000 following decades of government pressure and fallout from war against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party.  

Report from Compass Direct News

ISRAEL Vs HAMAS: THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE WINNER HERE

I am continually bewildered by the condemnation that is always dumped on Israel when it seeks to protect itself from terrorist aggression. I feel terribly sorry for innocent Palestinian people caught in the middle of this conflict between Israel and Hamas (as well as other terrorist organisations operating against Israel). However, while Palestinians actively support the likes of Hamas, it is difficult for me to accept their criticism of Israel (or that of other nations, whether they be Islamic or Western).

What other nation would sit on its hands when a group is actively terrorising and bombing its citizens? None I would suspect, yet this is what so many expect Israel to do. They must strike at those they know are responsible for targeting and killing its citizens. Hamas must be destroyed for a peaceful resolution of the Gaza Strip situation.

Why is Israel condemned for its occupation of Palestinian lands in Gaza, the West bank and the Golan Heights areas? Did not these areas come into Israeli hands as a result of the Six Day War in which Arab nations attempted to obliterate the Israeli nation? Haven’t these Arab nations and Arab groups constantly attempted to destroy Israel and haven’t some of these groups and nations made it their pledge to do so? Aren’t these areas close to the Israeli border used by terrorist group to fire rockets into Israel – then why shouldn’t Israel occupy them if it means protecting their people?

Surely the surrounding nations and Palestinians can’t legitimately declare their innocence in the face of Israeli retaliation? Who are they fooling? It seems that quite a number of gullible people and nations out there are buying it – but these people are simply ignoring the origins of the conflict with a biased view.

Hamas has to be stopped or there can be no peace. Hamas cannot defeat the might of the Israeli military – there can only be one winner here.

BELOW: Footage of the conflict in Gaza which needs to be understood in the face of constant rocket attacks on Israel

BELOW: Typical propaganda from anti-Israeli sources (beware – it is offensive):