Thirteen Ways In Which The COVID-19 Threat May be Inflated

COVID-19 is a very serious problem that should be taken very seriously by both government and the public, but there are ways in which we may be getting an inflated sense of the threat:

Populism for Peace

Voters generally don't care or know much about the horrors US foreign policy inflicts on so many people around the world. But to get rid off the foreign policy establishment responsible for those horrors you would need a populist revolt. So the situation seems hopeless.

In this article published on The Libertarian Institute's site I argue that there is hope after all: A populist pro-peace movement could end the Empire without even trying.

List of Commentators Who Acknowledge They Were Wrong About Russiagate

There was no evidence of any collusion between the Russian government and the Trump campaign. This was the conclusion of the Mueller report that was made public last April. The conclusion was subsequently confirmed by Robert Mueller himself in his testimony before Congress in late July.

Of course, if you had predicted in 2017 or even in 2018 that Mueller would find no evidence of collusion many hundreds or thousands of journalists, pundits, politicians, podcasters, TV hosts and other commentators would have thought you were a fool or worse.

Now that they've had several months to reflect it may be instructive to see which of the people who were at some point so confident that there was Trump-Russia collusion now publicly acknowledge that they jumped the gun.

A while ago I published a list of commentators and media organizations who were rationally skeptical throughout Russiagate, who always insisted that the publicly available evidence for collusion simply wasn't there. They deserve praise for getting it right.

But because intellectual honesty matters we should also praise the people who once believed in collusion but who now acknowledge that they were wrong.

You can find their names on the list below. Suggestions for additions are welcome.

Acknowledged They Were Wrong about Russiagate 

1. Michael Isikoff
2. Bobby Chesney (55:00)
3. Stewart Baker (57:15)
4. James A. Gagliano

This list will be updated with more names when needed.

Bill Browder's Sergei Magnitsky Story Is a Lie

Bill Browder tells the story of how his whistle blower lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was murdered in a Russian prison to cover up a massive fraud he had discovered. This story has been a key element in the current anti-Russia narrative that is so pervasive in Western European and North American politics.

It is also completely false.

Three Books on the History and Nature of Russophobia Help Explain Russiagate

What is Russophobia?

Russophobia is several things. Wikipedia says:

a diverse spectrum of negative feelings, dislikes, fears, aversion, derision and/or prejudice of Russia, Russians or Russian culture. A wide variety of mass culture clichés about Russia and Russians exists in the Western world. Many of these stereotypes were originally developed during the Cold War, and were primarily used as elements of political war against the Soviet Union. Some of these prejudices are still observed in the discussions of the relations with Russia. (wikipedia)

But as Guy Mettan explains in his historical study, Creating Russophobia: From the Great Religious Schism to Anti-Putin Hysteria, Russophobia is not just the manifestation of a feeling:

It is first of all the expression of a power balance, of a relation of power. It is not only a passive judgment. It is not just a mass of clichés and prejudices. It is also, and first of all, an active bias, adopted with the intention to harm or at least to reduce the other in relation to one’s self. In this sense Russophobia is also a racism: the purpose is to diminish the other with a view to better dominate.

And this is what makes Russophobia a phenomenon specific to the West. It proceeds with the same categories Edward Said identified for orientalism: exaggeration of the difference, affirmation of the superiority of the West and recourse to stereotyped analytical grids. The ultimate strategy of the Russophobic discourse is to provide a full-fledged, infinitely adjustable subject, sufficiently sophisticated for academics in charge of theorizing about Russia yet popular with journalists eager to put that within everyone’s reach.

Russiagate Skeptics

Below a list of journalists, commentators etc & media organizations who never succumbed to Russiagate --the conspiracy theory that the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government to hack and distribute the DNC & Podesta emails-- and who remained rationally skeptical throughout.

People Who Have Not Succumbed to Anti-Russia Hysteria

"Russia hacked the DNC! Russia attacked American democracy! A new Pearl Harbor! A cyber 9-11!"

"And Trump is Putin's poodle. He's a traitor. Our government is controlled by a foreign enemy!"

This kind of rhetoric is absurd and exceedingly dangerous. It is also very common and completely mainstream. See for example here and here.

What makes this rhetoric so dangerous is that it increases tensions between the two nuclear superpowers. Needlessly. And with increased tensions comes a increased threat of war --nuclear war-- either intentional or accidental. And nuclear war is bad, really bad.

Obama Spokespersons Embarrassing Themselves

In the spirit of people (rightly) mocking Trump press secretary Sean Spicer's blatantly false claims, here are some other examples of blatantly false or ridiculous claims by Obama's spokespersons, typically about matters much more serious than crowd sizes: