8 ms·

"This didn't make it into the piece, but here's how the Chinese treated people working with the CIA: According to one source, one asset working at a state tech

"This didn't make it into the piece, but here's how the Chinese treated people working with the CIA: According to one source, one asset working at a state tech institutes, and his pregnant wife, were executed live on closed circuit TV in front of the staff." https://twitter.com/zachsdorfman/status/1029861843521523712 https://twitter.com/zachsdorfman/status/1029861843521523712

King-Aaron 8y ago
Obviously a revelation on Twitter about a secretive organisation's workings should always be taken with a grain of salt. However these sorts of reports aren't too uncommon, and it surprises me how there's a lot of pro-china commentators in communities such as HN who seem to glaze over these sorts of things and still aggressively promote the "Chinese way of doing things" is superior to whatever western value or opinion is the discussion point of the day.
- nyolfen 8y ago
  fwiw the tweet is by the author of the linked article
- 68c12c16 8y ago
  I think what we call the skill of "analysis" is to divide an abstract object into a set of its containing elements, and then differentiate those elements and treat each element for its own different case. China is one such abstract object...It's never about pro-china or anti-china -- after all it is a society of 1 billion individuals who are all differentiable from each other (and we have to differentiate a random chinese people from their government)...if we find a certain aspect of China appealing and potentially benecial to our own society, then why not just "like" that aspect and learn from them? In the last few decades of the 5th century BC, Sparta and Athens fought a war with each other, which Athens had lost...but this did not prevent Plato (who was an Athenian) from praising certain aspects of Spartan society.
  - BurritoAlPastor 8y ago
    And also didn't prevent us (a couple thousand years later) from lumping them all together as "ancient Greece". Distance from the components, in time or space, lets us paint the set as homogeneous.
    - 68c12c16 8y ago
      I was just doing a categorical mapping, which you might call it analogy... How is that "lumping" relevant to the current discussion initiated by King-Aaron?
  - cjhanks 8y ago
    And then didn't he die from ingesting hemlock?
    - alasdair_ 8y ago
      >And then didn't he die from ingesting hemlock? No. He probably died in his sleep. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato#Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato#Death You're probably thinking of Socrates, who deliberately killed himself by eating hemlock.
  - King-Aaron 8y ago
    I certainly don't disagree. I do think that your point is possibly lost on a lot of people that are drawing these sorts of comparisons though...
    - 68c12c16 8y ago
      sorry...analogy quite often can cause confusions...I will try to make more intuitive and relevant ones in the future... It's just that the current situation between China and the U.S. bears a lot of similarities as that between Peloponnesian League (led by Sparta) and Athenian Empire during the Peloponnesian War. At the time, Sparta was an oligarchic society and Athens was a democratic one. Thucydides considered the cause of the war was because Sparta was worried about the rise of Athens could threaten its own way of life, and Athens wanted to spread democracy to other city states. There seemed to be no intrinsic conflict between the two states...the problem was that they did not trust each other, only because they were different. I personally feel this situation is quite like the current situation between US and China...There is no intrinsic conflict; they just don't trust each other (sometime even a bit phobic of each other), only because they are different...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- toomanybeersies 8y ago
  I agree that I see a lot of Chinese apologism in the form of "this is the Chinese way" here. I wouldn't say that the comments are necessarily pro-China though, but rather just explaining that it is a different culture and things are done in a different way. I do think it's a bullshit cop out though. I think that it's ignorant at best and racist at worst when people make comments here along the lines of "Chinese people like authoritarian societies and couldn't function in a democracy", usually justified by saying that China has been an authoritarian society since day 0. Europe, until recently, was a continent ruled by autocrats (whether in the form of kings, presidents, or emperors). There are plenty of Chinese democracy activists, and I'm yet to meet a Chinese immigrant who has any love for the CCP and the Chinese government.
  - Jarwain 8y ago
    Would an immigrant Be an immigrant if they held love for the CCP and the Chinese Government?
    - bacon_waffle 8y ago
      There are a lot of reasons that people move to different countries, aside from feelings about the government they're moving away from.
    - toomanybeersies 8y ago
      I migrated from New Zealand to Australia, yet I like the current ruling coalition and government in New Zealand and dislike the Australian ruling coalition and government. There are reasons to migrate beyond politics.
    - 07d046 8y ago
      There's been a lot of discussion recently about Chinese influence or interference in Australia, and much of that is through Chinese people living in Australia. For example, Chau Chak Wing is a Chinese-Australian billionaire with ties to the Chinese Communist Party, is one of Australia's top political donors, and is the unindicted co-conspirator in a bribery case involving the former president of the UN general assembly. https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/political-donor-chau-chak-wing-behind-un-bribe-scandal-parliament-told-20180522-p4zgs5.html https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/political-donor-chau... Edit: In today's news, more controversy around another Chinese billionaire with permanent residence in Australia and how he's getting involved in Australian politics for the benefit of the CCP https://www.smh.com.au/politics/western-australia/wyatt-s-all-expenses-paid-china-trip-linked-to-controversial-billionaire-communist-regime-20180815-p4zxn2.html https://www.smh.com.au/politics/western-australia/wyatt-s-al...
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  Out of curiosity, how do you think traitors providing potentially critical intelligence to one of the most dangerous agencies of a powerful and aggressive unfriendly foreign power should be treated, when there is literally zero doubt as to their guilt? And to be clear, I'm not condoning this action but I'm also not so quick condemn it. I'm genuinely uncertain if I somehow were the Chinese government what my decision would be, but I think you are quite certain -- and it's sparked my curiosity.
  - throwawayt1894 8y ago
    I'm just surprised they didn't try to make them double agents or at least feed them false information. It seems like a rash judgement to suddenly eliminate 30+ people who you know are spies.
    - computerfriend 8y ago
      There's an incentive to do it all at once, or as rapidly as possible. If you try to recruit them, you run the risk of them reporting this and suddenly the other 29 spies are exfiltrated.
    - yourapostasy 8y ago
      > It seems like a rash judgement to suddenly eliminate 30+ people who you know are spies. It isn't a rash judgement if the CCP is so confident of their counter-intelligence program, that they evaluate the effort of neutralizing with disinfo or turning those 30+ is not worth their trouble and informational value. Considering the scale and depth of surveillance they employ within China, and continued heavy investment into more, I wouldn't want to off-hand rule out that possibility.
  - King-Aaron 8y ago
    > but I think you are quite certain Quite the contrary, not sure how this conclusion was drawn. I just feel that "execution of them and their family broadcast to the entire staff" isn't really a value that is typically held in high esteem.
  - 8y ago
- Rapzid 8y ago
  If you study the grammar on a lot of these posts, all over the internet even, you may come to the conclusion that the posters are government plants or Chinese CCP zealots. I wouldn't rule out a massive propoganda campaign; HN, mainstream news article comments, suspicious Quora "questions" about China with manipulative "answers", Confucius Institutes!..
  - 68c12c16 8y ago
    It would be nice if someone could come up with an algorithm that automatically tell which posts are astroturfing, just like fakespot.com But apparently this would be much more difficult than the algorithm used by fakespot, and seem to be less domain specific... But at least, perhaps, we could do some information clustering, as comments written by independent individuals are more likely to have greater variances -- and quite often, difference is what makes an individual human so valuable...
    - JetSpiegel 8y ago
      Call it Pravda. Musk is game for it.
  - toomanybeersies 8y ago
    Not even just comments on news articles. I've read plenty of news articles that view China and their foreign policy with suspiciously rose tinted glasses. Especially around the One Belt One Road initiative.
- jmartrican 8y ago
  I try to be careful and separate 'Chinese' from 'China's Communist Party'.
- mikec3010 8y ago
  Yeah it's barbaric what the Chinese do to spies. Next thing you know they'll be waterboarding prisoners or holding people without trial for a decade. Good thing we're superior westerners, huh?
  - nyolfen 8y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
- throw2016 8y ago
  Most of the comments are not pro China but highlight the brazen hypocrisy of getting worked out about China in the face of all encompassing surveillance currently run by the NSA, GCHQ and Google, Facebook and others which is a far bigger and ongoing threat to democracy and citizens here. China's actions are limited to China. There is hardly any activism against the invasive surveillance of SV companies or protests against the NSA. This forum itself has its fair share of apologists for surveillance capitalism. So where are the protests in front of Google and Facebooks campuses and in Washington? So if people don't care about these issues at home how can they care about them in China? This is simply not credible or serious. China's actions don't impact people here, your governments and companies here do. In the absence of any mainstream activism, just singling out China for outrage and anger is duplicitous and comes across as motivated more by politics than any genuine concern for the issues or people impacted. And using human rights for cheap points ultimately trivializes it and risks bad actors who have no interest in human rights pushing their own agenda. So better for the Chinese to fix their country, there are 1.3 billion of them, and for us to fix ours.
- anotheramala 8y ago
  The Chinese have an active propaganda machine for decades which tells all Chinese people the world is out to get them. They have completely internalized that. This makes them defensive and nationalistic so they can defend whatever the state does to them.
07d046 8y ago
From an earlier NYT piece: > According to three of the officials, one was shot in front of his colleagues in the courtyard of a government building — a message to others who might have been working for the C.I.A. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/asia/china-cia-spies-espionage.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/asia/china-cia-spie...
- onetimemanytime 8y ago
  USA has the death penalty for treason too. Now you can argue back and forth (US wants China to eventually be democratic so I'm helping China by spying for CIA...etc) but they essentially betrayed their country. Chinese efficiency: Torture them till they tell want they know and then teach others a lesson along the way too. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2381 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2381 Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.
  - garmaine 8y ago
    Missing the point. There's something to be said about treating every human with dignity, even the traitors.
    - onetimemanytime 8y ago
      I am sure they got a trial, albeit a 2 minute one, appeals included. Even in China looks like they improved from "Hanged, drawn and quartered," but let's be honest, things are different over there. Or we may want to ask about being treated with dignity those that are in Guantanamo Bay. Bottom line, one that betrays his country should know the--locally decided--risks. In Russia they kill you even after "forgiving" you (see last case in UK)
      - 8y ago
68c12c16 8y ago
I think the reason why Chinese government would execute defected officials, instead of putting them in prison for life, is because historically defected officials often caused very serious losses to the chinese communist party. For instance, one of the most damaging defectors in their history was Gu Shunzhang, who led to the arrest of hundreds of their underground communists (many of those arrested were executed by the KMT government at the time). In those early days, the Chinese communist party was very weak and had to fight for its own survival. So as a result, Zhou Enlai ordered the assassination of almost Gu's entire family, as warning and revenge [1]... I think this bears a certain similarity to the rationale of that IRA members assassinated their defectors and French executed their traitors in WWII... It's just sad to see that certain traditions still remained unchanged with the Chinese government (or more specifically, their communist party) ...but at least we can see how much they hate defectors; and we can find some common root of that in all humanity... Perhaps things will change when they value human life more, which I think they will do when their individual's economic condition continues to improve...When the existence of an average life makes little difference to a society, statistically, life would be socially regarded as cheap... -- [1] https://www.nytimes.com/1991/02/03/weekinreview/the-world-15-years-after-zhou-s-death-his-image-is-larger-than-life.html https://www.nytimes.com/1991/02/03/weekinreview/the-world-15...
- throwawayt1894 8y ago
  I don't think it has anything to do with valuing human life or not. I'm sure we both agree the US values human life, but the government is more than willing to accept the death of a 16 year old American citizen when trying to target his father during a drone strike. I'm more surprised that they would reveal their hand so suddenly. Maybe I watch too many movies, but I would think if you have exposed the entire network, then doing counter-espionage would be the smarter tactic.
  - 68c12c16 8y ago
    At the time of the drone strike, perhaps to the remote drone pilots, conceptually, the 16-year old kid was not an American citizen but merely someone who was different than they were...
dnomad 8y ago
This is exactly like the wild claims about "Iraqi babies being killed in incubators" [1]. It's an absurd, baseless claim but somehow it gets regularly accepted as true. At some point you would think that journalists would show even a little intelligence, a little competence, a little skepticism. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony

King-Aaron 8y ago

Obviously a revelation on Twitter about a secretive organisation's workings should always be taken with a grain of salt. However these sorts of reports aren't too uncommon, and it surprises me how there's a lot of pro-china commentators in communities such as HN who seem to glaze over these sorts of things and still aggressively promote the "Chinese way of doing things" is superior to whatever western value or opinion is the discussion point of the day.

nyolfen 8y ago
fwiw the tweet is by the author of the linked article
68c12c16 8y ago
I think what we call the skill of "analysis" is to divide an abstract object into a set of its containing elements, and then differentiate those elements and treat each element for its own different case. China is one such abstract object...It's never about pro-china or anti-china -- after all it is a society of 1 billion individuals who are all differentiable from each other (and we have to differentiate a random chinese people from their government)...if we find a certain aspect of China appealing and potentially benecial to our own society, then why not just "like" that aspect and learn from them? In the last few decades of the 5th century BC, Sparta and Athens fought a war with each other, which Athens had lost...but this did not prevent Plato (who was an Athenian) from praising certain aspects of Spartan society.
- BurritoAlPastor 8y ago
  And also didn't prevent us (a couple thousand years later) from lumping them all together as "ancient Greece". Distance from the components, in time or space, lets us paint the set as homogeneous.
  - 68c12c16 8y ago
    I was just doing a categorical mapping, which you might call it analogy... How is that "lumping" relevant to the current discussion initiated by King-Aaron?
- cjhanks 8y ago
  And then didn't he die from ingesting hemlock?
  - alasdair_ 8y ago
    >And then didn't he die from ingesting hemlock? No. He probably died in his sleep. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato#Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato#Death You're probably thinking of Socrates, who deliberately killed himself by eating hemlock.
- King-Aaron 8y ago
  I certainly don't disagree. I do think that your point is possibly lost on a lot of people that are drawing these sorts of comparisons though...
  - 68c12c16 8y ago
    sorry...analogy quite often can cause confusions...I will try to make more intuitive and relevant ones in the future... It's just that the current situation between China and the U.S. bears a lot of similarities as that between Peloponnesian League (led by Sparta) and Athenian Empire during the Peloponnesian War. At the time, Sparta was an oligarchic society and Athens was a democratic one. Thucydides considered the cause of the war was because Sparta was worried about the rise of Athens could threaten its own way of life, and Athens wanted to spread democracy to other city states. There seemed to be no intrinsic conflict between the two states...the problem was that they did not trust each other, only because they were different. I personally feel this situation is quite like the current situation between US and China...There is no intrinsic conflict; they just don't trust each other (sometime even a bit phobic of each other), only because they are different...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
toomanybeersies 8y ago
I agree that I see a lot of Chinese apologism in the form of "this is the Chinese way" here. I wouldn't say that the comments are necessarily pro-China though, but rather just explaining that it is a different culture and things are done in a different way. I do think it's a bullshit cop out though. I think that it's ignorant at best and racist at worst when people make comments here along the lines of "Chinese people like authoritarian societies and couldn't function in a democracy", usually justified by saying that China has been an authoritarian society since day 0. Europe, until recently, was a continent ruled by autocrats (whether in the form of kings, presidents, or emperors). There are plenty of Chinese democracy activists, and I'm yet to meet a Chinese immigrant who has any love for the CCP and the Chinese government.
- Jarwain 8y ago
  Would an immigrant Be an immigrant if they held love for the CCP and the Chinese Government?
  - bacon_waffle 8y ago
    There are a lot of reasons that people move to different countries, aside from feelings about the government they're moving away from.
  - toomanybeersies 8y ago
    I migrated from New Zealand to Australia, yet I like the current ruling coalition and government in New Zealand and dislike the Australian ruling coalition and government. There are reasons to migrate beyond politics.
  - 07d046 8y ago
    There's been a lot of discussion recently about Chinese influence or interference in Australia, and much of that is through Chinese people living in Australia. For example, Chau Chak Wing is a Chinese-Australian billionaire with ties to the Chinese Communist Party, is one of Australia's top political donors, and is the unindicted co-conspirator in a bribery case involving the former president of the UN general assembly. https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/political-donor-chau-chak-wing-behind-un-bribe-scandal-parliament-told-20180522-p4zgs5.html https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/political-donor-chau... Edit: In today's news, more controversy around another Chinese billionaire with permanent residence in Australia and how he's getting involved in Australian politics for the benefit of the CCP https://www.smh.com.au/politics/western-australia/wyatt-s-all-expenses-paid-china-trip-linked-to-controversial-billionaire-communist-regime-20180815-p4zxn2.html https://www.smh.com.au/politics/western-australia/wyatt-s-al...
TangoTrotFox 8y ago
Out of curiosity, how do you think traitors providing potentially critical intelligence to one of the most dangerous agencies of a powerful and aggressive unfriendly foreign power should be treated, when there is literally zero doubt as to their guilt? And to be clear, I'm not condoning this action but I'm also not so quick condemn it. I'm genuinely uncertain if I somehow were the Chinese government what my decision would be, but I think you are quite certain -- and it's sparked my curiosity.
- throwawayt1894 8y ago
  I'm just surprised they didn't try to make them double agents or at least feed them false information. It seems like a rash judgement to suddenly eliminate 30+ people who you know are spies.
  - computerfriend 8y ago
    There's an incentive to do it all at once, or as rapidly as possible. If you try to recruit them, you run the risk of them reporting this and suddenly the other 29 spies are exfiltrated.
  - yourapostasy 8y ago
    > It seems like a rash judgement to suddenly eliminate 30+ people who you know are spies. It isn't a rash judgement if the CCP is so confident of their counter-intelligence program, that they evaluate the effort of neutralizing with disinfo or turning those 30+ is not worth their trouble and informational value. Considering the scale and depth of surveillance they employ within China, and continued heavy investment into more, I wouldn't want to off-hand rule out that possibility.
- King-Aaron 8y ago
  > but I think you are quite certain Quite the contrary, not sure how this conclusion was drawn. I just feel that "execution of them and their family broadcast to the entire staff" isn't really a value that is typically held in high esteem.
- 8y ago
Rapzid 8y ago
If you study the grammar on a lot of these posts, all over the internet even, you may come to the conclusion that the posters are government plants or Chinese CCP zealots. I wouldn't rule out a massive propoganda campaign; HN, mainstream news article comments, suspicious Quora "questions" about China with manipulative "answers", Confucius Institutes!..
- 68c12c16 8y ago
  It would be nice if someone could come up with an algorithm that automatically tell which posts are astroturfing, just like fakespot.com But apparently this would be much more difficult than the algorithm used by fakespot, and seem to be less domain specific... But at least, perhaps, we could do some information clustering, as comments written by independent individuals are more likely to have greater variances -- and quite often, difference is what makes an individual human so valuable...
  - JetSpiegel 8y ago
    Call it Pravda. Musk is game for it.
- toomanybeersies 8y ago
  Not even just comments on news articles. I've read plenty of news articles that view China and their foreign policy with suspiciously rose tinted glasses. Especially around the One Belt One Road initiative.
jmartrican 8y ago
I try to be careful and separate 'Chinese' from 'China's Communist Party'.
mikec3010 8y ago
Yeah it's barbaric what the Chinese do to spies. Next thing you know they'll be waterboarding prisoners or holding people without trial for a decade. Good thing we're superior westerners, huh?
- nyolfen 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
throw2016 8y ago
Most of the comments are not pro China but highlight the brazen hypocrisy of getting worked out about China in the face of all encompassing surveillance currently run by the NSA, GCHQ and Google, Facebook and others which is a far bigger and ongoing threat to democracy and citizens here. China's actions are limited to China. There is hardly any activism against the invasive surveillance of SV companies or protests against the NSA. This forum itself has its fair share of apologists for surveillance capitalism. So where are the protests in front of Google and Facebooks campuses and in Washington? So if people don't care about these issues at home how can they care about them in China? This is simply not credible or serious. China's actions don't impact people here, your governments and companies here do. In the absence of any mainstream activism, just singling out China for outrage and anger is duplicitous and comes across as motivated more by politics than any genuine concern for the issues or people impacted. And using human rights for cheap points ultimately trivializes it and risks bad actors who have no interest in human rights pushing their own agenda. So better for the Chinese to fix their country, there are 1.3 billion of them, and for us to fix ours.
anotheramala 8y ago
The Chinese have an active propaganda machine for decades which tells all Chinese people the world is out to get them. They have completely internalized that. This makes them defensive and nationalistic so they can defend whatever the state does to them.

07d046 8y ago

From an earlier NYT piece: > According to three of the officials, one was shot in front of his colleagues in the courtyard of a government building — a message to others who might have been working for the C.I.A. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/asia/china-cia-spies-espionage.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/asia/china-cia-spie...

onetimemanytime 8y ago
USA has the death penalty for treason too. Now you can argue back and forth (US wants China to eventually be democratic so I'm helping China by spying for CIA...etc) but they essentially betrayed their country. Chinese efficiency: Torture them till they tell want they know and then teach others a lesson along the way too. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2381 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2381 Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.
- garmaine 8y ago
  Missing the point. There's something to be said about treating every human with dignity, even the traitors.
  - onetimemanytime 8y ago
    I am sure they got a trial, albeit a 2 minute one, appeals included. Even in China looks like they improved from "Hanged, drawn and quartered," but let's be honest, things are different over there. Or we may want to ask about being treated with dignity those that are in Guantanamo Bay. Bottom line, one that betrays his country should know the--locally decided--risks. In Russia they kill you even after "forgiving" you (see last case in UK)
    - 8y ago

68c12c16 8y ago

I think the reason why Chinese government would execute defected officials, instead of putting them in prison for life, is because historically defected officials often caused very serious losses to the chinese communist party. For instance, one of the most damaging defectors in their history was Gu Shunzhang, who led to the arrest of hundreds of their underground communists (many of those arrested were executed by the KMT government at the time). In those early days, the Chinese communist party was very weak and had to fight for its own survival. So as a result, Zhou Enlai ordered the assassination of almost Gu's entire family, as warning and revenge [1]... I think this bears a certain similarity to the rationale of that IRA members assassinated their defectors and French executed their traitors in WWII... It's just sad to see that certain traditions still remained unchanged with the Chinese government (or more specifically, their communist party) ...but at least we can see how much they hate defectors; and we can find some common root of that in all humanity... Perhaps things will change when they value human life more, which I think they will do when their individual's economic condition continues to improve...When the existence of an average life makes little difference to a society, statistically, life would be socially regarded as cheap... -- [1] https://www.nytimes.com/1991/02/03/weekinreview/the-world-15-years-after-zhou-s-death-his-image-is-larger-than-life.html https://www.nytimes.com/1991/02/03/weekinreview/the-world-15...

throwawayt1894 8y ago
I don't think it has anything to do with valuing human life or not. I'm sure we both agree the US values human life, but the government is more than willing to accept the death of a 16 year old American citizen when trying to target his father during a drone strike. I'm more surprised that they would reveal their hand so suddenly. Maybe I watch too many movies, but I would think if you have exposed the entire network, then doing counter-espionage would be the smarter tactic.
- 68c12c16 8y ago
  At the time of the drone strike, perhaps to the remote drone pilots, conceptually, the 16-year old kid was not an American citizen but merely someone who was different than they were...

dnomad 8y ago

This is exactly like the wild claims about "Iraqi babies being killed in incubators" [1]. It's an absurd, baseless claim but somehow it gets regularly accepted as true. At some point you would think that journalists would show even a little intelligence, a little competence, a little skepticism. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony