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Comment by dnomad | Hacker News Reader

How would it be insane?

This is a very common pattern. American media publishes outlandish stories and the only evidence is "anonymous sources" and highly partisan agents. Iraqi soldiers killed babies in incubators. Iraq has 10_000 aluminum tubes. Iran is arresting all its Jews. China has camps with millions of people imprisoned.

The only thing insane about the whole affair is that no matter how many times it happens, virtually every time, Americans are quick to believe these reports and display virtually no skepticism. The problem isn't Bloomberg by any stretch of the imagination.

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> China has camps with millions of people imprisoned

This appears to be actually true in Xinyang?

> Iraq aluminium tubes

https://www.ucsusa.org/center-for-science-and-democracy/scie...

It appears that they did try to buy the tubes, and they could be used for nuclear weapons (that's why they were embargoed) - but the evidence did not support that interpretation of their purpose.

A deeper point: journalism considers accurate reporting to be reporting that "X said Y" if X did, in fact, say Y. It does not consider itself bound to independently investigate the truth of that - indeed, attaching the reporters's assessment that the source is lying could be considered bias!

> This appears to be actually true in Xinyang?

According to what evidence?

The entire story is based off remarks from an anonymous UN official on a random UN committee. [1] In classic style remarks from anonymous and highly partisan sources are repeated endlessly until they "become" true. There's absolutely zero concrete evidence that can be verified.

The deeper point is that Americans are trapped inside a propaganda bubble. Their outlandish understanding of the world is based on nothing more than gossip repeated over and over by their press. It's no better than Russia; the only difference is that most Russians know full well what's going on and are very skeptical of such claims.

On a deeper level I suspect Americans need to believe this nonsense, that there must be an external enemy to hate. It's not that they are deceived by the media, it's that they want to be deceived.

[1] https://grayzoneproject.com/2018/08/23/un-did-not-report-chi...

https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/02/28/a-summer-vacation-in-ch...

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