Hasbara Buster
SENIOR MEMBER
- Joined
- Aug 17, 2010
- Messages
- 4,612
- Reaction score
- -7
US hypocritical in accusing China of espionage: Analyst
Interview with Danny Schechter
Press TV has conducted an interview with Danny Schechter, an editor of Media Channel.org, in New York about the US-China espionage row.
The following is an approximate transcript of the interview.
Press TV: China says that the US deliberately - quote, “made up the facts” implying that Washington is carrying out a well thought out plan. Do you agree with that?
What do you think about the Chinese position on this?
Schechter: Certainly it helps the NSA, which is under attack here in the United States and the Obama administration for spying, to say look world, we are actually defending American companies from being spied on by big bad China and therefore this shows that our surveillance operation is needed because we’re trying to protect American interests from Chinese intrusion.
And of course the Chinese are saying this is a pile of hypocrisy because as the Snowden disclosures showed, the United States is heavily involved and not just in normal so-called spying, but there has been documents produced that show that the NSA has been spying on energy companies in Brazil – a form of economic espionage – to get for competitive advantage, the very thing that we’re accusing China of doing.
So I don’t think that this is something that the world is going to be impressed by. And I think there are domestic and political reasons for doing it.
Press TV: Our guest Bob Ayers (former US intelligence Officer) saying that this is about a difference in legalities where in China it is legal to spy on another country for economic advantage and pass that on to domestic companies, this is illegal in the United States.
Schechter: I think he’s right about that. In fact the New York Times report on all of this suggests that this notorious Chinese unit, which is supposedly the hacking unit of the Chinese military, often acts almost as a contractor for Chinese businesses who want intelligence information or who need it.
In the same way the NSA has a huge number of private contractors advising it and providing it with all kinds of services.
So, in some ways where in a situation where both sides of this are doing the same thing except for one interesting angle, which you haven’t mentioned, which is that one of the companies the United States is claiming has been spied on is not a company at all, it’s a union – the United Steel Workers Union.
The United Steel Workers Union has been waging its own war on China for some time now blaming the Chinese for taking jobs out of the United States and hiring people in steel and in other industries like tires that the steel workers represent. Other people are saying, well, the steel workers did not protest this at the time; in fact they were in collusion with the outsourcing of these jobs.
So their hands are not clean here either, but it’s a political factor where Obama has aligned himself with the Steel Workers Union in the past; he wants to quote, “give them something” to show that he’s sincere on this issue.
So there’s a whole political underside to all of this that is not being investigated by our media and which is not being talked about.
Press TV: The point here is that those who are against the United States’ position on this are saying that the US has also done this – part of its spying activities on US citizens they say did involve commercial interests. Your opinion?
Schechter: It’s interesting that they’re indicting five members of the Chinese military for what is essentially an economic crime.
I’m sure Mr. Ayers would agree with me about wondering why economic crime against American citizens are not being prosecuted i.e. the prosecution of bankers who clearly have been part of all kinds of schemes that led to the financial collapse in our country.
They’ve been treated gingerly. There are no FBI ‘wanted’ posters for the CEOs of these banks... pretty much. There is a Swiss bank that’s agreed that it has engaged in illegal activities, but no American banks. And this is also another layer of the hypocrisy here.
Of course you don’t want to encourage intelligence agencies doing trade spying and economic spying. I would agree that that is something that should be a ‘no no’, but it’s more nuanced than is being suggested when Chinese companies are competing with American companies under Chinese law not under American law.
Press TV: Will these allegations affect economic relations or will business continue as usual between the US and China?
Schechter: They will continue as usual except of course this is opening and encouraging Mr. Putin to build a closer relationship with China and China with Russia. This can’t be good for the United States. It’s going to have negative consequences. Many American companies are privately saying that.
So I think it’s an ill-considered move from the point of view of American interests and also besides the moral or hypocritical aspects of it.
There is another aspect to this that you haven’t mentioned... namely that in the design of the internet there were many proposals to introduce more encryption technology, which the NSA opposed. They wanted the internet to be free of all that so that they could spy on people more freely.
So in part this has its roots also in the way in which the NSA has related to the internet in the past. And the situation where American companies are being vulnerable to this type of effort is in part because of the American government.
Press TV: Mr. Ayers says that under US law it is not the responsibility of the NSA or US government to protect the internet security of its domestic companies and that that responsibility lies with the companies themselves. Your response to that?
Schechter: I think that’s very naïve, I think that’s extremely naïve. Have you ever heard of something called the military industrial complex where the interests of large American companies and the interests of the government and its intelligence agencies tend to march in lockstep with each other.
In the real world there is a lot of ways in which the government supports business and business supports the government and there is a kind of unholy kind of complicity that goes on there. To deny that that exists because of certain statutory ideas I think is completely naïve and not descriptive of the real situation.
PressTV - US hypocritical in accusing China of espionage: Analyst
Interview with Danny Schechter
Press TV has conducted an interview with Danny Schechter, an editor of Media Channel.org, in New York about the US-China espionage row.
The following is an approximate transcript of the interview.
Press TV: China says that the US deliberately - quote, “made up the facts” implying that Washington is carrying out a well thought out plan. Do you agree with that?
What do you think about the Chinese position on this?
Schechter: Certainly it helps the NSA, which is under attack here in the United States and the Obama administration for spying, to say look world, we are actually defending American companies from being spied on by big bad China and therefore this shows that our surveillance operation is needed because we’re trying to protect American interests from Chinese intrusion.
And of course the Chinese are saying this is a pile of hypocrisy because as the Snowden disclosures showed, the United States is heavily involved and not just in normal so-called spying, but there has been documents produced that show that the NSA has been spying on energy companies in Brazil – a form of economic espionage – to get for competitive advantage, the very thing that we’re accusing China of doing.
So I don’t think that this is something that the world is going to be impressed by. And I think there are domestic and political reasons for doing it.
Press TV: Our guest Bob Ayers (former US intelligence Officer) saying that this is about a difference in legalities where in China it is legal to spy on another country for economic advantage and pass that on to domestic companies, this is illegal in the United States.
Schechter: I think he’s right about that. In fact the New York Times report on all of this suggests that this notorious Chinese unit, which is supposedly the hacking unit of the Chinese military, often acts almost as a contractor for Chinese businesses who want intelligence information or who need it.
In the same way the NSA has a huge number of private contractors advising it and providing it with all kinds of services.
So, in some ways where in a situation where both sides of this are doing the same thing except for one interesting angle, which you haven’t mentioned, which is that one of the companies the United States is claiming has been spied on is not a company at all, it’s a union – the United Steel Workers Union.
The United Steel Workers Union has been waging its own war on China for some time now blaming the Chinese for taking jobs out of the United States and hiring people in steel and in other industries like tires that the steel workers represent. Other people are saying, well, the steel workers did not protest this at the time; in fact they were in collusion with the outsourcing of these jobs.
So their hands are not clean here either, but it’s a political factor where Obama has aligned himself with the Steel Workers Union in the past; he wants to quote, “give them something” to show that he’s sincere on this issue.
So there’s a whole political underside to all of this that is not being investigated by our media and which is not being talked about.
Press TV: The point here is that those who are against the United States’ position on this are saying that the US has also done this – part of its spying activities on US citizens they say did involve commercial interests. Your opinion?
Schechter: It’s interesting that they’re indicting five members of the Chinese military for what is essentially an economic crime.
I’m sure Mr. Ayers would agree with me about wondering why economic crime against American citizens are not being prosecuted i.e. the prosecution of bankers who clearly have been part of all kinds of schemes that led to the financial collapse in our country.
They’ve been treated gingerly. There are no FBI ‘wanted’ posters for the CEOs of these banks... pretty much. There is a Swiss bank that’s agreed that it has engaged in illegal activities, but no American banks. And this is also another layer of the hypocrisy here.
Of course you don’t want to encourage intelligence agencies doing trade spying and economic spying. I would agree that that is something that should be a ‘no no’, but it’s more nuanced than is being suggested when Chinese companies are competing with American companies under Chinese law not under American law.
Press TV: Will these allegations affect economic relations or will business continue as usual between the US and China?
Schechter: They will continue as usual except of course this is opening and encouraging Mr. Putin to build a closer relationship with China and China with Russia. This can’t be good for the United States. It’s going to have negative consequences. Many American companies are privately saying that.
So I think it’s an ill-considered move from the point of view of American interests and also besides the moral or hypocritical aspects of it.
There is another aspect to this that you haven’t mentioned... namely that in the design of the internet there were many proposals to introduce more encryption technology, which the NSA opposed. They wanted the internet to be free of all that so that they could spy on people more freely.
So in part this has its roots also in the way in which the NSA has related to the internet in the past. And the situation where American companies are being vulnerable to this type of effort is in part because of the American government.
Press TV: Mr. Ayers says that under US law it is not the responsibility of the NSA or US government to protect the internet security of its domestic companies and that that responsibility lies with the companies themselves. Your response to that?
Schechter: I think that’s very naïve, I think that’s extremely naïve. Have you ever heard of something called the military industrial complex where the interests of large American companies and the interests of the government and its intelligence agencies tend to march in lockstep with each other.
In the real world there is a lot of ways in which the government supports business and business supports the government and there is a kind of unholy kind of complicity that goes on there. To deny that that exists because of certain statutory ideas I think is completely naïve and not descriptive of the real situation.
PressTV - US hypocritical in accusing China of espionage: Analyst
