by Eric Zuesse, The Duran:

I have encountered this so many times so that I’ll give today’s example in order to display how blatant it is:

I prefer generally not to read at X and other sites where posts tend to be user-hostile for skeptical readers (like I) who are constantly checking to find the original source for an allegation, but I just happened upon an X from Arnaud Bertrand, on August 18th, headlined from the World Bank “Military expenditure (% of GDP) – China,” and it showed China at a remarkably stable and low percentage of around 1.7% since 2010, during which time the U.S. empire have enormously increased their joint efforts to get Taiwan to declare independence from China so that the U.S. will have an excuse (though a false one) to invade and take control over China (like it has over EU/NATO countries, Japan, banana republics, etc. — the entire existing U.S. empire). As Bertrand’s post at X said, “So there’s a LOT of dishonesty in this discourse and even more so when these folks tell you how certain they are about China’s intent behind that ‘buildup’: it’s essentially guessing why there’s a ‘buildup’ that’s their own constructed narrative, that’s what passes for serious analysis these days.” And it showed that World Bank picture, but I needed to authenticate what that picture showed, to look at its source, and so I Googled its headline “Military expenditure (% of GDP) – China” hoping and expecting there’d be a find from the World Bank, but instead got: “Your search did not match any documents.”