This is a story about Liam Mendes, of The Australian, who wrote a hit piece on my friend Jaq James and his retreat on Twitter when confronted with some of the facts that contradicted his story.
Let me take you through the events.
Ostensibly, the piece was about Drew Pavlou, a supposed “human rights activist” running for the Senate in Queensland. I know that Queensland has had some interesting characters attempting to make their way to Canberra, including the infamous “Joh for PM” which failed miserably. Every Queensland over 50 knows what a joke that was.
I am looking forward to Pavlou’s campaign receiving the equivalent disdain from intelligent Queenslanders. As a teetotaller, I will happily raise a glass to it flopping. Pavlou’s claim to fame is, as he will happily inform you, that he has an enormous QC, apparently at his disposal, to go after anyone who isn’t nice to him.
Truthfully, I pity Pavlou and his ilk. Just as I pity that sad little band of men in Australia bleating about a mythical Uyghur genocide and about their disappointment that China defeated their dream of a ETIM Caliphate.
I imagine Drew is pissed off by not being able to join all those good ETIM chaps in training camps, waving guns around. Perhaps it’s his night time dream.
No, I’m sorry Drew, you’re just not cut out to be a terrorist. For your enlightenment (and also for our mate Mendes), here’s a real ETIM Uyghur terrorist. I hope I see your very public condemnation of this kind of terrorist – after all, you are a candidate for my state for the Senate, so I’d like to see that REALLY clearly stated.
Looking forward to Liam Mendes writing the piece where you utterly condemn these people. And his denunciation of the sentiments expressed in this ETIM publication by a Uyghur activist.
Translation:
“Chinese insulted the religion and culture of the Muslims of Xinjiang by permitting nightclubs, and that’s why Noor Mohamed attacked one of these clubs in Kashgar and killed two Chinese whores in 7/9/2012”
(Islamic Turkestan magazine 2013)
Naturally, Drew will quote the words of Bashir, Shaykh (1 July 2008). “Why Are We Fighting China?”. NEFA Foundation.
“We are fighting China… China is an enemy who has invaded Muslim countries and occupies Muslim East Turkestan. There is no greater obligation, aside from belief in Allah, than expelling the enemies of Muslims from our countries…. We are fighting China to make them testify that ‘there is no God but Allah, Mohammed is the Messenger of Allah’ and make them convert to Islamabad Muslims could only fight with swords, spears, bows and arrows, they would fight with them. When they were able to fight with firearms, rockets and bombs, they would fight with them also, relying on Allah and doing their utmost… In every single battle with the infidels or the apostates.”
He will, no doubt, in the up-coming disapprobation piece for Liam, make clear that he, in no way, supports these sentiments.
But, I digress.
In fact, Liam Mendes article was actually an attack on Jaq and Milton James. Jaq and/or Milton will probably reply to the hit piece – but probably not any time soon, as they have other important things to do.
Mendes thinks that one requires a cyber security expert to uncover a rumour. Clearly, anyone, including me, who has seen the tweet below can be implicated in a glorious ‘CCP’ conspiracy.
It’s odd to me that Mendes seems happy to say that “The exact figure soon found its way into a social media post by a pro-Beijing activist group run by two Australians” but can’t seem to bring himself to put it in context, nor ask Jaq what her source was. It’s clear that, for Mendes, the slur is more important than the context or the truth.
Seems like, from the article Mendes has written, that emails were sent as traps. I’m not a legal expert, but this kind of entrapment doesn’t seem to be lawful. Come on, Mendes. Reveal who the emails were sent to. Give your story an ounce of credibility. Or will you hide behind the skirts of “commercial in confidence” or some other bullshit?
“One of the pair believes the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre is a hoax”.
This refers to Milton James’ article in which he deconstructs the whole Tiananmen Square Massacre myth. Mendes, along with his fellow gullible Australians seems impervious to facts. Naturally, Robbie Barwick tweeted the response below.
This refers to the laughable history of the event exposed by the ABC. But never mind that. Now this tweet is ‘safely’ behind:
Of course, Mendes seems mute about this issue. If he acknowledges the comedy that Robbie indicates, he will have to retract his criticism of Milton and thence throw in doubt his narrative on Jaq and Milton.
Despite making a public statement about Jaq and Milton, Mendes can’t seem to summon the intestinal fortitude to respond to those who might defend them. No, he runs behind the skirts of a Twitter facility.
It would be interesting to know, in the description of the activity of Internet 2.0 and Robert Potter described as:
Emails with fake contracts that included a monetary figure she was to be paid for a book she was writing were sent from a burner email account to each activist. Each figure was unique to each activist to track the flow of the information.
After a cyber campaign targeting the activist community within Australia, Internet 2.0 assessed the commentary of pro-China Twitter to identify what information might be interesting to them,” chief executive and founder of Internet 2.0 Robert Potter said. “After seeing much speculation on the value of the book contract received by Vicky Xu, Internet 2.0 placed fake information within activist emails.”
whether Internet 2.0, Potter or Mendes have committed a crime under Australia’s laws on fake identities on-line. I intend to find out by reporting this to the Federal Police. I will be asking them to investigate whether anyone was involved in hacking Jaq’s email and whether this statement from Internet 2.0 might constitute an admission to such. After all, the only activists named are Jaq and Milton.
This piece of deceit continues. Having just referred to Jaq and Milton, Mendes returns to the original hack and makes unsubstantiated claims that they were ‘state actors’. An unwitting reader might connect these two statements. Read these below and see whether you would readily discriminate between the sentences about Jaq and Milton and the alleged ‘hack’ on Pavlou.
Milton and Jaqueline James did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Mr Potter said the IP addresses linked to the hack originated from mainland China, but the attack could not be confirmed to have come from a state-sponsored actor. However, it had the sophistication, and fitted the profile, of an attack by a state actor.
Now, read also how he switches rapidly between speaking about the alleged “pro-China activists” and “the remote logins” supposed to be part of the Pavlou hack. To make this clear, I will put the references to Jaq and her ‘pro-China activists’ in red and the references to the ‘hacking’ in purple.
“The data fits what was placed on social media by pro-China activists. Based on the uniqueness of the number, it appears the information has been shared with pro-China activists in one way or another,” Mr Potter said.
“The remote logins were from multiple IP addresses which shows they had preset cyber infrastructure for an attack. They had robust infrastructure and they bypassed his two-factor authentication,” he said
So, Mendes wants you, as reader, to mistake the anti-China propaganda activists he calls “pro-China activists” (and yes, I am one of them) with some alleged hacking of Pavlou. Any reasonable person would make an inference between the activism and the hack. This is clearly Mendes cynical intent.
I invite Mendes to clarify what he thinks the last quote refers to:
““It says a lot about the nature of Chinese power and global influence that they are trying to interfere in Australia’s democracy to undermine and attack their critics in this country, and they’re possibly actually carrying out illegal crimes to do it.
“This is a very clear case of Chinese interference in Australian democracy. They’re deliberately trying to undermine the credibility and genuinely attack and smear anti-CCP critics in Australia,” Mr Pavlou said.
If this is a reference to either Jaq or Milton, I hope they sue the sorry arse off both Mendes and Pavlou. Potter might be safely in another jurisdiction, but I think Pavlou and Mendes might be in for a shock about the laws of the jurisdiction in which they live.
Of course, I doubt that Mendes will come forward to clarify anything.