Peng Shuai just gave an in-person interview to French sports magazine L'Équipe, her first such interview to foreign media since the #WhereIsPengShuai conspiracy theory broke out.
Firstly, to state the obvious, she is there ⬇️ If anything, that should settle that...
Small 🧵
She'd already been accosted at a skiing event in a scoop interview by a Singaporean journalist: zaobao.com.sg/realtime/china… but this time with L'Équipe they met in a Beijing hotel and sat down for 1hr.
She reiterated that she'd never accused Zhang Gaoli of sexual assault in her original Weibo post and that this was an "enormous misunderstanding by foreigners".
She calls everyone to "stop deforming" her meaning in the post and to stop the media onslaught about it.
That should have been obvious right from the start for anyone reading the post ⬇️ with non-biased eyes.
Heck she even writes she "agreed" to have sex that evening and they started a 3-year relationship from that day onwards.
She says she never did disappear and that this is basically a conspiracy theory: "I don't know why the theory that I disappeared got spread".
She says she never stopped being in "very close contact" with her friends, her colleagues and the WTA.
She implies that Steve Simon of the WTA lied when he said she never replied to him ⬇️
She says that before the WTA put up their statement alleging she'd "disappeared", she only ever received one email from a WTA psychologist offering their assistance.
She says she found it "very unusual": "why would I need psychological assistance?".
She goes on that it's "exaggerating" for the WTA to assume she'd disappeared on the sole basis that she didn't engage with a single offer for psychological assistance.
She says that straight after reading the WTA statement she "replied [herself] to president of the WTA Steve Simon."
She goes on: "Several copies were sent and these emails I wrote myself. It's my personal declaration."
She adds: "The same evening I also sent WeChat messages to my colleagues in the players' department to confirm personally to them that I was the author of the emails sent from my work email address."
To no avail of course because Steve Simon immediately went on a media campaign to say he had a 'hard time believing' the email was written by Peng and that it 'only raises concerns' on her safety 🤦 firstpost.com/sports/email-w…
She also calls to stop politicizing sports because "it is against the will of athletes and the world of sports"
She ends the interview with a message: "I hope for less antagonism and more understanding in the world between countries that have very different systems and cultures"
I look forward to all the media and organizations apologizing for spreading the #WhereIsPengShuai conspiracy during weeks as well as for the obvious distortion of her Weibo post (often claiming that she wrote she'd been "raped")...
But I'm afraid I'll wait a long time...
There's no winning with these people 🤦
When Peng Shuai doesn't fit the narrative "she can't speak freely" and she's a mindless tool of a "CCP propaganda scheme" without agency.
Of course if she'd said the contrary she'd have been lauded...
Relevant Parenti quote included.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Victor Davis Hanson laying out what the U.S. plan was:
"The more we are magnanimous with China [...] they will reciprocate that magnanimity with gratitude and will become a member of the Western democratic community. [...] They will follow a trajectory like India for example."
This is so wrong on so many levels 🤦
First of all, assuming that China would regime-change itself as a gesture of appreciation for Western "magnanimity" towards it, seriously?
Like "thank you for your 'kindness', I'll become your vassal state now". How deluded can you get?
And then somehow blaming China for "exploiting" this "kindness" by not becoming "a member of the Western community"?
When he just said the US were the actual exploiters in the relationship by being "magnanimous" for the sole purpose of inducing regime change? This is priceless!
The US of course seeks to continue unilateralism as the world's headmaster, leading the world by way of unilateral sanctions ⬇️, military interventions, drone strikes, interference in the internal affairs of others and bashing/belittling any country that dares challenge this.
Bill Clinton, of all people, said something very prescient in a 2003 Yale speech:
"[The US is] the biggest, most powerful country in the world now … But if you believe that we should be trying to create a world with rules and partnerships and habits of behaviour that we...
The joint statement issued by China and Russia this afternoon after presidents Xi and Putin met in Beijing is an extraordinary piece of history: en.kremlin.ru/supplement/5770
It really cements the fact we're entering a new era. A small 🧵 on it.
It starts with there is a new "world order", "power is being redistributed", demand for leadership that aims at peace and development.
"Some actors" (*cough* the West *cough*) have a hard time accepting the end of their hegemony and do all sorts of interfering and warmongering.
The vision: true multipolarity, not a West-led "rules-based order" but an "international law-based world order" driven by the UN, that respects countries' sovereignties and their right to self-determination.
Btw, almost word for word what the original UN charter says...
Interestingly, in a first version of the title they had "Uyghur heritage" instead of "Uyghur name".
Why the change? Maybe because they must have seen the contradiction with their narrative: "we can't tell them the Uyghurs are genocided and tell them there is one right there" 🤔
There is this new podcast on Spotify called "Weghur Stories" that's supposedly about sharing "stories from the Uyghur Diaspora".
Seems innocent enough, no?
Not on closer observation, small 🧵
The first thing that tipped me there might be a story behind this is that the podcast is directly paid for by the U.S. Embassy in France.
Somewhat strange 🤔
I looked at who's behind it: weghurstories.com/about and the podcast has 2 co-creators: a Uyghur lady who's been in France for 20 years and this guy 👇, John Bair, presented as an "American writer who specializes in helping other people tell their stories".