Voice of America has responded! And it may well be the worst “fact-check” and rebuttal in the history of fact-checks and rebuttals. As Ron Paul Institute executive director Daniel McAdams put it, “Unbelievable! They confirmed everything you said as true and then pronounced you wrong!”
This revolves around an interview I did on RT where I talked about how the U.S. weaponizes the dollar and uses the global SWIFT payment system as a foreign policy billy club. The Voice of America “fact-checking” website Polygraph.info contacted me for comment. Since it was clear they intended to discredit my narrative, we decided not to respond to their email but instead write a full-blown rebuttal of the narrative that I knew they would advance.
This worked out even better than I anticipated. Polygraph.info actually responded to my pre-rebuttal. And in their response, they basically conceded my main point – that the U.S. government can and does use SWIFT as a foreign policy tool. Of course, they tried to downplay the significance, but their concession is telling.
“While the U.S. has the ability to pressure SWIFT thanks to its position in the global economy, it could be limited by potential costs that would be felt by U.S. businesses and those of U.S. allies. An Atlantic Council opinion piece warns the U.S. Congress to ‘be wary of taking unilateral steps to target SWIFT in future legislation,’ adding the practice risks hampering the flow of financial data, “slowing global trade and transactions.” Moreover, the U.S. does not directly control SWIFT.” [Emphasis added]
McAdams is right. This essentially confirms what I said — No. The U.S. does not control SWIFT, but it can exert significant pressure on it.
“So, despite what VoA and the Treasury Department claim, the U.S. government clearly pressures SWIFT to serve as a foreign policy tool. It may be technically accurate to say the U.S. government does not ‘control’ SWIFT. But the U.S. clearly applies political pressure on the institution and that pressure yields results.” [Emphasis added]
The Atlantic Council piece Polygraph.info links to confirms what I wrote. The very fact that somebody felt the need to warn Congress about the consequences of abusing its influence over SWIFT indicates that my position is absolutely correct.
Polygraph.info chose to ignore most of the points that I made in my pre-rebuttal article, writing that they were “beyond the scope of this fact check.”
This is an odd statement considering my article addressed the substance of what they were supposedly fact-checking. So basically, the very thing they were fact-checking was beyond the scope of the fact check.
OK.
As Ron Paul once said, “Truth is treason in an empire of lies.” The fact that a propaganda arm of the U.S. government wants to whitewash the truth about America’s economic warfare is telling. Its inability to effectively do it is even more so.
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