By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with
Two Englishmen, Timothy Garton Ash (lead image, left) and Mark Leonard (right), and Ivan Krastev (centre), a Bulgarian, claim to have discovered from opinion polls they conducted in nine European Union (EU) countries during January that “since Russia’s war on Ukraine began, the US and its European allies have regained their unity and sense of purpose…Russia’s aggression in Ukraine marks both the consolidation of the West and the emergence of the long-heralded post-Western international order.”
“The growing hostility of Europeans towards Russia is reflected in their preference not to buy Russian fossil fuels even if it results in energy supply problems. This is the prevailing view in every one of the nine EU countries polled, with an average of 55 per cent of these EU citizens supporting it.It is now clear that, contrary to the Kremlin’s expectations, the war has consolidated the West, rather than weakened it.”
“Average” is a telltale admission from Ash, Leonard, and Krastev.
They have been employed to undertake the polling and write a summary of its reults by a European government think tank called the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). Their report was published on February 22. Click to read it here.
This “average” result has been fabricated by counting the response percentages in each of the EU country polls and dividing by their sum, nine. This “average” distorts and conceals the large differences in the poll percentages between the most anti-Russian countries – Estonia and Poland – and the more pro-Russian and antiwar states, such as Italy, Spain, and Germany.
“Unity”, “consolidation”, and “hostility towards Russia” are the “prevailing view in every one of the nine EU countries” – that’s the headline conclusion from the think tank. It appears to mean the majority of people in Estonia think the same towards Russia and the war as the majority of Italians; the majority of Poles the same as the majority of Spaniards or Germans.
But the evidence from Ash, Leonard and Krastev is a slip of their tongue between “prevailing”, which is a political term that doesn’t mean numerical majority; and “average” which is an arithmetical operation which doesn’t measure difference – it erases the variation around the numerical mean.
Politically speaking about the Europe peoples, this is faking. “I found the degree to which the national EU findings were subsumed in the overall figures, so that Germany could be diluted by Poland, for instance, fairly blatant,” commented a British expert on the war.
Asked to clarify the methodology for his published conclusion, Krastev refused, saying “I am putting in cc my colleagues from ECFR as they can answer your question.”
Speaking for Krastev, Ash and Leonard, Andreas Bock, a Berlin-based spokesman for the ECFR, acknowledged the individual country tabulations for each of the poll questions asked in each of the European countries were available to the report authors. But when asked for a public or press copy of these data, Bock refused to disclose them. He claimed “we can’t provide the intra-European data as we are preparing another piece using this [sic] data”.
Ash has been travelling outside England, his secretary said, but he had received the request for evidence to substantiate what he had written, and he would be replying. He has not, however. “Misrepresenting research data, withholding research data tables, faking research results, refusing to substantiate factual claims, and representing propaganda as professional work are grave violations of duty, standard and conduct for the holder of a university professorship”, Ash was asked. “How do you respond?” He has not answered.
Ash, Leonard, and Krastev were asked by telephone and email to explain the stonewalling. “Is there a reason in evidence or interpretation why you believe this statement [of fabrication] does not apply to you?” There has been no response.
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