At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. military launched a secret campaign to counter what it perceived as China’s growing influence in the Philippines, a nation hit especially hard by the deadly virus.
The clandestine operation has not been previously reported. It aimed to sow doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and other life-saving aid that was being supplied by China, a Reuters investigation found. Through phony internet accounts meant to impersonate Filipinos, the military’s propaganda efforts morphed into an anti-vax campaign. Social media posts decried the quality of face masks, test kits and the first vaccine that would become available in the Philippines – China’s Sinovac inoculation.
Reuters identified at least 300 accounts on X, formerly Twitter, that matched descriptions shared by former U.S. military officials familiar with the Philippines operation. Almost all were created in the summer of 2020 and centered on the slogan #Chinaangvirus – Tagalog for China is the virus.
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If we spent half the energy on improving our lives that we spend on fucking people over, we’d have a utopia by now. Or at least less lead in our pipes.
America is a global superpower which - apparently - spends some of its most secretive efforts on petty lashbacks to Chinese propaganda. And I’ll be damned if our most secretive efforts don’t also end up costing us the most taxes (relative to their effective output). I know that Twitter opens its firehouse of data to government programs to support social media analysis. I’m sure Google and Meta do as well. They are aiding these psychological campaigns.
If the American Government spent half the energy on improving the lives of the working class that the American Government spend on fucking over governments and working class people, globally, the American working class would have a utopia by now. Or at least less lead in our pipes.
FTFY
America is a utopia
For the billionaires
FFS
Yeah and trump ran a very public anti-vax campaign in the USA.
Trumps supporters were anti vaccine, but surprisingly he was pro vaccine
He took both sides of every issue
Yes. For instance, now Trump is anti covid vaccine mandates.
He was also pro injecting yourself with bleach.
It’s a funny meme, but Trump didn’t say that.
However, the words he did say don’t make that much more sense.
"And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside "
He’s either talking about injecting disinfectant, or injecting light. Either way it’s the ramblings of someone who’s not all there.
Didn’t he point at his own butt when he mentioned the light thing? I guess he wanted someone to shine a laser pointer through his butt.
He definitely doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He seems to be trying to say that scientists should experiment, but we can’t be certain.
I recall reading that he had just had a briefing about some actual research about something that was vaguely along those lines and was trying to be clever by “suggesting they do that” before any public information came out about it so he could claim credit. But because he didn’t really understand it, he instead said things that his followers interpreted as “drink bleach if you want protection from covid”.
Sounds very plausible.
He took over those briefings even though he had no expertise.
COVID was a real instant-karma moment for American foreign policy
I don’t care if they are considered our enemies; that’s fucked up. Our government’s grievances are of their government. Not the people. Not the culture. Not the land itself. Doing shit that harms the average person is incredibly vile.
Our government’s grievances are of their government. Not the people.
Have you noticed how all those nukes the US government maintains don’t target governments but population centres instead? The mass-slaughter of civilians have always been the US way - this time, they just did it with misinformation.
They don’t target population centers, they target military bases that always happen to be near a population center. In the 50’s and 60’s missile targetting was shit so they had megaton yield bombs to make sure they got the bases. Nowadays they have lower yield bombs so they can have more bombs that specifically target bases.
It’s no use targeting population centers as those bombs could be used instead to cripple them militarily. It’s just that no country would have a good day if nukes went off anywhere near them.
They don’t target population centers, they target military bases that always happen to be near a population center.
That’s exactly the excuse they used to justify every aerially-delivered atrocity from Hamburg to Hanoi. Britain was routinely doing it in the middle-east nearly a decade before the Nazis did it at Guernica.
If you don’t want to believe me, you can believe Curtiss Le May himself.
There are no innocent civilians. It is their government and you are fighting a people, you are not trying to fight an armed force anymore. So it doesn’t bother me so much to be killing the so-called innocent bystanders.
The mass-slaughter of civilians was the point then, it’s the point now - the nuclear ballistic missile is simply the logical conclusion to this. It literally allows for mass-murder at the push of a button.
You need to stop confusing the propaganda with the actual reasons.
Why would you think I am okay with nukes?
Didn’t say you were… that’s not the point. The point is that the US has always treated civilian populations as perfectly expendable - to be kind of honest, I’m not even sure they don’t see the US population in the same way, either.
Worse, this was targeted in part against the people of the Philippines, an ally.
It’s fucked up when we do it, it’s fucked up when Russia does it, it’s fucked up when China does it. This is terrible.
- The antivaxxers were complaining a conspiracy when this whole time they were the conspiracy.
- This whole time antivax kept getting blamed on Russian troll farms, when the troll farms were Western all along. Golden.
This whole time antivax kept getting blamed on Russian troll farms, when the troll farms were Western all along. Golden.
Just because the US was doing it, doesn’t mean Russia wasn’t also doing it.
ok but we have evidence right in front of our face that the US was doing it
The US was doing it in the Philippines. Russia was doing it in the US. It’s the circle of life.
We also have evidence and motive for Russia doing it.
This isn’t a either/or situation.
Right because that changes the ethics of us doing it?
Not what I said.
I don’t discount the possibility. That being said, mentioning every possibility messes up the joke potential.
Nobody gives a fuck if Russia was doing it or not. That’s useless whataboutism.
This is about the effects a disinfo campaign has on how the world perceives America and whether they’re worth trusting anymore.
Nobody gives a fuck if Russia was doing it or not. That’s useless whataboutism.
The person I was directly replying to said this:
This whole time antivax kept getting blamed on Russian troll farms, when the troll farms were Western all along. Golden.
So they seem to care. Send your whataboutism comment their way.
Tell me you don’t understand whataboutism without telling me you don’t understand whataboutism.
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Wrong, this is about all the excess lives lost due to misinformation and the moral culpability of those responsible, not your country’s PR image. Russia getting Americans killed through anti-vax propaganda and the US getting Filipinos and others killed through anti-vax propaganda. Both are responsible for their actions. The US has proved untrustworthy long before this incident anyway.
I always wanted the US to counter China and Russian troll accounts, but not like this.
Undermine China, pave the way for BongBong, you know. Foreign policy stuff.
Fuck Trump.
As an American, I am ashamed that my country’s government does acts of pure evil like this. I’m sorry rest of the world, I wish my voice was more than but a whisper while on a St Patrick’s Day bar crawl in Boston.
In my honest opinion whoever proposed this, approved this, and ultimately executed this should be persecuted for something akin to shouting fire leading to a stampede and deaths.
Actions like this are exactly why we probably shouldn’t have a completely opaque society.
General Jonathan Braga was promoted to Lieutenant General in August 2021, months after the new Biden administration was informed about and canceled the program.
That’s internal bullshit. Suck enough dicks and you’ll be able to murder someone at a party and get away with it.
He followed orders and ran an effective disinformation campaign.
Think of the Pentagon as a bureaucracy that just does what they’re told. If the President says they should invade a country X, they draw up the plans, figure out the logistics, and invade country X. If the President says invade country Y, same thing, just with country Y instead of country X. They follow orders, it’s kinda a big thing in the military.
Trump ordered a disinformation campaign in the Philippines, so this guy ran an effective disinformation campaign in the Philippines. If the President wanted to run a disinformation campaign in Russia this would be a guy they’d want to do it.
Follows orders and is good at his job, that’s the criteria needed for a promotion.
The blame lies on Trump for giving the order.
Following orders is no excuse and the campaign should be is and is a crime of meaningful scope and scale.
Well sorry to break it to you, there’s no international law making disinformation campaigns illegal. It was a bad order to be sure, but not an illegal order.
Soldiers are responsible when following an illegal order. When it’s a bad order, then it’s the person giving the order that’s responsible.
It’s just how military works. They have to follow the law, but not your personal morality. I mean what’s the morality around killing a person because they’re wearing a different uniform? Do you think that’s fine while a disinformation campaigns are crossing the line?
You just legitimized Russian, Iranian and Chinese disinformation campaigns against America. Good job, I guess.
It is what it is. War is a much more horrible thing than a disinformation campaign. So let’s just make war illegal, problem solved!
Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way.
Whether Russian, Iranian and Chinese disinformation campaigns against America are legitimate or not isn’t all that relevant. They’re happening and will continue to happen regardless of how legitimate anyone considers them to be.
Eventually there may be treaties countries will agree to stop doing disinformation campaigns. But Russia, China, and Iran aren’t going to sign on to these agreements if they’re the only ones with the capability to conduct disinformation campaigns. Why would they give up their capabilities to disrupt their adversaries if their adversaries didn’t have the capability to disrupt their countries with disinformation? Gotta have Mutually Assured Disinformation before you can get everyone to agree to stop these activities.
Just how global politics works.
Whats funny is the poster here was very likely part of said disinformation campaign. This is an attempt to distract from the moral wrong excuted here with the cover of legality. No laws existed that made the Holocaust illegal yet the post laws and trails are valid and necessary. The acts here should be seen as a form of biological warfare, a crime against humanity with all the reprehensible disgust and reasonable punishment due to those who did not stand up and walk away.
Following orders is not just how it works and the criminality of following illegal orders has been established many times.
This is a crime, regardless of the laws today, regardless of my feelings, it is never acceptable to attempt to infect others with a deadly biological agent directly or indirectly.
Is it a crime to kill a person simply because they’re wearing a different uniform from you?
That’s what the military does, right? They kill people for wearing a different uniform. What’s the morality around that? Is it more or less moral to lie to someone than it is to kill them?
We can debate the morality of the existence of militaries all we want. But people in power in places like Russia aren’t having that debate. They will use their capabilities to expand their power in absence of a force to oppose them. We need military capabilities and that we means we need to have people willing to kill people for wearing a different uniform. God forbid they might lie to people sometimes, right? Killing people we’re fine with, but disinformation crosses the line!
Cool technicality. It’s a crime by any sane definition of harm.
The law isn’t based on your feelings.
It is in part based on my feels.
That excuse didn’t work for the Germans and regular soldiers in WW2. Why would you think it should work for America now?
Are you claiming that a disinformation campaign is a war crime and therefore an illegal order?
That’s kinda a stretch don’t you think?
I’m 100% willing to claim that. The expected end result of this is fewer civilians taking the Chinese vaccine (with likely spillover for other vaccine efforts) and thus more disease deaths. That’s a pretty solid justification for war crimes.
Just like “shooting a gun” isn’t a war crime. It’s not the act that’s a crime, it’s the expected results and the victims.
You’re sanitizing this as a “disinformation campaign”, stripping away that the target was civilians and the likely result deaths. If the president ordered a general (this isn’t some nobody private with no agency) to implement a plan of bombings against civilian targets, that isn’t just “a bombing campaign” and following orders is not correct.
In my honest opinion whoever proposed this, approved this, and ultimately executed this should be persecuted for something akin to shouting fire leading to a stampede and deaths.
That would be Donald J. Trump. It’s in the article.
We knew he was bad at managing the pandemic and we know he was bad at foreign policy. This was a two for the price of one deal.
He was bad at everything ffs. Nothing has changed. Yet half the country is going to vote for him again
And part of Lemmy will continue to say “there’s basically no difference between the two parties!”
Nothing shocking, nothing surprising.
We here in South Africa had our turn with US psyop shitfuckery last year.
Please share! I fell out of contact with my friends there over the pandemic and heard nothing about this.
A Russian ship docked in Cape Town last year carrying armaments destined for the “War On Terror - Mozambique Edition.” The US embassy pretended it didn’t have access to that intelligence, and accused the SA government of (supposedly) supplying Putin with weaponry. The rapidity with which these accusations was championed by white supremacist political organisations (including the second largest political party) made it all even more suspicious. We literally had people here (you can imagine which kind) calling for the US to regime change us.
The incident raised more questions than anything - but the white liberal media here in South Africa didn’t bother with those… it merely seemed interested in using the entire affair to attack the ANC. It was pretty clear to people here that there was something bigger going on than merely one measly little Russian ship - and, personally, I suspect that the ANC’s “sudden” concern over what is going on in Gaza is a retaliation against the US for this. They sure as hell didn’t have these concerns when they allowed Israel to buy up South African corporations left, right and centre…
It undermines the entire world including the US. Fucking morons.
This is why the US lacks credibility.
When I hear about Tienanmen Square and all the protestors killed, I want to believe the US… and not believe China… and yet, I can’t be sure that anything coming from the US isn’t just made up garbage. It’s probably not… but I can’t really know!
It’s a horrible policy decision too allow things like this and creates major distrust of all US government narratives, when almost all of them could be true.
Yeah all the photos and film of Tiananmen Square are surely just propaganda right? That event was just made up by the US and definitely wasn’t witnessed by and broadcasted by several different countries’ news services.
The US has done some bad shit, and still does. But do not let that blind you to the crimes of other countries. There’s a reason why the Chinese government censors mentions of June 1989 and the mass deaths due to famine during the great leap forward.
Yeah all the photos and film of Tiananmen Square are surely just propaganda right?
The crazy thing about Tianamen was that the Tank Driver stopped and tried to move around the protester.
It was a remarkable moment of humanity between two people who clearly did not want to be in conflict with one another.
I can’t imagine a modem day officer treating any protesters the same way.
There’s a reason why the Chinese government censors mentions of June 1989 and the mass deaths due to famine during the great leap forward.
That’s completely untrue.
Here is an exhaustive response from a Chinese national. Not only is it not illegal, its documented in Baidu, China’s most popular social media site.
The claim that Chinese schools and leaders simply don’t talk about the First Five Year Plan is entirely fictitious. On par with claiming Americans don’t teach their kids about the Founding Fathers owning slaves.
It’s pure Western propaganda.
I don’t think anyone who knows about Tiananmen square thinks the tank ran over Tank Man. But the other cases? Mmm. (Nsfw) https://www.cnd.org/June4th/massacre.html
Edit: lmao, post a link of evidence and you just get downvoted. I wait for the day people just call this AI generated instead
Just remember that you can’t trust every anonymously sourced photo on the internet. Don’t forget to try to evaluate the genuineness of what you’re seeing.
For example, ask yourself if you can actual see identifiable features of Tiananmen Square in the background of these photos. (You would expect to be able to, right?)
Especially with an emotive topic like this. These photos inspire strong visceral reactions, and sometimes they’re counting on that. They want you to be so overwhelmed with disgust that you don’t stop to realize that some of the photos are obviously fake or mislabelled.
Like the ones that show piles of meat claiming to be the bodies of students run over by tanks. A moment’s thought will make it obvious that they are fake, because people’s clothes do not disappear when they are run over by tanks. But they want you to be so overwhelmed by disgust and anger that you don’t think about it.
Sometimes they rely on sheer quantity, but don’t mistake quantity for quality.
Anyway, I’m not going to push a side in this post. I trust that you can think for yourself.
I mean like, whether the guy who looks like paint on the road is really “squished by a tank” or not, the whole “Tiananmen didn’t happen” defense sits from anywhere between “300 people, mostly soldiers died” to “nothing happened at all”. I’m noticing you didn’t explicitly say what happened, only what didn’t, so likewise I think you’ve shown you actually know what went down that day.
I’m noticing you didn’t explicitly say what happened, only what didn’t
I didn’t say either of those things.
I’m noticing you didn’t explicitly say what happened
Consider the Kent State shooting. Imagine if we had a slew of Chinese language publications with interviews from dubiously sourced individuals asserting that hundreds of students were gunned down. Imagine a slew of articles every May 4th, asserting that American schools aren’t teaching about the Kent State Massacre. Then a slew of Op-Eds about how Americans were covering up the thousands of dead students by only releasing four names.
Now, try to have a coherent conversation about Kent State. What actually happened?
Tbh, I had always thought Tank Man was run over until extremely recently (like this year) so I’m sure there are lots of people like me who had just assumed that. I remember seeing a picture with red circles over all the supposedly dead bodies that had been run over by tanks. It’s still an impressive image, a single man bravely stopping a tank, but not quite what I thought I was looking at.
I’m getting a Site Cannot Be Reached. But I’m in the states, so maybe I’m the one being censored.
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See also: https://archive.ph/7Tdzh [NSFL: gore]
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I can’t be sure that anything coming from the US isn’t just made up garbage
I mean, ACAB is a safe bet in any country.
The narrative around Tianamen is that it is the consequence of a totalitarian Communist economic policy, and that our liberal free markets mean it can’t ever happen here.
The reality is that it was blowback from Chinese economic liberalization. This response is exactly the same as what you’ll find aimed at unionization drives around a sweatshop in the Philippines or a student protest on the Columbia college campus. Liberalism will not keep you safe from a row of tanks driving through your neighborhood or a police officer black bagging you for protesting on camera.
Tianamen was a warning to the world of what was to come. But US media transformed it into a reason to be afraid of Chinese people.
Gee, so the CIA wanted a pandemic and it happened in the city with the lab where the research was happening. I wonder if they facilitated the leak?
The Philippines is a major US ally in the region, hopefully they raise a stink about this. Nothing changes pentagon policy quicker than a potential loss of military strength.
This is ridiculous. Fucking spooks
What the fuck!? Come on!!!
The Shinzo Abe situations are always weird to me. One or more people decided to do this, in the sense that the buck stops somewhere.
It’s easy to find addresses, workplaces, family members, an itinerary.
It’s like in order to make it to these positions you need to have a defective brain that allows you to hurt lots of other people while ignoring how easy it is for one of them to reach out and touch you. I’d need constant anxiety meds.
Article doesn’t come up for me. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the brainchild of those farts in the Trump administration who thought the virus would kill off Democrat voters and were happy to see response slowed.
Yamagami did no wrong.
His only mistake was not using the insane 9-barrel doohickey he had at home instead
