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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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
FilipinosAmericans, 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.FTFT. Also horse de-wormer, hydroxychloriquine, and bleach. The Pentagon was just doing what other wrong-thinking military psyops orgs were doing. The MAGAts were, of course, the targets for those.
Unsurprisingly led by the demented orange rapist who embraced all the garbage and spread it widely, and bigly.
Pretty sure this was being done TO the US by ops in Russia,China, Iran and others
It was. Yeah. It was also wrong to do. And effective.
You’re mistaken. Literally the first paragraph of the article says …
the U.S. military launched a secret campaign to counter what it perceived as China’s growing influence in the Philippines
He’s making the point that everyone is doing this to each other.
They said someone else …
The MAGAts were, of course, the targets for those.
My point is that the same article, with just a few minor substitutions, could be aptly applied to right-wing MAGAs and Qult members who joined in and amplified said message. I have no doubt there is some equivalent to the Herman Cain Award winners in the Philippines.
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.
Undermine China, pave the way for BongBong, you know. Foreign policy stuff.
So basically the people claiming that vaccines are dangerous and part of a secret government scheme to control us were actually the victims of a secret government scheme to convince us that vaccines are dangerous.
They are the thing they despise the most: Sheep.
But I thought MAGA could spot what they call “glowies” from a mile away?
Even a lame excuse is still just an excuse
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Except that one is still going strong today… Like, how nuts is that? I have family that literally went full anti-vax since that point. Fully vaccinated before the pandemic.
I swear it’s always the same in .world
Post: “America proven to have done yet another thing wrong”
First comment: “BuT rUsSiA aNd ChInA?!!?!!!1!!11!”
For the record, this is a report coming from Reuters, the reports that Russia spread misinformation about COVID came from the State Department’s Global Engagement Center
Insane degrees of whataboutism
It’s almost like it’s noteworthy that the US is not unique in this shittiness, and it’s fucking awful of all the countries who did this.
The information about Russia did not come solely from the State Department: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/05/us/politics/covid-vaccines-russian-disinformation.html?smid=nytcore-android-share
And frankly, with the disinformation campaigns we definitively know Russia is doing, Volodya Ilich, it’s not farfetched to think Russia would do this. Especially considering how brutally Covid hit Russia and the vaccine skepticism they had domestically.
From your own article:
“Graphika has tracked disinformation that is probably spread by a group affiliated with people who used to work with the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency, which propagated disinformation during the 2016 election. […] While the group advances Moscow’s strategic narratives, it is unclear what precise ties, if any, it has to the Russian government”
The best link they could make between the posts and the Russian Government is “it was PROBABLY spread by a group AFFILIATED with people who USED TO work with the Saint Petersburg-based…”. Come on, man.
Volodya Ilich
That happens to be a reference to Lenin because I’m a socialist. The current Russian government on its downwards spiral to Fascism is the polar opposite of what socialism represents. Maybe stop being racist against anything with Russian roots, there’s plenty of opposition against the oligarchic imperialist government. It’s not far-fetched that the russian government would do this, but that’s entirely not the point of the post. The post is saying “America does evil thing” and the first comment that pops up on my screen is “oh, so just like Russia?”. No. Not "just like Russia. Just like the USA because it’s a force for evil in the world in itself.
I remember the US Airforce chief in 2017 suggesting that the US should have their own troll army. I guess that’s now implemented.
Skankhunt42 reporting for duty
I usually see the opposite: some post about Russia or China doing something shitty and a bunch of “but the US!!!” comments. Too much whataboutism all around.
this is exactly why i use linux
I use arch btw.
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Username checks out
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
Maybe the real conspiracies were the ones the DoD made along the way lmao.
Seriously though, I still remember people clowning on sinovac as if having access to a 60% efficacy vaccine was worse than having none at all because hurrrr durrr china copy cat manufacturing.
Which was about the efficacy of the Johnson and Johnson/Janssen vaccine.
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
This has to be terrible news for conspiracy theorists. Our government got caught doing something shady overseas but it was encouraging other people to NOT vaccinate, which is the thing the conspiracy theorists thought our government wanted everyone to do.
I’m legitimately interested to see how/if Fox or OAN report on this. It should be entertaining.
It doesn’t matter to conspiracy theorist because they can just say this is a false flag to make them look crazy. When the facts don’t matter, it’s easy to make any fact be further confirmation of your point.
This was anti sinovac because the Chinese vaccine wouldn’t have chips in it, pentagon wanted Phillipines to get American vaccines with mind control chips…
Not my belief but pretty easy to see how they’d deal with it.
Wow that doesn’t look good.
Maybe it’s a psyops to make conspirationists think taking your vax IS in fact the rebelious position ? Take that CIA !
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
