> payback for Beijing’s efforts to blame Washington for the pandemic
Maybe it is wrong but I did not read much about China blaming US for pandemic outside couple of articles claiming that on US media (including this one) while a lot American media, politicians and ordinary people used to blame China for pandemic since the beginning. I think this is just trying to justify this campaign as a reaction mechanism by the author while he admitted that it had put lives in risk and probably was indirectly cause of death for some. And the rest of article is good.
Well, it's more like: they tweeted links to published claims that it was a US bioweapon from a think-tank based in Montreal (Global Research Canada), in direct response to outright claims by US politicians & government officials that it was a Chinese bioweapon. You can read a detailed timeline in this report from the Atlantic Council:
The citations on wikipedia don't seem to be about tweets. Although you may be correct about the tit-for-tat nature; two wrongs do not make a right. China's government intentional stoked conspiracy stories and this nearly-whataboutism doesn't actually help anybody figure out what's going on.
> Hua Chunying, a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry, said on Monday (Jan. 18) at a press conference that the US should open Fort Detrick, a military medical research base in Maryland, for further investigation as a possible origin of Covid-19
> ...
> Hua made the remark in response to a question on China’s reaction to a statement last week from the outgoing US state secretary Mike Pompeo, who said the US government has “reasons to believe” some staffers at China’s state-owned Wuhan Institute of Virology developed symptoms that were consistent with “both Covid-19 and common seasonal illnesses” in autumn 2019
You're talking about "whataboutism" in a thread about the Pentagon and General Dynamics intentionally spreading misinformation about Chinese vaccines across Asia, including that they contained pork. If that's not "whataboutism" then "whataboutism" is a meaningless, disgusting term forced on Americans in the 50's to explain why the US shouldn't answer for apartheid, but socialism was the worst danger the world had ever seen.
Not the first time either. The US covert use of fake vaccination drives to gather intel to assassinate Bin Laden caused the public to become distrustful of vaccinations and led to the resurgence of Polio in that region.
Can you provide a source that the vaccines were fake? My understanding is that it was a real vaccine drive also gathering intel. But please share your sources.
Not that the vaccines themselves were fake (though the full multi-step doses were never actually administered, source included below). But the drive was fake, and the taking of blood samples at the time advertised to check for diseases was also fake in that the blood was never checked for diseases at all.
The vaccines were purported to be real hepatitis B vaccines, as the aid workers involved in the operation had previously successfully gained entry to the Bin Laden compound in order to vaccinate his children against polio. However, the aid workers did not complete the multiple doses necessary to complete the sequences of the hep B vaccine, so the vaccination program ruse could arguably be characterized as "fake" as it did not follow proper vaccination protocols, regardless of whether or not the vaccines used in the farce were themselves legitimate.
> The doctor went to Abbottabad in March, saying he had procured funds to give free vaccinations for hepatitis B. Bypassing the management of the Abbottabad health services, he paid generous sums to low-ranking local government health workers, who took part in the operation without knowing about the connection to Bin Laden. Health visitors in the area were among the few people who had gained access to the Bin Laden compound in the past, administering polio drops to some of the children.
> Afridi had posters for the vaccination programme put up around Abbottabad, featuring a vaccine made by Amson, a medicine manufacturer based on the outskirts of Islamabad.
> In March health workers administered the vaccine in a poor neighbourhood on the edge of Abbottabad called Nawa Sher. The hepatitis B vaccine is usually given in three doses, the second a month after the first. But in April, instead of administering the second dose in Nawa Sher, the doctor returned to Abbottabad and moved the nurses on to Bilal Town, the suburb where Bin Laden lived.
> It is not known exactly how the doctor hoped to get DNA from the vaccinations, although nurses could have been trained to withdraw some blood in the needle after administrating the drug.
> "The whole thing was totally irregular," said one Pakistani official. "Bilal Town is a well-to-do area. Why would you choose that place to give free vaccines? And what is the official surgeon of Khyber doing working in Abbottabad?"
> A nurse known as Bakhto, whose full name is Mukhtar Bibi, managed to gain entry to the Bin Laden compound to administer the vaccines. According to several sources, the doctor, who waited outside, told her to take in a handbag that was fitted with an electronic device. It is not clear what the device was, or whether she left it behind. It is also not known whether the CIA managed to obtain any Bin Laden DNA, although one source suggested the operation did not succeed.
For what it's worth, the CIA has committed to not use vaccination programs or workers or DNA obtained through such programs in operations going forward.
> For what it's worth, the CIA has committed to not use vaccination programs or workers or DNA obtained through such programs in operations going forward.
Shame and fucked up, although everyone is doing it. The Canadian government is currently having a big kerfuffle about foreign influence (1) and seems like the USA conveniently blames all domestic political strife on such interference. The obvious ethics of this aside, it's a good reminder that anything geopolitical is an active propaganda war these days. I notice it less on HN but honestly can't even read Reddit anymore there days because of this re: other current events.
Reddit employed NATO employees at high level position. Almost all of the main subreddits are active propaganda channels. I am constantly bewildered at the amount of Zelensky/NATO photos on innocuous subreddits like damnthatsinteresting or pics.
No but you need propaganda to push NATO borders on Russia, arm a coup, start a civil unrest, fund a war, destroy a peace treaty (Turkey 2022) and then drip feed arms to destroy two countries at same time.
Even in a thread about sick US propaganda, the apologists find an excuse for war.
I'm not a fan of either side. I really really don't like how America is overlooking the literal Nazis in Ukraine they are funding while pretending that various legitimate political positions on US social policies are equivalent to "Nazism".
But I also don't think any of these things justify invading Ukraine. "Pushing NATO borders on Russia"? Why does that justify invading Ukraine? If every country next to Russia joined NATO, that still wouldn't justify it.
> But I also don't think any of these things justify invading Ukraine.
Russian intervention was triggered by Kyiv botching the Minsk agreements and terminating ceasefire. That's the prime reason, since Russia is legally bound to provide military aid to Donetsk by the abovementioned agreement. Western propaganda is hard on erasing the side that never supported the coup in Kyiv.
Everything else are just additional grievances, i.e. assuming that the current Ukrainian government is crazy and non-sovereign enough to allow deployment of missiles previously forbidden by the recently dissolved INF treaty.
There's only one group which this could possibly refer to -- the Azov Brigade. You can say anything you want to about them -- but they definitely are not "literal Nazis", and that's their entire point.
Assuming you literally mean the literal sense of "literal" here.
That sounds a bit like Russian propaganda you know. Like Russia sending the tanks to kill Ukrainians and take their land is all the fault of the horrible people pushing peace and democracy.
How else something contradicting western propaganda is supposed to sound like?
> all the fault of the horrible people pushing peace and democracy
Please don't push this "nothing was happening in Donbas before 22". It's ignorant at best and just cruel at worst.
Using the peaceful reunification agreement as a way to stall and to prepare for war against dissidents has nothing to do with "pushing peace and democracy".
Real story IMO is at least further confirmation that Facebook, despite "expressing anger" are wholly subsumed by the national security state and allowed, or was not able to put a stop to this campaign until NSC chose to stopped the disinformation campaign because it aligned with new admins interest. Meta not only let obviously inorganic US propaganda to continue, but gave pentagon heads up that the campaign was too obvious, implying they can coordinate to enhance US disinformation dissemination, if subject/purpose wasn't something FB culture found distasteful. Not that it matters, since article suggest DoD can just ram through disinfo campaign on FB and presumably other western platforms with relative impunity.
> The U.S. military is prohibited from targeting Americans with propaganda, and Reuters found no evidence the Pentagon’s influence operation did so.
The US military should be banned from using propaganda in any form. We're not in a war. There's no justifiable reason to spend US tax payer dollars to actively lie to the rest of the world.
What a shameful and tawdry use of our institutions.
To be clear, I’m not advocating for it. I’m just explaining:
One of the core functions of the intelligence community, is to manage perceptions globally for the five eyes partners, led by the United States and the 16 intelligence agencies that comprise the intelligence community
It might be easier to think about it as the marketing budget that is spent on non-obvious influence
Reading Edward Bernays’s and his 1920 propaganda book will tell you everything you need to know about how we go about that process
In function, though it’s not the military determining those things, typically it’s Congress and other civilian oversight boards all the way up to the president dictating what those info operations are who they Target and determining impacts, etc., and risks
The story of the Moonies - anti-communist Korean cult - running the Washington Times. And the story of Falun Gong - anti-communist Chinese cult - running The Epoch Times. Are two great examples of US clandestine operations now propagandizing the US population.
Yes, but it is important to remember that the information that contradicts 'Russian propaganda' is 'American propaganda' and there is no particular reason to prefer one over another.
> Facebook executives had first approached the Pentagon in the summer of 2020, warning the military that Facebook workers had easily identified the military’s phony accounts, according to three former U.S. officials and another person familiar with the matter. The government, Facebook argued, was violating Facebook’s policies by operating the bogus accounts and by spreading COVID misinformation.
> The military argued that many of its fake accounts were being used for counterterrorism and asked Facebook not to take down the content
There you have it. Counter-terorrism is our new "please think of the children" to halt logical thought and make you the bad guy if you continue pressing any further on serious matters.
It wasn't just against China, they were campaigning against all non-western vaccines. Either you get Phizer/Astra-Zenka, or that evil Chinese/Russian/whatever liquid will make your eyes bleed out.
It's not even a "secret", you can just read "Radio Free Europe": the messaging was absolutely obvious.
> The U.S. military is prohibited from targeting Americans with propaganda, and Reuters found no evidence the Pentagon’s influence operation did so.
This is a moronic caveat. They were posting on instagram, facebook, and twitter. I have it on good word that Americans read those. I suppose that they'll be able to post any sort of lie as long as they say they were targeting Turkmenistan or Bolivia.
Setting aside the ethics of propaganda being targeted at any group and the loathsomeness of this particular campaign, they were pretending to be foreign nationals and posting in foreign languages. It’s unlikely many Americans ever read any of it.
"And in February, the contractor that worked on the anti-vax campaign – General Dynamics IT – won a $493 million contract. Its mission: to continue providing clandestine influence services for the military."
What makes this infuriating is the "most moral country in the world" did this for economic damage to another country's commercial market. So much for free markets. In the US, we still think the China vaccines are not as effective. This led to Saudi Arabia requiring everyone who came for pilgrimages to use US made vaccines. The problem was US made vaccines were not readily available in all places. It was double trouble for them.
Per the article, the China vaccines are not as effective:
> Although the Chinese vaccines were found to be less effective than the American-led shots by Pfizer and Moderna, all were approved by the World Health Organization.
At this point, a US department was intentionally spreading false information to hurt the economic success of an adversary. Any effect this has on the decision-making of foreign govts is going to be directly attributed to this mission.
Unless can be proven otherwise. But how can that be proven?
To my knowledge, organizations like the WHO and countries like Brazil reported weaker effectiveness of the Chinese jabs compared to the likes of Pfizer. I’m not familiar with even China claiming otherwise these past few years. Are you saying the CCP fell for the anti-CCP propaganda?
That's because the people rejected the Disinformation Governance Board. Imagine if this board was active. None of these would have happened and we would have had a happy peaceful life with our benevolent government watching us over.
The campaign specifically targeted Sinovac. US military assets may have been used, but I'll bet Pfizer and Moderna had a hand in this, seeing how embedded they are in the media and parts of the USG.
Maybe it is wrong but I did not read much about China blaming US for pandemic outside couple of articles claiming that on US media (including this one) while a lot American media, politicians and ordinary people used to blame China for pandemic since the beginning. I think this is just trying to justify this campaign as a reaction mechanism by the author while he admitted that it had put lives in risk and probably was indirectly cause of death for some. And the rest of article is good.