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.
Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic
11–20 of 71 posts
Re: Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic
#12> 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 a…
I think this is just trying to justify this campaign as a reaction mechanism by the author
Consider who was President at the time.
Re: Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic
#13Not 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.
Source for never completing the multiple steps of the vaccine doses: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vacci...
Source for blood sample procurement under false pretenses: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-14117438
Re: Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic
#14Real 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 o…
The government tells FB what to do. It's called jawboning and they've been doing it pretty blatantly
Re: Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic
#15Not 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.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Osama_bin_Laden
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vacci...
> 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.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-obama-cia/white-house-vow...
Re: Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic
#16> 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.
Re: Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would imagine China has little reason to claim in english that it's the US bioweapon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation_by_Chi...
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: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/W...
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.
ex. https://web.archive.org/web/20210220164052/https://qz.com/
> 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
Pompeo's comments: https://2017-2021.state.gov/ensuring-a-transparent-thorough-...
Re: Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic
#18This got innocent people killed. In a just world, those responsible would be in prison, but instead they just got another $0.5bn contract.
Re: Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic
#19The 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.
Re: Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic
#20> 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.