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.
Consider who was President at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation_by_Chi...
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/W...
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
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...
1 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/foreign-interference-trudea...
https://www.reddit.com/r/stupidpol/comments/wdrirf/reddit_is...
It's outright depressing even casually scrolling through reddit these days with blatant ads and propaganda smothering you.
Also, what happened subsequently is a textbook example of what Chalmers Johnson described in "Blowback".
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.
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 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's not even a "secret", you can just read "Radio Free Europe": the messaging was absolutely obvious.
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.
So basically this campaign was just one of many?!
I am so angry right now.
> 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.
Is this a false statement?
They don't make them like they used to...
I mean Andrew Wakefield was struck of for fraud in 1988 and still his stuff about vaccines causing autism lives on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation_Governance_Boar...
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-...
That was also the policy before they did it.
Unless can be proven otherwise. But how can that be proven?
Even in a thread about sick US propaganda, the apologists find an excuse for war.
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.
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.
The US was going to start WW3 over Cuba becoming an ally of the USSR.
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.
> 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".
However the crux of the issue wasn't that there were missiles but that the missiles were placed secretly.
There is a nice podcast series about it
https://www.historyextra.com/podcast-series/cuban-missile-cr...
Propaganda is a huge part of war, and this: https://www.newsweek.com/nato-says-it-didnt-notice-ukraine-s...
Is terrible propaganda, and it can be easily stopped. That's the most generous way of looking at it. The worst way, is that we'll have another "Fund the Taliban against Russia and see what happens" pt. 2 when the war is over and Azov beats all other parties to rule the area afterwards
This is 100 percent false, and in fact the complete reverse of my position in regard to the Palestine conflict.
The statement "pro war in Ukraine" is nonsense also. This is a defensive war from the Ukrainian perspective, obviously and unambiguously so. Supporting their right to defend themselves is not a "pro war" position, and it is intellectually dishonest to suggest that it is.
It's not a "literal Nazi" symbol. Importantly, it has a reverse orientation, and different proportion of its segments when compared with the Wolfsangel symbol. When you hold the two up together -- the difference is quite noticeable.
And even more importantly -- it just doesn't mean what you want it to mean. Azov maintains it wasn't derived from the Wolfsangel symbol, and is adamant that it is not intended as a symbol of Nazi affiliation or of support for Nazi ideology. In fact they say it derives from the abbreviation "National Idea", which means yes, they are self-described nationalists -- but not with any Nazi affiliation of the sort that you're trying to scare us with.
From Wikipedia:
Andreas Umland, a scholar from the Stockholm Center for Eastern European Studies, told Deutsche Welle that though it had far-right connotations, the Wolfsangel was not considered a fascist symbol by the population in Ukraine.[114] In 2022 political scientist Ivan Gomza wrote in Krytyka that the symbolism of the regiment had become associated with a "successful fighting unit that protects Ukraine", and wrote that other connotations are lost on most people in Ukraine.
They've even jumped on the pro-Israel bandwagon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vMAo_zOgBA
If you keep digging you can also find a precious video of Azov commanders line dancing with orthodox rabbis on one of their visits.
You're delusional if you ...
The irony here that on this particular subject at least -- the one who's been played and propagandized is you.
That's why the usual actors who keep repeating the "Azov == Nazi" narrative based on trigger symbols, marginal sample data and other misleading information keep on doing so. Precisely because they know that it doesn't have to align with the facts -- and either way it will push your buttons, and spike your cortisol levels to exactly the range where they need them to be.
Why not just change the symbols because your biggest supporters and allies have issues with it and the history behind it (you know very well the history of Ukrainian collaboration with Germany in WWII and where these symbols come from. Sure it's complicated but that's where it comes from). If NATO can't show pictures of soldiers due to the insignia, if journalists have to ask the soldiers to remove certain patches before interviewing them, why do they wear them at all?
Just because they stand next to Jews doesn't mean they aren't the kinds of people who love far-right Nazi symbols and what they mean. Said Qutb moved to the US and spent lots of time around Americans before starting an anti-Western ideological group.
But all this could be eliminated if the insistence of Azov on their tarnished names and symbols were removed. Why do they cling to them so much? Why are they so resistant to such a sensible request? These are the things that make people hesitant to support them, and they are extremely aware of it. This is the reason the US had a ban on arming Azov for years till very recently. They know what it looks like and they fight to keep it that way. That should raise some concern for anyone.
The simple fact is -- you didn't do your homework on Azov, and so within minutes you got debunked. Own it, and move on.
So it's not true that many Ukrainian regiments assisted the Nazis in WWII? It's not true that that is where these symbols come from? It's not true that the US had a ban on arming Azov for years for exactly this reason? It's not true that NATO can't post pictures of Ukrainian soldiers defending a sovereign territory from invaders because they wear Nazi insignia? It's not true that journalists have to ask the soldiers to remove their Nazi insignia when being photographed?
In fact all are true. Here are the sources:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/29/europe/ukraine-azov-movement-...
An image of a Ukrainian historical newspaper with a Nazi swastika and "Slava Ukraini" written at the top: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nove-zhittya.jpg#m...
https://www.newsweek.com/nato-says-it-didnt-notice-ukraine-s...
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/05/world/europe/nazi-symbols...
Don't close your eyes to facts and truth. The world is complex. Try to find the truth in that complexity
As in every country under the Nazi occupation. Including Russia, by the way -- and in significantly larger numbers than in Ukraine.
But this was 80 years ago and is a completely different topic. Do you actually think this provides some kind of chain of implication as to anything happening on the ground today? Or are you just trying evoke an image of Ukrainians as basically congenital Nazis, and that's the your big subliminal message here?
It's not true that that is where these symbols come from?
In fact it's not true. The Azov insignia is not derived from the Wolfsangel, or any of the symbols used by the Galicia Division or any other collaborationist units.
An image of a Ukrainian historical newspaper with a Nazi swastika and "Slava Ukraini" written at the top
Seriously -- what's the logic here? What is this supposed to prove?
Check in any American Nazi rally from the 1930s to the present; the photos are all over the place -- and (get ready to start trembling now) you'll invariably find prominent displays of swastika banners right along side the Stars and Stripes. Does that make it a Nazi flag?
To complete the analogy, if an American military unit used the same symbols the Nazis used while collaborating with the Nazis during WWII and then a modern-day American military unit proudly used those same symbols while constantly being told by all their allies, NATO, various allies journalists, etc. that these symbols cannot be shown to the public, they should absolutely be disbanded and never allowed to use such symbols again.
Why doesn't that happen in Ukraine? It's such a an obvious thing to do, you never ever answer this question, just always pick on minor things and make up strange interpretations of minor parts of what I'm saying
But leaving that aside, and to address just the first line, if I may, of your post above:
I'm quite familiar with Ukraine's collaborationist history in WW II. Of course callaboration was widespread, and the occupation forces had substantial support (or at least acquiescence) throughout the population -- again, as in all occupied countries. There's a reason they were able to pull of the multi-year Babyn Yar operation just outside the center of Kyiv, were able to recruit so many Trawniki to do the dirty in their camps, and so on. This isn't a revelation to me at all.
My question to you is -- how does any of this history move the needle (serve as "proof" in your words) -- or have any other kind of bearing, for that matter -- in regard to any of the assertions you're making about Azov today? As I asked in my most recent response (and you "ignored"): what is the actual chain of implication and substantiation here?
I'm just not seeing any. If you can enlighten me as to why I should, perhaps we can continue with the other points. But in any case that's all I have time for right now.
Because it actually takes a lot of time to answer you carefully and patiently like this, you know.
If you think that anyone who fought or otherwise worked for the Germans -- even if they served in the camps and did horrific things there (which this guy did not apparently), or served in a nominally elite military unit (as he did) -- is ipso facto a Nazi -- then it seems you haven't taken stock of one of the cardinal rules by which the Nazis operated in these countries (or any long-lived dictatorship operates for that matter, including certainly Putin's).
Which is: they don't need you to join the Party, or even believe the ideological flim-flam (and in the Nazis' case -- they definitely didn't need you to be antisemitic). You can even be a bit skeptical, or outright disdainful under the hood. At the end of the day, they don't really care about what your think as an individual. And they don't need you to be hip to their Master Plan.
They just need you to go along with it.
