this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2024
660 points (97.6% liked)

News

23310 readers
3552 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Serinus@lemmy.world 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Maybe they did. The White House has ways of getting information out without significantly adding additional attention.

The anonymous sources here were way more talkative than military types tend to be.

Seems to me like an example of another thing getting repaired after Trump broke it.

[–] gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Attention should have been drawn to this. Beyond the whole "America should practice what it preaches to every other country" thing, how is someone who was exposed to our disinformation and believed it going to find out it was false if we just try to memory-hole the whole thing?

They were only talkative after the Reuters reporters showed up with evidence of their bad behavior, so it's not like we're dealing with whistleblowers here. Fair point that military types tend to say a lot of bullshit and don't like to answer questions, though, which is why what really ought to happen here is a public Congressional hearing with subpoenas that force them to answer questions with their names attached to their statements. We need to know who the people who approved and implemented this were so we can make sure their careers with our military are over (or that they're never contracted for work by our military ever again).

Seems to me like another example of shithead moderate Dems covering up for psychopathic Republicans and normalizing their shittiest policies by coming up with a bit more paperwork instead of tearing them out root and branch like most Dem voters would want them to (see also; Biden continuing Trump's attacks on asylum and migration, Obama continuing Bush's drone war, Clinton continuing Reagan and Bush's attacks on welfare programs, etc.).

[–] Zipitydew@sh.itjust.works 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Trump takes a dump in the White House. Biden doesn't manage to mop it all up.

You - How could Biden have missed this spot.

[–] gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Why did he sweep one of Trump's turds under the rug and leave it for Reuters to clean up?

[–] Serinus@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago

Because he's still trying to do what's good for the country.