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.

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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    6 months ago

    I don’t care if they are considered our enemies; that’s fucked up. Our government’s grievances are of their government. Not the people. Not the culture. Not the land itself. Doing shit that harms the average person is incredibly vile.

    • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      It’s fucked up when we do it, it’s fucked up when Russia does it, it’s fucked up when China does it. This is terrible.

    • masquenox@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Our government’s grievances are of their government. Not the people.

      Have you noticed how all those nukes the US government maintains don’t target governments but population centres instead? The mass-slaughter of civilians have always been the US way - this time, they just did it with misinformation.

      • Madagaskar_sky@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        They don’t target population centers, they target military bases that always happen to be near a population center. In the 50’s and 60’s missile targetting was shit so they had megaton yield bombs to make sure they got the bases. Nowadays they have lower yield bombs so they can have more bombs that specifically target bases.

        It’s no use targeting population centers as those bombs could be used instead to cripple them militarily. It’s just that no country would have a good day if nukes went off anywhere near them.

        • masquenox@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          They don’t target population centers, they target military bases that always happen to be near a population center.

          That’s exactly the excuse they used to justify every aerially-delivered atrocity from Hamburg to Hanoi. Britain was routinely doing it in the middle-east nearly a decade before the Nazis did it at Guernica.

          If you don’t want to believe me, you can believe Curtiss Le May himself.

          There are no innocent civilians. It is their government and you are fighting a people, you are not trying to fight an armed force anymore. So it doesn’t bother me so much to be killing the so-called innocent bystanders.

          The mass-slaughter of civilians was the point then, it’s the point now - the nuclear ballistic missile is simply the logical conclusion to this. It literally allows for mass-murder at the push of a button.

          You need to stop confusing the propaganda with the actual reasons.

        • masquenox@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Didn’t say you were… that’s not the point. The point is that the US has always treated civilian populations as perfectly expendable - to be kind of honest, I’m not even sure they don’t see the US population in the same way, either.

    • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
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      6 months ago

      Worse, this was targeted in part against the people of the Philippines, an ally.

  • masquenox@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Nothing shocking, nothing surprising.

    We here in South Africa had our turn with US psyop shitfuckery last year.

      • masquenox@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        A Russian ship docked in Cape Town last year carrying armaments destined for the “War On Terror - Mozambique Edition.” The US embassy pretended it didn’t have access to that intelligence, and accused the SA government of (supposedly) supplying Putin with weaponry. The rapidity with which these accusations was championed by white supremacist political organisations (including the second largest political party) made it all even more suspicious. We literally had people here (you can imagine which kind) calling for the US to regime change us.

        The incident raised more questions than anything - but the white liberal media here in South Africa didn’t bother with those… it merely seemed interested in using the entire affair to attack the ANC. It was pretty clear to people here that there was something bigger going on than merely one measly little Russian ship - and, personally, I suspect that the ANC’s “sudden” concern over what is going on in Gaza is a retaliation against the US for this. They sure as hell didn’t have these concerns when they allowed Israel to buy up South African corporations left, right and centre…

  • mlg@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    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.

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    6 months ago

    Covid is related to SARs which East Asian people seem more susceptible to. This is very evil. Well, hopefully this was only under Trump’s turn, Biden doesn’t need more ammo for Genocide Joe.

    • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      To a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

      To the military, the solution to every problem is war.

  • mhague@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    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.

    • CluelessLemmyng@lemmy.sdf.org
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      6 months ago

      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.

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    6 months ago

    Wonderful to see our country is continuing our tradition of nonsensical psy-ops designed to exploit a tragedy and inflict as much harm as possible. I’m glad there’s no consequences for a nation abusing their power in such an egregious manner.

    • irreticent@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      I’m glad there’s no consequences for a nation abusing their power in such an egregious manner.

      Sarcasm aside, the no consequences part is especially troubling when there’s also the American Service-Members’ Protection Act (United States federal law enacted 2 August 2002).

      The American Service-Members’ Protection Act, known informally as The Hague Invasion Act, is a United States federal law described as “a bill to protect United States military personnel and other elected and appointed officials of the United States government against criminal prosecution by an international criminal court to which the United States is not party.”

      TL;DR: If an international criminal court tries to hold military personnel or politicians accountable for war crimes the US military is required by law to invade the Hague and “rescue” the war criminal from prosecution.

  • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
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    6 months ago

    Well that seems to have backfired.

    Excuse me, I seem to have facepalmed my eyeballs into the next room. Fuck.