Briefed on the Pentagon’s secret anti-vax campaign by Reuters, some American public health experts also condemned the program, saying it put civilians in jeopardy for potential geopolitical gain. An operation meant to win hearts and minds endangered lives, they said.
“I don’t think it’s defensible,” said Daniel Lucey, an infectious disease specialist at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine. “I’m extremely dismayed, disappointed and disillusioned to hear that the U.S. government would do that,” said Lucey, a former military physician who assisted in the response to the 2001 anthrax attacks.
The effort to stoke fear about Chinese inoculations risked undermining overall public trust in government health initiatives, including U.S.-made vaccines that became available later, Lucey and others said. 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. Sinovac did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
It's truly indefensible to see this kind of behavior that can kill people for geopolitical gain. And now, when we complain about foreign meddling, we can rightfully be reminded of what our side did to others...
The cruelty aside, I am also amazed by the shortsightedness of such tactics. This was an obviously failed strategy from the start. (And imaging the ignorance of assuming it would not be leaked...)
The hilarious part is people believe the historic global human rights abusers of the US intelligence community are different today, despite zero evidence of any reforms since they were overthrowing democratically elected governments to benefit multinational corporations, murdering activists who stood up for non-whites and the working class, operating "black" torture sites, caught backdooring the worlds hardware and software information systems no different to the KGB or Gestapo, conducting biological and chemical weapons tests on its own citizens, etc etc etc.
Yep, I'm sure the historic sociopaths have learned their lesson... From all those times they suffered zero retribution, and benefited to the tune of trillions of dollars!!
Since when is it bad to meddle with your enemies? Authoritarian regimes around the world are my mortal enemies. Why the fuck wouldn’t we undermine them at every opportunity?
Need I remind you that only 8% of countries are considered functional democracies (and that number is dropping). I’m open to any idea to stop the spread of authoritarianism.
This is so huge. And I'll be shocked if this makes it to the nightly / cable news outlets. We have more important things to worry about; like if someone lied about doing drugs in order to get a gun.
Jacobin: Why the Twitter Files Are in Fact a Big DealOn the Left, there’s been a temptation to dismiss the revelations about Twitter’s internal censorship system that have emerged from the so-called Twitter Files project. But that would be a mistake: the news is important and the details are alarming.
Wall Street Journal: Mueller Doesn’t Find Trump Campaign Conspired With Russia
That was Bill Barr's summary of the Mueller Report. The news article you posted was written with zero knowledge of the actual report. When the actual report was released later, the summary was criticized as trying to form a false narrative that intentionally omitted important pieces of the report. He was spinning it to provide cover for his boss, in effect. Much of this rested on Mueller not declaring Trump guilty of a crime, but as was described in the report, this was always considered to be outside of the scope of Mueller's appointment.
It's worth looking at the timeline here. The Trump Administration had no problem doing something that was obviously immoral. It got canceled by the Biden Administration and an investigation started. Just noting the timeline because I still see people saying there's no difference between the two politicians.
so shall we assume that convicted felon drumpf was, at the very least, informed of this operation between truckoads of "hamburders"?
shall we also asume that anti-vaxers everywhere will eschew their murderous complicity in what was clearly "gubbermunt propaganda to control our freedumbs"?
The U.S. military is prohibited from targeting Americans with propaganda, and Reuters found no evidence the Pentagon’s influence operation did so.
yeah, and I have some beachfront property in Florida to sell you. quick sale required.
How are we supposed to trust anything any government official says when they're pulling shit like this? Was ivermectin actually effective? Did they fluff the numbers? Was it all a political game to some end?