Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/06/14/u-s-military-caught-running-secret-vaccine-smear-campaign.html
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The Pentagon’s secret anti-vax propaganda campaign continued for months into the Biden administration before finally being shut down in 2021.
I am somewhat willing to give Biden a pass on this part, though, because I have to imagine finding all the heinous shit Il Douche put in place and shut it all down was not a small task.
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Utterly disgusting, and no question of it.
As an ancillary notion - yet not to defray guilt in the slightest!:
the Pentagon used fake social media accounts to prey on vulnerable populations, sowing doubt about the safety and efficacy of life-saving inoculations.
can it be presumed that Russia and/or China got behind “fake social media accounts” etc supporting MAGA/trump which lead to “doubt about the safety and efficacy of life-saving inoculations” as another example of nasty global psyops? one might think horrific plagues couldn’t possibly be worse, but for remorseless propaganda plus plagues -sigh- (“don’t think trump would think of bleach all on his own?”)
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I want to know who the Kentucky fried fuck authorized this and how quickly we can get them out of the public service
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Ah, my tax dollars at work.
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“The U.S. military is prohibited from targeting Americans with propaganda, and Reuters found no evidence the Pentagon’s influence operation did so.”
The fact that this erstwhile pull quote is in there, presumably at somebody’s insistence, kind of underscores the fact that whoever is calling the shots over there isn’t just insane or stupid but actually evil, like they’ve surgically removed their sense of right and wrong and replaced it with some kinda cop show bullshit
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I wonder if it was the same one who fucked up vaccination drives in Pakistan, including at least one (TB?) we would have been on the verge of wiping out for good?
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Equal parts evil and idiocy. This kind of fearmongering propaganda doesn’t stay neatly contained behind national borders any more than a fucking virus does.
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They were targeting Filipinos on Twitter, a surgical strike. /s
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Incidentally; the “group of academic researchers at Stanford University” mentioned in the article is the Stanford Internet Observatory which is well on its way to collapse thanks largely to congressional republicans; who, completely mysteriously, took academic study of internet liars extremely personally.
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It’d be swell if, next lethal pandemic, if people would stop being on the side of the pathogen.
Reminds me of this chucklehead, who saw in adversity a wondrous opportunity to kill off Democrats.
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This fucker is a genuinely evil person.
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So let me see if I got this straight. The US SecDef wrote a blank cheque authorising The Pentagon to use propaganda against foreign adversaries without the input of diplomats and regardless of damaging knock-on effects to public health, world wide. This was only discovered due to sloppy contractors who failed to adequately cover their tracks (who have since been rewarded with new contracts). It was only brought to the attention of the current administration because Facebook (of all companies) reported it, and the current administration’s response was to quietly shut it down, sweep it under the rug, and only cancel “part” of the original blank cheque.
Maybe it’s just me but that all sounds like a much bigger problem than any particular President. That’s a whole-ass entirely broken apparatus you’ve got there, top to bottom. Not that it’s new news given its long history of self-interested foreign interference, nor is the USA is the only culprit, but incidents like this certainly continue to reinforce the perception that as a country the US is a net negative influence on global stability and progress.
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I thought I was pretty jaded and cynical before. But just what the hell? Not nearly enough.
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Could not have put it better myself.
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Right? Remember when the CIA gave kids fake polio vaccines in Afghanistan (er, Pakistan*)? That hurts Americans as much as it hurt those kids, because people start to (understandably) doubt the sincerity and safety of public health initiatives everywhere.
Just don’t do this crap, people. Christ…
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Covid-19 is such a lucky virus. Unlike its predecessors, people actually knew exactly how to stop it. But it was so much more important for governments to win political points, for companies to keep raking in money, for entitled right-wingers not to be incovenienced than to prevent thousands of deaths. And so now it is something to be managed instead of eliminated, and even that is being done in a half-hearted manner.
Like most conspiracy theories, the continued popularity of the lab leak hypothesis is because this really was a human made pandemic, just not like that.
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