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orangerosebush · 5 months ago

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[Link to the Reuters article. From June 14th, 2024]

"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.

“COVID came from China and the VACCINE also came from China, don’t trust China!” one typical tweet from July 2020 read in Tagalog. The words were next to a photo of a syringe beside a Chinese flag and a soaring chart of infections. Another post read: “From China – PPE, Face Mask, Vaccine: FAKE. But the Coronavirus is real.”

After Reuters asked X about the accounts, the social media company removed the profiles, determining they were part of a coordinated bot campaign based on activity patterns and internal data.

The military program started under former President Donald Trump and continued months into Joe Biden’s presidency, Reuters found – even after alarmed social media executives warned the new administration that the Pentagon had been trafficking in COVID misinformation. The Biden White House issued an edict in spring 2021 banning the anti-vax effort, which also disparaged vaccines produced by other rivals, and the Pentagon initiated an internal review, Reuters found.

The U.S. military is prohibited from targeting Americans with propaganda, and Reuters found no evidence the Pentagon’s influence operation did so.

Spokespeople for Trump and Biden did not respond to requests for comment about the clandestine program.

A senior Defense Department official acknowledged the U.S. military engaged in secret propaganda to disparage China’s vaccine in the developing world, but the official declined to provide details.

A Pentagon spokeswoman said the U.S. military “uses a variety of platforms, including social media, to counter those malign influence attacks aimed at the U.S., allies, and partners.” She also noted that China had started a “disinformation campaign to falsely blame the United States for the spread of COVID-19.”

In an email, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it has long maintained the U.S. government manipulates social media and spreads misinformation.

Manila’s embassy in Washington did not respond to Reuters inquiries, including whether it had been aware of the Pentagon operation. A spokesperson for the Philippines Department of Health, however, said the “findings by Reuters deserve to be investigated and heard by the appropriate authorities of the involved countries.” Some aid workers in the Philippines, when told of the U.S. military propaganda effort by Reuters, expressed outrage.

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.

Academic research published recently has shown that, when individuals develop skepticism toward a single vaccine, those doubts often lead to uncertainty about other inoculations. Lucey and other health experts say they saw such a scenario play out in Pakistan, where the Central Intelligence Agency used a fake hepatitis vaccination program in Abbottabad as cover to hunt for Osama bin Laden, the terrorist mastermind behind the attacks of September 11, 2001. Discovery of the ruse led to a backlash against an unrelated polio vaccination campaign, including attacks on healthcare workers, contributing to the reemergence of the deadly disease in the country.

“It should have been in our interest to get as much vaccine in people’s arms as possible,” said Greg Treverton, former chairman of the U.S. National Intelligence Council, which coordinates the analysis and strategy of Washington’s many spy agencies. What the Pentagon did, Treverton said, “crosses a line.”

Together, the phony accounts used by the military had tens of thousands of followers during the program. Reuters could not determine how widely the anti-vax material and other Pentagon-planted disinformation was viewed, or to what extent the posts may have caused COVID deaths by dissuading people from getting vaccinated.

In the wake of the U.S. propaganda efforts, however, then-Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte had grown so dismayed by how few Filipinos were willing to be inoculated that he threatened to arrest people who refused vaccinations.

“You choose, vaccine or I will have you jailed,” a masked Duterte said in a televised address in June 2021. “There is a crisis in this country … I’m just exasperated by Filipinos not heeding the government.”

When he addressed the vaccination issue, the Philippines had among the worst inoculation rates in Southeast Asia. Only 2.1 million of its 114 million citizens were fully vaccinated – far short of the government’s target of 70 million. By the time Duterte spoke, COVID cases exceeded 1.3 million, and almost 24,000 Filipinos had died from the virus. The difficulty in vaccinating the population contributed to the worst death rate in the region.

A spokesperson for Duterte did not make the former president available for an interview.

Some Filipino healthcare professionals and former officials contacted by Reuters were shocked by the U.S. anti-vax effort, which they say exploited an already vulnerable citizenry. Public concerns about a Dengue fever vaccine, rolled out in the Philippines in 2016, had led to broad skepticism toward inoculations overall, said Lulu Bravo, executive director of the Philippine Foundation for Vaccination. The Pentagon campaign preyed on those fears.

“Why did you do it when people were dying? We were desperate,” said Dr. Nina Castillo-Carandang, a former adviser to the World Health Organization and Philippines government during the pandemic. “We don’t have our own vaccine capacity,” she noted, and the U.S. propaganda effort “contributed even more salt into the wound.”

The campaign also reinforced what one former health secretary called a longstanding suspicion of China, most recently because of aggressive behavior by Beijing in disputed areas of the South China Sea. Filipinos were unwilling to trust China’s Sinovac, which first became available in the country in March 2021, said Esperanza Cabral, who served as health secretary under President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Cabral said she had been unaware of the U.S. military’s secret operation.

“I’m sure that there are lots of people who died from COVID who did not need to die from COVID,” she said.

To implement the anti-vax campaign, the Defense Department overrode strong objections from top U.S. diplomats in Southeast Asia at the time, Reuters found. Sources involved in its planning and execution say the Pentagon, which ran the program through the military’s psychological operations center in Tampa, Florida, disregarded the collateral impact that such propaganda may have on innocent Filipinos.

“We weren’t looking at this from a public health perspective,” said a senior military officer involved in the program. “We were looking at how we could drag China through the mud.”

In uncovering the secret U.S. military operation, Reuters interviewed more than two dozen current and former U.S officials, military contractors, social media analysts and academic researchers. Reporters also reviewed Facebook, X and Instagram posts, technical data and documents about a set of fake social media accounts used by the U.S. military. Some were active for more than five years.

Clandestine psychological operations are among the government’s most highly sensitive programs. Knowledge of their existence is limited to a small group of people within U.S. intelligence and military agencies. Such programs are treated with special caution because their exposure could damage foreign alliances or escalate conflict with rivals.

Over the last decade, some U.S. national security officials have pushed for a return to the kind of aggressive clandestine propaganda operations against rivals that the United States’ wielded during the Cold War. Following the 2016 U.S. presidential election, in which Russia used a combination of hacks and leaks to influence voters, the calls to fight back grew louder inside Washington.

In 2019, Trump authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to launch a clandestine campaign on Chinese social media aimed at turning public opinion in China against its government, Reuters reported in March. As part of that effort, a small group of operatives used bogus online identities to spread disparaging narratives about Xi Jinping’s government.

COVID-19 galvanized the drive to wage psychological operations against China. One former senior Pentagon leader described the pandemic as a “bolt of energy” that finally ignited the long delayed counteroffensive against China’s influence war.

The Pentagon’s anti-vax propaganda came in response to China’s own efforts to spread false information about the origins of COVID. The virus first emerged in China in late 2019. But in March 2020, Chinese government officials claimed without evidence that the virus may have been first brought to China by an American service member who participated in an international military sports competition in Wuhan the previous year. Chinese officials also suggested that the virus may have originated in a U.S. Army research facility at Fort Detrick, Maryland. There’s no evidence for that assertion.

Mirroring Beijing’s public statements, Chinese intelligence operatives set up networks of fake social media accounts to promote the Fort Detrick conspiracy, according to a U.S. Justice Department complaint.

China’s messaging got Washington’s attention. Trump subsequently coined the term “China virus” as a response to Beijing’s accusation that the U.S. military exported COVID to Wuhan.

“That was false. And rather than having an argument, I said, ‘I have to call it where it came from,’” Trump said in a March 2020 news conference. “It did come from China.”

China’s Foreign Ministry said in an email that it opposed “actions to politicize the origins question and stigmatize China.” The ministry had no comment about the Justice Department’s complaint.

Beijing didn’t limit its global influence efforts to propaganda. It announced an ambitious COVID assistance program, which included sending masks, ventilators and its own vaccines – still being tested at the time – to struggling countries. In May 2020, Xi announced that the vaccine China was developing would be made available as a “global public good,” and would ensure “vaccine accessibility and affordability in developing countries.” Sinovac was the primary vaccine available in the Philippines for about a year until U.S.-made vaccines became more widely available there in early 2022.

Washington’s plan, called Operation Warp Speed, was different. It favored inoculating Americans first, and it placed no restrictions on what pharmaceutical companies could charge developing countries for the remaining vaccines not used by the United States. The deal allowed the companies to “play hardball” with developing countries, forcing them to accept high prices, said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of medicine at Georgetown University who has worked with the World Health Organization.

The deal “sucked most of the supply out of the global market,” Gostin said. “The United States took a very determined America First approach.”

To Washington’s alarm, China’s offers of assistance were tilting the geopolitical playing field across the developing world, including in the Philippines, where the government faced upwards of 100,000 infections in the early months of the pandemic.

The U.S. relationship with Manila had grown tense after the 2016 election of the bombastic Duterte. A staunch critic of the United States, he had threatened to cancel a key pact that allows the U.S. military to maintain legal jurisdiction over American troops stationed in the country.

Duterte said in a July 2020 speech he had made “a plea” to Xi that the Philippines be at the front of the line as China rolled out vaccines. He vowed in the same speech that the Philippines would no longer challenge Beijing’s aggressive expansion in the South China Sea, upending a key security understanding Manila had long held with Washington.

“China is claiming it. We are claiming it. China has the arms, we do not have it.” Duterte said. “So, it is simple as that.”

Days later, China’s foreign minister announced Beijing would grant Duterte’s plea for priority access to the vaccine, as part of a “new highlight in bilateral relations.”

China’s growing influence fueled efforts by U.S. military leaders to launch the secret propaganda operation Reuters uncovered.

“We didn’t do a good job sharing vaccines with partners,” a senior U.S. military officer directly involved in the campaign in Southeast Asia told Reuters. “So what was left to us was to throw shade on China’s.”

U.S. military leaders feared that China’s COVID diplomacy and propaganda could draw other Southeast Asian countries, such as Cambodia and Malaysia, closer to Beijing, furthering its regional ambitions.

A senior U.S. military commander responsible for Southeast Asia, Special Operations Command Pacific General Jonathan Braga, pressed his bosses in Washington to fight back in the so-called information space, according to three former Pentagon officials.

The commander initially wanted to punch back at Beijing in Southeast Asia. The goal: to ensure the region understood the origin of COVID while promoting skepticism toward what were then still-untested vaccines offered by a country that they said had lied continually since the start of the pandemic.

A spokesperson for Special Operations Command declined to comment.

At least six senior State Department officials responsible for the region objected to this approach. A health crisis was the wrong time to instill fear or anger through a psychological operation, or psyop, they argued during Zoom calls with the Pentagon.

“We’re stooping lower than the Chinese and we should not be doing that,” said a former senior State Department official for the region who fought against the military operation.

While the Pentagon saw Washington’s rapidly diminishing influence in the Philippines as a call to action, the withering partnership led American diplomats to plead for caution.

“The relationship is hanging from a thread,” another former senior U.S. diplomat recounted. “Is this the moment you want to do a psyop in the Philippines? Is it worth the risk?”

In the past, such opposition from the State Department might have proved fatal to the program. Previously in peacetime, the Pentagon needed approval of embassy officials before conducting psychological operations in a country, often hamstringing commanders seeking to quickly respond to Beijing’s messaging, three former Pentagon officials told Reuters.

But in 2019, before COVID surfaced in full force, then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper signed a secret order that later paved the way for the launch of the U.S. military propaganda campaign. The order elevated the Pentagon’s competition with China and Russia to the priority of active combat, enabling commanders to sidestep the State Department when conducting psyops against those adversaries. The Pentagon spending bill passed by Congress that year also explicitly authorized the military to conduct clandestine influence operations against other countries, even “outside of areas of active hostilities.”

Esper, through a spokesperson, declined to comment. A State Department spokesperson referred questions to the Pentagon.

In spring 2020, special-ops commander Braga turned to a cadre of psychological-warfare soldiers and contractors in Tampa to counter Beijing’s COVID efforts. Colleagues say Braga was a longtime advocate of increasing the use of propaganda operations in global competition. In trailers and squat buildings at a facility on Tampa’s MacDill Air Force Base, U.S. military personnel and contractors would use anonymous accounts on X, Facebook and other social media to spread what became an anti-vax message. The facility remains the Pentagon’s clandestine propaganda factory.

Psychological warfare has played a role in U.S. military operations for more than a hundred years, although it has changed in style and substance over time. So-called psyopers were best known following World War II for their supporting role in combat missions across Vietnam, Korea and Kuwait, often dropping leaflets to confuse the enemy or encourage their surrender.

After the al Qaeda attacks of 2001, the United States was fighting a borderless, shadowy enemy, and the Pentagon began to wage a more ambitious kind of psychological combat previously associated only with the CIA. The Pentagon set up front news outlets, paid off prominent local figures, and sometimes funded television soap operas in order to turn local populations against militant groups or Iranian-backed militias, former national security officials told Reuters.

Unlike earlier psyop missions, which sought specific tactical advantage on the battlefield, the post-9/11 operations hoped to create broader change in public opinion across entire regions.

By 2010, the military began using social media tools, leveraging phony accounts to spread messages of sympathetic local voices – themselves often secretly paid by the United States government. As time passed, a growing web of military and intelligence contractors built online news websites to pump U.S.-approved narratives into foreign countries. Today, the military employs a sprawling ecosystem of social media influencers, front groups and covertly placed digital advertisements to influence overseas audiences, according to current and former military officials.

China’s efforts to gain geopolitical clout from the pandemic gave Braga justification to launch the propaganda campaign that Reuters uncovered, sources said.

By summer 2020, the military’s propaganda campaign moved into new territory and darker messaging, ultimately drawing the attention of social media executives.

In regions beyond Southeast Asia, senior officers in the U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations across the Middle East and Central Asia, launched their own version of the COVID psyop, three former military officials told Reuters.

The Pentagon campaign sought to intensify fears about injecting a pig derivative. As part of an internal investigation at X, the social media company used IP addresses and browser data to identify more than 150 phony accounts that were operated from Tampa by U.S. Central Command and its contractors, according to an internal X document reviewed by Reuters.

“Can you trust China, which tries to hide that its vaccine contains pork gelatin and distributes it in Central Asia and other Muslim countries where many people consider such a drug haram?” read an April 2021 tweet sent from a military-controlled account identified by X.

One military-created meme targeting Central Asia showed a pig made out of syringes, according to two people who viewed the image. Reuters found similar posts that traced back to U.S. Central Command. One shows a Chinese flag as a curtain separating Muslim women in hijabs and pigs stuck with vaccine syringes. In the center is a man with syringes; on his back is the word “China.” It targeted Central Asia, including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, a country that distributed tens of millions of doses of China’s vaccines and participated in human trials. Translated into English, the X post reads: “China distributes a vaccine made of pork gelatin.”

Facebook executives had first approached the Pentagon in the summer of 2020, warning the military that Facebook workers had easily identified the military’s phony accounts, according to three former U.S. officials and another person familiar with the matter. The government, Facebook argued, was violating Facebook’s policies by operating the bogus accounts and by spreading COVID misinformation.

The military argued that many of its fake accounts were being used for counterterrorism and asked Facebook not to take down the content, according to two people familiar with the exchange. The Pentagon pledged to stop spreading COVID-related propaganda, and some of the accounts continued to remain active on Facebook.

Nonetheless, the anti-vax campaign continued into 2021 as Biden took office.

Angered that military officials had ignored their warning, Facebook officials arranged a Zoom meeting with Biden’s new National Security Council shortly after the inauguration, Reuters learned. The discussion quickly became tense.

“It was terrible,” said a senior administration official describing the reaction after learning of the campaign’s pig-related posts. “I was shocked. The administration was pro-vaccine and our concern was this could affect vaccine hesitancy, especially in developing countries.”

By spring 2021, the National Security Council ordered the military to stop all anti-vaccine messaging. “We were told we needed to be pro-vaccine, pro all vaccines,” said a former senior military officer who helped oversee the program. Even so, Reuters found some anti-vax posts that continued through April and other deceptive COVID-related messaging that extended into that summer. Reuters could not determine why the campaign didn’t end immediately with the NSC’s order. In response to questions from Reuters, the NSC declined to comment.

The senior Defense Department official said that those complaints led to an internal review in late 2021, which uncovered the anti-vaccine operation. The probe also turned up other social and political messaging that was “many, many leagues away” from any acceptable military objective. The official would not elaborate.

The review intensified the following year, the official said, after a group of academic researchers at Stanford University flagged some of the same accounts as pro-Western bots in a public report. The high-level Pentagon review was first reported by the Washington Post. which also reported that the military used fake social media accounts to counter China’s message that COVID came from the United States. But the Post report did not reveal that the program evolved into the anti-vax propaganda campaign uncovered by Reuters.

The senior defense official said the Pentagon has rescinded parts of Esper’s 2019 order that allowed military commanders to bypass the approval of U.S. ambassadors when waging psychological operations. The rules now mandate that military commanders work closely with U.S. diplomats in the country where they seek to have an impact. The policy also restricts psychological operations aimed at “broad population messaging,” such as those used to promote vaccine hesitancy during COVID.

The Pentagon’s audit concluded that the military’s primary contractor handling the campaign, General Dynamics IT, had employed sloppy tradecraft, taking inadequate steps to hide the origin of the fake accounts, said a person with direct knowledge of the review. The review also found that military leaders didn’t maintain enough control over its psyop contractors, the person said.

A spokesperson for General Dynamics IT declined to comment.

Nevertheless, the Pentagon’s clandestine propaganda efforts are set to continue. In an unclassified strategy document last year, top Pentagon generals wrote that the U.S. military could undermine adversaries such as China and Russia using “disinformation spread across social media, false narratives disguised as news, and similar subversive activities [to] weaken societal trust by undermining the foundations of government.”

And in February, the contractor that worked on the anti-vax campaign – General Dynamics IT – won a $493 million contract. Its mission: to continue providing clandestine influence services for the military."

#philippines #us politics #sinophobia #covid 19 #long post #continued below the cut

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ecoamerica · 23 days ago

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Apply or nominate: https://ecoamerica.org/american-climate-leadership-awards-2025/

Calling all organizations, individuals, and small businesses successfully engaging Americans on climate! Showcase your creativity and climate solutions by applying for @ecoamerica’s 2025 American Climate Leadership Awards. You can win $1K - $50K by submitting your efforts for consideration by a stellar line-up of judges and individuals leading on climate. It’s quick and easy to submit your application or nominate inspirational climate leaders. Apply or nominate today!

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carlocarrasco · 8 months ago

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Muntinlupa City Government warns public about highly contagious Pertussis (whooping cough)

Recently in the progressive City of Muntinlupa, the City Government warned the public about the spread of Pertussis (also referred to as whooping cough) which already caused over four hundred cases counted in the first ten weeks of the year in the country (according to the Department of Health’s statistics), according to a Manila Bulletin news report. To put things in perspective, posted below…

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justinspoliticalcorner · 5 months ago

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Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic

CHRIS BING and JOEL SCHECTMAN at Reuters:

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.

After Reuters asked X about the accounts, the social media company removed the profiles, determining they were part of a coordinated bot campaign based on activity patterns and internal data.

The U.S. military’s anti-vax effort began in the spring of 2020 and expanded beyond Southeast Asia before it was terminated in mid-2021, Reuters determined. Tailoring the propaganda campaign to local audiences across Central Asia and the Middle East, the Pentagon used a combination of fake social media accounts on multiple platforms to spread fear of China’s vaccines among Muslims at a time when the virus was killing tens of thousands of people each day. A key part of the strategy: amplify the disputed contention that, because vaccines sometimes contain pork gelatin, China’s shots could be considered forbidden under Islamic law. The military program started under former President Donald Trump and continued months into Joe Biden’s presidency, Reuters found – even after alarmed social media executives warned the new administration that the Pentagon had been trafficking in COVID misinformation. The Biden White House issued an edict in spring 2021 banning the anti-vax effort, which also disparaged vaccines produced by other rivals, and the Pentagon initiated an internal review, Reuters found.

The U.S. military is prohibited from targeting Americans with propaganda, and Reuters found no evidence the Pentagon’s influence operation did so. Spokespeople for Trump and Biden did not respond to requests for comment about the clandestine program. A senior Defense Department official acknowledged the U.S. military engaged in secret propaganda to disparage China’s vaccine in the developing world, but the official declined to provide details. A Pentagon spokeswoman said the U.S. military “uses a variety of platforms, including social media, to counter those malign influence attacks aimed at the U.S., allies, and partners.” She also noted that China had started a “disinformation campaign to falsely blame the United States for the spread of COVID-19.”

[...] 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. Academic research published recently has shown that, when individuals develop skepticism toward a single vaccine, those doubts often lead to uncertainty about other inoculations. Lucey and other health experts say they saw such a scenario play out in Pakistan, where the Central Intelligence Agency used a fake hepatitis vaccination program in Abbottabad as cover to hunt for Osama bin Laden, the terrorist mastermind behind the attacks of September 11, 2001. Discovery of the ruse led to a backlash against an unrelated polio vaccination campaign, including attacks on healthcare workers, contributing to the reemergence of the deadly disease in the country.

[...] By summer 2020, the military’s propaganda campaign moved into new territory and darker messaging, ultimately drawing the attention of social media executives. In regions beyond Southeast Asia, senior officers in the U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations across the Middle East and Central Asia, launched their own version of the COVID psyop, three former military officials told Reuters.

Although the Chinese vaccines were still months from release, controversy roiled the Muslim world over whether the vaccines contained pork gelatin and could be considered “haram,” or forbidden under Islamic law. Sinovac has said that the vaccine was “manufactured free of porcine materials.” Many Islamic religious authorities maintained that even if the vaccines did contain pork gelatin, they were still permissible since the treatments were being used to save human life. The Pentagon campaign sought to intensify fears about injecting a pig derivative. As part of an internal investigation at X, the social media company used IP addresses and browser data to identify more than 150 phony accounts that were operated from Tampa by U.S. Central Command and its contractors, according to an internal X document reviewed by Reuters. “Can you trust China, which tries to hide that its vaccine contains pork gelatin and distributes it in Central Asia and other Muslim countries where many people consider such a drug haram?” read an April 2021 tweet sent from a military-controlled account identified by X.

The Pentagon also covertly spread its messages on Facebook and Instagram, alarming executives at parent company Meta who had long been tracking the military accounts, according to former military officials. One military-created meme targeting Central Asia showed a pig made out of syringes, according to two people who viewed the image. Reuters found similar posts that traced back to U.S. Central Command. One shows a Chinese flag as a curtain separating Muslim women in hijabs and pigs stuck with vaccine syringes. In the center is a man with syringes; on his back is the word “China.” It targeted Central Asia, including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, a country that distributed tens of millions of doses of China’s vaccines and participated in human trials. Translated into English, the X post reads: “China distributes a vaccine made of pork gelatin.”

Reuters reports that The Pentagon launched an anti-vaxx campaign in the Philippines and Central Asia to foment anti-Chinese sentiments against their Sinovac vaccine.

#The Pentagon #China #Sinophobia #Sinovac #Coronavirus Vaccines #Vaccines #Vaccine Hesitancy #Coronavirus #Philippines #Donald Trump #Joe Biden #Biden Administration #Trump Administration #Central Asia

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faithintaiwan · 3 months ago

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august 5 - kaohsiung to tainan

Today we left Kaohsiung and went to Tainan. It used to be the capital city of Taiwan so I was really excited to see it!!

We first learned and practiced calligraphy at the National University of Tainan. It is one of the best universities in the country like the last one we went to. I made this fan and despite Yeh laoshi (a different one) saying it should be relaxing I was extremely stressed the entire time. But they provided bento lunch so I was able to relax then.

After, we went to a sugar factory that had been converted into an amusement park and museum. Peter explained that Taiwan used to produce sugar but as labor grew more expensive, Taiwan switched to exclusively importing it from places like the Philippines as they couldn’t compete with the cheap labor coming out of those countries. Some people and I walked around and looked at the different thrills we couldn’t do because Yeh laoshi told us no… It was so sad. They even had a zip line and a “free fall” drop that was just a jump down like three stories attached to a rope. Then we watched a drum performance by a band called Cross Metal. They mixed traditional instruments with modern rock music to create a special sound!!

After the performance, they gave us an hour to walk around so Fanny and I got drinks (apple juice and rose guava) before walking around the gift shop. We finally made it to the hotel and it’s been one of the nicer ones on this trip yay! Under it we even had a cosmed and a 9x9 so of course Fanny and I went and shopped a bit. I even found my favorite pen that recently ran out of ink and is getting super difficult to find on the internet.

Finally, a group of us went out for dinner at the Dadong Night Market and Jack even won a giant capybara!

Academic Reflection

For my independent excursion I went to the Dadong Night Market. It is the second largest night market in Tainan and is known for its roasted corns, quids, chicken butt, and fresh papaya milk according to the Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology. It is open Monday, Tuesday, and Friday from 5 pm to 1 am according to the Tourism Bureau of Tainan City Government. Because it is open at differing times from the most popular and largest night market, Garden Night Market, Dadong is a good alternative. We were also only here on the days Dadong is open which is why I chose it as my independent excursion!

Walking around the Dadong Night Market we were hit with the smell of roasting chicken, stinky tofu, and more as each stall sold a variety of foods. One stall even served small pieces of fruit inside large balls made of this jelly. Compared to the United States, I felt like the atmosphere was completely unique with tons of foods we don’t have and people bustling about. It reminded me of carnivals with all the games but mixed with a farmers market selling food.

Unlike in other more official stores and restaurants, night market stalls often don’t provide receipts. Before we came to Taiwan, Yeh laoshi told us to keep our receipts because each is an entry into a lottery for up to 300,000 US dollars! This lottery was created to combat places that don’t pay taxes or attempt to tax evade which can be common in night markets. By pressuring consumers to collect reciepts, the Taiwanese government was hoping to pressure stores and stall owners into paying taxes and providing receipts.

Furthermore, Taiwan has had a rocky history with its night markets. As recent as 2010, articles like From the Margins to the Center by Taiwan Panorama have detailed the illegality of the markets. They would often get shut down by police, provide unhygienic conditions for food, and operate mainly in Mandarin. As tourists increasingly enjoyed night markets, the Taiwanese government began to embrace them and strive to legalize them. They passed laws and incentives to shape them into a tourist activity. According to the Department of Health in Taipei, the Taiwanese government has been making efforts to ensure food safety and hygiene in night markets since 2018 and provides official passes for stalls to be in the markets. They have also required signs in English and mandarin at the front to identify the market.

The food here and especially in night markets is also wildly less expensive than in the states. I spent about 30 US dollars for three large pastries, scallion pancakes, fried pork, fruit jelly balls, stickers, dumplings, and boba!! Walking around at night and randomly stumbling on a bustling market with delicious smelling food is also such a treat compared to the darkness of the US. As a finance major, night markets in particular interested me because of their entrepreneurial spirit, pricing, and tax regulations.

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head-post · 3 months ago

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Asia tackles new monkeypox strain escalation

Asian countries from China to Pakistan have stepped up surveillance of a mutated monkeypox virus that is spreading outside Central Africa, where the World Health Organisation declared a public health emergency this month.

A case in Sweden last week underlines the international threat posed by the so-called 1B strain, which has reportedly killed more than 500 people, mostly children, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Across Asia, travellers arriving from countries affected by the virus are being asked to report symptoms and hospitals are stepping up surveillance for the disease.

Unlike the smallpox-causing virus, which spread worldwide in 2022, the new strain is more dangerous, with a mortality rate of more than 3 per cent. It is also possible that infected people can transmit the virus days before symptoms appear, making it more difficult to control the disease by identifying and isolating cases.

China is asking incoming travellers from affected countries and regions, those who have been in contact with smallpox patients, and those experiencing symptoms to report to customs officials upon entering the country, where they may be required to undergo testing, the statement said.

Health authorities in India have ordered increased vigilance at international airports and ports for passengers with smallpox symptoms, and have designated hospitals and laboratories to deal with potential patients, the Economic Times reported. Indonesia and Malaysia have also taken similar measures.

While smallpox is back in the spotlight, health officials are reporting cases probably caused by the milder strain 2b. A case of infection with strain 2b was confirmed in Pakistan on 13 August. The Philippine Department of Health said it had identified the first case of smallpox in the country since December in a 33-year-old man who had not travelled recently. The strain that caused the disease is not yet known.

A 2022 UK study found that more than half of mpox cases were spread by infected people who had not yet developed symptoms. Emerging evidence suggests that people incubating the disease can transmit the smallpox virus for up to four days before symptoms appear.

Luxembourg’s health minister said last Friday that the risk of the Luxembourg population contracting smallpox is “low.”

WHO recommends special measures to control monkeypox outbreak

The World Health Organisation is recommending special measures to control the outbreak of mpox, also known as monkeypox, in five African countries – the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda.

According to WHO recommendations, states should strengthen national health emergency response mechanisms, improve coordination of mpox control efforts, improve laboratory diagnosis of the disease, and identify contacts of mpox-infected people with others. In addition, WHO is calling for increased border surveillance to identify those who have become ill, vaccination and better public awareness of the disease and control measures.

The African Union Health Service declared a public health emergency on the continent due to the spread of monkeypox on 13 August. The disease has been detected in 17 African countries, totalling more than 38,000 infections and more than 1,400 deaths. The epicentre of the outbreak has been the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where 92% of African cases have been reported.

Read more HERE

#world news #news #world politics #asia #africa #congo #public health #healthcare #health and wellness #wellness #mpox #mpox outbreak #mpox virus #mpox news #mpox vaccine #monkeypox #outbreak

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vintagelacerosette · 1 year ago

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Joy List ✨️

I was tagged by these sweetie pies Macy @celestialmickey Nosho @creepkinginc Deanne @deedala Auds @auds-and-evens Bri @y0itsbri Cross @crossmydna thank youu 😘

Cooking up some art rn 🌈

Collaborating with the amazing Ling @lingy910y for our gallacrafts last month 🥰

Sending tumblr posts to besties bc I hope it'd make them smile 🤗

Makeup that have beautiful packaging 💄

Internet friends ✨️

Watching Yellowjackets with my beloved Benja @scarcrosseduntouched 💕

People finding my tags funny 😄

I had a four cheese pasta for dinner tonight 😋

I have sweet older coworker that sends me animal vids on instagram 🐶

Pretty press on nails I just bought that have cute designs & crystals 💅

I've been getting super confident with my driving with my driving instructor 🚗

Getting plane tickets for a holiday to the Philippines & Tokyo next year ✈️

Had a girls day out with my bestie 👭

Public holiday next monday 🏖

Watching Everything, Everywhere All at Once with my parents 🎥

Ikea dates with friends ❤️

Sunrise alarm clock 🌅

My niece & my sister are coming over this long weekend 🥰

Falling in love with Vox Machina bc of my darling Vey @look-i-love-u & getting my dad into it 😆

Collective pay rise in my department of work 💶

Going to my first convention since covid & I'm gonna cosplay!! My wig is ready 😆

I got two concerts coming the next two Fridays with Baby Metal & Black Pink 🎶

I'm tagging these sunbeams 💕 @scarcrosseduntouched @ian-galagher @jomilky @heymrspatel @darthvaders-wife @gallavichgeek @mishervellous @mishervellous @too-schoolforcool @energievie @sickness-health-all-that-shit @shameless-notashamed @7x10mickey @imikhailotakeyouian @look-i-love-u @good-then-dont @annatrow @sleepyfacetoughguy @howlinchickhowl @sluttymickey @arrowflier @suchagallabitch @lalazeewrites @notherenewjersey @suzy-queued @mmmichyyy @gallawitchxx @you-are-so-much-better-than-that @you-show-me-love @babygirlmickey @grossmickey @callivich @depressedstressedlemonzest @solaq @sisitrip @lee-ow @sirrudo

#joy list #tag game

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happynationaviation · 6 months ago

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TITLE: “NAVIGATING THE SKIES FROM THE GROUND”

Why do we need air traffic control in airports? because it is the way to prevent a collision involving aircraft operating in the system. When it comes to air traffic control (ATC), our top priority is ensuring the safety of the skies. What are the benefits and advantages of being air traffic control workers?

Air traffic controllers must be able to give clear, concise instructions, listen carefully to pilots' requests, and respond by speaking clearly in English. Decision-making skills. Controllers must make quick decisions.

Air traffic control rooms are strategic nerve centres in the aviation industry. These facilities are where highly trained professionals use sophisticated technology to orchestrate the movements of thousands of aircraft, ensuring that millions of passengers reach their destinations safely every day.

An air traffic control room is either located within an airport's control tower or is part of the traffic control centre that manages the broader region of airspace around the airport. The design of the control room is meticulously planned out to optimise controllers' ability to monitor and communicate with aircraft at all altitudes and in all directions. They also tend to feature very large windows in a circular style to allow for optimal ground-to-air visibility.

The control room will host an array of radar screens and computer systems that convey real-time data on aircraft positions, altitudes, and speeds. These systems are always arranged ergonomically, meaning they are laid out intuitively, to allow controllers to remain alert and responsive during their shifts. The layout needs to be as seamless as possible to minimise human error and to allow for sustained periods of uninterrupted concentration.

In this topic I will pursue this job because you make a good salary with benefits, but the work schedule can be inconsistent. Working for the federal government comes with a good salary, and paid leave and health insurance. Air traffic controllers use their skills and judgment to safely direct more than 100,000 departing and arriving flights daily in the Philippines.

Let’s go join with we and we started to count a plane everyday!!!

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pannaginip · 4 months ago

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“While the people are paying high out-of-pocket expenses, [the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation or] Philhealth is earning so much profit that the Department of Finance wants to get the surplus funds for other unprogrammed expenses like Maharlika investment,” [Dr. Edelina De la Paz, chairperson of Health Alliance for Democracy (HEAD)] said.

The Department of Health (DOH) earlier announced that there is P89.9 billion unused government subsidy for Philhealth, the national health insurance program of the government. They sought to transfer the unused funds for “unprogrammed appropriations” in the 2024 budget.

During the pandemic, the Duterte administration was urged to hold accountable ranking officials of Philhealth over the alleged P15 billion ($307 million) corruption. Concerned groups and individuals have been calling out the contribution premium hike for workers, adding layers of burdens amid massive price hikes and inflation, as well as unresolved issues in the Philhealth.

Dr. Jamie Dasmariñas of the Coalition for People’s Right to Health (CPRH) said that utilizing Philhealth requires health institutions to be accredited. “If you are poor and you do not have a barangay health station, and the nearest station is also not accredited by Philhealth, there is no other option for you,” she said in Filipino.

Dasmariñas stressed that Philhealth funds should be reallocated to barangay health stations and local government units because the process of Philhealth is also taxing for patients, and mostly falls under layers of red tape.

In a unity statement, CPRH called on the Marcos Jr. administration to set up health centers in every barangay with a complement of adequate health personnel, basic laboratories, supplies, and equipment in the wake of severe understaffing and subpar working conditions of healthcare workers.

2024 Jul. 19

#philippines #cost of living #public health #corruption

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filipeanut · 2 years ago

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Banaba flowers, and even products & artwork in and around my biking grounds in Manila.

I’m beginning to see more and more local products using Banaba (𝘓𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘦𝘮𝘪𝘢 𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘰𝘴𝘢). It has long been a traditional medicinal source for various communities in the country. Banaba is native to Southeast Asia, and has been long known for its antidiabetic, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant properties (DOST PCHRD*).

Maybe one day every home will have a Banaba tree, helping urban ecosystems thrive with life and biodiversity. What local and native trees grow in your neighborhood? How have some of them been utilized by your neighbors and Indigenous communities? These are our health heirlooms, passed down by generation, and germination.

Learn more about Banaba and more of our "forest friends" at the Haribon Foundation: https://haribon.org.ph/support-our-work/rainforestation/forest-friends-of-the-philippines/meet-banaba/

*Department of Science and Technology, Philippine Council for Health Research and Development

#Banaba #𝘓𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘦𝘮𝘪𝘢 𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘰𝘴𝘢 #Tea #Philippine native trees #biodiversity

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mariacallous · 1 year ago

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In southern Israel, crops are now waiting in the sun, wilting further with every passing minute and shuddering a bit as army vehicles buzz past. The area’s farms have become a vast army staging area, pocked with olive green tents and tanks. Farmhands are nowhere in sight.

On Oct. 7, Hamas rampaged through this region killing more than a thousand people, including foreigners. As many as 7,000 Thai nationals, who make up the largest share of the agricultural workforce, fled Israel after nearly two dozen were abducted and three dozen massacred.

The veritable greenhouse of the nation is now dependent on university volunteers. They have tried to salvage the situation and pick the fruit before it rots, but their efforts have fallen short and the Israeli government has already started to import some items.

Israelis are proud of their technological innovations in agriculture and of their ability to grow in a largely arid region and feed their people. Now it is at the top of the list of sectors that will bear the brunt of a long war with Hamas. Oil and gas, tourism, health care, retail and technology are some of the others.

“Many of my colleagues have left,” said Cindy, a care-giver from the Philippines who asked to be identified only by her first name for safety reasons. “We are going, too, if it gets any worse,” she told me at a market in Jerusalem.

Many airlines have stopped flying to Israel while the government has asked for activities at a gas field to be halted to minimize the risk of a targeted attack. The Israeli shekel has already plummeted to a 14 year low, the central bank has cut the forecast for economic growth this year from 3 percent to 2.3 percent, and prominent industries are facing disruptions.

Israel entered the war with $200 billion in reserves and $14 billion in aid, mainly for military funding, from the United States. And yet experts say the ongoing conflict will cost the Israeli economy billions more and take much longer to recover than it has in the past. Israeli volunteers at home and abroad are chipping in with extra labor and economic assistance—an admirable gesture but insufficient to make up the economic shortfall.

Michel Strawczynski, an economist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and former director of the research department at the Israeli central bank, said the cost of previous two confrontations—the Lebanon war in the summer of 2006 and against Hamas in 2014—cost up to 0.5 percent of the GDP and mainly impacted the tourism sector. But this time, “estimations are for a fall of 3.5 percent to 15 percent in annual terms” in the last quarter of this year.

Entire towns have been abandoned and businesses shut down as 250,000 people have been evacuated and forced to seek refuge across hotels in the country or with relatives living elsewhere. Furthermore, the call to 360,000 reservists, who were employed in various jobs in peace time, has stretched companies and made their continuation as profit-making businesses precarious.

“This war will cause additional costs compared to these two (previous) confrontations also because of a massive participation of reservists, who are inserted in the labor market in normal times but will be absent from their jobs during the war,” Strawczynski said. “If the war is long, the impact of lack of human resources will result on a high cost for the Israeli economy.”

Tourism, a sector that makes up 3 percent of Israel’s GDP and indirectly provides 6 percent of total jobs, has been dealt a fatal blow, too. The beach in Tel Aviv and cobbled lanes of the old city in Jerusalem, the main tourist attractions, both lie vacant.

It’s peak tourist season, but restaurants and bars in the historical quarters of Jaffa gate served few visitors, mostly journalists. The tourists who throng this part of the world to soak in the sun and bathe in a mix of Middle Eastern and Western vibes—enjoying hummus and cocktails in a breezy balmy November—were absent.

The hotels were hosting the internally displaced, with some subsidy from the government but still at a huge loss.

“It’s peak season, but there are no tourists,” said Mohammad, an Arab Israeli and owner of a candy shop in Tel Aviv who also asked that only his first name be used for safety reasons. “No families, no children lining for candies.” His friend Ahmad Hasuna lifted his hands in the air and looked up at the sky when I asked about his business. “There is nothing. It’s very difficult,” he said and pointed to several shops that hadn’t opened since the war broke out in the south.

Both Israeli Jews and Arab entrepreneurs here were united in their desperation, sipping on coffee and hopelessly gazing at the empty streets. At the Market House Hotel nearby, Alaa Marshagi, an Israeli Arab, sat at the reception and said there was only 10 percent occupancy compared to previous years, “all journalists.” His colleague Avi Cohen, an Israeli Jew, said most of the rooms were occupied by people who evacuated from the south at a heavy discount. “We are hosting them at a 50 percent loss, plus free meals,” he told Foreign Policy. “Right now, the government is helping, but that’s only until Nov. 22.”

The startup industry in Israel has been a great success and, although it stands to suffer less in comparison, it was already under pressure as investors pulled back from a country mired in mass protests over judicial reforms. Investments in the sector halved last year sensing instability as thousands gathered against the government’s judicial reforms that would allegedly weaken the courts and empower ruling politicians.

A group of global venture capitalists have come to the aid of budding Israeli startups and are trying to raise millions of dollars to save them from bankruptcy. They have launched an initiative called Iron Nation to protect the companies, and the country’s economy, from collapsing under pressure. (Up to 20 percent of reservists doubled up as employees in the tech industry.) The founders of the initiative claimed that 150 companies have already sought help for a chance at receiving between $500,000 and $1.5 million to keep their businesses running.

According to a study by Hebrew University titled “Civil Society Engagement in Israel During the Iron Swords War,” nearly half of the Israeli population volunteered in some way to help compatriots directly or indirectly reeling under the effects of Hamas’s attack and the concomitant war. Professor Michal Almog-Bar, the author of the study, told Israeli media that domestic philanthropic organizations and NGOs donated “tens of millions of dollars,” while donations from Jews in North America was estimated to run into hundreds of millions of dollars.

Meanwhile, to meet the costs of the war effort—expected to rise into billions of shekels—the economists are pushing the government to reprioritize the budget. Three-hundred Israeli economists have written an open letter to the government and called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who hails from a far-right party, to urgently implement a range of measures however unpalatable to some of their constituents. They have asked that the money kept aside for educational programs for the ultra-orthodox communities be redirected to military expenditure.

Strawczynski said the priorities are to reallocate billions of shekels towards “defense expenditure” and to “indemnizating affected individuals and firms” particularly in the south and the north. “We recommend redirecting what is called coalition funds,” money allocated for key programs of different parties under the coalition agreement. “These issues are related to the groups of voters of those parties, and not to common interest,” he said.

The Israeli government has presented an economic aid plan that offers $1 billion to help businesses, and Finance Minister Smotrich has promised that “whatever doesn’t involve the wartime effort and the state’s resilience will be halted.” The far-right, however, is still adamant on not letting Palestinians be a part of the solution. National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, the most vocal far-right leader, has blocked a proposal to hire more Palestinians to meet the shortfall of workers in Israel farms.

The agriculture industry faces a shortfall of 10,000 farmers and the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture has proposed a plan to hire 8,000 of those from the West Bank—Palestinian women of all ages and men at 60 or older. Gvir, however, warns of a security risk, a claim that some support as mistrust between Israelis and Palestinians deepens but others find prejudiced, especially since 2 percent of the Israeli population already comprises Israeli Arabs who arguably have some sympathy for the Palestinian cause but are not in cahoots with Hamas.

Even as the shekel depreciated, a five-member committee of the Bank of Israel which oversees the monetary policy has decided to maintain the interest rate at 4.75 percent and the governor of the central bank underscored the economy’s resilience. “There should be no major changes to our fundamental fiscal position,” Bank of Israel Governor Amir Yaron said.

Israel is not new to conflict and has in the past sailed through, but this time the war is expected to be a longer affair and may turn into a regional confrontation. Strawczynski suggested the key factor would ultimately be the length of the conflict.

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