The United States deliberately spread anti-vax disinformation around the world
In a shocking new article for Reuters, investigative journalists Chris Bing and Joel Schectman report that the U.S. military ran a “secret campaign” to “sow doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and other life-saving aid that was being supplied by China” during the worst years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Starting early in 2020 and ending in mid-2021, they write, “the Pentagon used a combination of fake social media accounts on multiple platforms to spread fear of China’s vaccines,” including by claiming they might contain rat poison. The program initially targeted the Philippines, and many of the posts used the hashtag “#ChinaAngVirus,” Tagalog for “China is the virus,” urging Filipinos to reject China’s Sinovac vaccines.
During the operation, Bing and Schectman report that “the phony accounts used by the military had tens of thousands of followers,” which makes it plausible (although impossible to confirm) that they had a significant impact on Filipinos’ health decisions. Notably, a 2022 study in the medical journal PLOS Global Public Health lists online misinformation as a key factor in “vaccine hesitancy” in the Philippines, even quoting one patient who said “My least preferred vaccine brand is Sinovac because of its country of origin. I do not believe in China.” Now, it turns out that those exact fears were being deliberately stoked by the United States.
It wasn’t just the Philippines, either. Reuters reports that the program expanded “across Central Asia and the Middle East,” targeting Muslim communities with claims that the Chinese vaccines might contain pork gelatin—which could be considered haram, forbidden, under Islamic law.
The driving force behind the operation, it seems, was Lieutenant General Jonathan Braga. As the leader of the Department of Defense’s Special Operations Command Pacific, Braga reportedly “pressed his bosses in Washington to fight back in the so-called information space” against “China’s COVID diplomacy,” which he feared could lead to closer alliances between China and countries like the Philippines. This idea was controversial even in the Pentagon, and several State Department officials objected—but in 2019, Trump-appointed Secretary of Defense Mark Esper signed an order changing the status of “the Pentagon’s competition with China and Russia to the priority of active combat,” and allowing “psyops” like the ones Braga had in mind to be conducted.
It really can’t be overstated how heinous this program was, even by the standards of the U.S. government. According to the World Health Organization, the Sinovac vaccine is "safe and effective for all individuals aged 18 and above," with no more side effects than any U.S. brand. Nor did the military care whether it was safe or not; as one anonymous source told Reuters, “We weren’t looking at this from a public health perspective. We were looking at how we could drag China through the mud.” The Pentagon certainly did that. And in the process, they almost certainly got people killed.
When leaders like Jonathan Braga and Mark Esper look with dismay on declining U.S. influence around the world, they shouldn’t blame China. They should realize that a growing number of people dislike and distrust the United States precisely because it does things like this—waging de facto biological warfare against innocent people just to prevent China from getting ahead. It’s a monstrous crime, and everyone responsible should be put on trial in an international court.
Trump’s “all tariff” proposal might be his most evil idea yet
Donald Trump is floating the idea of replacing the federal income tax with an “all tariff policy,” according to a campaign source who spoke with CNBC. It’s an even more radical expansion of a policy Trump has already floated publicly, to place a minimum 10-percent tariff on all imports, which would be used to finance more tax cuts that would disproportionately benefit the rich.
Right now, our tax system is filled with loopholes that allow the rich to avoid paying what they owe. (Trump has already made it more so.) But, at the very least, the U.S. is supposed to have a progressive tax system, in theory. Trump’s plan would effectively fulfill the long-standing conservative goal of doing away with progressive taxation as we know it.
As Jonathan Chait writes in an uncharacteristically astute piece for New York Magazine:
The rejection of progressive taxation on moral grounds remains a foundational tenet of American conservative thought. Conservatives have never stopped devising proposals to roll back progressive taxation, employing a wide array of creative ideas with varying levels of plausibility, from the utopian (the flat tax, the “fair tax,” Herman Cain’s 9/9/9 tax) to more banal proposals to slash or eliminate taxes on estates, capital gains, dividends, or the top income tax bracket.
But a flat tax is quaint compared to what Trump wants to do. While tariffs are technically a tax on importers, businesses always pass them on to consumers in the form of price hikes. As Andrew Leahey writes inForbes:
Such price hikes in everyday goods disproportionately impact low and middle-income households, because they are the consumers that spend the highest percentage of their income on consumable goods. This converts a progressive income tax—higher income folks pay a higher rate—into aregressive tax, akin to a sales tax. As such, in the near term, the only groups benefiting from the elimination of a broad-based income tax and the ratcheting up of tariffs are those folks at the higher end of the socioeconomic spectrum.
In other words, replacing income taxes with an “all tariff” policy would require the poorest Americans to pay a much greater percentage of their incomes in the form of higher prices.
In addition, Forbes estimates that getting rid of the federal income tax would require an 85 percent average tariff in order to match the amount of revenue brought in by the income tax. This is highly unlikely to be put in place, which means that massive cuts to government spending would become necessary. And given how Republicans typically conduct fiscal policy, it’s not like that money will come out of the defense budget — it’ll surely mean cuts to social programs like food stamps,Medicaid, and Social Security, which will hurt the poor even more.
“Protectionism” usually has a populist connotation in American politics, one that Trump successfully wielded to brand himself as a working-class fighter in his first term, even while pushing policies that shifted wealth upwards. Trump’s trade war failed to bring back Rust Belt jobs as he promised, but he still gained votes there as a result. Now, he’s seemingly leaning on a set of policies with a pro-working class veneer to push what can only be described as a multi-front class war on behalf of the rich. As a branding exercise, it might be the perfect medicine to help a decades-old GOP policy dream go down more smoothly. As a policy in its own right, it’s one of the most destructive things he has ever proposed, which is saying a lot.
“See these TicTacs, folks? You won’t be affording these any more. Bye-bye!” (Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr)
PAST AFFAIRS
For our online edition, Benjamin Studebaker explored "How the Left Should Think About Trade":
CROOKS vs. SICKOS (Or, "What are our politicians and oligarchs up to?")
❧ John Fetterman’s history of reckless and distracted driving is coming under new scrutiny. Last week, Fetterman was involved in a car crash on Interstate 70 in Maryland, in which he reportedly rear-ended another driver while traveling “well over” the speed limit of 70 mph. Thankfully, it appears nobody was seriously hurt. But as Annie Karni writes for the New York Times, it wasn’t the first time Fetterman has been a menace on the road.
In fact, Fetterman pleaded guilty to driving 34 mph above the posted speed limit back in March, and to breaking the speed limit by 24 mph in 2016, both in his home state of Pennsylvania. In the Times, Karni also reports that former members of the senator’s staff “said Mr. Fetterman was a notoriously distracted driver who often made video calls and read news articles on his phone while driving,” which “caused them major anxiety every time he got behind the wheel.” Some, it seems, “eventually refused to be in a car driven by the senator.”
Ironically, Fetterman is the junior senator for Pennsylvania, which passed tougher distracted-driving penalties into law just this month—and for good reason. In 2022, the Department of Transportation estimates that 3,308 people were killed in the United States by distracted drivers, and research suggests using a cell phone while driving is just as dangerous as driving drunk. Fetterman’s habits show a horrifying disregard for other people’s lives—but then, so do his political choices, like calling for a crackdown at the border or backing the Israeli war machine as it devastates Gaza. On or off the road, self-centered callousness seems to be his one real principle.
The category is “photographs taken moments before disaster.”
Could “fusion voting,” a proposal that would allow third parties to endorse major-party candidates, save democracy? (The New Republic)
The Supreme Court has overturned a federal ban on “bump stocks,” a gun accessory that will probably cause more mass shootings if it remains on the market. (The Nation)
Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein has identified some creepy things in the new Homeland Security budget, including surveillance blimps for the Canadian border and DNA testing to identify the “geographic origins” of migrants. (Substack)
The House’s latest defense bill includes a measure automatically registering all men aged 18 to 26 for the draft. In Reason Magazine (not everything they write is terrible), CJ Ciaramella writes that “the Selective Service should be abolished, not made more efficient and equitable.”
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was recorded saying he wants to return America to being “a place of godliness” and that “one side or the other is going to win” between the political Left and Right. (Rolling Stone)
COMMON, EVERYDAY AMERICAN CHUCK SCHUMER PREPARES A DELICIOUS HAMMED BURGER
The Senate Majority Leader posted this Fathers’ Day photo and promptly deleted it after people noticed that he’d placed cheese on top of a burger that was fully raw, which is… not how that works.
AROUND THE STATES
❧ Florida was just hit with record-breaking amounts of rain and floods that led Governor Ron DeSantis to declare a state of emergency. The region got more than 20 inches of rainfall within a 24-hour period last Wednesday.
Florida is preparing for a summer expected to feature more tropical storms than usual, resulting from record level Atlantic Ocean temperatures. But DeSantis continued to double down on the bill he signed last month to erase mentions of “climate change” from pieces of state legislation. He rejected the idea that anything out of the ordinary was happening with Florida’s weather, saying “This is clearly not unprecedented,” even though the rainfall recorded on Wednesday was “double the historical average rainfall for all of June,” according to AccuWeather. “We don’t want our climate policy driven by climate ideology,” he said in defense of the bill.
Of course, it’s not an “ideological” statement to point out that Florida reached a heat index of 115F in May this year, which is the hottest temperature ever recorded in the state. It’s not “ideological” to say that Florida is experiencing rapid sea level rise that will have coastal cities partially submerged by mid-century. And it’s not "ideological" to say that warmer global temperatures, resulting from greenhouse gas emissions, are the proximate causes of these things. They are observable, testable facts about reality. If anything is “ideological,” it’s removing inconvenient facts from the public lexicon, pushing ahead with policies that make climate change worse, and dismissing those concerned about it as “radical green zealots.”
Once again, Elon Musk reminds the world that no amount of money can buy cool:
In other news
Showing that Republicans really don’t understand irony, a Florida school district has banned a book about book bans, accusing it of “teaching rebellion of school board authority.” (Yes, they said "of," not "against," which suggests they could use a few more books in their lives themselves.) If someone writes a book about them banning the book ban book, they’ll probably ban that too. (Talahassee Democrat)
How many books would a book ban ban, if a book ban could ban books? All of them, apparently.
Maryland governor Wes Moore just issued pardons for roughly 175,000 marijuana-related convictions—which, although it won’t release anyone currently imprisoned, will clean up a lot of criminal records. Other Democratic governors, take note! (Baltimore Sun)
Executives from the ADHD telehealth startup Done were arrested last week and charged with fraud for overprescribing stimulants, leaving more than 10,000 patients with disruptions to their care. (New York Times)
Cities across the Midwest and Northeast, like Chicago and St. Louis, are experiencing a “heat dome” with temperatures up to 105 degrees Fahrenheit. (The Guardian)
(Graphic by Cali Traina Blume)
Five Venezuelan asylum seekers being held in U.S. immigration detention went on a hunger strike to protest the policy requiring them to be sent back to Mexico, where they say they face danger. They allege that authorities put them into solitary confinement as punishment. (Source NM)
North Carolina's Governor Roy Cooper has vetoed a bill that would charge and imprison 16 and 17-year-olds as adults—but the state GOP has a veto-proof majority, meaning it’ll probably become law anyway. (Associated Press)
Legendary hot dog eating champion Joey Chestnut has been banned from competition for endorsing a vegan meat substitute. (The New Republic)
AROUND THE WORLD
❧ Sudan is facing potentially the worst famine the world has seen in forty years as its civil war enters its second year. Citing U.S. officials, the Guardianreports that “aid deliveries continue to be blocked by the warring armies but arms supplies to both sides continue to flow in.” Meanwhile, the United Nations has appealed for aid, but as of last month only received 16 percent of the funds it needs. America’s ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, says she’s “seen mortality projections estimating that in excess of 2.5 million people…could die by the end of September.”
Sudan’s civil war has killed more than 15,000 people and displaced another 8.2 million since last April, when a power struggle broke out between two rival generals in the government. The United Nations reports widespread atrocities committed by both the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group, including the use of child soldiers, sexual assault as a weapon of war, and torture. For two months, the RSF, whose force is largely recruited from the Janjaweed militias that terrorized non-Arab minorities in Darfur 20 years ago, has been carrying out a brutal siege upon the city of el-Fasher in that region’s north. Last week, amid reports of more ethnically motivated violence, the UN Security Council voted unanimously to call for the siege to be halted, a call which has so far not been answered.
The UN also called for outside actors to stop fomenting the conflict. Among those nations accused of involvement are Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt. The United States has attempted to broker peace talks between the two sides, but at the same time, its ally in the UAE has been giving weapons to the RSF for more than a year, despite pleas for them to stop. Mohamed Ibn Chambas, the chair of the African Union’s “Silencing the Guns” initiative, told the Associated Press in April that “external support in terms of supply of war materiel and other needs has been the main reason why this war has lasted so long.”
Things have only gotten worse since this map was made. (Map: Sudan War Monitor)
❧ South Africa’s new coalition government is leaning hard to the Right. Ever since the African National Congress (ANC) failed to win a majority in South Africa’s general elections earlier this month, it’s been obvious that they’d have to form an alliance with another party (or parties) to remain in power. The question was, would they team up with a party of the political Left, or the Right?
Now, the answer is clear. At the time of writing, South Africa’s ruling coalition contains a total of five parties, and three of them are right-leaning. The most important is the Democratic Alliance (DA), a party that espouses free-market ideology and is generally seen as representing South Africa’s wealthy white minority. Its leader, John Steenhuisen, will be the first white leader with a prominent role in South Africa’s government since the end of Apartheid in 1991—a fact that’s predictably causing racial tensions and concerns, although it should be noted that the DA was an anti-Apartheid opposition party in that era. The conservative Zulu-led Inkatha Freedom Party have also joined the coalition, as have the far-right Patriotic Alliance, both minor parties.
It needn’t have been this way. There was an opportunity for the ANC to build closer ties with either of South Africa’s major left-wing parties, who stand for the concept of “Radical Economic Transformation” (RET). Either the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) or Jacob Zuma’s breakaway uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) would have put them over the edge to a majority. Instead, they chose the Right. Going forward, it may lead to all kinds of nasty consequences, like increased privatization of South Africa’s natural resources, the scuttling of plans for universal healthcare, and even—as Al Jazeera speculates—a weakening of South Africa’s critically important genocide case against Israel. But the ANC has made its bed, and now everyone else has to lie in it.
Meet the new face of South African politics. (Photo: Reuters, via the Telegraph)
⚜ LONG READ: In the American Prospect, Robert Kuttner describes how French President Macron’s gamble of calling snap elections has surprisingly benefitted the Left:
Commentators across the political spectrum denounced Macron for his arrogance and narcissism. In voting for Marine Le Pen’s party, French voters were not rejecting the Republic; they were rejecting Macron. How could he possibly believe that his grandiose words would cause them to change their allegiance? The likelihood was that Le Pen’s National Rally party would gain the most seats; her protégé, 28-year-old Jordan Bardella, would be named prime minister; and Macron would be a lame duck for the remaining three years of his term, governing in coalition with the far right.
But then something quite unexpected happened. Macron’s move caused the dispirited French left—Socialists, Communists, Greens—to put aside their differences and resolve to run on a common program as a New Popular Front. It now looks as if the left could be more unified going into the June 30–July 7 snap elections than at any time since the presidency of François Mitterrand, whose first government in 1981 included both Socialists and Communists.
In France, it may soon be Jean-Luc Mélenchon's time to shine. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
In other news
Award-winning novelist Arundhati Roy is being prosecuted by Indian authorities for her comments on the Kashmir independence movement. (Common Dreams)
An Israeli politician just quoted Hitler to justify the ongoing genocide in Palestine, calling for a “Hebrew Gaza.” Maybe it's just us, but we tend to feel Hitler is a bad guy to compare yourself to. (Palestine Chronicle)
The Biden administration is claiming to provide massive amounts of humanitarian aid from a recently constructed pier in Gaza. “But supplies from the pier aren’t flowing to Palestinians, and never really have,” writes Stephen Semler in Responsible Statecraft.
After anti-colonial uprisings in Kanaky (aka New Caledonia), French president Emmanuel Macron has suspended controversial reforms that would have allowed more French nationals to vote in independence referenda. (The Guardian)
Indonesia is trying to build a lavish new capital city. It’s not going great. (Foreign Policy)
A new report found that Justin Trudeau’s Canadian government (and that of his conservative predecessor Stephen Harper) violated procurement laws to give contracts to the notorious consulting firm McKinsey. This firm famously helped Canada’s largest grocery store chains keep the price of bread artificially high for more than 15 years. (Jacobin)
PAST AFFAIRS
On the Current Affairs podcast, Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe of the New York Times—who authored the book When McKinsey Comes to Town— discuss how the firm “has assisted opioid manufacturers, tobacco companies, fossil fuel companies, ICE, and authoritarian governments, and in each case has covered up its footprints.”
With the Tories circling the drain in advance of the UK’s upcoming elections, former Brexit party leader Nigel Farage has released the manifesto for his new far-right Reform UK party. It includes leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, taking Britain out of its “net zero” carbon pledges, and banning “transgender ideology” from schools. (Politico)
Politico also has a list of the 23 biggest weirdos entering the European Parliament: Among them are a Cypriot YouTuber famous for having “stood for 4 days straight” and a rabid antisemite who extinguished the Polish parliament’s Hanukkah menorah. (He also vandalized its Christmas tree because it had an ornament with the EU and Ukrainian flags.)
FISH FACT OF THE WEEK
Clownfish can change their gender!
As we continue through Pride month, it’s worth reflecting on the fact that gender roles are anything but simple, natural, or inevitable. As an example, take the humble clownfish. Although most people are familiar with them from the Disney film Finding Nemo, clownfishes’ actual lives are a lot more complicated. You see, all clownfish are born “male”—or maybe “male-presenting” is the better word. But every clownfish also has egg-producing reproductive organs, which lie dormant in the “males.” When the current matriarch dies, the largest and most dominant of the “males” will activate these organs and transition to “female,” taking the top spot in the female-led society. (Unlike with humans, the issue of which bathroom to use does not arise, since they all poop in the ocean.)
Is this fish male or female? Depends when you ask. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
Writing and research by Stephen Prager and Alex Skopic. Editing and additional material by Nathan J. Robinson and Lily Sánchez. Header graphic by Cali Traina Blume. Fact-checking by Justin Ward. This news briefing is a product of Current Affairs Magazine. Subscribe to our gorgeous and informative print edition here, and our delightful podcast here.
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