China is furious that environmental readings have exposed lies around COVID-19 deaths. The data collected shows a clear mismatch from the information released by the Chinese government about how many people died and at what time. This is a very sensitive subject with China engaging in a cold trade war with Australia over the origins of COVID-19 while providing support to affected smallers countries as calls are made for China to pay billions in penalties due to their coverup.
Before Beijing's crackdown, China's bureaucracy had been conducting business as usual – analysing, assessing and reporting on everything about its citizenry. The researchers from Washington University and Ohio State University say they have tracked down this early government data and combined it with reports in state-controlled and social media.
Among this data was the activities of eight crematories in Wuhan. By January 25 these were inexplicably operating around the clock.
Based on such sources, the researchers argue the total number of infections and fatalities before February was at least ten times that of the official figure announced by Beijing.
[...] The study tracked the sale [of] funeral urns to verify these estimates. In the January-March period during which the crematoriums were operating at peak levels, some 36,000 had been distributed.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by captain normal on Monday June 15 2020, @07:33PM (69 children)
"Following the death of his father, Sir Keith, in 1952, Rupert Murdoch inherited The News, which has been described by Murdoch biographer Bruce Page[11] as the "foundation stone" of News Limited (and News Corporation)."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_Corp_Australia [wikipedia.org]
Can't get anyone to buy Faux News so they slip in an AC with an article to try to bolster Trump's claim of China creating the Sars-Covd 2 virus.
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday June 15 2020, @07:39PM
Secrecy and lies all around
All our fancy machinery and technology has gone dark
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Freeman on Monday June 15 2020, @07:42PM (54 children)
The article mentioned, has nothing to do with the "claim of China creating the Sars-Covd 2 virus". The article is about the accuracy of the reports sent out by China with regards to the number of cases and deaths due to SARS-CoV-2. As in, it's possible that they reported 1 out of every 10 cases. At which point, you can't rely on the data coming out of China.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @07:46PM
Don't try to argue sense to something that has their own dick in their mouth as they write their drivel.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Monday June 15 2020, @07:47PM (41 children)
At which point, you can't rely on the data coming out of China.
Or anybody else. Nobody is telling the truth. Singling out China is political campaign bullshit.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Touché) by Freeman on Monday June 15 2020, @08:04PM (34 children)
I could see you saying that about this piece:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-01/china-concealed-extent-of-virus-outbreak-u-s-intelligence-says [bloomberg.com]
And would have said, you've got a leg to stand on. The report you're responding to is with regards to someone digging into a perceived discrepancy and running with it. Unless, you're saying that the USA is deliberately under-reporting. In which case, I'm going to say that you're very likely, wrong.
Perhaps, everything would have happened the way they did, if China had reported honest figures. We will never know. What is highly likely and seems to becoming apparent, is that China has been covering up the extent of the spread of SARS-COV-2 infection in China. Why? To save face? To cover up something worse? Just poor planning / decision making? Beats me and I doubt we'll ever know. Similar to the question of "Who killed JFK?" and that one was caught on camera. Sure, crappy black and white film, that doesn't hold a candle to today's technology, but still.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1, Interesting) by fustakrakich on Monday June 15 2020, @08:19PM (32 children)
Unless, you're saying that the USA is deliberately under-reporting. In which case, I'm going to say that you're very likely, wrong.
Under, over, it doesn't matter. The mere thought of an inaccurate count, or corrupt incompetence in the US or anywhere else but China is simply waved off, dismissed out of hand.
Sorry, this is scapegoating to distract from domestic issues
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Freeman on Monday June 15 2020, @10:56PM (31 children)
Inaccuracy is one thing, sure you might be off a bit, but overall the numbers should be predictable. Someone in a backroom going, hey, we should make the number be X amount or no more than X amount, is an entirely different matter.
This was reported by an Australian news service, by what seem to be legitimate professionals. Two MDs from Washington University and one professor from Ohio State University, with a random AT&T person, that I have no idea what they do.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday June 15 2020, @11:12PM (29 children)
All those people have to clear what they say.
I'm not doubting the story per se, it's the exaggeration and targeting for political reasons, by the time it gets to us, well, you remember that kids game, ironically called Chinese Whispers?
Sorry, at this point there is nobody. We are in the dark.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 16 2020, @12:48AM (28 children)
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday June 16 2020, @01:30AM (27 children)
Sorry, yours maybe, not mine
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 16 2020, @02:38AM
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday June 16 2020, @02:41AM (25 children)
Sorry, I didn't make your shameful defense of China. Such as:
If this is true, it's not a mere "thought of an inaccurate count" or corrupt incompetence, but a great evil that due to the spread of covid throughout the world has caused an enormous amount of human suffering and looks to cause a lot more.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday June 16 2020, @03:32AM (24 children)
Damn! You do just like the democrats about Trump... You actually think I'm defending them and saying they don't lie? How dumb can you be?
You people really are confused.
No, can't be, you're just clowning around, can't take you seriously...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 16 2020, @03:44AM (23 children)
Wrong. There are more ways to defend tyranny than that. This is a classic example of whataboutism. Dismissing a great evil because someone did a lesser evil.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday June 16 2020, @05:14AM (22 children)
You're nuts, but thanks for clarifying
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday June 16 2020, @12:36PM (21 children)
Sorry, reality doesn't work that way. Your first post [soylentnews.org] was a whataboutism and many of the rest were as well.
So what that there's "secrecy and lies all around"? The story is about a very specific set of alleged secrecy and lies.
Whataboutism is a typical evasive fallacy which supports evil through dilution, moral equivalence, and redirection of the argument. There's all this secrecy and lies so what does this particular secrecy and lies matter?
The obvious rebuttal to this nonsense is two-fold. First, it's obviously one-sided, you only bring up the argument with particular parties (other examples being bringing up [soylentnews.org] US elections when discussing the bogus Russian-run referendum in newly occupied Crimea or bringing up [soylentnews.org] a global map of corruption when confronted with evidence of Chinese illegal organ harvesting, and the Trump journals and observations are generally coupled with digs against the Democrat side). There's a clear pattern of biased evasion to these. You never excuse US flaws by claiming that China or Russia do them too.
Second, the accusation or evil act is still there no matter how many other people and countries do their own bits of evil. Whataboutism got its name in the first place because it became a standard cliched ploy in Soviet rhetoric for dodging accusations. But the evil of the Soviets remained no matter how many flaws they brought up about others.
You don't fight evil by saying others do it too.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday June 16 2020, @03:58PM (20 children)
You just sound like your regular democrat there, refusing to clean up your own house. All you have are distractions. I expected better from you
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 17 2020, @12:58AM (19 children)
Why should my country be treated any different from China or Russia? You excuse worse in this thread.
Tu quoque.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @02:51AM (1 child)
Is this a China vs. Russia robit flame war?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 17 2020, @04:15AM
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday June 17 2020, @04:14AM (16 children)
Why should my country be treated any different from China or Russia?
Because you're not in China or Russia. You don't pay taxes there.
Curb your own damn dog
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 17 2020, @04:32AM (12 children)
And what country are you a citizen of, so that we may know what country you are allowed to criticize?
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday June 17 2020, @08:23AM (11 children)
You have to make at least a feeble effort to control yourselves before complaining about others.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 17 2020, @01:28PM (10 children)
You already checked that box off for us. Recall we're quick and agile [soylentnews.org]? Democracies, especially those with careful separations of power, have built in control mechanisms.
The precondition was always satisfied, you just choose not to recognize it. So what other flimsy excuses do you have for why I can't complain about genuine evil of the world?
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday June 17 2020, @06:15PM (9 children)
Everything is personal. You can be as quick as agile as you want to be. Your choice
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 17 2020, @11:51PM (8 children)
Not a good excuse.
Sorry, but quite and agile is not a synonym for gullible. You haven't even presented a reason why this is supposed to be a good idea.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday June 18 2020, @12:22AM (7 children)
Not making excuses. That's your department
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 18 2020, @06:39AM (6 children)
or conflate those alleged actions with generic "secrecy and lies", you're making excuses for China's behavior as I already explained (and which echoes a larger pattern throughout your posts elsewhere).
And notice how you just assert stuff, Mr. "Not making excuses"? You can't even defend yourself.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday June 18 2020, @08:05AM (5 children)
Harping on China will get you nowhere. It is superficial bullshit.
You pointed out nothing. You're only making excuses for your own self.
Your problems are much closer to home, in fact, they are at home, not in China
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 19 2020, @02:10AM (4 children)
What makes you think I'm harping? If I bring up China again and again as alleged, it's because they do these things again and again. Let us keep in mind that a half century ago, this very government was one of the worst of history. It's extremely unusual in history to see a government of that level of brutality become so much more humane. I think a big part of what made that happen was the harping - the repeated, truthful nettling that embarrassed leaders and citizens alike.
Rather than go nowhere, I think we have the potential to see the most humane and beneficial government China has ever seen.
How many people have to die before it's something?
Ignore the beam in your brother's eye, because you have a little something, if you squint carefully... no the other eye...
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday June 19 2020, @04:40AM (3 children)
*sigh* your psychosis is showing
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 19 2020, @12:26PM (2 children)
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday June 19 2020, @04:26PM (1 child)
No, the fallacies are all yours, you're just repeating yourself. I don't feel like following your example at the moment.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Friday June 19 2020, @05:58PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday June 28 2020, @03:21PM (2 children)
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday June 28 2020, @06:01PM (1 child)
Some dogs just don't stay on their own lawn.
As the whole world is painfully aware
Worry about your own first
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 29 2020, @01:45AM
You've already acknowledged that box is checked.
(Score: 3, Informative) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Tuesday June 16 2020, @12:27AM
It appears to have been published by the murdoch media which are, despite the ".au", most unAustralian.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @11:55PM
So when Florida died that analyst for not changing the numbers, they weren't trying to deliberately underreport?
(Score: -1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @08:09PM (5 children)
This pokes a giant hole in the "America has the most coronavirus infections of any country in the world! OMG, Trump is a murderer!" story that the Democrat media keep repeating over and over, and that nobody with honesty or a brain would believe, given China is so much more populous and the source of the virus. It's pure Democrat election year propaganda of a crudeness you'd expect out of North Korea.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @09:01PM (3 children)
No it isn't.
Trump's fuckups are very clearly his own, and there is no need to make him seem worse than he is. From pushing against lockdowns, for preemptive re-openings, all the way to inspiring fatal remedies yes he is very responsible for many deaths. Directly responsible for the wife of at least one conservative, I haven't been keeping tabs since that story but I've heard of more people drinking chemical cleaning products.
Call them idiots all you'd like, but there is one idiot with a lot of instiutional authority who is planting the ideas in their heads.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @02:11AM (2 children)
No, that wife murdered him and used Trump as the excuse. She had a history of abuse against him and gave him a significantly higher dose than she put in her own drink. Last I heard she was being arrested.
People are drinking chemical cleaning products because they think it'll sanitize their mouths, just like teens were eating laundry detergent because they thought it was a cool dare. People do stupid things under emotional distress. Trump was acting like a business CEO telling his engineering department "Wouldn't it be cool if we synergize these two things? Why don't you go look into that." The proper response is to nod your head yes then walk away and get back to doing what you were originally doing.
If people misunderstood him that's on them. If blogs and news agencies had highly misleading headlines then they should have been sued into bankruptcy. People are responsible for their own actions. If they choose to follow the advice of any person that's their choice. If they choose to think before acting then that's their choice too.
Trump is a bad president, but some of the things he does is actually great (a positive side effect is still a positive outcome). For the lockdowns, it's far far far better that the states set their own lockdown policies than the federal government locking everyone down. By Trump just bad mouthing things and not acting, he's giving power back to the states were it was supposed to be. That reduces the power of the federal government, reduces the power of the head of executive branch, and causes state government to grow up and act for themselves instead of being spoon-fed what to do. It is far easier for a population to make changes to their local government and Trump is slowly making those position matter again. Yes he's pushed for earlier openings, but he hasn't forced any. It's still up to the states and towns. If they're too cowardly to do it right then that's again on them and they are more easily replaced.
In the long term, he'll be an okay president for all the things he failed to do. He's also really bad at corruption. I'm very glad we don't have a president who's good at corruption, which normally is the case. Stop looking at the negative side of everything. (and don't forget Fake News directly brought down the Berlin Wall. It isn't always a bad thing)
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by fustakrakich on Tuesday June 16 2020, @04:05PM (1 child)
Yep, Trump is fairly normal [caitlinjohnstone.com], but some consider him to be a bit too revealing.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @04:10AM
Flamebait
Heh, so funny, still lots of democrats in the room...
(Score: 1, Redundant) by Rich26189 on Tuesday June 16 2020, @06:43PM
+1 just for that first sentence.
(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday June 16 2020, @02:20AM (3 children)
What are we going to say once the US death tools hits a million? On annual, probably.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday June 16 2020, @02:54PM (2 children)
Hopefully, not turn into a communist dictatorship, because this horrible virus is going around killing 4% or less of the people infected. You dislike Trump now? How would you like dictator Trump, for life? For all of the problems with our current system, we've got plenty of worse options to choose from. Anarchy, Dictatorship, Tribalism, et al.
https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/the-worst-form-of-government/ [winstonchurchill.org]
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1, Troll) by legont on Tuesday June 16 2020, @03:02PM
My dislike of Trump is orders of magnitude less than my hate of Washington swamp in general and Clinton's gang in particular. Over the last three decades they methodically destroyed the country. The core - while middle class men - were hit especially hard. Not to say that black men got it much easier.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0, Redundant) by fustakrakich on Tuesday June 16 2020, @04:34PM
Ah, but the corollary, "The best argument against Democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." -- Uncertain if he really said that, but the subject is incomplete without it.
I still prefer focus on our own domestic liars more than those of foreign adversaries that we can't do anything about
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday June 16 2020, @11:06AM (6 children)
And we did this one months ago: Distributing urns has nothing to do with actual deaths. It could be that they were stockpiling them in case of further deaths. It could be that someone had panic-ordered a bazillion of them and they had to get rid of them somehow, e.g. by distributing them all over the city. Or, given that this was China, someone's brother-in-law was issued a state contract to make a bazillion of them and then had to get rid of them somehow. This is about as useful as counting cars in hospital carparks and claiming the CIA did it or whatever the last conspiracy theory was.
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Tuesday June 16 2020, @11:22AM (5 children)
You don't preemptively fire the ovens, however.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by driverless on Tuesday June 16 2020, @11:30AM (4 children)
That's a different conspiracy theory: China, notorious for its heavy pollution, experiences less pollution during the lockdown. When pollution returns after the lockdown ends it's obviously due to secret crematoria being run and not because of, well, the usual pollution returning once the lockdown ends.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Muad'Dave on Tuesday June 16 2020, @02:23PM (3 children)
These crematoria were allegedly being run __before__ the official lockdown, not after.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday June 16 2020, @04:38PM
And Iraq has nukes and is overturning incubators! This means WAR!
Anybody bother to verify this shit?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 4, Insightful) by driverless on Wednesday June 17 2020, @01:17AM (1 child)
That's what I love about conspiracy theories, they take a bunch of random unconnected events, often supported by marginal data, and carefully string them together to support a particular narrative. Let's look at what's being reported here...
Firstly, the time to reduce a body to ashes is 1-3 hours, let's say on average 2 hours. The crematoria where I live, a large city nowhere near China admittedly, typically have one oven. So going from a 12-hour working period to a 24-hour working period means a crematorium will process... six extra dead people! Wow! That's practically a pandemic!
Even if they're larger and have two or even three ovens, you've now raised the total to a massive twelve or even eighteen people per day.
Now look at when it happened. As the report points out, it's right in the middle of the Chinese New Year. During that period, no funerals occur, no-one gets buried, because it's incredibly bad luck. Guess what happens to all the extra bodies that can't be buried during that time?
So you've got two explanations, both of which fit the observed behaviour: A slight increase in cremations during the Chinese New Year when you can't bury people or a sikrit conspiracy by the evil communist yellow peril. One of those is a perfectly straightforward occurrence requiring no magical leaps of faith and the other isn't but makes for a great conspiracy and news headlines. Take your pick.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday June 17 2020, @03:18PM
Last I checked, conspiracy theories, are just theories. Whereas the reported research, seems to indicate that China is covering up, saving face, making poor decisions, trying to maintain the stranglehold over their citizens, or what not. The paper says that the crematoria are only supposed to run for four hours a day. An average of 1.5 hours would be more reasonable, with a 1 - 3 hour time frame. Still, we'll go with 2. So, they ramped up from 2 people a day to 12 people a day. Yes, that is significant. Other circumstantial evidence, also indicates that they are lying.
Now let's see here, a regime that is noted for lying (saving face/corruption/doing whatever they feel like and silencing the populace), has posted, circumspect numbers. Yeah, that seems legit. As in, it's 99.99% likely that they are lying.
Looks like someone didn't read the article or someone is trying to spin something.
But you can go ahead and spin your China is the one true nation that will save us all spiel.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday June 15 2020, @08:43PM (5 children)
Who cares what Trump says? Being no virologist he relies on his staff. They can offer good info, or they can stab him in the back.
The possibilities are two, either covid virus escaped china's lab because of a mistake/evil calculation, or they framed china. Difficult to trust any political statement by any nation, but China Russia the US Israel and Arabs are berlusconi tier lately
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @09:21PM (4 children)
Or this is just nature doing its thing, and if you've been following criticism of the numbers from Western democracies, we find that everybody has been lying about their numbers.
Now we have an indication that China too lies about their numbers. Everybody lies about their numbers until journalists catch them at it. Then Trump and China will still double down anyway. C'est la vie.
The only thing that is shocking to me is that the rulers can keep you distracted with so many levels of us vs. them. But that should not be shocking to me. Want to rule the planet of the apes? Convince these apes over here that those apes over there hate their freedumbs, and then do the same with those apes. Profit. You could strip-mine the entire planet (the apes will take care of the labor for you too!) and sell it all for gold-plated latinum and the apes would be too busy attacking each other over their missing resources to figure out where it went.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @02:35AM
Journalists lie about their numbers too. Everyone is biased with an agenda.
FFS, it's a virus with a 2 week incubation period. It's been running rampant on the world for over 6 months shutting down whole economies. That's more than 24 weeks. Can anyone seriously claim that we still don't know how the fuck covid works?
There may not have been time to create an vaccine or defense against covid. But by this time there should be absolutely NO EXCUSE for not having a complete FACTUAL breakdown on how it infects, who it infects and what steps need and should be taken to deal with it.
It's just one big media shit show of agenda pushing.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday June 16 2020, @01:51PM (2 children)
How much have they been lying about their numbers? Are they all secretly running their crematoriums full time?
Which happens a lot less often in China than it does in democracies around the world. When there is this breezy a disregard for the quality and quantity of the lies (and as in this case, the institutions that have some effect on reducing the degree and harm of those lies), that indicates to me that the lying doesn't really matter to you. There's a lot of these moral equivalences in the overall discussion. It's time we stopped that.
China lied in the crucial early phase of a disease that has killed over 400k people. But those lies blurred in all the other lies you don't really care about either. So you decided to blather about stripmining the Earth instead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @09:10PM (1 child)
Which part? The lying or the being caught at lying?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 16 2020, @09:50PM
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @09:24PM (1 child)
They are too late to help Australia, which is slowly becoming a Chinese vassal state.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @01:48AM
And Europe is becoming a Muslim state! OMG!!! Elect Trump!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @10:27PM (4 children)
China is lying. We have pretty good stats to back that up at this point. You do not have to blame fox news for that. You can do the math yourself. Just the wuhan prov where it started is bigger than most states where the body count is higher. They also did not lock down until it was really kicking off.
We also have on the ground accounts of real people saying otherwise. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFftsn6izic [youtube.com]
We get it you hate trump and you hate 'fauxnews'. But thinking the China gov has your best interests in mind is silly.
If China created the virus is 'plausible' but not exactly provable in any way unless someone who did it comes forward. If that is also true no one would dare. They would find themselves and their families family in a 're-education' camp. The likely source is probably some animal that was sick and undercooked food. A delicacy in many Chinese areas is to eat animals live as they feel it tastes better and gives them power.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Tuesday June 16 2020, @12:32AM (3 children)
As silly as thinking the US gov has our best interests in mind.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Tuesday June 16 2020, @12:35AM
Forgot to add an important bit:
I didn't know there was any question about that, apart from transparent face-saving denials.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by Kitsune008 on Tuesday June 16 2020, @01:36AM (1 child)
Both this and your following addition to this comment, are spot on.
What most people fail to realize, is that gov't.'s always have its own interests ahead of the populace.
Maintain the power structure, and the 'bread and circus' routine applied, and thus maintain the status quo and their revenue.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by quietus on Tuesday June 16 2020, @02:07PM
No.
There is a huge difference between a government which doesn't come pose questions when you invite a foreigner in your home, and one that does.
There is a huge difference between a government where you can form an action group about an issue that bothers you, and a government that requires an extensive report on every regular meeting of more than a few people, and an official registration of your local blackjack support group.
There is a huge difference between a government which leaves 'news' to the media, and one that uses every free square meter along roads and building squares to put up propaganda posters, telling you how everybody is harmonious and good under the ruling government.
There is a huge difference between a government which leaks parts of an intelligence or military report to the media, and one that daily names its enemies through its own official newspapers, websites and television stations.
There is a huge difference between a government which doesn't worry about an outlet like soylentnews, and a government which officially announces it monitors your every opinion online.
There is a huge difference between a government which doesn't get all nervous when criticized, where people are free to ridiculize and criticize their 'corrupt' politicians, and one that claims it's the best thing civilization has ever seen.
There is a huge difference between a government where its leader gets continually and fanatically mocked, and one that cannot even stand a cartoon picture.