Disinfo: Former members of Bush Administration created an anti-communist group to advise president Trump against China

Summary

Several advisors for President Trump are members of a group born out of the George W. Bush administration, calling themselves Red Dawn. The New York Times just released some mails from these people. This group, nostalgic for the Cold War, is viscerally anti-communist. The USSR ceased to exist, but China is still being ruled by the Communist Party. They are convinced that “evil” Chinese are attacking them with Covid-19. President Trump marginalised them, but their ideas entered the public debate. In the same way that the 9/11 events allowed the adoption of the Patriot Act, which had been prepared in advance, now Covid-19 allows former members of the Bush Administration to reactivate their own crusade.

Disproof

This is a conspiracy theory deliberately misrepresenting the so-called ‘Red Dawn group’, which is by no means a formal group. According to the documents, originally published by the site Kaiser Health News and later collected and reviewed by the New York Times, the Red Dawn was simply a chain of email exchanges between a US elite group of infectious disease doctors and medical experts in the federal government and academic institutions, both inside and outside of the government. This group was concerned by the implications of the novel coronavirus outbreak and the response of the Trump Administration and other governments and global institutions, which they considered ill-conceived and insufficient. “Red Dawn” was a notoriously anti-communist film released in 1984, but apart from that, there is no mention of any anti-communist ideology or any plan against China in the emails, or to any attack from the “evil Chinese”. The fact that some of these long-career experts served in the George W. Bush Administration is largely irrelevant, and there is no evidence that this group has an agenda to be implemented concerning taking advantage of the Covid-19 crisis. This is part of Russia’s disinformation campaign on coronavirus, well documented by both media and governments, and some of its elements were widely reported by Russian and international publications and by the European External Action Service. The EUvsDisinfo database has a long set of Kremlin-linked disinformation cases on this subject, such as claims that Bill Gates and George Soros are sponsoring the Wuhan coronavirus, that it is a UK, US or NATO creation and Americans have its cure, that it is an artificial disease which specifically targets Chinese DNA, that it is a pretext to gain control of the world’s population, that it was created with economic goals while big pharma companies are spreading panic for their own profits, that it is a biological weapon against Russia and China, that it will wipe out Ukraine’s population in a few days or that it was predicted by Nostradamus and others. This disinformation message appeared in the same article as claims that “Some in the US want to prevent China from explaining its efforts to deliver aid against Covid-19” and that “Coronavirus may be the latest steps in NATO’s containment strategy against China”.

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mundo.sputniknews.com (Archived)
  • Reported in: Issue 195
  • DATE OF PUBLICATION: 01/05/2020
  • Outlet language(s) Spanish
  • Countries and/or Regions discussed in the disinformation: China, US
  • Keywords: coronavirus, Donald Trump, The New York Times
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Disinfo: WHO impedes the use of cheap, accessible drugs that can effectively cure COVID-19

Dr. Didier Raoult, the famous French infectious disease specialist, creator and director of the Mediterranean University-Clinical Institute of Infectious Diseases, used chloroquine for treatment. The results of Dr. Raoult and his institute were outstanding: by the end of March, only 10 of the 2,400 people who received treatment at his institute had died. [—] For 80 years, chloroquine has been a cheap, common, safe generic. And only when it turned out that the medicine was priced at 4 cents, it was established that it couldn’t cure COVID-19 because it would potentially be too cheap and accessible. Another promising drug was remdesivir, an Ebola drug developed by Gilead Sciences. And what? On April 23rd, WHO “accidentally” posted on its website test results that showed that remdesivir was no good.

Apr 30, 2020
Disproof

This is part of the pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign around the coronavirus, and specifically its efforts to spread false or misleading health information related to COVID-19, its prevention, and its treatment. See similar false claims like that COVID-19 can be cured with saline solution, that treatment for COVID-19 will lead to forced vaccination, and that handwashing is useless for preventing the spread of the virus. False and misleading health claims are the most dangerous and irresponsible aspect of coronavirus-related disinformation, as they can have a direct impact on people’s health and even their lives. According to the World Health Organisation, “no pharmaceutical products have yet been shown to be safe and effective for the treatment of COVID-19.” In a statement, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: “We call on individuals and countries to refrain from using therapeutics that have not been demonstrated to be effective in the treatment of COVID-19. The history of medicine is strewn with examples of drugs that worked on paper, or in a test tube, but didn't work in humans or were actually harmful. We must follow the evidence. There are no short-cuts.” On 20 March, the WHO announced a major global trial called SOLIDARITY to test four potential treatments for COVID-19, including the malaria medications chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine. The SOLIDARITY trial will involve 45 countries and is designed to “dramatically cut the time needed to generate robust evidence about what drugs work.” Chloroquine has recently garnered public attention after a small study of 36 COVID-19 patients in France demonstrated initially promising results; however, infectious disease experts have said the findings are not conclusive and require further study. Importantly, chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine can have serious side effects, especially at high doses or when combined with other medicines. They should not be used without a prescription and without medical supervision. Experts and health authorities, including the WHO and the European Medicine Agency, have also expressed concern that premature use of these drugs for COVID-19 may create dangerous shortages for patients who need them for other serious conditions, including lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. The WHO advises against “unnecessary stockpiling and the creation of shortages of approved medicines that are required to treat other diseases”. See the WHO’s mythbusting page about false COVID-19 health advice for more information.

Disinfo: The COVID-19 outbreak demonstrates that NATO, EU should be consigned to the dustbin of history

The EU countries and NATO turned a deaf ear to Italian drama and acted poorly during the coronavirus outbreak. Poland closed its air space for Russian air planes with humanitarian aid to Italy. Similarly, Czech Republic appropriated Chinese humanitarian aid which was directed to Italy. The US demonstrated that they are not ready to risk the lives and health of their soldiers for Trans-Atlantic solidarity. Americans behaved as looters, they intercepted Chinese medical equipment which was orders by Germany and France. Russian humanitarian aid to Italy demonstrated that the NATO should be consigned to the dustbin of history. Washington needed NATO to impose its domination on Europe. Eastern European countries which joined the NATO became US’s satellites. The European countries which disliked coming under West’s subordination were destroyed by NATO, Yugoslavia’s case is telling in this respect. If Russia did not have nuclear capabilities and Belarus was not part of the Union State of Belarus and Russia, they would face the same fate. In the past years the countries of collective West repeatedly introduced anti-Russian sanctions based on far-fetched situation in the south-eastern Ukraine, no progress with the Minsk agreements, and Crimea return to Russia. Furthermore, the US authorities accused Russia of election meddling through cyber attacks on the US Democratic Party servers. No proofs of Russian involvement were presented.

Apr 30, 2020
Disproof

This publication promotes a number of fake news and conspiracies which are consistent with pro-Kremlin recurring narratives about West's aggressiveness towards Belarus and Russia, EU's countries as NATO satellites / puppets, and the absence of EU and NATO response amid the coronavirus outbreak in Italy. The European Commission has approved a €50 million Italian aid scheme to support the production and supply of medical devices, as well as to help Italy provide the necessary medical treatment to those infected. On March 18, the European Union also received a Chinese aid package, including masks and 50,000 testing kits that were fully allocated to Italy, as Rome faces the most urgent needs among member states in the coronavirus crisis. On March 13, the European Union proposed a Coronavirus Response Investment Initiative, envisaging EUR 835 million for Italy. On March 26, the European Parliament unanimously approved the initiative. The President of the European Commission has apologised for the slow response on behalf of the Union. Read more about the EU's response. NATO has also been doing a lot to assist all its member states in the fight against COVID-19. This includes facilitating the airlift of crucial medical supplies and equipment, matching requests for support with offers from allies and partners, setting up field hospitals. Many Allies, including the Czech Republic, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, North Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia, and Spain have benefited from this support. The coordination and delivery of urgently needed medical supplies, such as personal protective equipment, respirators and test kits, is organised by NATO’s Euro-Atlantic Disaster Response Coordination Centre (EADRCC) following requests by Allies and partner countries. The Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs made a statement regarding the alleged refusal of Poland to allow Russian transport planes delivering aid to Italy to cross its airspace. Poland called these accusations absurd and fake – the Russian Ambassador to Warsaw, Sergey Andreyev, received an official protest of Poland about the spread of this fake news by a Russian Senator. Read other examples of narratives, later identified as of Russian or of Chinese origin, that preyed on the initial confusion amid the coronavirus outbreak. According to international law, Crimea is a part of Ukraine. Russia violated international law as well as key principles of the European security framework by illegally annexing the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the City of Sevastopol in 2014. The American economic sanctions imposed on Russia also were a reaction to Russia's illegal annexation. The EU's policy of non-recognition of the illegal annexation of Crimea and Sevastopol includes a set of restrictive measures against entities and individuals responsible for actions against Ukraine's territorial integrity. As for alleged arbitrariness of US sanctions against Russia for election meddling, read the debunk here. The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia was not a retaliation for Yugoslavia's refusal to come under West's subordination but a response to mass ethnic cleansing of Albanians by the Yugoslavian authorities. Neither does NATO have aggressive plans in relation to Belarus or Russia as alleged. The allegation about NATO's plans to wage a war against Russia was addressed on NATO's official website: "Any claims that NATO is preparing an attack on Russia are absurd."

See earlier disinformation cases alleging that Lithuania is temporarily NATO-occupied territory ruled by non-Lithuanians, that the EU and NATO stood by and watched the coronavirus worsen without helping Italy, that NATO countries have been increasing the defense spending and now they don’t have lung ventilators, and that COVID-19 reached NATO and disrupts its anti-Russian plans.

Disinfo: Rockefeller Foundation and other organisations try to become supranational government during coronavirus crisis

In times of coronavirus the Rockefeller Foundation, Microsoft, the pharmaceutical lobby, the World Bank Group and other organisations are seeking to become a kind of supranational government because national governments are allegedly unable to cope with epidemics, disease and famine by themselves. Actually, national governments can cope with the coronavirus by themselves, as China has shown. Microsoft, the Rockefeller Foundation, and GAVI the Vaccine Alliance are among the organisations that support the Digital Identity Project ID2020 Alliance. Founding partners of GAVI – the Vaccine Alliance include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank Group, the World Health Organisation and UNICEF. GAVI- the Vaccine Alliance is a company that promotes and distributes vaccines around the world. Since February 2020, GAVI is focusing on the coronavirus pandemic. The globalist media blames everyone except the West for the pandemic. New information about the coronavirus is emerging and globalist media are trying to hide this information by spreading disinformation about China’s role in the pandemic.

Apr 30, 2020
Disproof

Recurrent pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative that blames the Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates, the Rockefeller Foundation and other “global élites” for the COVID-19 pandemic or for trying to exploit it in order to increase their wealth, to reduce the world’s population or to create a global surveillance network by vaccinating people in order to secretly install tracking chips inside them. The message contained in the article is also consistent with the pro-Kremlin narrative claiming that “global élites” seek to rob nations of their sovereignty and ultimately to install a world government. The article provides no evidence for its claim that the “global élites” it mentions are seeking to act as a “supranational government”, nor for its suggestion that the ID2020 Digital Identity Alliance and Gavi - the Vaccine Alliance are part of this “supranational government”’s nefarious agenda. ID 2020 is claimed by many conspiracy theorists to be part of Bill Gates’s and the fictitious plans of other "global elites" for mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations and the implantation of microchips into people’s bodies. The geopolitica.ru article hints that such a vaccination may be on the agenda of the alleged “supranational government”. Actually, ID 2020 (or Digital Identity Alliance) is a non-profit organisation that advocates digital ID for the billion undocumented people around the world that are unable to prove their identity through any recognised means. ID 2020 provides grants for digital identity research. None of their projects involve injecting people with anything. Gavi – the Vaccine Alliance is a non-profit organisation, also funded by the Bill and Melissa Gates Foundation and other sponsors, committed to increasing access to immunisation in poor countries. Read previous cases claiming that COVID-19 will allow total control of the population through forced vaccination and chips and that the coronavirus was invented by the Rockefellers and the Club of Rome.