• EleventhHour@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      The reason I absolutely believe this to be true? Because I’ve used this on my little brothers since we were kids. I’m 45.

      It’s called “reverse psychology.”

      • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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        1 month ago

        It’s a bizarre and (afaik) unfounded conspiracy theory, but I don’t think this reasoning works as a refutation. It’s still very possible that the experiment got out, and even if not they still needed policies to protect all the people they didn’t want to be affected because the targeting isn’t perfect.

    • overcast5348@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      How are China’s stringent lockdowns explained in this conspiracy theory? Also, where do I sign up as a member?

            • IndiBrony@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              I like you.

              Like, this is what conspiracy should be - actually somewhat believable - and not dumb shit like flat earth.

              I always held that 9/11 was dubious. Not an “inside job” per se, but definitely a case of “we’re gonna turn our backs for just a second, and you terrorists better not do something silly while we’re not looking!”

              One of the biggest things that will always stick out to me: the WMDs. They were adamant Iraq had them. They said they had actual evidence. None of it was true. It all came across as an excuse for ol’ George to go in and try to finish what daddy started in '91.

              Just to be clear as well, I think other conspiracies such as the controlled demolition of the towers and the fake plane at the pentagon are bullshit. I don’t have my tinfoil hat on that tightly.

                • MeowZedong@lemmygrad.ml
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                  1 month ago

                  This thread brought to you by Western Imperialism™.

                  Seeing this allowed on mander.xyz is deeply disappointing.

              • Vilian@lemmy.ca
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                1 month ago

                I always held that 9/11 was dubious. Not an “inside job” per se, but definitely a case of “we’re gonna turn our backs for just a second, and you terrorists better not do something silly while we’re not looking!”

                But why? What they won letting that happen?

              • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world
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                1 month ago

                other conspiracies such as the controlled demolition of the towers

                Maybe not WTC 1 or 2 but WTC 7 looks exactly like a controlled demolition.

            • MeowZedong@lemmygrad.ml
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              1 month ago

              We’re stupid, but at least we’re honest about it. They’re stupid, but at least they have the decency to not act like it out in broad daylight.

              Wrong comparison. People from the US are stupid and proud of it. There’s nothing honest coming from the US except bombs.

    • rbits@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      Can confirm this is true because the same was true for my mum. She was against the COVID vaccine, but then she started believing that the theories were started by the Chinese government to target people who don’t listen to the authorities.

      • GiveMemes@jlai.lu
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        1 month ago

        That doesn’t change the distribution of demographics by itself. Even assuming the birth rate skyrocketed after the nixing of the one child policy, it takes ~20 years before those people are working age.

        • Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de
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          1 month ago

          The big problem China faced and why the one-child policy was abandoned after all is that there was a staunch focus on having a male child to “keep the bloodline alive” (cultural reasoning) which led to a stagnation in the 0-14 years age group due to an overpopulation with males. This is not fixed by killing off your elderly.

          Covid was most deadly for the age group of 65 and above and in 2019, they had proportionally less people aged 65+ than the US (13.50% in China vs. 16.4% in the US). Either China’s scientists failed immensely or the virus stemmed from bad hygiene practices in livestock markets selling bats.

    • Achyu@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 month ago

      My personal conspiracy theory is that the Chinese government did engineer (or at least selectively cultivate) COVID

      The theory I’d believe more is that the U S of A govt or one of its agencies engineered and released it in China.

      China and India are growing economies, with decent populations and a pandemic would seriously delay their growth and help the U S of A keep it’s top place for a bit longer or destroy its competitors.

      I’ve heard the theory being given decent thought by non-western people. And it’s equally, if not, more believable than the other one.

      The US is the only country that has ever used nuclear weapons on civillians, so them using biological weapons on civillians would not be a big moral barrier for them or a big stretch to think about.

      They probably didn’t think it’d spread this much and their own citizens n even president would be idiotic enough to be against vaccines and masks, when people were dying.

      • MeowZedong@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 month ago

        The US is the only country that has ever used nuclear weapons on civillians, so them using biological weapons on civillians would not be a big moral barrier for them or a big stretch to think about.

        That’s such a small stretch that it’s actually a confirmed fact that the US has repeatedly used chemical and biological warfare. Korea and Vietnam are merely two easy examples.

      • Vilian@lemmy.ca
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        1 month ago

        The theory I’d believe more is that the U S of A govt or one of its agencies engineered and released it in China.

        They did a stupid ass job them, killing the older only gonna help China, and it didn’t even killed enough people to make a difference and it backfired in the US, the conspiracy that China was engineering with it and shit escaped make more sense

        • Achyu@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 month ago

          They did a stupid ass job them

          They probably didn’t expect their president to be idiotic enough to be against vaccines and recommend stuff like bleach.

          They’re a developed nation and could’ve had better control.
          They were able to hinder Chinese trade a bit.

          And didn’t they try and fail to kill Castro in many stupid ass ways?

          I think them doing it is more likely than China doing it to their own, considering the trade issues that the virus caused for China at the time.

          And again, they were the first to use nuclear weapons on civillians. Did it twice even.
          I don’t think they’d have an qualms about using biological weapons, if they thought that it’d give them an edge.

          They also can float the ‘China virus’ conspiracy to confuse the public and make them anti-China too.

          • MeowZedong@lemmygrad.ml
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            1 month ago

            You forgot the anti-vaccine campaign they ran in countries near China saying their vaccine contained pig parts. Not the US state dept’s first anti-vax campaign btw.

            US vaccines were made available first and foremost to Western citizens, and only then were made available to purchase. China released their vaccine worldwide, so countries without a vaccine program had access earlier and cheaper than they could acquire vaccines from the US. Their anti-vax campaign was meant to prevent other countries from accepting China’s offer, thus preventing goodwill towards China, protecting the profits of US companies, and leading to the deaths of millions who could have been saved in “US Allied” countries such as the Philippines.

            If you were going to buy into one of these two conspiracy theories, first you should have some actual evidence, and then you should look at the behavior of these countries and ask yourself: which behavior is more consistent with releasing a virus that could act as an economic weapon meant to shut-down a country, but not kill everyone?

    • bloubz@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 month ago

      The Chinese government has not persecuted Uyghurs, tin foil hat person

      • F04118F@feddit.nl
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        1 month ago

        I understand your desire to defend communism.

        But really, how far does an authoritarian regime have to go, while calling itself communist, before you judge them?

        What evidence would change your mind about the CCP?

        • kureta@lemmy.ml
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          1 month ago

          I was banned from /r/latestagecapitalism for not loving China. Anytime I tried to explain why I do not unconditionally love everything about China, they said “but USA?” Dude, I don’t care about USA. It’s thousands of kilometers away from where I live. Everything I said was interpreted as defending USA. I say “China does this” they hear “USA doesn’t do that”. There are other countries in the world, you know, not everything is about USA. End of rant :)

        • bloubz@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 month ago

          Where did I defend the CCP or communism?

          (I do fully support communism and have critical support for China, but that’s not the question here)

          What evidence would change your mind about […]

          Show me evidence that the Uyghur are being persecuted

            • F04118F@feddit.nl
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              1 month ago

              The communism preference, yes. As for the CCP: They literally denied Uyghur persecution. Not even genocide, which is a claim that, due to its severity, is always going to be hard to prove, and thus debatable, I get that.

              But even just the fact that the ethnic-religious group of Uyghurs are being persecuted on a large scale, had to be denied. That’s pretty extreme.

          • F04118F@feddit.nl
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            1 month ago

            Thank you for answering.

            I am not sure where to start, but let’s take the easy way: At the moment of writing, the wikipedia page “Persecution of Uyghurs in China” has 585 references.

            They’re probably all written by seemingly independent institutions, journalists and scientists who somehow have a McCarthyist-like fear of communism that they’d risk their credibility just to add a bit of damage to communist China’s moral standing?

            Or are they all factually incorrect through some other mechanism?