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Re:China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted page... by rumanator on Sunday April 12, 2020 @06:39PM (#22851526)
> What? That's not how evidence works. The onus is on the person making the claim to provide positive evidence.

You might have had a point if the Chinese regime wasn't putting it's propaganda machine into overdrive spewing conspiracy theories on how covid19 was created by the US to attack China.

Re:China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted page... by meowface on Sunday April 12, 2020 @06:54PM (#22851630)
They're always spewing propaganda about everything, though. How does that eliminate the need to provide evidence about a claim?

Or are you just saying the best geopolitical response to unsubstantiated propaganda is more unsubstantiated propaganda volleyed right back at them?

This is similar to people who accuse the CIA of orchestrating every big event or crime. They say they don't need to provide evidence, because the CIA is untrustworthy and tries to deceive people. But this is a completely bullshit argument.

Re:China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted page... by dependenttypes on Sunday April 12, 2020 @07:26PM (#22851815)
> But this is a completely bullshit argument.

Is it though? I think that it makes a lot of sense.

Re:China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted page... by meowface on Sunday April 12, 2020 @07:32PM (#22851845)
Yes, it is. Any argument akin to "I don't need to provide evidence of anything I accuse you of because you lie about things" is complete and utter bullshit. You would basically be just as bad and intellectually dishonest as the CIA, in that case.

You always need evidence, regardless of the nature of the accused person or entity. You could be accusing Stalin himself; you still need evidence

Re:China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted page... by rumanator on Sunday April 12, 2020 @08:07PM (#22851993)
> Yes, it is. Any argument akin to "I don't need to provide evidence of anything I accuse you of because you lie about things"

Either you didn't understood the point or you don't want to address it.

The point is that if China's regime tries to portray the fact that they operate a coronsvirus military research lab a few meters from the outbreak's alledged epicenter as nonsense while at the same time they try to pin the blame on the outbreak on military coronsvirus research work conducted by other nations.

I mean, if a work accident committed by China's military is ruled out as outlandish then why are they pushing conspiracy theories akin to area52 aliens as reasonable and plausible?

Re:China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted page... by meowface on Sunday April 12, 2020 @08:27PM (#22852077)
I understand the point. I still maintain any totalitarian communist regime is going to spread absurd propaganda in such a situation pretty much no matter what.

The lab escape theory is certainly completely plausible. But it becomes no more or less plausible just because there's "US military conspiracy" propaganda spread by the government.

They easily could've done that to counter all of the accusations hurled at them by US citizens that it's an intentional bioweapon, or due to Trump calling it "the Chinese virus" and constantly trying to associate it with them, or to pull attention away from themselves due to the outbreak starting there and just generally to reduce embarrassment and spread confusion that they hope will improve their reputation, or even specifically because of posts like yours.

If you assume for the sake of argument that the lab hypothetically isn't responsible, but lots of people think it is, this would be one way to provide such a distraction. It would as well if the lab were in fact responsible, but that definitely doesn't mean that's proof the lab is responsible. They have a ton of possible reasons for why they would want to spread this propaganda.

The hypothesis that "they're more likely to spread propaganda about the US military causing it if their lab caused it" carries a ton of implicit assumptions which may or may not be true. It's reasonable to speculate about and discuss, but it alone is evidence of nothing. If there were some leaked document saying something like "hey, since our lab fucked up let's distract people by accusing the US", then it'd be a different story.

Of course, China's government promoting and spreading absurd conspiracy theories needs to be condemned no matter what, but an analysis of the true root cause of the outbreak needs to be totally impartial and objective.

Re:China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted page... by dirtyid on Sunday April 12, 2020 @08:33PM (#22852096)
>I mean, if a work accident committed by China's military is ruled out as outlandish then why are they pushing conspiracy theories akin to area52 aliens as reasonable and plausible?

Because the incident isn't about deflection to US.

It was retaliating and warning US against pushing Wuhan conspiracy theory (Tom Cotton) and calling covid19 Wuhan virus (Pompeo) after WHO re-designation. Both these events proceeded the Chinese tweets.

Current US administration has consistently been the instigator of bellicose diplomacy. But people conveniently forget when it comes to China who has been remarkably patient compared to other countries, including US allies.

US is pushing crazy propaganda to deflect blame from their inadequate response. In return, China unleashed one of their mid tier diplomats to troll crazy US rhetoric coming from a Senator and Secretary of State to demonstrate that China is willing to escalate to dirty propaganda games. Hence why it had to be de-escalated by Chinese ambassador to US, a diplomat 2 levels higher than the original foreign ministry spokes person. It also plays well to Chinese domestic audience.

If China wanted to deflect blame, there would be much more plausible ways. The fact that China chose to confront US conspiracy with Chinese conspiracy should be interpreted as signalling to not go full retard. The message and messenger was calibrated for this affect. And what do you know the US backed off on this avenue of attack and has shifted to boosting Taiwan. Also concurrent to the conspiracy tit-for-tat was banning each others journalists. These events have to be evaluated in proper context and timelines.

Re:China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted page... by JamesG124 on Monday April 13, 2020 @02:09AM (#22853555)
It's bizarre to me that comments like this one are being downvoted instead of being engaged with
Re:China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted page... by highmastdon on Monday April 13, 2020 @03:17AM (#22853788)
I haven’t read any of the documents put forward by the Chinese government, but what if that’s the proof of them not making it and providing the negative proof, by showing who _did_ release the Corona virus?
Re:China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted page... by YarickR2 on Sunday April 12, 2020 @06:48PM (#22851580)
Right now US propaganda is in overdrive mode trying to lay the blame onto China ; there are no other views in mainstream media , and if anyone tries to doubt that, asking for evidence and reminding the world about presumption of innocence, they are instantly labeled chinese bots. So much for freedom of speech and thought
Re:China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted page... by andromeduck on Sunday April 12, 2020 @07:21PM (#22851790)
Presumption of innocence is a legal matter and this is not a court of law. It might be hard for you to understand but freedom of speech doesn't protect you from getting called out. Nay, it is the affirmative right to do so.

It would also do you well to keep in mind that if we're using the criminal justice system as some standard obstruction of justice itself is a crime, as is destruction/tampering of evidence as well as witness tampering. Physical evidence is not required to convict; strong circumstantial evidence is often sufficent.

Re:China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted page... by rumanator on Sunday April 12, 2020 @07:07PM (#22851710)
> trying to lay the blame onto China

How exactly is the Chinese regime not to blame for this mess? Between the blatant cover-up and falsified reports and underreporting deaths by a couple of orders of magnitude and knowingly stating that the virus didn't spread when they knew full well it spread like wildfire and intentionally leaving out demostratedly infected but asymptomatic cases out of the statistics while simultaneously blaming new cases on infected foreigners, how is China's regime not to blame for this whole mess?

And should we now just forget that the Chinese regime has been trying to pin the blame on their covid19 mess on Italy of all places?

Re:China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted page... by papermachete on Sunday April 12, 2020 @06:53PM (#22851627)
I'd like to remind people it's not just the US - Chinese test (and inhaler) suppliers being sued for highly unreliable (and some even pre-infected) equipment.