US Disinformation Governance Board paused after widespread questions; US an ‘empire of lies’: Chinese FM

Beijing: It is reasonable that the Disinformation Governance Board established by the US Department of Homeland Security, which was suspended after only 21 days, was widely questioned because the US government is the world’s biggest purveyor of misinformation, said a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson on Wednesday.

Zhao Lijian, the spokesperson, made the remarks at Wednesday’s press briefing, and noted that the US should stop fabricating and spreading false information and stop being proud of its “empire of lies.”

The first head of the “Board” was forced to resign. It makes sense that the “the Disinformation Governance Board” is being questioned, since the US government itself is the biggest disinformation spreader in the world, Zhao said.

US politicians are full of lies, but it is people who pay with their lives for disinformation made by the US, Zhao noted.

Zhao listed some examples, including that the US provoked the Iraq War by using a tube of white powder as evidence of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, which caused the death of about 200,000 to 250,000 Iraqi civilians.

The US used fake intelligence gleaned from a video staged by “White Helmets” as evidence, conducted the “most precise air strikes in history” in Syria, killing more than 1,600 innocent civilians, Zhao said.

In the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, the US government played down the urgency of the virus transmission and persisted in spreading false information about the source of the virus. The US government’s misinformation about the pandemic was named the “Lie of the Year 2020” by a US-based website, according to Zhao.

The US has the highest number of COVID-19 cases and deaths, with more than one million innocent American people losing their lives, noted Zhao.

The more the US government lies, the greater the damage to its credibility, Zhao pointed out.