4 ms·

Also, when the CIA doesn't ruin everything.

by o11c 3y ago

CodesInChaos 3y ago
> On May 2, 2011, President Barack Obama announced that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had located and killed Osama Bin Laden. The agency organised a fake hepatitis vaccination campaign in Abottabad, Pakistan, in a bid to obtain DNA from the children of Bin Laden, to confirm the presence of the family in a compound and sanction the rollout of a risky and extensive operation. Release of this information has had a disastrous effect on worldwide eradication of infectious diseases, especially polio. > On May 16, 2014, the White House announced that the CIA will no longer use vaccination programmes as a cover for espionage. The news comes in the wake of a series of militant attacks on polio vaccination workers in Pakistan, with legitimate health-care workers targeted as being US spies. The attacks have forced organisations such as the UN to suspend polio vaccination efforts in Pakistan, and have severely hampered anti-polio efforts, with parents refusing to have their children vaccinated. News of the vaccination programme led to a banning of vaccination in areas controlled by the Pakistan Taliban, and added to existing scepticism surrounding the sincerity of public health efforts by the international health community. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vaccinations-osama-bin-ladens-dna https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vacci... https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(14)60900-4/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
- danans 3y ago
  > News of the vaccination programme led to a banning of vaccination in areas controlled by the Pakistan Taliban, and added to existing scepticism surrounding the sincerity of public health efforts by the international health community. If I recall correctly, the conspiracy theory that emerged was that vaccines were secretly being used to render the people sterile. It is interesting how 8 years later nearly the same line of thinking took hold in the West (albeit with claim of injected mind control chips) amid anti-vaxxers.
  - krapp 3y ago
    >It is interesting how 8 years later nearly the same line of thinking took hold in the West (albeit with claim of injected mind control chips) amid anti-vaxxers. That line of thinking always existed in the West, among the "Mark of the Beast" set. The interesting thing is the degree to which it, and conspiratorial politics in general, became so normalized in such a short time. Also how the anti-vax movement switched from a generally leftist ideology to being captured by right-wing identity politics.
    - starcraft2wol 3y ago
      The parties have realigned around populism.
      - Mountain_Skies 3y ago
        Interesting how many people realigned their values instead of changing their party loyalty.
        starcraft2wol 3y ago
        Indeed, although some of the same groups still feel supported but just not for the same reasons as before.
  - Kye 3y ago
    The actual program of sterilizing indigenous people and experimenting on black people in the US sure didn't help. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterilization_of_Native_American_women https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterilization_of_Native_Americ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study Notions of conspiracy form easily when reality provides so much material.
    - wahnfrieden 3y ago
      Israel also sterilized Ethiopian Jews without their consent
- HorizonXP 3y ago
  Yeah I remember hearing about this and being similarly appalled. I get it. The US really wanted to kill Bin Laden. But the manner in which they did it is sickening. The ends cannot justify the means.
  - SpaceManNabs 3y ago
    > The ends cannot justify the means. Oh they absolutely can in an utilitarian sense. But a basic utilitarian argument would tell that jeopardizing an entire region's vaccine rollout program to get revenge on some asshole already living the rest of his life out of a hole was not worth it.
    - NateEag 3y ago
      And any utilitarian thinker who wanted to do the op would tell you that they weren't going to get caught, so that outcome won't be relevant to their calculus. Is that good reasoning? No. Is it what some humans will do? Yes.
      - SpaceManNabs 3y ago
        > And any utilitarian thinker who wanted to do the op would tell you that they weren't going to get caught Then they aren't being utilitarian because they are not including the risk into their cost calculation. Or at least not a good one. Definitely not "any" edit: Oh I see this now > who wanted to do the op Yeah any person can make any false argument to justify a conclusion they wanna reach. You don't have to be utilitarian for that. Just unethical.
        NateEag 3y ago
        > Then they aren't being utilitarian because they are not including the risk into their cost calculation. Sure they are. They just estimate the risk much lower than you do. You have no way to know who's right for sure. Maybe they legitimately have found a really low-risk way to massively increase utils by cheating / mistreating a few people. I don't know of a way to protect utilitarian systems from such conditions.

Also, when the CIA doesn't ruin everything.

by o11c 3y ago

Also, when the CIA doesn't ruin everything.

> On May 2, 2011, President Barack Obama announced that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had located and killed Osama Bin Laden. The agency organised a fake hepatitis vaccination campaign in Abottabad, Pakistan, in a bid to obtain DNA from the children of Bin Laden, to confirm the presence of the family in a compound and sanction the rollout of a risky and extensive operation. Release of this information has had a disastrous effect on worldwide eradication of infectious diseases, especially polio. > On May 16, 2014, the White House announced that the CIA will no longer use vaccination programmes as a cover for espionage. The news comes in the wake of a series of militant attacks on polio vaccination workers in Pakistan, with legitimate health-care workers targeted as being US spies. The attacks have forced organisations such as the UN to suspend polio vaccination efforts in Pakistan, and have severely hampered anti-polio efforts, with parents refusing to have their children vaccinated. News of the vaccination programme led to a banning of vaccination in areas controlled by the Pakistan Taliban, and added to existing scepticism surrounding the sincerity of public health efforts by the international health community. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vaccinations-osama-bin-ladens-dna https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vacci... https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(14)60900-4/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

danans 3y ago
> News of the vaccination programme led to a banning of vaccination in areas controlled by the Pakistan Taliban, and added to existing scepticism surrounding the sincerity of public health efforts by the international health community. If I recall correctly, the conspiracy theory that emerged was that vaccines were secretly being used to render the people sterile. It is interesting how 8 years later nearly the same line of thinking took hold in the West (albeit with claim of injected mind control chips) amid anti-vaxxers.
- krapp 3y ago
  >It is interesting how 8 years later nearly the same line of thinking took hold in the West (albeit with claim of injected mind control chips) amid anti-vaxxers. That line of thinking always existed in the West, among the "Mark of the Beast" set. The interesting thing is the degree to which it, and conspiratorial politics in general, became so normalized in such a short time. Also how the anti-vax movement switched from a generally leftist ideology to being captured by right-wing identity politics.
  - starcraft2wol 3y ago
    The parties have realigned around populism.
    - Mountain_Skies 3y ago
      Interesting how many people realigned their values instead of changing their party loyalty.
      - starcraft2wol 3y ago
        Indeed, although some of the same groups still feel supported but just not for the same reasons as before.
- Kye 3y ago
  The actual program of sterilizing indigenous people and experimenting on black people in the US sure didn't help. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterilization_of_Native_American_women https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterilization_of_Native_Americ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study Notions of conspiracy form easily when reality provides so much material.
  - wahnfrieden 3y ago
    Israel also sterilized Ethiopian Jews without their consent
HorizonXP 3y ago
Yeah I remember hearing about this and being similarly appalled. I get it. The US really wanted to kill Bin Laden. But the manner in which they did it is sickening. The ends cannot justify the means.
- SpaceManNabs 3y ago
  > The ends cannot justify the means. Oh they absolutely can in an utilitarian sense. But a basic utilitarian argument would tell that jeopardizing an entire region's vaccine rollout program to get revenge on some asshole already living the rest of his life out of a hole was not worth it.
  - NateEag 3y ago
    And any utilitarian thinker who wanted to do the op would tell you that they weren't going to get caught, so that outcome won't be relevant to their calculus. Is that good reasoning? No. Is it what some humans will do? Yes.
    - SpaceManNabs 3y ago
      > And any utilitarian thinker who wanted to do the op would tell you that they weren't going to get caught Then they aren't being utilitarian because they are not including the risk into their cost calculation. Or at least not a good one. Definitely not "any" edit: Oh I see this now > who wanted to do the op Yeah any person can make any false argument to justify a conclusion they wanna reach. You don't have to be utilitarian for that. Just unethical.
      - NateEag 3y ago
        > Then they aren't being utilitarian because they are not including the risk into their cost calculation. Sure they are. They just estimate the risk much lower than you do. You have no way to know who's right for sure. Maybe they legitimately have found a really low-risk way to massively increase utils by cheating / mistreating a few people. I don't know of a way to protect utilitarian systems from such conditions.