US Used Bogus HIV 'Education' Campaign As A Way To Recruit Anti-Government Activists In Cuba

from the another-bad-idea dept

Tue, Aug 5th 2014 3:31pm — Mike Masnick

Following the revelation that USAID built a special "Twitter for Cuba" in an effort to foment dissent in that country, it's now come out, via some AP reporting, that USAID also sent a bunch of Latin American youths from other countries to Cuba on a bogus "HIV prevention" campaign, which was really a cover for recruiting young Cubans to be anti-government activists.

Of course, remember that a bogus Polio vaccination campaign in Pakistan has resulted in people there no longer trusting such vaccinations and a rapid return of polio. While it's not likely that this campaign will directly lead to people totally ignoring HIV prevention advice, just the fact that the US government seems to be trying to make use of important health campaigns as part of a strategy to undermine others will have significant consequences, making people who need such information a lot less willing to actually pay attention to it. This doesn't seem like a good thing.

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Filed Under: activists, cuba, hiv education, usaid
Companies: zunzuneo

21 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 5 Aug 2014 @ 3:47pm

I thought, since high fructose corn syrup was invented, the corporations gave up on Fidel. Don't Corporate Insisible Army guys read the newspapers?
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Aug 2014 @ 3:48pm

This sounds a lot like terrorism.
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That One Guy (profile), 5 Aug 2014 @ 4:04pm

A fitting punishment
I think a nice punishment for those that just cannot restrain themselves, and end up sabotaging disease prevention/vaccination efforts would be to give them a nice shot of whatever disease the program was meant to prevent, then toss them in an isolation ward to enjoy the results.

Screw up a polio vaccination effort, and make people less likely to trust actually vaccination efforts in the future because of it, leading to preventable illness and deaths? Enjoy your polio shot.

Destroy the trust in HIV prevention efforts by planting spies/agents in the group of people trying to save lives, and/or prevent the spread of a disease/STD? Enjoy your HIV shot.

The ones ordering these things may think the gains outweigh the costs, but they aren't the ones who have to deal with the results, the illnesses and deaths that could have been prevented, if people had been able to trust the programs that were meant to help them.

Maybe spending the rest of their lives sick, or if they're lucky, just a month or so of intense illness, would give those ordering these actions a little perspective on the real costs of their actions.
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A. Rex, 5 Aug 2014 @ 4:11pm

Wrong Disease - Bad Reportage
The fake vaccine cover used in Pakistan was for Hepatitis, not Polio.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Aug 2014 @ 4:21pm

Re: Wrong Disease - Bad Reportage
Ok. But then some locals THOUGHT the polio vaccine was the same sort of thing. Can you blame those locals for thinking that?
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Nigel (profile), 5 Aug 2014 @ 4:39pm

WTF
Is wrong with us.

I know, I know... where to start.

N.
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That Anonymous Coward (profile), 5 Aug 2014 @ 4:47pm

When you are hellbent on doing all of the dirty tricks you call others out on, you might as well make sure that the spread of disease rides along with you.

'Merika War, Plague, Famine... whats that last one...
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Aug 2014 @ 6:27pm

Giving birth to conspiracy theories and then making them a reality... because Motherfucking Eagles.
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Padpaw (profile), 5 Aug 2014 @ 7:21pm

All from the people that funded and trained Osama bin liden and most recently discovered to have funded trained and armed the ISIS terrorists.

Wonder how long the rest of the world is going to continue to sit back and watch the leading exporter of terrorism world wide work.

And yes the US government funds terrorism to fight terrorism because reasons, national security and all that
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Aug 2014 @ 7:46pm

Re:
idiocy
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Aug 2014 @ 7:47pm

and then wail

"why do they hate us?"

then decide it's because of your freedoms.

never mind

Bible
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PaulT (profile), 6 Aug 2014 @ 12:29am

Re: Wrong Disease - Bad Reportage
It doesn't really matter. It was a CIA operation that led to general distrust of all vaccines. That it was polio rather than hepatitis that had the outbreak doesn't change the fact that the outbreak was due to the campaign.
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Antsan (profile), 6 Aug 2014 @ 1:41am

I don't see the problem
Now more Cubans will contract AIDS and thus Cuba will be weakened. And you can point to Cuba for bad AIDS prevention.

So you have anti-government workers, you've got a weakened enemy and bad press for him. What's not to like?
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Aug 2014 @ 5:04am

Re:
Excessive sugar consumption is not good for the human body, but HFCS is way worse.
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art guerrilla (profile), 6 Aug 2014 @ 5:35am

Re: Re: Wrong Disease - Bad Reportage
not that you are not correct, but there is more to it than OUR perfidy: al qaeda, etc *have* been against such programs previously without the added disincentive of bogus spook-sponsored vaccination programs...

hell, even back during the vietnam war, when we would vaccinate kids, etc as *part* of a program of 'winning the hearts and minds' (part bullshit cover for more insidious actions), the vietcong would come in and cut off the vaccinated arms of the kids to terrorize the citizenry into not cooperating with unka sam...
(kurtz voice: the horror, the horror...)

as i've mentioned before (and this is merely incident #15663864 to confirm it) USAID been spooked-up a LONG time...
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Aug 2014 @ 5:47am

Yet another 'health campaign' that sabotages actual health campaigns.

Yaaay. /s
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Harold K, 6 Aug 2014 @ 6:47am

The US government at work
The govementment is saying "... trust the USA...only ignore our lying, cheating and stealing!"
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Reality bites, 6 Aug 2014 @ 7:27am

More evil is perpetrated by those in authority than those under it.
What a pity that Cuba doesn't put together a personal Karma Assault team.... make sure the psychopathic USA rogue agencies all get a personal karma visit they don't ever recover from.

All it would take is to exterminate a bunch of the leading psychopaths and the rest of the snakes would take notice.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Aug 2014 @ 4:52pm

Re:
mexican cokacola conspiracy they know its better.
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PaulT (profile), 7 Aug 2014 @ 1:49am

Re: Re: Re: Wrong Disease - Bad Reportage
Oh, sure, it's definitely more complicated than "the CIA stopped people from trusting vaccines". It's just that once distrust gets out there, no matter who or how it appears, those people aren't going to simply distrust a single source or vaccine.

For example, the anti-vaxxer morons in the US may have based their fear on a false study specifically about the MMR jab (since admitted to be false by its author), but some of them also refuse things like TB and polio vaccination that have nothing to do with it.
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Mike Raffety (profile), 7 Aug 2014 @ 3:09pm

Recruiting activists through medical efforts?
Surely there's something in the Geneva Convention prohibiting this mixture of war-like efforts with medical care?
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