Slashdot Mirror
Polio Eradication Program Suspended In Pakistan After Aid Workers Shot
Hugh Pickens writes "Jamal Khan reports that the United Nations has suspended its polio vaccination drive in Pakistan after eight people involved in the effort were shot dead in the past few days. The killings dealt a grave blow to the drive to bring an end to the scourge of polio in Pakistan, one of only three countries where the crippling disease still survives. Militants accuse health workers of acting as spies for the U.S. and claim the vaccine makes children sterile. Taliban commanders in the troubled northwest tribal region have also said vaccinations can't go forward until the U.S. stops drone strikes in the country. Insurgent opposition to the campaign grew last year after it was revealed that a Pakistani doctor ran a fake polio vaccination program to help the CIA track down and kill Osama bin Laden, who was hiding in the town of Abbottabad in the country's northwest. The Pakistani government has condemned the attacks against aid workers, saying they deprive Pakistan's most vulnerable populations — specifically children — of basic life-saving health interventions. A total of 56 polio cases have been reported in Pakistan during 2012, down from 190 the previous year, according to the U.N. Most of the new cases in Pakistan are in the northwest, where the presence of militants makes it difficult to reach children. Clerics and tribal elders were recruited to support polio vaccinations in an attempt to open up areas previously inaccessible to health workers. 'This is undoubtedly a tragic setback,' says UNICEF spokeswoman Sarah Crowe, 'but the campaign to eradicate polio will and must continue.'"
Seems like every backward region I've ever been too has been awash in conspiracy theories, urban legends, and superstitious horseshit. Worked down in South America, where every illiterate countryside hick seems to think Americans are trying to steal their organs (resulting in shit like this). Worked in India, where half the hicks think that clean water is just a ruse to poison them. Even worked in a ghetto, where the rumor was that whitey was putting chemicals in menthol cigarettes to make black men sterile.
So it doesn't surprise me that backwater Pakistanis believe that Christians are out to give their kids drugs to make them hate Mohammad (or whatever other crazy crap runs through those heads), disguised as these things called "vaccines." Combine that with a CIA sleight-of-hand and a Taliban which is happy to use any excuse to show it's still relevant, and you get a lot of kids who are now going to die from a disease the rest of the world eradicated long ago.
Fuck, just look at this idiot as the perfect example of what happens when you mix base stupidity with just enough knowledge to be dangerous.
It's all well and good until said hillbillies start killing people or getting them killed.
I guess the Taliban have obtained biological weapons of mass destruction after all. They didn't need any fancy technology, just a whole lot of stupidity.
MURDERD.
Killed could mean anything - from an accidental car death to dying from bullets falling from the sky after a round of celebratory gunfire.
Then there's this: Afghan Taliban support polio vaccination campaign
So it's not really fair to blame this on the CIA's operation...
The summary is screwed up - the fake program used in searching for bin Laden was for hepatitis B, not polio.
I once read it being referred to as "the country that should never have been."
The partition of the Subcontinent is a tragedy that is still happening.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I hope the families of the slain sue and are successful in getting bazzzilions of dollars out of the idiot Americans.
So the Sikhs that were killed in the wake of 9/11 as "blowback" should sue the Taliban and Al-Queda?
Man, "justice" sure is fucked up where you're from.
Oh yeah, and Americans are idiots.
Ah yes, it is the entire American populace that are idiots. Yep, we were all part of everything you just said. Not one of us opposes it. All of us act together uniformly. No one protests. Man, for people who like to criticize Americans as racist bigots, they sure could look in the mirror from time to time.
My work here is dung.
Pakistan allied itself to NATO and America, allowed its land to be used freely for US spy planes, Voice of America broadcast stations, bought every bit of military hardware US was allowed to export, from Patton Tanks, to F-16s to E-3 Hawk-eyes to stinger missiles to.... India claimed to be a leader of Non-Aligned movement, but in fact it was leaning towards USSR with MIG-21, MIG-23, Sukai, Hind helicopters and T-72 tanks etc.
But though both countries were mired in poverty, somehow India's democracy thrived. No one would mistake India for a developed country, with its slums and open sewers and congested roads and perennial power cuts and corrupt politicians and periodical flare up of communal violence. But somehow it is emerging out of it, in fits and starts, cornered the cheap back office white collar market, some good IT companies, decent medical systems, eradicated polio, making good progress on other diseases...
I don't think the difference is religion. I think the difference is government dominated by the military in Pakistan, and civilians in firm control of the military in India. That I think set a completely different social processes, incentives in the economy etc. I think economists should study how this process happened instead of wasting their time out doing one another in forecasting gloom and doom following the fiscal cliff. More and more the economists are looking like Mayans predicting the end of the world at the end of their long count calender.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Allegedly killed. I haven't seen the body, have you? We can't rule out the possibility that the deaths were faked for insurance fraud. All we know is that someone, who may or may not really exist, may or may not now be dead.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
You do realize I was pointing to a video of Bill Gates speaking at a TED event....
Rationalizing is a sad disease that affects those that have a tiny tiny tiny voice telling them things ain't right in the world but they don't want to do anything about it because it would involve effort and risks their cosy little lives.
It is seen as such stuff as people saying child labor ain't so bad because at least it means kids have an income, that slave labor conditions are better then having no job etc etc. And that horrible nasty practices should be preserved because else you are not respecting peoples culture. Oddly enough these people NEVER preserve their OWN culture, they did take the polio vaccination because apparently THEIR culture was not worth preserving. Only OTHER people should be kept in a primitive backward miserable state to preserve cultural diversion and totally by accident the power of their own culture.
Basically, the grand parent is an elitist asshole trying to rationalize why others must live in misery to preserve their cultures so he can not associate with them.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.