Almost Daily Rant

Dr. Tenpenny on the Dangers of Vaccines

Mike Adams of Natural News recently interviewed Dr. Sherri Tenpenny about the dangers of vaccines. Note that the link takes you to a summary article but I've embedded the full video interview below.

What made this interview so powerful is that it goes beyond usual counterpoints and into the philosophical foundations underpinning the medical-pharmacological belief system. Dr. Tenpenny spotlights the reasons why vaccines are more a faith-based religion or mythology than a science. After all, were it a science, we would see actual results from placebo-based double-blind studies proving vaccines are harmless. We’d also see studies that link the impacts of vaccines beyond 14 days, and see that it is not accurate to say that a vaccine is “effective”, implying "protection" because it generates antigens, which in many cases have been proven to leave you vulnerable and in some cases more susceptable to the disease. True science would also not attempt to credit vaccines for ridding the world of diseases which were already on the decline, primarily due to improved sanitation.

How one can be labeled as a conspiracy wacko or radical for simply questioning the need to inject an infant with diseased animal, insect and fetal matter, potential carriers of other harmful and cancer-causing agents, along with hundreds of toxic chemicals, proven to cause brain inflammation, autoimmune disorders, allergies and asthma at a time when brain and immune system development are so vulnerable, demonstrates how desperate the complex has become.

The simple fact that governments have assumed all risk for vaccine manufacturers operating with immunity should cause one to get all the facts beyond what their doctors has been conditioned to tell them. Indemnity has aligned the pharmaceutical motive of profit with the government motive of plausible deniability of financial liability. Clearly, this is an unholy combination.

Many medical professionals, while individually well-meaning, have fallen prey to an institution built on peer pressure where professional dissent is professional suicide, oddly not too unlike a street gang. The Andrew Wakefield witch hunt is certainly a message to others who question the institution.

In any event, Tenpenny’s Saying No To Vaccines is an invaluable reference for making more informed decisions.

Avoiding GMOs

Everything You HAVE TO KNOW about Dangerous Genetically Modified Foods from Jeffrey Smith on Vimeo.

Download this Shopping guide for avoiding GMOs.

Vaccination Schedule

As a follow-up to the last posting on vaccines, and the fear mongering effort behind the H1N1 scare of 2009, I wanted to re-link an older but must-read article below on infant and child vaccination schedules by Donald W. Miller, Jr, MD.

And again to the fierce defenders of the medical establishment, this is not to say that all vaccinations are bad, but rather to repeatedly expose the blatant suppression of data that suggests the risks are much greater than advertised, when the benefits in many cases are questionable at best. The collusion between BigPharma and government agencies at the Simpsonwood Conference in 2000 is a case in point.

The medical, political and legal doctrines are structured such that the burden of proof to demonstrate without a reasonable doubt that vaccinations are harmful falls on an ill-equipped public, rather than requiring the vaccination establishment to prove that they are not. Once again, the situation is symptomatic of a corporatist system that trumps the rights of individuals to act on informed decisions.

Vaccination is a controversial subject, and many parents worry about subjecting their children to them. Readers of my article "Mercury on the Mind," about vaccines and dental amalgams, have asked what vaccines I would recommend their children receive. This article addresses that question.

In the Recommended Childhood Immunization Schedule put out by the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), 12 vaccines are given to children before they reach the age of two. Providers inject them against hepatitis B, diphtheria, tetanus (lockjaw), pertussis (whooping cough), polio, pneumococcal infections, Hemophilus influenzae type b infections, measles, mumps, rubella (German measles), chickenpox, and influenza (the flu).

Infectious disease was the leading cause of death in children 100 years ago, with diphtheria, measles, scarlet fever, and pertussis accounting for most them. Today the leading causes of death in children less than five years of age are accidents, genetic abnormalities, developmental disorders, sudden infant death syndrome, and cancer. A basic tenet of modern medicine is that vaccines are the reason. There is growing evidence that this is so, but perhaps not quite in the way conventional medical wisdom would have it. (Read Full Article)

Also, Mercola just published an excellent summary on risks of the Hepatitis B vaccine.

Hepatitis B vaccination has been recommended by federal health officials since 1991 for all infants and children.

There are now hepatitis B vaccine mandates for children to attend daycare or school in 47 states, despite strong evidence that the health risks of doing this outweighs the benefit for your child.

Three hepatitis B shots are part of the standard government-recommended childhood vaccination schedule, with the first dose given at 12 hours of age in the newborn nursery of most hospitals.

But hepatitis B is a primarily blood-transmitted disease associated with risky lifestyle choices such as unprotected sex with multiple partners and intravenous drug use involving sharing needles—it is NOT primarily a "children's disease."

As Dr. Jane Orient of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) so eloquently testified to Congress:

"With hepatitis B vaccine, the case for mandatory immunization with few exemptions is far less persuasive than with smallpox or polio vaccines, which protected against highly lethal or disabling, relatively common, and easily transmissible diseases...

"For most children, the risk of a serious vaccine reaction may be 100 times greater than the risk of hepatitis B."

There are more reports of serious adverse reactions in children than there are cases of childhood hepatitis B reported in America and, despite what you may hear in the media, reactions can be serious. (Read Full Article)

Sweet Lies

The industry that spends fortunes to convince you that terminator seeds and gene guns are just an extension of Mendel’s peas, and that neurotoxins like aspartame are healthy is at it again in the latest PR campaign to convince you that high fructose corn syrup is equivalent to sugar. 

The Corn Refiners Association (CRA) has petitioned the U.S. FDA to allow manufacturers the option of using the term “corn sugar” instead of “high fructose corn syrup”.

In their press release on the subject, they claim that “independent research demonstrates that the current labeling is confusing to American consumers.”

They blame “inexact scientific reports and inaccurate media accounts” for the current stigma associated with high fructose corn syrup.

In reality, as opposed to the CRA’s dream world, if you need to lose weight, or if you want to avoid diabetes and heart disease, high-fructose corn syrup is one type of sugar you’ll want to avoid.

Part of what makes HFCS such an unhealthy product is that it is metabolized to fat in your body far more rapidly than any other sugar (Read full article).

Vaccines, GMOs and Population Control

More people are becoming aware of the dangers of mercury in vaccinations, but mercury is just the tip of a very long spear. Vaccines, such the annual flu shot, are a cocktail of other toxins such as formaldehyde, aluminum and oil-based adjuvants like squalene.  And the same industry which benefits by a widely held belief that flu vaccines are safe and effective through massive PR campaigns has never produced a real study that confirms either. The Cochrane group found that the maximum effective rate is 1-3% because for starters they seldom match the correct virus:

http://www.naturalnews.com/029641_vaccines_junk_science.html

So with all the downside risk, which is suppressed as with the attack on Dr. Wakefield’s autism studies, the potential benefit seems slim to none. But vaccines are profitable and protected by the FDA, which based on their track record (GMOs, glyphosate, aspartame, MSG and so on), clearly puts profitability and the agenda of its handlers before public health. Is it any wonder when powerhouse lobbyists are appointed as FDA advisors by the White House?

The corruption runs so deeply from the corporate, regulatory to the institutional because too few benefit from the truth:  

http://wholefoodusa.wordpress.com/2010/07/04/cdc-votes-everyone-should-get-flu-vaccination-this-fallwinter/

Darker still, the WHO, the world’s supposed health watchdog, worked for decades with population control councils to develop a stealth anti-fertility push in the 3^rd world through a tetanus vaccination program that only targeted women of child-bearing age.

http://www.naturalnews.com/026907_food_vaccination_health.html

Power, greed and control motives, expressed in NSSM 200, Henry Kissinger’s document on population reduction in resource rich countries using food as a weapon, are disguised by a fake veil of humanitarianism. 

http://www.schillerinstitute.org/food_for_peace/kiss_nssm_jb_1995.html

As a study in how the vaccine, GMO and population control agendas converge, the Gates and Rockefeller Foundations are currently financing a project called The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) headed by former UN chief, Kofi Annan, which would push GMOs such as spermicidal corn, onto Africa.

http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/Swine_Flu/Gates_Vaccines/gates_vaccines.html

Major Concerns for Those Living near the Gulf

The catastrophe in the Gulf is getting to a point where the ecological, social and economic impacts are beyond comprehension. The suffering is immense and unfortunately getting worse, from the fishermen who can no longer make a living to the sea creatures floundering in a toxic stew.

At the risk of sounding like an alarmist, I’ve feared since reports started breaking on how dire the downhole situation was a month ago, that we are on the verge of a massive exodus from the entire effected region. It seems unavoidable that the current will push the oil around the coast of Florida, up the Eastern seaboard and out into the Atlantic Ocean.

One immediate concern is that power plants that use water from the Gulf Coast may need to be shut down. Rolling blackouts are especially concerning with Florida’s large elderly population and a flat terrain which means that most water distribution requires electricity.

There is also a risk that rain could distribute the dispersant Corexit on shore, even though I have not seen conclusive evidence of the percentage that could be distributed through the evaporation cycle. Nonetheless, hurricanes and tropical storms would push the toxic waters further inland even without the help of rain. The third major risk is benzene contamination of the water supplies. Sadly, but at this point probably inevitably, economic desperation will drive many westward as was the case during the Dust Bowl of the Depression.

The Absolutely Devastating Food Safety Modernization Act

I'm deeply concerned and have been tracking the purposefully misnamed Food Safety and Modernization Act which is making its way through Congress and must be stopped. This is it all in one bill: Codex, NAIS, an end to organic food production, a mandate of GMOs and more police state measures of enforcement. This bill is the definition of treason.

Codex Alimentarius is a decades-in-progress global doctrine that places food, drugs and supplements under global regulatory control. These international bodies are bankrolled and controlled by the largest stakeholders of the corporations they claim to regulate, legitimizing monopolistic food and drug cartels that destroy competition and suppress alternatives.

Codex establishes a legal doctrine that replaces Common Law, which allows you to consume what is not explicitly prohibited, with Napoleonic Law, which prohibits consumption of what is not explicitly allowed. Codex severely restricts personal health-related choices, including less profitable supplements that prevent (not treat) ailments.

 The origins of GMOs and the cartel behind the majority of our food production is very, deep, dark well. You’ve probably seen Jeffrey Smith's work (Seeds of Deception and his latest Genetic Roulette). I also highly recommend reading William Engdalh's Seeds of Destruction, which goes beyond the science and into the geopolitics of GMO's and large agribusiness in general. Henry Kissinger's infamous quote sums it up best:

"To control the oil is to control nations; to control the food is to control the people."

The roads of GMOs lead you back to the Rockefeller Foundation, along a foreign policy based on NSSM200 (reduce population in countries with resources) and up to theft of native crops by patent by large multinationals in Asia, Iraq and Africa.

It is much uglier than "unintended consequences" like so many seem to think.

510, the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010,  may be the most dangerous bill in the history of the US.  It is to our food what the bailout was to our economy, only we can live without money.

“If accepted [S 510] would preclude the public’s right to grow, own, trade, transport, share, feed and eat each and every food that nature makes.  It will become the most offensive authority against the cultivation, trade and consumption of food and agricultural products of one’s choice. It will be unconstitutional and contrary to natural law or, if you like, the will of God.”  ~Dr. Shiv Chopra, Canada Health whistleblower

It is similar to what India faced with imposition of the salt tax during British rule, only S 510 extends control over all food in the US, violating the fundamental human right to food.

Monsanto says it has no interest in the bill and would not benefit from it, but Monsanto’s Michael Taylor who gave us rBGH and unregulated genetically modified (GM) organisms, appears to have designedit and is waiting as an appointed Food Czar to the FDA (a position unapproved by Congress) to administer the agency it would create — without judicial review — if it passes.  S 510 would give Monsanto unlimited power over all US seed, food supplements, food and farming.

History

In the 1990s, Bill Clinton introduced HACCP (Hazardous Analysis Critical Control Points) purportedly to deal with contamination in the meat industry.  Clinton’s HACCP delighted the offending corporate (World Trade Organization “WTO”) meat packers since it allowed them to inspect themselves, eliminated thousands of local food processors (with no history of contamination), and centralized meat into their control.  Monsanto promoted HACCP.

In 2008, Hillary Clinton, urged a powerful centralized food safety agency as part of her campaign for president.  Her advisor was Mark Penn, CEO of Burson Marsteller*, a giant PR firm representing Monsanto.  Clinton lost, but Clinton friends such as Rosa DeLauro, whose husband’s firm lists Monsantoas a progressive client and globalization as an area of expertise, introduced early versions of S 510.

S 510 fails on moral, social, economic, political, constitutional, and human survival grounds.

1.  It puts all US food and all US farms under Homeland Security and the Department of Defense, in the event of contamination or an ill-defined emergency.  It resembles the Kissinger Plan.

2.  It would end US sovereignty over its own food supply by insisting on compliance with the WTO, thus threatening national security.  It would end the Uruguay Round Agreement Act of 1994, which put US sovereignty and US law under perfect protection.  Instead, S 510 says:

COMPLIANCE WITH INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS.

Nothing in this Act (or an amendment made by this Act) shall be construed in a manner inconsistent with the agreement establishing the World Trade Organization or any other treaty or international agreement to which the United States is a party.

3.  It would allow the government, under Maritime Law, to define the introduction of any food into commerce (even direct sales between individuals) as smuggling into “the United States.” Since under that law, the US is a corporate entity and not a location, “entry of food into the US” covers food produced anywhere within the land mass of this country and “entering into” it by virtue of being produced.

4.  It imposes Codex Alimentariuson the US, a global systemof control over food.It allows the United Nations (UN), World Health Organization (WHO), UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the WTO to take control of every food on earth and remove access to natural food supplements.  Its bizarre historyand its expected impactin limiting accessto adequate nutrition (while mandating GM food, GM animals, pesticides, hormones, irradiation of food, etc.) threatens all safe and organic foodand health itself, since the world knows now it needs vitamins to survive, not just to treat illnesses.

5.  It would remove the right to clean, store and thus own seed in the US, putting control of seeds in the hands of Monsanto and other multinationals, threatening US security. See Seeds – How to criminalize them, for more details.

6.  It includes NAIS, an animal traceability program that threatens all small farmers and ranchers raising animals. The UN is participating through the WHO, FAO, WTO, and World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) in allowing mass slaughter of even heritage breeds of animals and without proof of disease.  Biodiversityin farm animals is being wiped out to substitutegenetically engineered animals on which corporations hold patents.  Animal diseases can be falsely declared.  S 510 includes the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), despite its corrupt involvement in the H1N1 scandal, which is now said to have been concocted by the corporations.

7.  It extends a failed and destructive HACCP to all food, thus threatening to do to all local food production and farming what HACCP did to meat production – put it in corporate hands and worsen food safety.

8.  It deconstructs what is left of the American economy. It takes agriculture and food, which are the cornerstone of all economies, out of the hands of the citizenry, and puts them under the total control of multinational corporations influencing the UN, WHO, FAO and WTO, with HHS, and CDC, acting as agents, with Homeland Security as the enforcer.  The chance to rebuild the economy based on farming, ranching, gardens, food production, natural health, and all the jobs, tools and connected occupations would be eliminated.

9.  It would allow the government to mandate antibiotics, hormones, slaughterhouse waste, pesticides and GMOs. This would industrialize every farm in the US, eliminate local organic farming, greatly increase global warming from increased use of oil-based products and long-distance delivery of foods, and make food even more unsafe.  The five items listed — the Five Pillars of Food Safety— are precisely the items in the food supply which are the primary source of its danger.

10. It uses food crimes as the entry into police state power and control. The bill postpones defining all the regulations to be imposed; postpones defining crimes to be punished, postpones defining penalties to be applied.  It removes fundamental constitutional protections from all citizens in the country, making them subject to a corporate tribunal with unlimited power and penalties, and without judicial review. It is (similar to C-6 in Canada) the end of Rule of Lawin the US. (Read Full Article)

Food Inc. Trailer

If you haven't seen the documentary Food Inc. you should. This is the story of why cheap food is actually very expensive in health, societal and environmental terms. Instead of simply villainizing the multi-national food corporations, the take-away message is that you vote with your actions and your pocket books.

If you want healthy, whole foods, then in the words of a close friend of mine, actions speak louder than criticism of agribusiness giants. It should also be clear that our food production and distribution system is as fragile is it is centralized. You pull the diesel and natural gas plug anywhere along the energy-intensive food chain, the machine stops and the 3-day food supply at your local Mammoth-Mart disappears overnight.

A Guide for Avoiding GMO Food

Since the U.S. does not require genetically modified foods be labeled, The Center for Food Safety published a handy Non-GMO shopping guide that you can print out for reference.

H1N1 Motives

An objective person can only come to a handful of conclusions given the rampant fear mongering over the swine flu ranging from pharmaceutical profiteering to more sinister motives.

Every year, garden variety flu kills between 250,000 to 500,000 people worldwide and 36,000 people in the US so the numbers attributed to H1N1 so do not justify the response.

As it stands, NORTHCOM is preparing for a fully militarized vaccination campaign which is nothing less than a condition of martial law (Full Article Here and collection of related articles here).

According to CNN, the Pentagon is "to establish regional teams of military personnel to assist civilian authorities in the event of a significant outbreak of the H1N1 virus this fall, according to Defense Department officials."

"The proposal is awaiting final approval from Defense Secretary Robert Gates. The officials would not be identified because the proposal from U.S. Northern Command's Gen. Victor Renuart has not been approved by the secretary.

The plan calls for military task forces to work in conjunction with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. There is no final decision on how the military effort would be manned, but one source said it would likely include personnel from all branches of the military.

…

The implications are far-reaching. The decision points towards the militarization of civilian institutions, including law enforcement and public health. A nationwide vaccination program is already planned for the Fall. The pharmaceutical industry is slated to deliver 160 million vaccine doses by the Fall, enough doses to vaccinate more than half of America's population. 

The Pentagon is already planning on the number of troops to be deployed,. with a view to supporting a mass vaccinaiton program. It is worth noting that this involvement of the military is not being decided by the President, but by the Secretary of Defense, which suggests that the Pentagon is, in a key issue of of national interest, overriding the President and Commander in Chief. The US Congress has not been consulted on the issue. 

…

Much of the groundwork for the intervention of the military has already been established. There are indications that these "regional teams" have already been established under USNORTHCOM, which has been involved in preparedness training and planning in the case of a flu pandemic.

Within the broader framework of "Disaster Relief", Northern Command has, in the course of the last two years, defined a mandate in the eventuality of a public health emergency or a flu pandemic. The emphasis is on the militarization of public health whereby NORTHCOM would oversee the activities of civilian institutions involved in health related services.

One of the obvious questions is whether or not the vaccines will be mandatory.

With your safety clearly in mind, the US government has given flu vaccine companies legal immunity. Little surprise given that biotech companies are some of the most well-connected politically. The well-known case in point is Donald Rumsfeld, ex-chairman of Gilead Sciences, patent holder for Tamiflu.

  

The US Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, has just signed a decree granting vaccine makers total legal immunity from any lawsuits that result from any new “Swine Flu” vaccine. Moreover, the $7 billion US Government fast-track program to rush vaccines onto the market in time for the Autumn flu season is being done without even normal safety testing. Is there another agenda at work in the official WHO hysteria campaign to declare so-called H1N1 a pandemic virus threat?

First and foremost, neither the WHO nor the CDC or any other scientific body has demonstrated required scientific proof for the existence of the alleged H1N1 Influenza A new virus, a proof which requires such a virus to be scientifically isolated, characterized and photographed with an electron microscope—the scientifically accepted standard procedure. Yet it is being used as the basis for declaring a global “pandemic” threat.

The current official panic campaign over alleged Swine Flu danger is rapidly taking on the dimensions of a George Orwell science fiction novel. The document signed by Sebelius grants immunity to those making a swine flu vaccine, under the provisions of a 2006 law for public health emergencies.

Consider the allegations towards Baxter which allegedly crossed bird flu with a shipment of conventional flu vaccine and the steps the US government has taken to justify forced vaccinations.

Mandatory vaccination using untested vaccines violate the principles of the Nuremburg Code and Declaration of Helsinki.

Viennese journalist Jane Burgermeister filed documents with the Vienna prosecutor’s office on April 8th, 2009 accusing vaccine producer Baxter AG, its US parent, Baxter International, and Avir Green Hills Biotechnology of intentionally contaminating a 72-kilogram shipment of conventional flu vaccine with live H5N1 (bird flu) virus.

The shipment was made in February, 2009 from Baxter’s Vienna facility to 16 laboratories in Slovenia, Czech Republic, Germany, and Austria, and the contamination was discovered by Czech sub-contractors when ferrets died under routine testing with the vaccine. Burgermeister argues that Baxter’s high level biosafety protocols makes accidental contamination of the entire shipment impossible, and accuses Baxter of bioterrorism, stating that the company intended to spark a bird flu pandemic for which its bird flu vaccine would be needed. Burgermeister’s blog, which documents her filing is located here, and a radio interview can be found here.

Burgermeister takes her accusations further, however. She accuses the Austrian Government, in particular Health Minister Alois Stoger, of colluding with the WHO and the EU by giving power, under Austria’s Influenza Pandemic Plan of 2005, to force vaccinations on Austrian citizens in the event of a bird flu pandemic. She has produced an English-language version of her documents here , with specific reference to US law. This version of the documents alleges that US state governments, through the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act, (available here), enacted in 38 states, and the US Federal Government, through the National Security Presidential Directive 51and the Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20together ( referenced here)have likewise taken on themselves the power to force vaccinations in the event of a national pandemic, among other powers.

Burgermeister raises an interesting point in her argument against this appropriation of the power to force  vaccinations. She brings up the Nuremberg Trials, and in particular, the “Doctor’s Trials”(US v. Karl Brandt, et al.)(see here ), in which Nazi doctors were convicted of war crimes, including forced administration of experimental vaccines. Burgermeister argues that forced vaccinations using vaccines of unproven safety violate the principles of the Nuremberg Codeand Declaration of Helsinki, which resulted from the Nuremberg Trials. The principles set forward in the Nuremberg Code formed the basis for US Federal regulation (45 CFR §46 )governing government and federally-funded research.

Burgermeister alleges that bird and swine flu vaccines are untested and unproven. If this is the case and these vaccines are therefore experimental, mandatory vaccination would violate the principles of the Nuremberg Code. Given this experimental nature, administration of the vaccines could be characterized as research, and if conducted using Federal employees or funding, would also be subject to informed consent requirements under 45 CFR §46.116.

So what’s in a regular flu shot?

Egg proteins: including avian contaminant viruses

Gelatin: known to cause allergic reactions and anaphylaxis are usually associated with sensitivity to egg or gelatin

Polysorbate 80 (Tween80™): can cause severe allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis

Formaldehyde: known carcinogen

Triton X100: a strong detergent

Sucrose: table sugar

Resin: known to cause allergic reactions

Gentamycin: an antibiotic

Thimerosal: mercury is still in multidose flu shot vials

What’s in the new swine flu shot?

A new report from a WHO advisory group predicts that global production of vaccine for the novel H1N1 influenza virus could be as much as 4.9 billon doses a year, far higher than previous estimates. The report says that vaccine makers are expected to produce about 780 million doses of seasonal flu vaccine for the northern hemisphere's 2008-09 flu season for the

June 12 Announcement: The new H1N1 (swine flu) vaccine is going to be made by Novartis. It will probably be made in PER.C6 cells (human retina cells) and contain MF59, a potentially debilitating adjuvant.  MF-59 is an oil-based adjuvant primarily composed of squalene, Tween 80 and Span85. All oil adjuvants injected into rats were found toxic. All rats developed an MS-like disease that left them crippled, dragging their paralyzed hindquarters across their cages.

Squalene caused severe arthritis (3 on scale of 4). Squalene in humans at 10-20 ppb (parts per billion) lead to severe immune responses, such as autoimmune arthritis and lupus. Reference: Kenney, RT. Edleman, R. "Survey of human-use adjuvants." Expert Review of Vaccines. 2 (2003) p171. Reference: Matsumoto, Gary. Vaccine A: The Covert Government Experiment That’s Killing Our Soldiers and Why GI’s Are Only the First Victims of this Vaccine. New York: Basic Books. p54.

Federal health officials will probably recommend that most Americans get three flu shots this fall: one regular flu shot and two doses of any vaccine made against the new swine flu strain. Reference: Washington Post, Wednesday, May 6, 2009

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is talking to school superintendents around the country, urging them to spend the summer planning what to do if the government decides it needs their buildings for mass vaccinations and vaccinating kids first. Reference: CBS News, June 12, 2009.

Agribusiness, Big Pharma and Flu Panics

The swine flu panic shows us that political responses and overreaction to a supposed crisis should be of more concern to the average citizen than the crises itself. Though much has been made over Rahm Emanuel’s statement to, “never let a series crisis go to waste”, one needs only look back as far as the last administration to see that practice carried out with the wholesale destruction of civil liberties in the Patriot Act after 911 created a mass fear society overnight paving the way for a homeland security complex.

 

One foreseeable outcome of the Flu Panic of 2009 is to create scapegoats out of small family farms at the benefit of agribusiness giants by imposing animal ID tagging and other punitive measures. Once again, the truth trail leads us past the left-right puppet paradigm to the corporate money power base.

Flying Pigs, Tamiflu and Factory Farms by F. William Engdahl

If we are to believe what our trusted international media report, the world is on the brink of a global pandemic outbreak of a new deadly strain of flu, H1N1 as it has been labelled, or more popularly, Swine Flu. As the story goes, the outbreak of the deadly flu was first discovered in Mexico. According to press reports, after several days, headlines reported as many as perhaps 150 deaths in Mexico were believed caused by this virulent people-killing pig virus that has spread to humans and now is allegedly being further spread from human to human. Cases were being reported hourly from Canada to Spain and beyond. The only thing wrong with this story is that it is largely based on lies, hype and coverup of possible real causes of Mexican deaths.

One website, revealingly named Swine Flu Vaccine, reports the alarming news, ‘One out of every five residents of Mexico's most populous city wore masks to protect themselves against the virus as Mexico City seems to be the epicenter of the outbreak. As many as 103 deaths have been attributed to the swine flu so far with many more feared to be on the horizon. The health department of Mexico said an additional 1,614 reported cases have been documented.’ We are told that the H1N1 ‘shares genetic material from human, avian and swine influenza viruses.’1

Airports around the world have installed passenger temperature scans to identify anyone with above normal body temperature as possible suspect for swine flu. Travel to Mexico has collapsed. Sales of flu drugs, above all Tamiflu from Roche Inc., have exploded in days. People have stopped buying pork fearing certain death. The World Health Organization has declared ‘a public health emergency of international concern,’ defined by them as ‘an occurrence or imminent threat of illness or health conditions caused by bioterrorism, epidemic or pandemic disease, or highly fatal infectious agents or toxins that pose serious risk to a significant number of people.’2

What are the symptoms of this purported Swine Flu? That’s not at all clear according to virologists and public health experts. They say Swine Flu symptoms are relatively general and nonspecific. ‘So many different things can cause these symptoms. it is a dilemma,’ says one doctor interviewed by CNN. ‘There is not a perfect test right now to let a doctor know that a person has the Swine Flu.’ It has been noted that most individuals with Swine Flu had an early onset of fever. Also it was common to see dizziness, body aches and vomiting in addition to the common sneezing, headache and other cold symptoms. These are symptoms so general as to say nothing.

The US Government’s Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta states on its official website, ‘Swine Influenza (swine flu) is a respiratory disease of pigs caused by type A influenza viruses that causes regular outbreaks in pigs. People do not normally get swine flu, but human infections can and do happen. Swine flu viruses have been reported to spread from person-to-person, but in the past, this transmission was limited and not sustained beyond three people.’ Nonetheless they add, ‘CDC has determined that this swine influenza A (H1N1) virus is contagious and is spreading from human to human. However, at this time, it is not known how easily the virus spreads between people.’3

How many media that have grabbed on the headline ‘suspected case of Swine Flu’ in recent days bother to double check with the local health authorities to ask some basic questions? For example, the number of confirmed cases of H1N1 and their location? The number of deaths confirmed to have resulted from H1N1? Dates of both? Number of suspected cases and of suspected deaths related to the Swine Flu disease?

Some known facts

According to Biosurveillance, itself part of Veratect, a US Pentagon and Government-linked epidemic reporting center, on April 6, 2009 local health officials declared a health alert due to a respiratory disease outbreak in La Gloria, Perote Municipality, Veracruz State, Mexico. 

They reported, ‘Sources characterized the event as a ‘strange’ outbreak of acute respiratory infection, which led to bronchial pneumonia in some pediatric cases. According to a local resident, symptoms included fever, severe cough, and large amounts of phlegm. Health officials recorded 400 cases that sought medical treatment in the last week in La Gloria, which has a population of 3,000; officials indicated that 60% of the town’s population (approximately 1,800 cases) has been affected. No precise timeframe was provided, but sources reported that a local official had been seeking health assistance for the town since February.’ What they later say is ‘strange’ is not the form of the illness but the time of year as most  flu cases occur in Mexico in the period October to February.

The report went on to note, ‘Residents claimed that three pediatric cases, all under two years of age, died from the outbreak. However, health officials stated that there was no direct link between the pediatric deaths and the outbreak; they stated the three fatal cases were "isolated" and "not related" to each other.’

Then, most revealingly, the aspect of the story which has been largely ignored by major media, they reported, ‘Residents believed the outbreak had been caused by contamination from pig breeding farms located in the area. They believed that the farms, operated by Granjas Carroll, polluted the atmosphere and local water bodies, which in turn led to the disease outbreak. According to residents, the company denied responsibility for the outbreak and attributed the cases to "flu." However, a municipal health official stated that preliminary investigations indicated that the disease vector was a type of fly that reproduces in pig waste and that the outbreak was linked to the pig farms.’4

Since the dawn of American ‘agribusiness,’ a project initiated with funding by the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1950s to turn farming into a pure profit maximization business, US pig or hog production has been transformed into a highly efficient, mass production industrialized enterprise from birth to slaughter. Pigs are caged in what are called Factory Farms, industrial concentrations which are run with the efficiency of a Dachau or Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. They are all conceived by artificial insemination and once born, are regularly injected with antibiotics, not because of illnesses which abound in the hyper-crowded growing pens, but in order to make them grow and add weight faster. Turn around time to slaughter is a profit factor of highest priority. The entire operation is vertically integrated from conception to slaughter to transport distribution to supermarket.

Granjas Carroll de Mexico (GCM) happens to be such a Factory Farm concentration facility for hogs. In 2008 they produced almost one million factory hogs, 950,000 according to their own statistics. GCM is a joint venture operation owned 50% by the world’s largest pig producing industrial company, Smithfield Foods of Virginia.5 The pigs are grown in a tiny rural area of Mexico, a member of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and primarily trucked across the border to supermarkets in the USA, under the Smithfields’ family of labels. Most American consumers have no idea where the meat was raised. 

Now the story becomes interesting.

Manure Lagoons and other playing fields

The Times of London interviewed the mother of 4-year-old Edgar Hernandez of La Gloria in Veracruz, the location of the giant Smithfield Foods hog production facility. Their local reporter notes, ‘Edgar Hernández plays among the dogs and goats that roam through the streets, seemingly unaware that the swine flu he contracted a few weeks ago — the first known case — has almost brought his country to a standstill and put the rest of the world on alert. ‘I feel great,’ the five-year-old boy said. ‘But I had a headache and a sore throat and a fever for a while. I had to lay down in bed.’’

The reporters add, ‘It was confirmed on Monday (April 27 2009-w.e.) that Edgar was the first known sufferer of swine flu, a revelation that has put La Gloria and its surrounding factory pig farms and ‘manure lagoons’ at the centre of a global race to find how this new and deadly strain of swine flu emerged.’ 6

That’s quite interesting. They speak of ‘La Gloria and its surrounding factory pig farms and ‘manure lagoons.’ Presumably the manure lagoons around the LaGloria factory pig farm of Smithfield Foods are the waste dumping place for the feces and urine waste from at least 950,000 pigs a year that pass through the facility. The Smithfield’s Mexico joint venture, Norson, states that alone they slaughter 2,300 pigs daily. That’s a lot. It gives an idea of the volumes of pig waste involved in the concentration facility at La Gloria.

Significantly, according to the Times reporters, ‘residents of La Gloria have been complaining since March that the odour from Granjas Carroll’s pig waste was causing severe respiratory infections. They held a demonstration this month at which they carried signs of pigs crossed with an X and marked with the word peligro (danger).’7 There have been calls to exhume the bodies of the children who died of pneumonia so that they could be tested. The state legislature of Veracruz has demanded that Smithfield’s Granjas Carroll release documents about its waste-handling practices. Smithfield Foods reportedly declined to comment on the request, saying that it would ‘not respond to rumours.’8

A research compilation by Ed Harris reported, ‘According to residents, the company denied responsibility for the outbreak and attributed the cases to ‘flu.’ However, a municipal health official stated that preliminary investigations indicated that the disease vector was a type of fly that reproduces in pig waste and that the outbreak was linked to the pig farms.’9 That would imply that the entire Swine Flu scare might have originated from the PR spin doctors of the world’s largest industrial pig factory farm operation, Smithfield Foods.

The Vera Cruz-based newspaper La Marcha blames Smithfield’s Granjos Carroll for the outbreak, highlighting inadequate treatment of massive quantities of animal waste from hog production.10

Understandably the company is perhaps more than a bit uncomfortable with the sudden attention. The company, which supplies the McDonald’s and Subway fast-food chains, was fined $12.3 million in the United States 1997 for violating the Clean Water Act. Perhaps they are in a remote tiny Mexican rural area enjoying a relatively lax regulatory climate where they need not worry about being cited for violations of any Clean Water Act.

Factory Farms as toxic concentrations

At the very least the driving force for giant industrial agribusiness outsourcing of facilities to third world sites such as Veracruz, Mexico has more to do with further cost reduction and lack of health and safety scrutiny than it does with improving the health and safety quality of the food end product. It has been widely documented and subject of US Congressional reports that large-scale indoor animal production facilities such as that of Granjos Carroll are notorious breeding grounds for toxic pathogens.

A recent report by the US Pew Foundation in cooperation with the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health notes, ‘the method of producing food animals in the United States has changed from the extensive system of small and medium-sized farms owned by a single family to a system of large, intensive operations where the animals are housed in large numbers in enclosed structures that resemble industrial buildings more than they do a traditional barn. That change has happened primarily out of view of consumers but has come at a cost to the environment and a negative impact on public health, rural communities, and the health and well-being of the animals themselves.' 11

The Pew study notes, ‘The diversified, independent, family-owned farms of 40 years ago that produced a variety of crops and a few animals are disappearing as an economic entity, replaced by much larger, and often highly leveraged, farm factories. The animals that many of these farms produce are owned by the meat packing companies from the time they are born

or hatched right through their arrival at the processing plant and from there to market.’ 12 

The study emphasizes that application of ‘untreated animal waste on cropland can contribute to excessive nutrient loading, contaminate surface waters, and stimulate bacteria and algal growth and subsequent reductions in dissolved oxygen concentrations in surface waters.’13

That is where the real investigation ought to begin, with the health and sanitary dangers of the industrial factory pig farms like the one at Perote in Veracruz. The media spread of panic-mongering reports of every person in the world who happens to contract ‘symptoms’ which vaguely resemble flu or even Swine Flu and the statements to date of authorities such as WHO or CDC are far from conducive to a rational scientific investigation..

Tamiflu and Rummy

In October 2005 the Pentagon ordered vaccination of all US military personnel worldwide against what it called Avian Flu, H5N1. Scare stories filled world media. Then, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced he had budgeted more than $1 billion to stockpile the drug Oseltamivir, sold under the name Tamiflu. President Bush called on Congress to appropriate another $2 billion for Tamiflu stocks.

What Rumsfeld neglected to report at the time was a colossal conflict of interest. Prior to coming to Washington in January 2001, Rumsfeld had been chairman of a California pharmaceutical company, Gilead Sciences. Gilead Sciences held exclusive world patent rights to Tamiflu, a drug it had developed and whose world marketing rights were sold to the Swiss pharma giant, Roche. Rumsfeld was reportedly the largest stock holder in Gilead which got 10% of every Tamiflu dose Roche sold. 14 When it leaked out, the Pentagon issued a curt statement to the effect that Secretary Rumsfeld had decided not to sell but to retain his stock in Gilead, claiming that to sell would have indicated something to hide.’ That agonizing decision won him reported added millions as the Gilead share price soared more than 700% in weeks. 

Tamiflu is no mild candy to be taken lightly. It has heavy side effects. It contains matter that could have potentially deadly consequences for a person’s breathing and often reportedly leads to nausea, dizziness and other flu-like symptoms.

Since the outbreak of Swine Flu Panic (not Swine Flu but Swine Flu Panic) sales of Tamiflu, as well as any and every possible drug marketed as flu-related, have exploded. Wall Street firms have rushed to issue ‘buy’ recommendations for the company. ‘Gimme a shot Doc, I don’t care what it is…I don’t wanna die…’ 

Panic and fear of death was used by the Bush Administration skilfully to promote the Avian Flu fraud. With ominous echoes of the current Swine Flu scare, Avian Flu was traced back to huge chicken factory farms in Thailand and other parts of Asia whose products were shipped across the world. Instead of a serious investigation into the sanitary conditions of those chicken factory farms, the Bush Administration and WHO blamed ‘free-roaming chickens’ on small family farms, a move that had devastating economic consequences to the farmers whose chickens were being raised in the most sanitary natural conditions. Tyson Foods of Arkansas and CG Group of Thailand reportedly smiled all the way to the bank.

Now it remains to be seen if the Obama Administration will use the scare around so-called Swine Flu to repeat the same scenario, this time with ‘flying pigs’ instead of flying birds. Already Mexican authorities have reported that the number of deaths confirmed from so-called Swine Flu is 7, not the 150 or more bandied in the media, and that most other suspected cases were ordinary flu or influenza.

(To be continued) 

F. William Engdahl is author of Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation (Global Rersearch, 2007, see below) and A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order (Pluto Press). His new book, Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order (Third Millennium Press) is due out end of May. He may be contacted through his website: www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.

Notes

1  Health Advisory, accessed in http://www.swine-flu-vaccine.info/.

2  Ibid.

3Centers for Disease Control, Swine Influenza and You, accessed in
http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/swineflu_you.htm.

4Biosurveillance, Swine Flu in Mexico- Timeline of Events, April 24, 2009, accessed in
http://biosurveillance.typepad.com/biosurveillance/2009/04/swine-flu-in-mexico-timeline-of-events.html.

5Smithfield Foods website, accessed in
http://www.smithfieldfoods.com/our_company/our_family/Norson.aspx.

6[i]] Ruth Maclean in La Gloria and Chris Ayres in Mexico City, I had a headache and fever’ says boy who survived, London Times, April 28, 2009.

7[ii]] Ibid.

8 Ibid.

9Ed Harris, Bloggers Examine Environmental Role in Mexico Swine Flu Outbreak, April 27, 2009, accessed in
 http://www.planetthoughts.org/?pg=pt/Whole&qid=2870.

10 Ibid.

11 The Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm

Animal Production in America, accessed in http://www.ncifap.org/_images/PCIFAPFin.pdf.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid.

14 F. William Engdahl, Is Avian Flu another Pentagon Hoax?, GlobalResearch, October 30, 2005.