Swine Flu's Pandemic Path

what bothers me most about this article–just like ST Frequency's article last year on the avian flu virus, which he called "a serious threat to mankind"–is the alarmist tone, and the lack of context. one need do no deeper research than a cursory glance at wikipedia's page on influenza to discover that a "typical" year sees between 3 and 5 MILLION severe cases of flu, resulting in up to 500,000 deaths worldwide, "which by some definitions is a yearly influenza epidemic." the united states alone sees an average of 36,000 influenza deaths per year, acccording to the JAMA sources cited in the same wikipedia page.

at least this year's alarmist rs post doesn't champion u.s. navy "international surveillance programs" as our global savior. (from last year's article: "To make matters worse, for the past year the Indonesian government has resisted international surveillance programs, withholding new isolates of the virus from WHO and US Navy scientists." –which isn't even a very accurate description of the story it links to.) at least it doesn't present us with "chilling" visions from the notoriously conservative one-worldist CFR publication Foreign Affairs, or describe Donald Rumsfeld/Gilead's Tamiflu as "the most promising" flu drug (to his defense, ST does present links that the drug doesn't work, and tends to cause dementia and suicide, making the "promising" label seem very odd).

i'm not saying a major epidemic isn't a possibility. if anything, the fact that the powers that be have begun priming the populace annually suggests that they've maybe already got one planned. but any report that talks about the dangers of epidemic without putting them in context is doing more harm than good. the instant fever pitch alarmism throughout the media generated by this "news story" is the most alarming aspect of it. after all, if every single person with flu symptoms suddenly begins to fear for his life and starts taking tamiflu, considering its "side" effects, out of alarmism alone might spring a genuine serious problem.

there are any number of reasons–from pharmaceutical profits to new justifications for strengthening a centralized global surveillance state–for someone to start an epidemic, and past precedent shows the u.s. government is certainly not above infecting its own people. between 1950 and 1969 there were at least 300 "open air" germ tests conducted by various branches of the government. an operation in 1950 by the us navy (the heroes in this story, according to ST) even killed one person by bombarding san francisco with the bacteria Serratia marcescens.

i expect alarmist reporting like this from cnn and network news, but on the reality sandwich website it seems (just like it seemed last year) rather out of place. the creepy photo of a crowd of people with face-masks on might be improved with a caption that explains that surgical masks don't help– or don't help to do anything but give media some nice sensational footage to roll.

at least the readers posting on the comment board have already shown they aren't buying the hype. no matter how feverish the news may get on this or the next flu scare, we should maintain our skepticism. and whatever you do, stay away from the tamiflu!

ST Frequency's response seems like an ego-defense, and an unfair distortion of what I wrote... at the very least, it represents a weak attempt to "follow my logic"...certainly no "A" for effort...

i'll stick to two points of clarification:

1. on context: for all of the historical context ST Frequency provided, there is none which puts the avian flu or swine flu "national security threats" in the perspective of other disease epidemics which we consider "normal," and apparently (and rationally) not worthy of terrifying news stories: seriously, these "swine flu" news stories are terrifying people. and i think that is unnecessary, sad, and seriously harmful to everyone. to explore the obvious parallel, if next year the major news outlets reported on "normal flu" in the same manner as they have on "avian flu" and "swine flu," without providing the context of the number of people that ordinarily die from this epidemic, it would give infinitely more legitimate reason for people to panic than the severity (or lack thereof) of these recent scares. after all, as i quoted in the previous post, given the number of serious cases and the number of fatalities, the magnitude of a normal flu season "by some definitions is a yearly influenza epidemic." better yet, the media outlets can just rename it, call it the mysterious "flu x," and report the numbers: 3 million serious cases in the year, 500,000 dead worldwide, including 36,000 in the united states: without context, this seems like reason to shut down schools, stop government functions, administer tamiflu, unilaterally impose centralized surveillance "protective measures" on a global scale to counteract a global problem, no? but i hope even ST Frequency is with me that the annual influenza epidemic doesn't provide such a justification. this is why the onion article that people have referenced is so right on the money: reporting on sickness and death can sound really terrifying, but it can also be completely absurd without proper context. i haven't heard or read ONE news story that provides this appropriate context, including both of ST Frequency's influenza articles on this site. i do keep my exposure to the mass media to a minimum, so i'm not saying it's not out there, but it's definitely not the gestalt i've noticed in scanning the front pages.

2. on conspiracy: i never ever suggested that the u.s. government was behind this "swine flu." as it happens, i am much more sympathetic to the theory presented in the infowars article which "george the river rat" recommended, that this is the result of the much more banal and commonplace capitalist conspiracy of generating toxic environments in the name of profit (this time a pig farm in La Gloria, Mexico, owned by the notorious Smithfield Foods) and then covering up and denying their devastating effects. that being said, i DO think the lockstep sensational media reaction to that very real and sad health problem follows an agenda of fear-priming that is not explicitly presented. i will stand by the suggestion that there are groups of extremely influential individuals–whom one can call "shadowy" if one wishes–that work inside, outside, above, below, and through government agencies to further certain extremely anti-democratic agendas, that exert significant control over powerful covert government agencies which have deception and manipulation as their raison d'etre, and that have effective control over the general message of the "mass media," so-called. Frank Wisner, the Goebbels of the OSS and the CIA, went so far as to call his covert control over the media, "Wisner's Wurlitzer," which he liked to say he could play like a grand piano. To believe that the mass media isn't so manipulated by large and extremely well-funded covert u.s. government organizations which have a long history–before, during, and certainly after WWII–of supporting international fascism in the name of "anti-communism" (and now "anti-terrorism") is almost endearingly naïve: if I were someone like David Rockefeller, and that were true, I would want my tax money back. to say that all the media outlets are just doing–in harmony– what they always do with potentially sensational stories only buries issues of media manipulation that have already been well-exposed by diligent (and legitimate) researchers: if you're not into covert agencies, then at least some research into the influence of huge corporate public relations firms should give you pause...

and as for lab-concocted weaponized disease agents and designs on population control, these are realms of demonstrable fact. a little research into fort detrick, or the post-war fate of japan's sadistic "unit 731" (they were welcomed into the u.s. defense establishment), or the "open air" germ tests i mentioned in my previous post should put to rest any doubts about the u.s. government's historic quest to engineer "better killing through chemistry." and it should come as no surprise that the population council, founded by john d. rockefeller, had as its first president a noted eugenicist (yes, the nazi kind of eugenics), who shrewdly wrote that "Eugenic goals are most likely to be achieved under another name than eugenics." given all that i've learned about covert anti-democratic manipulation in my studies, i don't think it's at all far-fetched to suggest that powerful americans could make and possibly have made plans to start a massive disease epidemic, even against "its own populace," regardless of how "fringe" that may make me seem in ST Frequency's view.

these questions of manipulation are complex, and it doesn't surprise me that conspiracy denialists (to use a deliberately provocative phrase) always try to pigeonhole conspiracy discussion into some monolithic "illuminati plot" straw man which can easily be dismissed as fringe nonsense. even if the bavarian illuminati of the 18th century did achieve the sort of secret global political dominance they sought–and i'm not saying they did or didn't–the 21st century world of 6 billion people is infinitely more complex than that 18th century world was, and it would be sensible to reason that global domination is thus correspondingly more complex. for conspiracy inquiry, the historical truth of the legacy of illuminati almost isn't worth anyone's time–at least not as a starting point. it's like a black hole: you can tell there is something there exerting influence, but the only evidence seems to be the way the light bends around it. looking into it is looking into an informational void. that being said, the world is also terribly fucked up in ways that are obviously not at all natural–on the contrary, the most powerful people at the highest realms of governments and corporations, operating with the most brutal tactics and almost unlimited funds in the shadows of secrecy and propaganda have had to work tirelessly and extremely creatively, year after year, decade after decade, to suppress the will of the huddled masses that never seem to stop yearning to breathe free. how many leftist governments need to be replaced with brutal dictatorships by covert american agencies working hand in hand with large corporations for that pattern to be clear?

globalized capitalism by itself is a conspiracy, but it also isn't the end of the story. i hope the self-assured moderates out there will excuse us radicals for doing what our label suggests: trying to understand the "root" of this mess. forgive us for resorting to "theories" and speculation, but it's all just so goddamned TOP SECRET that there's not much else one can do.

for those sincerely interested in trying to understand covert global manipulation, who don't deny outright that such a thing exists, i'll write just five phrases that provide at least an interesting (but by no means complete) introduction to the field–a pattern, even. moving backward in time, i'll put: propaganda due, mkultra, operation gladio, odessa, i.g. farben. these topics are real rabbitholes–a careful inquiry will reveal quite a lot of covert connections and an endless realm of similar shady organizations and operations (i could easily put another ten down that rival those five), though the disinformation surrounding them is also predicatably dense. just researching them with a level head can provoke a paradigm shift: a new approach to information.

i suppose some might say this was a bit of a conspiracy rant, but i find, not surprisingly, the natural response (or conditioned reaction?) to the subject of secret global politics in general to be so dismissive. i know i was a lot more dismissive when i first encountered "conspiracy theories." all the more so because so much of the most prominent voices i encountered tended to be a bit fanatical and weak on research skills. but if i had to name the two traits about myself that i am most proud of, they would probably be my open mind and my sense of skepticism. if i had to name a third, it might be my keen ability to recognize patterns (i was a math major in college). and since the roots of oppression matter a great deal to me, i keep an eye on these possible patterns i see.  and i open my big fat mouth about it, regardless of how unpopular it makes me with democrats.  

 no offense meant to ST Frequency with my criticisms, but i think he's maybe not operating with a lot of the salient facts, or at least not considering some important historical contexts. i'll be the first to say that i don't know what the hell is going on, or how far the global manipulation goes, but i'm certainly not going to let the "fringe" label stop me from at least entertaining conspiracy hypotheses.

and if all that doesn't suffice to explain my logic, i'll end by saying that this guy will always make me suspicious:

"We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. We've got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we're going to be successful. That's the world these folks operate in, and so it's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.…. You need to have on the payroll some very unsavory characters… It is a mean, nasty, dangerous dirty business out there, and we have to operate in that arena. I'm convinced we can do it; we can do it successfully. But we need to make certain that we have not tied the hands, if you will, of our intelligence communities in terms of accomplishing their mission." -Dick Cheney