...all the reports about this supposed epidemic are based on faulty data provided by governmental agencies that have admittedly lied and covered up such data in the past to promote fear and terror for political and economic ends... ignore it. Tune it out. Turn off the TV and observe the actual world around you.
There is a brilliant video that was floating around the web several years ago in which someone simply spliced together news coverage of the 2001 anthrax scare into a surreal two minute montage of newscaster after newscaster solemnly intoning the words “anthrax,” “anthrax investigation,” “anthrax exposure,” “anthrax attacks,” “antibiotics” and other anthrax-related phrases. In just two minutes the viewer gets a vivid understanding of just how much of a role the media played in spreading the fear about the anthrax “attacks,” a series of anthrax-laced letters that were sent through the U.S. postal system in the wake of 9/11.
Ron Paul on Ebola Fears
The anthrax letters ended up killing just five people out of an American population (at the time) of nearly 285,000,000. As ludicrous as it was, in retrospect, for the average American to be scared about dying from anthrax in 2001, how much more ridiculous was it that the topic was discussed daily as I went to open the mail at the commercial real estate office I was working at at the time? In Canada. Where no letters were ever sent, no one got sick, and (obviously) no one died.
Such is the power of the media to manipulate our perception of the dangers that are worth our time and attention. 33,000 vehicle related deaths per year? A fatality-causing collision might rate a 20 second mention in the local news. 5 anthrax-related deaths over a two month period? Literally thousands of hours of coverage will be devoted to the topic, with hundreds of talking heads brought in to discuss the implications, with special emphasis placed on the pharmaceuticals that might come in handy in the event of anthrax exposure.
None of this should be surprising to readers of Dr. Graeme Macqueen's brilliant new summation of the 2001 anthrax inside job, “The 2001 Anthrax Deception,” in which he painstakingly documents the way in which the mass media hyped, amplified and spread anthrax fears during the attack:
“The U.S. media did not hesitate to make anthrax fears a major theme.In fact, they considered fears of anthrax almost as newsworthy as anthrax itself and reported on them repeatedly. By reporting on these fears, they participated, of course, in their spread. 'Anxiety' was probably the most common term ('Anthrax Anxiety at Home,' 'widespread anxiety in New York,' 'Anxiety Grows in South Florida,' 'Anxiety Over Bioterrorism Grows'), but there were also references to 'a frightened public,' 'rising public concern,' 'panicky citizens' and 'hysteria.' There were also references to 'jitters' and 'nervousness.' Immediately after the death of Robert Stevens, the Washington Post reported that 'jittery' citizens were 'on their knees begging for drugs.' On October 10 the appropriately named Darryl Fears reported in the same newspaper that after law enforcement agencies put the nation in a state of high alert and Ashcroft asked Americans to maintain 'a heightened state of awareness,' the result was increased feat. Along with the demand for Cipro, it appears, there was now a demand for gas masks. Soon (Oct. 15) it was reported that the 'anthrax scare' was spreading around the world. Eventually (Oct. 18) the reading public was informed that 'the fear of anthrax has become inescapable,' and shortly thereafter—not long before the final Congressional votes on the Patriot Act—Americans were said to be experiencing 'primordial terror' in 'a national anxiety attack.' It did not take long for journalists to come up with a clever aphorism: anthrax is not contagious, but fear of anthrax is.”
There are several things to note from this highly informative passage. The first would be that the mainstream media, perhaps unsurprisingly, inserted subtle propaganda for the pharmaceutical industry into their coverage of events, depicting average citizens as “on their knees begging for drugs.” The second would be that, by focusing on and thus helping to create and spread the sense of “primordial fear” that they were supposedly 'reporting' on, the news media were guilty of terrorism in the strictest sense of that word. And the third thing to note is that it was this terror, created and fostered by the media itself, that helped enable the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act, a horrific piece of legislation legalizing the most flagrant violations of American citizens' supposed “civil liberties” and enabling the rise of Police State America that we are increasingly familiar with today.
Fast forward to 2014. It isn't difficult to see how the Ebola hype of 2014 is virtually identical (in terms of mainstream American media coverage) to the anthrax attacks of 2001. A total of three CDC confirmed cases of Ebola diagnosed in the United States has managed to set off a firestorm of coverage that has now completely consumed the 24/7 news cycle and completely displaced the last boogeyman of the week (remember ISIS?) from the headlines (exactly as I suggested in last month's column on “The 9/11 Terror Script”). Are we being duped once again, whipped into a panic over something that, in retrospect, will make the hyperventilating coverage seem patently ridiculous? Or is this something different, something genuinely worthy of our attention? If this is a media-generated terror campaign, to what end is it being effected? Is there a Patriot Act equivalent that is waiting in the wings?
First, let's get a handle on some facts. Or, more to the point, explain why the “facts” being thrown around about this outbreak are admittedly meaningless. As of press time, the WHO has identified 8,997 cases of Ebola as “confirmed,” “probable” or “suspected.” This means that the 9,000 figure that is being thrown around right now is almost certainly inaccurate, with only about half of that number actually being confirmed through laboratory testing. But look at the WHO data for “confirmed” cases of Ebola (943) and deaths from Ebola (1072) in Liberia. You're not reading that incorrectly; there have actually been more confirmed deaths than confirmed cases because of a reported lack of laboratory capacity for confirming cases of Ebola (but not for confirming deaths, apparently). In Sierra Leone there have been 142 “probable” deaths out of 37 probable cases because of “on-going reclassification, retrospective investigation and availability of laboratory results.” Or take the estimated 50% fatality rate for this outbreak based on the fact that out of the 9,000 cases there have been 4,500 reported deaths. As we have just seen, the 9,000 case figure is inaccurate and the number of cases/deaths is dependent on laboratory capacity, so once again the 50% fatality rate is almost certainly inaccurate. Dividing cases by deaths also fails to take into account the fact that there are some proportion of those living with the disease who will die from it at some point in the future. After noting how “messy some of the data are,” a BBC report on the subject goes on to note that “this is the same basic data being used to reach forecasts of 1.4 million cases by January or 10,000 new cases a week by December.” In other words, not even the BBC is buying it.
But all of these numbers rely on the accuracy of the PCR (polymerase chain reaction) and ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) tests that are used to diagnose Ebola in the first place. I will spare you the details, but critics like Jon Rappoport have called into question the very basis of these tests as proof of the presence or impact of Ebola. Sound far-fetched? In July 2009, at the very height of the swine flu pandemic hype, the CDC suddenly stopped counting new cases of the disease. An investigative story into the subject by CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson opened with the provocative statement: “If you've been diagnosed 'probable' or 'presumed' 2009 H1N1 or 'swine flu' in recent months, you may be surprised to know this: odds are you didn't have H1N1 flu.” The report details how many of the “probable” H1N1 samples sent by the states to the CDC prior to the July 2009 shut-down of testing were in fact false positives and that the numbers used to justify the pandemic “crisis” had been vastly overblown. Attkisson's bombshell story was vetted, checked, and ready for broadcast...but the network execs killed the story and it wound up as a website-only piece. Months after they stopped actually counting the tests (and after they knew that the real numbers were vastly lower than the “tens of thousands” they had been talking about in July), the CDC suddenly came out with an estimate that 22 million Americans, or 1 out of every 15 people in the country, had had the swine flu. This estimate was apparently based on no actual tests or data whatsoever.
In the case of the 2009 swine flu hysteria, the evident motivation for terrorizing the public was twofold. Firstly, there was an attempt to 'help along' the passage of the “Model State Emergency Health Powers Act,” a piece of legislation that has now been passed into law in numerous states across the country that gives Governors extraordinary, dictator-like powers in the event of declared pandemics to seize private property and use military assets to enforce quarantines and deliver mandatory vaccines. The other apparent motivation for the 2009 panic was simply to scare up money for vaccine manufacturers, something that worked very well. As the Council of Europe noted in a report on the affair: “Some members of these advisory bodies evidently have professional links to certain pharmaceutical groups - notably through receiving extensive research grants from the big pharmaceutical groups - so that the neutrality of their advice could be contested. To date, WHO has failed to provide convincing evidence to counter these allegations and the organization has not published the relevant declarations of interest taking such a reserved position, the Organization has joined other bodies, such as the European Medicines Agency (EMEA), which likewise, have still not published such documents.”
Could there be a similar motivation behind the promotion of terror in the 2014 Ebola epidemic? Surely there are economic interests behind the promotion of the newly-energized Ebola vaccine/treatment industry. As I point out in my recent podcast on “The Ebola Effect,” these interests have already seen dramatic rises in stock value from the constant promotion of their brands on the evening news. (And, worryingly, many of them are connected directly to the US and Canadian biowarfare research complex via drug licensing agreements.) But in this case, as many in the alternative media have argued, the real motivation may be geopolitical in nature. The US and its allies have been looking for an excuse to send more troops into Africa for years now. Kony 2012 turned out to be a propaganda dud. Boko Haram failed to motivate the American people. But Ebola may just be the ticket that's needed to justify a large influx of American troops on African soil. The Brits, for their part, are already getting in on the action; less than 24 hours after it was announced that 750 UK troops would be sent to Sierra Leone to help with Ebola containment efforts there it was revealed that the deployments were in fact already in progress and many of the troops were already there.
So where does that leave us today? Unfortunately, it leaves us in a situation where all of the reports we are hearing about this supposed epidemic are based on admittedly faulty data being provided by governmental agencies that have admittedly lied and covered up such data in the past in order to promote fear and terror for political and economic ends. There is really only one way to counteract the fear that is being sown around this issue at the moment: ignore it. Tune it out. Turn off the TV and observe the actual world around you. Do you or anyone you know have Ebola? Has anyone in your community died in a bloody, violent manner as would be expected of a victim of hemorrhagic fever? Are there bodies of dead and dying lining the streets of your town? No? Good. Then take the average precautions that you would generally take in any cold and flu season (covering mouth when you cough, washing hands, etc.) and go about your daily business.
You are not going to die of Ebola. Live your life accordingly and forget what the terrorists are trying to tell you.
Weekly market Wrap Up