- (Note - Rense.com's formal position remains that H5N1
Avian Flu continues to move toward pandemic status through genetic recombination...natural
or otherwise. The Mexican A/H1N1 'swine' flu second wave, if there is
one, will likely be far more virulent that the current outbreak. The potential
for H5N1 to recombine with A/H1N1 is quite real and could result in a massive
pandemic of historic mortality. - JR)
-
- In his April 29 Global Research.ca article, F. William
Engdahl discussed "Flying Pigs, Tamiflu and Factory Farms" and
shed light on the current swine flu hysteria - hyped by the same folks
who engineered the 2006 (H5N1) Avian Flu scare that had more bark than
bite. But it proved hugely profitable for drug makers like Roche and Gilead
Sciences, the company Donald Rumsfeld led as chairman from 1997 - 2001
and remains a major shareholder. Although he won't discuss his "private
finances," he's likely benefitting handsomely from the current panic.
-
- Earlier Avian Flu reports were like the following:
-
- -- numerous ones from public health journalists saying
governments are "thoroughly unprepared" for a pandemic flu outbreak;
as a result, it could lead to potential "societal breakdown, chaos,
and panic;"
-
- -- Robert Madelin, the EU's health and consumer protection
department director-general, cited scientists' predictions of a potential
two - seven million death toll worldwide, then saying: "It's when
and not if;"
-
- -- the World Bank estimating that an Avian Flu (H5N1)
outbreak could kill up to 70 million worldwide and cause $2 trillion in
economic losses; and
-
- -- a scary July 2006 consumeraffairs.com report citing
information like the above and more, then concluding: "There have
so far been no known cases of H5N1 (Avian Flu) in the US."
-
- When all was said and done, the global tempest was no
more than a teapot maximum few hundred deaths, but, according to Engdahl,
a Pentagon-initiated biowarfare project threatens something far graver.
In an August 2008 article titled "The Pentagon's alarming project:
Avian Flu Biowar Vaccine," he cited "alarming evidence"
of a cooperative pharmaceutical industry-Pentagon effort to genetically
weaponize the H5N1 virus, then unleash a "selective pandemic through
the process of mandatory vaccination(s) with an alleged vaccine" offered
as protection.
-
- If today's Swine Flu scare is for this purpose, indeed
it is worrisome, but that remains to be seen. What's known is what Engdahl
reported in his April 29 article: that "In October 2005 the Pentagon
ordered vaccination of all US military personnel worldwide against what
it called Avian Flu, H5N1 (and) budgeted more than $1 billion to stockpile
the drug Oseltamivir, sold under the name Tamiflu. (At the time, George
Bush asked) Congress to appropriate another $2 billion for Tamiflu stocks."
This drug "is no mild candy to be taken lightly. It has heavy side
effects" that potentially can kill.
-
- Nonetheless, during the current panic, its sales have
skyrocketed, and that alone worries some enough to wonder what's more dangerous
- the flu or the combination of the FDA approving potentially deadly drugs
like Tamiflu, the dominant media hyping a non-existant threat, public health
organizations terrifying people with heightened alerts, and government
officials like Department of Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano
saying: "We are proceeding as if we are preparatory to a full pandemic"
even though:
-
- -- no evidence suggests one;
-
- -- flu epidemics are extremely rare, certainly global
ones with the potential to kill millions;
-
- -- influenza (flu) is a common viral illness;
-
- -- it exists in numerous strains;
- -- most remain infectious for about a week and produce
symptoms including fever, coughing, nausea and at times vomiting - annoying
but rarely life-threatening; and
-
- -- simple good health practices are more effective than
dangerous drugs, including frequent hand washing, use of disinfectants
and detergents, and abstaining from high-risk foods like all GMO ones as
well as beef, poultry, and pork - raised under unsanitary conditions on
factory farms that "are notorious breeding grounds for toxic pathogens."
-
- That said, major unreported or underreported pandemics
abound, real ones. None, however, make headlines or arouse public or media
concern. Below are some.
-
- Wars, Massacres, Genocide, and Violence
-
- Wars indeed are reported but not their toll, human or
otherwise. In the past century alone, scores of millions died and even
greater numbers of survivors suffered horrendously. Currently, and in recent
years alone, wars and conflicts continue globally, including in Iraq, Afghanistan,
Occupied Palestine, Pakistan, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo,
Sudan, Sri Lanka, Uganda, Kashmir, Haiti, Ivory Coast, Southern Nigeria,
Colombia, and elsewhere plus the mounting "war on terrorism"
toll that's totally blacked out in news reports.
-
- Gideon Polya edits the Body Count web site, and in 2007
published a book titled: "Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since
1950." As a biological scientist, he calls it "a carefully researched
(country by country)" estimate totaling about 1.3 billion needless
human deaths, including 140,000 under-five American infants in the last
seven years alone according to UN demographic data. Globally 16 million
avoidable deaths occur annually, including 10 million under age-five ones.
-
- Polya states: "There is no public discussion of
the actual human cost of First World policies" that are the chief
cause of global carnage in all forms, including wars, other conflicts,
massacres and genocide, starvation and famine, disease, as well as preventable
poverty and neglect. He adds: "An apocalyptic quartet of violence,
deprivation, disease and LYING (including suppressing the truth) is responsible
for the continuing carnage.
-
- Polya defines avoidable mortality as "the difference
between the actual deaths in a country and the deaths expected for a peaceful,
decently governed country with the same demographics." His main source
was UN Population Division data for "essentially every country in
the world since 1950 - (for) population, death rate, birth rate, population
breakdown, (and) under-5 infant mortality rate."
-
- As violent occupiers, offending countries include:
-
- -- Britain responsible for 727 million deaths in dozens
of countries, including Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Afghanistan and
Iraq;
-
- -- France responsible for 142 million deaths in many
countries, including Algeria, Vietnam, Haiti, and Ivory Coast;
-
- -- the US responsible for 82 million deaths in Korea,
Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere; and
-
- -- Israel responsible for 24 million deaths in Palestine,
Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt.
-
- Polya calls the occupations of Palestine, Afghanistan,
and Iraq (among others) genocide as defined under Article 2 of the 1948
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide that
states:
-
- "In the present Convention, genocide means any of
the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part,
a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
-
- (a) Killing members of the group;
-
- (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members
of the group;
-
- (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of
life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in
part;
-
- (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within
the group;
-
- (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another
group."
-
- Post-1967, Palestine sustained 300,000 avoidable deaths.
Post-1990, Iraq had about four million, up to half that number since March
2003, and since 2001, Afghanistan suffered three to seven million. These
tolls mount daily, yet are virtually blacked out in news reports.
-
- Numerous other pandemics abound as well, mostly below
the radar.
-
- Preventable Deadly Chronic Diseases
-
- They're numerous and include heart disease, cancer, malaria,
tuberculosis, diabetes, chronic respiratory diseases, HIV/AIDS, stroke,
and many others, the result of major risk factors like obesity, high blood
pressure, smoking, poor diet, stress, lack of exercise, poverty, deprivation,
and inadequate, unavailable, and/or poor quality public health.
-
- In two October 2005 articles titled "The neglected
epidemic of chronic disease" and "Preventing chronic diseases:
how may lives can we save," The (UK-based) Lancet (medical journal)
stated that many of them often "remain marginal to the mainstream
of global action on health," yet they "represent a huge proportion
of human illness" and deaths.
-
- In 2005, around 35 million people died from heart disease,
cancer, stroke, lower respiratory infections, and numerous other illnesses
for lack of prevention, control, or effective effort to treat them.
-
- Annually, over a half million women die unnecessarily
in childbirth, and for every death another 20 suffer injury, infection
or disease for lack of available, affordable quality care - affecting about
10 million women in total. As a result, one million children are left motherless
each year and become 10 times more likely to die within two years of their
mothers' death. The great majority of maternal deaths would be preventable
if a working health system were available to save lives.
-
- A 2005 World Health Report cited almost 11 million deaths
among children under five from largely avoidable causes, including four
million babies who don't survive their first month of life. Why aren't
world governments addressing this and acting to save lives! Why don't the
major media explain it!
-
- Including all chronic diseases, a mere 2% annual death
reduction "would avert 36 million deaths by 2015" or the equivalent
of about "500 million years of life over the 10" year span from
2006 - 2015, mostly in low and middle income countries, and under half
will be for people younger than 70 years.
-
- By 2015, The Lancet projects around 64 million deaths
categorized under three major groupings:
-
- -- communicable, maternal, perinatal, and nutritional;
-
- -- chronic, non-communicable; and
-
- -- injuries.
-
- In 2005, chronic diseases accounted for 72% of the global
total for the older-30 aged population. The Lancet concluded that "the
serious consequences of chronic diseases and their (preventable) risk factors
are not recognised by the international health community," at least
in terms of financial commitment or concern.
-
- Further, although high-risk behavior (smoking, poor diet,
etc.) takes its toll, low-income countries experience a larger problem,
especially for the population segment without easy access to good lifestyle
choices, including the availability of quality health care.
-
- An "insidious myth" is that these conditions
aren't preventable because people bring them on themselves. "The reality
could hardly be more different" with numerous factors playing a part,
including environmental and economic pressures that take a huge toll on
human health.
-
- Differences between high and low income countries are
marked and show the successful effects of intervention. From 1970 - 2000,
around 14 million heart disease deaths were averted in America alone. Overall,
a relatively small number of "modifiable risks" account for more
than half of all chronic disease deaths. Reducing them would have a dramatic
effect through:
-
- -- individual interventions;
-
- -- population-based ones; and
- -- macroeconomic ones with enough desire and fiscal allocations
to do it.
-
- The combination of all three are needed for chronic disease
prevention and control plus one more - widespread dominant media promotion
the same way it spreads fear by hyping scams like Avian and Swine Flu.
The Lancet also stated:
-
- "Our vision for the future extends beyond measuring
risk behavior and counting the dead, and instead encourages all sectors
of society (including the media) to contribute effective ways of reducing
health risks and promoting longer, healthier lives." It's for those
sectors to get on with the task instead of acting counterproductively,
pursuing profits at the expense of human health, and ignoring the global
pandemic of preventable illnesses and diseases.
-
- Other global pandemics include:
-
- -- 1.3 billion people live on less than $1 dollar a day,
including over 500 million existing in "absolute poverty" according
to the World Bank; another three billion survive on about $2 a day; poverty
this extreme kills;
-
- -- starvation and famine kill about 15 million children
annually;
-
- -- according to the World Health Organization (WHO),
one-third of the world population is ill-fed and another one-third is starving;
malnutrition affects one in twelve people, including 160 million children
under age five; in America, one-sixth of the elderly population is ill-fed,
and one out of eight children under 12 endures daily hunger;
-
- -- global hunger, starvation and famine persist in spite
of a plentiful world food supply;
-
- -- five million annual smoking-related deaths occur;
-
- -- two million annual alcohol-related deaths;
-
- -- about one million annual suicides;
-
- -- 400,000 annual auto and truck accident deaths;
-
- -- 200,000 annual illicit drug-related deaths; two -
three times that number die from legal drugs;
-
- -- about 30,000 annual US gun-related deaths;
- -- unknown annual tens of thousands of deaths from pollution,
food and water contamination, nuclear radiation exposure, and domestic
violence, especially to women, children and the elderly; and
-
- -- according to the World Health Organization: "The
world's biggest killer and the greatest cause of ill health and suffering
across the globe is listed almost at the end of the International Classification
of Diseases (code Z59.5) -- extreme poverty."
-
- These are real preventable pandemics, not fake ones like
Swine Flu being hyped for profit, to spread fear, and divert public attention
from real problems like the above-listed ones, the deepening global economic
holocaust, the systematic looting of national wealth, and the steady path
America is on to becoming a militarized banana republic police state.
-
- Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Center
for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at
lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
-
- Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and
listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday
- Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished
guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy
listening.
-
- http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13461
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