BOOM: Top Ebola Scientist Joked About Culling Humanity with Engineered Virus

Aaron Dykes & Melissa Melton

Activist Post

Media coverage is now focusing on the experimental Ebola treatments being given to two American Ebola patients who contracted it while caring for victims in Africa — the site of the world's deadliest outbreak.

But that Ebola treatment, created by a leading bioengineering scientist from the University of Arizona who "joked" about wiping out humanity with a "better" genetically engineered virus during a post-lecture Q&A focused on over-population issues, citing the Hollywood film 'Contagion.'

As Truthstream Media previously reported, on February 2, 2012, Dr. Charles Arntzen, head of The Biodesign Institute for Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology, responded to a question pertaining to whether feeding the 8 billion people of the world was worth it, or whether population reduction should be pursued.

The scientist quipped:

“Has anybody seen ‘Contagion’? That’s the answer! Go out and use genetic engineering to create a better virus… 25 percent of the population is supposed to go in Contagion.”

While this comment was made prior to the current Ebola outbreak fears, it is unsettling given the high level projects Dr. Arntzen has worked on for DARPA, as well as private biotech research. Among these are storable genetically engineered Anthrax vaccines for use during a biological attack, an edible vaccine with genetically engineered medicine/vitamins grown into foods like bananas and even work supporting efforts by EpiCyte to create a spermicidal anti-bodies grown in corn to slow human reproduction.

Statements like these hardly convey trust in a process that is already less than transparent and prone to speculation, various states of unrest and panic on the part of the public. The Daily Mail reported that much of the local population in Sierra Leone have been distrustful of medical workers there and blamed the deaths on a 'government conspiracy'

Someone casually remarking on culling some 25% of the population with a bioweapon is THE LAST PERSON you'd want to trust with creating an already dangerous countermeasure to Ebola, which carries a death rate as high as 90%.

Video link here

Aaron Dykes and Melissa Melton are some of the best independent researchers in all media. You can find their work at TruthstreamMedia.com, subscribe to them on YouTube, or Follow them on Twitter.

Corporate Overlords

 

By Sarah Anderson and John Cavanagh

Corporate Watch

  

1. Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are now global corporations; only 49 are countries.

2. The combined sales of the world's Top 200 corporations are far greater than a quarter of the world's economic activity.
3. The Top 200 corporations' combined sales are bigger than the combined economies of all countries minus the biggest 9; that is they surpass the combined economies of 182 countries.
4. The Top 200 have almost twice the economic clout of the poorest four-fifths of humanity.
5. The Top 200 have been net job destroyers in recent years. Their combined global employment is only 18.8 million, which is less than a third of one one-hundredth of one percent of the world's people.
6. Not only are the world's largest corporations cutting workers, their CEOs often benefit financially from the job cuts.
7. Japanese corporations have surpassed U.S. corporations in the ranking of the Top 200.
8. Over half of the sales of the Top 200 are in just 5 economic sectors; and corporate concentration in these sectors is high.
9. When General Motors trades with itself, is that free trade?: One-third of world trade is simply transactions among various units of the same corporation.
10. The Top 200 are creating a global economic apartheid, not a global village. The top eight telecommunications firms, for example, have been expanding global sales rapidly, yet over nine-tenths of humanity remains without phones.

Introduction

There are now 40,000 corporations in the world whose activities cross national boundaries; these firms ply overseas markets through some 250,000 foreign affiliates.¹ Yet, new calculations by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) indicate that the top 200 of these global firms account for an alarming and growing share of the world's economic activity.

Two hundred giant corporations, most of them larger than many national economies, now control well over a quarter of the world's economic activity. Philip Morris is larger than New Zealand, and it operates in 170 countries.² Instead of creating an integrated global village, these firms are weaving webs of production, consumption, and finance that bring economic benefits to, at most, a third of the world's people. Two-thirds of the world (the bottom 20 percent of the rich countries and the bottom 80 percent of the poor countries) are either left out, marginalized, or hurt by these webs of activity.

IPS has conducted detailed analyses of the changing nature of global corporate power for over a decade. This new report uncovers an alarming acceleration in corporate concentration in individual sectors and in the overall power of the largest corporations in the world, and new data on the job-destroying activities of large firms.

The most alarming finding is that as corporate concentration has risen, corporate profits have soared, yet workers and communities are getting a shrinking piece of the growing pie. Figures from Business Week chronicle the explosion of corporate profits and CEO pay between 1990 and 1995 in the face of stagnating workers wages. The newest State of Working America by the Economic Policy Institute also reinforces our findings: median family income fell over 1 percent a year between 1989 and 1994 after four decades of expansion.³

Top 10 Findings

1. Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are corporations; only 49 are countries. Wal-Mart-the number 12 corporation-is bigger than 161 countries, including Israel, Poland, and Greece.⁴ Mitsubishi is larger than the f ourth most populous nation on earth: Indonesia. General Motors is bigger than Denmark. Ford is bigger than South Africa. Toyota is bigger than Norway.

2. The combined sales of the world's Top 200 corporations are far greater than a quarter of the world's economic activity. Our calculations indicate that the Top 200's share of global economic activity has been growing rapidly over the past d ecade. In 1982, the Top 200 firms had sales that were the equivalent of 24.2 percent of the world's GDP. Today, that figure has grown to 28.3 percent of world GDP.

3. The Top 200 corporations' combined sales are bigger than the combined economies of all countries minus the biggest 9; that is they surpass the combined economies of 182 countries. At latest count, the world has 191 countries. If you subtr act the GDP of the big nine economies: the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Canada, and China, the combined GDP's of the other 182 countries is $6.9 trillion. The combined sales of the Top 200 corporations is $7. 1 trillion.

4. The Top 200 have almost twice the economic clout of the poorest four-fifths of humanity. The world's economic income and wealth remain highly concentrated among the rich. Indeed, according to the United Nations, some 85 percent of the worl d's GDP is controlled by the richest fifth of humanity; only 15 percent is controlled by the poorest four-fifths.⁵ Hence, the poorer 4.5 billion people in the world account for only $3.9 trillion dollars of economic activity; this is only a little over half the combined revenues of the Top 200's $7.1 trillion.

5. The Top 200 have been net job destroyers in recent years. Their combined global employment is only 18.8 million, which is less than a third of one percent of the world's people. The world has just over 5.6 billion people.⁶ Of these, around 2.6 billion are in the workforce.⁷ Hence, the Top 200 employ less than three-fourths of one percent of the world's workers. Of the world's top five employers, four are U.S. (General Motors, Wal-Mart, PepsiCo, and Ford ), and one is German (Siemens). If one also includes the public sector in these calculations, the U.S. Postal Service is the world's biggest employer, at 870,160, roughly 160,000 more workers than GM's 709,000 workers.⁸

6. Not only are the world's largest corporations cutting workers, their CEOs often benefit financially from the job cuts. A total of 59 of the Global Top 200 are U.S. firms. Of these, 9 laid off at least 3,000 workers in 1995: AT&T, Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, BellSouth, Kmart, Chase Manhattan, GTE, Mobil, and Texaco. Even worse, the CEOs of these 9 made millions of dollars in the increased value of their stock options after announcing the layoffs. Indeed, on the day that the CEOs of these 9 firms announced the layoffs, the value of the stock options of their 9 CEOs rose $25,218,819.⁹

7. Japanese corporations have surpassed U.S. corporations in the ranking of the Top 200. Six of the top 10 firms are Japanese; only 3 are from the United States. Of the Top 200, the 58 Japanese firms account for almost 39 percent of total sales, while the U.S.'s 59 firms account for only 28 percent of total sales. The vast majority (186) of the Top 200 are headquartered in just 7 countries: Japan, the United States, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. South Korea and Brazil are the only developing countries to break into the Top 200.

8. Over half of the sales of the Top 200 are in just 5 economic sectors; and corporate concentration in these sectors is high. Half of the total sales of the Top 200 are in trading, automobiles, banking, retailing, and electronics. The concentrated economic power in these and other sectors is enormous.¹⁰ In autos, the top five firms account for almost 60 percent of global sales. In electronics, the top five firms have garnered over half of global sales. And, the top five firms have over 30 percent of global sales in airlines, aerospace, steel, oil, personal computers, chemical, and the media.¹¹

9. When General Motors trades with itself, is that free trade?: One-third of world trade is simply transactions among various units of the same corporation.¹² This figure has remained steady for the past few years, and is higher in certain countries.¹³ Two-fifths of Japanese exports, for example, are intra-firm.14 For manufacturing exports from Brazil, the figure is 44 percent.¹⁵

10. The Top 200 are creating a global economic apartheid, not a global village. The top eight telecommunications firms, for example, have been expanding global sales rapidly, yet over nine-tenths of humanity remains without phones. Television ads for AT&T and GTE give the impression that the telecommunications giants are bringing the world closer together. And yet while the top eight firms in this sector enjoyed sales of $290 million in 1995, 90.1 percent of all people live in a household that is not connected to a telephone line.¹⁶ Likewise in the financial sector, when banks boast of the new ease of global banking, they fail to mention the difficulties most of the world's people face in obtaining even a tiny loan. Close to 4.8 billion of the world's 5.6 billion people still live in countries where the average per capita gross national product is less than $1,000 a year; only a handful of these people have access to credit from transnational banks.¹⁷ This is despite the fact that the 31 banks in the Top 200 have combined assets of $10.4 trillion and sales of more than $800 billion.¹⁸

Conclusions

These findings offer a clear picture of the rising inequalities in the United States and the world between those who benefit from expanding corporate activity and those who are being left behind. This inequality, fueled by accelerated corporate concentration, deserves to be a central issue in the political debates of this period. This report stands as a challenge to both major political parties to address growing inequalities and the economic forces behind them.

Why does the CDC own a patent on Ebola 'invention?

  NaturalNews

 The U.S. Centers for Disease Control owns a patent on a particular strain of Ebola known as "EboBun." It's patent No. CA2741523A1 and it was awarded in 2010.
Patent applicants are clearly described on the patent as including:

The Government Of The United States Of America As Represented By The Secretary, Department Of Health & Human Services, Center For Disease Control.

The patent summary says, "The invention provides the isolated human Ebola (hEbola) viruses denoted as Bundibugyo (EboBun) deposited with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ("CDC"; Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America) on November 26, 2007 and accorded an accession number 200706291."

It goes on to state, "The present invention is based upon the isolation and identification of a new human Ebola virus species, EboBun. EboBun was isolated from the patients suffering from hemorrhagic fever in a recent outbreak in Uganda."

It's worth noting, by the way, that EboBun is not the same variant currently believed to be circulating in West Africa. Clearly, the CDC needs to expand its patent portfolio to include more strains, and that may very well be why American Ebola victims have been brought to the United States in the first place. Read more below and decide for yourself...

Harvesting Ebola from victims to file patents

From the patent description on the EboBun virus, we know that the U.S. government:

1) Extracts Ebola viruses from patients.

2) Claims to have "invented" that virus.

3) Files for monopoly patent protection on the virus.

To understand why this is happening, you have to first understand what a patent really is and why it exists. A patent is a government-enforced monopoly that is exclusively granted to persons or organizations. It allows that person or organization to exclusively profit from the "invention" or deny others the ability to exploit the invention for their own profit.

It brings up the obvious question here: Why would the U.S. government claim to have "invented" Ebola and then claim an exclusively monopoly over its ownership?

U.S. Government claims exclusive ownership over its "invention" of Ebola

The "SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION" section of the patent document also clearly claims that the U.S. government is claiming "ownership" over all Ebola viruses that share as little as 70% similarity with the Ebola it "invented":

...invention relates to the isolated EboBun virus that morphologically and phylogenetically relates to known members filoviridae... In another aspect, the invention provides an isolated hEbola EboBun virus comprising a nucleic acid molecule comprising a nucleotide sequence selected from the group consisting of: a) a nucleotide sequence set forth in SEQ ID NO: 1; b) a nucleotide sequence that hybridizes to the sequence set forth in SEQ ID NO: 1 under stringent conditions; and c) a nucleotide sequence that has at least 70%, 75%, 80%, 85%, 90%, 95%, 96%, 97%, 98%, or 99% identity to the SEQ ID NO:

1. In another aspect, the invention provides the complete genomic sequence of the hEbola virus EboBun.

Ebola vaccines and propagation

The CDC patent goes on to explain it specifically claims patent protection on a method for propagating the Ebola virus in host cells as well as treating infected hosts with vaccines:

In another aspect, the invention provides a method for propagating the hEbola virus in host cells comprising infecting the host cells with the inventive isolated hEbola virus described above, culturing the host cells to allow the virus to multiply, and harvesting the resulting virions.

In another aspect, the invention provides vaccine preparations, comprising the inventive hEbola virus, including recombinant and chimeric forms of the virus, nucleic acid molecules comprised by the virus, or protein subunits of the virus. The invention also provides a vaccine formulation comprising a therapeutically or prophylactically effective amount of the inventive hEbola virus described above, and a pharmaceutically acceptable carrier.

No medical reason to bring Ebola to the United States

This patent may help explain why Ebola victims are being transported to the United States and put under the medical authority of the CDC. These patients are carrying valuable intellectual property assets in the form of Ebola variants, and the Centers for Disease Control clearly desires to expand its patent portfolio by harvesting, studying and potentially patenting new strains or variants.

Dr. Bob Arnot, an infectious disease specialist who spent time on the ground in developing nations saving lives, recently told Judge Jeanine, "There is no medical reason to bring them here, especially when you see how well Dr. Bradley was." (2)

There is, however, an entirely different reason to bring Ebola patients to America: so they can be exploited for medical experiments, military bioweapons harvesting or intellectual property claims.

Surely, medical authorities at Emory University and the CDC are working hard to save the lives of the two patients who have been transported to the U.S. But they are also pursuing something else at the same time: an agenda of isolating, identifying and patenting infectious disease agents for reasons that we can only imagine.

Only hoping to save lives?

On one hand, it's worth pointing out that the CDC's patent on Ebola is at least partially focused on methods for screening for Ebola and treating Ebola victims with drugs or vaccines. This seems like a worthwhile precaution against an infectious disease that clearly threatens lives.

On the other hand, why the patent? Patenting Ebola seems as odd as trying to patent cancer or diabetes. Why would a government organization claim to have "invented" this infectious disease and then claim a monopoly over its exploitation for commercial use?

Does the CDC hope to collect a royalty on Ebola vaccines? Is it looking to "invent" more variants and patent those too?

Make no mistake that billions of dollars in profits are at stake in all this. Shares of Tekmira surged over 11% last Friday as pressure was placed on the FDA to fast-track Ebola vaccine trials the company has set up. "Health campaigners have started a petition which has already been signed by approximately 15,500 people on change.org pressurizing FDA to approve the drug in the minimum possible time frame," reports BidnessEtc.com. (3)

Carefully scripted medical theater

With this, we start to see the structure of the elaborate medical theater coming together: A global pandemic panic, a government patent, the importation of Ebola into a major U.S. city, an experimental vaccine, the rise of a little-known pharmaceutical company and a public outcry for the FDA to fast-track the vaccine.

If Act II stays on course, this medical theater might someday involve a "laboratory accident" in a U.S. lab, the "escape" of Ebola into the population, and a mandatory nationwide Ebola vaccination campaign that enriches Tekmira and its investors while positioning the CDC with its virus patents as the "savior of the American people."

Yes, we've heard this music before, but the last time around it was called Swine Flu.

The formula is always the same: create alarm, bring a vaccine to market, then scare governments into buying billions of dollars worth of vaccines they don't need.

Pity the Children

Chris Hedges

This post originally appeared at Truthdig 

  
An Afghan child looks toward the site of a suicide bombing that occurred near a NATO convoy in Kabul, Afghanistan's capital, last February.

For the United States, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will be over soon. We will leave behind, after our defeats, wreckage and death, the contagion of violence and hatred, unending grief, and millions of children who were brutalized and robbed of their childhood. Americans who did not suffer will forget. People maimed physically or psychologically by the violence, especially the Iraqi and Afghan children, will never escape. Time and memory will play their usual tricks. Those who endured war will begin to wonder, years from now, what was real and what was not. And those who did not taste of war’s noxious poison will stop wondering at all.
I sat last Thursday afternoon in a small conference room at the University of Massachusetts Boston with three U.S. combat veterans—two from the war in Iraq, one from the war in Vietnam—along with a Somali who grew up amid the vicious fighting in Mogadishu. All are poets or novelists. They were there to attend a two-week writers workshop sponsored by the William Joiner Institute for the Study of War and Social Consequences. It is their voices and those of their comrades that have to be heeded now, and heeded in the future, if we are to curb our appetite for empire and lust for industrial violence. The truth about war comes out, but always too late. And by the time the drums begin beating, the flags waving and the politicians and press hyperventilating as they shout out their nationalist cant, once again we have forgotten what we learned, as if the debacles of the past had no bearing on the debacles of the future.
Joshua Morgan Folmar, 29, a bearded Marine Corps veteran from Alabama who participated in 200 combat patrols in Iraq, sat next to me. He handed me his poem “Contemplating the Cotard Delusion on the Downeaster to Boston.” It begins:

Maybe I’m a walking corpse, or maybe I’m in a coma in
Germany, or Walter Reed, sucking MREs
through plastic tubes, while a few children in Haditha pick up bone
shards from the explosion and trade them like card games for chocolate.
My head droops against the window: face reflecting broken
limbs and stagnant water, blurring against the train’s scratched safety
glass. And somewhere out there is my last combat patrol. And somewhere out there, my dead friends are waiting.

Brian Turner, 47, who was a sergeant and infantry team leader in the 3rd Stryker Brigade in Iraq in 2003 and 2004, wrote poems in a small notebook he carried while he was there. They were published in a collection called “Here, Bullet” (Alice James Books). One lament, called “Ashbah” (a transliteration of the Arabic word for “ghosts”), reads:

The ghosts of American soldiers
Wander the streets of Balad by night,
Unsure of their way home, exhausted,
The desert wind blowing trash
Down the narrow alleys as a voice
Sounds from the minaret, a soulful call
Reminding them how alone they are,
how lost. And the Iraqi dead,
they watch in silence from rooftops
as date palms line the shore in silhouette,
leaning toward Mecca when the dawn wind blows.

None of these veterans are at ease in America. They never will be.
“I live in a country that is so wealthy we can wage wars and not have to think about them,” Turner said. “It is a pathology handed down from generation to generation. We talk about our military. We use words like ‘heroism.’ But when will we start to care about people whose names are difficult to pronounce? The list of people lost is so vast. How do I write about this and share it in a country that does not want to hear it? We want narratives that are easy and complete, ones we can process. We want wars to be recorded the way historians or people who make tombstones in cemeteries do. They give us the start, the duration and end of the war. But for those of us who were in war it does not end. If you talk to my grandfather in Fresno, Calif., at some point during the day you will be in the presence of World War II.”
Combat brings with it trauma for those who inflict the violence as well as those who suffer it. See a lot of combat and the trauma is severe. But the worst trauma is often caused not by what combat veterans witnessed but by what they did. The most disturbing memories usually involve children. War creates bands of ragged, poor, dirty street urchins. The bands wander about the edges of a conflict looking for something to eat. They pick through the garbage dumps. They line the sides of roads begging convoys for food or chocolate. They attempt to sell a few pathetic items to make money. In Iraq they offered American troops “freaky”—the slang for European porn videos—whiskey or heroin (Turner said he doubted there was heroin in the packets). The children lived in fear. They saw their parents, brothers, sisters and grandparents publicly humiliated by occupation troops. They cowered in terror during night raids as troops kicked down the doors of their houses and herded them and their families into rooms where they were made to sit, sometimes for hours, with their arms bound behind their backs with plastic ties. They warily eyed the drones circling overhead day and night, never sure when death would rain down from the sky. They saw brothers and fathers killed. They dreamed of growing up to revenge their deaths.
Children threw rocks at convoys or patrols. They worked as spotters for insurgents and at times they carried automatic weapons. And in the long nightmare of a war of occupation, where every Afghan or Iraqi outside the perimeter of a base was viewed as the enemy, it was not long until children were targets. Soldiers and Marines often threw the bottles they used for urination inside their vehicles at children begging for water along the road.
Folmar said that on occasion children fired air guns at his patrols. The Americans were unable to tell if these were toy guns or real guns and carried out confiscations to avoid killings.


“We would go to shop owners to say, ‘Please don’t sell these,’ ” he said. “One day this kid comes out and shoots at us. We yell “Hey!” This scares him. We take the gun out of his hand. The father comes up. He is trying to figure out what is going on. We don’t have an interpreter. I was a radio operator and was usually next to my squad leader so I was to be the Arabic translator, which is hilarious because I only had two or three weeks of training. Through hand gestures and a little Arabic I tried to explain to the father why we had to take this gun away. We did not want his kid to die. If it were dark we would not know if that was [an air] gun or not. The father did not understand. I don’t blame him. I had crappy Arabic. My squad leader was exhausted and pissed. He pulled out his M9 service pistol and put it in the father’s face. He said, ‘Do you understand this?’ ”
Children threw rocks into the windshields of passing trucks. This was a persistent problem that caused some U.S. troops to answer with live fire.
“Kids would run out and throw rocks at us,” Turner said. “We were going 35 or 40 miles an hour. A rock hits you like that and you can be damaged for life. One of those kids smashed the windshield of one of the freight trucks. It jackknifed, flipped and the driver died in about 90 seconds. I remember hearing over the radio some higher-up saying, ‘You are authorized to shoot children.’ ”
The schizophrenic nature of the war meant that on some days children were to be courted and on other days threatened. The children could never tell how troops would respond.
“The rules of engagement constantly changed,” Folmar said. On some days it was shoot anything in sight. Then it would be about hearts and minds. Giving out chocolate. Giving stuff to schools that were blown to bits. We would carry candy. Then the next week the kids would scream ‘Chocolate! Chocolate!” and we would have been told to keep the kids away.” “We were on patrol and I was pegged by a rock on the head,” Folmar said. “The father comes out of nowhere and starts whacking the shit out of this kid. We were all laughing. But later on I thought what kind of world must you live in where the father is beating the crap out of his son? It was partly out of respect. But it was also about recognizing that your kid can be killed for throwing a rock.”
“There was this point where we really started, I don’t want to say hating the children, but we were exasperated,” said Folmar, who emphasizes that he never saw Americans shoot a child during his deployment. “We became cynical. There became a moment where we realized we were stuck in it. That what we were doing was just creating a new generation that would hate each other. It never got to the point where anyone in my unit said let’s just kill them, but there became a moment when we all felt ‘What is the point?’ We were making them mad. They are going to hate us. It’s just going to continue.”
Folmar said that when U.S. troops inspected trucks at checkpoints many of the vehicles were carrying corpses to be buried and it was not uncommon to see corpses of children. “It was a regular thing,” he said.
The war in Vietnam had many of the same dynamics, with the added abuse of thousands of girls who populated brothels that sprang up outside the vast military bases and in cities like Saigon. George Kovach, 66, the third combat veteran in our group last Thursday, was wounded in Vietnam with a friend from his unit. When they were being evacuated by helicopter his friend died next to him. Forty years later he says he still fights off depression and thoughts of suicide.
“I remember soldiers chucking C-ration cans at the heads of children—I know I did, and sometimes it was worse,” he said. “There were lots of kids that were camp followers. In Vietnam these kids would point you out [to the Viet Cong]. When we left on patrol we were always worried the kids would report our movements.”
People who carry weapons and travel with armed units have a terrifying God-like power to humiliate, to demand instant and unquestioned obedience and to kill. Those who do not carry weapons live in states of unrelenting terror and powerlessness. The powerless often seek to become invisible, avoiding contact with the hydra-headed groups of killers that roam the landscape and speak in the language of violence.
Boyah J. Farah, 36, endured the war in Somalia as a teenager with his mother. He was the oldest of five siblings. During our Boston meeting he listened in silence to the stories of the military veterans, remembering, he said, what it was like to be on the other side of the divide. He quoted an African proverb: “When the elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.”
“Militia would come into the city and take everything,” Farah said. “Then that militia would be defeated. A new militia would come in. Each militia that came in was hungry, hungry to steal, hungry to rape. They would take everything, including our small amount of rice. If there were food on the stove they would take it. As soon as you thought you had adapted, new militias appeared.”
Turner turned to Farah. “I used to kick in people’s doors,” he said to him. “My job was to do raids night after night after night. I wonder about this now. And this is difficult for me to write about. I can write about what it is like to kick in a door. But ... I wonder about the kids that were in some of those houses. When the war is over do you feel comfortable in your own house? Do you feel safe?”
Farah shook his head. “Once you go through that experience it never goes away,” he answered. “It is like the experience you had [in combat]. I came here [to the United States] in 1993. I never feel completely safe. I never get used to the Fourth of July. As soon as I hear the boom sound [of the fireworks] the war comes. Even the bang of a door brings it back.”


“I escaped,” Farah said. “I got educated. I came to a country at peace. But most of my friends did not make it to a peaceful country. They remained behind. And those left behind lived only for revenge. When I was in the refugee camp in Kenya I heard my friend, whose father was killed, pray out loud and say: ‘God, I don’t know what you have planned for me. But I am going back and kill 100 men.’ He was 16 or 17. I am sure he went back. I am sure he killed. I doubt he is alive.”
None of this is what these veterans or children wanted. They wanted, and continue to want, what we were created for—love. And the battle with the demons of war is the battle back to what is sacred and whole in life. Some will make it. Many will not.
“The hardest thing to write about is love,” Turner said. “It comes across as sappy. This inability to write about love is part of the pathology of war. Writing about war is easy. War is addictive. I am drawn to that sort of frenetic experience. But what I want is love. I want to write poems for my wife. But when I try they are not good.”
Folmar voiced a similar thought. “I understand violence,” he said. “I can put it on a page. I can do it well. But it is the love that I can’t do. How am I supposed to write about love? Especially when I have these other things to write about. My wife asked me, ‘You write about all these sad things. When are you going to write about me?’ I have to get the other stuff out first. I am hoping I will get it out. I am hoping it will go away.”

Big Brother gone wild: Airport installs technology to track every passenger's footsteps around the airport

 This post originally appeared at Natural News

 

 

Big Brother just keeps getting more powerful and pervasive, thanks to technology, and what's more, hundreds of millions of people accept this as just "part of" living in the Digital Age.

According to Britain's The Telegraph newspaper, all mobile phones that are logged into the Wi-Fi network at Helsinki Airport in Finland's capital city will be monitored by an in-house tracking system that identifies passenger movements in real time.

As you might imagine, such technology is already being criticized by privacy and civil rights groups, but no matter: Officials who back the technology say it is all for your protection. Specifically, reports say that it is "aimed at monitoring crowds and preventing bottlenecking at the airport, which sees around 15 million passengers a year."

About 150 white boxes, each of which being the size of a wireless Internet router, have been positioned at various points all over the airport. They are equipped with technology from the Finland-based retail analytics company Walkbase, and each is designed to collect the "unique identifier numbers" of all mobile devices that have their Wi-Fi access turned on.

As reported by Bloomberg News:

Such systems are being deployed more widely as physical shops seek to remove a disadvantage against online retailers who are more advanced in analyzing the digital traces left by customers.

Data are not saved - allegedly

The Helsinki Airport operator, Finavia Oyj, allegedly won't be able to see any personal information about the user or the device itself; all data reportedly stays in an aggregated form, according to Tuomas Wuoti, the chief executive officer of Walkbase. Also, company officials say that the software discards the unique identifiers of all devices after pulling only the necessary data out.

Furthermore, officials say that passengers can "opt-in" for additional services simply by logging into the network via a separate application such as an airline app or retail store app, in order to get sales offers from the airport's various shops and more than 32 restaurants and cafes, in addition to any relevant flight data. Users who want to access the Wi-Fi network will be notified about the monitoring system before they actually log in.

"We're looking at great paybacks from this investment," Heikki Koski, vice president in charge of new services at Finavia Oyj, said in an interview with Bloomberg. "We can manage the airport better, we can predict where bottlenecks might come and analyze everything more thoroughly."

Currently in its early phases, the full tracking system is not expected to be in place until the end of 2014. Then, the technology could enable shops to specifically target passengers that are close to them, "such as a deli that could alert a passenger walking by of a certain item on sale," The Telegraph added.

Customers are concerned

But software security analysts said they find it hard to believe that "location tracking is only left at statistics" levels.

"The fact that my movements are tracked is a scarier thought than someone knowing which websites I visit," Antti Tikkanen, director of security response at the software maker F-Secure Oyj, told Bloomberg.

The tracking technology has also been met with concerns from customers at the U.S.-based department store retailer Nordstrom, where the system was tested last year. Customers criticized it for monitoring them unwarily.

Koski said that passenger privacy concerns are "extremely important" to his company.

Citing experience from retailers and initial trials at the airport, Walkbase expects about 60 to 70 percent of people to leave their Wi-Fi access on, Bloomberg reported.

Planes can be hacked via inflight WiFi, researcher says

Ruben Santamarta of IOActive to provide details at Black Hat conference

Thomson Reuters

In theory, a hacker could use a plane's onboard WiFi signal or inflight entertainment system to hack into its avionics equipment, potentially disrupting or modifying satellite communications. Associated Press

Cybersecurity researcher Ruben Santamarta says he has figured out how to hack the satellite communications equipment on passenger jets through their WiFi and inflight entertainment systems - a claim that, if confirmed, could prompt a review of aircraft security.

'These devices are wide open.'- Ruben Santamarta, IOActive

Santamarta, a consultant with cybersecurity firm IOActive, is scheduled to lay out the technical details of his research at this week's Black Hat hacking conference in Las Vegas, an annual convention where thousands of hackers and security experts meet to discuss emerging cyber threats and improve security measures.
His presentation on Thursday on vulnerabilities in satellite communications systems used in aerospace and other industries is expected to be one of the most widely watched at the conference.
"These devices are wide open. The goal of this talk is to help change that situation," Santamarta, 32, told Reuters.
The researcher said he discovered the vulnerabilities by "reverse engineering" - or decoding - highly specialized software known as firmware, used to operate communications equipment made by Cobham Plc, Harris Corp, EchoStar Corp's Hughes Network Systems, Iridium Communications Inc and Japan Radio Co Ltd.
In theory, a hacker could use a plane's onboard WiFi signal or inflight entertainment system to hack into its avionics equipment, potentially disrupting or modifying satellite communications, which could interfere with the aircraft's navigation and safety systems, Santamarta said.

Hacks tested in controlled environments

He acknowledged that his hacks have only been tested in controlled environments, such as IOActive's Madrid laboratory, and they might be difficult to replicate in the real world. Santamarta said he decided to go public to encourage manufacturers to fix what he saw as risky security flaws.
Representatives for Cobham, Harris, Hughes and Iridium said they had reviewed Santamarta's research and confirmed some of his findings, but downplayed the risks.
For instance, Cobham, whose Aviation 700 aircraft satellite communications equipment was the focus of Santamarta's research, said it is not possible for hackers to use WiFi signals to interfere with critical systems that rely on satellite communications for navigation and safety. The hackers must have physical access to Cobham's equipment, according to Cobham spokesman Greg Caires.
"In the aviation and maritime markets we serve, there are strict requirements restricting such access to authorized personnel only," said Caires.
A Japan Radio Co spokesman declined to comment, saying information on such vulnerabilities was not public.

Buggy firmware

Black Hat, which was founded in 1997, has often been a venue for hackers to present breakthrough research. In 2009, Charlie Miller and Collin Mulliner demonstrated a method for attacking iPhones with malicious text messages, prompting Apple Inc to release a patch. In 2011, Jay Radcliffe demonstrated methods for attacking Medtronic Inc's insulin pumps, which helped prompt an industry review of security.
Santamarta published a 25-page research report in April that detailed what he said were multiple bugs in firmware used in satellite communications equipment made by Cobham, Harris, Hughes, Iridium and Japan Radio Co for a wide variety of industries, including aerospace, military, maritime transportation, energy and communications.
The report laid out scenarios by which hackers could launch attacks, though it did not provide the level of technical details that Santamarta said he will disclose at Black Hat.

Risk 'very small'

Harris spokesman Jim Burke said the company had reviewed Santamarta's paper. "We concluded that the risk of compromise is very small," he said.
Iridium spokesman Diane Hockenberry said, "We have determined that the risk to Iridium subscribers is minimal, but we are taking precautionary measures to safeguard our users."
One vulnerability that Santamarta said he found in equipment from all five manufacturers was the use of "hardcoded" log-in credentials, which are designed to let service technicians access any piece of equipment with the same login and password.
The problem is that hackers can retrieve those passwords by hacking into the firmware, then use the credentials to access sensitive systems, Santamarta said.
Hughes spokeswoman Judy Blake said hardcoded credentials were "a necessary" feature for customer service. The worst a hacker could do is to disable the communication link, she said.
Santamarta said he will respond to the comments from manufacturers during his presentation, then take questions during an open Q&A session after his talk.
Vincenzo Iozzo, a member of Black Hat's review board, said Santamarta's paper marked the first time a researcher had identified potentially devastating vulnerabilities in satellite communications equipment.
"I am not sure we can actually launch an attack from the passenger inflight entertainment system into the cockpit," he said. "The core point is the type of vulnerabilities he discovered are pretty scary just because they involve very basic security things that vendors should already be aware of."

What are US Biowar Researchers doing in the Ebola Zone?

Jon Rappoport
Activist Post

This is a call for an immediate, thorough, and independent investigation of Tulane University researchers and their Fort Detrick associates in the US biowarfare research community, who have been operating in West Africa during the past several years.

What exactly have they been doing?

Exactly what diagnostic tests have they been performing on citizens of Sierra Leone?

Why do we have reports that the government of Sierra Leone has recently told Tulane researchers to stop this testing?

Have Tulane researchers and their associates attempted any experimental treatments (e.g., injecting monoclonal antibodies) using citizens of the region? If so, what adverse events have occurred?

The research program, occurring in Sierra Leone, the Republic of Guinea, and Liberia—said to be the epicenter of the 2014 Ebola outbreak—has the announced purpose, among others, of detecting the future use of fever-viruses as bioweapons.

Is this purely defensive research? Or as we have seen in the past, is this research being covertly used to develop offensive bioweapons?

For the last several years, researchers from Tulane University have been active in the African areas where Ebola is said to have broken out in 2014. 

 These researchers are working with other institutions, one of which is USAMRIID, the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, a well-known center for biowar research, located at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

In Sierra Leone, the Tulane group has been researching new diagnostic tests for hemorrhagic fevers.

Note: Lassa Fever, Ebola, and other labels are applied to a spectrum of illness that result in hemorrhaging.

Tulane researchers have also been investigating the use of monoclonal antibodies as a treatment for these fevers—but not on-site in Africa, according to Tulane press releases.

Here are excerpts from supporting documents.

Tulane University, Oct. 12, 2012, “Dean’s Update: Update on Lassa Fever Research”:

“In 2009, researchers received a five-year $7,073,538 grant from the National Institute of Health to fund the continued development of detection kits for Lassa viral hemorrhagic fever.

“Since that time, much has been done to study the disease. Dr. Robert Garry, Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, and Dr. James Robinson, Professor of Pediatrics, have been involved in the research of Lassa fever. Together the two have recently been able to create what are called human monoclonal antibodies. After isolating the B-cells from patients that have survived the disease, they have utilized molecular cloning methods to isolate the antibodies and reproduce them in the laboratory. These antibodies have been tested on guinea pigs at The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston and shown to help prevent them from dying of Lassa fever…

“Most recently, a new Lassa fever ward is being constructed in Sierra Leone at the Kenema Government Hospital. When finished, it will be better equipped to assist patients affected by the disease and will hopefully help to end the spread of it.” [The Kenema Hospital is one of the centers of the Ebola outbreak.]

Here is another release from Tulane University, this one dated Oct. 18, 2007. “New Test Moves Forward to Detect Bioterrorism Threats.”

“The initial round of clinical testing has been completed for the first diagnostic test kits that will aid in bioterrorism defense against a deadly viral disease. Tulane University researchers are collaborating in the project.

“Robert Garry, professor of microbiology and immunology at Tulane University, is principal investigator in a federally funded study to develop new tests for viral hemorrhagic fevers.

“Corgenix Medical Corp., a worldwide developer and marketer of diagnostic test kits, announced that the first test kits for detection of hemorrhagic fever have competed initial clinical testing in West Africa.

“The kits, developed under a $3.8 million grant awarded by the National Institutes of Health, involve work by Corgenix in collaboration with Tulane University, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, BioFactura Inc. and Autoimmune Technologies.

“Clinical reports from the studies in Sierra Leone continue to show amazing results,” says Robert Garry, professor of microbiology and immunology at the Tulane University School of Medicine and principal investigator of the grant.

“We believe this remarkable collaboration will result in detection products that will truly have a meaningful impact on the healthcare in West Africa, but will also fill a badly needed gap in the bioterrorism defense.

“…The clinical studies are being conducted at the Mano River Union Lassa Fever Network in Sierra Leone. Tulane, under contract with the World Health Organization, implements the program in the Mano River Union countries (Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea) to develop national and regional prevention and control strategies for Lassa fever and other important regional diseases.

“Clinical testing on the new recombinant technology demonstrates that our collaboration is working,” says Douglass Simpson, president of Corgenix. “We have combined the skills of different parties, resulting in development of some remarkable test kits in a surprisingly short period of time. As a group we intend to expand this program to address other important infectious agents with both clinical health issues and threat of bioterrorism such as ebola.”

The third document is found on the Sierra Leone Ministry of Health and Sanitation Facebook page, dated July 23. It lays out emergency measures to be taken. We find this curious statement: “Tulane University to stop Ebola testing during the current Ebola outbreak.”

Why? Are the tests issuing false results? Are they frightening the population? Have Tulane researchers done something to endanger public health?

In addition to an investigation of these matters, another probe needs to be launched into all vaccine campaigns in the Ebola Zone. For example. HPV vaccine programs have been ongoing. Vials of vaccine must be tested to discover ALL ingredients. Additionally, it’s well known that giving vaccines to people whose immune systems are already severely compromised is dangerous and deadly.

Thanks to http://birdflu666.wordpress.com/ for discovering hidden elements of the Ebola story.

Jon Rappoport is the author of two explosive collections, The Matrix Revealed and Exit From the Matrix, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com

The Ebola Virus Pandemic: “A Weapon of Mass Destruction”?

By Joachim Hagopian

 

This post originally appeared at Global Research,

This year’s first outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever virus Ebola started in February in the West African nation of Guinea. It then began spreading to Liberia and, for the first time, to Sierra Leone and now Nigeria. With the possible spread to England in attempts to trace 30,000 people who might have been exposed, and now an American death in Nigeria and two more Americans afflicted with it here in the US, Ebola has rapidly grown into what could become a global epidemic with a potential capacity to wipe out millions.
According to recent statistics from the World Health Organization (WHO) released just last week, at least 672 people have died out of a total of 1,201 cases so far this year in West Africa. However, seven days later the number of fatalities has jumped to 887, a spike of over 200 deaths in just the last few days.
Because the incubation period may last ten days while the infected victim may not even be aware of any illness, the virus is highly contagious. Then what begins like typical flu symptoms of fever, later vomiting as the virus spreads rapidly inside the body causing people to succumb often within days of its onset. Victims literally die from internal bleeding that in the final stages can flow out of every orifice. It has the trappings of a ghastly zombie science fiction nightmare come true.
There is no standard treatment (other than isolating the infected and quarantining those at risk). Nor is there yet an official vaccine, although Reuters just announced that as early as next month the US government will commence testing an experimental Ebola vaccine on humans after positive results were found on primates. It has been reported that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) infectious disease unit and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will be running vaccine trials “as quickly as possible.”
The Department of Defense and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) classify the Ebola virus as a biowarfare agent. Reports of up to 90% of humans infected die within a very short time. Therefore, it is a very real, extremely potent potential weapon of mass destruction.
Every single day Ebola keeps cropping up in different places, eight cases spreading into Africa’s most populated nation Nigeria, several more now have surfaced beyond the African continent with suspected new cases in Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia. At least six others fresh off flights from West Africa are currently being quietly tested at locations here in the US in New York, Philadelphia and Ohio. With all the latest news of the spreading outbreak understandably giving rise to public fear and panic that it is just a plane ride away now, millions if not billions on this planet are pondering whether the African pandemic might be rapidly turning into a global epidemic spreading to every corner of the earth. Of course to reduce these concerns, the World Health Organization (WHO) and US government are busily downplaying the risks to citizens here in North America.
Is it coincidence that the first two Americans suffering from the deadly disease are now inside the US border? Is it coincidence that the most deadly outbreak of the disease in history has admittedly now killed nearly 900 West Africans already this year? Over 200 more than just a few days ago? Is it coincidence that President Obama has just signed an executive order to have the power to begin rounding up American citizens with respiratory diseases against their will? Is it coincidence that FEMA roundups are about to begin in Los Angeles, deceiving homeless people with the carrot stick of a meal to corral them into those FEMA concentration camps and Halliburton refurbished, soon to no longer be empty prisons we’ve been hearing about?
Throughout this last century the US government and military have a notorious track record for delving into the darkest, most sinister realms in its pathological, “cutting edge” pursuit of amassing the most powerful destructive forces on earth… from torturous mind control methods to unlawful, deceptive drug experimentation on unsuspecting soldiers acting as involuntary guinea pigs, to manipulating extreme weather events used as offensive weapons to create killer storms and droughts, to the use of potently lethal electromagnetic radio waves to alter and disturb the human mind and behavior that conceivably can even cause heart attacks.
For many decades the US military has been systematically carrying out numerous highly secretive black ops programs, from raining poisonous metals down on unsuspecting Americans as sprayed chemtrails to using poor inner city mostly African Americans in St Louis as guinea pigs directly firing radioactive volleys from urban rooftops just to see how humans react to high doses of radiation. Also throughout the 1950’s into the early 1960’s there was extensive atomic bomb testing in the Nevada-Utah desert sites as well as experimental weapons testing still being detonated to this day in the South Pacific, all done knowing that downwind are unsuspecting, unprotected human victims. For four decades right up until 1972, 400 poor black sharecroppers in Tuskegee, Alabama were purposely infected syphilis just to study the effects. As if that was not enough, US government scientists infected Guatemalans in the 1940’s also with syphilis just to experiment with penicillin. This ultra-covert, highly unethical and illegal, malevolent practice of customarily misusing science, often at top universities with unlimited taxpayer funding to harness brilliant yet twisted scientific minds to unleash Nazi Dr. Mengele-type nightmarish experimentation on innocent human populations is nothing new. For obvious reasons it has largely been kept secret and hidden from public view and awareness. But enough concrete evidence has been uncovered over the years to show how willingly diabolical the US military consistently is toward harming even its own citizens.
Less hidden but far more devastating evil acts have been perpetrated by American armed forces on civilians throughout the world. Senselessly destroying Hiroshima and Nagasaki as densely populated Japanese cities became the first intended targets and human guinea pigs of the atomic bomb. And President Truman ordered it even knowing Japan had all but surrendered already. But even prior to the Enola Gay dropping the atomic bomb, the US has used chemical warfare killing people all over the globe with Monsanto made napalm bombs that in one single attack wiped out 100,000 Japanese citizens. Hundreds of thousands of Southeastern Asians were napalmed to death during the Vietnam War. White phosphorus has been used to melt human flesh in Iraq and Israel has used it against Palestinians. Millions and millions of innocent humans have been murdered as a result of these most heinous international crimes against humanity decade after decade after decade with complete impunity at the hands of both the US and Israeli military.
So developing biological weapons from collecting monstrously lethal specimens of the Ebola virus should come as no surprise. Or when considering this already long and extensive US military history, repeatedly guilty of human slaughter on such mammoth, unprecedented scale, it should not be so shocking to realize the military purpose of Ebola as yet another highly destructive weapon in its vast lethal arsenal could be potentially used to eliminate an enormous segment of this planet’s readily expendable current human population.
This year’s first outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever virus Ebola started in February in the West African nation of Guinea. It then began spreading to Liberia and, for the first time, to Sierra Leone and now Nigeria. With the possible spread to England in attempts to trace 30,000 people who might have been exposed, and now an American death in Nigeria and two more Americans afflicted with it here in the US, Ebola has rapidly grown into what could become a global epidemic with a potential capacity to wipe out millions. According to recent statistics from the World Health Organization (WHO) released just last week, at least 672 people have died out of a total of 1,201 cases so far this year in West Africa. However, seven days later the number of fatalities has jumped to 887, a spike of over 200 deaths in just the last few days.
Because the incubation period may last ten days while the infected victim may not even be aware of any illness, the virus is highly contagious. Then what begins like typical flu symptoms of fever, later vomiting as the virus spreads rapidly inside the body causing people to succumb often within days of its onset. Victims literally die from internal bleeding that in the final stages can flow out of every orifice. It has the trappings of a ghastly zombie science fiction nightmare come true.
In 1976 the Ebola outbreak first surfaced in Zaire (now the Republic of the Congo) and then concurrently in Sudan though with different strains, killing 280 people out of 318 diagnosed in Zaire (88% mortality rate) and 151 out of 284 in Sudan (at a killing rate of 53%). During the nearly four decades since those first outbreaks, little has been learned of the disease. The origin of the virus is believed to come from infected animals such as rats, monkeys and bats, all edible meat that are a main staple and part of many Africans’ diet. The so called bush meat can be a viral carrier. So humans remain at risk from animal to human transmission and of course now from human to human transmission, most often from exchange of bodily fluids.
There is no standard treatment (other than isolating the infected and quarantining those at risk). Nor is there yet an official vaccine, although Reuters just announced that as early as next month the US government will commence testing an experimental Ebola vaccine on humans after positive results were found on primates. It has been reported that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) infectious disease unit and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will be running vaccine trials “as quickly as possible.”
This contagious, incurable, highly fatal disease along with the typical bleeding from the eyes has people around the world reacting in horror especially with this largest outbreak to date. Both the CDC and WHO have emphasized that there is no reason for panic as far more people die from the common flu every year than the less than 2000 people killed by Ebola since its African emergence nearly four decades ago. The total numbers show two out of three humans who have been diagnosed with the Ebola virus, die from it with 1,717 deaths recorded out of a total 2,586 cases thus far. In stark contrast, 500,000 people die annually from influenza and a total of nineteen million are believed to have succumbed from the flu.
That said, it is important to disseminate accurate information of what we have come to learn about Ebola. According to the Public Health Agency of Canada:
“ INFECTIOUS DOSE: 1 – 10 aerosolized organisms are sufficient to cause infection in humans.”
Canadian researchers separating pigs from monkeys by wired pens found that infected pigs transmitted the virus by air to the monkeys. Also the viral organism can survive outside the host for several days at normal room temperature, evidence that the virus can stay alive on door knobs and household surfaces and be contagious for a considerable length of time.
The increased near nonstop mainstream reporting about Ebola in recent weeks is undoubtedly in part government propaganda designed to frighten people as well as perhaps take some of the heat off its number one genocidal ally Israel. The security state typically exaggerates or fabricates crises after crises in order strengthen its control through fear tactics over the general population. It only solidifies the absolute authority and power of the police state. Add the media propensity to over sensationalize as a tool of state sponsored propaganda and sufficient excuse emerges to activate security forces to quell ensuing panic and disorder. That said, local citizens in all nations do need to stay informed of any real global danger if in fact an Ebola pandemic does break out in a neighborhood near you, whether by accident or by sinister government design.
Right in stride with the Ebola hype comes the signing of Obama’s latest executive order. “Revised List of Quarantinable Communicable Diseases” allows for the “apprehension, detention, or conditional release of individuals to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of suspected communicable diseases,” added to George Bush’s 2003 Executive Order 13295. This means that anyone with respiratory problems that might include bronchitis, COPD or pneumonia can potentially be rounded up at any time. This disinformation of protecting people under benign pretense is the deceptive bait by which the totalitarian police state closes in on its stranglehold of the American populace. Every week the government is ratcheting up conditions ripe for the next manufactured crisis on domestic soil that will ultimately pave the way for martial law and the FEMA roundups of American citizens. With these latest developments, we are one step closer.
Under CDC authority not just people with respiratory problems can be apprehended and detained against their will under the protocol of being quarantined. CDC asserts that any healthy American can be detained as well based on mere suspicion that he or she might have come into contact with an infected person. This loosening of the criteria for detaining individuals opens the floodgate for Big Brother to round up virtually anyone.
In other recent related news, along with people with respiratory problems, there is a current plan in place to soon be rounding up the homeless in Los Angeles and locking them up in FEMA concentration camps with implanted RFID chips. They will be baited with a promised meal. That famous poem by Martin Niemöller comes to mind about the passivity and denial of so many German citizens in response to the series of Nazi prewar mass roundups – “when they came for the homeless, I did not speak out because I was not homeless.” The Orwellian nightmare is officially underway.
Over the weekend Dr. Kent Brantly, the American doctor who contracted Ebola while treating patients in West Africa, arrived in Atlanta and under police escort was rushed off to the home of the CDC Emory University Hospital. Today another American medical worker Nancy Writebol came in on a separate flight and was wheeled into Emory Hospital. Their arrival marks the first Ebola cases on US soil. Both were given an experimental drug in Liberia that apparently is improving their condition. Last Thursday before given the drug the doctor stated he felt he was dying but had already gained enough strength to walk into the hospital in Atlanta on his own. The new drug is called ZMapp and was developed by the San Diego biotech firm Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc. after showing promising signs treating monkeys infected with Ebola.
No doubt the US government is highly invested in Ebola for both potential Big Pharma profits developing a vaccine as well as for a potential “final solution” as a convenient biowarfare global population-killer. Speaking of profits, Tekmira Pharmaceuticals, a company working on an anti-Ebola drug, just received a $1.5 million cash advance from another killer corporation Monsanto. In the past Tekmira was also awarded $140 million contract from the Department of Defense (formerly known more appropriately as the Department of War). In 2010 the CDC actually did acquire a patent on the strain that erupted in Uganda in 2007 that killed 39 out of 116 infected patients. The CDC patent owning that particular strain of Ebola from Uganda known as “EboBun” has the patent number CA2741523A1 and can be viewed here.
By filing for a patent on a product, in this case a highly lethal infectious disease, the US government is acquiring a governmentally enforced monopoly to exclusively profit from the “invention.” In the summary section of the EboBun patent, it stipulates that the US government in its patent ownership has complete legal control and ownership over all other strains of Ebola virus that share 70% and higher similarity. Thus, this deadly West African strain of Ebola will soon become the US government’s latest prize possession in biowarfare.
In bringing the two Ebola infected Americans back from West Africa to the CDC, in addition to optimizing their survival chance, the other all too obvious explanation is to harvest their Ebola cells for extraction that will then be used to patent the most deadly strain ever known to man. Infectious disease specialist Dr. Bob Arnot who worked on the ground in Africa with patients infected with Ebola virus recently went on television maintaining that “there is no medical reason to bring them here.” To make an exclusive claim of ownership of such a highly infectious disease stolen from the afflicted seems in and of itself invasively and exploitatively sinister. Of course it raises such red flag warnings and suspicion of how the virus might actually be used or more apt misused. Typically the government is quick to explore its military application as potentially the most powerful deadly biological weapon in the entire world.
Sierra Leone recently kicked out all US Ebola researchers from Tulane University and the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), a known center for biowar research headquartered at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Just prior to that event two weeks ago after three nurses died from the viral hemorrhagic fever, Sierra Leone nurses working in heavily infested Kenema district actually went on strike accusing the government’s Ministry of Health and Sanitation of mishandling the pandemic that is rapidly spreading. They complained that the medical workers caring for the ill are not properly protected and are suspicious that the American biowarfare team may be responsible for the recent surge in deaths. The Sierra Leone government then ordered the US bioweapons lab at Kenema to be moved due to the mounting anger of the local population blaming the Americans for infecting their citizens through their Ebola testing. Posted on the health ministry’s Facebook page is the conclusion that the diagnostic kits the US researchers have been using are fake and producing false results. It legitimately asks, “Have Tulane researchers done something to endanger public health?” Meanwhile, more people are becoming infected and dying there in that Sierra Leone district hospital than any other place on the planet.
Compounding the mystery, US mainstream media reported that the Sierra Leone leading doctor died from Ebola but the Minister of Health denied that claim. WHO is believed to be taking advantage of the crisis in medical services with pressure to deploy UN security forces in order to launch a massive vaccination (and possible infection) and quarantine campaign. In response, 700 soldiers from the Sierra Leone army have been deployed setting up roadblocks to help quarantine citizens, permitting only health personnel into the hardest hit areas. Troops in Liberia have also been sent to help contain the outbreak there.
The Minister also stated that all new confirmed cases will be admitted and treated at Kailahun Hospital, not trusting what has been occurring with the presence of the US biowarfare researchers at Kenema where rates of confirmed diagnosis have soared recently. Finally the Sierra Leone government is also demanding that the CDC send the biowar lab results to the African government for analysis, implicating that the US research group may be under investigation.
A doctor employed by the French charity organization Doctors Without Borders even stated that the locals’ perception that they will be killed in the Kenema hospital where the Americans have been conducting their research is “understandable,” given that the hospital has become the pandemic’s epicenter. Both the WHO and CDC documents admit that historically most of the Ebola victims have died at the Kenema hospital because of the questionable activities of medical staff. That sounds like an admission of guilt that the military biowarfare team instead of accurately diagnosing patients may have in fact contaminated them with the Ebola virus, possibly using the local Sierra Leone population as mere guinea pigs for their experimentation.
Back in 2009 Tulane University Ebola researchers received more than a $7 million dollar grant from NIH to fund the detection kits allegedly used in Sierra Leone. A 2007 Tulane University release entitled “New Test Moves Forward to Detect Bioterrorism Threats” boasts of an earlier $3.8 million NIH grant that led to early test trial success of “diagnostic test kits that will aid in bioterrorism defense against a deadly viral disease.” This document indicates that the Ebola biowarfare research team has been experimenting with its kits on Sierra Leone’s people for at least seven years before they were ultimately banished recently.
In another astonishing development, a rogue doctor with extensive experience treating Ebola victims, anonymously released what he calls a simple treatment for Ebola – massive amounts of Vitamin C. Similar but far more extreme than scurvy, the Ebola virus essentially drains the body of all Vitamin C, thus depriving oxygenated blood that bursts capillaries and triggers internal hemorrhaging that in effect causes victims to bleed to death. This Ebola specialist maintains that there is no need for a vaccine and warns against them, adding his opinion that the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone was actually caused by that biowarfare research team. The doctor recommends a high dosage treatment of 500,000 mg of Vitamin C per day, emphasizing that it is not a cure but will boost the immune system giving it the strength to kill off the Ebola virus in the body.
What is most certain in all these developing stories is the rapid unfolding of global destabilizing events and developments, bogus accusations and boldface lies streaming forth everyday from the propaganda mills of mainstream media and the US government. But a closer examination of what is far more probable the actual truth indicates that so many of these simultaneous incidents are intimately related, and a mere connecting of dots spells an evil agenda promoting tighter control by a desperate security state that is now declaring war on all people who seek and speak the truth.

Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former US Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on his unique military experience entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It examines and focuses on US international relations, leadership and national security issues. After the military, Joachim earned a masters degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field for more than a quarter century. He now concentrates on his writing.

Ebola virus patent

Human Ebola Virus Species and Compositions and Methods Thereof
US 20120251502 A1

Abstract

 

 

Compositions and methods including and related to the Ebola Bundibugyo virus (EboBun) are provided. Compositions are provided that are operable as immunogens to elicit and immune response or protection from EboBun challenge in a subject such as a primate. Inventive methods are directed to detection and treatment of EboBun infection.

 

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Cover Up Surrounding Pentagon Funding of Facebook’s Psychological Experiment?

Army Research Office's bankrolling of 'emotional contagion' study scrubbed from Cornell press release

by Paul Joseph Watson

 

Was there a cover-up surrounding the Pentagon’s direct funding of Facebook’s notorious mass psychological study in order to conceal the fact that the experiment’s true purpose was part of preparations to manipulate public opinion in times of civil unrest?

It now appears as though information indicating that the Department of Defense bankrolled the experiment was scrubbed from an online press release by Cornell University in order to hide the connection.

Here’s what we know for a fact to be true. Facebook’s mass psychological study, which proved that altering a user’s timeline feed was a successful method of causing emotional “contagion” to spread through the social network, was conducted in part by Cornell University’s Jeffrey T. Hancock, who was listed as one of the study’s authors.

 

 

Hancock is also involved with the Pentagon’s Minerva Initiative, which recently hit the headlines for its role in bankrolling a program which provides “funding to universities to model the dynamics, risks and tipping points for large-scale civil unrest across the world.”

However, an even more creepy connection between the Facebook experiment and the Pentagon has emerged after it was revealed that the original press release from Cornell highlighting the study included a passage at the bottom which read, “The study was funded in part by the James S. McDonnell Foundation and the Army Research Office.”

According to the Army Research Office’s official website, “Basic research proposals from educational institutions, nonprofit organizations, and private industry are competitively selected and funded,” as part of the Pentagon’s mission of “combating terrorism and new emerging threats.”

However, the text indicating the Facebook study was bankrolled by the Pentagon was later scrubbed from the website, with Cornell claiming it had made a mistake, an explanation that Jay Rosen, Journalism Professor at NYU, finds highly dubious.

“Why do I call this strange? Any time my work has been featured in an NYU press release, the PR officers involved show me drafts and coordinate closely with me, for the simple reason that they don’t want to mischaracterize scholarly work,” writes Rosen.

“So now we have to believe that Cornell’s Professor of Communication and Information Science, Jeffrey Hancock, wasn’t shown or didn’t read the press release in which he is quoted about the study’s results (weird) or he did read it but somehow failed to notice that it said his study was funded by the Army when it actually wasn’t (weirder).”

“I think I would notice if my university was falsely telling the world that my research was partially funded by the Pentagon… but, hey, maybe there’s an innocent and boring explanation that I am overlooking.”

The Pentagon’s involvement with a Facebook study which would have given the DoD a revealing insight into how to manipulate public dissatisfaction via social media during potential civil unrest would not be a surprising move given the Army’s obsession with anticipating domestic disorder.

As we previously highlighted, a 2008 study by the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Institute warned that the United States may experience massive civil unrest in the wake of a series of crises which it has termed “strategic shock.” The recent Minerva Initiative project to predict disorder and its link to Facebook researcher Jeffrey T. Hancock is also a tantalizing connection.

“So it seems that Facebook and the U.S. military are likely working together to study civil unrest and work on ways to manipulate the masses into apathy or misguided feelings of contentment in the face of continued banker and oligarch theft. This is extremely disturbing, but this whole affair is highly troubling in spite of this,” writes Michael Krieger.

Endless War and the “Pictures in Our Heads

By James F Tracy

Global Research

 

Over ninety years ago political analyst Walter Lippmann noted how the masses overwhelmingly rely on subjective views–“the pictures in our heads,” or what he termed “stereotypes”–to make sense of the world. “The stereotype,” Edward Bernays elaborated, “is the basis of a large part of the work of the public relations counsel.”[1]

These views mirror those of an elite class that Lippmann and Bernays were pleased to serve—an elite that, taken as a whole, now retains several thousand such minds throughout government and the private sector working. These social scientists and public relations technicians proceed under the broadly-held assumption that as more “qualified” parties are enfranchised enact realpolitik, the public must necessarily be condemned to flounder in Plato’s cave.

Along these lines, Australian propaganda researcher Alex Carey observed how among all countries in the world the United States has the greatest tendency for possessing a “Manichean” worldview—one where social and political phenomena are typically perceived as binary opposites of good-evil, sacred-satanic, and so on.  This observation is reaffirmed in more recent research.[2]

Such a belief system is anticipated and encouraged by the carefully-crafted propaganda and disinformation that pervades government pronouncements and corporate news reportage and commentary on both foreign and domestic affairs.

US public opinion is overall against military action against Syria. Yet this attitude obscures the fact that a similar majority doesn’t understand that the Obama administration and its allies have for over two years supported an intense guerrilla war in Syria that has killed close to one hundred thousand inhabitants and displaced over one million.

A New York Times-commissioned public opinion poll reveals that while Americans are skeptical of President Obama’s attempt to sell them a new war, with seventy-two percent wishing to refrain from inflicting “US democracy” on Syria. A subsequent question suggests the American public’s unfamiliarity with the grave situation in that country.

“Based on what you have seen or read,” the poll asks, “do you think the Syrian government probably did or probably did not use chemical weapons against Syrian civilians?” An overwhelming seventy-five percent responded that it “probably did,” ten-percent said that it “probably did not,” and the remaining fifteen-percent had no opinion.[3]

In other words, nine out of ten Americans are unmindful toward the true geopolitical underpinnings of the Syrian crisis apart from White House propaganda and its heavy reverberation via the corporate media.

A Pew Research Center poll offers similar findings, with fifty-three percent replying that there is “clear evidence” that Bashar al-Assad’s government “used chemical weapons against civilians”, versus twenty-three percent responding that there was “not clear” evidence of such, and an amazing twenty-four percent claiming ignorance.[4]

Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry’s position that Assad is guilty of such crimes is based on doubtful evidence that initially included a photograph taken in Iraq in 2003 of a child leaping over piles of shrouded bodies.[5]

On the other hand, the “rebels” operating in Syria have clear chemical weapons capabilities. This was proven in May when members of the Al-Nusra front were caught by Turkish police preparing to deploy two kilograms of sarin gas inside Turkey and Syria.[6]

Yet such observations may be easily obscured or dismissed—particularly for the educated classes–as the guardians of proper thought deem them among the many “anti-American conspiracy theories,”[7] a term that intends to short-circuit any inquiry among those inclined think twice about conflicting information in news reports.

The experts who craft the “war on terror” propaganda recognize how truly effective publicity must be direct and unambiguous. The official narrative rests on the still broadly-held notion that that US and its allies are “the good guys.”

Proclamations concerning the triumph of genuinely independent fact-based analytical reports of the tragic situation in Syria are thus premature. Despite the cracks and fissures in the official “war on terror” narrative initiated by alternative media, it is still more or less accepted by a US populace that the western-backed Al-Qaeda mercenaries operating in Syria are indeed “protesters,” “activists,” and “rebels.”

The effectiveness of such propaganda rests in the fact that such figures are routinely depicted throughout mainstream news outlets wielding machine guns, grenade launchers, and other sophisticated weaponry while they frolic throughout the country.

9/11 and the subsequent brutal and calculated military onslaughts that have unfolded Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and now Syria cannot emerge as prevailingly uncontested historical events without a citizenry relegated to the hinterlands of what passes for today’s civil society—indeed, without a mass man willing to abandon his own reason and embrace the carefully constructed pictures in his head.

This text which now includes the video was updated on September 23, 2013.

Notes

[1] Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion, New York: The New Press, 1997 (1922); Edward Bernays, Crystallizing Public Opinion, New York: Ig Publishing (1923), 115.

[2] Alex Carey, Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda Versus Freedom and Liberty, Andrew Lohrey, ed., Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996. See also “Majority of Americans Believe in the Devil–Especially Republicans, Blacks, and Women,” UK Daily Mail, September 20, 2013.

[3]  Mark Landler and Megan Thee-Brenan, “Survey Reveals Scant Backing for Syria Strike,” New York Times, September 10, 2013.

[4] “Public Opinion Runs Against Syrian Air Strikes,” Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, September 3, 2013.

[5] “’CIA Fabricated Evidence to Lure US Into War with Syria,’” RT.com, September 9, 2013; Julie Wilson, “Bombshell: Kerry Caught Using Fake Photos to Fuel Syrian War,” Infowars.com, August 30, 2013.

[6] “Turkish Police Seizes 2 kg of Sarin Gas From Al-Nusra Militants,” Voltaire.net, May 31, 2013.

[7] Jon Lee Anderson, “Putin and the Syria Conspiracy Theory Problem,” The New Yorker, September 6, 2013. See also, Jamelle Bouie, “Enough Already: Syria Wasn’t A False Flag Operation,” The Daily Beast, September 10, 2013.