[Mb-civic] more from the Free Press on the flu campaign

[Peter Fleming]

Happy Thanksgiving 
However you believe or disbelieve in the massive
   flu media fear frenzy propaganda campaigns...
 here is yet another source on the subject
  not found in mainstream, monopoly media
I hope you find it worth re-sending to thinking friends.   Peter


Is Avian Flu another Pentagon Hoax?
by F. William Engdahl
 October 30, 2005 
GlobalResearch.ca  (see their websites below)

No sooner are indictments being handed down to Scooter Libby, the Chief of
Staff of the Vice President of the United States for lies and coverup of
information used deliberately to suppress the fact the Bush Administration
had no ‘smoking gun’ to prove Saddam Hussein was building a nuclear arsenal,
but a new scandal is surfacing every bit as outrageous and ultimately,
likely also criminal.

Against all scientific prudence and normal public health procedure, the
world population is being whipped up into a fear frenzy by irresponsible
public health officials from the US Administration to WHO to the United
States Centers for Disease Control. They all warn about the imminent danger
that a malicious viral strain might spread from infected birds, primarily in
Vietnam and other Asian centers, to contaminate the entire human species in
pandemic proportions. Often the flu pandemic of 1918 which is said to have
killed 18 million worldwide, is cited as an example of what ‘might’ lie in
store for us. 

On November 1, appropriately enough the day after Halloween, President Bush
is scheduled to visit the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda Maryland
to announce his Administration’s strategy of how it will prepare for the
next flu epidemic, whether from Bird Flu or some other strain. The plan has
been a year in the making. On October 28 the Senate passed an $8 billion
emergency funding bill to address the growing Avian Flu panic. Health and
Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, in a moment of candor during the
debate on the Senate bill told the press, ‘If it isn’t the current H5N1
virus that leads to an influenza pandemic, at some point in our nation’s
future, another virus will.’ In the meantime taxpayer billions will have
gone to a handful of pharmaceutical giants positioned to profit. None stands
to reap more lucre than the Swiss-US pharmaceutical giant Roche Holdings of
Basle. 

The only medicine we are told which reduce the symptoms of general or
seasonal influenza and ‘possibly’ might reduce symptoms also of Avian Flu,
is a drug called Tamiflu. Today the giant Swiss pharmaceutical firm, Roche,
holds the sole license to manufacture Tamiflu. Due to the media panic, the
order books at Roche today are filled to overflowing. Roche recently refused
a request from the US Congress to lift its exclusive patent rights to allow
other drug manug´facturers to produce Tamiflu with the improbable excuse
that it was in effect, too complex for others to rapidly produce.
 
However, the real point of interest is the company in California who
developed Tamiflu and gave the marketing rights to its patented discovery to
Roche. 

‘Rummy Flu’

Tamiflu was developed and patented in 1996 by a California biotech firm,
Gilead Sciences Inc. Gilead is a NASDAQ (GILD) listed stock company which
prefers to maintain a low profile in the current rush to Tamiflu. That might
be because of who is tied to Gilead. In 1997, before he became US Secretary
of Defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld was named Chairman of the Board of Gilead
Sciences, where he remained until early 2001 when he became Defense
Secretary. Rumsfeld had been on the board of Gilead since 1988 according to
a January 3 1997 company press release. 

An as-yet-unconfirmed report is that Rumsfeld while Secretary of Defense
also purchased an additional stock in his former company, Gilead Sciences
Inc., worth $18 million, making him one of its largest if not the largest
stock owners today. 

The Secretary of Defense, the man who allegedly supported the use of
contrived intelligence to justify the war on Iraq, is now poised to reap
huge gains for a flu panic his Administration has done everything it can to
promote. It would be useful to know whether the Pentagon’s successor to
Douglas Feith’s Office of Special Plans developed the strategy of biowarfare
behind the current Avian Flu panic. Perhaps some enterprising Congressional
committee might look into the entire subject of plausible conflicts of
interest regarding Secretary Rumsfeld.

Rumsfeld stands to make a fortune on royalties as a panicked world
population scrambles to buy a drug worthless in curing effects of alleged
Avian Flu. The model suggests the parallel to the brazen corruption of
Halliburton Corporation whose former CEO is Vice President Dick Cheney.
Cheney’s company has so far gotten billions worth of US construction
contracts in Iraq and elsewhere. Coincidence that Cheney’s closest political
friend is Defense Secretary and Avian Flu beneficiary Don Rumsfeld? It is
another example of what someone has called the principle of modern US
corrupt special interest politics: ‘Concentrate the benefits; diffuse the
costs’ President Bush has ordered the US Government to buy $2 billion worth
of Gilead Science’s Tamilflu.

GMO Chickens come home to roost 

But Tamiflu conflicts are perhaps just the tip of the iceberg of the Avian
Flu story. There is high-level biological research underway in Britain and
presumably also the United States to develop a genetic engineering method to
make chickens and other birds ‘resistant’ to Avian Flu viruses. 

British scientists are reportedly genetically engineering chickens to
produce birds resistant to the lethal strains of the H5N1 virus devastating
poultry in the Far East. Laurence Tiley, Professor of Microular Virology at
Cambridge University and Helen Sang of the Roslin Institute in Scotland are
involved in developing ‘transgenic chickens’ which would have small pieces
of genetic material inserted into chicken eggs to allegedly make the
chickens H5N1 resistant. 

Tiley told the Times of London on October 29, ‘Once we have regulatory
approval, we believe it will only take between four and five years to breed
enough chickens to replace the entire world (chicken) population.’ The real
question in this dubious undertaking is which GMO giants are underwriting
the research and development of GMO chickens and who will control their
products. It is increasingly clear that the entire saga of Avian Flu is one
whose dimensions are only slowly coming to light. What we can see so far is
not at all pretty.

Global Research Contributing Editor William Engdahl is author of ‘A Century
of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, Pluto Press and
the soon-to-be released book, ‘Seeds of Destruction: The Geopolitics of
Gene-ocide’. He can be contacted through his website,
www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net. 



Related Article

Bird Flu: A Corporate Bonanza for the Biotech Industry, Tamiflu, Vistide and
the Pentagon Agenda. by F. William Engdahl


 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
 
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility
of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for
Research on Globalization.

To become a Member of Global Research

The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) at www.globalresearch.ca
grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles in their
entirety, or any portions thereof, on community internet sites, as long as
the text & title are not modified. The source must be acknowledged and an
active URL hyperlink address to the original CRG article must be indicated.
The author's copyright note must be displayed. For publication of Global
Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet
sites, contact: crgeditor at yahoo.com 

www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making
such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in
an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and
social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to
those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and
educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes
other than "fair use" you must request permission from the copyright owner.

To express your opinion on this article, join the discussion at Global
Research's News and Discussion Forum

For media inquiries: crgeditor at yahoo.com

© Copyright F. William Engdahl, GlobalResearch.ca, 2005 

The url address of this article is:
www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=%20EN20051030&artic
leId=1169 

 


 
  
 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----


Privacy Policy 

© Copyright 2005 GlobalResearch.ca
Web site engine by Polygraphx Multimedia © Copyright 2005


 
 
 

11828 San Vicente Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90049
310-454-1373

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20051123/9501687b/attachment.htm