Kevin Libin August 11, 2010
The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Tuesday that the H1N1 “swine flu” pandemic was officially over. The declaration came only about six months after virtually everybody else in the Western world realized that nothing like a pandemic, as we normally understand the term, had ever really begun.
Thirteen months ago, the WHO raised the swine flu threat to a Level 6 pandemic alert, the highest possible. “It is all of humanity that is under threat,” warned Margaret Chan, the WHO director-general. The organization projected millions of souls might be struck down by the virus; the WHO’s assistant director-general drew comparisons to the Spanish Flu, which had wiped out upwards of 20 million people by 1919.
It quickly became apparent that H1N1 would be nothing like that. And never will be. The WHO says this is now just another “seasonal influenza.” As those bugs go, it appears a milder strain. More common varieties kill 250,000 to 500,000 people worldwide every year. The total confirmed death toll of the Great Swine Flu Pandemic: 18,000.
The world’s most authoritative body suddenly seems far less authoritative, particularly as it resists acknowledging unnecessarily triggering worldwide fear. “We have never had a moment’s doubt of whether this is a pandemic or not,” insisted one official recently.
But then, the agency looks at these things very differently than most people — many of whom surely have grave doubts about how the so-called Swine Flu pandemic was handled from the start.
The WHO, after all, considers all pandemics potential threats to humanity. Its scientists also have a distinct way of establishing a pandemic. Any virus that jumps from animals to human-to-human transmission “leading to community wide outbreaks” in two countries triggers warnings. In recent years, the organization stopped requiring “several, simultaneous epidemics worldwide with enormous numbers of deaths and illness”; now pandemics “can be either mild or severe.” To qualify, a virus, until 2008, needed to “shift,” and spawn subtypes. This criteria, too, was removed.
“Although this change seems subtle, it is a significant change, and is a potential problem with the new WHO pandemic definition,” cautioned an editorial in the British Medical Journal’s Clinical Evidence last year.
But the UN-run health body has hardly exercised caution in communicating such semantic technicalities. Instead, it has sounded the pandemic alarm loudly and dramatically. Dr. Chan says it was “pure good luck” H1N1 didn’t confound our vaccines and antiviral drugs and deliver widespread death. If that’s luck, then humanity is on some streak: in 2005, the WHO predicted 150 million dead from the H5N1 Avian Flu, though the confirmed toll never reached even 100; the Global Health Council anticipated the 2003 SARS outbreak wiping out 60 million lives, but the final tally ended up below 800.
In every case, people and economies have been more afflicted by contagious panic — closed borders, travel bans, shuttered schools and businesses, edgy consumers, mass livestock culls, and billions spent by taxpayers on protection programs — than by contagious disease.
This is not the concern of Dr. Chan, who has argued, anyway, that believing modern, liberalized trade improves living conditions and health worldwide is mistaken. Such systems “favour those who are already well off,” she told the Regional Committee for Europe, last September. Progress comes, rather, from redistribution: “Gaps in Health outcomes will be reduced, and health systems will strive for fairness only when equity is an explicit policy objective, also in sectors well beyond health,” she said. We need “changes in the functioning of the global economy.”
With that philosophy, it makes sense that Dr. Chan might mistake for “pure luck” what is more likely the fruit of progress, driven largely by liberalized commerce. WHO officials suggest devastating pandemics are inevitably cyclical: After the millions of deaths caused by the Spanish Flu, the Asian Flu (1957) and the Hong Kong Flu (1968), the next is due “any time now” they’ve promised. But in each subsequent pandemic, the world was a richer, better-fed, generally healthier place — and each time, mortality rates grew smaller.
Epidemiologists know influenza viruses prove deadliest in victims weakened by pre-existing complications. Since the Spanish Flu, public health is incalculably better: we’ve developed and commercialized sulfa drugs and penicillin; we’ve improved vaccines; malnutrition levels in the developing world are half what they were 40 years ago. The fact that H1N1 did not outfox human vaccines and anti-virals might seem lucky to those lacking faith that human enterprise and innovation can also prove ingeniously adaptable and potent.
It may be there will never be another decimating flu plague on the scale of past ones again.
Predictably, though, the WHO has only taken its massive Swine Flu misjudgment to warn against growing “complacent,” as another threat could one day come. But the false alarms have only bred doubt about the WHO’s own trustworthiness, popularizing theories that the agency colludes with Big Pharma while nourishing skeptics who convince the gullible that vaccinations are a dangerous scam. Even the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe called this a “faked pandemic.”
If we do ever become complacent about genuine viral pandemic threats, it may be the unfortunate result of the World Health Organization’s emerging pattern of needless panics.
Showing posts with label false pandemic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label false pandemic. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
H1N1 Pandemic Officially Over, Says WHO
(would that be the pandemic which never occurred? And now it's over?--jef)
H1N1 Pandemic Officially Over, Says WHO; Cites Lessons Learned
August 10, 2010, 10:45 AM ET
The swine flu pandemic is officially kaput, per the World Health Organization, which is charged with determining this sort of thing. “We are now moving into the post-pandemic period, said WHO Director-General Margaret Chan on a conference call with reporters, citing the consensus of the organization’s Emergency Committee. “The new H1N1 virus has largely run its course.”
That doesn’t mean the virus is gone, of course, just that it is expected to recede into the semi-anonymity of other circulating flu viruses. There may still be “localized [H1N1] outbreaks of different magnitude,” Chan said, but out-of-season outbreaks are no longer being reported.
Chan said public-health authorities were aided by “pure good luck” in that H1N1 didn’t mutate to a more lethal form or develop resistance to antiviral treatments and that the vaccine developed for use against it was effective. And she said WHO was correct in its response to the pandemic, which some criticized as overly alarmist. But she did add that in the future, a “more flexible” approach to pandemic preparedness guidelines would allow WHO to present best-, intermediate- and worst-case scenarios and to adjust predictions as a pandemic evolves.
That was one of the lessons she said the agency took away from the H1N1 pandemic; the other was the need to better communicate through social media.
H1N1 is one of the viruses protected against by the latest iteration of the seasonal vaccine, which every year targets the strains public-health authorities deem most likely to be a threat in the upcoming flu season. This year’s vaccines have already been approved by the FDA and shipped to distributors, and Chan urged people to be protected against H1N1 because much is still not known about whether and how it will manifest this year.
***
H1N1 Pandemic Officially Over, Says WHO; Cites Lessons Learned
August 10, 2010, 10:45 AM ET
The swine flu pandemic is officially kaput, per the World Health Organization, which is charged with determining this sort of thing. “We are now moving into the post-pandemic period, said WHO Director-General Margaret Chan on a conference call with reporters, citing the consensus of the organization’s Emergency Committee. “The new H1N1 virus has largely run its course.”
That doesn’t mean the virus is gone, of course, just that it is expected to recede into the semi-anonymity of other circulating flu viruses. There may still be “localized [H1N1] outbreaks of different magnitude,” Chan said, but out-of-season outbreaks are no longer being reported.
Chan said public-health authorities were aided by “pure good luck” in that H1N1 didn’t mutate to a more lethal form or develop resistance to antiviral treatments and that the vaccine developed for use against it was effective. And she said WHO was correct in its response to the pandemic, which some criticized as overly alarmist. But she did add that in the future, a “more flexible” approach to pandemic preparedness guidelines would allow WHO to present best-, intermediate- and worst-case scenarios and to adjust predictions as a pandemic evolves.
That was one of the lessons she said the agency took away from the H1N1 pandemic; the other was the need to better communicate through social media.
H1N1 is one of the viruses protected against by the latest iteration of the seasonal vaccine, which every year targets the strains public-health authorities deem most likely to be a threat in the upcoming flu season. This year’s vaccines have already been approved by the FDA and shipped to distributors, and Chan urged people to be protected against H1N1 because much is still not known about whether and how it will manifest this year.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Analysts say WHO communication errors spurred 'false pandemic' charges
by Ashton Daigle | 07-07-2010
Two former World Health Organization consultants have said that communication missteps fueled accusations that the organization exaggerated the H1N1 threat in order to enrich pharmaceutical companies.
The analysts, Peter Sandman and Jody Lanard, called the allegations absurd, but said the organization made itself vulnerable by making three communication errors, CIDRAP News reports.
The allegations were recently leveled against WHO in a report by the Council of Europe and an investigative report in BMJ, formerly the British Medical Journal. The COE report alleged that the WHO hyped the pandemic partly in order to enrich the companies that make vaccines and antivirals. The BMJ article primarily examined alleged conflicts of interest.
Lanard and Sandman wrote the three communications mistakes made by the WHO included reporting on the mildness of the pandemic, the debatable meaning of the term influenza pandemic and the inevitable, but not culpable, structural conflicts of interest of WHO advisers.
WHO Director-General Margaret Chan recently denied the allegations made by the COE regarding hyping the virus to help drug companies. She did, however, acknowledge that the WHO needs to develop better policies and methods for disclosing potential conflicts of interest.
The WHO has commissioned a committee of independent experts to review the handling of the pandemic. That group will meet in Geneva this week, but its final report is not expected until next year.
Two former World Health Organization consultants have said that communication missteps fueled accusations that the organization exaggerated the H1N1 threat in order to enrich pharmaceutical companies.
The analysts, Peter Sandman and Jody Lanard, called the allegations absurd, but said the organization made itself vulnerable by making three communication errors, CIDRAP News reports.
The allegations were recently leveled against WHO in a report by the Council of Europe and an investigative report in BMJ, formerly the British Medical Journal. The COE report alleged that the WHO hyped the pandemic partly in order to enrich the companies that make vaccines and antivirals. The BMJ article primarily examined alleged conflicts of interest.
Lanard and Sandman wrote the three communications mistakes made by the WHO included reporting on the mildness of the pandemic, the debatable meaning of the term influenza pandemic and the inevitable, but not culpable, structural conflicts of interest of WHO advisers.
WHO Director-General Margaret Chan recently denied the allegations made by the COE regarding hyping the virus to help drug companies. She did, however, acknowledge that the WHO needs to develop better policies and methods for disclosing potential conflicts of interest.
The WHO has commissioned a committee of independent experts to review the handling of the pandemic. That group will meet in Geneva this week, but its final report is not expected until next year.
Monday, June 7, 2010
The pandemic that never was
Drug firms 'encouraged world health body to exaggerate swine flu threat'
By FIONA MACRAE
Declaring a swine flu pandemic was a 'monumental error', driven by profit-hungry drug companies spreading fear, an influential report has concluded.
It led to huge amounts of taxpayers' money being wasted in stockpiling vaccines, it added.
Paul Flynn, the Labour MP charged with investigating the handling of the swine flu outbreak for the Council of Europe, described it as 'a pandemic that never really was'.
The report accuses the World Health Organisation of grave shortcomings in the transparency of the process that led to its warning last year.
The MP said that the world relied on the WHO, but after 'crying wolf', its reputation was in jeopardy.
The report questions whether the pandemic was driven by drug companies seeking a profit. Mr Flynn said predictions of a 'plague' that would wipe out up to 7.5million people proved to be 'an exaggeration', with fewer than 20,000 deaths worldwide.
Britain braced itself for up to 65,000 deaths and signed vaccine contracts worth £540million.
The actual number of deaths was fewer than 500 and the country is now desperately trying to unpick the contracts and unload millions of unused jabs.
The focus on swine flu also led to other health services suffering and widespread public fear.
Pharmaceutical companies, however, profited to the tune of £4.6billion from the sale of vaccines alone.
Mr Flynn said: 'There is not much doubt that this was an exaggeration on stilts. They vastly over-stated the danger on bad science and the national governments were in a position where they had to take action.
'In Britain, we have spent at least £1billion on preparations, to the detriment of other parts of the health system. This is a monumental failure on the WHO's part.'
The Council of Europe inquiry heard allegations that the WHO had downgraded its definition for declaring a pandemic last spring - just weeks before announcing there was a worldwide outbreak.
Critics said the decision to remove any need to consider the deadliness of the disease was driven by drug companies desperate to recoup the billions of pounds they had invested in developing pandemic vaccines after the bird flu scares.
But the WHO said its basic definition of a pandemic never changed.
Mr Flynn said: 'It doesn't make any sense as to why they should have changed the definition a month before declaring an outbreak.
'In this case, it might not just be a conspiracy theory, it might be a very profitable conspiracy.'
A Daily Mail investigation earlier this year revealed more than half of the swine flu taskforce advising the Government on its strategy had ties to drug companies.
Eleven of the 20 members of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies had done work for the pharmaceutical industry or are linked to it through their universities.
Concerns about drug companies' influence are also highlighted by a separate investigation by the British Medical Journal and the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
It found that key scientists behind the WHO's advice on stockpiling pandemic flu pills such as Tamiflu had financial ties with the drug companies that stood to profit. The WHO last night firmly rejected all the criticism.
Spokesman Gregory Hartl said: 'There is no question of this being a fake pandemic. If fits the criteria for a pandemic, which is a new virus to which human beings have little or no immunity and which has spread around the world.
'It spread from zero to 74 countries in the space of 9 weeks - that's a pandemic.'
He said that not all ties to drug companies were necessarily conflicts of interest.
By FIONA MACRAE
Declaring a swine flu pandemic was a 'monumental error', driven by profit-hungry drug companies spreading fear, an influential report has concluded.
It led to huge amounts of taxpayers' money being wasted in stockpiling vaccines, it added.
Paul Flynn, the Labour MP charged with investigating the handling of the swine flu outbreak for the Council of Europe, described it as 'a pandemic that never really was'.
The report accuses the World Health Organisation of grave shortcomings in the transparency of the process that led to its warning last year.
The MP said that the world relied on the WHO, but after 'crying wolf', its reputation was in jeopardy.
The report questions whether the pandemic was driven by drug companies seeking a profit. Mr Flynn said predictions of a 'plague' that would wipe out up to 7.5million people proved to be 'an exaggeration', with fewer than 20,000 deaths worldwide.
Britain braced itself for up to 65,000 deaths and signed vaccine contracts worth £540million.
The actual number of deaths was fewer than 500 and the country is now desperately trying to unpick the contracts and unload millions of unused jabs.
The focus on swine flu also led to other health services suffering and widespread public fear.
Pharmaceutical companies, however, profited to the tune of £4.6billion from the sale of vaccines alone.
Mr Flynn said: 'There is not much doubt that this was an exaggeration on stilts. They vastly over-stated the danger on bad science and the national governments were in a position where they had to take action.
'In Britain, we have spent at least £1billion on preparations, to the detriment of other parts of the health system. This is a monumental failure on the WHO's part.'
The Council of Europe inquiry heard allegations that the WHO had downgraded its definition for declaring a pandemic last spring - just weeks before announcing there was a worldwide outbreak.
Critics said the decision to remove any need to consider the deadliness of the disease was driven by drug companies desperate to recoup the billions of pounds they had invested in developing pandemic vaccines after the bird flu scares.
But the WHO said its basic definition of a pandemic never changed.
Mr Flynn said: 'It doesn't make any sense as to why they should have changed the definition a month before declaring an outbreak.
'In this case, it might not just be a conspiracy theory, it might be a very profitable conspiracy.'
A Daily Mail investigation earlier this year revealed more than half of the swine flu taskforce advising the Government on its strategy had ties to drug companies.
Eleven of the 20 members of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies had done work for the pharmaceutical industry or are linked to it through their universities.
Concerns about drug companies' influence are also highlighted by a separate investigation by the British Medical Journal and the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
It found that key scientists behind the WHO's advice on stockpiling pandemic flu pills such as Tamiflu had financial ties with the drug companies that stood to profit. The WHO last night firmly rejected all the criticism.
Spokesman Gregory Hartl said: 'There is no question of this being a fake pandemic. If fits the criteria for a pandemic, which is a new virus to which human beings have little or no immunity and which has spread around the world.
'It spread from zero to 74 countries in the space of 9 weeks - that's a pandemic.'
He said that not all ties to drug companies were necessarily conflicts of interest.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
WHO Appoints H1N1 Cover-Up Committee
WHO Appoints H1N1 Cover-Up Committee
Published on 04-13-2010
By James Corbett
Reports that the WHO is appointing an ‘independent’ committee to investigate its own conduct in the H1N1 panic of 2009 has been tempered by the fact that one of the committee’s members, John Mackenzie, was in fact one of the advisors who urged the WHO to declare a pandemic in the first place. He also has ties to vaccine manufacturers, making him part of the very charge being investigated: that the WHO relied on advisors with a financial interest in declaring a pandemic regardless of the facts on the ground.
Evidence continues to mount that the WHO declared a pandemic for the relatively mild H1N1 outbreak last year in order to trigger billions of dollars of automatic vaccine contracts for the benefit of WHO advisers with connections to Big Pharma. In the face of growing opposition and a loss of credibility due to the conflicts of interests among key WHO advisors, WHO Director Margaret Chan called Monday for a “frank, critical, transparent, credible and independent review of our performance” before entering a closed-door meeting with the “independent experts.” No photographers were allowed inside and press was allowed only occasional access to the meeting.
Hopes for a genuinely independent investigation into the scandal were quickly dashed, however, when it was discovered that one of the group’s members, Professor John Mackenzie of Curtin University in Australia, was a member of the very panel that advised the WHO to declare the H1N1 pandemic. In fact, Mackenzie is already on record with his assessment of his own actions: “I think we did everything right,” he told Der Spiegel earlier this year.
Clues to the likely findings and recommendations of the group in Geneva can be derived from other comments Mackenzie made to the German paper: “The system of pandemic levels needs to be revised,” he was quoted as saying. “We need to fine-tune phase 6 so that the severity of the disease is also taken into account.” Analysts are expecting the review to find that the WHO was a victim of fog of war and loose definitions for a pandemic and that no individual will be held responsible for the billions of dollars that have been spent around the world on vaccines that governments are now giving away and may ultimately have to throw out.
Also at issue is why the WHO changed its definition of a pandemic virus just as it was considering whether the emerging swine flu may fit that critera. A definition available on the website before the panic specifically listed “enormous numbers of deaths and ilness” as a criterion for declaring a pandemic. By April, the definition had been changed to specifically allow for “mild” pandemics.
The cover-up committee is being formed ahead of the final report of the ongoing Council of Europe investigation into the scandal. Just last month, the Council released a draft report of its investigation into the affair, delivering a blistering critique of the WHO and its motives for declaring the H1N1 pandemic:
The Council of Europe committee inquiry was spearheaded by Wolfgang Wodarg, the former chair of the Council’s health committee who made waves last year for saying that the WHO faked the pandemic to make money for vaccine manufacturers. The committee is expected to be quite critical of the WHO, leading many to speculate that the WHO-sanctioned group in Geneva is an attempt to get ahead of the damage and issue a limited hangout on the issue.
The independent group is expected to finish its meeting on Wednesday. No word yet if they will address the fact that flu vaccines actually increase the risk of contracting H1N1, or what the effect might be if a vaccine-pushing WHO ignores this information.
The H1N1 panic started last March, with the WHO estimating as many as two billion infections and millions of deaths. Newly released data shows that the 2009 flu season was actually much less deadly than the regular flu season.
Published on 04-13-2010
By James Corbett
Reports that the WHO is appointing an ‘independent’ committee to investigate its own conduct in the H1N1 panic of 2009 has been tempered by the fact that one of the committee’s members, John Mackenzie, was in fact one of the advisors who urged the WHO to declare a pandemic in the first place. He also has ties to vaccine manufacturers, making him part of the very charge being investigated: that the WHO relied on advisors with a financial interest in declaring a pandemic regardless of the facts on the ground.
Evidence continues to mount that the WHO declared a pandemic for the relatively mild H1N1 outbreak last year in order to trigger billions of dollars of automatic vaccine contracts for the benefit of WHO advisers with connections to Big Pharma. In the face of growing opposition and a loss of credibility due to the conflicts of interests among key WHO advisors, WHO Director Margaret Chan called Monday for a “frank, critical, transparent, credible and independent review of our performance” before entering a closed-door meeting with the “independent experts.” No photographers were allowed inside and press was allowed only occasional access to the meeting.
Hopes for a genuinely independent investigation into the scandal were quickly dashed, however, when it was discovered that one of the group’s members, Professor John Mackenzie of Curtin University in Australia, was a member of the very panel that advised the WHO to declare the H1N1 pandemic. In fact, Mackenzie is already on record with his assessment of his own actions: “I think we did everything right,” he told Der Spiegel earlier this year.
Clues to the likely findings and recommendations of the group in Geneva can be derived from other comments Mackenzie made to the German paper: “The system of pandemic levels needs to be revised,” he was quoted as saying. “We need to fine-tune phase 6 so that the severity of the disease is also taken into account.” Analysts are expecting the review to find that the WHO was a victim of fog of war and loose definitions for a pandemic and that no individual will be held responsible for the billions of dollars that have been spent around the world on vaccines that governments are now giving away and may ultimately have to throw out.
Also at issue is why the WHO changed its definition of a pandemic virus just as it was considering whether the emerging swine flu may fit that critera. A definition available on the website before the panic specifically listed “enormous numbers of deaths and ilness” as a criterion for declaring a pandemic. By April, the definition had been changed to specifically allow for “mild” pandemics.
The cover-up committee is being formed ahead of the final report of the ongoing Council of Europe investigation into the scandal. Just last month, the Council released a draft report of its investigation into the affair, delivering a blistering critique of the WHO and its motives for declaring the H1N1 pandemic:
Some members of these advisory bodies evidently have professional links to certain pharmaceutical groups – notably through receiving extensive research grants from the big pharmaceutical groups – so that the neutrality of their advice could be contested. To date, WHO has failed to provide convincing evidence to counter these allegations and the organisation has not published the relevant declarations of interest taking such a reserved position, the Organisation has joined other bodies, such as the European Medicines Agency (EMEA), which likewise, have still not published such documents.
-”The handling of the H1N1 pandemic: more transparency needed“
The Council of Europe committee inquiry was spearheaded by Wolfgang Wodarg, the former chair of the Council’s health committee who made waves last year for saying that the WHO faked the pandemic to make money for vaccine manufacturers. The committee is expected to be quite critical of the WHO, leading many to speculate that the WHO-sanctioned group in Geneva is an attempt to get ahead of the damage and issue a limited hangout on the issue.
The independent group is expected to finish its meeting on Wednesday. No word yet if they will address the fact that flu vaccines actually increase the risk of contracting H1N1, or what the effect might be if a vaccine-pushing WHO ignores this information.
The H1N1 panic started last March, with the WHO estimating as many as two billion infections and millions of deaths. Newly released data shows that the 2009 flu season was actually much less deadly than the regular flu season.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Truth is inconvenient for ideologues
Truth Has Fallen and Taken Liberty With It
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
There was a time when the pen was mightier than the sword. That was a time when people believed in truth and regarded truth as an independent power and not as an auxiliary for government, class, race, ideological, personal, or financial interest.
Today Americans are ruled by propaganda. Americans have little regard for truth, little access to it, and little ability to recognize it.
Truth is an unwelcome entity. It is disturbing. It is off limits. Those who speak it run the risk of being branded “anti-American,” “anti-semite” or “conspiracy theorist.”
Truth is an inconvenience for government and for the interest groups whose campaign contributions control government.
Truth is an inconvenience for prosecutors who want convictions, not the discovery of innocence or guilt.
Truth is inconvenient for ideologues.
Today many whose goal once was the discovery of truth are now paid handsomely to hide it. “Free market economists” are paid to sell offshoring to the American people. High-productivity, high value-added American jobs are denigrated as dirty, old industrial jobs. Relicts from long ago, we are best shed of them. Their place has been taken by “the New Economy,” a mythical economy that allegedly consists of high-tech white collar jobs in which Americans innovate and finance activities that occur offshore. All Americans need in order to participate in this “new economy” are finance degrees from Ivy League universities, and then they will work on Wall Street at million dollar jobs.
Economists who were once respectable took money to contribute to this myth of “the New Economy.”
And not only economists sell their souls for filthy lucre. Recently we have had reports of medical doctors who, for money, have published in peer-reviewed journals concocted “studies” that hype this or that new medicine produced by pharmaceutical companies that paid for the “studies.”
The Council of Europe is investigating the drug companies’ role in hyping a false swine flu pandemic in order to gain billions of dollars in sales of the vaccine.
The media helped the US military hype its recent Marja offensive in Afghanistan, describing Marja as a city of 80,000 under Taliban control. It turns out that Marja is not urban but a collection of village farms.
And there is the global warming scandal, in which NGOs. the UN, and the nuclear industry colluded in concocting a doomsday scenario in order to create profit in pollution.
Wherever one looks, truth has fallen to money.
Wherever money is insufficient to bury the truth, ignorance, propaganda, and short memories finish the job.
I remember when, following CIA director William Colby’s testimony before the Church Committee in the mid-1970s, presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan issued executive orders preventing the CIA and U.S. black-op groups from assassinating foreign leaders. In 2010 the US Congress was told by Dennis Blair, head of national intelligence, that the US now assassinates its own citizens in addition to foreign leaders.
When Blair told the House Intelligence Committee that US citizens no longer needed to be arrested, charged, tried, and convicted of a capital crime, just murdered on suspicion alone of being a “threat,” he wasn’t impeached. No investigation pursued. Nothing happened. There was no Church Committee. In the mid-1970s the CIA got into trouble for plots to kill Castro. Today it is American citizens who are on the hit list. Whatever objections there might be don’t carry any weight. No one in government is in any trouble over the assassination of U.S. citizens by the U.S. government.
As an economist, I am astonished that the American economics profession has no awareness whatsoever that the U.S. economy has been destroyed by the offshoring of U.S. GDP to overseas countries. U.S. corporations, in pursuit of absolute advantage or lowest labor costs and maximum CEO “performance bonuses,” have moved the production of goods and services marketed to Americans to China, India, and elsewhere abroad. When I read economists describe offshoring as free trade based on comparative advantage, I realize that there is no intelligence or integrity in the American economics profession.
Intelligence and integrity have been purchased by money. The transnational or global U.S. corporations pay multi-million dollar compensation packages to top managers, who achieve these “performance awards” by replacing U.S. labor with foreign labor. While Washington worries about “the Muslim threat,” Wall Street, U.S. corporations and “free market” shills destroy the U.S. economy and the prospects of tens of millions of Americans.
Americans, or most of them, have proved to be putty in the hands of the police state.
Americans have bought into the government’s claim that security requires the suspension of civil liberties and accountable government. Astonishingly, Americans, or most of them, believe that civil liberties, such as habeas corpus and due process, protect “terrorists,” and not themselves. Many also believe that the Constitution is a tired old document that prevents government from exercising the kind of police state powers necessary to keep Americans safe and free.
Most Americans are unlikely to hear from anyone who would tell them any different.
I was associate editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal. I was Business Week’s first outside columnist, a position I held for 15 years. I was columnist for a decade for Scripps Howard News Service, carried in 300 newspapers. I was a columnist for the Washington Times and for newspapers in France and Italy and for a magazine in Germany. I was a contributor to the New York Times and a regular feature in the Los Angeles Times. Today I cannot publish in, or appear on, the American “mainstream media.”
For the last six years I have been banned from the “mainstream media.” My last column in the New York Times appeared in January, 2004, coauthored with Democratic U.S. Senator Charles Schumer representing New York. We addressed the offshoring of U.S. jobs. Our op-ed article produced a conference at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and live coverage by C-Span. A debate was launched. No such thing could happen today.
For years I was a mainstay at the Washington Times, producing credibility for the Moony newspaper as a Business Week columnist, former Wall Street Journal editor, and former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. But when I began criticizing Bush’s wars of aggression, the order came down to Mary Lou Forbes to cancel my column.
The American corporate does not serve the truth. It serves the government and the interest groups that empower the government.
America’s fate was sealed when the public and the anti-war movement bought the government’s 9/11 conspiracy theory. The government’s account of 9/11 is contradicted by much evidence. Nevertheless, this defining event of our time, which has launched the US on interminable wars of aggression and a domestic police state, is a taboo topic for investigation in the media. It is pointless to complain of war and a police state when one accepts the premise upon which they are based.
These trillion dollar wars have created financing problems for Washington’s deficits and threaten the U.S. dollar’s role as world reserve currency. The wars and the pressure that the budget deficits put on the dollar’s value have put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block. Former Goldman Sachs chairman and U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is after these protections for the elderly. Fed chairman Bernanke is also after them. The Republicans are after them as well. These protections are called “entitlements” as if they are some sort of welfare that people have not paid for in payroll taxes all their working lives.
With over 21 per cent unemployment as measured by the methodology of 1980, with American jobs, GDP, and technology having been given to China and India, with war being Washington’s greatest commitment, with the dollar over-burdened with debt, with civil liberty sacrificed to the “war on terror,” the liberty and prosperity of the American people have been thrown into the trash bin of history.
The militarism of the U.S. and Israeli states, and Wall Street and corporate greed, will now run their course. As the pen is censored and its might extinguished, I am signing off.
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
There was a time when the pen was mightier than the sword. That was a time when people believed in truth and regarded truth as an independent power and not as an auxiliary for government, class, race, ideological, personal, or financial interest.
Today Americans are ruled by propaganda. Americans have little regard for truth, little access to it, and little ability to recognize it.
Truth is an unwelcome entity. It is disturbing. It is off limits. Those who speak it run the risk of being branded “anti-American,” “anti-semite” or “conspiracy theorist.”
Truth is an inconvenience for government and for the interest groups whose campaign contributions control government.
Truth is an inconvenience for prosecutors who want convictions, not the discovery of innocence or guilt.
Truth is inconvenient for ideologues.
Today many whose goal once was the discovery of truth are now paid handsomely to hide it. “Free market economists” are paid to sell offshoring to the American people. High-productivity, high value-added American jobs are denigrated as dirty, old industrial jobs. Relicts from long ago, we are best shed of them. Their place has been taken by “the New Economy,” a mythical economy that allegedly consists of high-tech white collar jobs in which Americans innovate and finance activities that occur offshore. All Americans need in order to participate in this “new economy” are finance degrees from Ivy League universities, and then they will work on Wall Street at million dollar jobs.
Economists who were once respectable took money to contribute to this myth of “the New Economy.”
And not only economists sell their souls for filthy lucre. Recently we have had reports of medical doctors who, for money, have published in peer-reviewed journals concocted “studies” that hype this or that new medicine produced by pharmaceutical companies that paid for the “studies.”
The Council of Europe is investigating the drug companies’ role in hyping a false swine flu pandemic in order to gain billions of dollars in sales of the vaccine.
The media helped the US military hype its recent Marja offensive in Afghanistan, describing Marja as a city of 80,000 under Taliban control. It turns out that Marja is not urban but a collection of village farms.
And there is the global warming scandal, in which NGOs. the UN, and the nuclear industry colluded in concocting a doomsday scenario in order to create profit in pollution.
Wherever one looks, truth has fallen to money.
Wherever money is insufficient to bury the truth, ignorance, propaganda, and short memories finish the job.
I remember when, following CIA director William Colby’s testimony before the Church Committee in the mid-1970s, presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan issued executive orders preventing the CIA and U.S. black-op groups from assassinating foreign leaders. In 2010 the US Congress was told by Dennis Blair, head of national intelligence, that the US now assassinates its own citizens in addition to foreign leaders.
When Blair told the House Intelligence Committee that US citizens no longer needed to be arrested, charged, tried, and convicted of a capital crime, just murdered on suspicion alone of being a “threat,” he wasn’t impeached. No investigation pursued. Nothing happened. There was no Church Committee. In the mid-1970s the CIA got into trouble for plots to kill Castro. Today it is American citizens who are on the hit list. Whatever objections there might be don’t carry any weight. No one in government is in any trouble over the assassination of U.S. citizens by the U.S. government.
As an economist, I am astonished that the American economics profession has no awareness whatsoever that the U.S. economy has been destroyed by the offshoring of U.S. GDP to overseas countries. U.S. corporations, in pursuit of absolute advantage or lowest labor costs and maximum CEO “performance bonuses,” have moved the production of goods and services marketed to Americans to China, India, and elsewhere abroad. When I read economists describe offshoring as free trade based on comparative advantage, I realize that there is no intelligence or integrity in the American economics profession.
Intelligence and integrity have been purchased by money. The transnational or global U.S. corporations pay multi-million dollar compensation packages to top managers, who achieve these “performance awards” by replacing U.S. labor with foreign labor. While Washington worries about “the Muslim threat,” Wall Street, U.S. corporations and “free market” shills destroy the U.S. economy and the prospects of tens of millions of Americans.
Americans, or most of them, have proved to be putty in the hands of the police state.
Americans have bought into the government’s claim that security requires the suspension of civil liberties and accountable government. Astonishingly, Americans, or most of them, believe that civil liberties, such as habeas corpus and due process, protect “terrorists,” and not themselves. Many also believe that the Constitution is a tired old document that prevents government from exercising the kind of police state powers necessary to keep Americans safe and free.
Most Americans are unlikely to hear from anyone who would tell them any different.
I was associate editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal. I was Business Week’s first outside columnist, a position I held for 15 years. I was columnist for a decade for Scripps Howard News Service, carried in 300 newspapers. I was a columnist for the Washington Times and for newspapers in France and Italy and for a magazine in Germany. I was a contributor to the New York Times and a regular feature in the Los Angeles Times. Today I cannot publish in, or appear on, the American “mainstream media.”
For the last six years I have been banned from the “mainstream media.” My last column in the New York Times appeared in January, 2004, coauthored with Democratic U.S. Senator Charles Schumer representing New York. We addressed the offshoring of U.S. jobs. Our op-ed article produced a conference at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and live coverage by C-Span. A debate was launched. No such thing could happen today.
For years I was a mainstay at the Washington Times, producing credibility for the Moony newspaper as a Business Week columnist, former Wall Street Journal editor, and former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. But when I began criticizing Bush’s wars of aggression, the order came down to Mary Lou Forbes to cancel my column.
The American corporate does not serve the truth. It serves the government and the interest groups that empower the government.
America’s fate was sealed when the public and the anti-war movement bought the government’s 9/11 conspiracy theory. The government’s account of 9/11 is contradicted by much evidence. Nevertheless, this defining event of our time, which has launched the US on interminable wars of aggression and a domestic police state, is a taboo topic for investigation in the media. It is pointless to complain of war and a police state when one accepts the premise upon which they are based.
These trillion dollar wars have created financing problems for Washington’s deficits and threaten the U.S. dollar’s role as world reserve currency. The wars and the pressure that the budget deficits put on the dollar’s value have put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block. Former Goldman Sachs chairman and U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is after these protections for the elderly. Fed chairman Bernanke is also after them. The Republicans are after them as well. These protections are called “entitlements” as if they are some sort of welfare that people have not paid for in payroll taxes all their working lives.
With over 21 per cent unemployment as measured by the methodology of 1980, with American jobs, GDP, and technology having been given to China and India, with war being Washington’s greatest commitment, with the dollar over-burdened with debt, with civil liberty sacrificed to the “war on terror,” the liberty and prosperity of the American people have been thrown into the trash bin of history.
The militarism of the U.S. and Israeli states, and Wall Street and corporate greed, will now run their course. As the pen is censored and its might extinguished, I am signing off.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Swine flu no danger
Swine flu danger appears to be ebbing
March 19, 2010|By Thomas H. Maugh II
The CDC says a third wave of the H1N1 pandemic is less likely in the U.S. Attention now turns to the Southern Hemisphere, where flu season is just beginning.
The likelihood of a third wave of pandemic H1N1 influenza appears to be declining as all indicators of swine flu activity remain low throughout the bulk of the country, according to data released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"Nobody can say for sure that we are totally out of the woods, but the further we go into spring and summer, the less likely we are to see another wave," said CDC spokesman Tom Skinner. It would not surprise the agency to see some local activity of the virus "continue to percolate along," he added.
March 19, 2010|By Thomas H. Maugh II
The CDC says a third wave of the H1N1 pandemic is less likely in the U.S. Attention now turns to the Southern Hemisphere, where flu season is just beginning.
The likelihood of a third wave of pandemic H1N1 influenza appears to be declining as all indicators of swine flu activity remain low throughout the bulk of the country, according to data released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"Nobody can say for sure that we are totally out of the woods, but the further we go into spring and summer, the less likely we are to see another wave," said CDC spokesman Tom Skinner. It would not surprise the agency to see some local activity of the virus "continue to percolate along," he added.
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