by Anngwyn St. Just
September 30, 2014
"We are lived by forces we barely understand".
(W.H. Auden)
"Africa must not relegate the Continent to become the locality for disposal and deposition of hazardous chemicals, dangerous drugs or biological agents for emerging diseases".
(Dr. Cyril E. Broderick, September 2014)
"Genetic engineering can do far more damage than nuclear bombs".
(Michael Crichton M.D., novelist)
"Tell them the biggest lie, yes. But, they have to want the kind of lie you're telling. It has to give them equal parts of fear and fascination"
(Ellis Medavoy, retired propaganda operative).
Given that plagues have been known to alter the course of history, this recent Ebola epidemic deserves our studied attention.
Epidemics qualify as one of the "Greater Forces" that have the potential to alter our world as we know it and this has been true throughout human history. Plagues often serve as catalysts for major social, political and economic upheavals.
To date, the four deadliest epidemics include:
Black Death outbreaks from 1347-1351, during which bubonic plague and its airborne pneumonic offspring decimated some 3/5 of the European inhabitants.
We now know that this is a flea borne plague, which kills about 2/3 of its victims within four days, recognized at least as far back as the Roman Empire and the Plague of Justinian in 541 A.D.
This painful scourge, which reportedly left some 25 million dead, decimated nearly half the population of Constantinople, now modern Istanbul. An estimated 5,000 citizens died every day.
In modern times, bubonic/pneumonic plague was utilized by the Japanese as one of the several bio-weapons employed by their Imperial Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1941).
They introduced infected fleas into Chinese territory, ostensibly in the interest of conquest and colonization.
In 1918-1919 the Spanish Flu actually killed more people than World War I and infected nearly a third of the global population.
The causes of this outbreak remain highly controversial, especially among those who maintain that various influenza and other government-promoted vaccines may have actually served to weaken the immune systems of both the military and civilians; collectively stressed populations during and after World War I.
Beginning in the late 20th century, around 60 million unfortunates have been infected by HIV/Aids, since it was first reported in 1981; and another 30 million are living with this as a chronic condition. (Daniel Jennings, survivalbackpack.com, September, 2014).
During my Rolfing training in Berkeley, in the late seventies, I was sleep walking, as usual, until it was disclosed to me that Nick Rock, a young actor from New York and my genial gay roommate, was diagnosed as our country's first AIDs patient.
Within our local bodywork community, it had been believed that Nick had "cat scratch fever" and we were naturally concerned that after showing some serious symptoms, he was not showing any improvement. Inexplicably, this previously healthy and physically fit young man, rapidly declined and died.
Only many years later, after randomly selecting Randy Shilt's, And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the Aids Epidemic, (1987) in a San Francisco bookstore while waiting to meet my husband for a date night dinner, did I finally realize the truth about my friend and colleague's untimely demise.
And then there was smallpox, which raged through the Antonine Plague 165-180 A.D., killing 5 million people, including two emperors, (regime change) and may have greatly weakened the late Roman Empire; and promoted the spread of Christianity by diminishing faith in their pagan deities.
Smallpox, which also has a hemorrhagic variety, is thought to have emerged within the human population as early as 10,000 B.C. Scars from its characteristic pustular rash have been documented on the mummy of Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses V; and this disease was known in China in 1122 B.C.
Smallpox killed an estimated 400,000 Europeans toward the end of the 18th century, and earlier, including five reigning monarchs, (more regime change), and blinded countless others.
The World Health Organization (WHO) claims that smallpox was responsible for 300-500 million fatalities during the 20th century.
Together with other European diseases, smallpox devastated many indigenous populations following the discovery of the New World. It is widely believed to have been employed as a major bio-weapon in genocidal attempts at population control, and to eradicate indigenous peoples throughout North, Central and South America as well.
It was probably employed in Australia and New Zealand also, since this is what colonizing white people seem to believe is their mission. (Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel, PBS.org).
While smallpox was eradicated in 1979, varicella continues to live on in laboratories, as do all of the above mentioned organisms; as sources for actual and potential bioweapons.
Here, one might bear in mind the fact that at the close of World War II, the Third Reich's top virologists and bioweapons specialists for racially and genetically targeted diseases for population control and eugenics, (so-called science-based genocide), were sent to U.S. and British laboratories under Project Paperclip.
The Pentagon has been interested in filoviruses with high mortality rates since the seventies and one wonders.
And now, in Africa, there is Ebola, again...
While there have been 19 known outbreaks of Ebola in relatively isolated rural villages, this one is different, having reached major urban centers in West Africa where it has not been previously known.
Moreover, there are concerns that the current version of this highly contagious, often lethal virus, may be airborne via respiratory routes, hitch a ride onto international flights, cross borders, and sail throughout the Mediterranean with the potential to become a global pandemic.
The strain causing this recent outbreak is of a lineage known as Ebola Zaire, so named as it emerged in 1976 in Zaire, somewhere near the Ebola River, in what is now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo. This Ebola virus belongs to the family Filoviridae, order Mononega virales. One of the first photos taken in October, 1976 reveal this filovirus as an elongated, tubular, wormlike particle with a characteristic "shepherd's crook".
Ebola virus attacks and disables the immune system of its host. Early symptoms resemble influenza, including headache, sore throat, cough, fever, muscle pain and weakness. As the disease progresses, patients suffer vomiting, diarrhea, and severe dehydration.
The final stages are marked by visceral liquidation; the vascular system dissolves resulting in internal hemorrhages and bleeding from every orifice, evoking passages from Edgar Allen Poe's Gothic fiction classic...
"No pestilence had ever been so fatal or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal… the redness and the horror".
(The Masque of the Red Death, 1842)
The pandemic possibilities of this current epidemic first came to my attention in the sci-fi medical disaster film "Outbreak" released in March 1995. As the story unfolds, a fictional devastating, Ebola-like virus called Motaba appears in Zaire (Congo) and then in Smalltown USA.
Film critic, the late Roger Ebert, called it
"One of the great scare stories of our time… the notion that deep within uncharted rain forests, deadly diseases are lurking and if they ever escape their jungle homes and enter the human bloodstream, there will be a new plague the likes of which we have never seen."
(Chicago Sun Times, 1995)
Other critics dismissed this film's warning premise as "an absolute hoot". (Rita Kempley, Washington Post, March 10, 1995).
Still dozing within the pervasive fog of our mainstream media matrix, I failed to notice or pay attention to the salient fact that the pathogen named in the film was Motaba.
As this blog plot thickens, we now know that reversed, this spells Abatom, the name of a small, privately owned, pandemic research "think tank" in Jericho, Ibadan, Nigeria; located directly in the middle and between places where past Ebola outbreaks have occurred and where this new contagion is now taking place. (J.C. Collins, August 2, 2014) - (www.abatom.com).
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It is interesting and also disturbing to note that law enforcement personnel containing the quarantined were not wearing masks or any other protective gear. (theglobalmail.com, August 20, 2014).
With a situation likely to become worse, citizens confined to the capital's West Point slum area were packed into a small peninsula that juts out into the Atlantic. Lack of clean water and sanitation means that there are four, long since overflowing, public toilets for a population of 75,000 and therefore public defecation remains an ongoing source of contagion. (vice.com, 09/21/2014).
On September 18, 2014, with her impoverished country descending into chaos, President Sirleaf expressed her understanding of the cross cultural issues which hinder treatment.
While she pleaded with families of Ebola patients to isolate them from others, however, as a mother, she added, that…
"we know that for families to see their loved ones being taken to a place where they are not allowed to follow is strange and frightening. We also know that a case of Ebola in a family can lead to stigma and shame."
And so, she continued,
"some families hide their sick relatives… in secret. By doing this, the virus continues to spread".
In response to her plea for international help, Britain and China are sending experts on biological disasters, Cuba is sending 461 doctors and nurses and President Obama is deploying 3000 military personnel "to fight Ebola".
Citing a threat to national and global security, President Obama, speaking at the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, declared that the focus of this mission is to establish a regional control center and construct 17 treatment centers with 100 beds each with Public Health Service specialists to new field hospitals to train health care workers and to provide "security".
Some of what U.S. armed personnel will do in West Africa remains unclear.
Science journalist Yoichi Shimatsu, who organized a medical information team of microbiologists during the SARS and influenza contagions in S.E. Asia, speculates that this Ebola crisis has made way for an otherwise unacceptable British and American military incursion into West Africa.
Their new bases of operations there with Atlantic ports and large airfields provide resources for AFRICOM to operate within the region to continue the fight with Al Qaeda-linked Emirate of the Magreb in Mali, north of Guinea and Boko Haram in nearby Nigeria.
He is concerned that this so called Ebola invasion is a man-made epidemic unleashed in a psychological warfare operation aimed at re-colonization of West Africa with transnational corporate control over mineral resources and oil fields as well as legitimizing the phony war on terrorism.
Shimatsu warns that Africa's radical Islamic forces can be expected to launch a jihad against the invaders. (rense.com, September 2014).
President Obama's declaration of "War on Ebola" has not been enthusiastically received by an already war weary nation.
Factions within the military doubt the wisdom of entering into yet another theatre of war for which we are not adequately prepared. And, serious questions arise as to how our foreign troops might be received by an African population already distrustful of outsiders, AND their own governments.
These sentiments were hardly soothed by a story which appeared in Monrovia on the front page of the Liberian Daily Observer, written by Emeritus Professor and Plant Pathologist at Liberia's College of Agriculture and Forestry, Dr. Cyril E. Brodrick.
His report maintains that the U.S. Department of Defense, together with trans-national, Western pharmaceutical companies, are responsible for bio-engineering this current version of the Ebola virus as a bio-weapon and injecting Africans with this pathogen through the cover of their so called, "vaccination programs". (birdflu666.wordpress.com).
Public suspicion and apprehension continued to mount after video documentation surfaced which revealed that at least 45 bodies of Ebola victims were dumped into the source of a major river by Liberian government officials currently partnering with WHO. These videos fueled charges that this deadly pathogen was being deliberately spread via their country's rivers.
There have also been multiple reports of government workers transporting highly contagious bodies of Ebola victims into towns and villages for burial where there have been no Ebola cases or deaths. (CBS News, August 9, 2014).
Medical professionals here in the USA including Dr. Jane Orient, Executive Director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons have expressed a mounting concern that Pentagon personnel sent to Ebola infected regions could serve as a vector for transmission of this disease beyond the borders of Africa.
Meanwhile, our corporate controlled media is hyping fears of global pandemics, medical Martial Law, and a need for miraculous serums; as well as the race to find and market 'preventive' vaccines.
Within this rapidly changing scenario, we can now reasonably expect some travel restrictions, airport theater protocols dramatizing a need to screen for fever and other signs of contagion. These measures are likely to prove largely ineffective since the incubation period is 21 days and up until that time those infected may not exhibit any tell-tale symptoms.
There are also reasonable concerns that this Ebola variation may mutate into an airborne strain.
It is also highly likely that there will be verified cases showing up out of Africa and here as well. Before you rush to shutter your windows, it is important to understand that this is not Africa and there is ample evidence that with early intervention and fluid management, survival rates will greatly improve.
We can also expect the hype around mass vaccination programs to be similar to the fear campaigns launched during the Avian, SARS and Swine Flu fiascos.
We may even expect some well dramatized, limited quarantine lockdowns, under some measure of medical Martial Law, southern borders closed at intermittent intervals and so on.
Our ever vigilant surveillance state will likely enter the scene with investigation of contacts, as well as contacts of contacts.
As a result, we can prepare for stories of mistaken identities, SWAT team home invasions with resulting casualties to families and their pets, shooting events involving anyone fleeing quarantine, biological terror scares involving school children and other innocents, and more of the same.
No doubt, military personnel, and health care professionals will be told that some new, untested Ebola vaccine is mandatory, and perhaps also for law enforcement and school teachers as well, and many others will be encouraged to believe that their only choice is between potential side effects or Ebola. As usual, multinational pharmaceutical companies will enjoy huge profits, especially since they are legally protected from prosecution in the event of adverse or even lethal side effects.
Interestingly enough, an unexpected breakthrough has been announced by Liberian Dr. Gobee Logan who declared his finding that,
"Ebola is the brainchild of HIV… it is a destructive strain of HIV".
Dr. Logan is health director for agricultural Bomi County which has 2 doctors for about 85,000 people.
Inundated with patients in a rural Liberia Ebola Center in Tubmanburg, out of sheer desperation, he got the idea to start using a retroviral agent, Lamivudine, a nucleoside analog, after he read in scientific journals that HIV and Ebola replicate inside the body in much the same way.
Dr. Logan now reports that if patients report early, there has been a mortality rate of only 7%.
One wonders what Dr. Leonard Horowitz would make of this new information. More speculation and information concerning the role of government agendas and the role of pharmaceutical companies throughout the African continent is available on James Corbett's video discourse: "Ebola: Turning Panic into Profit" (corbettreport.com).
More on this subject is also available in John le Carre's medical fiction novel: The Constant Gardener and the film by the same name; which he claims is based upon real events.
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