Swine Flu & Big Pharma

The news programs have crackled with the news a "possible pandemic" of swine flu. Don't worry, though, the gov't will make Tamiflu available to treat those infected. At a profit to the drug industry , of course.

The kicker is that the virus appears to have been engineered in a lab. The big question is whether it was a gov't facility or a pharmaceutical one. Oops, I forgot that most pharmaceutical developments are partnerships between big gov't and big pharma.

Oh well, in the mean time, here is some good information & advice from Health Sciences Institute:

Don't Panic: 7 FACTS About 'Swine Flu'

With all the sensationalized news about the so-called swine flu flying around, I figured we'd better set all the facts straight.

1. So far, only 82 cases of so-called swine flu have been definitively identified worldwide, mostly in Mexico (26 confirmed, 7 deaths) and the U.S.(with 40 confirmed, no deaths). (Though about 1600 suspected cases, including 159 deaths, are reported in Mexico.) That does not add up to a pandemic swine flu outbreak.
2. This virus has nothing to do with swine. In fact, it hasn't been seen in a single animal. And you can't possibly get it from eating pork.
3. No existing vaccines can prevent this new flu strain. So no matter what you hear – even if it comes from your doctor – don't get a regular flu shot. They rarely work against seasonal flu…and certainly can't offer protection from a never-before- seen strain.
4. Speaking of this strain, it doesn't seem to have come on naturally. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), this particular strain has never before been seen in pigs or people. And according to Reuters, the strain is a 'genetic mix' of swine, avian and human flu. Was it created in a lab? We don't know yet.
5. The drug companies are getting excited…and that's never a good thing. According to the Associated Press at least one financial analyst estimates up to $388 million worth of Tamiflu sales in the near future – and that's without a pandemic outbreak.
6. Let's not forget that Tamiflu comes with its own problems, including side effects like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, headache, dizziness, fatigue, cough…the very symptoms you're trying to avoid. And let's not forget that Japan banned this drug for children back in 2007, after links to suicidal behavior.
7. Vaccines for this flu strain probably won't have to jump through all those annoying hurdles like clinical trials for safety and effectiveness. That won't, however, stop the government from mandating the vaccine for all of us – a very likely scenario. And if the vaccines are actually harmful…killing people, for example…the vaccine makers will be immune from lawsuits.

Your best defense – your only real defense in any flu season – is a bulletproof immune system. You can learn about the best ways to strengthen yourself in the HSI archives.

--Michele

How the Executive Branch Functions

Below you will find an excerpt from an essay by Gary North that appeared in a recent edition of Reality Check. Dr. North's succinct and graphic style boils the power politics behind the President's Cabinet down to a few paragraphs.

A President's cabinet is mostly for show. A few of the senior positions are about representing the Powers That Be, meaning the Establishment.

The Secretary of the Treasury is the seat for the big banks and financial institutions. These days, this is the Goldman Sachs slot.

The Secretary of State is the seat for one of the factions in [the] Council on Foreign Relations. Today's position is filled by a rival politician whose husband was vetted by the CFR in 1992. The main person who promoted him in early 1992 was the legendary Washington party-giver, Pamela Harriman, the former wife -- among many others -- of the late Averill Harriman (d. 1986), one of the six "Wise Men" in modern American foreign policy. She had even
been the daughter-in-law of Winston Churchill for a while.

The Attorney General is vetted by the lawyer's guild. He may be a politician-lawyer, who receives a reward for faithful partisan political service, or he may be a faithful lap dog
during the first term of a President's Administration.

The other positions are more openly payoffs to special- interest voting blocs. Think of the Secretary of Commerce or the Secretary of Labor. Big business vets the first; labor union
leaders screen the second. Guess who vets the Secretary of Agriculture? What about the Secretary of Education? And, lest we forget, what about the Secretary of Defense? You get the
idea.

Most of these people are selected for show. They convey the impression to voters that each group is represented in the Administration. Each group is represented, meaning each group's
full-time organizational agents is represented. This representation has to do with voting blocs every four years. Neither political party alienates any of these agents completely.
It is a matter of shifting departmental budgets at the margin.

Each administers a gigantic bureaucracy that is protected by Civil Service. These subordinates cannot legally be fired. They survive every Administration. They keep the system running according to whatever makes life easier for bureaucrats.

A department Secretary can change almost nothing. He acts as a spokesman -- one might say "shill" -- for the bureaucrats who are officially under him, but who are operationally over him
because they control the flow of information to him. His main task is to make sure the department's budget grows each fiscal year. The President wants this, and so do the bureaucrats. So do the special-interest groups whose interests are represented by
the department.

Each Secretary goes out on the rubber chicken circuit lecture to give carefully vetted speeches to local and regional conferences held by the special-interest group. He or she is
supposed to keep the special-interest group in line behind whatever the Administration is doing to expand the power of the special-interest group over the American people. This means
getting its fair share -- plus a little more -- of Federal budget. Like the children of Lake Wobegone, each department is expected to do better than average, budget-wise.

Tragedy and Hope: The Conspirators Exposed

In 1966, a professor at Georgetown University published a long, scholarly tome entitled Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time. This 1300 page volume would have been destined to collect dust on the shelves of university libraries but for one thing.

It seems that this Establishment scholar who trained aspiring foreign service appointees claimed that a secret international society played a large part in shaping the events of recent history. He claimed firsthand knowledge of the secret group, and he detailed its founding and organizational structure.

Here is a key passage that appeared in the books, pamphlets and newsletters of conspiratologists in the late 1960's and early 1970's:

There does exist, and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical Right believes the Communists act. In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so. I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960's, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments. I have objected, both in the past and recently, to a few of its policies (notably to its belief that England was an Atlantic rather than a European Power and must be allied, or even federated, with the United States and must remain isolated from Europe), but in general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known.

That era produced two influential right wing books that quoted extensively from Quigley's work: None Dare Call It Conspiracy (NDCC) by Gary Allen and The Naked Capitalist by W. Cleon Skousen. The strength of these books lay in their exposure of the inner workings of the power elite in America.

Knowledge alone will not defeat an adversary that wields unimaginable power and wealth. That knowledge must lead to the right kind of action.

The weakness of these books lay in their call to political action that pretty much confined itself to writing letters to congressmen and voting the rascals out. That's a naive approach to oust a group that controls the national candidate selection process for both political parties.

NDCC in particular blanketed the conservative movement of the early to mid-1970's, and I think led to the grassroots support for Ronald Reagan over the CIA, Trilateral Commission candidate, George Bush. Reagan punctuated his nomination by immediately choosing Bush as his running mate. (Under the present system, NO ONE gets to run as a major party presidential candidate without making deals.)

High Level Conspiracy against Gold

Gary North's latest issue of his e-letter Reality Check begins as follows:

THE GOLD WAR: WILL YOU LOSE IT?

If you own gold, you are in a war. You are under assault. You had better figure this out early.

There is a full-scale war against you. The politicians and central bankers who are conducting this war against you are determined to see that you lose money on your investment.

I have written a detailed report on this: "The Gold Wars." You can download it free of charge here:

http://www.GaryNorth.com/GoldWars.pdf

The reason why you are under assault is because you have demonstrated by your purchase of gold or a gold-related investment that you do not trust the monetary policies of your nation's central bank. If you are an American, this means you do not trust the monetary policies of the Federal Reserve System. You have taken a step that confirms your lack of trust in the government and its central bank. If you think the government and the central bank will sit quietly, while millions of citizens buy gold as a way to hedge against government and central bank policies, you are terminally naive.

A PERPETUAL WAR

Governments and central banks for almost a century have done whatever they could to keep citizens from using gold as a way to hedge their economic futures against the taxation policies of the government and the inflation policies of central banks.

The war escalated a few days after the outbreak of World War I in August of 1914. At that time, central banks authorized commercial banks to cease redeeming paper money for gold at a fixed rate of exchange. For most of the world, that prohibition extended during the war, after the war, during the Great Depression, during World War II, up to today.


If you want to read the rest of this issue, Dr. North's Reality Check usually is posted here:
Gary North Archives
I don't see it there yet, but there may be time lag between publication of the newsletter and posting in the archives.

I do recommend that you download and read the Gold Wars.