The “Race Card”And Who Plays It

Throughout the 2008 Democratic nomination process Barack Obama played the race card. Poor Hillary didn’t have a chance against the smooth offense of Obama/Axelrod and their Obamaniac army charging her with racism for daring to stay in the campaign against the Dear Leader. Clearly, the battle to wrest the Black and youth vote for Obama was based on presenting the Illinois senator as both a victim of “dog whistle” racism and the only possible champion of a new racism free America. When among Blacks Obama pretended to be a child of the civil rights struggle.

Obama and Mama

When pitching to Whites he presented himself as the no-longer-tragic mulatto no White person need fear.  He played America’s dissociative racial identity disorder from every side.

We know how that strategy turned out.

Yes, Obama played a few versions the “race card”.  I don’t have a problem with acknowledging  that fact.  What troubles me is the absurd notion that he invented the idea or the tactic of gaining political advantage by using it.  There is a total historical amnesia about the true history of the so-called race card.

Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about the “race card” and its history:

In the less critical sense, the phrase is commonly used in two contexts. In the first, and more common context, it alleges that someone has deliberately and falsely accused another person of being a racist in order to gain some sort of advantage.^[1] An example of this use of the term occurred during the O.J. Simpson criminal trial, when critics accused the defense of “playing the race card”^[2] in presenting Mark Fuhrman’s racist past (e.g., his recorded use of the word “nigger” in addition to his being accused of tampering with murder evidence in prior cases, as well as his use of the Fifth Amendment to avoid potential self-incrimination upon questioning) as a reason to draw his credibility as a witness into question.

Another example would be a criticism of Georgia Representative Cynthia McKinney’s assertion that she was the victim of racial profiling^[3] after she allegedly struck a United States Capitol police officer who had grabbed her at a security checkpoint. A more recent example would be criticism of Yale University student Jian Li’s formal complaint against Princeton University, which asserted that Princeton and other elite universities discriminate against Asian Americans while setting the admissions bar lower for other minorities, including African Americans and Hispanic Americans.

In the second context, it refers to someone exploiting prejudice against another race for political or some other advantage. The use of the southern strategy by a political candidate is said by some to be a version of playing the race card, such as when former Senator Jesse Helms, during his 1990 North Carolina Senate campaign ran an ad showing a black man taking a white man’s job, intended as a criticism of the idea of racial quotas. The ad was interpreted by many people as trying to play to racist fears among white voters.

On the other hand, George Dei, Karumanchery, et alia, in their book Playing the Race Card^[4] argue that the term itself is a rhetorical device used in an effort to devalue and minimize claims of racism.

Jim Crow minstrel

Frankly, the above description is limited in scope and pretty recent.  The “race card”, played by the White political establishment goes way,way back, to the first justification for denying the African-American his/her due. Playing the race card is a method of creating racial cohesiveness among a diverse and sometimes antagonistic group of ethnic whites for political gain.

Kevin Phillip, Nixon’s campaign director said this about the “southern strategy” in 1970:

From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don’t need any more than that… but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That’s where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.

Little Rock school desegregation

Lee Atwater, Republican political strategist  commented in 1981:

”You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.

”And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, ‘We want to cut this,’ is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than ‘Nigger, nigger.”’

Ant-BlackAmerican propaganda WWI

The most famous and successful example of playing the race hate game is the 1915 D.W. Griffith film “the Birth of a Nation”. The film  fueled the revival of the Ku Klux Klan and justified the destruction of Black cities and the atrocity of lynchings and burnings of African-Americans.

How many politicians have played the color game for political gain?  Too many to name.

What happened to HR676?

Pelosi delivers a bucket of snot and calls it Health Care Reform

See my previous post in which I urge everyone to please call members of the House of Representatives to ask their  support  for  the Weiner amendment and HR676, which was supposedly going to be discussed and voted upon today. What the heck, besides my last post, see these others –  here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here.

Yesterday afternoon an email blast was sent by Progressive Democrats of America:

Last night PDA got word from Congressman Weiner’s office that Speaker Pelosi is keeping her promise to allow the Weiner single-payer amendment full debate and vote on the floor of the House. This will happen on Friday or Saturday.

At about the same time yesterday afternoon, Representative Dennis Kucinich and Representative John Conyers withdrew HR 676.  Here you have it via the Chicago Sun-Times:

Dear Friends,

We thank you for your continued devotion to the cause of health care for All Americans. We have worked together for many years to write, promote and campaign for HR676, a single payer, not for profit health care system.  . . .

Tomorrow, the House of Representatives is scheduled to consider a single payer bill. As the two principal co-authors of the Conyers single payer bill, we want to offer a strong note of caution about tomorrow’s vote.

. . .

Here are the facts: There has been no debate in Congress over HR676. There has not been a single mark-up of the bill. Single payer was “taken off the table” for the entire year by the White House and by congressional leaders. There has been no reasonable period of time to gather support in the Congress for single payer. Many members accepted a “robust public option” as the alternative to single payer and now that has disappeared. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has scored the bill scheduled for a vote tomorrow in a manner which is at odds with many credible assumptions, meaning that it will appear to cost way too much even though we know that true single payer saves money since one of every three dollars in the health care system goes to administrative costs caused by the insurance companies. Is this really the climate in which we want a test vote?

. . .

Sincerely,

Congressmen John Conyers and Dennis Kucinich

You surely recall that this is the same congress that needed no time at all to consider and approve the bailout of Wall Street.  I for one find it incomprehensible that Mr. Conyers and Mr. Kucinich would not want every congressperson to go on the record, Yes or No, to health care for all.  Do you believe that HR 676 was withdrawn because “this is not the right time“?  I for one do not believe it.

Here’s what Anthony Weiner had to say:

“We did not want to let the perfection of the single-payer be the enemy of the good”

What good?  Do you see a good in this alleged reform of the health care industry?  I see no good at all.

I smell a rat, and I for one would like to know what really happened.

cross-posted at Lightpond

In Maine, Gays Now Can’t Marry

It’s time to stop pretending. Read the cards on the table.  A woman’s party, a third force capable of representing the interests of all women by throwing it’s weight behind a common goal, is a pipe dream.  At least for now.  The results of Maine’s Question1, the anti-gay marriage initiative, has nailed the coffin shut on that slender hope.

Behold-the Eagle Forum. Continue to disregard them at your peril. Eagle Forum hate-a-rama is no surprise.  Concerned Maine Families is no surprise.  How about Focus on the Family, the Christian Coalition?  The usual suspects. That Linda Bean Folkers, heiress to the L.L. Bean fortune, was a contributor was a (mini) shock since it’s so about mountains and streams and such(the company distances itself from her positions). What other head slappers are there?

Reprise proposition gay H8te in California.

Reprise the demolition of the Equal Rights Amendment.

heiress to L.L. Bean fortune

Once again, like a clockwork money machine, the Phyllis Schlafly brigade of right wing throwbacks, bigots and belligerents marched in and snatched the ice cream cone right out of the gay baby’s hand,  leaving a shit storm of rage in their wake.  They’re pretty happy right now. And this time the voters were white.  So don’t blame just the Black bigots for hating on gays. Phyllis could whack the handful of black voters with a flyswatter.

The failure of the “fierce” gay advocate currently occupying the White House, to take a stand, was surely part of the mix.  He handed the treasury to those fu&%#@s with his asinine “faith based initiative”.  Somebody wants to move both parties rightward.  So we’re on our own.

This time there is no one to blame but the neo-conservative and fundamentalist religious movement; a stealthy coalition energized by women against women, who represent the interests of anti-feminist men. They are not our friends.  Obama, hate him or loathe him, but the enemy of my enemy is for damn sure not my friend.

Bachmann-right wing nutjob

SO HEY, NEO-FEMINISTS OF THE NO-PARTY PARTY!  YOU WANT WOMEN TO VOTE FOR WHOM?

JUST CLOSE MY EYES AND VOTE FEMALE, you say!  Vote the nutbags.Vote the haters?

Mark the old x next to Bachmann or Palin. Riiight. It will only hurt after the morphine wears off. But wait, do they even believe in morphine?

Alice Paul Fought For ERA–Fight For Her!

A friend of mine is trying to get congressional recognition for Alice Paul, the great suffragist and the woman who wrote and pushed for the Equal Rights Amendment.  Although she lived 92 years, it was just long enough to see her efforts brought to destruction by Phyllis Schlafley and her rabid band of anti-feminists.

People are working to get the ERA back on track.

Alice Paul

Here’s a link to her biography and the history of the suffrage movement:

Read the message below and contact your congressperson to recognize this great woman with the congressional gold medal.

Please forward EVERYWHERE!
. . .
Did you know . . . The only right that the Constitution guarantees for women is the right to vote?!

Did you know . . . ERA STILL has NOT been ratified as a Constitutional Amendment because it is 3 states short of the 38 states needed? Is your state one of the 17 states that did not? http://equalrightsamendment.org/

Did you know . . . Alice Paul drafted the Equal Rights Amendment?

Did you know . . .AlicePaul spearheaded the effort to pass the 19th Amendment and she was arrested for peaceably picketing the White House? Did you know she was imprisoned and tortured for her efforts?

Did you know . . .legislation as been introduced in the House of Representatives to award Alice Paul a Congressional Gold Medal but it still needs 159 more co-sponsors to move it out of the House? Is YOUR representative a co-sponsor? (You can look it up at http://thomas.loc.gov. Look under bill HR406, co-sponsors.)

IF YOU APPRECIATE YOUR RIGHT TO VOTE, OR KNOW SOMEONE WHO DOES, YOU CAN DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!

1.VOTE FOR THE WOMAN WHO FOUGHT FOR A WOMAN‘S RIGHT TO VOTE!

THERE IS STILL TIME TO CAST A VOTE FOR ALICE PAUL ON THE NEW JERSEY HALL OF FAME WEBSITE http://www.njhalloffame.org/! The New Jersey Hall of Fame today announced its 2010 nominees, including our girl, Alice Stokes Paul. The public can vote at NJHallofFame.org from the list of 30 nominees rolled out today for the 3rd edition of the New Jersey Hall of Fame. The choices — 17 of whom are being nominated posthumously — emerged today from a pool of 200 and are coupled in groups of six under such categories as “historical,” “sports,” and “arts and entertainment.” The New Jersey Hall of Fame, a non-profit set up by law in 2005, is intended to hold up role models and inspire schoolchildren and enlists panels of experts to weigh in on the nominees, who face a vote on NJHallof Fame.org through Nov. 20. The winners are to be announced later this fall. So, cast your vote now and let’s make sure that Alice Paul gets her name in the 2010 New Jersey Hall of Fame.

2. CONTACT YOUR LOCAL REPRESENTATIVE TO FIND OUT IF SHE/HE HAS
SIGNED ON TO CO-SPONSOR HR 406, GIVING ALICE PAUL A CONGRESSIONAL GOLD MEDAL.

The Zero Percent Solution

I love women. I respect and admire them. I think it’s imperative that a representative percentage of them are running the government. If we want to change the direction of the nation and foster the needs of women and girls, more women must be on the ballot and more should be elected. This idea is best described as “The Thirty Percent Solution”.  In principle, every political woman supports this idea.

That being said, there is a movement afoot, promoted by the neo-conservative elements of the power structure, to pretend that voting for women-hating women accomplishes this goal. I suppose if one is a neo-conservative woman, voting for these women supports not only a female supportive agenda, but even more importantly, supports a pro-family or pro-patriotic program. Included in this list are a few of the Republican women who may be seeking elective office. Phyllis Schlafly’s conservative Eagle Forum may be supporting  many of them.

According to Right-Wing Watch, these are the major elements of Schlafly’s anti-feminist movement:

• the fervent belief that America is at a tipping point between freedom and fascist power: President Obama and his congressional allies are on the verge of delivering America into Socialism, Communism, and/or Nazi-style tyranny, and that government is therefore to be feared and resisted
• optimism that the tea bag movement and anti-health-reform town halls are a sign that Americans are prepared to resist that tyranny
• extreme opposition to Democratic health care reform efforts, with some support for the congressional Republican alternative and some demands for a no-compromise approach that would involve ending all government involvement in health care, including Medicare

• recent attacks on ACORN are just part of a larger effort to target progressive community organizing groups and their religious supporters and “defund the left”
• hostility not only to same-sex marriage but also to any legal protections for LGBT Americans and same-sex couples
• a continued merging of messaging and organizing among the Religious Right and “teabagger” right
• a new push to use “abortion as black genocide” as a wedge between African Americans and pro-choice progressives built around a new “documentary” portraying abortion as 21st century genocide
• American exceptionalism – the belief that America’s founding was divinely inspired and the nation has been uniquely blessed by God – is alive and well, though America is now living under a curse for having elected Barack Obama
• activists don’t need a majority to take back America; if their minority or “remnant” is committed enough God will use them
• the apparent passing (or grabbing) of the torch from Phyllis Schlafly to Janet Folger Port

Whether one agrees with any or all of these positions, they represent a trend.

Michele Bachmann

Take Michele Bachmann, if you will.  The representative from Minnesota is making the rounds as a women’s candidate.  She’s being pushed like patent medicine by both allegedly pro and anti-feminist sides of the aisle. Since the next voting cycle 2010-2012  promises an unprecedented interest in the “women’s vote” the women’s vote is in play.  Right wingers are encouraging everyone to put aside bickering over the most divisive of issues: abortion.  Liberal women are being assured  that Roe v. Wade is not threatened-can’t be lost.  Conservatives are being told it is headed for the trash heap of history.  Which is correct? Is this really the critical issue?  I believe the real assault by conservatives will be against less high profile issues that nevertheless affect the well-being of women and girls.

Michele Bachmann is rated at 100% by Phyllis Schlafley’s Eagle Forum, the group who killed the ERA and lesbian equality.  That means she opposes women’s equality. Naral gave her a 0% rating.

She voted against:

H.R. 1913, Hate Crime bill extending coverage based on sexual orientation.  She gets a 0% rating from the Human Rights Campaign.

She opposes campaign reform.

She voted for the stimulus bill but opposed an extension of federal unempolyment benefits.

She gets an 8% rating on animal rights issues.

Predictably, she opposes any legislation that would ease access to contraception of interruption of unwanted pregnancy.

She opposed the Lily Ledbetter Act.

She opposed the Fair Pay Act.

She voted with agricultural employers 100% of the time.

She voted with the national chambers of commerce 94% of the time.

Wildlife protection interests gave her a 0% rating.

Children’s Defense Fund rates her a 0%.

The list goes on. Perhaps you can put abortion aside, but can you put everything aside?

Maybe I don’t get it, but isn’t voting for this woman the same as voting for the establishment patriarchy? I’ll believe in the honesty of this vote for any woman idea when I see support of conservatives for women candidates of a more liberal bent.  So far, that hasn’t happened.

Obama Says “Get A Mop”, Complainers

Poor Obambi.  Where is the love these days for the Dear Leader?  Where’s the adulation? From Chicago to Oslo he’s getting the fat tomato. This must be tough to take for the do nothing, empty suit, Messiah cum president, who also did nothing of note at Harvard Law Review, the streets of Chicago, Chicago University, Illinois state senate or anywhere else, for that matter. His answer to his critics? “Get a mop”. Help me clean up after the other crooks; I want to make my own messes!

They paid HOW much to hear THAT?

He didn’t mention he hired the same people from the mess maker administration to run his government.

On Monday Obama, addressed a crowd of angry LGBT on the Washington Mall.  They asked, nay screamed, about his failure to fulfill his campaign promises on  DADT and DOMA.  His answer was: I’m with ya in spirit but ya just may have to wait until 2017 before I get around to ya. Right wing extremists must be accommodated, too.

Doesn’t he know, according to the Maya calender, the world will end in 2012?

There are tough love messages for “Leftist” agitators. The administration point man , Barney Frank, who apparently speaks homo better than the president, warned gays to pipe down;  complaining to Obama might annoy the very busy president, who might dig in his heels and do nothing.   No new message there.  Since the presidential primaries, when Obama’s surrogates told the “Bitter Knitter”, Hillary supporters to get with the program or take a hike, it’s been plain Obama doesn’t care what the Democrats who elected him want. He’s the president of the Republicans.

Lately, progressives from the single-payer, public option crowd have challenged Obama on comprehensive health care.  It is said he canceled public appearances to avoid protesters over Guantanamo and his beefed up Afghan war.The president has warned his loyalist critics to get out of his bi-partisan face while he hands over the keys to Joe Lieberman and Olympia Snowe. Rahm Emmanuel suggested that progressive bloggers should get out of their PJs and smell the strong Political Reality coffee.

Poor Obama. His mask is beginning to slip.  The most awesomist  Black man since Hannibal crossed the Alps is starting to get dissed.

What to do? Take the show on the road.

Find a Black audience (carefully salted with Whites). They’ll try to love him in spite of himself. Since they’re used to getting nothing but talk, they won’t know the difference.

How about Nawlins?  Why not stage a little boy asking ‘why does everybody hate you?’  The subtext of “racism” will be understood without further ado while playing the martyr. He can counsel patience, mock his critics, talk in riddles, commend the Negroes on their patience and perseverance, so much like his own half-baked Negritude, give Republican Governor, Bobby Jindal, a rousing intro in a public forum.  After a couple of hours Obama is back aboard Air Force One on his way to meet with his real peers at a $34,000/plate dinner in San Fransisco.

But maybe the stagecraft is beginning to fail.

Even with the Elmer Gantry style intonations and con man delivery, a few in the audience seem skeptical of his empty promises.

They should all get mops and sweep the phony back to Chicago.

PSSST…Liz Cheney Likes Torture

torture 6

According to Liz and Dick, America can’t be safe unless it can torture at will.  Torture is good for America.  It’s the one government job Republicans don’t want to export. Are they pissed off because Obama has the foresight to keep a campaign promise and fob it off on our allies, the Egyptians and Saudi Arabians? If Liz and Dick are so proud of what he did why did they burn the session tapes? Isn’t prosecution a small price to pay for saving America?

Suffice it to say Liz is a dope. Jeb Bush/Liz Cheney in 2012, anyone?

See Liz Run

Torture 2

The Cheneys and their organization “Keep America Safe” insist “enhanced interrogation” isn’t torture.  What goes on in CIA jails and dungeons is no more unpleasant than a Skull and Bones hazing. Water boarding is no worse than an extended tea party at the bottom of the swimming pool. It’s a three minute dip. Anyone can hold his breath that long. Abu Zabaydah did it 186 times and lived (for Cheney to tell about it).  I wonder if Liz would like to give it a try at Democratic Party headquarters. A psychologist, a physician and an Indian chief will be present in case things go too far. Former Bush Attorney, John Yoo, will provide a memo if things do.

Salon says:

torture 5

In other words, bye-bye, Bill of Rights. This is a prescription for a police state, where not just the police but the Army can kick your door down without a warrant or probable cause, as long as the president says he’s fighting “terror.” If Barack Obama had solicited such an opinion from an obliging Justice Department lawyer because he wanted to sic the U.S. Army on a group of domestic terrorists, the right would be screaming about jackbooted federal thugs descending from black helicopters to haul off American citizens. Strangely, no conservatives have taken to the streets to warn us of the Big Government danger posed by this radical doctrine. Perhaps they are too busy mobilizing against the unspeakable socialist menace represented by Obama’s 3 percent increase in taxes on millionaires.

torture 1

The only trouble is some people (the losers), such as the Japanese, have been hanged for it, if they did it to Americans. Here’s a visual history of the violent sport of water-boarding.   From the Medieval Dominican monks torturing heretics to American imperialists torturing Filipinos, every group deploying the technique has justified it as absolutely necessary to preserve or protect whatever they claimed needed preserving or protecting. Every State torturer says it is entitled to every tool at its disposal. The Nazis used that argument at Nuremburg, the furtherance of State interests.   Most, but not all, torture in secret, not only to protect their identities from future retribution, but to create State terror. That’s (one reason)why it’s banned.

torture 4

And it’s not just water boarding.  It’s every horror known to man. As soon as water boarding is commonly believed to be NOT torture, nothing will be. As soon as it’s alright to break a foreign “terrorist” on the rack, “enemies domestic” won’t be far behind.

torture 3

Fight Fixed! Wolf Awarded Prize! Peace Sheep Stunned!

Wolf wins prize

I wish I could get someone to write my (crappy) speeches so I good win a prize.

Welcome to the Nobel Prize for Peace, 2009.

I pray the medicine, physics and literature Nobel winners weren’t undistinguished juveniles with great “potential”.

Thanks to Sweden’s star-struck Nobel Committee, Pretendident Barack Obama can now add the Junior-Junior Ignobel Hopium Peace Prize to his other unearned accolades.  I trust there’s still room on his White House mantel.  Let’s see… if  he  pushes back the Lincoln, FDR, and JFK trophies and moves Malcom X,  Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela a little to the left he can squeeze it in… next to the Presidency of the United States, Democratic Party leadership, and de facto sovereignty over the American Black community.  Sadly, the award, grand as it is, must fall beneath the shadow of HIS tall Messiah statuette.

Although Obama publicly acknowledged that he does not deserve even to sit in the company of previous winners, he humbly (for him) accepted, while promising that he would (continue to) do nothing to deserve it in the coming years of his administration.  YAY! He can now place this award next to arch fiend and murderer, Henry Kissinger’s, who also accepted the prize with astonishing hubris.

Mohandas Gandhi didn’t win a Peace Prize after a lifetime of Peace leadership, for freeing a nation!. That award was reserved for boy genius, Hope hustler, Barack Obama AT THE OUTSET OF HIS TERM, IN JANUARY, 2009. What were they (not) thinking?  Since then he’s abandoned Gay and women’s rights,handed the people’s Treasury to the banksters, ignored torture, vowed to detain more suspects indefinitelywithout trial, expanded a two- front war, attacked innocent people with drones, created more refugees, etc.  Were they hoping to tickle the sociopath into good behavior? Too late, that job’s been taken!

DOUBLE SCREW OBAMA. I NEED A DRINK!

WHAT DESERVING, ENLIGHTENING, INSPIRING,  SELF-SACRIFICING ACTIVIST DID THEY PASS  OVER TO REACH B.O. AT THE BOTTOM OF THE BARREL?!!

The Nobel Peace Prize is now officially worthless, a tin badge in a cereal box, a foil covered mint patty. Obama’s win has turned the king of international prizes into coinage so debased as to declare it counterfeit. He  has won the hope and change prize for dashing hope while remaining the same.  Why wasn’t George W. Bush a co-recipient?

When I heard that President Backtrack had been so honored, my jaw dropped, my head spun. It almost felt like the outrage of his outlandish, wasteful inauguration; a celebration of the specialness of HIM. I was embarrassed and furious again at the absurdity of predictable Obachatter and Obadoctrination among the blinkered, swooning masses, the paid-off media. After all, Obama the wolf discarded his sheep’s attire even before his official cannonization, back in September 2008, when he flip flopped on FISA and since then has paraded openly in his peau de loup for all to see.

WHEN HE F*CKS UP THE WORLD, CAN THEY TAKE IT BACK?

The Vaccine Dilemma

Are American troops (once again) being used to run large scale drug trials for drug companies?  It would seem so. The military has virtually admitted as much.

The Pentagon has bought 2.7 million vaccines, and 1.4 million of those will go to active duty military. National Guard troops on active duty are also required to receive the vaccine, as are civilian Defense Department employees who are in critical jobs.

As a result, the military is expected to provide health officials with an early assessment of the vaccine.

“Because I can compel people to get the shots, larger numbers will have the vaccine,” said Renuart, commander of U.S. Northern Command. “They will, as a percentage of the population, be vaccinated more rapidly than many of us. So we may see some objective results, good or not, of the vaccinations.”

Are they really sure what’s going on with these drugs, or not?

The nation is gearing up for a serious pandemic of A/H1N1 aka Swine Flu.  Hundreds of millions doses of various flu vaccines and therapies such as Tamiflu and the attenuated viral nasal application”FluMist”are on the market, widely distributed by governmental and private sources. These products have been “fast tracked” through the FDA by the Departments of Defense and Health and Human Services. “Fast tracking” does not mean that the drug in question has completed its required trials, but that it has met certain preconditions for approval. Clinical trials, designated I-II-III represent increasing numbers of test subjects that will be administered the drug. Phase III trials for Tamiflu and related competing drugs apparently included around 1,000 test subjects for short term responses.  I’m not an expert, but long term outcomes don’t seem to be part of fast track trials.

Squalene adjuvant

Military Iraqi designates are administered required doses of subcutaneous and intramuscular injections of Avian flu vaccine, multiple doses of Anthrax vaccines and poison gas antidotes, most of which contain adjuvants such as squalene — not FDA approved — and pyridostigmine bromide implicated along with depleted uranium exposure, and multiple vaccinations, etc. as Gulf War Syndrome contributors.

The U.S. military are test subjects for every drug and vaccine that comes down the pike. They have made perfect, obedient, young, healthy and numerous test subjects for plutonium and radiation studies, Agent Orange and other dioxins and mycoplasma exposures.

The U.S. is promising to share the vaccine largess with the rest of the world, especially the third world.

This blogger, Socio-Economics, History Blog sums up much of the alarm around big pharma and its vaccine programs:

The US vaccines would be made available to countries through the World Health Organization (WHO), recognizing that “diseases know no borders, and the health of the American people is inseparable from the health of people around the world,” the White House said.

Bullshit! If the U.S. cared about “the health of people around the world” it would be providing serious money (even just a small fraction of its military budget) for anti-malarial programs, access to safe drinking water, etc.

(Yes, a really cogent point that should be more thoroughly examined. )

Baxter lost control of its experimental virus H3N2 during a shipment to a subcontractor in the Czech Republic.  If H1N1 and H2N3 are simultaneously administered the human body can serve as an incubator for a mutant viral strain and a pandemic.

This is not the first time that vaccine companies have been caught distributing vaccines contaminated with deadly viruses. In 2006 it was revealed that Bayer Corporation had discovered that their injection drug, which was used by hemophiliacs, was contaminated with the HIV virus. Internal documents prove that after they positively knew that the drug was contaminated, they took it off the U.S. market only to dump it on the European, Asian and Latin American markets, knowingly exposing thousands, most of them children, to the live HIV virus. Government officials in France went to prison for allowing the drug to be distributed. The documents show that the FDA colluded with Bayer to cover-up the scandal and allowed the deadly drug to be distributed globally. No Bayer executives ever faced arrest or prosecution in the United States.

Considering the long history of official dissimulation around human experimentation, I think I too have become a “conspiracy theorist.”

I Got Flu, You Got Flu…

Back in April of this year the world (at least the commercial media)was hyperventilating about an outbreak of “swine” flu, renamed ( just in time) H1N1. The contagion’s spread was counted down in real time-one victim at a time. Rumors abounded.

Predictions were made about the (American) death rate possible from the mysterious killer disease that jumped the species barrier from pig to human. There were calls to deport the Mezzicans and seal the (southern) border(s). Lou Dobbs must have been thrilled to finally see some vigorous action taken after his phony hysteria warnings about a plague of Wetback borne leprosy was ignored. A one million (gasp!) pig filthy obscenity farm in Mexico, half owned by American pork giant Smithfield Farms, was implicated in the transmission of the virus. Since then, two things have happened: not much and nothing.

The pig farm is still gloriously, capitalistically, unregulated. That’s why they moved to Mexico in the first place. Unfortunately, Smithfield’s sales plummeted and it has asked for welfare gu’mit assistance.

No Americans died, although

About 36,000 Americans die from flu complications every year.

Mexico has reported 152 fatalities in flu-like cases in recent days, seven of which have been confirmed as swine flu. Another 19 patients have been confirmed as having swine flu but surviving. About 2,000 people have been hospitalized with symptoms. (Figures might have changed).

Authorities admit that the villages are poor. Malnutrition and other diseases  may have contributed to patient deaths.

And the source of the contamination is probably still there (though Smithfield denies it).

Health and Human Services, HHS and the Department of Defense are asking three companies for rush on doses.  These two government agencies can give the vaccine producers an FDA  “pass” on testing trials in an hysteria emergency.  Dosage levels, number of doses, and adjuvants, or extenders, for the drugs are questionable for serious side effects.  Adjuvants such as the oil squalene, can be more deadly than the diseases they’re supposed to fight, causing complicated, long lasting autoimmune responses.  Aluminum, arsenic, and mycoplasmas also contaminate vaccines. Some of these substances have been linked to autism.

Tamiflu, which may or may not be effective, can be used as a therapeutic or a vaccine.  Guess who has a huge amount of stock in that product?  Donald Rumsfeld, our erstwhile Secretary of Defense. He will be raking $$$t in.

Let’s go back to the pre 9/11 anthrax scare of 2001.

In September 2001 five envelopes of militarized, inhalation anthrax spores were mailed to a senate offices and the media.  A few people died from the spores.  The media had been flogging the idea of biological weaponry being used by Saddam and this incident seemed to prove that BW’s would be used as terror weapons. Before this incident interest in an anthrax vaccine was waning and appeared likely to be discontinued.  Eventually, a culprit was tagged, Bruce Edward Ivins, a bio-weapons scientist at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland.  Ivins, allegedly killed himself after the investigation focused on him.

Production of the vaccine was ramped up after the scare with millions of doses prepared and delivered to the military after the Iraq invasion. The vaccine was very weak, up to six doses required.  Adjuvants such as aluminum and squalene were added to stretch the vaccine further.  Adjuvants are believed to be implicated in the side affects noted in Gulf War Syndrome. Disease and disability even negligence are not a problem-for them. You can’t sue.

Guess who has a large financial interest in the Anthrax Vaccine? A company called BioPort, with controlling interest of Admiral Crowe, the Carlyle Group, the Bushes, perhaps the Bin Ladens. They’ll be raking $$$t in.

Sweeeeeeeet.