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WHITE HOUSE 'AIDS THREAT' MEDIA SPIN AHEAD OF MBEKI U.S. VISIT
By Fintan Dunne
AidsMyth News 1 May 2000
White House Press Briefing, May 1. ...Question to spokesman Joe Lockhart:
Question: Joe, when did the NSC [National Security Council] come to
the decision that the global AIDS crisis is a threat to national security?
Press Spokesman Joe Lockhart: "The NSC has been working on this
particular issue for now almost two years. I think two years ago they set
up an office and put on some staff to deal with health issues, because they
do, ultimately, go to our national security......... "
Mr. Lockhart then goes into a general waffle about the "staggering" AIDS statistics.
Small wonder that did not answer the specifics of the question: viz. when
exactly did the NSC decide this?
Because an Internet search of State Department or White House documents and
Presidential Executive Orders reveals NO recent determination about an AIDS
security threat. That probably explains why the Washington Post was the only
newspaper to break this 'story.' As there is nothing 'new' it hardly qualifies
as news. Despite this, the AIDS threat was headlined on ABC News 1st May,
and even featured on local US TV news programs. A non-story does not usually
develop those kind of wings unless power-assisted. Whose power? What is going
on here? Does it have anything to do with recent heretical views on AIDS by
South Africa's President Mbeki- due to visit Washington soon?
Old News is Good News
In fact the AIDS 'security threat' issue first surfaced in a December 1999
White House authored "National Security Strategy for a New Century"
that was released January 5th, 2000:
"Threats to U.S. Interests
Environmental and health threats:
Environmental and health problems can undermine the welfare of U.S. citizens,
and compromise our national security, economic and humanitarian interests
abroad for generations. These threats respect no national boundary. History
has shown that international epidemics, such as polio, tuberculosis and AIDS,
can destroy human life on a scale as great as any war or terrorist act we
have seen, and the resulting burden on health systems can undermine hard-won
advances in economic and social development and contribute to the failure
of fledgling democracies."
Quite. A National Intelligence Estimate prepared in January, reached similar
conclusions. Usually such intelligence estimates are classified- but in a
rare exception a declassified version of the report was released January 7th,
2000. Subsequently the United Sates brought this 'security' issue before the
UN Security Council to lukewarm reaction from the Russians and Chinese. Later,
Al Gore addressed the UN on the same topic and President Clinton offered 100%
tax breaks to anyone who could come up with an AIDS vaccine. Clinton also
made a couple of speeches on the desirability of effective AIDS vaccination
programs- especially in the Third World. All old news, but does anyone spot
a pattern here?
That December 1999 National Security Strategy also spoke of how:
"Our strategy has three core objectives: enhancing American security; bolstering
our economic prosperity; and promoting democracy and human rights abroad......"
Bolstering American prosperity may be the key objective in all this. A global
market is emerging in products aimed at alleviating the effects of infectious
plagues. American analysis shows that financing these medications could easily
gobble 10% or more of Third World countries GNP. Having practically invented
the HIV virus, the US is determined to carve out a slice of this vast global
market. Hence the hysteria about a global AIDS plague. Africans may actually
be dying merely of malnutrition, but why offer them food if one can raid their
health budgets for a fortune in anti-AIDS medications. AIDS drugs are among
the most expensive pharmaceutical products ever brought to market. The high
prices hold because the only alternative is death. Or is it?
Not if you listen to AIDS 'dissidents.' These heretical scientists- Nobel
Laureates among them- claim that HIV is not the cause of AIDS and existing
diseases have been relabeled as AIDS to enable a vast corporate pharmaceutical
scam. Drug companies effectively control most 'independent' AIDS research
and they primed the AIDS hysteria from the start: funding gay groups who clamored
for fast-track approval of anti-AIDS medications; skewing clinical trials
to produce favorable outcomes and reaping a financial harvest from their efforts.
The 'dissidents' have been sidelined for 15 years: who could resist the hysteria
of AIDS? A black South African President perhaps?
New Leader, New Era
Thabo Mbeki is Nelson Mandela's hand-picked successor- now President of South
Africa. A freethinker with an MA in economics from London University and a
penchant for surfing the Internet. That's where he came across the AIDS dissident
views as he pondered the health crisis that threatens to scupper his country's
fledgling economy. He determined to convene an expert panel to examine the
AIDS issue, in advance of the forthcoming July 2000, 13th AIDS conference
in Durban. When he announced that he would invite dissident scientists all
hell broke loose. Orthodox scientists threatened to boycott the conference,
prompting Mbeki to make impassioned calls- in a letter to world leaders- for
a scientific objectivity that did not demand that heretics be burned at the
stake.
The U.S. Government played the issue softly, softly at first- until that Washington
Post 'security threat' article appeared: a shot across Mbeki's bow. The 'story'
has the fingerprints of the CIA all over it: a pre-emptive media spin designed
to stiffen resolve in the face of an unprecedented revolt from the 'colonies.'
No doubt, Glaxo-Wellcome, whose anti-AIDS AZT medication has been cast into
quicksand by Mbeki, used their shareholder's Rockefeller connections to encourage
Washington to keep everybody 'on message.' Countering wealthy Geroge Bush
Jr. might require Al Gore to seek handouts from deep pharmaceutical pockets.
AIDS dissidents can expect to have the CIA breathing down their necks, while
the US media shelters behind an authorized 'National Security' that mainly
seeks to secure the profits of the AIDS industry. AIDS agencies will now attend
'task force' meetings in the National Security Agency Situation Room. A strange
venue for scientists, but one which will enable the White House, CIA and US
military to keep a close eye on the scientists and health professionals. Expect
a continuing spin on the vital importance of developing AIDS vaccinations-
the next new AIDS market. Expect too that US allies courted for support by
Mbeki will now hesitate to run counter to vital US 'security' objectives.
Imperious Imperialism
But Mbeki's question haunts science and the world: how can a virus, which
in the West is demonstrably affecting only homosexuals be rampantly transmitted
by heterosexual means in Africa? In the West the dire projections of heterosexual
AIDS have never materialized. The glib answer on US TV is that a different
strain is active in Africa. But research shows that up to 2000 sex acts are
needed to transmit the HIV virus heterosexually. African heterosexual AIDS
is a myth. The pseudo-science of a virulent 'heterosexual AIDS strain' would
attract the derision of a first-year immunology student.
Different strain? Maybe the only 'strains' are the new stresses on the AIDS
paradigm that has ruled popular consciousness for 15 years and may have taken
the lives of hundreds of thousands of perceived AIDS 'victims.' Not so much
victims of a virus as victims of a market-driven pharmaceutical industry which
manipulated social hysteria to feed them chemotherapy drugs like AZT: deemed
too toxic for cancer sufferers, but too profitable to resist prescribing for
a 'virus' which is still the subject of scientific dispute.
In another time and place, Britain's Lord Denning rejected evidence that UK
police had framed the 'Birmingham Six' for IRA bombings. He opined that a
'frame' opened up such an "appalling vista" that it simply could not be considered.
The Birmingham Six were later freed. Imperial Britain always painted Ireland
as backward and disease-ridden. Similarly, US 'AIDS' propaganda aims to reduce
African self-esteem. But in seeking to colonize an African market for anti-AIDS
drugs, the Americans and their pharmaceutical allies may have overplayed their
hands. Mbeki surely seeks to change the perceptions of a reborn South Africa.
In challenging AIDS hysteria he has raised the specter of a pharmaceutical
genocide spanning fifteen years. An appalling vista indeed.
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