[Nettime-bold] FW: The INSIDE STORY on that AIDS THREAT TO US NATIONAL S

-----Original Message----- From: gittons [SMTP:gittons@hotmail.com] Sent: Friday, May 05, 2000 5:24 AM To: officina 99; david christian; Kevin Doyle; Czech; Revolt News; Lucien van der Walt; Anna; arthur; Philip McCrory; ZC; X; cobastlc cobastlc; Geordie Birch; Harry M. Cleaver; Global @ction; Mark Laskey; zeme; Steve Swart Swart; jesse; Jo Lee; Chuck0; batur; Art McGee; Demian Schroeder; GroenFront; Kara Karaoglu; EW Plawiuk; Jo Makepeace; revelrytion; Robby Barnes; Meira Hanson; Biotic; Valued Customer; John Connor; Vadim Barak; John O; Gordon Flett; Carlos Fernandez Subject: The INSIDE STORY on that AIDS THREAT TO US NATIONAL SECURITY INSIDE STORY: White House spins 'AIDS THREAT' by Fintan Dunne Editor, AIDSMYTH DISSIDENT NEWS www.aidsmyth.com/news.htm 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 Lockhart did not answer the specific 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 perhaps 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. Copyright (c) 2000 Fintan Dunne Reproduce entirely and non-commercially only AIDSMYTH Dissident News has HTML version of this article & more on Mbeki www.aidsmyth.com/news.htm White House Press briefing on 1st May http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/global/hiv/homepage.htm White House NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY FOR A NEW CENTURY http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-res/I2R?urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/2000/1/7/1.text.1 CNN Report on the AIDS National Security Threat http://www.msnbc.com/news/401495.asp?0m=N12T Washington Post article on the AIDS National Security Threat http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40503-2000Apr29.html National Intelligence Estimate on Global Infectious Disease Threat http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/nie/report/nie99-17d.html

INSIDE STORY: White House spins 'AIDS THREAT'

by Fintan Dunne
Editor, AIDSMYTH DISSIDENT NEWS
www.aidsmyth.com/news.htm

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 Lockhart did not answer the specific 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 perhaps 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.

AIDSMYTH Dissident News has HTML version of this article & more on Mbeki
www.aidsmyth.com/news.htm

White House Press briefing on 1st May
http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/global/hiv/homepage.htm

White House NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY FOR A NEW CENTURY
http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-res/I2R?urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/2000/1/7/1.text.1

CNN Report on the AIDS National Security Threat
http://www.msnbc.com/news/401495.asp?0m=N12T

Washington Post article on the AIDS National Security Threat
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40503-2000Apr29.html

National Intelligence Estimate on Global Infectious Disease Threat
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/nie/report/nie99-17d.html