The Miracle of the H1N1 Vaccine (Opinion & Sarcasm)

The propaganda push for flu vaccines has reached a level of absurdity that's just begging to be made fun of. Today, a flu vaccine story appearing in Reuters claimed that injecting pregnant women with flu shots would increase the birth weight of their babies by half a pound. That same story claimed flu shots are so healthy for pregnant women that they also prevent premature births.

It even quotes a team of experts who claim that injecting an expectant mother with a flu shot would reduce the hospitalization of her infants, explaining: "Flu vaccine given to women during pregnancy is 85 percent effective in preventing hospitalization in their infants under 6 months of age."

This conclusion was derived from a study of pregnant women in Bangladesh, by the way, and it didn't even use randomized, placebo-controlled study protocols, meaning the conclusions of the study are highly unreliable (more vaccine quackery).

Speaking of bizarre claims, another Reuters report appearing this week claims that statin drugs prevent flu deaths!

This story reports, "Patients taking statin drugs were almost 50 percent less likely to die from flu, researchers reported on Thursday in a study providing more evidence the cholesterol-lowering drugs help the body cope with infection."

How was this "science" conducted? There wasn't even a clinical trial at all. Researchers simply checked the medical records of people who died from seasonal flu infections and found that 3.2% of the patients who weren't taking statin drugs died from flu complications while only 2.1% of the patients who were taking statin drugs died. Since 2.1% is roughly 50% less than 3.2%, they leaped to the conclusion that "statin drugs prevent flu deaths by 50 percent!"

Flu shots prevent wrinkles!

When it comes to pushing drugs and vaccines, Big Pharma never misses an opportunity to misrepresent science in order to fabricate statistical support for some silly claim. Using the same statistical quackery as the drug companies, I could easily design a meta-analysis study that would find flu shots prevent skin wrinkles. And then, with a little help from Big Pharma it would be a simple matter to get some medical journal to publish the article. The mainstream media, for its part, would then declare, "Flu shots prevent skin wrinkles!"

But why stop there? Flu shots might also eliminate bad breath, too. Proving so would be an easy matter, too: Just take 100 people with various levels of bad breath, give flu shots to those with the freshest breath, then resample their breath levels following the flu shots. Voila! Those who got the flu shots have the freshest breath!

(Although this sounds incredibly stupid, it's exactly how some clinical trials are designed from the start: Certain groups are included in the study, or eliminated from the study, solely based on how well they will support the desired outcome...)

Send this "research" to Reuters, and you might even get a write-up: "Flu shots prevent bad breath, say scientists."

In fact, using the right study design, flu shots can be "proven" to prevent almost anything, including varicose veins, shyness and gray hair. It all comes down to how the study is designed from the start. With proper statistical revisions, virtually any substance can be proven to prevent -- or promote -- almost any health condition.

Clinical trials are a joke

That's because in modern medicine today, clinical trials are a joke. When a researcher sets out to create a study or clinical trial with a pre-ordained conclusion rather than an open mind, he can accomplish that in a variety of ways: By excluding study participants that don't fit his conclusion, by eliminating data sets from meta-analysis studies, by controlling the timeline of the study to end it before side effects start to appear, and so on.

That's why "proving" that a flu shot can improve erections, or function as a pharmaceutical face lift, or eliminate snoring is also a simple matter. Anything can be made to look statistically significant by a clever enough researcher.

Interestingly, a new study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine sought to review whether published papers describing pharmaceutical clinical trials even bothered to mention the negative side effects observed during the trials. They found:

• 11% of the published studies mentioned no negative side effects whatsoever.

• 56% of the published studies distorted the reporting of negative side effects to minimize their impact.

• 47% of the studies gave zero data on the withdrawal of subjects from the study (this is how study participants get "kicked out" of the clinical trials when they threaten the desired outcome of the study).

What this analysis reveals is that clinical trials are often just mathematical window dressing for medical quackery. The way such trials are conducted today is merely a kind of numerical theater that's staged to invoke the illusion of science where none exists.

And keep in mind: The entire pharmaceutical industry is based on this! Clinical trials are the so-called "scientific evidence" the FDA looks at to approve drugs. Remember: The FDA conducts no clinical trials itself. It merely accepts the clinical trials conducted (and paid for) by the drug companies, and then it accepts that research to be honest and trustworthy!

This is how Vioxx got approved by the FDA. It's how Rezulin got approved. It's the reason Alli was approved as an over-the-counter weight loss drug even though it may be linked to liver damage. Big Pharma has used quack clinical trials to win FDA approval for some really dangerous drugs, and the practice continues today.

That's why it's so hilarious when pharma pushers question natural remedies, claiming "Natural remedies have no clinical trials to back them up!"

Why bother? Clinical trials, it turns out, prove absolutely nothing. They are simply the vehicle of quackery through which chemical pushers grasp for an illusionary foothold in the realm of fuzzy statistics. Having a clinical trial that "proves" a drug works doesn't mean the drug works at all; it merely means your company has a big enough budget to hire a sufficiently creative research team that can wrangle together the conclusions you wish to support.

To call any of this "science" is entirely laughable.

And oh, by the way, did you know that taking a flu shot improves your eyesight and gives you a tight bum, too? It's been proven in a clinical trial...


Witch Doctor:



They're Coming To Take Me Away:

Is the Economy Back on Track?

It is being reported today that the GDP expanded 3.5% in the third quarter. That seems to be a good sign, but don’t start singing “Happy Days Are Here Again!”! I question how much of this expansion is due to the government getting out the taxpayer’s credit card and artificially and temporarily expanding the economy. By one estimate that I heard recently as much as 10% of our economy is derived from an ever expanding national debt.

Last quarter was boosted by the $24,000 that was spent per car on the cash for clunkers program, the $8.000 being given to fist time homeowners (artificially inflating home values), and thousands of other programs financed by the $1.8 TRILLION ($1,800,000,000,000) that Washington added to the national debt this year. The White House has admitted that the stimulus’s greatest impact has already been achieved and the stimulus will have little impact next year. (click here)

Unemployment figures are now becoming worthless because the rates do not reflect people that have slipped out of the government’s unemployment lifeline or have been transferred to extended unemployment benefits. They are predicting that unemployment will remain at 9.6% through next year.

Holiday sales will illuminate the true state of the economy.

Monster Mash:

Downtown:

WHY the National Emergency declaration for current "Pandemic"?

President Obama's declaration of a national pandemic emergency is "no cause for alarm," reported the mainstream media throughout the weekend. The declaration is nothing more than a "precaution," they say. "It's really more a continuation of our preparedness steps," said Anne Schuchat, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, in a USA Today story.

In other words, there's not really any emergency at all. So why declare a national emergency in the first place? The media reports this was done to allow hospitals to bypass federal regulations concerning the setting up of large-scale triage sites -- emergency medical camps quickly constructed to deal with large numbers of sick people.

But at the same time, H1N1 isn't causing large-scale sickness. As USA Today reported, an expert on infectious disease, P.J. Brennan (the chief medical officer for the Penn Health System at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia) said, "The public ought to take some solace, some relief in this. It's not a suggestion that things have deteriorated in any way. In no way is the virus more severe or more difficult to manage."

So let me get this straight. Yes, the H1N1 seems to be reversed from the standard flu in that it is effecting the young over old, but the overall death rate is nowhere near the normal flue season. The H1N1 virus remains mild. The CDC reports that swine flu infections already peaked out in mid-October. There have been no new developments in swine flu that would be cause for alarm and no reason to suspect huge numbers of sick people flooding into the hospitals. And yet, for some reason, the Obama administration has declared a national pandemic emergency specifically for the purpose of speeding the ability of hospitals to process large masses of sick people through emergency medical triage tents?

What are these people not telling us?

Something doesn't add up here. Why would the U.S. government need to declare a national emergency to enable hospitals to handle a flood of sick people when there is no flood of sick people (and the pandemic seems to be fizzling out)?

This is more like the kind of preparation you might expect in advance of a biological terrorism attack, not for a flu that appears no more dangerous than the seasonal sniffles.

The National Emergencies Act and FEMA

Mr. Obama has declared a 2009 H1N1 swine flu a national emergency. It is not clear if this declaration falls under the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601–1651). The act is not mentioned in media reports.

The National Emergencies Act was passed in 1976. It has been extended six times. In 2007, the declaration was strengthened with the issuance of National Security Presidential Directive 51 (NSPD-51) which gave the president the authority to do whatever he deems necessary in a vaguely defined “catastrophic emergency” including everything from canceling elections to suspending the Constitution.

NSPD-51 (National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive) is unconstitutional. It was created on May 4, 2007, as a “presidential directive” (bypassing Congress) and signed by George W. Bush. It claims the power to execute procedures for continuity of the federal government in the event of a “catastrophic emergency.” Such an emergency is construed as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions.”

In other words, it is a martial law directive. On May 10, 2007, The Washington Post characterized NSPD-51 is a “shadow government” directive.

The John Warner National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2007 states that the military may be used during a “national emergency.” Sec 1076 is extremely explicit, notes Michel Chossudovsky, and “virtually creates a Pinochet style environment for the mass arrest of political dissidents without trial, the storming of public rallies, etc.”

NDAA specifically mentions “epidemic” as an excuse to declare martial law.

Prior to Warner and NSPD-51, legislation passed by the Clinton administration allowed the military to intervene in judicial and civilian law enforcement activities. In 1996, legislation was passed which allowed the military to intervene in the case of a national emergency. In 1999, Clinton’s Defense Authorization Act (DAA) extended those powers (under the 1996 legislation) by creating an “exception” to the Posse Comitatus Act, which permits the military to be involved in civilian affairs “regardless of whether there is an emergency,” according to Chossudovsky.

In 2005, a month after Hurricane Rita, a so-called bird flu “crisis” was hyped by the government and the corporate media. “I am concerned about avian flu. I’m concerned about what an avian flu outbreak could mean for the United States and the world… I have thought through the scenarios of what an avian flu outbreak could mean,” Mr. Bush declared at the time. “One option is the use of a military that’s able to plan and move. So that’s why I put it on the table. I think it’s an important debate for Congress to have” (emphasis added).

Mr. Bush’s directive, signed two years later, did not bother to involve Congress in the “debate.”

Mr. Obama’s declaration of a national emergency sets the stage for forced vaccination and internment of people who refuse to be vaccinated.

In January, the National Emergency Centers Establishment Act (HR 645) was introduced in Congress. It calls for the establishment of six national emergency centers in major regions in the US to be located on existing military installations to be used to quarantine people in the case of a public health emergency or forced vaccination program. HR 645 remains in committee.

The H1N1 “crisis” is a manufactured crisis. As noted earlier today, a CBS investigative report reveals that H1N1 flu cases are not as prevalent as we are told by the government, the CDC, WHO, and the corporate media. The so-called epidemic is bogus.

Millions of people are refusing to take the H1N1 vaccine. In the weeks ahead — if Mr. Obama’s emergency declaration falls under the above directives — we may witness a move toward martial law, forced vaccination, and internment of those who refuse.

At best, Mr. Obama’s declaration is a flimsy attempt to scare people into taking the toxic soft kill vaccination. Let’s hope this is the case.


Meanwhile, the media ignores the rest of the story about what dangerous powers a declaration of a national emergency puts into play. As reported, this declaration effectively ends many civil liberties in America and, at least on paper, puts the U.S. government in the position of having the legal authority to force vaccinations on the entire population at gunpoint (if they wanted to).

The National Emergencies Act passed in 1976 has some peculiar realities attached to it. In particular, as Wikipedia reports:

A federal emergency declaration allows the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to exercise its power to deal with emergency situations ... Typically, a state of emergency empowers the executive to name coordinating officials to deal with the emergency and to override normal administrative processes regarding the passage of administrative rules.

Got that yet? By declaring a national emergency, Mr. Obama invokes a set of laws that not only override important sections of the U.S. Constitution, but that also activate FEMA to take charge of "responding" to the emergency.

Now we know why they need all those emergency medical tent camps near the hospitals. FEMA's in charge! And if FEMA handles the swine flu pandemic in the same way the agency handled the Hurricane Katrina disaster, we may indeed need all those emergency triage tents after all.

Those of you who have been following the ongoing march to destroy the freedoms of the American People already know about FEMA camps. These aren't Boy Scout field trip camps; they're detention centers designed to hold large numbers of people for "emergency" purposes. Many theories abound on what these FEMA camps might be used for (www.campFEMA.com).

They could conceivably be used to quarantine people who are infected with a dangerous pandemic virus. On the other hand, they might also be used to isolated and detain people who refuse to be vaccinated against any declared pandemic. Under the National Emergencies Act and related U.S. law, FEMA would have two years of near-total control over the civilian population, during which people could be subjected to forced vaccinations, mandatory searches of their homes, gunpoint detainment and "involuntary transportation" to a FEMA detainment facility, and so on.

I'm not saying they're going to do all this, but they could if they wanted to!

And that's not freedom. Real freedom means you have the guaranteed right to be safe from being detained, or arrested without cause, or injected with a government-mandated chemical. Under a declaration of a national emergency, your "freedom" is at the whim of those who maintain police state powers over you. You're only "free" if they decide to refrain from exercising the power they have over you. It's the same kind of freedom you might get as a peasant in some Medieval kingdom where the king says, "You're free to go."

Now, some of these freedom-restricting actions might conceivably be justifiable if a truly dangerous pandemic virus were sweeping through the population killing millions, causing huge disruptions in the national infrastructure and threatening the nation with a partial or total shutdown of essential services. But that is not happening here. H1N1 is a mild virus that rates astonishingly low on the severity scale. If H1N1 were a hurricane, it would be little more than a "tropical depression." It is not a category five hurricane, nor a phase six pandemic. Virtually everyone who is exposed to H1N1 generates their own antibodies and cures themselves naturally. According to hospital reports, those who have died from the H1N1 virus are almost exclusively people who were already suffering from preexisting conditions that compromised their health such as asthma or extreme obesity.

By any measure, H1N1 as currently configured appears to present no extraordinary threat to the health of the population. So once again, we must ask: Why declare a national emergency and initiate a FEMA response to something that's not really an emergency?

Why I'm concerned

For the first time in this whole pandemic situation, I'm concerned. Not due to the virus itself, because that's a mild virus that presents no real threat to the population at large. I'm concerned about what we don't know might be going on behind the scenes here.

These preparations for large-scale medical triage tents and the emergency activation of FEMA have me worried that the American people aren't being told the whole story. Perhaps a terrorist organization is planning on releasing a wildly dangerous mutation of H1N1 in some major U.S. city. Or perhaps some vaccine maker is, in fact, that terrorist organization. (The best way to sell more vaccines would be to release a mutated form of H1N1 into the population and scare up some more sales...)

Or maybe, as some creative thinkers have suggested, the vaccine itself IS a bioweapon, and the U.S. government is preparation for large-scale fatalities it expects to see soon.

Or maybe these are just fleeting, dark visions from crazy people, and the U.S. government is a benevolent organization with all our best interests in mind, and they're jumping through these bureaucratic hoops to make sure there are plenty of hospital beds to go 'round just in case more people get really sick.

But even that explanation doesn't hold water. A "national emergency declaration" isn't necessary to waive hospital tent rules. Mr. Obama could have easily accomplished the same thing with an Executive Order, without having to invoke the National Emergencies Act or put FEMA in charge at all.

He chose the emergency declaration for a specific reason. I guess we'll all have to wait and see what that real reason turns out to be.

How to be a swine flu vaccine zealot

Quick note before I begin...IF you do not understand what satire is and how it is used please find something else to read today.

Swine flu vaccine zealots are like zombies... they just keep coming at you, mindless... heartless... empty-headed and a tad funky on the smell, too. But I've noticed from observing the behavior of a few such zealots that not all of them fully comprehend precisely how to act like a mindless vaccine zealot. There's more to it than just parroting whatever the FDA says. You actually have to get with the zealot program if you want to be taken seriously as a swine flu vaccine zealot.

So I've put together this handy guide to help them along:

Step 1) Loudly proclaim your vaccines are backed by "science," but when critics ask you to produce that science, just tell them you don't have to because "everybody knows they work." (Then grunt and paw at the air from time to time for effect...)

Step 2) Practice scoffing. Scoffing is an important skill for swine flu vaccine zealots. When someone asks an intelligent question like, "Where are the placebo-controlled studies that show flu vaccines work at all?" simply scoff at them. This avoids having to answer the question because, as you know, there are no such studies.

Step 3) Practice making people feel guilty for not getting the flu shot. Blame them for pandemic. Just ignore the fact that the shot itself has zero ability to actually prevent the spread of influenza and focus on what works: Guilt!

Step 4) Spread more fear! Guilt and fear go together like peanut butter and jelly on processed white bread -- a favorite zombie food! In combination, they work like gangbusters if you're trying to scare up some vaccine sales to generate billions of dollars in profits for the drug companies. In the absence of any actual science, just invoke fear! (Hey, it worked for the Patriot Act, too...)

Step 5) Remind people that they are not doctors and therefore don't know anything. Then quote some doctor who's pro-vaccine (and probably taking kickbacks from some pharmaceutical company that's been caught committing a felony crime) and declare that no one can question them because they're a doctor. Doctors are God, didn't you know? Just ask all the victims of Thalidomide... or Vioxx.

Step 6) Strip off the plastic coating on both ends of an extension cord, exposing the wires. Attach the two wires on one end to the temples of your skull, then attach the two exposed wires on the other end to the exposed slots of a live electrical outlet in your home. You are now "WIRED." (Want a free subscription?) This process will destroy any critical thinking regions of your cerebrum, disabling the annoying ability to think for yourself (which can interfere with what the vaccine industry wants you to think instead). Once achieved, you're half-way qualified to being a vaccine zealot, unhindered by critical thinking skills!

(Don't forget to grunt, moan and leave your mouth draping open from time to time, or the whole effect will be ruined...)

Step 7) Defend mercury as safe. It's not that bad, really. What's a little mercury in your shot anyway? Ignore these inconvenient facts: A typical flu vaccine shot solution is 50,000 parts per billion of mercury. The EPA classifies any substance with more than 200 parts per billion as hazardous waste. (The EPA limit in drinking water is 2 parts per billion.) Thus, the mercury density in a vaccine is 25,000% higher than the level required to be considered hazardous waste. This is injected directly into the bloodstream of infants, children, expectant mothers and senior citizens. What could possibly be dangerous about that?

"Your rights are suspended."

Welcome to Shreveport: Your rights are now suspended.

Over two months ago, the National Association for Gun Rights first broke this incredible tale out of Shreveport, Louisiana.

At the time, no other gun rights organization had touched the story. But when we tracked down the victim for an interview, we couldn't believe what we heard, and we immediately sent out a nationwide alert.

The story went viral overnight.

If this tale of government abuse moves you, send it to a friend or family member to get the word out.


According to Cedric Glover, mayor of Shreveport, Louisiana, his cops "have a power that [. . .] the President of these Unites States does not have": His cops can take away your rights.

And would you like to guess which rights he has in mind?

Just ask Shreveport resident Robert Baillio, who got pulled over for having two pro-gun bumper stickers on the back of his truck -- and had his gun confiscated.

While the officer who pulled him over says Baillio failed to use his turn signal, the only questions he had for Baillio concerned guns: Whether he had a gun, where the gun was, and if he was a member of a pro-gun organization. No requests for a driver's licence, proof of insurance, or vehicle registration -- and no discussion of a turn signal.
Accordingly, Baillio told the officer the truth, which led the police officer to search his car without permission and confiscate his gun.

However, not only does Louisiana law allow resident to drive with loaded weapons in their vehicles, but Mr. Baillio possessed a concealed carry license!

What does such behavior demonstrate, other than transparent political profiling -- going so far as to use the infamous Department of Homeland Security report on "Americans of a rightwing persuasion" as a how-to guidebook, no less?

Mr. Baillio made no secret of his political affiliations: An American flag centers a wide flourish of pro-freedom stickers and decals on his back windshield.

In fact, when Baillio asked the officer if everyone he pulls over gets the same treatment, the officer said no and pointed to the back of his truck.

Baillio phoned Mayor Glover to complain about this "suspension of rights" only to find that his city's morbidly obese "commander in chief" was elated at the story: According to Glover, Baillio got "served well, protected well, and even got a consideration that maybe [he] should not have gotten."

Thankfully, Mr. Baillio recorded a good bit of that phone call. You can watch a video with the transcriptions here. I've reproduced a chunk of the call below:


Baillio: (in the context of being asked about the presence of a gun) Well, I answered that question honestly, and he disarmed me.

Glover: Which would be an appropriate and proper action, sir. The fact that you gave the correct answer -- it simply means that you did what it is you were supposed to have done, and that is to give that weapon to the police officer so he could appropriately place it in a place where it would not be a threat to you, to him, or to anyone in the general public.

[. . .]

Glover: My direction to you is that, had you chosen not to properly identify the fact that you had a weapon and directed that officer to where that weapon was located; had you been taken from the vehicle, and the officer, in the interest of his safety, chose to secure you in a safe position, and then looked, found, and determined that you did, in fact, have a weapon...then, sir, you would have faced additional, [inaudible], and more severe criminal sanctions.

Baillio: So what you're saying is: I give up all my rights to keep and bear arms if I'm stopped by the police: Is that correct?

Glover: Sir, you have no right, when you have been pulled over by a police officer for a potential criminal offense [which would be what?! - DB] to stand there with your weapon at your side in your hand [Baillio's weapon was nowhere near his side or his hand, and Glover knew that. -- DB] because of your second amendment rights, sir. That does not mean at that point your second amendment right has been taken away; it means at that particular point in time, it has been suspended.


Will Grigg from ProLibertate, an excellent freedom blog, has this to say:

According to Glover, a police officer may properly disarm any civilian at any time, and the civilian's duty is to surrender his gun -- willingly, readily, cheerfully, without cavil or question.

From Glover's perspective, it is only when firearms are in the hands of people other than the state's uniformed enforcers/oppressors that they constitute a threat, not only to the public and those in charge of exercising official violence but also to the private gun owner himself.

NAGR spoke with Mr. Baillio, and he told us that he's in the process of securing the official procedures and codes for firearm handling and private property confiscation for the Shreveport police department.

So far, the city has been half-heartedly cooperating with him.

"I felt sick," Baillio told NAGR. "My uncles didn't die for this country so I could surrender my rights like a wimp. I felt terrible. I was just thinking of all that my family has done for freedom in this nation -- including dying -- and here they are disarming me at a traffic stop."

What to do?

1. Read Luke's commentary here, and participate in the discussion by leaving a comment.
2. Send this around. This kind of behavior cannot go unchecked.
3. Call Mayor Glover's office to complain: (318) 673-5050.




Don't Take Your Guns To Town:




Mama Look At Bubu: