What You Need to Do to Survive Ebola BEFORE the Panic Starts

Guest Post by Mac Slavo

The Ebola virus is spreading and no one in any position of authority is releasing information to the public about how serious of a contagion this is.

It was just a few weeks ago that the CDC and mainstream media claimed it wouldn’t make it to U.S. shores, but as of this morning, reports are flowing in from all over the country from hospitals that have admitted patients who recently traveled to Africa and are showing possible symptoms of the deadly virus.

In Nigeria, where there have only been a couple of deaths reported officially, the medical community has formally requested help in the form of experimental serums from the United States, suggesting things are much worse there than are being reported.

Moreover, the World Health Organization reports an explosion in confirmed cases over the last 48 hours.
An analysis of confirmed cases from Joshua Krause at The Daily Sheeple suggests that, while the virus almost died out back in April, it is now back with a vengeance and growing at a seemingly exponential rate.
What’s most bizarre and frustrating about all of this is that neither the U.S. government or the Centers for Disease Control have provided any actionable information or advice to the American public. They maintain that they have the facilities to stop any such outbreak and continue to tout the narrative that there is nothing to fear, because they have it all under control.

Should even one single case pop up in a random U.S. city, that narrative will fall apart instantly. If someone in Georgia, Ohio, New York or any other state checked themselves into a hospital and are found to be infected with Ebola it will prove without a shadow of a doubt that all CDC containment efforts have failed.
In such an instance where Ebola is found to be in the “wild” anywhere in the continental United States you can be certain that panic will follow.

Take a look at the following photo. It was taken last week in Toledo about an hour after the city announced that their water supply had been contaminated with toxins:

Notice how every drop of pure H2O has been removed from the shelves.

Imagine for a moment what grocery store shelves, pharmacies and hardware supply stores are going to look like within 12 hours of an Ebola infection or outbreak being announced on U.S. soil.

Things will happen fast.

Now, for all we know the CDC’s containment efforts are successful, and perhaps Ebola will be stopped in its tracks. But being naturally skeptical of our government’s abilities to mitigate such a virus, especially given the lack of any actual information from the CDC or government, we must assume that Ebola will eventually start popping up in the United States.

When it does, the CDC and Homeland Security will likely announce a number of precautions that we need to take. Those precautions are going to include supply lists and strategies.

Guess what 300 million Americans are going to do all at once when those supply lists and recommendation are announced? ( Look no further than the DHS Fukushima radiation announcement and how it affected the supply and price of potassium iodide)

Here’s the bottom line: If you don’t have your supplies before emergency announcements hit the airwaves, then plan on going without.

If you want to take action ahead of millions of panicked Americans, then we urge you to follow the recommendations below. They come from informed sources and will be very similar to what the government will recommend in the event of an Ebola outbreak or pandemic emergency.

Emergency services professional Tess Pennington, author of The Prepper’s Blueprint, explains that the government will have specific protocols to follow on local, state and federal levels, and they’ll include widespread shutdowns:

Understanding that our lives will change drastically if the population is faced with a pandemic and being prepared for this can help you make better choices toward the well being of your family. Some changes could be:
-Challenges or shut downs of business commerce
-Breakdown of our basic infrastructure: communications, mass transportation, supply chains
-Payroll service interruptions
-Staffing shortages in hospitals and medical clinics
-Interruptions in public facilities – Schools, workplaces may close, and public gatherings such as sporting events or worship services may close temporarily.
-Government mandated voluntary or involuntary home quarantine.

Essentially, once this happens the whole system could potentially go into lock-down.
The Organic Prepper and author of The Pantry Primer says that in this environment that you must take the No One Goes Out, No One Comes In approach in order to be absolutely certain no one in your household is exposed.

I know this sounds harsh, but there are to be no exceptions. If you make exceptions, you might as well go wrestle with runny-nosed strangers at the local Wal-Mart and then come home and hug your children, because it’s the same thing.

Once you have gone into lockdown mode, that means that the supplies you have on hand are the supplies you have to see you through.  You can’t run out to the store and get something you’ve forgotten.

That means if a family member shows up, they have to go into quarantine for at least 4 weeks, during which time they are not allowed access to the home or family, nor are they allowed to go out in public.  Set up an area on your property that is far from your home for them to hang out for their month of quarantine. If at the end of the month they are presenting no symptoms, then they can come in.

It sadly means that you may be forced to turn someone away if they are ill, because to help them means to risk your family.

Now is the time to plan with your preparedness group how you intend to handle the situation. Will you shelter together, in the same location, and reserve a secondary location to retreat to if the situation worsens further or if someone becomes ill? Will you shelter separately because of the nature of the emergency?  Decide together on what event and proximity will trigger you to go into lockdown mode. Make your plan and stick to it, regardless of pressure from those who think you are over-reacting, the school that your children have stopped attending, and any other external influences. If you’ve decided that there is a great enough risk that you need to go into lockdown, you must adhere to your plan.
Full Article

Here’s a basic supply list, provided by The Organic Prepper, of items you’ll need to weather a pandemic emergency:

• Drinking water (1 gallon per person per day)
• Food (including items that don’t require fuel for preparation)
• Heavy duty garbage bags
• Sanitation supplies such as toilet paper, paper towels, baby wipes, and feminine hygiene supplies)
• Entertainment – you’ll want to be able to keep children and restless family members  busy so get craft supplies, books, games, and puzzles
• Basic medical supplies (here’s a list)
• Pandemic kits that contain protective clothing (we have a QuakeKare Deluxe Pandemic Flu Kit for each family member)
• Extra N95 masks (3M 1860 Health Care N95 Particulate Respirator and Surgical Mask, Small Adult, 20/Bx)
• Nitrile gloves (Dynarex Black Nitrile Exam Gloves, Heavy-Duty, Powder Free, Large, Box/100)
• Safety goggles with an elastic band to ensure a snug fit (Pyramex V2G Safety Eyewear, Clear Anti-Fog Lens With Black Strap/Temples)
• Antibacterial cleaners such as disposable wipes, bleach, and spray cleaners
• Antibacterial hand sanitizer (Purell Pump Bottle, Original, 8 Ounce (Pack of 12))

Those items should help with prevention, especially if you take the advice of locking down and staying home.
However, we must assume that some of us, for whatever reason, will still have to make our way out into public. And with that assumption, we must also expect the absolute worst case scenario – an infection or suspected infection within in our own ranks.

If you must venture outside then take a look at what medical personnel are sporting in highly contagious environments:



If you’re forced to exit your home, you’re going to want to be fully protected, and that includes covering your hands, eyes, nose, and mouth.

In addition to the N-95 respirator masks mentioned above, you may also consider upgrading to the more expensive N-100 respirators recommended by the World Health Organization.

Or, go with a full facemask. Insofar as your preparedness efforts are concerned, you may also be able to kill two birds with one stone here and go with a full face mask that includes NBC (Nuclear, Biological, Chemical) protection like the US-made NATO SGE 400/3 Military Gas Mask.  If going with such a mask, be sure to include some NBC filters.

For protection inside of your home, Tess Pennington of Ready Nutrition recommends building a sick room that can be used to isolate suspected infections or even to be used as a quarantine/observation area for friends and family who may be coming to your home as part of your group lockdown plan.
Building a sick room may include supplies like:

• Heavy Duty Plastic Sheeting to go over doors, windows or other potential airborne entry points (4 millimeter home coverall)
• Duct tape
• Portable toilet if one is not attached directly to the sick room (Luggable Loo)
• Disposable trash and toilet bags *Note: Waste must be disposed of properly because it may be contaminated*
• Click here for a complete list of items for a well stocked sick room

The takeaway here is this: You cannot depend on the government to give you accurate information until it is too late. Moreover, emergency services personnel will be overwhelmed and you will have only yourself and those in your lockdown group to depend on.

Plan on no outside help.

That means you need to have food, water, and other supplies on hand. Additionally, if we have a widespread emergency that brings down the commerce system you may need to head out to barter and trade with others for necessary supplies that may have been overlooked. In such an instance you may also want to have some precious metals on hand for trade. The Silver.com price for silver today is about $20. It may be a good time to stock up on some emergency ‘cash’ like silver eagles or pre-1965 US quarters and half-dollars which contain 90% silver. These trade instruments are recognizable and may come in handy.

Prepare now, because as we have seen with disasters past, waiting to do so until after the announcements are made will be too late.

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Also reading our free book Beyond Collapse will put you miles ahead of everyone else in terms of preparedness

UN and Feds Plan to Fight Ebola With Tyranny

Guest Post by  Alex Newman
 
With estimates suggesting more than 800 people have died from the ongoing Ebola outbreak sweeping across West Africa, concerns are spreading in the United States about how federal and state authorities would react if — or when — a life-threatening virus such as Ebola begins spreading domestically.

Global responses to the outbreak are also stirring fears. Considering the militarization of swine flu preparations five years ago, there is plenty of cause for alarm, experts say. Some analysts and commentators have even warned that the stage is being set for medical tyranny as illegal immigrants flood across the border and an American infected with Ebola comes to the U.S. for treatment.

The United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) is also making waves with its controversial global preparations. Already, the planetary outfit claims to be “coordinating” a $100 million planetary response with its member governments. “The situation in West Africa is of international concern and must receive urgent priority for decisive action at national and international levels,” argued WHO Director-General Margaret Chan, telling African governments that the outbreak had outstripped their capacity to respond and that self-styled “global health authorities” would need to be involved.

The director general, who was just in West Africa meeting with officials in the affected countries, praised them for their “commitment” to tackling the virus — which the Wall Street Journal reported was “demonstrated this week with new measures such as deploying soldiers to quarantine stricken neighborhoods in Sierra Leone.” “This meeting must mark a turning point in the outbreak response,” Chan was quoted as telling the assembled African presidents, warning of “a security threat to response teams when fear and misunderstanding turn to anger, hostility, or violence.”  

In the United States, draconian-sounding preparations are being made, too, and many have been in place for years. In an amendment to “Executive Order” 13295 signed last week, Obama, expanding on a previous order, has already purported to grant his administration vast powers to detain Americans suspected of harboring a “respiratory illness.” At the state level, a “model” law created by the feds and the WHO on “Emergency Health Powers,” which provides officials with purported powers blasted as “draconian” by critics, has been adopted in whole or in part by some four in five state governments.

While the Ebola outbreak has been largely centered in the West African nations of Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone, fears are growing about a potential global epidemic as the virus spreads. With illegal immigrants flooding across the U.S. border, it is hardly far-fetched to suppose that the disease will eventually reach American shores, too. Already, dozens of illegal immigrants from the three African countries suffering the most severe Ebola outbreaks have been apprehended crossing the U.S. border with Mexico. So what would — or could — American authorities do? The answers have more than a few analysts warning of potential government abuse.

On July 31, responding to news about the spread of Ebola, Obama modified a George W. Bush-era “executive order” signed in 2003. That unconstitutional decree was supposedly aimed at “providing for the apprehension, detention, or conditional release of individuals to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of suspected communicable diseases.” Under that scheme, the federal government would be allowed to detain people suspected of harboring a broad list of diseases including cholera, diphtheria, tuberculosis, smallpox, yellow fever, SARS, Ebola, and more.

The order signed by Obama last week modified one subsection of Bush’s original executive order. In essence, it drastically widens the net in terms of Americans who could be detained. Under Bush, subsection B dealt only with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS. Obama’s amendment allows the feds to detain anyone who displays signs of “diseases that are associated with fever and signs and symptoms of pneumonia or other respiratory illness” that might cause a pandemic or lead to “mortality or serious morbidity if not properly controlled.” Only the flu is exempt.

Obama’s executive order references section 361 of the Public Health Service Act. On its website, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) claimed that statute, originally passed in 1944, “clearly established the federal government’s quarantine authority for the first time.” The Constitution never established it. Indeed, critics say the statute represents a blatantly unconstitutional power grab that is totalitarian in scope. For instance, the scheme purports to allow the federal government to “apprehend” and “detain” individuals suspected of infection for “such time and in such manner as may be reasonably necessary.”

In other words, a bureaucrat could deprive a U.S. citizen of his unalienable rights — for as long as said bureaucrat considers necessary — on the mere suspicion that the person being detained has been in contact with some disease. Contrast the purported federal authorities under the statute with the plain language in the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment, which outright prohibits the deprivation of liberty without due process of law — a timeless and essential principle enshrined in the Magna Carta almost 800 years ago. State constitutions across America recognize those fundamental rights as well.

The federal government, though, apparently does not. Among other schemes, the CDC operates a vast network of “quarantine centers” stretching from Anchorage in Alaska to Miami in South Florida that could someday hold massive numbers of Americans against their will — merely on orders from the president. The federal agency even purports to possess the authority to quarantine “well persons” who “do not show symptoms” if it claims they “may have been exposed” to a communicable disease such as Ebola. (It also owns a “patent” on one strain of the virus, a fact that has perplexed analysts in recent days.)

Even the military could become involved. In fact, in 2009 amid the wildly overblown swine-flu hysteria, the Obama administration was even preparing for potentially deploying the military on U.S. soil. “When directed by the President, DoD [the Department of Defense] will provide support to civil authorities in the event of a civil disturbance,” noted a document entitled “Department of Defense Implementation Plan for Pandemic Influenza” by the assistant secretary of defense. “DoD will augment civilian law enforcement efforts to restore and maintain order.”

At the state level, thanks to plenty of federal bribes, the situation could be even more draconian. Consider, for instance, the so-called “Model State Emergency Health Powers Act.” Developed by the CDC in collaboration with partners such as the UN WHO, the widely criticized emergency medical regime has been implemented to varying degrees in the vast majority of states.

Among other schemes, the law purports to give public health officials the authority to mandate vaccines and enforce involuntary quarantines in the event of an emergency declaration. It would also force people to submit to medical exams and treatment decreed by authorities against their will, violate patient privacy, attack private-property rights, threaten medical professionals, mobilize troops to enforce government decrees, ration everything from food and gasoline to firearms, and much more.  

“I believe — and believe it should be evident to you — that this model plan, if enacted throughout the states, would ... eliminate our freedom to choose our medical care and health treatment and potentially eliminate a broader range of our basic civil liberties,” observed Sue Blevins, the president of the Institute for Health Freedom, in an analysis for the Heritage Foundation when the scheme was being foisted on states after the September 11 attacks. “It is our duty in the public policy community to help educate, inform, and alert both our state officials and state-based think tank leaders to the challenge to our freedoms and liberties this extreme model legislation will have.”

The widely respected Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, meanwhile, warned that the legislation “could turn governors into dictators.”

Americans hoping that the courts might step in to protect their rights in the event of medical tyranny will likely be disappointed, according to experts. “Judges will not stand in the way of emergency actions taken to protect the public from a clear and present danger, and if they do, the state appeals court will overturn their rulings in a matter of hours,” explained Louisiana State University director of the program in law, science, and public health, Edward Richards, and Dr. Katherine Rathbun. “The history of judicial restraint on emergency powers is one of blind obedience to civil and military authority.”

CDC boss Thomas Frieden claimed recently that a widespread Ebola outbreak in the United States was “not in the cards.” One of the reasons for that, he suggested, is that the federal agency has amassed broad powers in case disease does strike. “We have quarantine stations at all the major ports of entry,” Frieden told reporters. Another reason why the CDC and various medical experts have argued that Ebola may not represent a major threat to America is that it is supposedly only transferred through direct contact with bodily fluids. However, at least one study cited by analysts and published in the journal Scientific Reports suggests that it can actually be transmitted through airborne droplets as well.

Critics of the administration’s actions have also suggested that the U.S. government was taking dangerous steps in terms of potentially importing the virus — especially by bringing infected patients into the United States for treatment when they could have been treated in Africa. “The madness of Ebola is only matched by the madness of America," wrote talk-radio titan Michael Savage, who also has a Ph.D. in epidemiology, in a piece for WND, suggesting that calls for vaccinating whole nations with an untested Ebola vaccine may be coming soon.

“Common sense would dictate you isolate and avoid contact with patients, because in this case the disease is often fatal,” continued Savage. “And yet, the morons who are running America are bringing infected patients to America, allegedly to treat them, but we all know it is an untreatable disease. It can only be managed. The entire story of bringing these Ebola patients from West Africa to America stinks to high Heaven.”
Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.), meanwhile, has been expressing concerns about the ongoing flood of potentially infected illegal immigrants pouring across the Southern border. “The influx of families and unaccompanied children at the border poses many risks, including grave public health threats,” Gingrey told the CDC in a letter last month. “As a physician for over 30 years, I am well aware of the dangers infectious diseases pose.... Reports of illegal migrants carrying deadly diseases such as swine flu, dengue fever, Ebola virus and tuberculosis are particularly concerning.” Dozens of illegal immigrants from the three affected countries have already been apprehended.

There can be no doubt that Ebola is a dangerous and frightening disease — it kills an estimated 90 percent of its victims, and there is currently no cure. However, unconstitutional government scheming allegedly designed to deal with the virus and other communicable diseases ought to be at least as alarming to Americans. Indeed, the potential for abuse, tyranny, and wanton constitutional violations under a declared “emergency” is hard to emphasize strongly enough. Machinations by the dictator-dominated UN could be even worse.
Unrestrained governments, which murdered hundreds of millions of innocent people in the last century alone, as well as epidemics, have both proven to be among the deadliest threats to humanity. For the sake of life and liberty, though, Americans must ensure that their officials do not trample on the Constitution under the guise of a real, manufactured, or imagined emergency — whether it be an Ebola outbreak or anything else. There are plenty of ways to protect public health without resorting to tyranny. Securing the Southern border would be a good first step.    

Photo of ambulance carrying one of the American Ebola victims to a hospital in Atlanta: AP Images

Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American, is currently based in Europe. He can be reached at anewman@thenewamerican.com. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU.

The overcriminalization of American people

Guest Post by Tom Sullivan

Why are we seeing such an uptick in Americans being arrested for such absurd “violations” as letting their kids play at a park unsupervised, collecting rainwater and snow runoff on their own property, growing vegetables in their yard, and holding Bible studies in their living room?

Mind you, we’re not talking tickets or fines or even warnings being issued to these so-called “lawbreakers.” We’re talking felony charges, handcuffs, police cars, mug shots, pat downs, jail cells and criminal records.
Consider what happened to Nicole Gainey, the Florida mom who was arrested and charged with child neglect for allowing her 7-year-old son to visit a neighborhood playground located a half mile from their house.

For the so-called “crime” of allowing her son to play at the park unsupervised, Gainey was interrogated, arrested and handcuffed in front of her son, and transported to the local jail where she was physically searched, fingerprinted, photographed and held for seven hours and then forced to pay almost $4000 in bond in order to return to her family. Gainey’s family and friends were subsequently questioned by the Dept. of Child Services. Gainey now faces a third-degree criminal felony charge that carries with it a fine of up to $5,000 and 5 years in jail.

For Denise Stewart, just being in the wrong place at the wrong time, whether or not she had done anything wrong, was sufficient to get her arrested.

The 48-year-old New York grandmother was dragged half-naked out of her apartment and handcuffed after police mistakenly raided her home when responding to a domestic disturbance call. Although it turns out the 911 call came from a different apartment on a different floor, Stewart is still facing charges of assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest.

And then there are those equally unfortunate individuals who unknowingly break laws they never even knew existed. John Yates is such a person. A commercial fisherman, Yates was sentenced to 30 days in prison and three years of supervised release for throwing back into the water some small fish which did not meet the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission’s size restrictions. Incredibly, Yates was charged with violating a document shredding provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which was intended to prevent another Enron scandal.

The list of individuals who have suffered similar injustices at the hands of a runaway legal system is growing, ranging from the orchid grower jailed for improper paperwork and the lobstermen charged with importing lobster tails in plastic bags rather than cardboard boxes to the former science teacher labeled a federal criminal for digging for arrowheads in his favorite campsite.

As awful as these incidents are, however, it’s not enough to simply write them off as part of the national trend towards overcriminalization—although it is certainly that. Thanks to an overabundance of 4500-plus federal crimes and 400,000 plus rules and regulations, it’s estimated that the average American actually commits three felonies a day without knowing it.

Nor can we just chalk them up as yet another symptom of an overzealous police state in which militarized police attack first and ask questions later—although it is that, too.

Nor is the problem that we’re a crime-ridden society. In fact, it’s just the opposite. The number of violent crimes in the country is down substantially, the lowest rate in 40 years, while the number of Americans being jailed for nonviolent crimes, such as driving with a suspended license, are skyrocketing.

So what’s really behind this drive to label Americans as criminals?

As with most things, if you want to know the real motives behind any government program, follow the money trail. When you dig down far enough, as I document in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, you quickly find that those who profit from Americans being arrested are none other than the police who arrest them, the courts which try them, the prisons which incarcerate them, and the corporations, which manufacture the weapons and equipment used by police, build and run the prisons, and profit from the cheap prison labor.

Talk about a financial incentive.

First, there’s the whole make-work scheme. In the absence of crime, in order to keep the police and their related agencies employed, occupied, and utilizing the many militarized “toys” passed along by the Department of Homeland Security, one must invent new crimes—overcriminalization—and new criminals to be spied on, targeted, tracked, raided, arrested, prosecuted and jailed. Enter the police state.

Second, there’s the profit-incentive for states to lock up large numbers of Americans in private prisons. Just as police departments have quotas for how many tickets are issued and arrests made per month—a number tied directly to revenue—states now have quotas to meet for how many Americans go to jail. Having outsourced their inmate population to private prisons run by corporations such as Corrections Corp of America and the GEO Group, ostensibly as a way to save money, increasing numbers of states have contracted to keep their prisons at 90% to 100% capacity. This profit-driven form of mass punishment has, in turn, given rise to a $70 billion private prison industry that relies on the complicity of state governments to keep the money flowing and their privately run prisons full. No wonder the United States has the largest prison population in the world.

But what do you do when you’ve contracted to keep your prisons full but crime rates are falling? Easy. You create new categories of crime and render otherwise law-abiding Americans criminals. Notice how we keep coming full circle back to the point where it’s average Americans like you and me being targeted and turned into enemies of the state?

That brings me to the third factor contributing to Americans being arrested, charged with outrageous “crimes,” and jailed: the Corporate State’s need for profit and cheap labor. Not content to just lock up millions of people, corporations have also turned prisoners into forced laborers.

According to professors Steve Fraser and Joshua B. Freeman, “All told, nearly a million prisoners are now making office furniture, working in call centers, fabricating body armor, taking hotel reservations, working in slaughterhouses, or manufacturing textiles, shoes, and clothing, while getting paid somewhere between 93 cents and $4.73 per day.” Tens of thousands of inmates in U.S. prisons are making all sorts of products, from processing agricultural products like milk and beef, to packaging Starbucks coffee, to shrink-wrapping software for companies like Microsoft, to sewing lingerie for Victoria’s Secret.

What some Americans may not have realized, however, is that America’s economy has come to depend in large part on prison labor. “Prison labor reportedly produces 100 percent of military helmets, shirts, pants, tents, bags, canteens, and a variety of other equipment. Prison labor makes circuit boards for IBM, Texas Instruments, and Dell. Many McDonald's uniforms are sewn by inmates. Other corporations—Microsoft, Victoria's Secret, Boeing, Motorola, Compaq, Revlon, and Kmart—also benefit from prison labor.” The resulting prison labor industries, which rely on cheap, almost free labor, are doing as much to put the average American out of work as the outsourcing of jobs to China and India.

No wonder America is criminalizing mundane activities, arresting Americans for minor violations, and locking them up for long stretches of time. There’s a significant amount of money being made by the police, the courts, the prisons, and the corporations.

What we’re witnessing is the expansion of corrupt government power in the form of corporate partnerships which both increase the reach of the state into our private lives while also adding a profit motive into the mix, with potentially deadly consequences.

This perverse mixture of government authoritarianism and corporate profits is now the prevailing form of organization in American society today. We are not a nation dominated by corporations, nor are we a nation dominated by government. We are a nation dominated by corporations and government together, in partnership, against the interests of individuals, society and ultimately our freedoms.

If it sounds at all conspiratorial, the idea that a government would jail its citizens so corporations can make a profit, then you don’t know your history very well. It has been well documented that Nazi Germany forced inmates into concentration camps such as Auschwitz to provide cheap labor to BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, and other major German chemical and pharmaceutical companies, much of it to produce products for European countries.

Makes you wonder, doesn’t it, whether what we are experiencing right now is fascism, American style, or Auschwitz revisited?

What you haven’t been told: American Ebola victims are the subjects of a science experiment

 Guest Post by The Extinction Protocol

In the absence of official confirmation about how the two American patients with Ebola are being treated, rumor and speculation filled the void. 

First were the reports that the blood serum of a teenage Ebola survivor may have saved Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, who contacted the deadly disease in Liberia while working with the Christian aid organization Samaritan’s Purse. 

The latest news centers around an experimental “secret serum” called ZMapp. Already, CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta has proclaimed that the medicine “appears to have worked.” Sadly, Dr. Gupta seems to be over-promising. Here’s why. Treating Ebola with the blood of a survivor: The science behind the first alleged treatment — using the blood serum of a survivor to cure those who are suffering — is the subject of controversy in the Ebola research community, said Dr. Thomas Geisbert, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Texas Medical Branch. “Back in 1995 during the large outbreak of Ebola Zaire virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, there were reports that convalescent serum was used from people who survived Ebola to treat people who were infected,” he said. A small case series report about the treatment involving eight patients was published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases. Only one of the eight people died- a fatality rate much lower than the then-outbreak, which killed some 80 percent of those infected.

 

Unfortunately, however, the serum theory was not confirmed by later studies. “When we tested that hypothesis in a lab, and took convalescent blood from animals who survived and gave it to Ebola-infected animals, they all died,” said Dr. Geisbert. “There was the belief that most of those patients treated were in the process of recovering anyway.” Yesterday, the “secret serum” called ZMapp emerged as the primary treatment of the Americans. This is an antibody therapy developed by several stakeholders — Mapp Biopharmaceutical, Inc. and LeafBio in San Diego, Defyrus Inc. from Toronto, the U.S. government and the Public Health Agency of Canada — to treat Ebola. It’s made up of a cocktail of monoclonal antibodies, which are just lab-produced molecules that mimic the body’s immune response. To create these molecules, scientists gave mice Ebola proteins and watched the animals’ immune systems respond. After identifying the antibodies that fought off the disease in mice, they created almost identical antibodies from plants for use in humans. The idea is that, when given to Ebola-infected people, the drug will boost their immune system so that they too can eliminate the virus. But this drug has never undergone testing in people, only monkeys. The data on the efficacy of ZMapp in monkeys has never even been published.

 

 

Studies on similar drugs are not entirely confidence inducing, either. In this study, two of the four monkeys given monoclonal antibodies 48 hours after exposure to Ebola survived. In this second study, the animals had a 43 percent survival rate when given the drug cocktail after the onset of symptoms. So even though the treatment of monoclonal antibodies decreased the mortality rate — if given close to exposure of the illness —  scientists haven’t moved past these tiny animal studies to testing in actual people. Mapp Biopharmaceuticals is also just one of some 25 labs in seven countries working on these antibody cocktails for Ebola, and none of them have entered a phase one trial in humans, according to the journal Science. For this reason Dr. Martin Hirsch, a Harvard virologist, told Vox, “It’s too premature to say that the patients being treated miraculously improved.” That doesn’t mean ZMapp isn’t a promising therapy, however. It just means the American Ebola victims are effectively undergoing a science experiment. Even if they survive, it wasn’t necessarily the drug that saved their lives. Over 20 percent of people who get this type of Ebola survive. To know whether the drug truly works, it needs to be properly tested in clinical trials. And doing that will require funding drug companies and governments may not want to invest.

Why ZMapp? According to the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Samaritan’s Purse contacted CDC officials working in Liberia. They asked about the status of several experimental Ebola treatments that they had identified for possible use in the infected American missionaries. “CDC officials referred them to an NIH scientist who was on the ground in West Africa assisting with outbreak response efforts and broadly familiar with the various experimental treatment candidates,” said an NIH spokesperson. “The scientist was able to informally answer some questions and referred them to appropriate company contacts to pursue their interest in obtaining experimental product.” Right now, Samaritan’s Purse will not confirm why ZMapp ended up being the chosen treatment. –VOX

 

The Curious Recovering Americans and the 'Top Secret' Ebola Treatment

Guest Post by Robert Wenzel

More developments that suggest the possibility that US biowarfare operators may be involved with Ebola research, and quite possibly the outbreak in Africa.

The Atlantic reports:

Ebola is notoriously incurable (and the strain at large its most lethal), it is overwhelming to hear that "Secret Serum Likely Saved Ebola Patients," as we do this morning from Gupta's every-20-minute CNN reports. He writes: 

Three top secret, experimental vials stored at subzero temperatures were flown into Liberia last week in a last-ditch effort to save two American missionary workers [Drs. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol] who had contracted Ebola, according to a source familiar with details of the treatment.

Brantly had been working for the Christian aid organization Samaritan's Purse as medical director of the Ebola Consolidation Case Management Center in Monrovia, Liberia. The group yesterday confirmed that he received a dose of an experimental serum before leaving the country.  

In Gupta's optimistic assessment, Brantly's "near complete recovery" began within hours of receiving the treatment that "likely saved his life." Writebol is also reportedly improved since receiving the treatment, known as zMapp. But to say that it was a secret implies a frigid American exceptionalism; that the people of West Africa are dying in droves while a classified cure lies in wait...

[T]he proprietary blend of three monoclonal antibodies known as zMapp had never been tested in humans. It had previously been tested in eight monkeys with Ebola who survived—though all received treatment within 48 hours of being infected. A monkey treated outside of that exposure window did not survive. That means very little is known about the safety and effectiveness of this treatment—so little that outside of extreme circumstances like this, it would not be legal to use. Gupta speculates that the FDA may have allowed it under the compassionate use exemption.

From the very sparse web site of the zMapp developer, Mapp Biopharmecutical:

ZMappTM is the result ofa collaboration between MappBiopharmaceutical,Inc. and LeafBio(San Diego,CA), Defyrus Inc.(Toronto, Canada),the U.S. government and thePublicHealth Agency of Canada (PHAC).

Among its partners, LeafBio lists:

 United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Disease (USAMRIID) – Virology Division

and

Defence Research and Development Canada

From an August 2013  U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) report:

Scientists have successfully treated the deadly Ebola virus in infected animals following
onset of disease symptoms, according to a report published online today in Science Translational Medicine. The results show promise for developing therapies against the virus, which causes hemorrhagic fever with human case fatality rates as high as 90 percent.

According to first author James Pettitt of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of
Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), the research team previously demonstrated that the
treatment—known as MB-003—protected 100 percent of non-human primates when given one hour after Ebola exposure. Two-thirds of the animals were protected when treated 48 hours after
exposure...

“By requiring both a documentable fever and a positive diagnostic assay result for Ebola
infection before initiating treatment in these animals, we were able to use MB-003 as a true
therapeutic countermeasure,” said senior author Gene Olinger, Ph.D., of USAMRIID. “These
initial results push the threshold of MB-003 from post-exposure prophylaxis to treating verified
illness.”...

USAMRIID’s mission is to protect the warfighter from biological threats and to be
prepared to investigate disease outbreaks or threats to public health. Research conducted at
USAMRIID leads to medical solutions—vaccines, drugs, diagnostics, and information—that
benefit both military personnel and civilians. The Institute plays a key role as the lead military
medical research laboratory for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s Joint Science and
Technology Office for Chemical and Biological Defense. USAMRIID is a subordinate
laboratory of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command.

UPDATE:

The firm  producing (part of?) zMapp is Kentucky Bioprocessing, LLC  (KBP)

Hugh Haydon is the founding Chairman and CEO of KBP.

Prior to assuming his current role with KBP, Haydon served as Executive Vice-President of Programs for a Washington, DC based consulting group providing strategic and implementation direction to various research, development and commercialization programs for the United States Department for Homeland Security.

According to Kentucky.gov, since 2010 KBP has secured and successfully executed over $30 million in contracts with the United States Department of Defense "aimed at protecting the warfighter and general public from various biological threats."

In 1999, Haydon was presented with the Kentucky Distinguished Service Medal for his service in support of the Kentucky Commission on Military Affairs.

The big questions:

1. Was the U.S. military only doing research to find a treatment or were they attempting to also develop Ebola as a biowarfare weapon?

2. Were they conducting Ebola research in Africa, which appears to be the case? SEE: A Link Between the Ebola Outbreak and a US Bioweapons Lab?

3. Did they lose control of their research experiments in Africa which has resulted in the current Ebola outbreak?

We’re All Criminals and Outlaws in the Eyes of the American Police State

  
Guest post by John w. Whitehead, Rutherford Institute

Why are we seeing such an uptick in Americans being arrested for such absurd “violations” as letting their kids play at a park unsupervised, collecting rainwater and snow runoff on their own property, growing vegetables in their yard, and holding Bible studies in their living room?

Mind you, we’re not talking tickets or fines or even warnings being issued to these so-called “lawbreakers.” We’re talking felony charges, handcuffs, police cars, mug shots, pat downs, jail cells and criminal records.
Consider what happened to Nicole Gainey, the Florida mom who was arrested and charged with child neglect for allowing her 7-year-old son to visit a neighborhood playground located a half mile from their house.

For the so-called “crime” of allowing her son to play at the park unsupervised, Gainey was interrogated, arrested and handcuffed in front of her son, and transported to the local jail where she was physically searched, fingerprinted, photographed and held for seven hours and then forced to pay almost $4000 in bond in order to return to her family. Gainey’s family and friends were subsequently questioned by the Dept. of Child Services. Gainey now faces a third-degree criminal felony charge that carries with it a fine of up to $5,000 and 5 years in jail.

For Denise Stewart, just being in the wrong place at the wrong time, whether or not she had done anything wrong, was sufficient to get her arrested.

The 48-year-old New York grandmother was dragged half-naked out of her apartment and handcuffed after police mistakenly raided her home when responding to a domestic disturbance call. Although it turns out the 911 call came from a different apartment on a different floor, Stewart is still facing charges of assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest.

And then there are those equally unfortunate individuals who unknowingly break laws they never even knew existed. John Yates is such a person. A commercial fisherman, Yates was sentenced to 30 days in prison and three years of supervised release for throwing back into the water some small fish which did not meet the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission’s size restrictions. Incredibly, Yates was charged with violating a document shredding provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which was intended to prevent another Enron scandal.

The list of individuals who have suffered similar injustices at the hands of a runaway legal system is growing, ranging from the orchid grower jailed for improper paperwork and the lobstermen charged with importing lobster tails in plastic bags rather than cardboard boxes to the former science teacher labeled a federal criminal for digging for arrowheads in his favorite campsite.
As awful as these incidents are, however, it’s not enough to simply write them off as part of the national trend towards overcriminalization—although it is certainly that. Thanks to an overabundance of 4500-plus federal crimes and 400,000 plus rules and regulations, it’s estimated that the average American actually commits three felonies a day without knowing it.

Nor can we just chalk them up as yet another symptom of an overzealous police state in which militarized police attack first and ask questions later—although it is that, too.

Nor is the problem that we’re a crime-ridden society. In fact, it’s just the opposite. The number of violent crimes in the country is down substantially, the lowest rate in 40 years, while the number of Americans being jailed for nonviolent crimes, such as driving with a suspended license, are skyrocketing.
So what’s really behind this drive to label Americans as criminals?

As with most things, if you want to know the real motives behind any government program, follow the money trail. When you dig down far enough, as I document in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, you quickly find that those who profit from Americans being arrested are none other than the police who arrest them, the courts which try them, the prisons which incarcerate them, and the corporations, which manufacture the weapons and equipment used by police, build and run the prisons, and profit from the cheap prison labor.

Talk about a financial incentive.

First, there’s the whole make-work scheme. In the absence of crime, in order to keep the police and their related agencies employed, occupied, and utilizing the many militarized “toys” passed along by the Department of Homeland Security, one must invent new crimes—overcriminalization—and new criminals to be spied on, targeted, tracked, raided, arrested, prosecuted and jailed. Enter the police state.

Second, there’s the profit-incentive for states to lock up large numbers of Americans in private prisons. Just as police departments have quotas for how many tickets are issued and arrests made per month—a number tied directly to revenue—states now have quotas to meet for how many Americans go to jail. Having outsourced their inmate population to private prisons run by corporations such as Corrections Corp of America and the GEO Group, ostensibly as a way to save money, increasing numbers of states have contracted to keep their prisons at 90% to 100% capacity. This profit-driven form of mass punishment has, in turn, given rise to a $70 billion private prison industry that relies on the complicity of state governments to keep the money flowing and their privately run prisons full. No wonder the United States has the largest prison population in the world.

But what do you do when you’ve contracted to keep your prisons full but crime rates are falling? Easy. You create new categories of crime and render otherwise law-abiding Americans criminals. Notice how we keep coming full circle back to the point where it’s average Americans like you and me being targeted and turned into enemies of the state?

That brings me to the third factor contributing to Americans being arrested, charged with outrageous “crimes,” and jailed: the Corporate State’s need for profit and cheap labor. Not content to just lock up millions of people, corporations have also turned prisoners into forced laborers.

According to professors Steve Fraser and Joshua B. Freeman, “All told, nearly a million prisoners are now making office furniture, working in call centers, fabricating body armor, taking hotel reservations, working in slaughterhouses, or manufacturing textiles, shoes, and clothing, while getting paid somewhere between 93 cents and $4.73 per day.” Tens of thousands of inmates in U.S. prisons are making all sorts of products, from processing agricultural products like milk and beef, to packaging Starbucks coffee, to shrink-wrapping software for companies like Microsoft, to sewing lingerie for Victoria’s Secret.

What some Americans may not have realized, however, is that America’s economy has come to depend in large part on prison labor. “Prison labor reportedly produces 100 percent of military helmets, shirts, pants, tents, bags, canteens, and a variety of other equipment. Prison labor makes circuit boards for IBM, Texas Instruments, and Dell. Many McDonald’s uniforms are sewn by inmates. Other corporations—Microsoft, Victoria’s Secret, Boeing, Motorola, Compaq, Revlon, and Kmart—also benefit from prison labor.” The resulting prison labor industries, which rely on cheap, almost free labor, are doing as much to put the average American out of work as the outsourcing of jobs to China and India.

No wonder America is criminalizing mundane activities, arresting Americans for minor violations, and locking them up for long stretches of time. There’s a significant amount of money being made by the police, the courts, the prisons, and the corporations.

What we’re witnessing is the expansion of corrupt government power in the form of corporate partnerships which both increase the reach of the state into our private lives while also adding a profit motive into the mix, with potentially deadly consequences.

This perverse mixture of government authoritarianism and corporate profits is now the prevailing form of organization in American society today. We are not a nation dominated by corporations, nor are we a nation dominated by government. We are a nation dominated by corporations and government together, in partnership, against the interests of individuals, society and ultimately our freedoms.

If it sounds at all conspiratorial, the idea that a government would jail its citizens so corporations can make a profit, then you don’t know your history very well. It has been well documented that Nazi Germany forced inmates into concentration camps such as Auschwitz to provide cheap labor to BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, and other major German chemical and pharmaceutical companies, much of it to produce products for European countries.

Makes you wonder, doesn’t it, whether what we are experiencing right now is fascism, American style, or Auschwitz revisited?

The United States' Farm-Grown Terrorism

  

Guest Post By The Daily Take Team, The Thom Hartmann Program

Let's talk about America's farm-grown terrorism epidemic.

Back on September 11th, nearly 3,000 people lost their lives in the attacks on the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Since 9/11, our government has spent over $7.6 trillion on military and homeland security operations in response to the deaths of those roughly 3,000 souls.

Now, compare that to the fact that each year, 23,000 Americans die from antibiotic-resistant infections, and another 2 million get sick.

That's the equivalent of nearly eight 9/11's per year. But our government isn't doing a thing about it.
Each year, Big Agriculture feeds millions and millions of pounds of antibiotics to factory-farm animals, all to slightly increase their profits by plumping up their meat.

In 2011 alone, nearly 30 million pounds of antibiotics were purchased by Big Agriculture, to promote growth in the animals, and to reduce the spread of disease in the horrific factory-farm conditions.
That 30 million pounds is a staggering four times the amount of antibiotics that were prescribed to humans that year.

These are otherwise healthy animals, but they're getting dosed daily with low-levels of antibiotics anyway.
As a result, this widespread and unnecessary use of antibiotics in factory-farm animals is creating a major public health crisis here in the US by breeding antibiotic-resistant infections caused by bacteria referred to in the media as superbugs.

But rather then enforcing regulations already in place to control the use of antibiotics in factory-farm animals, our federal government is bowing to the interests of Big Agriculture, and is continuing to let the abuse go on.
Just last week, the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the FDA could leave an antibiotic that's used in animal feed on the market, even though the dangers associated with that antibiotic are widely known, including the increased risk of antibiotic resistance infections jumping to human beings.
Basically, the court gave Big Agriculture the go-ahead to continue pumping millions and millions of pounds of antibiotics into poultry and livestock, with no concern for public safety.

So, why should Americans care about this?

Well, for starters, Americans eat a lot of meat. And the superbugs and antibiotic-resistant bacteria that are bred on factory farms very easily make their way into our food system.

For example, last year, a drug-resistant salmonella outbreak tied to chicken from Foster Farms sickened over 600 Americans, and that outbreak is still getting worse today.

And if that wasn't bad enough, these antibiotic-resistant superbugs also get into our water supply, and into soil for crops.

The situation is so dire that, speaking about antibiotic resistance, Dr. Thomas Freidman, director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said that, "If we don't act now, our medicine cabinet will be empty and we won't have the antibiotics we need to save lives."

If 23,000 Americans are already dying from superbugs and antibiotic-resistant infections each year, just imagine how much worse it could get as this antibiotic abuse continues.

We could soon have a full-blown pandemic on our hands.

But it doesn't have to get worse. We can stop this farm-grown terrorism right now, and save millions of lives.
Big Agriculture says that slashing its use of antibiotics will hurt all of us in the form of higher prices at the supermarket, but that's simply not the case.

As Ruth Reichl points out over at The New York Times, "Although many industrial farmers claim that cleaning up their act will cost the rest of us at the cash register, responsible producers from Missouri to Denmark are already raising healthy livestock and poultry at competitive prices without the use of unnecessary drugs."

Reichl highlights the story of Russ Kremer, a fifth-generation pork farm in Missouri, who, after nearly being killed by an antibiotic-resistant infection on his own farm, decided to do things the all natural way.
He lets his pigs roam free, and doesn't have to stuff them full of antibiotics, because they're not living in squalor.

And, thanks to competitive prices, his meat is bought by companies like Chipotle and Costco.
So Big Agriculture's "higher meat prices" argument is complete bologna. Pun intended.
The use of antibiotics on factory farms is all about profits for Big Agriculture, But, with 23,000 Americans dying each year as a result, it's time to start putting the American people ahead of profits.
Meat producers and sellers across the country need to say "no" to more superbugs. No animals on factory farms should ever be given antibiotics, unless diagnosed as sick by a veterinarian.

And while we're at it, we need to work harder to close down Washington's revolving door, which encourages employees in government agencies like the FDA to get bought off by corporate interests and then turn a blind eye to corporate abuse.

We have a right to eat food that's not going to kill us.

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