"American Idol" is unquestionably now a cultural phenomena, drawing 31+ million viewers weekly to it's presentation of monumental entertainment mediocrity despite the fact that its primary demographic is white female children often termed as tweens(pre-pubescent & early-pubescent) and it is,otherwise clearly a "girl thing" as 65% of its viewership is female and 72% of its RIGGED votership is female. Avian Flu is another " obsession of the moment" despite accurate disclaimers regarding the validity of bird flu fear-mongering. The fact is the bird flu scare is completely manufactured and is the greatest hoax currently being trumpeted by our " politics of fear" spokespeople such as 'Cry-Wolf' Blitzer.Listening to MSM's banal blather on this subject does,however, create an unintended panic. One doesn't know whether the source is morphing into Blitzer or Tippi Hedren! So what is behind the bird flu hype. Well, in this age of distraction that insures inexplicables like "American Idol", Tom Cruise, Dumbya and Avian Flu; follow the money! Our cuddly Secretary of Defense, Don Rumsfeld, has a history of peddling poison to the masses and making untold $millions in the process.His ongoing fortune arises from Nutrasweet, which exceeds even sugar as a health menace. But...it doesn't stop there! Rumsfeld is also a key figure in the sale of the worthless drug Tamiflu which is now flying off the shelves due to the bird flu scare.Rumsfeld has already made $5 million on Tamiflu and owns an additional $25 million in shares of the Gilead Sciences which leased Tamiflu to Roche Pharmaceutical.

by Roy Murtishaw (14 articles, 0 quicklinks, 11 diaries, 81 comments) on Thursday, May 11, 2006 at 11:09:40 AM

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When I heard in the beginning of this scare that Tamiflu was not going to be a help in the event of an outbreak, I was amazed to hear the president talk of the Government ordering up all available supplies of the drug. I knew that in the end it would be of benefit to Rumsfeld. I did not even consider that in the later days, weeks and months that a campaign to spread fear of a coming pandemic would commence. So now, why am I not surprised?

by Pat Herrick (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 169 comments) on Thursday, May 11, 2006 at 11:53:58 AM

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Thank you SO much for addressing this issue. Please take a moment to peruse these links at: http://whatreallyhappened.com/... type in Spanish Flu to discover how, even though the British Journal of Medicine stated - less than a year ago - that due to the "lack of sustained human to human transmission" they concluded that "AH5N1 avian virus does not currently have the capacity to cause a human pandemic.", yet the U.S. government continually referred to the "coming pandemic". AT THE SAME TIME that the DOD was getting closer and closer to "reconstructing" the long gone, and highly lethal "Spanish Flu". They have now the ability to reproduce the extremely deadly virus. And if you will look on the White House web site, you will see that they have just completed their "three tiered" plan on how to "protect" the public from infection of the Bird Flu ( which is not a danger to humans). Wait until you get a load of what is in store for us! I hope that this is just a "coincidence", but I don't think it is. Mr. Allen, could I please get your feedback on this? I'm very worried for my children and grandson. And, again, I thank you.

by Cheryl Hines-Dronzkowski (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 5 comments) on Thursday, May 11, 2006 at 6:50:58 PM

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Spreading disease Avian influenza has flared anew in recent weeks, spreading among birds in Europe and parts of Africa, and prompting authorities to impose bans on the poultry trade, introduce mass culling and vaccinate poultry flocks. In India, officials launched an emergency campaign to try to contain the virus, which experts fear might mutate to allow it to pass between people, potentially triggering a pandemic. NBC VIDEO • Rethinking strategy Feb. 19: Some European nations are rethinking strategies to fight the virus. NBC's Charles Sabine reports. Nightly News Another official said blood samples of 30 people from bird flu-hit Nandurbar district in western Maharashtra state had been sent for testing for the H5N1 virus, a top official told Reuters. “All these people were showing flu-like symptoms and we have sent their blood and sputum samples for testing for bird flu,” said Vijay Satbir Singh, the state’s top health official, said. India, the world’s second most populous nation and a major poultry producer, reported its first bird flu cases in poultry on Saturday, after 50,000 birds died in Maharashtra. In France, Europe’s biggest poultry producer, the farm ministry confirmed that a duck found dead on Monday in the east of the country had H5N1. France’s H5N1 case was one of several wild ducks found dead near Lyon in a region famous for the quality of its chickens. Elsewhere, authorities in northern Spain are testing a duck found dead in lake to see if it carried H5N1, while Britain said bird flu was now more likely to reach its shores. Europe on alert Germany and Austria have reported more cases of bird flu, while authorities in Bulgaria put a man in an isolation chamber and were testing him for H5N1 after two of his ducks died. The disease has also spread to Egypt, which reported its first cases of H5N1 on Friday, while in Nigeria authorities are culling poultry and urging people not to eat sick birds after outbreaks there. Indonesia confirmed on Saturday that a 19th person had died of bird flu, which has been reported in chickens and other domesticated fowl in most provinces of the sprawling country of 220 million people. The H5N1 virus is known to have infected 171 people worldwide since late 2003, killing 93 of them. Two hundred million birds across Asia, parts of the Middle East, Europe and Africa have died of the virus or been culled. Experts have long feared the consequences of bird flu taking hold in Africa because of poor health and surveillance systems. The U.N. AIDS chief said avian flu posed a major threat to Africa’s fight against its AIDS epidemic, challenging overburdened health care systems and stretching economies. “We are on very thin ice here,” Piot told Reuters in Dar es Salaam, where he was on an inspection mission. “AIDS has made a mess of Africa’s health care systems, and none of the factors that created the AIDS disaster have gone away. But with bird flu, we could be looking at things getting worse in a matter of months, not decades.” Bird flu is also threatening livelihoods by slashing demand for poultry in Europe, Nigeria and parts of India. The total number of dead is 115 people worldwide.

by fpmagnolia (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 2 comments) on Thursday, May 11, 2006 at 8:00:15 PM

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Bird flu verified in India Monday, February 20, 2006, 4:38 PM by John Perkins Officials in India are confirming that nation's first cases of H5N1 avian influenza. According to Dow Jones newswires, the first deaths due to bird flu occurred in January but were not verified until this weekend. Since early February, more than 60,000 birds died as a result of infection in the western state of Mahrashtra. 800,000 birds are scheduled to be culled to prevent the spread the virus and another 200,000 are being vaccinated. The farm where bird flu was discovered will be closed for three months. HEALTH: India Caught Unready for Bird Flu Sandhya Srinivasan MUMBAI, Feb 20 (IPS) - India's first confirmed cases of the highly pathogenic avian influenza or 'bird flu' surfaced in western Maharashtra state, over the weekend, catching authorities unprepared and threatening the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of poultry workers, in this populous, farming country. On Feb.18, the High-security Animal Disease Laboratory (HADL) in Bhopal, central India, announced that the H5N1 virus was found in samples from birds, following mass poultry deaths late January. Since 2004, the laboratory has been testing samples obtained both routinely and from bird deaths, for the highly pathogenic avian influenza strain. Some 40,000 chickens have died on poultry farms in Nandurbar district, a tribal area in Maharashtra, 460 km from this city, the provincial capital. There are 60 poultry farms in the region, mostly ‘layers' or egg-laying chickens. H K Pradhan, director of the HADL, confirmed to IPS over telephone on Monday that samples of birds from the recent poultry deaths in Maharashtra were found to be infected with H5N1. He was responding to the poultry industry's challenges that findings so far were not confirmed to be of the H5N1 strain. India's health minister Anbumani Ramadoss told parliament on Monday that things ''were under control'' and that there is as yet ''no confirmed case of human avian influenza''. Eighty human blood samples have been sent for testing and eight people with flu symptoms hospitalised for observation. The Maharashtra government quickly announced plans to cull between 400,000 and 800,000 birds in the 'alert zone', three km around the affected farms and vaccination of poultry in farms within the 'surveillance zone' of 10 km radius. Farmers are to be compensated at between Rs 20 and Rs 40 (seven- 14 US cents) per chicken -- a gross underestimate of the cost which should be around 70 cents if feed, vaccine and other inputs are included. No compensation was announced for the thousands of workers rendered jobless as farms are shut down. Poultry farm owners in the region believe they will suffer losses worth at least five million dollars. Government teams in some places were met by belligerent farmers, angry at the prospect of losing their livelihoods overnight. Media reports indicate that World Health Organisation (WHO) precautions for slaughter and disposal of poultry are not being followed. Reporters have seen birds being slaughtered and disposed of without basic protection to workers or the environment. There exists no systematic screening of poultry farm workers. There are also reports that no action has been taken in the farm where the deaths were first reported from. India's 8.5 billion dollar poultry industry has contested the government's announcement that birds died of avian flu and has turned to union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar of the National Congress Party (NCP) for support. While WHO representative, Subhash Salunke (former director of Maharashtra state's health services), has stated that the virus was imported from migratory birds landing in the region, John believes commercially transported chicks most likely brought the virus in -- and this could have happened anywhere else in the country, though the government banned import of chicks in February 2004. India is the second largest egg producer and the fifth largest broiler producer in the world, according to NECC, employing more than three million people, mostly in the rural areas. Outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza caused by the H5N1 virus have occurred in South Korea, Vietnam, Japan, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, China and Malaysia. The infection has spread to Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Turkey, Romania, Nigeria, and now India. So far, these outbreaks have resulted in the deaths of more than 1.5 million farm birds, through disease or through culling for outbreak control. Despite these measures, bird flu is now considered endemic (not eradicated, and occurring routinely) in some parts of South-east Asia. It has also been found among migratory birds. When humans have been infected through close contact with poultry, they have suffered an aggressive illness, damaging the lungs, with a case fatality of more than 50 percent. The poultry workers in Nandurbar are mostly impoverished tribals whose malnourished condition increases their risk of infection and the severity of illness. ''A few humans will inevitably become infected; this is a huge epidemic in birds,'' said John. ''The amount of virus in the environment would be so high that most likely several people will be infected. At first it was presumed that the birds were dying of Ranikhed, which is not infectious in humans, so no precautions were taken.'' The H5N1 strain is likely to be highly virulent, said John. ''The virus is spreading all over this region and human to human infection is eventually likely to start happening and when it does, we face a worldwide catastrophe.'' As of Feb. 13, 2006, the WHO recorded 170 laboratory-confirmed cases of human infection, and 92 deaths -- a case fatality rate of more than 50 percent. The most recent death was in Iraq on Feb. 17, 2006. Clinically diagnosed cases without laboratory confirmation are not included in the WHO records. ''Human to human influenza will spread rapidly through droplets,'' says Ashok Mahashur, pulmonologist at the PD Hinduja Hospital. ''In an overcrowded city (like Mumbai) it would be a calamity. If a case is identified they need to isolate the case and all contacts.'' About the only silver lining in an otherwise grim prospect is the strength of India's powerful generic drugs industry. India's health ministry has 750,000 doses of the main antiviral, oseltamvir and is placing further orders. The Swiss patent holder Roche has licenced manufacture to a local company, Hetero, but two other Indian firms, Cipla and Ranbaxy, have started manufacture apparently in defiance of current patent law and in anticipation of a public health emergency. Cipla can make 150,000 doses per week, enough to treat 35,000 people at a cost of 25 dollars per course of treatment. ''We have raw material stocks enough to provide 150,000 doses a week for the next few weeks,'' said Jaideep Gogtay, spokesman for Cipla. The company is also ready to supply the government at the wholesale rate of 16 dollars per course. In November 2005, Cipla declared intention to challenge the patent application filed by Roche for oseltamivir. Roche's patent application is in the patent mailbox in India and Yusuf Hamied, chairperson and managing director of Cipla, has said there is no clarity on the patent. Since India has not yet granted a patent to the drug, Cipla and other companies seem confident of manufacturing it without serious legal opposition. (END/2006) The affected area of Western India is on a prime migratory path, which has led nearby nations to take action. Bangladesh has increased border security in order to fight poultry smuggling and has stepped up the monitoring of farms for outbreaks. Pakistan has banned poultry imports from India, in addition to France and Iran, and will not allow hunters to bring in wild bird carcasses from neighboring nations. India's region of Kashmir has also halted poultry imports.

by fpmagnolia (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 2 comments) on Thursday, May 11, 2006 at 8:16:58 PM

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You're obviously wrong on this one. The politicians you mention may be poised to profit from the bird flu; however, the threat is both a real and a serious one. Too many scientists here in the U.S. and other countries, who can't be manipulated by Washington politics, have pointed out the seriousness of the bird flu threat, reasoning from science, not politics. You should practice responsible media reporting and retract your article.

by William (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 2 comments) on Thursday, May 11, 2006 at 8:47:50 PM

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Looks more like payback from Tyson Chickens. Bird Flu up my ass so I took a Rummy pill. The bird flu out my ass, along with Rummy too!

by Dom Jermano (20 articles, 0 quicklinks, 40 diaries, 930 comments) on Friday, May 12, 2006 at 4:24:30 AM

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