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WHO: Swine Flu Could Trigger Global Pandemic

Unheard of new strain is hybrid resulting from a combination of four different viruses

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars
April 25, 2009

The World Health Organization has warned that a new form of influenza that may have spread from Mexico into the U.S. could develop into a pandemic-type virus.

Hundreds of people in Mexico have been infected and 60 have died from suspected swine flu, while seven human cases have been confirmed in the United States, a World Health Organisation spokeswoman has said.

U.S. labs are still running tests on the Mexican strain of the virus, results of which will be released by the will be released later today by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

At this point it is not yet clear whether the two strains are the same. Some media reports have failed to make this clear, while the Drudge report has jumped in head first declaring an "OUTBREAK" with a giant frothing red headline.

Five of the U.S. cases were recorded in California with a further two in Texas. The first two cases in Southern California appeared almost simultaneously, 100 miles apart, indicating that the virus can silently spread. Neither case was due to contact with swine, and family members had symptoms before and after the confirmed cases, indicating that the H1N1 swine flu is being efficiently transmitted human to human.

Most of the Mexican cases were found in healthy young adults with no known record of prior illness, according to reports.

Schools in Mexico City and the surrounding areas have been temporarily closed and people with flu symptoms have been advised to stay home from work. The Mexican government has launched a huge vaccination campaign.

A constantly updated map of the cases swine flu can be viewed here.

The WHO has also pointed out that pigs have been implicated in the emergence of new influenza viruses responsible for two of the previous century's influenza pandemics, including the 1918 pandemic strain which spread to nearly every part of the world killing an estimated 2.5 to 5% of the human population - somewhere in the region of 50 million to 100 million people.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has reiterated the WHO comments, writing on it's website:

"The infection of humans with a novel influenza A virus infection of animal origins as has happened here is of concern because of the risk, albeit small, that this could represent the appearance of viruses with pandemic potential."

According to scientists at the CDC, genetic analysis indicates that the virus is "highly unusual":

"It is a hybrid that resulted from a combination of four different viruses -- one that typically infects people, one that originated in North American birds and two from pigs in Europe and Asia," Anne Schuchat, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told the Washington Post.

"The good news is all seven of these patients have recovered," she said. The virus appears to be resistant to two drugs normally used to treat the flu, but two others appear to be effective against it.

"This combination has not been recognized before in the U.S. or elsewhere," Schuchat said.

Other scientists have warned that if a pig is simultaneously infected with a human and an avian influenza virus, it can serve as a "mixing vessel" for the two viruses that could combine to create a new more virulent strain.

Though this story has broken in the mainstream media today, authorities have been tracking it for some time. One week ago, the Public Health Agency of Canada contacted health and quarantine services to inform them that Mexican health authorities had advised Canada to be on alert for possible infections.

SWINE FLU AND MARTIAL LAW

Kurt Nimmo
infowars
April 26, 2009

As the AP video here reports, countries around the world are reacting to the Swine Flu (H1N1 ) outbreak in Mexico with quarantines and travel warnings. The United Nation’s World Health Organization convened an emergency meeting Saturday to develop a response to the “pandemic potential” emerging from Mexico (although the threat is apparently not considered serious enough to prompt officials in the United States to close the border).

If the outbreak indeed turns into a global pandemic, as WHO seems to think, we can expect not only quarantines, but the imposition of martial law in the United States. In fact, the government has planned for just such a scenario for some time now.

In late 2007, the Bush administration issued a “directive” establishing a “National Strategy for Public Health and Medical Preparedness” based on Biodefense for the 21st Century (see PDF). HSPD 21, short for Homeland Security Presidential Directive (signing statement bypassing Congress), defines “catastrophic health event” as “any natural or manmade incident, including terrorism, that results in a number of ill or injured persons sufficient to overwhelm the capabilities of immediate local and regional emergency response and health care systems.”

HSPD 21 established an academic Joint Program for Disaster Medicine and Public Health housed at a National Center for Disaster Medicine and Public Health at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. It teamed up the Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Defense to “carry out respective civilian and military missions.”

Prior to this, in May of 2007, the U.S. military had the foresight to “plan for a possible avian flu pandemic that could kill as many as three million people in the United States in as little as six weeks,” according to Yahoo News. Guidelines and “planning assumptions for US military services and combatant commands” were published in a document entitled “Implementation Plan for Pandemic Influenza.”

“Possible scenarios include US troops being called in to put down riots, guard pharmaceutical plants and shipments, and help restrict the movement of people inside the country and across its borders,” Yahoo summarizes. “The plan envisions fast moving, catastrophic waves of disease that would overwhelm health facilities and cripple the ability of state and local authorities to provide even basic commodities or services.”

The military would be used to restrict traffic within states to contain the spread of the virus, according to the document. “It said the military will be called on to evacuate non-infected people from areas abroad that are having problems, and to help allies.” In other words, think FEMA during Hurricane Katrina ~ the relocations, the toxic camps, the confiscation of firearms.

A key military role will be to distribute medical supplies and medications and provide security for the production and shipment of vaccines on orders of the president.

DoD’s “Implementation Plan for Pandemic Influenza” proposes nothing less than the militarization of health care. In short, the military — provided to “augment civilian law enforcement” — will be used to vaccinate the population, as “directed by the president.”

Considering the above, the purpose of the brand spanking new KBR camps ostensibly built for “an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs” comes into focus.

As Michel Chossudovsky wrote in 2005, the “hidden agenda consists in using the threat of a pandemic and/or the plight of a natural disaster as a pretext to establish military rule” and “suspend Constitutional government and allow the Military to intervene in civilian affairs in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.”

Bush said as much when he announced that in the event of a flu outbreak in the U.S. he would consider using the military to “effect a quarantine” and place National Guard troops under federal, rather than state, control. Dr. Irwin Redlener, associate dean of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and director of its National Center for Disaster Preparedness, told the Associated Press that a law enforcement role for the military would be an “extraordinarily Draconian measure.”

Since Redlener made his comment, the military, under the Northern Command, according to the Army Times, announced the transfer of the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team and its “dedicated assignment… as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.” Training for homeland operations commenced last year at Fort Stewart and at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs.

Over the last few months, the military has steadily increased its collaboration with local law enforcement in violation of Posse Comitatus, most notably and egregiously in Alabama and Tennessee (see Damage Control: U.S. Army Investigates Deploying Troops in Samson, Alabama Massive Checkpoint Operation in Tennessee Violated Posse Comitatus, Fourth Amendment). and

The federalization and militarization of law enforcement has continued apace since 1994 when the DoD issued a directive allowing military commanders to take emergency actions in domestic situations.

Is it possible a mutant influenza virus would be used as an excuse to impose martial law now that the military is in place ?

“Our best intelligence estimate is that pandemic Avian Flu has already been created through genetic engineering in the United States, fusing the deadly genome of the 1918 Pandemic, misnamed the ‘Spanish Flu’, with the DNA of the innocuous H5N1 virus in a growth medium of human kidney cells, according to the National Institutes of Health and the vaccine’s manufacturer. Some virologists believe that this would insure that the man-made mutant virus recognizes human cells and knows how to invade them,” writes Rima E. Laibow, MD, head of the Natural Solutions Foundation, a citizen watchdog group monitoring the pharmaceutical industry.

Laibow underscores what we stress above: “Given the shockingly obvious lack of any threat from an un-weaponized H5N1 virus, how can we explain the Bush Administration spending billions of dollars preparing each of the 50 States, for what it calls the ‘inevitable Bird Flu pandemic,’ which they say could kill half or more of all Americans and similar numbers of people around the globe?”

Of course, the current swine flu is not H5N1. It is the H1N1 virus. It is however an odd duckling with a suspicious composition: the virus contains genes of human, bird and swine origin.

As the virus spreads, more and more people — and even a few virologists — believe H1N1 is a human-engineered pathogen. On April 25, the journalist Wayne Madsen wrote:

Our Mexico City source said a top scientist for the United Nations, who has examined the outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in Africa, as well as HIV/AIDS victims, concluded that H1N1 possesses certain transmission “vectors” that suggest that new flu strain has been genetically-manufactured as a military biological warfare weapon. The UN expert believes that Ebola, HIV/AIDS, and the current A-H1N1 swine flu virus are biological warfare agents.

Past swine flu outbreaks have been spread from pigs to humans, who then passed the flu on to other humans. However, with A-H1N1, there have been no reported infections of pigs. In fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), A-H1N1 has gene segments from North American swine, bird and human flu strains and a segment from Eurasian swine flu. Costa Rica, Brazil, and Peru have issued alerts to check all incoming passengers from Mexico at border crossings, airports, and seaports for symptoms of the swine flu.

Meanwhile, in the United States, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has instituted “passive surveillance” of travelers entering the country.

Napolitano announced this on Sunday. On Friday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it was too late to contain the swine flu outbreak in the United States.

Swine Flu: Potential for Martial Law

Is Swine Flu A Biological Weapon?

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, April 27, 2009

There are some factors that suggest the swine flu killing people in Mexico may be a biological weapon, but obviously no such conclusion can be drawn at this time. The World Health Organization and the U.S. government have been quick to deny such claims.

The swine flu virus is described as a completely new strain, an intercontinental mixture of human, avian and swine viruses. Tellingly, there have been no reported A-H1N1 infections of pigs.

According to a source known to former NSA official Wayne Madsen, “A top scientist for the United Nations, who has examined the outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in Africa, as well as HIV/AIDS victims, concluded that H1N1 possesses certain transmission “vectors” that suggest that the new flu strain has been genetically-manufactured as a military biological warfare weapon.

Madsen claims that his source, and another in Indonesia, “Are convinced that the current outbreak of a new strain of swine flu in Mexico and some parts of the United States is the result of the introduction of a human-engineered pathogen that could result in a widespread global pandemic, with potentially catastrophic consequences for domestic and international travel and commerce.”

However, it’s important to stress that it is far too early to make this assumption. We have to bear in mind that the number of victims has been comparatively low when one considers the fact that hundreds of thousands in Mexico contract infectious diseases every year related to poverty like tuberculosis and malaria.

Fort Detrick, the U.S. Army Medical Command installation that was the source of the 2001 anthrax attacks, is again attracting suspicion in light of the swine flu panic after it was revealed that criminal investigators are probing whether virus samples recently went missing from its biolabs.

Chad Jones, spokesman for Fort Meade, said CID is investigating the possibility of missing virus samples from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases,” reports The Frederick News.

In February, USAMRIID halted their work when virus samples were discovered that were not listed in its inventory. Criminal investigators from the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division unit at Fort Meade are now probing whether virus samples are missing from the Army’s top biolab, which also studies pathogens including ebola, anthrax and plague.

Obviously, in light of the current swine flu scare, and the new strain’s possible synthetic origin, the fact that virus samples may have gone missing from the same Army research lab from which the 2001 anthrax strain was released is extremely disturbing.

A 2008 FBI and DOJ investigation concluded that Bruce Edwards Irvins, a microbiologist, vaccinologist, and senior biodefense researcher at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Fort Detrick, Maryland, was responsible for mailing anthrax to members of Congress and the media in September and October 2001.

The fact that Irvins apparently committed suicide shortly before the announcement led many to suspect that he was a patsy in a wider plot. Despite the suspicious circumstances, no autopsy was carried out on Irvins’ body. His attorney was certain that Irvins, who had cooperated with the 6-year investigation, was innocent of the five anthrax deaths.

The Department of Justice initially considered Dr. Steven Jay Hatfill to be a strong suspect in the anthrax attacks, but he later sued the government and won $5.8 million in damages. A New York Times piece on Irvins’ suicide asked the hypothetical question: “What if Dr. Hatfill had committed suicide in 2002, as friends feared he might? Would the investigators have released their evidence and announced that the perpetrator was dead?”

Fears that a mass pandemic was being readied as a biological attack have rumbled on in the conspiracy community ever since 9/11. Investigators point to the highly unusual number of deaths of top microbiologists to suggest that people with knowledge of the program are being eliminated.