Tag Archives: Ebola

Transcending The Soul Hackers

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By Daniel Spaulding

Source: 21st Century Wire

With the closing of another year marked by media hysteria, the narrative that the crazed hermit North Korean regime orchestrated the hacking of the Japanese-owned Hollywood company Sony, thereby assaulting our precious freedom to crank out cultural subversion, has quickly begun to fall apart.

From the beginning the story never held neither consistency nor any forensic evidence. Yet the notion that ruthless Korean dictator Kim Jong Un wants to keep them from the movies, the modern substitute for the West’s emptying churches, has sent cable news consumers into a panic.

Elusive North Korean hackers have joined ISIS, Ebola, and a resurgent Russia on the ever- lengthening list of threats that government and media tell us we must fear. As it stands now, with the script quickly breaking down, the media and government (really two tentacles of the same power structure) are bound to quickly divert attention elsewhere; a new national security villain will be constructed and dangled in front of the attention-deficit public.

Meanwhile in France, several young radical Muslims have been attacking their host society, attempting to murder French police officers and Christmas shoppers. As has become standard fare in our era of political correctness, the French government quickly sought to dismiss the cosplay jihadists as having nothing to do with terrorism, casting them instead as a random assortment of mentally ill individuals senselessly lashing out. Similar ISIS-inspired escapades by marginal, ressentiment-driven characters have transpired in recent months, not only in France, but also in Canada, the United States, and Australia. Government authorities in these nations were equally quick to dismiss such attacks by self-styled holy warriors as aberrations that should not be seen as part of some wider pattern, lest the West’s entire secular multicultural project come under deeper scrutiny.

It is in this environment that the 20th century German philosopher Josef Pieper observed that while modern man is “looking out for the powers of corruption in a mistaken direction,” the lords of the technocracy “establish their rule before his eyes.” Modern man is diverted down a multitude of false paths toward dead ends, but he remains all too often oblivious to what is happening right under his very nose. His ignorance, often willful, lends strength to those who would seek even more power to control and manipulate him.

So while the public is held in a state of anxiety over North Korea and other manufactured phantoms, media reports have surfaced (and not for the first time) revealing that US police departments are utilizing their position in the new security architecture to scan and monitor social media and other online activities. In his endless benevolence, Big Brother is peering over your shoulder in order to develop a color-coded “threat rating.” Hence, as the 20th century science fiction writer Philip K. Dick foresaw, the age of “pre-crime” is upon us. As is normative in our times, the blatant power grabs of the surveillance state go mostly unnoticed and unprotested by the masses.

There is a serious disconnect between what the elite tell us we must fear and the “threats” they themselves utilize. While do-it-yourself jihadists (often themselves manipulated by domestic intelligence agencies) and other manifestations of underclass violence are brushed aside, those who dare openly express their dissatisfaction with the policies of our beloved rulers risk finding themselves listed as threats by the surveillance state. Leviathan grows ever larger and more pervasive in the name of security, only to use its power not against actual threats, but those it claims to protect. The Swiss philosopher Éric Werner provides some illumination here:

The current function of the police is not to fight insecurity. It is, which is quite different, to control and monitor people. Not just some people, as claimed by authorities (offenders, criminals, terrorists, etc.), but all of them. Even if the whole country turned into a no-go zone, the surveillance society would keep functioning… We do not develop the surveillance society in the fight against insecurity; rather, insecurity is used as an excuse to justify the surveillance society.

He further notes that the ruling politicians and bureaucrats’ real fear “is not insecurity, but rather potential retaliations against insecurity.”

We must ask what that oft-used buzzword “freedom” actually means in the modern West. For many, the ability to stream an inverted universe of pornography, or order off of Pizza Hut’s “subconscious menu” from their iPads – is enough assurance that they are still free, but the ever-expanding Leviathan state and the spread of vapid consumerism should give us all more than a moment’s pause. If freedom is reducible to a dazzling array of consumer options and self-gratification, why is that worth dying for? We must strive toward being higher than the perpetually consuming, soulless homo economicus.

In order to resist and confront the forces arrayed against him and to achieve a higher freedom, man must begin with repentance and spiritual reformation. His soul must be cleansed of sloth and apathy, as well as the other enslaving vices that leave him open to fear, manipulation, and despair; or as Ernst Jünger put it, one “must be free in order to become free.” The German adventurer further said that for the spiritually free man, “this world filled with oppression and oppressive agents,” will only “serve to make his freedom visible in all its splendor.”

The great Russian thinker Nicolas Berdyaev, who himself openly defied the murderous Bolsheviks who overran his homeland, taught that the “victory over slavery is a spiritual act,” and that “social and spiritual liberation ought to go hand in hand.” Repentance and spiritual resistance are the first, and most important, steps in confronting the powers of our age.

Author Daniel Spaulding earned a BA in English literature from Bridgewater State University. He currently works and lives in Seoul, South Korea. He enjoys reading philosophy, history, politics, and science fiction. 

 

Ebola News Gives Me a Guilty Thrill. Am I Crazy?

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By Abraham Riesman

Source: Pacific Standard

What it means to feel a little excited about the prospect of a horrific event.

Folks speak blithely about their guilty pleasures. But if you get a little thrill when you contemplate the worldwide obliteration of society in a horrific Armageddon, have you crossed a line from “person with a guilty pleasure” to “person who is a dangerous psychopath”?

This was a question that wrecked most of one afternoon following a discussion of Ebola with some co-workers. We were brainstorming ideas for stories about the awful pandemic, and the topic of American preparedness came up. Although Ebola seems decently isolated on our shores, public health officials are girding our infrastructure for worst-case scenarios.

I made the following confession: Although obviously the West African Ebola crisis sickens and saddens me, and although I of course don’t want Ebola to run rampant … whenever I hear about the idea of our nation crumbling in an apocalyptic plague, I get an amoral twinge of excitement. It’s a tiny but unavoidable rush, not unlike the burst one feels when a rollercoaster begins to crest a hill, or when Darth Vader flicks on his lightsaber for the climactic battle of The Empire Strikes Back. I feel a similar frisson when it seems like a geopolitical crisis is bringing us to the brink of World War III (all summer, every time I read about ISIS’s march, I felt a jolt). I’m not proud of the way I feel, but it never goes away.

“If it’s not in the hypothetical and you’re seeing the devastation and you’re more excited than distraught, then you’re in the psychopathic range.”

Surely, I thought, at least some of my journalist coworkers could relate. They could not. “Dude,” one muttered to me. “That’s kinda fucked up.” Red-faced, I took to Gchat and iMessage to see if any non-work friends felt a similar electricity when they considered a real-world apocalypse. “Not really,” said one. “I don’t get scared, but I don’t get excited, either,” said another. “I don’t even want to be homeless in America, much less experience The Road,” said one of my dearest pals.

My pondering had turned to mild panic. Was I crazy? Or at least, in the immortal words of Matchbox 20, just a little unwell? I sought journalists’ favorite kind of professional help: I called up some researchers, specifically, in this case, those who had studied humanity’s fixation on end-of-the-world scenarios. I began each interview by asking if I was crazy for having my shameful thrills about apocalyptic news.

“I have that, too!” exclaimed University of Minnesota neuroscientist Shmuel Lissek (to my great relief). The idea of Armageddon “wakens your autonomic nervous system,” he says. “Your heart starts beating faster, you start breathing faster, your sweat glands engage. There’s a certain exhilaration from that idea, and one can enjoy that kind of arousal, especially if there’s a part of you that knows it won’t happen.”

Lissek’s research on the human fear-response suggests that apocalyptic exhilaration is actually the product of useful evolutionary traits. “We’d rather have a false alarm than miss a potential threat,” he says. “Organisms endowed with brain circuitry leading them to take even minor threats”—such as the unlikely prospect of a worldwide Ebola outbreak—”seriously are more likely to pass on their genes.” Plus, he says, “Life gets boring with the in and out routine of our daily lives, so having something like [the apocalypse] be a possibility is exciting.”

Of course, cautions Lissek, some balance is in order here. “When the apocalypse is in the hypothetical, it’s normal for the excitement to be stronger than the fear,” he says. “If it’s not in the hypothetical and you’re seeing the devastation and you’re more excited than distraught, then you’re in the psychopathic range.”

But University of California-San Diego psychologist Nicholas Christenfeld has a slightly different take. He agrees that my feelings were in the normal range for humans, but said that those feelings were the result of an irrational aspect of human cognition.

“If you hear about a horrible tragedy that kills 1,200 people, there’s some part of us that thinks, Just 1,200? But 120,000 would be so much cooler!” Christenfeld says it’s part of a quirky divide in human thought when we experience or hear about any kind of massive event, be it a natural disaster or a well-executed air-show performance from the Blue Angels. On the one hand, we recognize the valence of our emotions—a judgment about whether the thing we’re experiencing is good or bad. But we also recognize the magnitude of the emotion—the degree to which it’s big or rare.

“In humans, to some extent, the valence is secondary,” Christenfeld says. “One could run up the magnitude and make things more exciting and engrossing, regardless of whether the thing you’re thinking about is good or bad.” He compares it to the experience of enjoying a tragic movie in which the protagonists die. “You’ll say, ‘It was so gripping! I wept!’ It’s not that you liked that they died, but you liked the intensity of the emotion,” he says. “These apocalypses are tapping into that same two-factor experience. The vast scale of the destruction would be awesome, in the literal definition of that word.”

Other experts suspected my excitement might have to do with contemplating the world that would come after a society-destroying plague. “We’re so stressed and overloaded, that you can start to think, Wouldn’t life be simpler if things just broke down?” says Jeff Greenberg, a social psychologist at the University of Arizona. “As long as we’re among the survivors, life gets simpler. In a world like ours right now, the idea of being heroic and doing the right thing is so complex that we don’t know what it might even be. But in a post-apocalyptic world, we’d have simpler ways to know what the right thing is.”

Along similar lines, University of California-Davis sociologist John R. Hall drew a parallel between my thinking and people’s endless fascination with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. “When you have a phenomenon like 9/11, it’s literally a disclosure, which is the Greek meaning of the word,” he says. “It unveils an understanding of the world that is beyond what any of us possessed before or could’ve imagined having. Apocalyptic events seriously draw into question people’s taken-for-granted understanding of their worlds.” In other words, the end of the world as we know it can show the world as it always really was, beneath the veneer of stability.

These conversations put me somewhat at ease about my own mental health (at least in this particular matter). And all of the experts I spoke with emphasized that, as long as I don’t have a desire to bring about the end times (I don’t), I pose no threat to society.

But a new question popped up: If humans are predisposed to find apocalyptic scenarios exciting, couldn’t that numb our feelings of urgency about preventing the apocalypse? Even if we don’t want to speed it along, would my (and others’) desire for thrills subconsciously keep me from wanting to avert disaster? None of the experts I spoke with had a conclusive answer, though none of them seemed too worried about it. However, guilty creature that I am, I raced to the website of Doctors Without Borders and made a donation. I, like all sane people, continue to hope the crippling crisis in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea will come to an end soon.

Speaking of guilt, there’s one last tidbit I should mention. Greenberg, the social psychologist, pointed out that my choice of profession might also predispose me to my extremely guilty pleasure. “You’re in a business where bad news is exciting, right?” he asks. “The apocalypse would give you more stuff to write about.” Touché.

Privatized Ebola

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Red Cross workers burry 14 May Italian nun Dinaros

By Margaret Kimberly

Source: Black Agenda Report

“The world of private dollars played a role in consigning thousands of people to death.”

Sierra Leone has waved the white flag in the face of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD). Its meager infrastructure has buckled under the onslaught of a disease which could have been curtailed. The announcement that infected patients will be treated at home because there is no longer the capacity to treat them in hospitals is a surrender which did not have to happen. Not only did Europe and the United States turn a blind eye to sick and dying Africans but they did so with the help of an unlikely perpetrator.

The World Health Organization is “the directing and coordinating authority for health within the United Nations system.” Its very name implies that it takes direction from and serves the needs of people all over the world but the truth is quite different. The largest contributor to the WHO budget is not a government. It is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which provides more funding than either the United States or the United Kingdom. WHO actions and priorities are no longer the result of the consensus of the world’s people but top down decision making from wealthy philanthropists.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation may appear to be a savior when it provides $300 million to the WHO budget, but those dollars come with strings attached. WHO director general Dr. Margaret Chan admitted as much when she said, “My budget [is] highly earmarked, so it is driven by what I call donor interests.” Instead of being on the front line when a communicable disease crisis appears, it spends its time administering what Gates and his team have determined is best.

The Ebola horror continues as it has for the last ten months in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The cruelty of the world’s lack of concern for Africa and all Africans in the diaspora was evident by the inaction of nations and organizations that are supposed to respond in times of emergencies. While African governments and aid organizations sounded the alarm the WHO did little because its donor driven process militates against it. The world of private dollars played a role in consigning thousands of people to death.

Critics of the Gates Foundation appeared long before this current Ebola outbreak. In 2008 the WHO’s malaria chief, Dr. Arata Kochi, complained about the conflicts of interest created by the foundation. In an internal memo leaked to the New York Times he complained that the world’s top malaria researchers were “locked up in a ‘cartel’ with their own research funding being linked to those of others within the group.” In other words, the standards of independent peer reviewed research were cast aside in order to please the funder.

Private philanthropy is inherently undemocratic. It is a top down driven process in which the wealthy individual tells the recipient what they will and will not do. This is a problematic system for charities of all kinds and is disastrous where the health of world’s people is concerned. Health care should be a human right, not a charity, and the world’s governments should determine how funds to protect that right are spent. One critic put it very pointedly. “…the Gates Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates, do not believe in the public sector, they do not believe in a democratic, publically owned, publically accountable system.”

There is little wonder why the Ebola outbreak caught the WHO so flat footed as they spent months making mealy mouthed statements but never coordinating an effective response. The Gates foundation is the WHO boss, not governments, and if they weren’t demanding action, then the desperate people affected by Ebola weren’t going to get any.

Privatization of public resources is a worldwide scourge. Education, pensions, water, and transportation are being taken out of the hands of the public and given to rich people and corporations. The Ebola crisis is symptomatic of so many others which go unaddressed or improperly addressed because no one wants to bite the hands that do the feeding.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged an additional $50 million to fight the current Ebola epidemic but that too is problematic, as Director General Chan describes. “When there’s an event, we have money. Then after that, the money stops coming in, then all the staff you recruited to do the response, you have to terminate their contracts.” The WHO should not be lurching from crisis to crisis, SARS, MERS, or H1N1 influenza based on the whims of philanthropy. The principles of public health should be carried out by knowledgeable medical professionals who are not dependent upon rich people for their jobs.

The Gates are not alone in using their deep pockets to confound what should be publicly held responsibilities. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced that he was contributing $25 million to fight Ebola. His donation will go to the Centers for Disease Control Foundation. Most Americans are probably unaware that such a foundation even exists. Yet there it is, run by a mostly corporate board which will inevitably interfere with the public good. The WHO and its inability to coordinate the fight against Ebola tells us that public health is just that, public. If the CDC response to Ebola in the United States fails it may be because it falls prey to the false siren song of giving private interests control of the people’s resources and responsibilities.

 

Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

How a Minimal Ebola Outbreak Will Devastate the U.S. Economy

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By Dave Hodges

Source: Investment Watch

A World Bank analysis of the economic impact of Ebola on national economies suggests that only a minimal outbreak of the virus could very well devastate the United States and its economic interests.

Economic Consequences of the Perceived Threat of Ebola

There are two dominant theories related to the present Ebola crisis. One theory states that the media and certain government sponsored agencies such as the CDC, NIH and the FDA are hyping the Ebola crisis to promote the roll-out of mandatory vaccines. This notion promotes the belief that Ebola will not impact that many people but the fear being promoted will drive people to help people like Bill Gates make a fortune from the inevitable vaccines that  will follow this crisis. The theory certainly has merit.

The second theory postulates that Ebola will serve as a depopulation instrument AND the elite (e.g. Bill Gates) will make money on the demise of much of humanity through the implementation of mandatory vaccines, while Ebola rips through the population claiming millions of lives.

This second theory also proposes that the super-elite need not worry about succumbing to Ebola because of the fact that there are at least two vaccines and one vaccine, the 2006 human-tested Crucell vaccine, is being withheld from the public and is not being reported on in the media despite a paper trail pointing to its existence and possible efficacy as a treatment agent in the fight against Ebola. This fact has given rise to the possibility that the Crucell vaccine is effective, but the majority of the population will be receiving the hastily prepared and subsequently dangerous GSK vaccine. On the surface, this would seem like crazy thinking. However, it is actually very logical thinking because the Obama administration refuses to shut down air travel from West Africa or to shut down our porous border while trying to prevent the possibility of bioterrorism involving Ebola. Any prudent person would shut down the entry points of Ebola into the U.S. Therefore, we need to be asking what does the Obama administration know that the rest of us do not?

Which of the two theories is true? In terms of economic collapse, it does not matter which is true because either scenario will result in economic devastation.

The globalists are already warning the world about what lies ahead. On October 8, 2014, the World Bank warned about economic consequences of Ebola outbreaks on West African economies.

 “With Ebola’s potential to inflict massive economic costs on Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone and the rest of their neighbors in West Africa, the international community must find ways to get past logistical roadblocks and bring in more doctors and trained medical staff, more hospital beds, and more health and development support to help stop Ebola in its tracks,” says Jim Yong Kim, the President of the World Bank Group.

In fact, the World Bank has published an economic analysis and a series of projections regarding the impacted Ebola countries in West Africa.
ebola-economics-in-africa

Ebola’s Critical Mass Impact On the U.S. Economy

What is the threshold of GDP loss that a country like the United States can endure before the wheels come off of the economy? In other words, how much of a percentage impact would Ebola have to have on the economy to devastate most businesses? Recently, the Washington Post published figures which set the historical average profit margin for a U.S. business at 4.6%. This means that if the spin-off effects of Ebola exceeds a 5% impact on the economy, the wheels will quickly come off the U.S. economy. Business failures will lead to a Stock Market collapse. Because the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed under Clinton, the Banks would be the next to fail  because they are recklessly tied to  underwriting and insuring many investment events in the Stock Market and individual savings and retirement accounts would disappear as well when the banks collapse.

Quickly, the country would fall into chaos. As widespread as the cascading economic collapse would become, no amount of martial law would contain the chaos.
Turn your attention to the World Bank chart, listed above, with regard to the projected economic impact on Liberia based upon low, medium and high projected effects  of an Ebola outbreak on their economy. Pay attention to the percentage of loss of their economic base listed in the above World Bank projections.

 

Ebola’s Impact on Liberia             Percentage of Impact

Low Impact From Ebola                          – 3.4%

Medium Impact From Ebola                   –  5.8%

High Impact From Ebola                         –  12.0%

 

Some are wondering why Liberia was chosen to illustrate the economic impact of Ebola and what this could potentially mean to the United States economy? Sierra Leone and Guinea have very primitive economies compared to Liberia, therefore, the impact of Ebola on their respective economies would be insignificant as a basis of comparison to the United States. To some extent, a Liberian comparison is invalid on its face because the Liberians do not have anything close to a 3,000 mile salad. In Liberia, there is virtually no “Just In Time” (JIT) delivery which forms the backbone of our service economy here in the United States. However, the Liberian numbers give us some idea of what we could expect in the U.S. when Ebola gains a foothold.

Since the economy of the United States is based upon JIT and our economic institutions are considerably more well-integrated and intertwined than they are in Liberia, what do you suppose would be the low, medium and high impact on the United States? Undeniably, the impact of Ebola as a factor of economic devastation would be catastrophically higher. The social consequences are devastatingly higher as well because a lower percentage of Americans are able to provide their own food supply as compared to Liberia. There are no numbers that I can point to with regard to the low, medium and high impact effect of Ebola on the U.S. economy except to say that any analysis would place the percentage of impact at a far higher rate than the World Bank projections listed for Liberia. It is safe to conclude that even a low impact effect of Ebola on the U.S. economy would exceed the 5% threshold.

When Going Out In Public Becomes Too Much of a Risk

As any politician, sociologist or policeman will tell you that the fabric that holds society together is voluntary conformity and trust. Most Americans obey most laws because we understand the importance of societal cooperation as opposed to the dangers of living in a state of anarchy. The other factor that binds society together is trust. One of the key elements of trust in America is that our citizens trust the fact that it is safe to go out in public. And going out in public is where much of America’s economic business is conducted (i.e. restaurants, movie theaters, shopping malls, football games, concerts, etc.).

Mike Adams, appearing as a guest on The Common Sense Show on October 6, 2014, captured this notion when he stated that when Americans lose trust in the belief that it is safe to be in crowds, the impact on our way of life, and especially on our economy, will be catastrophic.

To illustrate just how devastating the effects can be on the economy when people lose trust in the belief that it is safe to go out in public, let’s take a look at the immediate reaction from the citizens of Dallas when only one Ebola case, Thomas Duncan, surfaced in the city.

When it was announced that Thomas Duncan had contact with some Dallas school children, we saw the immediate impact as Dallas moms began to keep their children home from school. Officials in Louisiana refused to receive Thomas Duncan’s property. Subsequently, and according to the AP and Veolia North America, Duncan’s effects were  disposed of in drums taken from a Dallas apartment where Duncan became ill and were burned at the company’s incinerator in Port Arthur., TX.

It does not matter what I write or what someone broadcasts on their talk show about Ebola, once people perceive there is a threat, even a low-level threat posed by someone like Thomas Duncan, the people will panic. Rationality will not be part of the decision making process. Fear will take over.

How long would police, fire, EMT personnel, hospital personnel, people that service our water supplies and the doctors that service our infirm, stay on the job following an Ebola outbreak? An examination of this question, by using Hurricane Katrina, as a comparison, tells us that by the third day, virtually all essential  services would be seriously compromised because of personnel defections. In this scenario, how would chronically ill people receive their medications? How would people get emergency appendectomies or other emergency medical procedures?  There will be no “911, what’s your emergency”? The factors that bind society together will quickly unravel  as Ebola spreads even on a relatively low level of impact.

What can you do to prepare if the economy collapses because of the economic impact of Ebola?

CBD Protective Against Ebola Virus

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by David B. Allen M.D.

Source: Cannabis Digest

There is good scientific evidence that cannabinoids, and in particular Cannabidiol (CBD), may offer control of the immune system and in turn provide protection from viral infections (4). Cannabis has already been recognized to inhibit fungus and bacteria and can be considered a new class of antimicrobial because of the different mechanism of action from other antimicrobials. (1)

Ebola is a complex RNA viral organism that causes the cell to engulf it by pinocytosis, and then the virus hijacks the cell to replicate itself. This replication can involve many mutations in the RNA code that make it difficult to impossible to create an effective vaccine. There are U.S. Patents showing evidence that Cannabinoids have significant anti-viral activity. (3) (4)

Normally any virus infected cells will produce surface proteins that are identified as foreign. The Immune system attacks these cells when the surface protein is identified as foreign.  The Ebola virus infection causes the cell to produce proteins that hide the virus from the immune system. The viral proteins are sterically shielded, i.e. “hidden” from view, thereby hindering cellular (and thus viral) destruction by the immune system.  This mechanism allows the RNA virus to hide the infected cell by shielding it from view from the immune system.

The cause of death by this virus is the body’s own immune response to the viral infection. This is what causes the mortality and morbidity of this infection.  Subsequently, the virus triggers the immune killer cells to release the enzymes (cytokines) they hold. This release of enzymes causes other lymphocyte to release even more Cytokines in a Storm of release. This is properly termed a Cytokine Storm.

Causes small blood clots to form in all arterioles, called; DIC or Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation.
Causes a massive Coagulopathy where the blood will not to clot properly simultaneously with the DIC (Bleeding and clotting occur at the same time.) Toxic Shock Syndrome occurs when the cytokines release causes the blood vessels to dilate to such an extent that a shock state exists.

Cannabinoids are proven to reduce and prevent Toxic Shock and DIC (2)

The Ebola virus also attacks the adhesions between cells caused by the immune Killer cells to release of VEGF (Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor) which result in the destruction of the Tight Junction between cells and causes a fluid leakage between cells until bleeding occurs. The inhibition of VEGF by cannabinoids prevent the cellular junctions from haemorrhage.

Cannabinoids Inhibit VEGF and inhibit Glioma brain tumors growth by this mechanism. (6) It is reasonable to predict that inhibition of VEGF and other Cytokines by Cannabinoids during an Ebola infection will help the survival of this deadly disease.  (6 and 7) Stopping the release of Cytokines will be a key feature of treatment of this deadly disease.

The discovery and application of the Endocannabinoid Signalling System is proving to be the control of virtually all diseases of mankind. Cannabinoids are emerging as a new class of drugs that treat infections of bacteria, fungi and virus by different mechanisms of action not found in any other class of drug. (1)

Cannabinoids are proving to have significant cidal (killer) activity to many viruses, including hepatitis C and the HIV virus. Cannabinoids down-regulate (inhibit) the immune response to the infection (2) (3). The cited U.S. Patents (3 and 4) are proof that cannabinoids inhibit many different virus strains from replicating. These patents also prove cannabinoids decreases the body’s immune over stimulated response to the viral infection.  Claims that are made in these U.S. Patents include the following:

(refer to patent for exact quote.)

  • A method of treating HIV disease by the direct inhibition of viral replication using a cannabinol derivative of claim 2. (see patent)
  • The cannabinol derivatives of claim 10 wherein the cannabinol derivative of claim  is used to treat HIV disease by the direct inhibition of viral replication. (see patent)
  • A method of treating diseases of immune dysfunction which are the result of infectious origin such as Simian Immunodeficiency Virus, Feline Immunodeficiency Virus, Herpes Simplex virus, Epstein-Barr virus, Cytomegalovirus, hepatitis B and C, influenza virus, rhinovirus and mycobacterial infections using the cannabinol derivatives of claim 2. (see patent)
  • This United States Patent, proves cannabinoids treats this immune dysfunction that becomes what is known as a Cytokine Storm caused by different viral infections. (4)

In Summation; The US Patents prove down regulation of the immune system by cannabinoids may be a key in survival of HIV and may indeed translate into survival for Ebola patients. The direct Killing or Cidal effect of Cannabinoids is proven in HIV infections,(4) but not yet in Ebola. Inhibition of VEGF is crucial to prevent endothelial leakage and haemorrhage.

Because cannabis is so very safe especially under doctor supervision, I believe it is crucial for the medical community to start human trials on survivability of Ebola infected patients regardless of the political restraints.

 

David B. Allen M.D.
retired Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgeon
Medical Director, Cannabis Sativa, Inc. (Cali215doc@gmail.com)

 

References

1)   Antibacterial Cannabinoids from Cannabis sativa: A Structure−Activity Study Antibacterial Cannabinoids from Cannabis sativa: A Structure−Activity Study; Giovanni Appendino et al. The School of Pharmacy, University of London

2)   Protection Against Septic Shock and Suppression of Tumor Necrosis Factor α and Nitric Oxide Production by Dexanabinol (HU-211), a Nonpsychotropic Cannabinoid Ruth Gallily1,
Aviva Yamin1, Departments of Immunology The Hebrew University, Faculty of Medicine, Jerusalem,  Rehovot, Israel.

3)    Cannabinoid derivatives US patent 20070179135 A1

4)    Treatment of HIV and diseases of immune dysregulation US 20080108647 A1

5)    Curr Pharm Des. 2006;12(24):3135-46. Cannabinoids, immune system and cytokine network. Massi PVaccani AParolaro D, University of Insubria, Via A. da Giussano 10, 21052 Busto Arsizio (VA), Italy

6)    Cancer Res August 15, 2004 64; 5617 Cannabinoids Inhibit the Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor Pathway in Gliomas Cristina Blázquez HYPERLINK “http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/64/16/5617.full”1,

7)    How Cannabis Might Keep Coronary Stents Open Longer
http://www.cbds.com/…/how-cannabis-might-keep-coronary-stents-open-longer
Jun 10, 2014 David Allen M.D.

US Has More Sanctions Against Russia Than Against Ebola

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By Paul Craig Roberts

Source: PaulCraigRoberts.org

We have known since . . . well, when haven’t we known that our public officials are incompetent [more specifically, incompetent at tasks serving the public interest]. Their incompetence is always expensive, but now it risks a worldwide ebola pandemic.

With so little known about a deadly disease, one would think that with ebola on the rampage in three west Africa countries, air flights to and from these countries would be halted.

When riots or kidnappings present dangers in foreign lands, the State Department issues a travel advisory and warns, and sometimes prevents, Americans from traveling to areas of danger. As the ebola danger goes beyond the person himself, one would think public officials would have halted traffic to and from west Africa. In fact, it is harder for a critic of the US government, especially if the critic is Muslim, to enter the US than for a person infected with ebola. Indeed, there are a number of Russians who cannot enter the US because of unilaterally imposed US sanctions. But there are no sanctions against ebola.

Apparently, public health officials have an outdated and incorrect comprehension of ebola and how it spreads. A sufficient number of medical personnel protected against ebola patients’ body fluids but without respirators have now been infected to indicate that the current strain of ebola can spread by air like flu. This also means surface contact.

Airplane cleaning crews at New York LaGuardia are on strike because there are no precautions or protections for cleaners who could come into contact with ebola from an infected passenger. Neither does the next passenger on an outgoing flight have any assurance that he will not be sitting in the seat occupied by an ebola carrier on the incoming flight.

In fact, something like this might have already occurred. A British citizen who has not been to countries where there are ebola outbreaks has just died in Skopje, Macedonia, apparently from ebola. His companion told authorities that they had travelled straight from the UK. The hotel has been sealed off, and the hotel staff and ambulance crew have been isolated. I assume also the traveling companion, but the report doesn’t say. http://rt.com/news/194640-briton-ebola-macedonia-dead/

Five US airports that have flights to the infected west African countries have imposed screening on incoming passengers, such as temperature checks. This is better than nothing, but if, as is believed, the deadly virus has a long incubation period, this screening would only catch people with symptoms, and, of course, there are many reasons for high temperatures, especially during cold and flu season.

So what our incompetent public officials have arranged is screening that will quarantine people who have caught a cold but fail to catch those carrying ebola who have not yet come down with it.

Par for the course.

Political issues in the Ebola crisis

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ebola

By Patrick Martin

Source: WSWS.org

The report that a healthcare worker in Dallas, Texas, one of those who treated Ebola victim Thomas Eric Duncan before his death, has herself contracted the disease, is a significant and troubling event. Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, admitted in a television interview Sunday, “It’s deeply concerning that this infection occurred.”

While Frieden claimed that current protocols for treating Ebola patients were effective in preventing the spread of the disease, arguing that there must have been “a breach of protocol,” no actual explanation has been given for how the healthcare worker became infected. She was not one of the 48 primary contacts with Duncan who were being monitored for possible exposure, but worked in a more peripheral role. Her infection was only detected when she contracted a fever and reported it herself.

There are a growing number of such cases, including doctors and nurses in the affected regions of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, who were well aware of the procedures, and an NBC News photographer, whose infection has caused the quarantining of the entire reporting team, led by Dr. Nancy Snyderman, the network’s chief medical correspondent. These cases suggest that despite the repeated assurances from health officials, there is much that is not known about how the disease is transmitted.

What is certain is that the Ebola outbreak in West Africa is a catastrophe for the people of that region. More than 8,000 people have been infected and more than 4,000 have died, with no signs that the epidemic has been curtailed. The heroic efforts of doctors, nurses and aid workers have been sabotaged by the collapse of the healthcare systems of these countries, among the poorest in the world. Only 20 percent of the affected population in West Africa has access to a treatment center.

It is almost impossible to overstate the dimensions of the disaster. Until this year, Ebola was a disease of remote rural areas that had killed only 1,500 people in 20 previous outbreaks over 40 years. Now the disease has reached urban centers like Monrovia, capital of Liberia, a city of one million, and individuals infected with the virus have travelled from the region only to fall ill in the United States, Spain and Brazil. There are well-founded fears that Ebola could become a global plague, particularly if it reaches more densely populated countries like Nigeria, or the impoverished billions of South and East Asia.

The impotent global response to the immense tragedy in West Africa is a serious warning. The Ebola crisis has proven to be a test of the ability of capitalism, as a world system, to deal with an acute and deadly threat. The profit system has failed. A society organized on the basis of production for private gain and divided into antagonistic nation-states, with a handful of imperialist powers dominating the rest, is incapable of the systematic, energetic and humane response that this crisis requires. It is no accident that the Ebola outbreak takes place in countries that are former colonies of imperialist powers. Guinea was a French colony, Sierra Leone a British colony, and Liberia a de facto US colony since its founding by freed American slaves. Despite their nominal independence, each country remains dominated by giant corporations and banks based in the imperialist countries, which extract vast profits from the mineral wealth and other natural resources. Guinea is the world’s largest bauxite exporter, Sierra Leone depends on diamond exports, Liberia has long been the fiefdom of Firestone Rubber (now Bridgestone).

These countries are unable to provide even rudimentary healthcare services to their populations, not because they lack resources, but because they are exploited and oppressed by a global economic system controlled by Wall Street and other financial and commodity markets. This economic system is so unequal that the 85 richest individuals on the planet control more wealth than the poorest three billion people, nearly half of humanity.

Economic development, particularly over the past 40 years, has created an interconnected and globalized world. Thousands of people travel every day between West Africa and other parts of the world. The revolution in transportation and communications means that what happens in West Africa today can affect Dallas, Boston, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro tomorrow. This makes the Ebola epidemic not a regional event, but a world event.

But the response to the Ebola crisis is carried out by national governments driven by competing national interests, and concerned, not with the danger of the virus to the world’s people, but with how it affects the interests of the ruling class in each nation. Thus there are calls in the United States and Europe for imposing an embargo on travelers from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, although health experts warn that such an action would cause the economic collapse of these countries, vastly worsening the epidemic and making its global spread more rather than less likely.

Equally reactionary is the Obama administration’s decision to send 4,000 US troops to Liberia, ostensibly to build health treatment facilities. Why are heavily armed soldiers chosen for such a mission? They are not construction workers or healthcare providers. If healthcare workers and journalists have become infected, despite taking every precaution, then certainly soldiers could themselves fall victim to the disease, and bring the virus home with them. The real agenda of Washington is to secure a basis for its Africa Command (AFRICOM), up to now excluded from the continent by local opposition, thus advancing the interests of American imperialism against its rivals, particularly China.

The potential dangers of a disease like Ebola spreading from rural Africa to the world have long been understood by epidemiologists and other scientists. It has been the subject of specialized studies and best-selling books. The issue has even penetrated into popular culture through films from The Andromeda Strain to Outbreak and 28 Days. But the profit system has been incapable of generating a serious effort to forestall an entirely predictable crisis.

The detection of Ebola in the mid-1970s should have been the occasion for the launching of an intensive effort to study the virus, analyze how it is transmitted and develop antidotes and a vaccine. This did not take place, in large measure, as a report last month suggested, because the giant pharmaceutical companies that control medical research saw little profit in saving the lives of impoverished villagers in rural Africa (see “Profit motive big hurdle for Ebola drugs”).

What little research has been conducted on possible cures and vaccines was funded by the US Pentagon, for dubious reasons: at best, to protect US soldiers who might be deployed to the jungles of central Africa as an imperialist invasion force; at worst, to determine whether the virus could be weaponized for use against potential enemies.

What would a serious response to the Ebola crisis look like? It would entail a massive, internationally coordinated response which calls on vast resources on the scale necessary both to save as many as possible of those under immediate threat and to prevent the development of an outbreak on a global scale.

It would mean the mobilization of doctors, nurses, public health workers and scientists from America, Europe, Russia, China and the rest of the world to fight back against a deadly threat to the entire human race. And it would mean taking control of this response out of the hands of the national military establishments, particularly the Pentagon, and the giant pharmaceutical firms, one of the most corrupt and rapacious detachments of big business.

Dancing with The Bride of Dracula at the Ebola Debutante’s Ball

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By Les Visible

Source: Reflections in a Petri Dish

Dog Poet Transmitting…….

May your noses always be cold and wet.

What Really Happened has got a s-load of Ebola news up at the beginning of the articles list today, from yesterday and that might change in a few hours but you can find them. Yes, the government invented it and the government is disseminating it and if their usual policies hold true they will soon be taxing you for the privilege of catching it. However, if you are rich you will not have to pay for hosting Ebola in your system because the rich don’t pay taxes. That’s why God made so many poor people, so that they could finance the system, which is designed to make things go real smooth for the rich. In fact, the gears that turn the mechanical assemblies that pump out financial profit for the rich are designed to run on human blood. Not only is human blood the fuel that runs the machinery but human blood is also what lubricates the gears. You would have to say it is seriously multipurpose, especially considering that people (people?) like Little Georgie Sorrows, David Rockefeller, Lloyd Blankfein, Michael Bloomfield and many others also drink it as a cordial, aperitif, general cocktail and food supplement served up in smoothies. This is as it should be because they are smoothies. They slide through existence, like a lizard on a greased, inclined mesa.

A short while ago, the government propaganda agency, also known as the Crass Media, was mentioning how Ebola was created by the Russians but… since the completely Zionist owned American government owns the patent on Ebola and since GKS and the CDC and others are blockading all natural means for treating Ebola, it is to be presumed that this is a multifaceted assault on the public. On one hand they want to kill off as many useless eaters as they can in Africa and they’ve been killing Africans for profit and sport for decades now, while also testing whatever toxic diseases they can think of on them so that they can screw them over with pharmaceutical vaccines and, of course, they tested AIDS on them and of course they test all their jungle warfare weapons on them too.

After awhile, depending on when they need access to whatever resources they intend to steal, from whatever country their professional thieves, lawyers, bean counters and Zionist overlords decide on, they jump right in and do what they do. They are joined at the hip with the IMF (Bride of Dracula Christine Lagarde country) and the most powerful Satanic family bloodline in the world, The Rothschilds. How bad are these last? The matron of the family once said if her sons didn’t want war there wouldn’t be any war. Familiar with war are you? War is when people get blown up into small pieces, women and children get gang-raped by two legged animals. Mass graves get filled with hundreds of bodies that were first tortured. All this takes place under orders from BANKERS. Bankers own the governments because they print the money. In any case, you are not dealing with human beings here. You are dealing with hollow shells inhabited by real demons. This is why and how they can do what they do and have no regrets, remorse, or twinge of conscience whatsoever. The nastier the enterprise, the more tumescent they get. The screams of the defenseless work upon their libido like Viagra.

These seemingly civilized men and women in expensive suits provide nothing of any value whatsoever. They are a plague upon existence. They don’t care who they hurt and they don’t care how many they hurt. I am incapable of finding an adjective that accurately describes them. The toxicity of a soul like Binliner WackoffYahoo, Skull Olmert, 9-11 Barack and the rest of these mass murdering crocodile swine, is as vile and poisonous as any poison or virus on the planet. There is no if and or but about these characters. For thousands of years these contemptible densities of darkness have been adding (life after life) to the black marks upon what might have once been their souls. They are so far past the boundaries of the ring pass not, of what composes anything human that it is only the costume they are wearing that conveys the impression that they are human. They ARE NOT human. Human beings do not behave as they do. These fiends just announced that their next assault on Gaza will be worse that the last one. Think about that. They intend to wipe The Palestinians from the face of the Earth because the Palestinians ARE the people that they are fraudulently pretending to be. The Palestinians are Semitic. They are not.

Take heart in the fact that everything going on these days is all part of an extended and complex demonstration of the good, the bad, the ugly and the beautiful. How are YOU carrying yourself in these times? WHAT are you up to? What do you say? What do you think? What do you do? What are you? The quality or lack of quality expressed in these actions defines you. Every moment of your life you are defining yourself. If you want to know what you are, look back the way you came and you will at least see what you thought you were. Look within and do it with the proper degree of intensity and perpetuating determination and you will see what you really are and there will be no concern about in what manner it gets expressed because it expresses itself without the need for thought or action, yet is bleeds through every single one.

I have screwed up any number of times. For a long while my judgment and level of self control were not what they should have been; in the ideal sense that is but… I have never stopped trying. I have never sugar coated my own behavior, in my own mind, so as to locate justification for anything. It is what it was but we are fluid creatures, unless we allow ourselves to become so stratified that change has become more difficult than we were capable of. That’s Curmudgeon Country. You don’t want to live there. Nothing has to be the way it is. Either we are stronger than our patterns or they are stronger than we are and that is singularly dependent on the degree to which we have surrendered to Material Nature.

The problem is that so many things passed off as spiritual behavior these days, are simply just another permutation of Material Nature. This can be determined by whether one operates according to self interest or not. Unless you have developed a sophisticated infrastructure of lies by which you have convinced yourself of what is not, in place of what is, you should be able to see through yourself. Self deprecation and humility are powerful tools. Don’t leave home without them.

If too much of your focus is outward it can’t help but impact on your inward view. Just because the mass of humanity is marching toward perdition does not mean you have to, nor does the mass create any kind of a measure for your own being. Simplicity is a killer app. It automatically engages as a continuing feature of an ‘uncluttered mind’, We’ve already discussed how you come into possession of one.

I am not here to tell you not to live in a city. I have no idea of the condition and direction of your personal Karma. There are countless tales of men in combat who moved completely unscathed through terrible circumstance, while everyone around them bought it. I will say that generally… generally, that is the location where the worst of what is coming will hit and you are remarkably dependent on the heat and other utilities; the trucks and trains that bring in the food and water. If you are resident in the pressure cooker of countless lives all compressed into a small space, the odds are… the odds are you had better be able to think on your feet.

It takes a very, very short period of time for formerly civilized, seemingly civilized people, to revert to ‘beast mode’. I submit that you will be stunned at the velocity at which this happens. For most people, the patina of civilization is very thin. It is a kind of Formica that is extremely heat sensitive. This laminated surface can burn off in no time and leave something truly terrifying. When it expresses itself in mob behavior well… good luck with that. I have been in several mob scenes and seen what happens. It ain’t pretty. You can forget reasoning with anyone. You have to go directly into toreador mode. There are things a person needs in times of great uncertainty and it is a certainty that you will experience the reality of whatever it is that you rely on so… make absolutely sure you trust whatever that is. You need both courage and restraint. These two have have a deep relationship with each other. Those who study the nature of desirable qualities, soon learn that there are all kinds of symbiotic relationships that exist between one quality and another. Raw courage is more of a liability than anything else if it isn’t tempered by other qualities.

My friends; Push and Shove are on the marquee and Howling Chaos is in the orchestra pit. Our job is and always has been to weave harmonics out of discord, to refine our Love to its most comprehensive and efficient expression and to understand that often enough, simple and sustained endurance is all you need. Before I go off on yet another tangent, let me go off altogether. Have a wonderful day!

End Transmission…….