Category Archives: Press Fraud

WHITE HOUSE ON THE LINE

INVENTING MEDIA REALITY

MAY 12, 2011. As I’ve been writing, reality is basically invented. It can emanate from the individual or from a source like the media.

People forget that the tone of media pieces, the content, the attitude, the language, the imagery, the juxtaposition of items are all geared to produce a reaction. It’s imagination at work.

So you can either feast on THEIR imagination, or use your own.

You can accept their invention of reality or you can create your own.

Most people, obviously, prefer to fold up their tent and accept the world invented by media. It’s easier. It’s more comfortable. It’s less challenging.

And this vast audience can always resort to the time-honored excuse: THE MEDIA JUST REPORT THE FACTS.

Is that so?

Is that basically what’s going on?

Now we’re going to be getting messages from “the authorities,” even from the White House, inserted into our cell phones. Overrides. The messages will appear no matter what we’re doing with the phones.

This is media, too. Invention of reality. Attempts to induce a climate of fear.

Forbes: “…90-second text messages to users [interrupting all ongoing cellphone calls] during certain emergencies, such as a terrorist attack…The program will be launched in New York City by the end of the year, with the rest of the US getting their own…”

I was in my bathroom scrubbing the toilet, when the president called me.

He said there was a 50% chance a terrorist might be targeting a Wienerschnitzel in downtown San Diego.

Only twelve miles away.

I said, “Do you think it’s a nuke?” But he didn’t answer. He just kept talking.

I walked into the living room and clicked on the TV. There he was again. Delivering the same message.

Was I supposed to vacate the house? Hide in the garage? Drive north on the 5 to LA?

No info on that.

I went into the kitchen and the toaster was beeping, but there was no bread in it. Had to be another version of the alert.

So I shouted at the top of my lungs, “WHERE’S BIN LADEN’S DIALYSIS MACHINE?”

Deathly quiet.

The TV shut itself down. The toaster stopped beeping.

There was a knock on my front door.

I ran over and opened it. A man in a suit, whose features you would never remember, was standing there.

“What do you know about the dialysis machine?” he said.

“Nothing!” I said. “That’s the whole point! Didn’t they find it in the house?”

“No,” he said.

“Did bin Laden have a kidney transplant?”

“No.”

“Then where was the machine? How could he stay alive?”

He shook his head.

“You know what I think?” I said. “He died in 2001, of kidney failure, and since then he’s been living as a construct. It costs a lot of money to make a good one. You have to pour major cash behind it. Even if most of the videotapes were amateur-hour productions, add up all the column inches and air time, it’s a high-ticket item.”

My cell buzzed. I took it out of my pocket.

The voice said, “This is the president. I just want to tell you you’ve just won an all-expenses-paid cruise to New Zealand!” The phone lit up and bells started ringing.

“You did it,” he said. “It was the dialysis machine. You caught the most obvious clue. Congratulations!”

“What about the terror alert?” I said.

“Oh,” he said. “That wasn’t me. I’m in Florida. They have my voice and image on file. They work it any which way. A random number generator decides when we broadcast the alerts.”

The man in my house left.

I went back in the kitchen and put an English muffin in the toaster. I pressed the red button. No beeps.

INVENTING MEDIA REALITY

HERE COMES GLOBAL COOLING

MAY 10, 2011. I offer this piece, not to dig into the science, but to show how strong the media effect is. Thirty-five years ago, newspapers and magazines were drumming up support for a global cooling scare.

Notice the language in this April 28, 1975, Newsweek article, “The Cooling World,” by Peter Gwynne. It has the same rhythms today’s warming pieces display, the same transitions, the same reliance, of course, on experts.

It’s all about INVENTING REALITY, because the 1975 Newsweek reporter—or today’s highly confident journalists and smirking pundits—have no idea what they’re talking about. They’re simply taking their cues from people they accept as experts. And then fabricating the whole business. Cooling, warming—none of them has ever really thought about the state of the science. None of them has even turned a layman’s mind, armed with some degree of logic, to the statements and methods of the climate researchers. They’re personally clueless.

Their editorial meetings should really go this way: “Okay, boys, we’ve got the quotes from the expert researchers, so now we know which way to go. It’s cooling (or warming). From here on out, make it up. Make it sound somber, inject apprehension and fear, you know how it works. We want that dignified tone in our pieces. Of course, we have no idea what the hell we’re doing. Not really. We’re just the messengers. But who cares? Give it your best shot. Invent reality.”

Newsweek, April 28, 1975. The ironies in this piece, knowing what we know now about the warming media campaign, are so thick you’ll need a de-fogger. And if you think the subsequent media shift from cooling to warming was simply a matter of discovering new iron-clad data, I have a villa in the center of the Arctic I’m dying to sell you. Here is the 1975 Newsweek article:

There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production – with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas – parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia – where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.

The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree – a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars’ worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.

To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world’s weather. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. “A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale,” warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, “because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.”

A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.

To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth’s average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras – and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average. Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the “little ice age” conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900 – years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City.

Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery. “Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data,” concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. “Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions.”

Meteorologists think that they can forecast the short-term results of the return to the norm of the last century. They begin by noting the slight drop in overall temperature that produces large numbers of pressure centers in the upper atmosphere. These break up the smooth flow of westerly winds over temperate areas. The stagnant air produced in this way causes an increase in extremes of local weather such as droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long freezes, delayed monsoons and even local temperature increases – all of which have a direct impact on food supplies.

“The world’s food-producing system,” warns Dr. James D. McQuigg of NOAA’s Center for Climatic and Environmental Assessment, “is much more sensitive to the weather variable than it was even five years ago.” Furthermore, the growth of world population and creation of new national boundaries make it impossible for starving peoples to migrate from their devastated fields, as they did during past famines.

Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.

The Matrix Revealed

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

 

AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH Dr. Barbara Starfield: Medically Caused Death in America

by Jon Rappoport

December 9, 2009

(To join my email list, click here.)

On July 26, 2000, the US medical community received a titanic shock to the system, when one of its most respected and honored public-health experts, Dr. Barbara Starfield, revealed her findings on healthcare in America.

The landmark Starfield study, “Is US Health Really the Best in the World?,” (for pdf, here) published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, came to the following conclusions:

Every year in the US there are:

* 12,000 deaths from unnecessary surgeries;

* 7,000 deaths from medication errors in hospitals;

* 20,000 deaths from other errors in hospitals;

* 80,000 deaths from infections acquired in hospitals;

* 106,000 deaths from FDA-approved correctly prescribed medicines.

* The total of medically-caused deaths in the US every year is 225,000. That’s a total of 2.25 million medically-caused deaths in the US every decade.

* This makes the medical system the third leading cause of death in the US, behind heart disease and cancer.

The Starfield study is the most explosive revelation about modern healthcare in America ever published.  The credentials of its author and the journal in which it appeared are, within the highest medical circles, impeccable.

Yet, on the heels of Starfield’s astonishing findings, although media reporting was extensive, it soon dwindled.  No major newspaper or television network mounted an ongoing “Medicalgate” investigation.  Neither the US Department of Justice nor federal health agencies undertook prolonged remedial action.

All in all, it seemed that those parties who could have taken effective steps to correct this mind-boggling situation preferred to ignore it.

On December 6-7, 2009, I interviewed Dr. Starfield by email.

What has been the level and tenor of the response to your findings, since 2000? 

My papers on the benefits of primary care have been widely used, including in Congressional testimony and reports. However, the findings on the relatively poor health in the US have received almost no attention. The American public appears to have been hoodwinked into believing that more interventions lead to better health, and most people that I meet are completely unaware that the US does not have the ‘best health in the world’.

In the medical research community, have your medically-caused mortality statistics been debated, or have these figures been accepted, albeit with some degree of shame? 

The findings have been accepted by those who study them. There has been only one detractor, a former medical school dean, who has received a lot of attention for claiming that the US health system is the best there is and we need more of it.  He has a vested interest in medical schools and teaching hospitals (they are his constituency).  They, of course, would like an even greater share of the pie than they now have, for training more specialists.  (Of course, the problem is that we train specialists—at great public cost—who then do not practice up to their training—they spend half of their time doing work that should be done in primary care and don’t do it as well.)

Have health agencies of the federal government consulted with you on ways to mitigate the effects of the US medical system?

NO.

Since the FDA approves every medical drug given to the American people, and certifies it as safe and effective, how can that agency remain calm about the fact that these medicines are causing 106,000 deaths per year?

Even though there will always be adverse events that cannot be anticipated, the fact is that more and more unsafe drugs are being approved for use. Many people attribute that to the fact that the pharmaceutical industry is (for the past ten years or so) required to pay the FDA for reviews—which puts the FDA into a untenable position of working for the industry it is regulating. There is a large literature on this.

Aren’t your 2000 findings a severe indictment of the FDA and its standard practices?

They are an indictment of the US health care industry: insurance companies, specialty and disease-oriented medical academia, the pharmaceutical and device manufacturing industries, all of which contribute heavily to re-election campaigns of members of Congress. The problem is that we do not have a government that is free of influence of vested interests. Alas, [it] is a general problem of our society—which clearly unbalances democracy.

Can you offer an opinion about how the FDA can be so mortally wrong about so many drugs?

Yes, it cannot divest itself from vested interests. (Again, [there is] a large literature about this, mostly unrecognized by the people because the industry-supported media give it no attention.

Would it be correct to say that, when your JAMA study was published in 2000, it caused a momentary stir and was thereafter ignored by the medical community and by pharmaceutical companies?

Are you sure it was a momentary stir?  I still get at least one email a day asking for a reprint—ten years later!  The problem is that its message is obscured by those that do not want any change in the US health care system.

Do medical schools in the US, and intern/residency programs in hospitals, offer significant “primary care” physician training and education?

NO. Some of the most prestigious medical teaching institutions do not even have family physician training programs [or] family medicine departments. The federal support for teaching institutions greatly favors specialist residencies, because it is calculated on the basis of hospital beds. [Dr. Starfield has done extensive research showing that family doctors, who deliver primary care—as opposed to armies of specialists—produce better outcomes for patients.]

Are you aware of any systematic efforts, since your 2000 JAMA study was published, to remedy the main categories of medically caused deaths in the US?

No systematic efforts; however, there have been a lot of studies.  Most of them indicate higher rates [of death] than I calculated.

What was your personal reaction when you reached the conclusion that the US medical system was the third leading cause of death in the US?

I had previously done studies on international comparisons and knew that there were serious deficits in the US health care system, most notably in lack of universal coverage and a very poor primary care infrastructure. So I wasn’t surprised.

Has anyone from the FDA, since 2000, contacted you about the statistical findings in your JAMA paper?

NO. Please remember that the problem is not only that some drugs are dangerous but that many drugs are overused or inappropriately used.  The US public does not seem to recognize that inappropriate care is dangerous—more does not mean better.  The problem is NOT mainly with the FDA but with population expectations.

… Some drugs are downright dangerous; they may be prescribed according to regulations but they are dangerous.

Concerning the national health plan before Congress—if the bill is passed, and it is business as usual after that, and medical care continues to be delivered in the same fashion, isn’t it logical to assume that the 225,000 deaths per year will rise?

Probably—but the balance is not clear. Certainly, those who are not insured now and will get help with financing will probably be marginally better off overall.

Did your 2000 JAMA study sail through peer review, or was there some opposition to publishing it?

It was rejected by the first journal that I sent it to, on the grounds that ‘it would not be interesting to readers’!

Do the 106,000 deaths from medical drugs only involve drugs prescribed to patients in hospitals, or does this statistic also cover people prescribed drugs who are not in-patients in hospitals?

I tried to include everything in my estimates.  Since the commentary was written, many more dangerous drugs have been added to the marketplace.

106,000 people die as a result of CORRECTLY prescribed medicines.  I believe that was your point in your 2000 study.  Overuse of a drug or inappropriate use of a drug would not fall under the category of “correctly prescribed.”  Therefore, people who die after “overuse” or “inappropriate use” would be IN ADDITION TO the 106,000 and would fall into another or other categories.    

‘Appropriate’ means that it is not counter to regulations.  That does not mean that the drugs do not have adverse effects.

Some comments from the interviewer:

I’m aware there are reports, outside the mainstream, which conclude far more than 225,000 people in the US die every year as a result of medical treatment.  For example, see the work of Carolyn Dean, Trueman Tuck, Gary Null, Martin Feldman, Debora Rasio, Dorothy Smith.

This interview with Dr. Starfield reveals that, even when an author has unassailable credentials within the medical-research establishment, the findings can result in no changes made to the system.

Yes, many persons and organizations within the medical system contribute to the annual death totals of patients, and media silence and public ignorance are certainly major factors, but the FDA is the assigned gatekeeper, when it comes to the safety of medical drugs.  The buck stops there.  If those drugs the FDA is certifying as safe are killing, like clockwork, 106,000 people a year, the Agency must be held accountable.  The American people must understand that.

As for the other 119,000 people killed every year as a result of hospital treatment, this horror has to be laid at the doors of those institutions.  Further, to the degree that hospitals are regulated and financed by state and federal governments, the relevant health agencies assume culpability.

It is astounding, as well, that the US Department of Justice has failed to weigh in on Starfield’s findings.  If 225,000 medically caused deaths per year is not a crime by the Dept. of Justice’s standards, then what is?

To my knowledge, not one person in America has been fired from a job or even censured as result of these medically caused deaths.

Dr. Starfield’s findings have been available for nine years.  She has changed the perception of the medical landscape forever.  In a half-sane nation, she would be accorded a degree of recognition that would, by comparison, make the considerable list of her awards pale.  And significant and swift action would have been taken to punish the perpetrators of these crimes and reform the system from its foundations.

In these times, medical schools continue turning out a preponderance of specialists who then devote themselves to promoting the complexities of human illness and massive drug treatment.  Whatever the shortcomings of family doctors, their tradition speaks to less treatment, more common sense, and a proper reliance on the immune systems of patients.

The pharmaceutical giants stand back and carve up the populace into “promising markets.”  They seek new disease labels and new profits from more and more toxic drugs.  They do whatever they can—legally or illegally—to influence doctors in their prescribing habits.  Some drug studies which show negative results are buried.  FDA panels are filled with doctors who have drug-company ties.  Legislators are incessantly lobbied and supported with pharma campaign monies.

Nutrition, the cornerstone of good health, is ignored or devalued by most physicians.  Meanwhile, the FDA continues to attack nutritional supplements, even though the overall safety record of these nutrients is good, whereas, once again, the medical drugs the FDA certifies as safe are killing 106,000 Americans per year.

Physicians are trained to pay exclusive homage to peer-reviewed published drug studies.  These doctors unfailingly ignore the fact that, if medical drugs are killing a million Americans per decade, the studies on which those drugs are based must be fraudulent or, at the very least, massively incompetent.  In other words, the whole literature is suspect, unreliable, and impenetrable.

At the same time, without evidence, doctors off-handedly tout their work with great confidence.  Some years ago, a resident at a major New York hospital harangued me about the primacy of controlled studies.  She boasted, in passing, that the hospital’s heart-bypass surgery team was considered the best in the city, and one of the best in the country.  I asked her for a reference.  Was her statement a combination of folk-wisdom and rumor, or was there a proper study that confirmed her opinion?  A bit chagrined, she admitted it was hearsay.  I was sure she would repeat her tune, however, many times.

Claiming evidence where there is none, and denying the evidence that the medical system does great harm, are apparently part of the weave of the modern Hippocratic Oath.

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails here.

A reporter responds: Suzanne Somers’ June 4th blog

A reporter responds: Suzanne Somers’ June 4th blog

by Jon Rappoport

June 5, 2009

OH, I DON’T KNOW ABOUT THAT. IT COULD BE DANGEROUS.

WATCH OUT. SHE’S DANGEROUS.

THAT INFORMATION IS NOT ONLY FALSE, IT’S DANGEROUS.

ALLOWING HER TO SAY THESE THINGS IS DANGEROUS.

Ms. Somers begins her blog entry, “Two Scariest Women on the Planet–Oprah and Suzanne,” with this:

“Have you seen this week’s Newsweek magazine? Here we go again! They have a new article on how Oprah is giving ‘dangerous’ advice by having uninformed guests give false information to the public.” (more rebuttal on the Newsweek article here)

Ms. Somers is referring to information about bio-identical hormones–a subject that has raised considerable controversy.

For the last 30 years, I’ve seen that “dangerous information” tag thrown around. It’s usually employed against scientists or reporters who question mainstream consensus, who don’t line up with authorities on a scientific or medical topic—such as bio-identical hormones. In this case, the label is being applied to Oprah and Somers.

People who control large amounts of official power hurl the “dangerous” tag, to try to maintain their positions as the top experts in a given field.

My interest is in heading off a rising threat to free speech. You see, “dangerous,” used as a label, is close to an accusation that a crime is being committed. It’s an attempt to derail the First Amendment.

In this age of science, there are surprising numbers of people who believe that, once a proof of something has been offered, there should be no more conversation. The deal is closed.

These terminally confused people don’t understand what free speech is.

Then, we have the obvious factor of false proofs. There are scientists who want to declare “case closed,” when they submit their papers to journals. They want immediate and universal acceptance. They want to stifle debate about their findings.

There are many examples where proofs are incomplete, false, or fraudulent. Stifling free speech about the proof makes the matter worse.

Finally, there is a rising tide of opinion in this country that “ordinary people” need to be protected from any information that could possibly lead them to make harmful choices. This is a slippery slope, to say the least. And there is no perfect solution. People who are gullible must disabuse themselves of the tendency.

Of course, I understand there are reasonable laws against malicious fraud. But if officials aren’t willing to pursue a legal case, then those who could be bamboozled need to wake up.

I happen to believe bio-identical hormones are useful. But that’s beside the point here. To accuse Somers or Oprah of being dangerous is an obvious clue: the detractors don’t want to engage in a fair and complete debate of the relevant issues. They want to defame and discredit, and make the public afraid. They want to do this and only this. They want to protect their own turf.

Somers and Oprah, like everyone else, have the right of free speech. They also, in this case, have information. That information, if it’s going to be challenged, should be examined through reasonable debate. That’s not about to happen. Somers and Oprah are willing to bring scientists forward on their own behalf, but the experts aren’t ready. There’s too much to lose. So they just say “it’s dangerous,” and they assume a guise of wanting to protect everyone—from freedom.

This country doesn’t work that way.

There are arrogant high-IQ idiots who think it does, but they’re wrong.

The Matrix Revealed

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.