Sunday

Flu Warning: Beware The Drug Companies - The New York Review of Books Recaps The Flu Hoax, and Helen Names Heidi Jolson as the FDA Culprit

Helen Epstein of The New York Review of Books recently penned a thorough and enraging recap of the Tamilflu and Swine Flu hoaxes on the part of Big Pharma and how they evolved to a a multi-billion pay off for these companies.  This is an excellent slice of premium investigative journalism and I can't praise it more highly. If the Obama Justice Department knows even half what Helen Epstein knows, then we know for sure this is just another example of this administration turning a blind eye to criminal behavior (while persecuting legal medical marijuana dispensaries in California).

I had no idea, but it turns out that Relenza (GlaxoSmithKline) and Tamilflu (Roche) not only produced useless and ineffective anti-flu vaccines as part of their long term "pandemic preparedness" programs--which they later sold to the U.S. and other nations for billions--but according to Epstein's research, as made possible by Roche's branch in Japan (apparently not locked down into silence by Roche brass), these substances are actually the cause of neuropathic illness and death.  Over 20 cases of people dying from Relenza alone, suffocated alive. This is no joke, my dears.  As Epstein notes:
The active ingredient in Tamiflu was discovered in 1989 by an Australian biotechnology company that licensed it to the British firm GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). The company gave it the trade name Relenza, carried out clinical trials, and submitted the results to the FDA in 1999.26 The FDA scientific panel that reviewed this evidence was unimpressed; it noted that the drug—a powder for oral inhalation—had little effect on influenza symptoms and seemed to worsen breathing problems in people with asthma. The panel members voted 13–4 against approval, but the agency overruled them and approved the drug anyway. The head of the FDA’s antiviral drug program, Heidi Jolson, justified this decision on the grounds that Relenza might be useful for some patients, and even a weakly effective drug was better than nothing, given the fears then circulating about “avian flu.”
Working for Big Pharma and no doubt hoping for a revolving door payoff at the end, Heidi Jolson allows Relenza on the market.  By the way, why should an appointed bureaucrat have the power to overrule 13 scientists in the first place?  Who benefits?

And further:
In 2008, an article in the journal Drug Safety, signed by a group of Roche authors, claimed that rats and mice, both given a very high dose of Tamiflu, showed no ill effect.38 But according to documents submitted to the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare by Chugai, the Japanese Roche subsidiary, the exact same dose of Tamiflu killed more than half of the animals. As they died, the rats exhibited many of the same central nervous system symptoms that Hama had described in his case series on the Japanese children.
So, Roche Pharma, everywhere but Japan, hid the fact that the real tests caused half the lab animals to die.  They deliberately falsified the results of Tamiflu tests they provided the FDA, and of course, they had their people on the job there, like Heidi, to make sure that no pesky scientists got in the way. But it goes deeper. The infiltration of GSK and Roche into places like the World Health Organization, and more, is documented by Epstein:
During the ten years leading up to the pandemic declaration of 2009, scientists associated with the companies that were to profit from the WHO’s “pandemic preparedness” programs, including Roche and GlaxoSmithKline, were involved at virtually every stage of the development of those programs. The companies funded the documents giving guidance on preparing for the influenza pandemic, in which the WHO recommended the stockpiling of Tamiflu and Relenza. Consultants drafted parts of these documents and joined WHO officials in fund-raising for the Tamiflu stockpile. Industry-supported scientists were also on the committee that issued the “pandemic emergency declaration.”49 That announcement caused developing countries to request assistance from the WHO’s Tamiflu stockpile fund, and these requests contributed to a tripling of the drug’s sales in 2009.50 By declaring a pandemic and linking the response to Tamiflu stockpiling, the WHO could not have done a better job of promoting Roche’s interests.
So there you have it.  Money, corruption, inFLUence. The U.S. gov bought off again, and again.

Read the entire article when you get the chance.  Roche and GSK are like viruses that infected the once-healthy bodies of places like WHO, FDA, and CDC. 

Where is the social vaccine we need to stop these people, I ask you?


Thursday

Fiction Writers and Platform: Some Useful links from Algonkian Writer Conferences

Marcela put it honestly if somewhat bluntly: If she had to make a decision between two equally good novels, and one author had a platform and the other did not, she'd choose the author with the platform every time.

Why? Because an author's having a platform means the likelihood of the publisher selling many copies of that novel increases.
Algonkian sent me this to post, and it's worthwhile.  Some useful links regarding the building of platform for fiction writers and aspiring authors:

http://www.redroom.com/blog/karen-dionne/the-fiction-authors-platform

http://blog.writersdigest.com/norules/Fiction+Writers+Need+Platforms+Too.aspx

http://www.amazon.com/Get-Known-Before-Book-Deal/dp/158297554X/ref=as_li_tf_mfw?&camp=212361&linkCode=wey&tag=wwwwritersont-20&creative=391825

http://cba-ramblings.blogspot.com/2008/02/fiction-platform.html


Friday

Tales of The Washington Revolving Door - Spoiled Fish John Sindelar of GSA Past, Now of Hewlett Packard, Works to Create New Leaders at the ELC Festival While Big Fish Orszag Revolves to Citigroup


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE .......................  August 30, 2010
Hewlett-Packard Agrees To Pay $55 MillionTo Settle Allegations Of Fraud
WASHINGTON – Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) has agreed to pay the United States $55 million to settle claims that the company defrauded the General Services Administration (GSA) and other federal agencies, the Justice Department announced today. This settlement resolves allegations under the False Claims Act that HP knowingly paid kickbacks, or “influencer fees,” to systems integrator companies in return for recommendations that federal agencies purchase HP’s products.

I said this was an instance of "structural corruption" in public life that had become so taken for granted that DC insiders considered it beneath mention or notice
                                                           - James Fallows/The Atlantic



Who is John Sindelar of Hewlett Packard, formerly of GSA? A schmuck of ages? An evil wizard with bad teeth? An overweight, weasel-wording, corporate wheel-greaser living out his twilight days? Who cares?  Hardly anyone, but that's not the point. The point here is to demonstrate the "structural corruption" that goes on at every level of government in Washington, from the most mundane (in the case of Hewlett Packard's John Sindelar) to the most influential (e.g, Peter Orszag of OMB).

Yes, It's the big guys and gals that make the news, people like Julie Gerberding of CDC who went to Big Pharma as her reward for pushing swine flu.  But it's the tadpoles, the "shadows behind the partition", the window tribe types like John Sindelar who are really running things, imploding their country a bit at a time like countless insects in the wood, providing the daily bridges between corporate America and the government that feeds their obesity.  And there are so many of them, hundreds, thousands of these revolving door bureaucrats (RDBs), recruited with a wink and a handshake at corporate-gov executive retreats, and over cocktails in D.C. watering holes, on and on, till finally, it becomes hard to see where government service ends and corporate dominance begins ... And wasn't that the plan all along?  Wink, wink.

Are we saying that John Sindelar, and/or guys and gals like him who used to "work" for the federal government, possibly helped pave the way for corporations like Hewlett Packard to defraud agencies like GSA of billions only to escape with a wrist slap and not a single prosecution? Are we saying that the Peter Orszags of the world, hired by bailed-out banking behemoths like Citigroup, live mainly to protect and serve the money interests of these behemoths as they bid defiance to the laws and spirit of this country?

You do the math. Examples of RDB action figures, Distinguished Fellows, corporate-gov executive hybrids, and all manner of species below. 



First, John Sindelar himself (overweight middle-aged man in the center), and another dim bulb RDB, pretending to be experts on IT issues in the federal gov and generally doing what good corporate RDBs do, i.e., name drop, weasel word, slogan-ize, and blather out with things that are either so banal or obvious they are not worth hearing.

Be warned. You don't have to watch all of this. It's so boring you might entertain thoughts of suicide.








And now, let's take a look at the RDB recruiting festival that creates executive leaders like the ones above.

Gleeful RDBs and Future RDBs With Name Tags
First, a caption for the smiling group of RDBs and future RDBs in the photo to the right :

"HP’s John Sindelar, photographic recidivist Alan Balutis, former Interior Deputy CIO Ed Meagher, GSA Office of Citizen Services Associate Administrator Dave McClure, and senior GSA adviser Josh Sawislak. John reports that he and DoE’s Pete Tseronis, Lockheed’s Dan Norton, and PR guru Steve O’Keefe came in four under in best ball on the Golden Horseshoe course earlier in the day."

Isn't everyone just having a grand old time?  We've got Lockheed and Hewlett Packard's John Sindelar (far left) chumming and golfing and blue-suiting around with a whole host of potential RDBs. What could they be talking about?  What is their purpose? Is it all just to have fun? And where did this pic and story come from?  It came from FED TECH BISNOW reporting on the corporate-gov golf-and-food fest known as the 19th annual Executive Leadership Conference.

Jeez, who can have a qualm or any dyspepsia over something as innocent as an Executive Leadership Conference?  Who can be against such leadership?  Don't we want these great leaders to earn their wings and do the best for America?  Here are some more leaders:

Great American Leaders
As the caption states: "We snapped DoD Deputy CIO Dave Wennergren, former DoT CIO (and now CSC’s) Dan Mintz, and ELC program chair (and Cisco’s) Alan Balutis. Intellectuals, all, Dave tells us he spent several hours hiking yesterday in Prince William Forest (we had to look it up), and Dan visited Jamestown with his wife. As for Alan, anyone whose job title is “Distinguished Fellow” could have napped all afternoon and still seemed smart."

Wait a minute, is that Dick Cheney's estranged half brother on the left, and isn't that guy on the right one of the boors in the video? Whatever ... So here we have the corporate-gov DOD guy, and a CSC corporate-gov guy from DOT, and this boring guy from Cisco brown-nosing and backslapping around, just doing his job. CIO and CIO and Distinguished Fellow, and it all gets blurry who works for the American government and who works for the corporation doing business with the American government.  They're all beginning to look alike, act alike, talk alike ... It's scarier than the old Patty Duke show.

Btw, here is a portion of the roster of the ELC planning committee for the event above, from ACTGOV.COM.  Please note corporate and gov and coporate-gov and gov-corporate types not only in bed together, but brushing their teeth together, feeding each others, wiping each other's asses free of gold residue, and generally providing mutually beneficial therapy in the most innocent and congenial of ways, all for the sake of enabling future American leaders. How selfless and patriotic can they be?

Conference Chairs:
Kathy Conrad, Jefferson Consulting
Dave McClure, General Services Administration

Vice Chairs:
Darren Ash, Nuclear Regulatory Commission
John Sindelar, HP Enterprise Services

Plenary Sessions:
Andrew McLauchlin, CGI Federal
Bill Piatt, General Services Administration

Tracks:
Tim Long, Ziemba Waid Public Affairs
Ramon Barquin, Barquin International
Lawrence Gross, Department of the Interior
Kathleen Turco, General Services Administration


Tracks? ... And there's John Sindelar again! He just keeps popping up doesn't he?  And he gets to mingle with all his friends from GSA, being an ex-GSA guy himself, plus his friends at GSA get to schmooze and plan with consultants and all kinds of corporate weevils doing business with the American government.  I tell ya, if this isn't an example of organizational democracy in action working for the benefit of all, I don't know what is!

Maybe if peeps like Sindelar do a great job at their mother corporations they can get hired by Peter Orszag at Citigroup, move up to the big boys who don't just defraud the American taxpayer, but who actually run the show.  Maybe? ... Maybe?