Hidden in the Needle: Not for Reality Sandwich

Not too long ago I published this little piece, fired it off into the ether and (as is usual with such things) thought nothing more of it except to check for comments now and then, moving on to other commentaries like the intellectual magpie I am.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I received an email from our main man around here, Daniel Pinchbeck, founder and shamanic guru-in-chief of our eclectic little community.
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Hi Psychegram,

I was happy to see your blog post on Evolver about resisting the Swine Flu
vaccine. I was seeking to write something similar but don't have the time.
I would like to use this as a feature on Reality Sandwich and give it a
push so it could potentially reach a much larger audience. I think this
subject is about to become a big one, if the recent articles in the UK
press and elsewhere are correct.
Would you be willing to do some quick work on this piece before we ran it?
I would like to have the evidence you present supported by credible links
to decent news sources where possible. I would also like you to back up
slightly and make an argument for why this could be more than just paranoid
conspiracy stuff.
Here was a back-and-forth i just had with a skeptic that seemed to help
them consider what i was saying might be conceivably plausible:

On 7/20/09 8:36 AM, "Robin Gunkel" <*******@gmail.com> wrote:

Daniel,

I'll definitely have a read of this material when you send it out. I have
to say though that I'm weary of conspiracy theories. Did you watch Michael
Pollan on Democracy Now talk about swine flu
http://www.elephantjournal.com/2009/05/michael-pollan-on-swine-flu-amy-g...
? I think that a lot of what we struggle with in this culture is not always
overt attempts to control or manipulate masses, rather we deal with deep,
deep subconscious undercurrents. Swine flu is a product of treating animals
as a gross commodity, which is in turn a product of a purely material,
mechanized world view with a construed conception of what real wealth is. I
just think there's a danger in embracing these theories because on some
level it's a surrender of our own power. I think Cornel West talks about
this in relation to the African American community.
**

Robin,

I think one’s attitude toward 9-11 provides a litmus test of sorts.
How carefully have you explored alternative theories and evidence that
indicates a conspiracy around 9-11? The evidence that the buildings had to
have been brought down using controlled demolitions, the whistle blowers
who have died mysteriously, the overt fact that a gigantic jet did not hit
the Pentagon, etc?
If 9-11 was pulled off by a cadre of insiders, then there are, obviously,
factions of a “secret government” with no regard for human life capable
of doing anything to maintain power. This is not outside the realm of
possibility, as we can see the same situation was the case with Germany in
the 1930s – those people were also human beings just like us – The
Nazis are not some distant historical curiosity or another species somehow
different from humans now. In fact, 1,200 top-level Nazi scientists
including rocket scientists and concentration camp experimenters were
brought into the highest echelons of the US military industrial complex
after the Second World War with Operation Paperclip. At the same time, the
Bush family directly supported the rise of the Nazi regime. You do know all
of this, I assume ?
If this is the case, then those factions may be devising Malthusian plans
to maintain power in the face of global ecological catastrophe and economic
collapse.
Yours,
Daniel -

And of course, my immediate, thrilled, indeed joyful even response:
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Hi Daniel,

I have to leave for work so I'll keep this short.

Excellent!

I'll get an edited, updated version out to you as soon as possible. Thanks for your interest!

-Matt
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Hi Daniel,

Sorry this took so long to get to you. Work's been busier than usual with the result that I didn't have the energy to get to it until tonight ... when I didn't so much have the energy as think to myself, damn, it's been a few days, I should really get on top of this.

Anyhow, attached is a rewritten, edited and expanded version of 'Hidden in the Needle', complete with links to various sources backing up most of what I was saying. The original piece wasn't really intended for a wide audience, so I didn't much feel the need to research and source everything ... speaking of sources, what is a 'credible' source these days? It seems very little name-brand journalism carried the information I was looking for, so I ended up linking to stuff from some occasionally strange corners of the web. I don't think the RS crowd will mind that so much, though.

Hopefully there are no problems with the HTML ... wasn't sure what software you use so I just wrote in all the tags by hand.

Let me know if there are any problems, suggestions, quibbles, or other changes you'd like made.

Best,

Matt
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You'll note I say 'backing up most of what I'm saying' as I generally assume you are able to use google at least as well as I, and should you find something questionable in anything I say, then have at it. Now, maybe that's the source right there of this thing sort of fizzling out as it were ... maybe Daniel's just more of an old-school journalist, or something.

Let's see:
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Hi Matt,

I made a few more changes to your piece. Please check it out and get back to me as soon as you can.

Yours,
Daniel
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Hi Daniel,

No problems at all with the changes. Including the Russel quote directly only makes sense, and the Icke material fits perfectly. I'd've mentioned him myself, except as you noted he has been discredited often enough that anyone who hasn't already taken the red pill will just roll their eyes and move on as soon as his name comes up.

I've made a few more changes. Nothing major, just correcting a few typos, inserting a couple more links, a few stylistic improvements, that sort of thing. Should be a bit more readable now.

Let me know what you think,
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Well, that was encouraging, wasn't it? The changes were few enough, just a few added paragraphs really. I did find it odd, however, that he wanted me to 'back up on the paranoid conspiracy stuff' and then inserted to long paragraphs by David Icke, about the least 'credible source' one might find.
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Hi Daniel,

It's been a few days ... just wondering if there were any remaining issues with the piece?

Best,

Matt
_____________________________________________________________
Working on it!

Stlll getting resistance from my publisher, who is down on what he sees as “conspiracy theory”.
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Hi Matt,

I find myself going over your piece again and again, researching and checking many Internet links, and not finding satisfactory evidence for many of the claims, or that they are exaggerated. This is such a sensitive area that I really worry about doing something that gets discredited.

For instance, there is no original source I can find to the WHO document about 150 million Sub Saharan Africans. There was one unsubstantiated sheet of rumors that circulated around many websites and blogs but has no provenance. Tracing it back a bit, some of this material may have been sent out by Right Wing Pro-Lifers. Similarly, we have no evidence that 3 million Fillipinas were sterilized – they were given a vaccine that might cause sterility in some women, but there is no follow up on what happened actually.

I don’t think I can use the piece in its present form. Alas! I don’t know if you would be willing to do serious journalism to scrupulously separate fact from rumor, but that is what this subject calls for.

I may go back to trying to approach it myself, though really don’t have the time available to do this properly.

Yours,
Daniel
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This article seems helpful:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14543

[Ed: Global Research, by the way, are some of the most hardcore conspiracy researchers out there today. If you want to know the nuts and bolts of how the New World Order works, they are the people to ask. Everything documented.]

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Hi Daniel,

Regarding the WHO claim, I wasn't able to find the original source
material for that either, and was worried by that myself. Thus the
quote was stated as 'allegedly', for while it looks like it may be
difficult, probably impossible (we are after all talking about a
secret document that was published back in 1985, pre-internet, thus
making it likely no digital version exists) to find the original
source document, there's no question that the quote has certainly made
the rounds and that's the only point I was trying to make there.

Hmm. I've dug a little deeper and it seems the quote may originate
with Major General, Retd., Stubblebine, former commander Army
Intelligence. It's possible he saw something that troubled him and
decided to speak out. It's also possible that this is part of a psyop,
and frankly, Stubblebine's got enough of a nasty reputation in this
regard that I've amended the passage to read:

"The quote seems to originate with Major General (Retd.) Albert
Stubblebine, a former commander of army intelligence, and while this
origin renders its credibility suspect even amongst hardened
conspiracy theorists, its popularity reveals the increasingly
widespread mistrust directed at organizations that have taken control
of our health without democratic openness or direct engagement with
civil society."

Now, regarding the Phillipinas: I've done a little more research and
it seems that only 20% of the vaccines contained B-hCG
(http://www.mail-archive.com/zestalternative@yahoogroups.com/msg00027.htm...).
Sites like Rense (where I saw the original claim in a piece that's
been picked up all over the place) seem to indicate that it was all of
them, but I read everything I find at Rense with healthy skepticism
and try to double- and triple-check any claims they make elsewhere. As
you've found yourself most of the links that turn up in this case seem
to be related to various Christian anti-abortion or pro-life groups,
which admittedly lowers credibility somewhat from a mainstream
perspective; however, given their orientation it's only to be
expected, I think, that such groups would be more likely to devote
attention to this matter than others such as the mainstream media....

Ah-hah! I spoke too soon. Here's a link to a BBC transcript, a 1995
interview with the Catholic Sister who first raised her voice about
all this:

http://davidrothscum.blogspot.com/2009/03/is-procter-and-gamble-funding-...
http://web.archive.org/web/19991008043627/http://www.africa2000.com/INDX...

So, I've made the following change:

"This has happened in the Phillipines, with an anti-tetanus shot that, curiously, was
administered only to women between the ages of 14-45."

Previously the link was to lifesitenews.com, which appears to be a
pro-life site. The BBC transcript should be quite a bit more credible.

There's a lot of other stuff in the piece that really can't help but
fall under the rubrick of a conspiracy theory, for the simple reason
that (just as with the fascinating moon-landing-hoax piece by Weidner
that went up a week or so ago ... and why is your publisher down with
that piece but so leary of this?) if there's anything at all to what
I'm writing here, we are in fact dealing with a conspiracy of frankly
epic proportions. That said I fully appreciate that you don't want to
go off half-cocked with this and have it blow up in our faces.

So, some further changes I've made to the piece:

1.

"But lest you think that you and yours - who, given that you're
reading this on a computer, are more than likely educated, white, and
'middle class' - are exempt from this, best think again because
reports are coming in that the HPV vaccine Gardasil (which the
pharmaceutical industry lobbied, unsuccessfully,
in an effort to make mandatory) contains
polysorbate 80, a compound that (you guessed it) causes sterility.
"

(new link added, to Reuters)

2.

In the US, no official pronouncement of mandatory vaccination has come
however, the President went on record some time ago as being in favor
of it ... or, in his words, “I am
not in favor of selective vaccination”.

(added actual quote and source)

3.

And it might come to a gun to the
head. It
really might. If getting your shot becomes a legal obligation,
those who refuse become criminals. Chew for a moment on the
implications of that.

(added two links, including the Global Research article you sent)

That's all for now ... to my amateurs eye the piece looks to be pretty
thoroughly documented. As many claims as possible are backed up by
links, and those that aren't are often backed up by other links within
the piece (many of which contain a great deal of the same information
on their own.) Is there anything else you'd like me to have go into
more depth with? If there is let me know ASAP ... time is of the
essence here.

Yours,

Matt
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Hi Daniel

One more change, an addition really, to the contentious Phillipines section:

"However, by this point the damage was already done, with three
million Phillipinas vaccinated. While no survey seems to have been
conducted to determine precisely how many were sterilized (the lack of
any such study should, I think, surprise no one), there has since this
time been a global diaspora of Philippino women into the nursing and
elder-care professions, and one might ask just why one of the
Philippines’ major exports has been its women."

I didn't read that anywhere, but it occurred to me last night that,
while I was in Japan, I noticed that a large number of Philippinas
were being brought into Japanese nursing homes (as well as hostess
bars), and here in Canada they're somewhat over-represented in the
healthcare system compared to other recent immigrant ethnicities.

Once again, if there's anything else you'd like changed (within reason
of course, I don't want to dilute the character of the piece), any
other research you'd like done, what have you, just let me know. This
is my article, after all, so it's not like I'd expect you to spend all
your free time fixing it up.

Best,

-Matt
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Well, it's been a week since that was written and there's been no response yet. I should add that in an effort to meet David's nebulous standards for a 'credible news source' the essay ballooned to 9 pages with 26 links to sources like the BBC and Global Research. I can only assume I was unable to find enough 'credible evidence' to satisfy the Reality Sandwich audience. An audience that regularly, by the way, discusses crop circles, UFOs, entheogens, mayan calenders, consciousness shifts, subtle energy, chakras, channeling, ritual magic, synchronicity, siddhis, singularities, and oh, lets not forget every once in a while the conspiracy theories without ever demanding much in the way of proof or evidence for any of it. We're not exactly dealing with the Skeptical fucking Enquirer here now are we? The general tone is one of 'Don't believe me? Then don't. Find your own reality.' That's what the Great Google was manifested for, and I think it's a pretty fantastic philosophy of life.

So what the hell happened here? The 'not credible enough' charge is clearly bullshit, given the likely audience. And adding Icke to the piece - David Icke! King of the Conspiracy Loons! - completely undermined it from a 'credible news source' point of view anyway. Maybe it just wasn't well-written enough to meet Daniel's high standards?

Haha, OK, just joking.

But if he had no intention of running it in the first place ... why even ask?

So I'm not sure what to think. A little angry, not so much at the snub (though I'll admit to being only human), as at the with-holding of what I feel may be the most important information you'll get this season: don't get the flu shot. No matter what, don't let them stick you. Now, Reality Sandwich is Daniel's sandbox so it's not for me to tell him what kind of castle to build ... but I can certainly ask why.

Why, Daniel? Why don't you want your audience to hear that from you? No doubt most of them are hearing it anyways ... the warnings resound through the internet ... so why don't you want them to hear it from you, too?

Well, at the very least you've heard it from me and you're hearing it again, here and in the republished 'Hidden in the Needle' (complete with Pinchbeck edits, an authentic Stan Lee Marvel no-prize for anyone who can guess which parts were his!) which I've republished as a separate post, as this has gone on long enough already.

Yoroshiku