Empty Mirror: BSE

: Conspiracy Theories

WAS WEAPONS EXPERTS DR. DAVID KELLY A WALTER MITTY-STYLE FANTASIST?

Dr. Kelly's acknowledged status as a world authority on WMD, particularly in Iraq, makes the slur against him by a leading civil servant particularly unpleasant.

The Hutton enquiry should at last give some answers as to whether the government or the BBC has been misleading the public.

Dr. Kelly paid for giving evidence to another enquiry with his life: Why?

DO THE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION (WMD) THAT LED TO THE WAR IN IRAQ EXIST?

The Economist magazine (August, 03) has disclosed that an MI6 report for the Prime Minister will show that no WMD have been found in Iraq as yet. Mr. Blair has recently stated in a TV interview that it may be "another 4 or 5 years" before significant WMD can be presented.

Many Labour MPs and members of the public supported the war on the basis that the Saddam Hussein regime posed an imminent and potentially disastrous threat to the UK.

Former Labour minister and stage star Glenda Jackson has immediately responded to The Economist's report:

"We were quite clearly told that Saddam had weapons and that some of them could be launched in 45 minutes", she said.

"This simply confirms what many of us believed all along - there were never any weapons …"

COULD THE DEEPCUT ARMY CAMP "SUICIDES" BE THE WORK OF A SERIAL KILLER?

The files of 15 deaths at 3 of Britain's biggest army barracks have been secretly reviewed by lawyers as the Ministry of Defence prepares for an independent enquiry.

15 cases over the past 5 years have been classified as suicide, despite strong family disbelief and protests.

According to Amnesty International figures there have been 200 "self-inflicted" deaths at army barracks since 1990.

Independent ballistics expert Frank Swann has cast doubt on 4 of the cases, commenting:

"We were left in a situation in one case where the guy would have needed 15 ft long arms…"

A source commented:

"Two of the barracks involved - Deepack and Catterick were training barracks and if … - and I say "if" - there is a Dr. Shipman-style serial killer at large, he is a trainer …"

HOW WAS MARILYN MONROE MURDERED? AND WHY?

It was at 4.25 am on August 5, 1962, that the nude body of the star was found lying under a white sheet by Sergeant Jack Clemmons, LAPD. Originally found by her housekeeper four hours earlier, it was claimed that the news was only released to the police once cleared by the actress's studio, Twentieth Century Fox.

According to new research (in "Victim: The Secret Tapes of Marilyn Monroe" by Matthew Smith) it was Ms. Monroe's affairs with both JFK and his brother Robert, that meant she had to be removed by the CIA. Mr. Smith claims that the massive doses of Nembutal sleeping tablets that killed her were not taken either orally or by injection according to the post-mortem. They were, in fact, entered in to the bloodstream by an enema carried out by the security services.

B.S.E.

FACT: 21/4/02 A British woman aged 22 living in Florida has contracted the human variant of 'mad cow' disease, the first known case in the USA.

The Florida woman is thought to have acquired the disease by eating beef products in Britain during the late 1980s or early 1990s.

FACT: Most of Britain's 60m population has been exposed to the BSE agent.

FACT: The USA has banned blood donations from anyone who lived in the UK during the last 20 years for more than 3 months.

FACT: In the UK those in the North and Scotland are statistically more likely to be victims than those from other regions.

FACT: It is now believed that many elderly victims of the disease have been misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's cases.

FACT: There was a 30% increase in 2001 in deaths from CJD. This was the first sustained increase in the death rate.

FACT: Professor James Ironside of the National CJD Surveillance Unit has predicted that the current worst-case scenario, with a final vCJD toll of 140,000, will have to be revised upwards.

"The incidence is increasing and the rate of death is increasing".

FACT: Some experts have predicted there will be up to 500,000 victims of the disease.

FACT: The meat industry has held back information concerning their products.

Professor Ironside has commented:

"Our investigations have not been helped by the reluctance of the food industry to give us the information about what kind of meat went in to their products".

FACT: The incubation period for the disease is 15 to 25 years on average.

FACT: Mechanically-recovered meat is behind much of the contamination.

MRM is produced by using a high-pressure hose to strip tiny scraps of remaining meat, tissue and fat from butchered animal carcasses.

The resulting dark slurry is collected up then sieved to remove small pieces of bone.

It is then used to bulk up burgers, pies, sausages and baby food.

BSE - containing fragments of spinal cord could easily have become part of the mixture.

Though concerns were raised in 1990 that MRM could be increasing the chances of infection with BSE, it was not until 1995 that the removal of scraps from the spiral cords of cattle and sheep was halted.

FACT: Animal feed contaminated with the infectious BSE agent was exported to over 100 countries, whose livestock could now be harbouring the disease.

FACT: Conservative Minister John Selwyn Gummer publicly fed his 4-year-old daughter a burger to show that BSE could not be transferred to humans.

FACT: In December 1995 Prime Minister John Major wrote to the mother of a vCJD victim:

"I should make it clear that humans do not get mad cow disease".

For two decades knowledge about potential risks of infection was not told to the British public, for two reasons: to avoid losses in meat trade profits, and especially to avoid causing "panic".

OPINION: (Kevin Toolis: 'The Guardian') "BSE is probably the most cynical act of biological warfare ever waged against a civilian population by a western government".

5/8/02 Scientists have now revealed that there is 'an appreciable risk' of people catching BSE through blood transfusions. This disclosure represents a major increase in the danger of large numbers of Britons having already been infected (unknowingly) by the disease.

Previously the government had described the risk as 'theoretical'; now in a complete about turn they are considering banning all people who have ever received transfusions from donating blood.

The latest experiments were carried out at the Institute of Animal Health.

One in six animals given blood from infected sheep appear to have caught the disease so far. Scientists now realize that more blood components than previously thought might carry the killer agents of BSE and variant CJD, and the blood might be infected long before animals show outward systems of the disease. Humans would be similarly affected.

In autumn 2000 scientists in Berkshire and Edinburgh disclosed that blood from a sheep fed cattle brain infected with BSE had infected a previously healthy animal. Yet this evidence had been discounted by government sources: until now.

12/8/02 BBC Journalist accuses the government of 'tampering' with the news.

BBC World Affairs Editor John Simpson has alleged that the government illegally hacked in to the BBC's computer system with the aim of influencing potentially critical news items before they would be broadcast.

Such computer hacking was made illegal by the Computer Misuse Act of 1990.

Mr. Simpson claims that journalists were rung up by government sources on several occasions, and that these sources had knowledge of items that could have only come from accessing the BBC's confidential files.

12/8/02 USA 'anthrax suspect' trained in UK.

Dr. Steven Hatfill, 48, a bioweapons expert, has issued a fierce and public denial to US television concerning FBI suspicions that he was involved with the recent spate of anthrax letters in the US.

Dr. Hatfill trained at Porton Down, the Ministry of Defence's germ warfare research centre, just a couple of weeks after the letters reached their targets.

Five people died as a result of letter-spread anthrax infection; the Ames strain anthrax used was American in origin.

Dr. Hatfill had helped the American government with a study on how powdered anthrax could be sent through the post.

The FBI interviewed 5,000 people, and issued 1,700 grand jury subpoenas in their efforts to track down the terrorist.

7/1/2003 6 Algerians have been arrested in Wood Green, North London, after traces of the lethal toxin ricin were found in their flat.

Ricin was used to kill the Bulgarian dissident Georgy Markov by the Soviet authorities 25 years ago; he died on Waterloo Bridge having been stabbed in the leg with a ricin-tipped umbrella.

There is no known antidote to ricin poisoning; it produces what one expert described as "a collapse of the whole body system."

Chemists stated that ricin is 6,000 times more deadly than cyanide.

One gram could kill 36,000 people.

2/3/2003
A British widow has filed a $50 million lawsuit against the US government, which she believes is involved in a cover-up and conspiracy of silence to prevent the person or persons behind the anthrax bioterror attack which killed her husband being revealed. Bob Stevens, 62, was killed by anthrax sent through the US mail shortly after September 11th: he worked in Florida as a picture editor for US supermarket tabloid The Sun. Bob's widow Maureen at first was led to believe that the anthrax attacks were the work of Al Qaeda; now however, she thinks -as do many of America's top scientists - that the killer came from the US biotechnical world itself and is being kept in obscurity by the US state. Her Miami-based lawyer Richard Schuler commented:

"Our government does not want the world to know that this crime was perpetuated by one of its own."

NOBEL PRIZE WINNER CALLS FOR MASS SCREENING

Every Briton must be tested for the human form of BSE. That is the view of Professor Stanley Prusiner the Nobel Prize winner for identifying the cause of the disease.

He has attacked the lack of action by the authorities as the issue becomes sidelined, and he claims that infected meat is still being sold;

"A million cattle infected with BSE entered the British food chain so almost everyone in the country will have been exposed to the infectious prion proteins that cause variant CJD.

Every Briton should be tested."

Variant CJD can be dormant in the body for decades; the ultimate cost of the disaster remains unknown.

The British BSE crisis looks as if it will be allowed to fade in memory, and those who have lost loved ones may never know what exactly caused the fatalities, or indeed, who was ultimately responsible.

We live in a dark era where officialdom will always evade responsibility: spin is everything.

Every month seems to bring a new warning in the UK, and we shall consider these as they arise in this Conspiracy Theory section.

Q: IS LONDON SAFE?

A: Not according to the head of MI5. She has publicly stated:

"We are faced with a realistic possibility of a form of unconventional attack that could include chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear (CRBN). It is only a matter of time before a crude version of a CRBN is launched. A simulated attack on central London is to be staged before autumn. Police, hospitals, the fire service and local authorities will all take part.

At this moment thousands of troops are on imminent standby in case of a doomsday terror attack."

© Guy Byrne 2002, 2003

WAS WEAPONS EXPERTS DR. DAVID KELLY A WALTER MITTY-STYLE FANTASIST?
	Dr. Kelly's acknowledged status as a world authority on WMD, particularly in Iraq, makes the slur against him by a leading civil servant particularly unpleasant. The Hutton enquiry should at last give some answers as to whether the government or the BBC has been misleading the public. Dr. Kelly paid for giving evidence to another enquiry with his life: Why?


DO THE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION (WMD) THAT LED TO THE WAR IN IRAQ EXIST?
	The Economist magazine (August, 03) has disclosed that an MI6 report for the Prime Minister will show that no WMD have been found in Iraq as yet. Mr. Blair has recently stated in a TV interview that it may be "another 4 or 5 years" before significant WMD can be presented. Many Labour MPs and members of the public supported the war on the basis that the Saddam Hussein regime posed an imminent and potentially disastrous threat to the UK. Former Labour minister and stage star Glenda Jackson has immediately responded to The Economist's report: "We were quite clearly told that Saddam had weapons and that some of them could be launched in 45 minutes", she said. "This simply confirms what many of us believed all along - there were never any weapons …"


COULD THE DEEPCUT ARMY CAMP "SUICIDES" BE THE WORK OF A SERIAL KILLER?
	The files of 15 deaths at 3 of Britain's biggest army barracks have been secretly reviewed by lawyers as the Ministry of Defence prepares for an independent enquiry. 15 cases over the past 5 years have been classified as suicide, despite strong family disbelief and protests. According to Amnesty International figures there have been 200 "self-inflicted" deaths at army barracks since 1990. Independent ballistics expert Frank Swann has cast doubt on 4 of the cases, commenting: "We were left in a situation in one case where the guy would have needed 15 ft long arms…" A source commented: "Two of the barracks involved - Deepack and Catterick were training barracks and if … - and I say "if" - there is a Dr. Shipman-style serial killer at large, he is a trainer …"


HOW WAS MARILYN MONROE MURDERED? AND WHY?
	It was at 4.25 am on August 5, 1962, that the nude body of the star was found lying under a white sheet by Sergeant Jack Clemmons, LAPD. Originally found by her housekeeper four hours earlier, it was claimed that the news was only released to the police once cleared by the actress's studio, Twentieth Century Fox. According to new research (in "Victim: The Secret Tapes of Marilyn Monroe" by Matthew Smith) it was Ms. Monroe's affairs with both JFK and his brother Robert, that meant she had to be removed by the CIA. Mr. Smith claims that the massive doses of Nembutal sleeping tablets that killed her were not taken either orally or by injection according to the post-mortem. They were, in fact, entered in to the bloodstream by an enema carried out by the security services.

	B.S.E.
FACT:	21/4/02 A British woman aged 22 living in Florida has contracted the human variant of 'mad cow' disease, the first known case in the USA. The Florida woman is thought to have acquired the disease by eating beef products in Britain during the late 1980s or early 1990s.
FACT:	Most of Britain's 60m population has been exposed to the BSE agent.
FACT:	The USA has banned blood donations from anyone who lived in the UK during the last 20 years for more than 3 months.
FACT:	In the UK those in the North and Scotland are statistically more likely to be victims than those from other regions.
FACT:	It is now believed that many elderly victims of the disease have been misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's cases.
FACT:	There was a 30% increase in 2001 in deaths from CJD. This was the first sustained increase in the death rate.
FACT:	Professor James Ironside of the National CJD Surveillance Unit has predicted that the current worst-case scenario, with a final vCJD toll of 140,000, will have to be revised upwards. "The incidence is increasing and the rate of death is increasing".
FACT:	Some experts have predicted there will be up to 500,000 victims of the disease.
FACT:	The meat industry has held back information concerning their products. Professor Ironside has commented: "Our investigations have not been helped by the reluctance of the food industry to give us the information about what kind of meat went in to their products".
FACT:	The incubation period for the disease is 15 to 25 years on average.

FACT:	Mechanically-recovered meat is behind much of the contamination. MRM is produced by using a high-pressure hose to strip tiny scraps of remaining meat, tissue and fat from butchered animal carcasses. The resulting dark slurry is collected up then sieved to remove small pieces of bone.
	It is then used to bulk up burgers, pies, sausages and baby food. BSE - containing fragments of spinal cord could easily have become part of the mixture. Though concerns were raised in 1990 that MRM could be increasing the chances of infection with BSE, it was not until 1995 that the removal of scraps from the spiral cords of cattle and sheep was halted.
FACT:	Animal feed contaminated with the infectious BSE agent was exported to over 100 countries, whose livestock could now be harbouring the disease.
FACT:	Conservative Minister John Selwyn Gummer publicly fed his 4-year-old daughter a burger to show that BSE could not be transferred to humans.
FACT:	In December 1995 Prime Minister John Major wrote to the mother of a vCJD victim: "I should make it clear that humans do not get mad cow disease". For two decades knowledge about potential risks of infection was not told to the British public, for two reasons: to avoid losses in meat trade profits, and especially to avoid causing "panic".
OPINION:	(Kevin Toolis: 'The Guardian') "BSE is probably the most cynical act of biological warfare ever waged against a civilian population by a western government".

5/8/02	Scientists have now revealed that there is 'an appreciable risk' of people catching BSE through blood transfusions. This disclosure represents a major increase in the danger of large numbers of Britons having already been infected (unknowingly) by the disease. Previously the government had described the risk as 'theoretical'; now in a complete about turn they are considering banning all people who have ever received transfusions from donating blood. The latest experiments were carried out at the Institute of Animal Health. One in six animals given blood from infected sheep appear to have caught the disease so far. Scientists now realize that more blood components than previously thought might carry the killer agents of BSE and variant CJD, and the blood might be infected long before animals show outward systems of the disease. Humans would be similarly affected. In autumn 2000 scientists in Berkshire and Edinburgh disclosed that blood from a sheep fed cattle brain infected with BSE had infected a previously healthy animal. Yet this evidence had been discounted by government sources: until now.
12/8/02	BBC Journalist accuses the government of 'tampering' with the news. BBC World Affairs Editor John Simpson has alleged that the government illegally hacked in to the BBC's computer system with the aim of influencing potentially critical news items before they would be broadcast. Such computer hacking was made illegal by the Computer Misuse Act of 1990. Mr. Simpson claims that journalists were rung up by government sources on several occasions, and that these sources had knowledge of items that could have only come from accessing the BBC's confidential files.
12/8/02	USA 'anthrax suspect' trained in UK. Dr. Steven Hatfill, 48, a bioweapons expert, has issued a fierce and public denial to US television concerning FBI suspicions that he was involved with the recent spate of anthrax letters in the US. Dr. Hatfill trained at Porton Down, the Ministry of Defence's germ warfare research centre, just a couple of weeks after the letters reached their targets. Five people died as a result of letter-spread anthrax infection; the Ames strain anthrax used was American in origin. Dr. Hatfill had helped the American government with a study on how powdered anthrax could be sent through the post. The FBI interviewed 5,000 people, and issued 1,700 grand jury subpoenas in their efforts to track down the terrorist.
7/1/2003	6 Algerians have been arrested in Wood Green, North London, after traces of the lethal toxin ricin were found in their flat. Ricin was used to kill the Bulgarian dissident Georgy Markov by the Soviet authorities 25 years ago; he died on Waterloo Bridge having been stabbed in the leg with a ricin-tipped umbrella. There is no known antidote to ricin poisoning; it produces what one expert described as "a collapse of the whole body system." Chemists stated that ricin is 6,000 times more deadly than cyanide. One gram could kill 36,000 people.
2/3/2003	A British widow has filed a $50 million lawsuit against the US government, which she believes is involved in a cover-up and conspiracy of silence to prevent the person or persons behind the anthrax bioterror attack which killed her husband being revealed. Bob Stevens, 62, was killed by anthrax sent through the US mail shortly after September 11th: he worked in Florida as a picture editor for US supermarket tabloid The Sun. Bob's widow Maureen at first was led to believe that the anthrax attacks were the work of Al Qaeda; now however, she thinks -as do many of America's top scientists - that the killer came from the US biotechnical world itself and is being kept in obscurity by the US state. Her Miami-based lawyer Richard Schuler commented: "Our government does not want the world to know that this crime was perpetuated by one of its own."


NOBEL PRIZE WINNER CALLS FOR MASS SCREENING
	Every Briton must be tested for the human form of BSE. That is the view of Professor Stanley Prusiner the Nobel Prize winner for identifying the cause of the disease. He has attacked the lack of action by the authorities as the issue becomes sidelined, and he claims that infected meat is still being sold; "A million cattle infected with BSE entered the British food chain so almost everyone in the country will have been exposed to the infectious prion proteins that cause variant CJD. Every Briton should be tested." Variant CJD can be dormant in the body for decades; the ultimate cost of the disaster remains unknown. The British BSE crisis looks as if it will be allowed to fade in memory, and those who have lost loved ones may never know what exactly caused the fatalities, or indeed, who was ultimately responsible. We live in a dark era where officialdom will always evade responsibility: spin is everything. Every month seems to bring a new warning in the UK, and we shall consider these as they arise in this Conspiracy Theory section.


Q: IS LONDON SAFE?
	A: Not according to the head of MI5. She has publicly stated: "We are faced with a realistic possibility of a form of unconventional attack that could include chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear (CRBN). It is only a matter of time before a crude version of a CRBN is launched. A simulated attack on central London is to be staged before autumn. Police, hospitals, the fire service and local authorities will all take part. At this moment thousands of troops are on imminent standby in case of a doomsday terror attack."