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Subject: Biowar on a Budget
From: Tom Keske (trkeske@yahoo.com)
Date: 1997/12/21
Newsgroups: bionet.microbiology
BIOWAR ON A BUDGET
Perhaps this can be expanded into "how-to" manuals, such as
"Biowar Made Simple" or "Biowar for Dummies". I hope to
counter arguments that we could not possibly have had
technology to create new viruses, such as AIDS.
I was previously speculating how even the 1918 flu epidemic
could conceivably have involved biowarfare. Just tonight, I
noticed a reference saying that "The modern history of biowar
began in 1918 with the formation of a special section of the
Japanese Army (Unit 731) dedicated to biowar" (from
"Biological Warfare and the Implications of Biotechnology" by
Scott McCulloch). It didn't say anything about what, exactly,
they worked on, if we even know this (hmm...). How blind
can people be? Don't answer that, many of you are already
doing a fine job.
When people argue that AIDS could not have been "from
scratch", it shows naivete concerning how viruses can be
created. When the same people pretend to have reviewed all
the available literature, and to be highly informed on the
subject, then it suggests that they are deliberately lying,
being cute with phrasing, because this point has come up and
been refuted so many times- no one is saying that it is
necessary to create a new virus "from scratch".
I would argue that it is currently improbable to create
viruses from the raw elements, with precise specifications as
to the desired product, and knowing exactly what you are going
to get.
I do believe that there is a great deal that could have been
done to direct production of new viruses, with less precise
methods. This is a more technically involved discussion for
the future. For now, I want to argue on an even more basic,
common-sense level, concerning approaches that are even more
crude, but still effective.
What approaches can you use to obtains weapons of biological
warfare, without a lot of money or sophistication?
* TRAVEL TO THE FAR CORNERS
Did the Aum Shinri Kyo cult of Japan have a team of
microbiologists to create Ebola? No, they simply heard of an
exotic new disease in Africa, and they made a journey to try
to get their hands on it (luckily, they didn't, this time).
Skeptics of biowar tell us all the time- weird diseases exist
and hide for long periods of time in confined areas, escaping
our notice until they suddenly escape. Fine, let's suppose
that AIDS and Ebola existed since ancient times. If a remote
village in Africa gets hit, the epidemic stops in its tracks
when the small, remote village gets wiped out.
Governments can do the same thing that a cult can do. They
keep their eyes and ears open, for every exotic virus in every
remote corner of the world. They can seize samples, culture
it, spread it without needing to know much at all about it,
helping along a potentially natural process, many-fold.
* LEVERAGE NATURE'S LABORATORY
Sometimes, the establishment propagandists trip over their own
contradictions. On one hand, we are told that creating new
viruses was far beyond our capability. On the other hand, we
are assured that AIDS is natural, because "Nature is a
laboratory where new viruses are created all the time."
Therefore, it is nothing suspicious, to see a new virus.
Wait a minute, though. If Nature is such a fine, natural
laboratory, then why can't a human laboratory find ways to
exploit Nature's own laboratory?
You know how antibiotics and antibacterial soaps help to
create new, more resistant strains of bacteria. Bacteria and
viruses can sometimes adapt to environmental challenges, adapt
to new hosts. Similar phenomena can be consciously exploited
in a lab, to encourage new development.
* ENCOURAGING MUTATION / SELECTIVE BREEDING
You don't need to know how to clone a baby in a test tube,
from raw materials, in order to create a deformed baby (as we
found with thalidomide). Lots of agents can induce mutation-
chemicals, radiation.
Some scientists speculate that "directed evolution", and rapid
bursts of evolution might be assisted by a gene that turns on
and increases the frequency of mutation. An animal species
does not know in advance what the end result will be. Natural
selection simply favors the most suitable mutations.
A scientist can do the same: induce mutations, any mutations,
through a wide variety of simple means, then also define the
criteria for the selection process, rejecting the majority,
keeping the desired result when it occasionally comes from
random chance.
* ENCOURAGE JUMPING OF SPECIES BARRIER
This is a theme that is coming up, constantly. Ebola, AIDS,
hanta, mad cow, even the 1918 flu strain, all supposedly
jumped a species barrier, from monkeys, or cows, or mice, or
birds.
The establishment propagandists again tend to contradict
themselves. On one hand, they often claim that "viruses
cannot easily be made to jump the species barrier", at least
when the context involves human laboratories or possibly
contaminated vaccines.
On the other hand, they will act as if one stray monkey bite,
one child eating a piece of bad chicken, and whoops, a whole
new epidemic is underway. Of course, it is such a natural
occurrence, that we should not be suspicious.
You can't have it both ways. One of the simplest things for a
biowarfare scientist is to experiment, taking every animal
virus imaginable, and injecting it to large numbers of human
guinea pigs: prisoners of war, criminals, people in mental
institutions, etc.
Pump them with blood of diseased animals, pus, feces, force
feed them raw meat of diseased animals- types of contact that
we would normally avoid, scrupulously.
You can sometimes create a new virus simply by culturing it in
a new type of tissue.
One of the first recorded examples of biological warfare is
the ancient Romans using dead animals to foul the enemy's
water supply ("Biological Warfare and the Implications of
Biotechnology").
If the ancient Romans can manage to cook up such ideas, so can
Allied, German, or Japanese scientists in 1918, and so can
DOD, CIA, or Russian scientists in the 60's and 70's.
GOING CHEAP?
Kathleen Bailey, a former assistant director of the U.S. Arms
Control and Disarmament Agency declared that she was
"absolutely convinced" that a biological arsenal could be
built with $10,000 of equipment in a 15x15 room.
It is the "poor man's nuke". To "affect" a 1 square
kilometer area requires $2000 with conventional weapons, $800
with nuclear weapons, $600 with chemical weapons, $1 with
biological weapons (same source cited previously).
Biowarfare on a Budget.
Tom Keske
Boston, Mass.
===========================================================
Subject: Spirit of '76
From: Tom Keske (trkeske@yahoo.com)
Date: 1997/12/27
Newsgroups: alt.politics.homosexuality
SPIRIT OF '76
How much coincidence is too much coincidence? That is up to
individual readers to decide for themselves. My job, in
trying to arouse more curiosity as to the origins of emerging
diseases, is to try to point out more clearly, exactly how
much coincidence exists.
I find that pouring over chronologies of events sometimes
reveals interesting patterns, as well as giving you a feeling
for the spirit of a time- an intangible factor that can be
nearly as important.
What was the spirit of '76? This was when the CIA director
was being fired, immediately after revealing to Congress the
secret history of extensive, unauthorized biowarfare research
by the CIA. George Bush, one of the few people that Nixon
trusted always to play ball as Nixon wanted, took the fired
director's place. George went to bat to defend the CIA's
interests and secrecy, dozens of times.
In 1976, Felix Rodriguez quit the CIA as he was sent to prison
for his role in Watergate. In 1976, Robert Gallo was
isolating T-cell growth factor, allowing T-cells to be
cultured in vitro.
In 1976, the first recorded Ebola outbreak in Africa, ever,
took place. In 1976, the first case of Legionnaire's disease,
ever, was recorded in Philadelphia.
In February of 1976, the CDC investigated and confirmed a
swine-type influenza outbreak at Fort Dix. Fear of an
epidemic similar to the 1918 flu epidemic led to a
recommendation that all Americans be inoculated. The National
Influenza Immunization Program was officially started by
October of 1976. Over 40 million people were inoculated in
the short time that the NIIP was in effect.
By December 1976 the NIIP was suspended following reports from
more than 10 states of Guillain-Barre Syndrome, an uncommon
neurological disorder.
The Spirit of '76- shady politics + weird diseases +
questionable vaccines. The spirit actually permeated several
decades.
In 1975, the first case of Lyme disease, ever, was recorded in
Connecticut.
In 1979, the vaccine trials on gay men were underway in New
York, soon to be followed by an AIDS epidemic.
In 1979, there was also a peculiar outbreak in Sverdlovsk,
Russia. The Russian government blamed this on innocent causes-
bad hygiene, etc.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980, Russia consistently denied its
biowarfare program, having signed a treaty in 1972 that
forbade such research.
In 1992, Yeltsin finally confirmed that the Sverdlovsk tragedy
was a bioweapons leak from a secret military lab. "No more
lies", he said.
Defectors have also told debriefers in London and Washington
of deadly microbes used for political assassinations of 6 or 7
individuals since 1978.
Is it obvious what lies behind any one of these events? No. Is
it obvious that with everything taken together, there was a
suspicious climate in these times? Quite. Yet, even this
simple realization seems to be denied with an excess of
vehemence, by many people. Why?
Perhaps it is refusal to face unsettling realities, or perhaps
it is stupidity, or perhaps it is intentional lies of the same
kind that Russia told, for the same kinds of reasons.
CORRELATION VERSUS CAUSATION
Correlation does not equate to causation, but it can be cause
for suspicion.
If a man takes out an insurance policy on his wife a week
before she is murdered, that is cause to take a second look.
If the amount of money in the policy is extremely large, the
cause for suspicion increases in proportion to the amount. If
the husband also was heard remarking that he loathed his wife
and wished that he could be rid of her, it is another strike.
Picture the man ridiculing the police investigators: "Don't
you know the FIRST THING about science? You really ought to
take Philosophy 101. Correlation and coincidence prove
nothing. You sound like crazy conspiracy theorists, to me.
Maybe aliens from a UFO murdered my wife."
Hopefully, the police and the jury would slam the man's ass in
prison, with extra gusto.
When you have a government that cozies with religious
extremists who say that gays are abominations and enemies of
God, that is comparable to a man who says that he loathes his
wife. When the government talks about developing new viruses
refractory to the immune system, it is comparable to a man
buying a gun similar to that which was used to kill his wife,
shortly afterward.
We are dealing with governments with a proven track record of
lying, as a matter of routine. Both the U.S. and Russia
promised to stop biowar research in a 1972 treaty. Neither
did.
When you are dealing with governments that lie, one of your
only methods of judging truth is to assess how much
coincidence is too much coincidence. It is not a matter of
gullibility or being suspiciously minded. It is the
unfortunate fact of your situation, that you are left with
these imperfect means. You have few other options, and you
must use them, because the stakes are too high, to do
otherwise.
Tom Keske
Boston, Mass.
===========================================================
Subject: Giving Biowar a Chance
From: Tom Keske (trkeske@yahoo.com)
Date: 1998/02/06
Newsgroups: alt.politics.org.cia
Giving Biowar a Chance
Jeff Jacoby, an obnoxious excuse for a journalist at the
Boston Globe, is now gung-ho to be a Weekend Warrior, an
Armchair General, to start a war with Saddam Hussein.
I am not a fan of Hussein, but neither do I have stomach for
the rah-rah blood lust of a shallow and naive ideologue, who
would be among the last to be coming home with Gulf War
Syndrome himself, or ever to be one to concern himself with
the betrayals of a government that turns its back on its own
veterans.
The argument is that we must destroy Hussein, because he has
deadly VX gas. This shows great naivete about biochemical
warfare, much less about politics.
I once majored in Chemical Engineering, before I switched to
Computer Engineering. However, I took up interest, once
again, in the course of researching the origins of AIDS, which
also requires researching the history of biochemical warfare.
The truth is, a graduate student, or a moderately competent
organic chemist could synthesize VX gas, or sarin gas. It
requires no special materials or knowledge, and limited
laboratory facilities.
Such is nature of the dangers in the world today, and such are
the reasons that we cannot go on our way in this world,
thinking that it is still possible to kick butt of demonized
enemies, as if we were having fun at a football game.
Sarin gas: the chemical structure is (H3C)2CHOPF(O)me. It has
just four ingredients: phosphorus trichloride, sodium
fluoride, isopropyl alcohol, and acentonitrile. It can be
made by mere cults, much less renegade governments.
The formula for VX gas was available in a library in London,
where I visited a couple months ago, but I did not bring it
back, so I won't print it. I believe that it's also available
in libraries here, if you know where to look. There was an
incident, I believe also in London, where a professor once
wrote the formula down on a blackboard before radical
students, who then circulated it.
But that nasty Sadam- He's ready to USE these horrible
weapons! See how he gassed the Kurds!
May I remind everyone that the first country to use nerve gas
against the Kurds was Great Britain, decades before Hussein.
How would the West feel today, if there had been a Middle
Eastern country powerful enough to bomb and devastate England,
killing hundreds of thousands of women and children, as we
have done to Iraq?
Of course, when it comes to atrocities against the Kurds,
maybe we should be as eager to assassinate Henry Kissinger as
we are eager to assassinate Saddam Hussein.
Little do Americans realize, either, that Kuwait was
slant-drilling into Iraq's oil. America's justifications for
military actions against Cuba, or Panama, or Grenada, or many
other places, have been little better. Kuwait was a disliked,
undemocratic government, whose leaders actually practiced
slavery. It isn't merely "principle" that determines whom
America hates, and whom it supports.
The U.S. also has its supplies of VX gas. Should we be
bombed, also?
Oh, but we are not reckless madmen like Saddam Hussein!
Really? Then who were the reckless madmen who armed Saddam
Hussein with dozens of biological agents in the first place-
another fact which is largely suppressed? Who are the madmen
who killed thousands of sheep at Dugway testing grounds in
Utah, in leaks from nerve gas tests, which the government also
tried to cover up?
Who are the madmen who admit that some of their own inventory
of VX gas is presently unaccounted for? Who are the madmen
who let AIDS rampage, years ago, with indifference?
Saddam has VX gas, so let's charge right in and start a war.
Of course, the war itself could be the very thing to provoke
the use of the VX gas. Details.
I can understand the temptation to go to war. What I don't
care to see is the cavalier enthusiasm of hatemongers, using
this as one more excuse to vent the natural bile in their own
systems, who also think that it will come easy and pain free.
America's never been hurt on its own soil, with the kinds of
tragedies that now hang over it by a slender thread.
Sometimes, I think that America will never give up its
arrogant, swaggering ways until precisely that happens.
Sometimes, I think that Judgment Day for America would be to
have the same level of destruction, and the same propaganda
rationalizations used against it, that it has often used
against weaker nations.
You can bomb Saddam , but you can never be safe in this world,
ever again. Our own madness is as dangerous to our safety.
Our own mindless aggression, our own blood lust, our tendency
to demonize our enemies while failing to see similar traits in
ourselves, our self-serving propaganda that presents only one
side of truth, are probably all factors more deadly than our
VX gas.
Tom Keske
Boston, Mass.
===========================================================
Subject: Reply: Man-made AIDS?
From: Tom Keske (trkeske@yahoo.com)
Date: 1998/02/07
Newsgroups: soc.culture.zimbabwe
Reply: Man-made AIDS?
<< You find it hard to keep up eh? Missed the bit completely
<< the amount of AIDS cases in the US declining 44%
I'm afraid that it is the above statistic that is grossly
misstated. The cumulative total of AIDS cases is still rising.
The number of DEATHS has decreased, because of better
treatment. The number of NEW cases (i.e., the rate of
increase) declined in 1997. This is not at all the same as a
decline in the total AIDS population.
The ballyhooed statistics are being misinterpreted in ways
that might cause a destructive complacency.
However, all this is beside the point. The fact that better
treatments have been found has no bearing on whether the virus
is natural or man made, or whether the epidemic originally
began accidentally or intentionally.
<< Completely missed the blood sample found by the CDC that
<< came from Brazzaville
Wrong again- I wrote about this, the same day it was
announced. I shall repost this to your newsgroup (see
"Piltdown AIDS") I use a purely statistical argument to
explain why all such claims are very likely false, and
probably are deliberate fabrications. I've received some
patronizing insults, but seen no serious attempts at rebuttal
of the assumptions or line of reasoning.
After the first such claim, of a British sailor having AIDS in
1959, I expressed my feeling that we were seeing calculated
misinformation, and would probably see more of the same. A
government that wishes to hide a dangerous truth can easily
contaminate samples for unwitting researchers.
It is analysis of the pattern of early AIDS spread that most
effectively counters the supposedly "undisputed" blood sample
claims.
<< The simian ancestry of AIDS slipped right by you
Hardly. I am well aware of the contending theories- that HIV
came from SIV, or from bovine virus, or visna. I am aware
that a majority of establishment scientists believe it was
SIV.
I am not personally backing any of these theories, at this
time. I am trying to get more information, and am talking with
an HIV/SIV microbiologist researcher about it.
I have heard some claims that the similarity of SIV is greater
than visna, and I have also heard the reverse claim. I cannot
yet make a judgment call on this debate.
The best that I have determined so far is that the percent of
genetic similarity among these contenders is too close to call
a winner, on that basis alone- roughly about 50-60% similarity
in each case. This is not really a very close similarity-
less than the similarity between a man and a mouse, if I'm not
mistaken.
I do not trust the consensus view because I suspect a bias on
the part of researchers who will absolutely rule out
possibilities of biowar and lab-manipulated viruses, virtually
a priori. If they assume an African origin, then they may be
biased toward monkeys, instead of sheep or cows, for obvious
reasons.
I do not necessarily believe that the answer to this question
is necessarily critical to the larger questions of whether
contaminated vaccines or laboratory manipulations were
involved.
<< do not think that soc.culture.zimbabwe automatically
<< guarantees you an ignorant audience.
I imagine nothing of the kind. Your first sentence above
showed some clear ignorance, but that is only your individual
statement, which I do not take to represent a country or
newsgroup.
There is far greater reception for alternate theories of AIDS
origin in Africa than there is in America. There is far
greater acceptance of the same in America's black population
than in the white gay population.
The white gay population would probably tend to think that
this is because the black population is more ignorant,
uneducated, paranoid, and gullible. This, I think, is a
patronizing, racist attitude.
They don't realize that concerns over AIDS genocide are
widespread among the black intelligentsia, and among some
prominent leaders, not just the poor ghettos. In my opinion,
it is the black population in the U.S. that shows the greater
political savvy.
If anyone is looking for a "gullible" audience in Africa, it
is more likely to be white, American, Christian evangelists.
They are more interested in hobnobbing with hated dictators,
riding on their yachts, and becoming rich from deals and
diamond mines that use slave labor.
I do not need or wish for anyone to be ignorant. I wish for
them to become well-informed enough in time that they can
confidently hold their own in a debate with microbiologists,
media, or government propagandists who are trying to cover
their misdeeds. I wish for them to hear, consider, and
critique all sides of the argument.
<< The real title for this piece should be: AIDS- FACTS,
<< FICTION AND CLEVERLY INSERTED MISINFORMATION TO FURTHER
<< OUR AGENDA
I am frequently accused of "paranoia" and "conspiracy theory",
as anyone will be who takes this unpopular position. It is
odd, then, to be accused also of a devious, conspiratorial
hidden "agenda". What, exactly, do you suppose my hidden
"agenda" to be? Communist propaganda to destabilize the
country? To win sympathy for the "gay agenda"?
I think that it is our governments who more truly have an
"agenda". They are terrified of the thought of blacks, gays,
AIDS victims all getting angered enough over suspected
genocide to start racial/civil war. They are worried about
destroyed reputations, destroyed political power of the Right,
criminal charges, lawsuits. I think that they are running a
desperate propaganda machine at full bore, as they usually do
in such situations.
Governments lie during war, and they will lie during the AIDS
war.
I certainly do hope to wake society's marginalized groups
enough to make them see why we need to take forceful action
against the corrupt, crackpot Far Right that dominates our
politics.
I have no need or intention to bend the truth in the slightest
degree, to accomplish this. I speak about biowarfare
activities and lab manipulation of viruses because there is a
long and sordid history of it, and because it is not at all
unreasonable to imagine that it might have something to do
with the AIDS epidemic. The exaggerated hysteria with which
I am attacked for making this simple observation is all the
more evidence that it is the opposition who cannot tolerate an
open discussion.
Tom Keske
Boston, Mass.
===========================================================
Subject: Bioethical Dilemma
From: Tom Keske (trkeske@yahoo.com)
Date: 1998/03/01
Newsgroups: alt.religion.gay-les-bi-tran
BIOETHICAL DILEMMA
This is a long, rambling philosophical essay, written for the
sake of my personal need to write it, but you are welcome to
read and think along, if you like long philosophy and enjoy
the inner agonies of others.
I cannot help but wonder what the America would do in the
following scenario:
A new, unprecedented disease comes out of nowhere. A third to
a half of the American population is dead or dying. There is
suspicion that it might be a product of Iraqi biowarfare, but
not absolute proof.
We knew for a fact that Iraqi scientists were investigating
the production of a new virus that had essentially the same
characteristics as the virus that hit the public. A team of
Iraqi scientists visited Houston, and within a couple months,
the first cases ever of the new disease appeared in Houston.
A year later, the same team visited Atlanta. Within months,
Atlanta became the second city to report cases of the new
disease.
Of course we knew that Hussein had deep hostility, and had
said that America was worthy of death, many times. But when
we confronted Hussein, he laughed and ridiculed how we didn't
understand that mere correlation is not causation.
What would America do? Nothing? Hit Iraq with everything we
had, nukes included? What level of proof and certainty would
we consider sufficient, in the face of an unspeakable
Holocaust?
Everyone can have their own opinion, but I think that I know
the answer: if we didn't feel that we had sufficient proof to
satisfy the international community, we would manufacture our
own "proof" in order to justify our actions. Or perhaps in a
case like this, we would no longer even care what the
international community thought. I think that America would
decimate Iraq, to the last man, woman, and child, barely
stopping to think twice about it.
Would this be the RIGHT thing to do? It is an interesting
question, because it is essentially an identical situation to
what gays and other despised groups face today.
Houston and Atlanta and replaced by New York and San
Francisco. The visiting Iraqi scientists are replaced
experimental hepatitis B vaccines used on gays. The Iraqi
biowar research is replaced by a 1969 U.S. Defense
appropriation that granted $10 million for the development of
AIDS-like viruses. The Muslim rhetoric of "Great Satan" and
"Death to America" is replaced by fundamentalist Christian
rhetoric tying gays to Satanic forces, and a Holy Bible that
calls us worthy of death.
What doesn't compare in the analogy is that gays have no army,
no nuclear stockpile to retaliate, no media establishment that
they own and operate, to condition the public with
justifications for their war.
However, as I research the origin of AIDS, I learn more
unsettling things than I wish to know about the "poor man's
nuke".
I learned a simple way to make chlorine gas from household
products. I learned that the production of sarin gas is only
one chemical step removed from the production of ball point
pen ink.
I was curious how difficult it really was to get the formula
for VX gas, so I experimented. It took me literally seconds.
I marveled how the molecular structure was so simple, I could
memorize it in minutes.
These deadly weapons require little in the way of special
training or facilities, nothing that is not in the reach of
modestly educated people.
How to fight the corrupt oligarchs, callous patricians,
indifferent aristocrats with all the billions of dollars at
their disposal? How ironic that a possible answer made itself
apparent as I researched the origins of a Holocaust.
Darkness crosses my heart, to feel a temptation in such
things.
As I research, I also learn more and more to discourage me
about the worth of the human race, the chances for our future.
I learn of the ugliness of my own country's history and its
leaders, the equal ugliness of the rest of the world.
I learn about the rape of Nanking, vivisections, human body
parts in formaldehyde, 3 day-old infants with pins stuck in
their fingers. I learn how the good GI Joes never prosecuted
these war criminals, because they made a deal to get the
fruits of this wonderful research.
I read about the links of the Rockefellers and the Nazis, the
Fords and the Nazis, the Duponts and the Nazis, the Bush
family and the Nazis, Buchanan and the Nazis, Liddy and the
Nazis, Nixon and the Nazis, Coca-Cola doing stiff-arm salutes
for the Nazis, Standard Oil and the Nazis, Bayer and the
Nazis. I begin to wonder if there is really anything worth
saving in this world.
I think about the irony of reacting to a murderous world with
a retaliatory murder campaign. Would assassinating crackpot
right-wing leaders be morally equivalent to their own efforts
to purge "undesirables"? On the other hand, can you sit back
and let them get away with it, let them cover it up?
I heard Desmond Tutu assuring us that right and wrong matter.
Sounds nice, but should I buy it? Sometimes, the relentless
evil of the world can undermine the reassuring superstitions
that are necessary for our sanity- the superstitions which we
are often barely aware that we even hold: That goodness is
eventually rewarded. That time brings progress as the
naturally favored outcome.
Perhaps time chases its tail in meaningless circles. Perhaps
we progress to within an inch of our goal, then simply die.
Perhaps our pain is never consciously designed as a "lesson",
merely a random accident dispensed in sheer caprice by an
uncaring Universe.
You can continue to get by in such a world, but only if your
luck holds up. When Life is mostly disillusioning, your
attitude turns into sheer nihilism and a Death Wish for the
World. At least, this is true if you cannot manage to
maintain these lovely superstitions, or at least questionable
propositions, that keep us going.
Is it worth it to have superstition for its utilitarian value,
or to make us behave well, if it is really all a lie? Or is it
merely a cruel joke, to keep us chasing a carrot on a stick
that we never reach, merely making us slaves to our own
survival instincts?
There are times when I would be tempted to smash this whole
world. If there is a God, then He will be called out of
Hiding, to come and try to save this world if He can.
My kind was ground up, washed up and left for dead. But it's
all right, in fact its going to be a gas. Jumping Jack Flash
hits the nerve gas. Jumping Jack Flash hits the sarin gas.
Jumping Jack Flash, hits the VX gas.
Jesus versus Jumping Jack Flash. The Battle of the Millenium.
Of course we are not silly and superstitious, a dying Ship of
Fools. Jesus could take Jumping Jack Flash with one hand tied
behind his back, we all know that. And then Ronald Reagan and
John Wayne will ride in on white horses, leading the cavalry,
and Pat Buchanan will follow, Riding to the Guns, ready to
Lock and Load. The Republican Revelation, God and Country to
restore our faith.
I am relieved of my bioethical dilemma somewhat by virtue of
the fact that my efforts as an amateur investigative reporter
have given me too much visibility to pursue such options, even
if I desired. Once that you start disseminating damaging
information about powerful people, it doesn't take much to
get noticed and thoroughly, constantly scrutinized.
Yet, the very question, just to figure out what I really
think, gnaws at me. Of course, it is also true that the
ability of our governments to monitor its outraged malcontents
might sooner or later be taxed to the limit. I contemplate
how it would take just one enraged chemist, one enraged
microbiologist, one enraged nuclear scientist, who had the
sense to keep a low profile, to come from nowhere as a
wildcard of history, dealing a deadly blow to our entire,
corrupt power structure.
I recall a Pentagon study, where they tested a simulation, to
see whether the Congress and White House were vulnerable to
chemical/biological attacks. Had the tests been real, they
could have wiped them both. Nice of them to share this
thought with us.
We've already seen planes crash on the White House lawn. I
shudder to think what a crop dusting plane on a windy day
could do.
I recall a famous figure of history (I forget who) who said in
regard to slavery, "I tremble when I contemplate that God is
Just."
Really? Personally, I tremble when I contemplate that God is
Insane, or God is Incompetent, or God is Missing in Action. I
tremble when I contemplate that there is no magic, invisible
safety net to catch the human race and protect it from its own
stupidity.
America and the world at large make me think of an auto with a
drunk at the wheel, the gas pedal stuck to the floor, the
brakes not working, rushing at 100 mph up a highway, narrowly
missing a utility pole, narrowly missing on oncoming car,
narrowly missing a steep gully. The public are the children,
peacefully asleep in the back seat.
The image is so painful, it is difficult to want to shoot the
idiot at the wheel, bastard that he is, knowing that this will
just make it worse, if you can't grab the wheel yourself.
I think that a better analogy is of America as the U.S.S.
Titanic. It is comfortable, plush, confident, arrogant.
They think themselves to be invincible.
They are go-getters, optimists, world-shapers, men of action.
They think that this is why they are so successful. They hate
the gloomy whining of pessimists who say they saw an iceberg
ahead with their binoculars, and who tell them it is critical
to slow down.
It is run by aristocrats: spoiled, greedy, petty, vain,
callous or sometimes downright sadistic. They think they are
some higher form of life. They look down on the undesirables
who are not part of their world, and who seem to them like a
vague threat to their own well-being.
They would lock us all below, purge us to make their own world
cleaner.
They are of course only the human race. Their underlying
character is no different than any of us. We should feel our
own shame, seeing what they are.
Their problem is mostly that life has been too soft. Too many
people, needing their money and power, always flattering their
egos, never daring to tell them what ugly creeps they really
are.
They don't attribute their success to their ruthlessness,
their exploitations, their privilege of birth. They succumb
to the belief in their natural superiority, as most
aristocrats tend to do. They believe that God favors them,
guarantees their victories.
It is worth it to kill them? No, as supreme insult, I would
say that it isn't even worth the bother. It is unnecessary.
There is enough pain and loss ahead for everyone, not even
lifeboats this time for the aristocrats.
What counts? What matters? In terms of "morality", I don't
know it really matters at all, whether we are violent or
gentle. In a world of such madness, the concepts become
meaningless, like worrying about the morality of killing a boa
constrictor in a jungle. To kill it is no moral crime, to run
from it is no cowardice. There are only the practical results
to consider. I don't think that God cares one way or the
other. I don't think that the human race has enough insight
for its opinions to matter at all.
As to what matters, I think you must ask yourself what would
matter to you if an asteroid were going to hit the Earth in a
couple months. Should you crusade to make the world a better
place? Bring all the criminals to justice? To get revenge?
I would urge you to spend time with your loved ones. Feed the
ducks. Walk a nature trail. Watch the sunset, try to enjoy
its beauty while you can, don't think about trying to push it
back into place. Maybe after it goes down, it will eventually
come back on its own, by forces more powerful than you, even
if not perfect and always benevolent forces.
I shall do my little part to try to make it better, as
everyone does. I shall be a good investigative reporter,
digging honestly for the truth. I shall recycle my
newspapers. Donate to preserve the farmland.
But I don't think that I care to singe my hair, holding up the
Sun on my shoulders, or bothering to blow it out myself in
rage, like a candle.
You will find me in my spare time feeding the ducks and geese,
trying to get the last drops of sweetness from bittersweet
life. In between my contempt of the human race, I shall feel
sadness for it.
Tom Keske
Boston, Mass.
===========================================================
Subject: Codons and HIV
From: Tom Keske (trkeske@yahoo.com)
Date: 1998/03/14
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.gaynet
CODONS and HIV
This discussion of mutation rates and HIV may seem boring, but
it is worth paying attention. It relates to some critical
issues- not only the real age of the virus and the possibility
that it may have been man-made, but also the future of the
epidemic and how far wide-spread it may become.
One of the issues that I have been debating is whether HIV is
likely to evolve backwards, closer again to SIV. I have said
that is not likely, but have been arguing with a couple people
who claim otherwise, as in the following:
" > A constant mutation merely means that the pattern is
> different from the last pattern that it held.
> Suppose you have a single point that can be only one of
> two things. If it mutates twice, it will be back to its
> original state.
> Now, a genetic codon is three bases long and can contain
> one of four possibilities. This gives a total of 64 possible
> combinations for a triplet codon. Now, a constant mutation
> rate not only will have the codon "moving back" toward
> the original codon sequence, it is practically guaranteed
> to happen. There are only 64 possible sequences. If the
> sequence mutates 64 times, you are guaranteed to have a
> duplicate.
> HIV can be quite old. Just because some mutates a lot
> doesn't mean that it mutates very far.
> Influenza and cold viruses have been around for centuries,
> and yet they are some of the most rapidly mutating viruses
> known. I have heard that you can't get the same cold
> twice."
I would hope that most people would know intuitively why the
above argument is nonsense. This was not posted to an
audience of microbiologists, so I think that it would help to
define some terms, first:
co-don (ko' dan) n. a small group of chemical units,
believed to be a sequence of three nucleotides, that
codes the incorporation of a specific small group of
amino acids into a protein molecule during the
synthesis of a protein. Codons are present in DNA
and RNA.
The above argument is silly because is talking about having 64
possible combinations for just ONE codon. The only problem is
that HIV-1 has (a-hem) 401,231 codons. The total possible
combinations, I estimate, is on the order to 10 to the 308-th
power.
Yes, if you have one codon change, it certainly could change
back, and move you "closer" to SIV. However, the subtype O
virus was SIGNIFICANTLY closer to SIV, genetically, than the
other known strains, and there is also significant genetic
difference between HIV and SIV.
The odds against a large number of mutations all moving back
to older strain would be astronomical. It is similar to the
fact of how human beings may surely continue to evolve into
many different forms, but never precisely into monkeys.
The statement about "never getting the same cold twice" hints
at the very contradiction. You develop immunity to each
strain that infects you, yet you keep getting new infections,
regularly. Why? Because you constantly get new mutations
that are unlike what you saw before, virtually unlimited in
number.
As I said, the mutation issue may be critical to the entire
future of the epidemic.
For example, an HIV subtype was found in Thailand in 1996 that
spreads much more easily through heterosexual intercourse. The
subtype grows much more easily in the female reproductive
tract than does the HIV subtype that currently predominates in
the U.S.
Another major issue is whether some mutations might result in
failure of current blood tests to screen the virus. We have
been comforted by the assurance that our blood banks are
virtually 100% safe. If we start having to play catch-up,
revising the tests to cover new strains, we may have windows
of vulnerability.
Inquiring minds would want to know- how many possible strains
of HIV might we expect to see, in what time frame? This
would seem like a simple enough question, but my attempts to
search literature on the subject have not yet yielded a
satisfying answer.
I'm still researching, but I am fairly confident that the
possibilities for mutation will be astronomical, essentially
limitless. Direct mutation is only one aspect of virus
change- there is also recombination that occurs among
different virus strains.
In general, it is possible for nearly anything to evolve into
anything else, given enough time. Human beings evolved from a
primordial soup of basic raw materials. Counting the possible
combinations of codons is beside the point, in that sense.
What makes for rapid evolution, however, is rapid mutation.
It appears that the concept of HIV lingering in the body,
dormant for long periods, may have been inaccurate. It now
appears that there is a constant battle with the immune
system, which is partially effective, but it is the HIV
mutation rate that statistically works to the long-term
advantage of the virus.
It is a concern that the same phenomenon that applies to the
HIV battle within a single individual, might also apply to our
collective, long-term battle with HIV as a species.
Similar to how the immune system tries to identify invaders,
and purge them, we try in the blood banks to identify invasion
by contaminated blood.
An individual with HIV can go for a long time without
realizing the true nature of the long-term problem. If
mutations were ever to start evading detection in blood supply
screening, as it evades detection by the human immune system,
we could be in more serious trouble than we realize.
It would seem to be advisable that we continue studying these
issues, until we can be confident that we have a very good
handle on them.
Tom Keske
Boston, Mass.
===========================================================
Subject: More on Codons
From: Tom Keske (trkeske@yahoo.com)
Date: 1998/03/19
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.gaynet
MORE ON CODONS
It was questioned on gaynet whether 400,000 was correct for
the number of codons in HIV. The HIV virus is about 9500
nucleotides long [1].
The 401,231 figure was taken from the "Codon Usage Database",
developed by Prof. Toshimichi Ikemura (Laboratory of
Evolutionary Genetics, National Institute of Genetics) [2].
My efforts to check the technical accuracy of my articles by
posting to microbiology newsgroups seems to be working. I had
extended conversations with an assistant Professor of Biology
at St. Joseph's University, and an HIV researcher at Los
Alamos National Laboratory.
Their explanations of the discrepancy didn't quite jibe, but I
thought that the HIV researcher overall was most credible. The
assistant Professor said that the assumption about 400000
codons would be true "only if every nucleotide on both strands
(in the double-stranded replicative form of the viral genome)
were used to code for protein". The HIV researcher said that
the 400,000 figure probably was not an error, but was a
summation across all variants of the virus.
For a single virus, both sources seemed to feel that the
number of codons would be about 3000-4000.
I imagine that there could be some justification for looking
at the cumulative total as an indicator for how many new
mutations are possible. However, it doesn't really matter,
because the bottom line is unchanged even in the most
conservative case.
I found that my estimate of 10 ^ 308 possible mutations was
far too low, because the long double-precision floating point
variables in my calculator program overflowed, which I should
have noticed. The real figure is far LARGER, even if you use
the lowest figure of 3000 codons.
The assistant Professor said that the number of possible
mutations was "very large but not infinite". The HIV
researcher agreed that the number was essentially infinite.
Of course, the whole issue is somewhat irrelevant, because as
I pointed out in a later post, researchers DID in fact state
that the type O subtypes of HIV were indicative of multiple
animal cross-overs, which was exactly one of the points that I
was trying to make in my own speculation.
Someone on gaynet criticized that "evolution does not go
backwards", which is an odd criticism, because this is the
whole point that I was trying to make. It can "imitate" going
backward, by random chance, not by some actual process driving
a reversal. However, this is a very limited effect.
If the total number of possible mutations is large, and if
the "older" gene sequence is significantly distant, then the
odds of going back to it by random chance is statistically
infinitesimal. This is the only point that I was making,
which seems fairly straightforward, so I am hard pressed to
understand all the fuss.
I find that there is a LOT of contradiction between different
experts on issues related to HIV. In time, I'm bound to make
some errors. However, if I do make any errors of an obviously
factual type (matters of speculation notwithstanding), you can
be sure that I'll have flocks of microbiologists jumping all
over me, and I will report the correction.
Tom Keske
Boston, Mass.
Sources:
[1] http://ww.urmc.rochester.edu/...mbi/cann/335/335Structure.html
[2] http://www.dna.affrc.go.jp/~nakamura/readme_codon.html
===========================================================
Subject: Re: Codons and HIV
From: Tom Keske (trkeske@yahoo.com)
Date: 1998/03/29
Newsgroups: bionet.microbiology
>HIV has 400,000 plus codons??? A 10,000 base RNA could
>contain only 3,300 codons,
I've answered this question already, in a subsequent post. I
double-checked the database which listed the 400,000 figure,
and verified that this was what it said.
I've had two different answers from two different
microbiologists as to why there might be a discrepancy, but
tend to believe the one who said that he thought the 400,000
figure was a total across all known strains, not a single
virus.
It doesn't matter, though. The whole point was to figure out
how many possible mutations there could possibly be. This
answer is the same- essentially infinite, or something just
shy of infinite ;-)
>Tom, you are example of how a little knowledge can be worse
>that complete ignorance. Do your homework before you start
>discoursing on molecular biology and epidemiology. Be part
>of the solution, not part of the problem.
After talking to a lot of microbiologists by now, I find that
I get a lot of contradiction and confusion out of them. Not
merely matters that I am not understanding clearly, or subtle
nuances that might be escaping me- I mean point-blank,
gross-out contradictions.
I guess that you can lay microbiologists end-to-end like you
can lay economists end-to-end, with similar results.
If I felt that I could trust in the scientific establishment
to enlighten us adequately on matters that are of
life-and-death importance to my kind, I would be happy to do
so.
What am I supposed to think when a colleague of Robert Gallo
and a Nobel Laureate come along, claiming that HIV doesn't
even cause AIDS?
Excuse me for not trusting the profession, and please excuse
me for suspecting genocide. Perhaps if more microbiologists
took their noses out of their petri dishes and noticed Newt
Gingrich warmly welcoming a man who advocates putting gays in
camps, they would understand from where I am coming.
I am not posting to this newsgroup thinking that it is going
to enlighten microbiologists. I am reposting essays that are
primarily intended for gay newsgroups. My point in posting
them here, is so that experts can correct me if I make any
obviously factual errors.
Now, Jay, I've talked to a number of microbiologists who
promised to help guide me, but haven't followed through a
great deal. For better or worse, I'm a regular on gay
newsgroups, and have no intentions of going anywhere, so it's
best if any errors are merely called politely to my attention.
I will correct all FACTUAL errors, but will not comprise
matters of speculation and opinion.
Tom Keske
Boston, Mass.
===========================================================
===========================================================
Subject: Foresight Versus Hindsight
From: Tom Keske (trkeske@yahoo.com)
Date: 1998/05/24
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.gaynet
FORESIGHT VERSUS HINDSIGHT
It is a cheap shot to suggest that investigating "AIDS
conspiracy" means that one must necessarily be detracting from
the "more positive" and proactive efforts to fight AIDS.
Time for investigating biowar and AIDS origin does not come
out of time for fighting AIDS. It comes out of time for
lunch, time for movies, time for luxuries like sleep. I
support AIDS fundraising, conventional AIDS education, no less
now than in the years before I realized that AIDS origin was
also an issue.
AIDS is now promising a death total to surpass World War II,
the worst war in human history. If there is any chance
whatsoever that reckless laboratory experimentation, much less
deliberate genocide, might have any involvement in
precipitating this epidemic, then no stone should be left
unturned in investigating those possibilities. If the
mindset of many gaynetters had its way, there would be
virtually not a single one of the many stones turned.
We need Faggots with Foresight, not Homosexuals with
Hindsight. It would represent great progress if our
community, merely to have better insight into the present,
much less the future.
I want to give a little more personal history, to make a point
about how it is possible to succeed in correctly perceiving
the news-behind-the-news, well before it becomes common
knowledge, through a crusade just like this one over AIDS
origin.
Someone asked me why I was twice visited by the Secret
Service. He suggested that perhaps I was visited merely
because of radical and antisocial tendencies, and that the SS
were really the Men in White.
No, they were really straight, white men with bad fashion
sense.
My current AIDS crusade is political intrigue #6 for me.
Political crusades #3 and #4 both had nothing whatever to do
with gay or AIDS politics. They had to do with Russia and the
CIA. Crusade #5 was a brief obsession, having to do with
cryptography.
How did I get interested in Russia and the CIA? It was a
chance outgrowth of political crusades #1 and #2, which I will
not try to describe, here.
It is similar to the AIDS crusade. An issue intrudes into
your life in some way, through no intent or desire of your
own. You start looking into it, you get drawn deeper and
deeper into it. You start getting vocal, you make some
contacts. You start getting fed information from mentors and
obscure sources who decide that you can help further their own
agenda. As on internet, it is impossible even to know with
whom you are dealing. You find yourself dealing with shadows.
What business did I have in Russia? Who appoints you to
investigate AIDS? Who appointed Danny Casolaro to investigate
Iran-Contra? You see something, realize that it is
important, and make it your business.
When I looked into the role of the CIA in Russia, I came to
feel that I essentially had inside information that a coup was
imminent. I was on a crusade to announce that fact, for the
best part of year. Within a week or two after mailing a
lengthy essay to the media, the coup broke.
The Secret Service first visited me, shortly after this. I
assumed that they wanted to see me about the "coup" package. I
was trying to get everything ready, what to say, explain how I
came about this knowledge.
Oh, no. What they wanted to see me about was a parody that I
had made, a cassette tape mocking the White House. It was
nasty, but it was also just a collection of comic material and
blues songs that I had compiled from records available in
ordinary record stores, and put onto a tape cassette. I was
quietly aghast.
I think they knew perfectly well that they had no legal basis
for the visit. I do not believe for a minute that the tape
really had anything to do with the visit.
I had well-justified resentments against the government. I was
vocal, making charges, talking about sensitive issues. I
think that the real goal was merely to intimidate.
Crusade #4 had to do with my conclusion that there were still
Russian moles operating in the CIA. I spent over a year
compiling material on this one. Sometimes, I had self-doubt.
After all, Russia was now supposed to be our friend, and the
KGB was supposed to be defunct. Yet, I thought that I knew
better, that there was still intrigue afoot, people getting
killed and threatened.
There had not been a single word in the mainstream media about
a possibility of moles, but I had faith in the little signs
and in my shadow sources. I wrote an essay in excess of 200
pages on the subject. I mailed it to media contacts just as
Clinton was being inaugurated for his first term. More than a
year later, came confirmation of my beliefs, more dramatic
than I ever expected to see, in the Aldrich Ames case.
My second visit by the SS was about the same. A minor
pretext. When I contacted the media about my "mole" theory,
I had specifically REQUESTED to speak to the Secret Service
about it, saying that I saw serious threats lurking. The
Secret Service never spoke a single word on this subject, only
on the trivia.
Before I moved to Boston, I had been President of Bradbury
Park condominiums, just outside of Washington, D.C. I was
good friends with a woman who was Vice-President, who worked
for the Agency for International Development, and whose son
also happened to be a decorated member of the Secret Service.
I played a section of tape for her related to these intrigues,
which I had also tried to play once to an FBI agent and to
another CIA investigator/critic. She was suitably impressed
by it, and we talked about my contacting her son.
I never did get around to this one, but obviously, I had
nothing to hide.
Intrigue #5 had to do with cryptography. I took up an
interest in the subject, after a friend at work described to
me some corporate intrigues involving encryption.
As I thought about the subject, I came to a startling
conclusion, that seemed almost crazy: the art of
code-breaking was dead. The government could not control
encryption or even detect its use, if you knew what you were
doing.
This seemed against the convention wisdom. There was so much
talk about encryption not being secure enough. I concluded
that this was an artificial issue, merely a reflection of
unreasonable limitations in commercial packages, and a
byproduct of government regulation.
I developed a program and offered a $1000 reward on various
cryptography newsgroups, publishing the program text, 90% of
the plaintext, asking for just a couple encrypted lines.
Newbies were ridiculed on these newsgroups, like "AIDS
conspiracy" gets ridiculed. The stereotype of the idiot
novice, who thinks he has something new, but is easily done in
by the pros.
No one claimed the award. So strong is the media's
obfuscation, even in technical journals, that the death of
code-breaking is still not widely understood.
I tell you about these past episodes in hopes that you will
get a better clue, that it really is possible to see the
news-behind-the-news, if you dig diligently enough.
Today's "AIDS conspiracy" will be tomorrow's common knowledge.
It will be to your credit if you can see it today, and not
need to wait with the pack for tomorrow.
Tom Keske
Boston, Mass.
===========================================================
Subject: Needles and Nitrites
From: Tom Keske (trkeske@yahoo.com)
Date: 1998/06/05
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.gaynet
NEEDLES AND NITRITES
What gives, here? John Liesch says that poppers were
originally made from amyl nitrate, and Mike Silverman says
that amyl nitrate is "extremely poisonous". Gee whiz, Mr.
Science.
At least, this is an example of a question that has a definite
answer, and all we have to do is dig hard enough for it. I'll
let you guys take care of this one.
I'm not sure if John is on the "Don't Worry, Be Happy" side of
the debate, or the "Maybe We Have to Worry about Genocide"
side. When he says that amyl nitrite/nitrate is not a likely
causative agent of KS, that to me that is the scary thought.
The statistical correlation is strong, a fact acknowledged by
Gallo, by Congress, by a CDC Director. As I said, this is the
scenario that makes me worry about contamination.
As I worry about contaminated poppers to kill gays, I also
worry about contaminated drugs, to kill drug users. We tend
to hold it as an unquestioned assumption that drug users are
"bad" people who naturally "deserve" what they get, for being
irresponsible with their health. We ask so few questions,
that few would wonder or question if there were murder, right
under our noses.
It is worthwhile to question the "dirty needle" theory that we
all have accepted as virtual fact. I try to think how one
might try to test whether drug users are unreasonably
over-represented among AIDS victims.
I've long been bothered by the fact that health-care
needle-stick accidents are claimed to be so low risk, yet
"dirty needles" for drug users are so extremely effective at
causing infection.
I tried to find some information on infectivity rates. I
found that the probability of contracting AIDS through
needlestick accidents was very low- about .05 percent [1]. In
contrast, the basic risk of contracting AIDS through vaginal
intercourse is as much as 10 times higher: .1 to .5 percent
[2].
If the probability of infecting someone PER INCIDENT doubles,
it doesn't mean that the growth curve of infections merely
doubles. The effect is even greater, because it grows as a
power of 3 instead of a power of 2.
This is a maybe a controversial point, but I question whether
the infectivity rate for drug users should be much higher than
for health care needlesticks, per incident.
Drug users may inject far more often, but if the infectivity
rate PER INCIDENT is lower than that of heterosexual
intercourse, then you would expect to see far more
heterosexuals with AIDS than drug users with AIDS. In fact,
it is just the opposite: the number of drug users with AIDS is
nearly triple [3].
I asked a microbiologist about this. He claimed that the
dangers for an incident of drug injection were about "1000
times" greater than that for a needlestick accident.
Although this person had insisted that I be precise and quote
my sources, he himself quoted no source for this. I suspect
that it was just a haphazard guess. If the risk were really
"1000 times greater", the proportion of drug users with AIDS
should be even far more dramatically skewed.
The microbiologist said that the key difference was that
injecting directly into a vein is a far more efficient course
of entry, than merely into muscle tissue.
Superficially, this might seem to make sense. However, it
seems to me that for a virus like this, mere entry into the
bloodstream, at all, should be quite sufficient. There is no
blood, in muscle tissue or anywhere else in the body, that
merely sits in place. It has to cycle back through the whole
circulatory system, back to the heart. I'm sure that a
percentage of blood cells may just get stuck somewhere and
die, but I would think that for the most part, they keep
circulating, in time, through the whole body.
It is a recurring theme that infectivity of HIV is related to
the dose level and concentration of the virus. Supposedly,
this is why AIDS doesn't spread by deep kissing, even though
the virus is present in saliva, in low amounts.
I doubt that even drug users are injecting themselves with
needles that are dripping with visible blood. Even the most
hopelessly addicted souls can at least wipe a needle off on
their sleeve. A mouthful of saliva, that's safe, yet the
invisible, miniscule amount of blood on a wiped-off needle-
that manages to infect our society's undesirables, like crazy?
Even if wiping off wasn't enough, a little bleach would be
quite effective. If "needle exchange" is politically
incorrect for conservatives, why not a bit of education about
bleach, or free bleach packets?
Anyone motivated enough to exchange their needles certainly
ought to be motivated enough to pick up a bottle of bleach.
I'm surprised that we would even need such a program. Anyone
who can afford drugs can afford a simple bottle of bleach,
that would probably last them for months.
Perhaps we are blind sheep accomplices to genocide, because we
buy so easily into stereotypes: drugs users must all be too
dirty, too stupid, too self-destructive to save their own
lives in the simplest and easiest of ways- just like gay
people and other undesirables.
Maybe they are not. Perhaps the answer to why so many drug
users are getting sick is tied to the question of why the CIA
would let crack be peddled in black neighborhoods.
Profiting from genocide- getting rid of drug users, of blacks,
making money for the Contras in the process. Perhaps the money
goes into Swiss banks.
Perhaps former First Lady Nancy Reagan was giving us a hint of
the answer, when she said that anyone who used drugs was "an
accomplice to murder"
Or perhaps LA police chief Daryl Gates was telling us
something more when he advised a Senate Judiciary committee
that drug users should be "taken out and shot."
Why shoot them? It would cause such a nasty stink with the
liberals. There is a better way.
Good morning, people- are you ever going to wake up?
Tom Keske
Boston, Mass
References:
[1] http:www.thriveonline.com/health/Library/CAD/
abstract11577.html (Occupational Health and Safety)
[2] http"//www.ccisd.org/sidafrique/a_SA1_2_1_SFTSE.htm
[3] http://www.cdc.gov/nchstp/hiv_aids/stats/exposure.htm
===========================================================
Subject: Poppers Go the Weasels
From: Tom Keske (trkeske@yahoo.com)
Date: 1998/06/10
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.gaynet
POPPERS GO THE WEASELS
Let's see, so far some people have argued that amyl nitrate
was never used in poppers at all, only nitrites. One went as
far as to say to amyl nitrate was extremely poisonous, which
seemed to be implying that it therefore couldn't possibly have
been used in poppers. Another assured us that poppers were
probably harmless and had no connection to KS.
I think that maybe Mr. Science is trying to weasel out of some
contradictions and misstatements.
I have no trouble with the idea that something can be
poisonous in large quantities, but benign in smaller amounts.
However, when someone says "extremely" poisonous, that seems
to imply that even small amounts are dangerous. Perhaps Mr.
Science should have been an English major instead of a
chemistry major, because bad language misinforms as much as
bad science.
Its odd that even Robert Gallo and Dr. Harold Jaffe, chief of
AIDS research at the CDC, are not ruling out poppers as a
cause of KS, while some gaynetters second-guess so
enthusiastically. [1]. This is in spite of full knowledge
concerning the competing theories about the role of herpes
viruses, I might add.
Jaffe admits that there are some mysteries that could not be
explained readily by herpes virus as a cause of AIDS: why KS
is seen so rarely outside gay males with HIV, why KS has
declined steeply over the past 10 years (coinciding with a
decline in popper use, but not coinciding with an equal
decline in HIV).
HHV has been found even in KS patients who do NOT have HIV. If
HHV can cause KS by itself, then we would expect to see
considerably more KS among women, among heterosexuals. We
would need to invent another mechanism to explain why the
virus prefers gay men. It cannot be the same "bleeding during
anal intercourse" explanation, because KS has NOT been found
to spread in transfusion-related AIDS. Given the huge number
of heterosexuals with herpes, it isn't likely to be merely gay
"promiscuity" as the explanation, either.
Another fact suggestive of a link to poppers is the fact that
KS tends to occur around the nose and mouth, conforming to the
sites at which poppers are inhaled.
For what it is worth: I've tried to sort out the muddle of
confusion that has been spinning around gaynet concerning
nitrates/nitrites.
It appears that amyl nitRATE most certainly WAS used for
poppers in the early days [2]. As some chemicals were banned,
other similar chemicals were put into use. I noted with
interest that some of the old amyl nitrate poppers were even
marked "POISON".
These were extremely cynical attempts to circumvent the law,
by profiteering mobsters, at the expense of gay males.
Whether amyl nitrate was "extremely" poisonous is a matter of
definition. Obviously, you could use them a few times will
little lasting effect. However, it is also obvious enough
that they were NOT healthy, as so many ads tried to claim.
Tom Keske
Boston, Mass.
[1] Kaposi's, Viruses & Poppers, Tom Bethell
http://www.duesberg.com/tbkaposi.htm
[2] AIDS and POPPERS, Tom Bethell,
http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/data/tbpoppers.htm
===========================================================
Subject: Biowar Against Blacks
From: Tom Keske (trkeske@yahoo.com)
Date: 1998/06/14
Newsgroups: soc.culture.irish
The moon will get back to you, still more to say to Ireland,
much congratulations to you. In the meantime, please read
something slightly off-subject. However, now that your
troubles are finally fading, maybe it will give you a glimpse
of where the next big Troubles in the world might break out.
Perhaps it will someone else's turn to fight a battle, your
turn to play specator and commentator.
=========================================
BIOWAR AGAINST BLACKS
The black and gay populations of our country would be wise to
pay close attention to the revelations that have come from the
South African panel that is investigating human rights abuses
during the apartheid era. Testimony of scientists reveals a
"twisted world of science gone mad", in the words of
Associated Press.
According to testimony of scientists, South Africa had a
secret biological and chemical weapons program. They told
about concocting poisoned chocolates, plotting to induce brain
damage in Nelson Mandela, and trying to find germ-warfare
agents and infertility drugs that would target blacks [1].
"That was the psychosis that prevailed", said Daan Goosen, who
led a covert biological research laboratory. "I was not
thinking rationally at the time", he said.
One witness testified of a shirt infused with poison, given to
a black activist, who loaned it to a friend, who died.
Perhaps there are more significant truths in the answers to
questions that the mainstream press would not think to ask.
Could our CIA have known of this? South Africa was one of the
hot spots of the world. At the very least, it would have been
a failing of intelligence, for them not to have known.
But the CIA had closely collaborated with Pretoria's
intelligence service for years, particularly in their joint
operation in Angola, an effort which cost the United States
dearly in support from other African countries [2].
Henry Kissinger, after he left Harvard, had an interest in
biowar. It was at his request that the DOD in 1969 requested
$10 million dollars for the development of AIDS-like viruses.
Kissinger also issued a National Security Council memorandum
in 1969, promoting a more right-wing policy toward the white
regime in South Africa. For years, the words "white regime"
had been remain censored in this document[3].
Could America ever contemplate something as evil as what
occurred in South Africa? If the CIA knew what South Africa
was doing in terms of biowar and genocide, Kissinger also
would have known. Their sympathy for the white regime would
have included a willingness to overlook mass murder.
American science has also had scandals in race-specific biowar
research. In 1951, African-Americans were exposed to
potentially fatal simulant, in a Virginia test of
race-specific fungal weapons [4].
The DOD did not deny the tests. Their excuse was that they
feared an attack on blacks, from outside the United States,
using such weapons. They claimed that they were merely
seeking an antidote.
In view of the racial climate of the time, this claim
stretches credibility, to say the least.
Similarly, our government has at times conspired to poison its
own citizens. In one incident, the CIA was alleged to have
conspired to put LSD in the coffee of a college professor
whose politics displeased them. There are many similar,
reported incidents.
Evil flourishes when people bury their heads and refuse to
acknowledge the signs of deep evil, right under their noses.
In South Africa, the truth is coming out, decades late, only
because the corrupt white minority regime has been thrown from
power.
We will never have a Truth Commission in America, to find out
what really happened in 1951, what really happened after the
1969 DOD biowar appropriation was granted. At least, this
will never take place while a corrupt, right-wing Republican
Congress is in power. In view of the revelations in South
Africa, and the hints of similar madness in the United States,
the minority populations must begin to think literally in
terms of throwing the right-wing from power, if we cannot vote
them from power.
We must get over brainwashing from our own oppressors, that
such thoughts are something "criminal" or "irresponsible".
Under the circumstances, it is our most basic right, whether
it is acknowledged by the complacent majority of a
long-corrupt system, or not.
Tom Keske
Boston, Mass.
[1] Associated Press, "South African Rights Panel Hears of Deadly
Science Plots, 6/12/98
[2] The CIA: a Forgotten History, William Blum
[3] Emerging Viruses, AIDS & Ebola, Leonard Horowitz
[4] A brief history of bio-chemical weapons, http:csf.colorado.edu/
lists/pen-l/nov97/0431.html
===========================================================
Subject: Re: Biowar Against Blacks
From: Tom Keske (trkeske@yahoo.com)
Date: 1998/06/17
Newsgroups: soc.culture.irish
To the woman who laughed at my alleged characterization of the
CIA as "efficient"- I made no such claim, you infer something
that I did not imply.
I'm aware of the CIA's rich history of foul-ups. However, I
will give them this much credit: while I think that there are
many genuine screw-ups on their part, due to bureaucratic
incompetence, due to corruption, due to unstable personalities
in their employ, I do also think that the stereotype of them
as has-beens and clowns who cannot keep a secret, is
misleading and falsely reassuring.
It underestimates their vast power, technological magic, their
extensive hidden influence in media, the corporate world, and
in most governments of the world.
It is a stereotype that they themselves sometimes have a
vested interested in perpetuating. When you have major
secrets that would cause wars, should they break out, when you
are raping your neighbors in their sleep, it serves your
purpose sometimes to swallow your pride and allow yourself to
be seen as a complete incompetent who cannot keep a secret.
Also, they sometimes play the fall guy for other parts of the
intelligence community, who keep their cover by letting the
"CIA" take blame for everything that goes wrong.
Don't let the propaganda fool you. They are quite powerful,
and they are quite cancerous.
Tom Keske
Boston, Mass.
===========================================================
Subject: My Mistake: Biowar on Blacks
From: Tom Keske (trkeske@yahoo.com)
Date: 1998/06/21
Newsgroups: soc.culture.zimbabwe
MY MISTAKE: BIOWAR ON BLACKS
Was I being too quick, too suspicious, when I immediately
questioned whether our CIA might have known of biowar efforts
by the former white regime of South Africa?
I can see my real mistake, now. I was not being nearly
suspicious or paranoid enough.
My subsequent research, and tips that I have been provided,
suggest that the CIA more likely PARTICIPATED in such efforts.
Check out http://www.salonmagazine.com/news/news961114.html,
"Our Man in South Africa", by Jeff Stein. Stein is a former
deputy foreign news editor at United Press International. In
1995, he taught investigative reporting in South Africa.
He describes Pentagon manuals proved to South African
operatives, providing an arsenal of tricks from disruption to
death, booby traps, poisons. One of the items was prussic
acid, which would give a massive coronary, but still look like
natural causes.
On a CIA newsgroup, came the following information about U.S.
attempts to keep the black government from getting information
about the biowar program:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
US Mentioned in S. Africa Testimony
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/ap/international/story.html?s=
n/ap/980612/international/stories/south_africa_apartheid_plot_1.html
"The United States and Britain tried to keep the
soon-to-be-elected black government in South Africa from
obtaining a biological weapons program intended to keep whites
in power, a former government official testified Friday.
The disclosure came in a week of revelations by apartheid-era
scientists before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
alleging that South Africa conducted secret scientific
research that targeted blacks. ... It was not clear how much
the United States and Britain knew about the secret program.
...
Apartheid-era army scientists who testified before the
commission described extravagant projects aimed at preserving
white rule, including an effort to find a germ warfare agent
that would kill only blacks."
S.Africa says it terminated chemical weapons scheme
http://www.infoseek.com/Content?arn=a1334LBY257reulb-
19980615&qt=%2B%22south+africa%22+%2Bchemical&col=
NX&kt=A&ak=allnews
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Such revelations make it clear that it is not at all
unjustified or paranoid to worry about the real origins of all
emerging diseases, include AIDS.
Our government surely would have known that the white regime
would not merely "research" biowar. The DOD and CIA would
have every reasonable expectation that South Africa would put
to use any product of that research, for full genocide. One
can only conclude that our own government is therefore also
capable of making itself a partner in deliberate genocide.
The above is not mere "hearsay" or "rumor". It is testimony
to a Truth Commission, a formal setting, a perfectly valid
source for reporting in the press.
These, the most revealing of the revelations, are discussed
here on newsgroups, minimized and downplayed in the mainstream
media. Of Stein's charges, I have yet to see anything at all
in my mainstream paper.
You should put aside your naive contempt of newsgroups, and
realize that they are only effective medium for such unspoken
truths. You should demand of the media to know what is the
explanation for the blanket of silence. Is it simply to
avoid political embarrassment, and to avoid the consequences
of minority resentment?
Tom Keske
Boston, Mass.
===========================================================
From: Tom Keske (trkeske@yahoo.com)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.homosexuality
Date: 7/02/98
Subject: The Big, Bright Green Vaccine Machine, part 1
THE BIG, BRIGHT GREEN VACCINE MACHINE, Part 1
Proposition: Between 10 and 30 million people have been
injected with vaccines that were contaminated with a monkey
virus that shows evidence of causing cancer in lab animals.
Answer quickly, now, and no cheating- Is this proposition:
1) A plot for a new science fiction movie?
2) A wild rumor spread by internet conspiracy theorists?
3) A fact acknowledged by all major health organizations
and the mainstream media?
If you answered "3", congratulations, at least you are reading
newspapers. But don't congratulate yourself too much, because
if all you are reading is newspapers, and you haven't been
much concerned about the issue, then you still have a very
considerable amount to learn about the subject.
Do you nervously await the blows of cruel fate?
The Big Vaccine Machine is Bright Green, not only because it
is the color of the money made from vaccines, but also because
it is the color of the monkeys whose tissues were used in the
production of the vaccines. Specifically, it was the African
Green Monkey, whose simian viruses are considered by most
medical experts to be the precursor to HIV.
A virus called SV-40 did indeed pass unnoticed in vaccines
that were given to millions of people. If you read newspaper
accounts, this seems unexciting, because of the propaganda
line that the SV-40 virus appears to cause no problems in
human beings.
Of course, even if SV-40 were harmless, it would be foolish to
pay little concern to the fiasco. If millions of people did
not get cancer as a direct result, it is merely from our good
luck. It is at best a near-fiasco that highlights the extreme
dangers that can lurk behind the use of vaccines.
However, it is not so clear whether we were so lucky as to
have merely a "near" fiasco. One must look past the
reassuring propaganda.
Michele Carobone, Assistant Professor of Pathology at Loyola
University, isolated fragments of SV-40 in human bone cancers
and a form of lung cancer called mesotheliomas. The viral
contaminate was found in 33% of osteoscarcoma bone cancers,
40% of other bone cancers, and 60% of mesotheliomas lung
cancer.
An Italian team of researchers at the University of Ferrara
discovered SV-40's presence in various other tumors: 83% of
chroiod plexus papillomas, 73% of ependymomas, 47% of
astrocytomas, 50% of glioblastomas, 14% of meningiomas.
Dr. Howard Strickler of the NIH has plotted a geographic
pattern to the cancers associated with SV-40, helping to
confirm its link to the tainted vaccines. Massachusetts and
Illinois residents who received tainted vaccines are now
demonstrating ten times the rate of osteosarcoma bone tumors,
compared to those who received vaccines free of SV-40- a fact
that I have not seen mentioned in the press, here.
Green monkey tissues were used in the production of smallpox
vaccines used in Africa. The vaccines clearly have a
relationship to the spread of AIDS. I am attempting to
determine whether green monkey tissues were involved with the
hepatitis B vaccines given to gay men in New York, in the late
1970s, which also coincided with the onset of AIDS. It
appears that similar tissues were also used.
Harvard Medical School professor, Dr. Ronal Desroier, points
out that medical knowledge is limited to "perhaps 2% of
existing monkey viruses". Is it possible that SIV, or some
mutant strain of SIV, from the same monkey tissues, was also
mass-injected into human beings, just as SV-40 was,
precipitating the AIDS epidemic?
Obviously, when medical experts or the mainstream press talk
about "contaminated needles" being a likely candidate for
helping to spread AIDS in Africa, they are very deliberately
censoring some other, even more likely, possibilities. It was
no so likely the "needles" contaminated, but the vaccines,
themselves.
Tom Keske
Boston, Mass.
References:
"Thirty Year Legacy of Tainted Polio Vaccine", Harold Stearley,
http"//www.ioa.com/~dragonfly/vaccines.html
http://www.i-wayco.com/niini/knowledgereport/hep_newborns.html
===========================================================
Subject: Proving the AIDS/Vaccine Link
From: Tom Keske (trkeske@yahoo.com)
Date: 1998/10/19
Forums: alt.politics.org.cia
PROVING THE AIDS/VACCINE LINK
You would think that it would not be too difficult to find a
smoking gun, when that gun has killed or wounded some 30 million
people.
My friends sometimes tell me that the gay community will never
listen to claims that AIDS was unleashed through vaccine trials
in the late 1970's, even if it is true, because "nothing can be
proven, anyway".
One should not give up, so easily. After analyzing some data
concerning those vaccine trials, I believe that I can produce
statistical evidence as damning as an O.J. Simpson DNA test,
pointing unequivocally to a deliberate murder.
I am sure that the details can be quibbled, but I am equally
confident that the bottom line will be unchanged. It is no
longer a "theory" that AIDS was seeded through vaccine trials- it
is for all intents and purposes a fact, with as high a level of
certainty as most any other belief that you may care to hold.
When you have an explosive, new epidemic, the first few cases
tend to tell you the most about the epidemic's origins. Most of
what follows tends to get lost in an exploding confusion that
attends the exploding epidemic.
I decided to focus my attention on the gay men who were among the
first to be diagnosed with AIDS, and how many of those had
participated in the hepatitis B vaccine trials that were held in
New York and San Francisco, starting in the late 1970's.
The prevalence of vaccine trial participants among the first AIDS
cases has sometimes been dismissed on the grounds that
promiscuous men were chosen for the vaccine trials, and
therefore, supposedly, it was nothing suspicious that they should
be the first to get AIDS.
Relative to a supposedly non-promiscuous straight population,
that might have been true. However, the relevant comparison is
not against the straight population. The promiscuous vaccine
trial participants, and their rate of AIDS, needs to be compared
against that of other promiscuous gay males, in the same cities,
during the same time period.
The CDC issued a report pretending to show that vaccine
participants did not have a higher AIDS rate than the general
population. Before I refute that claim, a bit of context is
needed on the general subject of "damned lies and statistics".
This trite saying about statistics has probably done more harm to
the cause of Truth than bad statistics could ever do.
Statistics are like guns: Statistics do not lie. People lie with
statistics.
However, the commission of this crime requires a willing victim.
Rather than becoming an empty-headed cynic about all statistical
analysis, your personal goal should be to become sophisticated
enough in your understanding of statistics, that you can
determine for yourself whether they are being used for the
purpose of Truth or Lies.
If a person came up to you and made a bet that he could toss a
coin and get 4 heads in a row, and then did so, is he likely to
have cheated you? How about 10 heads in a row? 20 heads?
Four heads in a row, the odds are 1 in 16- you'd let it pass and
pay up. Ten heads, the odds go up to 1 in 1000. Twenty heads, 1
in 1,000,000.
If the man were accused of a scam, and you were the jury, would
you convict, if the man repeatedly made bets and threw 20 heads
in a row? Would you need to know exactly how he cheated, or
would the statistical evidence alone at some point become
sufficient?
At 20 heads in a row, it always COULD be luck, but you would be a
fool to conclude anything other than you had been cheated. Are
the statistics lying to you? Emphatically, they are not.
The same applies to genocide. You need not care who laced the
vaccines with HIV, why they did it, how they did it. For now,
you need merely to convince yourself of the fact that it DID
happen that way.
The CDC's statistical analysis is questionable in part simply on
the grounds that the CDC, having a connection to the trials, has
a natural bias, even to the point of potentially lying, outright.
Feeding this suspicion is the fact that our government has hidden
most the vaccine trial data, on grounds of "national security",
much to the outrage of AIDS investigators, and much to the
ignorance of most of the general public.
Supposed you had 100 vaccine participants in a city of 1,00,000,
and an epidemic occurred shortly thereafter. The government that
sponsored the vaccine test assured that the rate of death among
the vaccine participants was no higher than that of the city in
general. Can you believe them?
Not necessarily. Suppose, for example, that they forgot to tell
you that everyone in the city died. The death rate of the vaccine
participants would have been 100%, and the death rate for the
city would have been 100%. Of course, they were the same.
Suppose also that they didn't tell you how the vaccine
participants all got the new disease among the very first, then
members of their families got it next, then friends of family
members got it next, etc. Taking a statistical study a few years
into the epidemic would not reveal the true story, would it?
Propagandists trying to cover-up the man-made origins of AIDS
frequently love to dismiss contrary evidence by saying that
"Correlation is not causation".
This is most certainly true, and it is most certainly not a
refutation.
As a tongue-in-cheek example: if you took a CIA propagandist who
was attempting to cover-up a major scandal, and shot him right
between the eyes, the act of your shooting him between the eyes
would be correlated with his keeling over dead. In this case:
Yes, Virginia, correlation really IS causation.
Another classic example is a correlation between ice cream sales
and pregnancy- the higher the ice cream sales, the higher the
rate of pregnancies.
A fallacious conclusion would be that ice cream CAUSES pregnancy.
Correlation is not NECESSARILY causation, but correlation does
require EXPLANATION. In the case of ice cream, the explanation
is that higher ice cream sales are tied to higher temperatures,
which is when people also tend to have more sex.
With gay men, AIDS, and the vaccine trials, the alternate
explanation to "refute" a causal link is that the vaccine
participants were chosen to be promiscuous.
The problem with this is that urban gays in the late 1970's were
very commonly promiscuous. Why should the promiscuous, gay,
vaccine participants be more likely to get AIDS, compared to any
other promiscuous gay males?
After all, anti-gay forces tell us all the time that gays have
such extensive AIDS because gays are all supposed to be
promiscuous. When I finish this statistical analysis, the
anti-gay, pro-coverup propagandists might have to do an
about-face, and start to argue that we are NOT promiscuous. If
they do so, it would all the more reveal their insincerity.
I am not addressing in this essay, the question of whether AIDS
was engineered or natural. For now, it is enough to demonstrate
statistically that the virus had to be present in the vaccines.
If the virus occurred in nature, fine. If its monkey predecessor
SIV existed for decades or centuries before HIV, perhaps all
someone needed to do was to discover it, and coax it to adapt to
human tissue.
Or, if the virus adapted itself to human tissue by natural means,
then all someone needed to do was to discover a new virus in
remote African villages, and use it for genocide. The
realization that the virus was already "on the loose", and
already likely to spread inevitably in time, could tempt a
genocidal madman all the more. Little was left to lose in
targeting a population of undesirables to be hit first, and hit
hardest.
With HIV, I was intrigued at statement of Dr. Paul O'Malley, the
health investigator who headed up the Merck/CDC hepatitis B
study. Dr O'Malley reported that of the first 24 AIDS cases in
San Francisco, 11 were from the vaccine trial [1].
This seemed suspicious on an intuitive level. What other AIDS
investigators have heretofore failed to do is to attempt to
compute statistical odds for or against this being a natural
occurrence.
Similarly, in New York, of the first 41 AIDS cases, some 25-50%
were reported to be participants of the vaccine trials [2]. For
my purposes, I'll take a middle figure of 37.5%, or 15 men.
In San Francisco, some 6700 men participated in the hepatitis
vaccine tests. In New York, it had been some 1000.
The only remaining information needed to make a ballpark estimate
of the statistical odds are figures for the numbers of
promiscuous gay men that existed in these cities, in the late
1970s.
It is difficult to get accurate information, since there is no
formal gay census. However, you can make some reasonable,
conservative estimates.
The population of the city of San Franciso is about 700,000, and
the metropolitan area is about 1.7 million. Most gays would
estimate 10% of the population as being gay, while I tend to use
a more conservative 5% figure. New York and San Francisco
should have higher percentages than the national average, but to
be conservative, you can stick to the overall average.
Another yardstick that I used was the Pride Parade attendance,
about 200,000 in San Francisco.
Estimates about venereal disease, and surveys about unsafe sex
practices can give an estimate of what percent of the gay
population might be termed "promiscuous".
These measures are not precise, but they are reasonable. From
such sources, I'm estimating about 100,000 sexually active gay
males in San Francisco in the late 1970s, and another 100,000 in
New York. I consider these numbers to be more likely
conservative than inflated. If anyone has more credible numbers,
and can credibly demonstrate that fact, then I'll be happy to
refine the calculations.
This becomes a relatively straightforward problem in binomial
distributions. If you want to calculate the probability of
getting r of one kind of thing in a sample of n things, the
probability is:
(n! / (n-r)!r!) x (q ^ (n-r) x p^r)
where "!" means "factorial, "^" means "raised to the
power".
p is the probability of getting the item of interest, and q is
the probability of getting the other item.
For SF, p is (6700/100000) = .067. q is (93300/100000) = .933.
n is 24 and r is 11 (as discussed above).
The above formula gives the probability of getting 11 vaccine
participants out of a sample of 24. What we want is the
probability of getting 11 OR MORE, so I wrote a program to sum
repetitively for the chances of getting 11, 12, 13 … 24.
For San Francisco, the odds against getting such a high
percentage of vaccine participants in the first 24 AIDS cases are
about 1 in 7.7 million. In New York the chance of getting 15
vaccine participants in the first 41 AIDS cases were even more
dramatic, about 1 in 2.2 x (10 ^ 19).
For the overall probability in NY and SF, you can take the
product of these two figures, giving about 1.7 in 10 ^ 26 (this
being a figure of 1 followed by a string of 27 zeroes).
May I emphasis against, this is strictly comparing the odds for
promiscuous, gay vaccine participants versus other promiscuous
gay men in the same cities, to have contracted HIV as they did.
Figures in this range leave a great deal of room for error,
without changing the bottom-line conclusion: the connection
between the vaccines and the outbreak of AIDS is not random, and
is not explained by the promiscuity of the men who took the
vaccines.
For the next installment of this series, I will explain why the
vaccines were almost certainly contaminated by deliberate intent,
not by accident.
Tom Keske
Boston, Mass.
[1] "Emerging Viruses, AIDS & Ebola", Leonard Horowitz
[2] "Designer Diseases', http://www.afrinet.net/~hallh/afrotalk/
afrooct95/1934.html
===========================================================
Subject: Proving the AIDS/Vaccine Link
From: Tom Keske (trkeske@yahoo.com)
Date: 1998/10/31
Forums: bit.listserv.gaynet
In a message dated 10/31/98 2:03:24 AM Eastern Standard Time,
ebohlman@netcom.com writes:
<< You've jumped to a conclusion here, namely that if there is a
statistical, even causal, association between participation in
the HBV vaccine trials and developing AIDS, then it must have
been because the HBV vaccines were contaminated with HIV. In
fact, that's only one of several possibilities. Just a couple
that come to mind >>
I appreciate at least seeing critique that is civil, a rarity on
gaynet. I do think that you are "reaching" a bit for alternate
explanations, which of course I will be debating a at length on
gaynet, in days to come.
Forgive me for saying that I think you have a motive of some
kind, that you would argue in any way that you could against the
possibility of genocide, even if you had to go out on a limb to
do so. Why? Just can't deal with the emotional aspects?
Offends too much the myths with which you have been indoctrinated
as to the decency and superority of your country?
Vaccines went through a similar phenomenon in Africa. The huge
and rapid outbreak of AIDS where the vaccines were administered
was not because anyone was "monitoring their health" more
closely.
In New York, they hardly needed to "monitor the health" of
vaccine trial participants for very long. Some had full-blown
AIDS within a few months. It would have been very difficult NOT
to notice.
Lots of promiscuous gays have plenty of other factors that weaken
their bodily defense- bouts of venereal disease, drugs, poppers.
It seems like you are "reaching" to imagine that the vaccines
would have been much more significant in this regard, than any of
these other commonplace factors.
Please let down your defenses- let the realization come. Your
alternative to "jumping to conclusions" is to bury what is
potentially history's worst crime against humanity, under a
mountain of obfuscation.
Sincerely, Tom Keske
===========================================================
Subject: Proving AIDS/Vaccine Link (new data)
From: Tom Keske (trkeske@yahoo.com)
Date: 1998/11/05
Forums: alt.politics.org.cia
Re: Proving the AIDS/Vaccine Link
BACKGROUND: In the late 1970's, experimental hepatitis
B vaccines were given to gay men in New York and San
Francisco. Months later, in each location, the first
known cases of AIDS were reported. In New York, some
15 of the first 41 cases were believed to be
participants of the vaccine experiment. In San
Francisco, 11 of the first 24 vaccine AIDS cases were
participants of the vaccine trials. What I am
demonstrating is that the probability of this being
explainable by random chance is so small, that it
constitutes a statistical "smoking gun"- essential
"proof". In this essay, I am rebutting some
criticisms
from "Patrick F".
> Patrick F. wrote:
> All these calculations are so full of uncertainties and
> untestable assumptions that they don't really tell us
> anything.
Untestable!? We are debating how many sexually active men were
present in the San Francisco metropolitan area in 1980. Agreeing
on a reasonable figure is perfectly feasible. Any competent
epidemiologists at the CDC should want data such as this as the
first step in predicting the course of the epidemic. It is no
more difficult of a task than what the Census Bureau does, all
the time (I used to work there, starting out of college as
"survey statistician").
One of the key points here is that the level of uncertainty in
picking that number is little deterrent in drawing conclusions
that are *rock-solid*. The tolerable margin for error is that
huge. If I can prove that there were merely 50,000 sexually
active gay men in San Francisco, the case is clinched. The odds
are still too small to be accounted for by random chance. What
I am more aiming to prove is that the odds are in fact
*astronomical*.
> If there is any evidence of HIV infection in the US before the
> trials, your hypothesis is nullified, anyway.
This is a ridiculous non sequitur. I said clearly: for the
purposes of this debate, I am saying nothing about whether HIV
occurred as an accident of nature or in a lab. I am saying
nothing about whether it existed prior to the vaccines. My
*sole* contention, for the moment, is that there is an undeniable
connection between the vaccines and the outbreak of AIDS.
In fact, if HIV existed naturally before the vaccines, that makes
my case all the easier. It answers two of the most common
objections: 1) that we wouldn't have had the technology to
produce the virus, 2) that no one would have risked a general
spread of the disease, just to go after gays.
If the disease existed naturally, then no one needed to engineer
it. They merely needed to discover it sooner than was admitted to
the public. If the disease was already starting to break out,
and could not be stopped, then there was little to lose by
unleashing it against "undesirables".
Why did America ever take a chance on unleashing a strange, new
virus- smallpox- by giving infected blankets to Indian tribes,
many years ago, wiping out tribes in the Ohio River Valley?
Easy- because it wasn't a strange, new virus at all. It was
already going around the American troops. Giving it to Indians
affects mostly the Indians- the amount of blowback is less than
the casualties of war against the Indians.
> What criterion did the Hepatitis B vaccine trial use for
> promiscuity>?
I already answered that- it would be nice to know, exactly, but
the data is kept secret by our government for "national security"
reasons. Loosely translated, it would probably spark a riot if
people knew the truth, and that would threaten the national
security. The best that we know is that they specifically wanted
"promiscuous gays".
> Where does the 200,000 figure (for the Pride parade) come from?
> (this was one of a number of measures used to gauge gay
> population size)
From a web search on "Pride parade San Francisco". This info is
published every year in newspapers- you're free to check.
> So, you're saying that roughly 1 in 3 adult males in the SF
> metro (200,000) are could be a *promiscuous* gay man. Give me
> a break.
For one thing, I said the 200000 was an *upper bound*, and didn't
even use this as the primary figure. I gave figures for half
this number, and a quarter this number.
I found that the population of S.F *proper* is about 720,000. One
source listed the population of the S.F. metro area as 1.76
million. Today, I found another sources listed the S.F. metro
area as 6 million [1].
Why the discrepancies? Are the numbers wrong? Are they "fuzzy"?
No, you just need to be careful what you are talking about when
you say "San Francisco". There are no hard and fast rules for
what you consider to be the "metro area".
With the most liberal, 6 million figure, the objections are blown
away. If anyone doesn't like the figure of 100,000 sexually
active gay men, fine- try tripling it.
As I said, I don't care less if I were off by a factor of 10. I
need only to demonstrate about 50000 active gay males to prove
the statistical point.
I had given the following table of the probabilities, for so many
vaccine recipients to be among the first AIDS victims, out of all
the other sexually active gay men in SF:
ACTIVE MALES -> PROBABILITY
42500 -> .000496
64000 -> .000011
85000 -> .00000068
100000 -> .00000013
Patrick F asked:
> So what's the probability if you use 13,400 as the number of
> sexually active males?
I couldn't care less what the probability would be, because it is
demonstrably ridiculous to suggest that there were this few.
Another eye-opening figure: we may not have census data for gays
in San Francisco, but we DO have AIDS statistics [2].
If you count the number of AIDS cases (living and dead) in SF
(25000+), plus the number that are HIV+ (15000), you will find
that there are currently over 40000 people in SF infected with
HIV. This is just for San Francisco PROPER (pop 720000), not for
the whole 2 - 6 million of the metro area.
The lion's share of the HIV cases are gay males. Presumably, the
number of gay males that DO currently have HIV must be roughly as
large as the number of active males who MIGHT have been
candidates for getting AIDS.
Even if a full half of the SF gay male population of SF proper
were infected, that would still imply 80000 active males in SF
proper- a far cry from "13,400", and fully consistent with my
estimate.
This is enough to hammer home the point, but just for fun, I
found yet another novel way to estimate the gay population of SF.
Comparing different measures gives a good sanity check.
I noticed a figure for SF "average family size": 2.19 per
household. Without even seeing the national figure, I said "Hmm…
I'll bet that SF has a smaller average family size than average".
Why? For the simple reason that gay couples don't typically have
children.
Census data records racial minorities, but not gays. However, it
DOES compute "average family size".
I reasoned that you could make a reasonable estimate for gay
population size in SF, by computing how many gay households it
would take to reduce the average household size from the national
average to the SF average.
Of course, some gay households can have a dozen roommates, and
some would have kids, but this if anything would "hide" how many
gays there are. It is the single-person residences and two-person
residences that mostly pull down the average.
After some digging, I found that the national average family size
in 1980 was 2.76, and SF was 2.19 [3]
Depending on what you assume for the gay household size, for a
1.76 million SF metro area, you get:
@ 1 gay per household: 261,364 total gays,
554520 straight households (at 2.76/household)
@ 1.5 gays per household: 363557 gay households,
545336 total gays, 440096 straight households,
1214460 total straights.
@ 2 gays per household: 602740 gay households,
1.2 million total gays, 200913 straight households,
554520 total straights.
I had little idea how this would work out, before I computed it,
but it matches quite consistently with the other measures.
A more perceptive criticism of my statistical computation might
have attacked from the opposite direction: that my figures are
far too LOW.
The virus has no idea where are the geographical bounds of San
Francisco. The first AIDS cases in San Francisco were also the
first AIDS cases in the whole state of California. Los Angeles,
the largest city in the country, has plenty of promiscuous gay
men, too. They would have had equally likely chance to get
infected by a new virus.
You could make a case that it would be justified to compute the
probability for the first 11 of 24 AIDS cases relative to the
numbers of promiscuous gay men in the state, or even the country.
The improbability level in this context would be truly
mind-boggling.
I don't need even to touch this question- just looking at SF
metro area, or even SF proper, is plenty enough.
Lastly, Patrick F wrote in reference to a website that I listed
that would compute binomial probabilities on-line for you
(http://home.clar/net/sia/binomial.htm):
> File not found, says Netscape
If you're not a Netscape newbie, it might occur to you that
servers go down, sometimes, or web sites move. There is LOTS of
statistical software available on the web. Use a search engine,
use keywords like "binomial distribution". A little bit of
looking, you'll find something.
The kind of nonsense arguments that I'm having to waste time
debating on gaynet ought to demonstrate a point to any
investigators or journalists who are interested in AIDS origin:
It ought to be obvious, at first blush, without needing any
mathematical proof, that something is *extremely* wrong when so
many of the first AIDS cases were all members of vaccine trials.
However, it is clear that many people can't grasp the
significance, even when you try to spell it out for them in great
detail and in big letters. It isn't enough to write a book and
mention that 11 of 24 of the first AIDS cases in SF had a vaccine
connection. You've got to spell out the statistical smoking gun.
The brush-off attitude is an outrage. We are talking about
something that would constitute one of the most serious crimes
against humanity in all of history. There is a scarecrow
stereotype of "conspiracy nuts" that exists as calculated means
to further an agenda, just as there is a calculated stereotype of
"militant, gay radicals".
It is contemptible beyond description for the gay community to
take such little interest in the clear possibility of genocide
against it.
On this question, we have to date been a community of pathetic
sheep. Little wonder that we could be lead to slaughter like
sheep.
Tom Keske
Boston, Mass.
SOURCES:
[1] http://www.graylinessanfrancisco.com/sffacts.html
[2] http://www.sfaf.org/epi/eip.html
[3] http://www.mtc.ca.gov/facts_and_figures/misc/House.htm
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/cb98-88.html
===========================================================
Subject: AIDS/VACCINES: issue here to stay
From: Tom Keske (trkeske@yahoo.com)
Date: 1998/11/05
Forums: bit.listserv.gaynet
AIDS/VACCINES
BACKGROUND: In the late 1970's, experimental hepatitis
B vaccines were given to gay men in New York and San
Francisco. Months later, in each location, the first
known cases of AIDS were reported. In New York, some
15 of the first 41 cases were believed to be
participants of the vaccine experiment. In San
Francisco, 11 of the first 24 vaccine AIDS cases were
participants of the vaccine trials. What I am
demonstrating is that the probability of this being
explainable by random chance is so small, that it
constitutes a statistical "smoking gun"- proof as far
beyond reasonable doubt as any jury could ever hope to
obtain.
So far, the most intelligent rebuttal was from Patrick F.
Patrick supposes that there were only 13,400 promiscuous gay men
in San Francisco in 1980, even after I point out to him that more
than 40,000 have ALREADY contracted HIV in San Francisco since
1980. He says that I'm wasting my time.
Yes, and I can see why. His is the more intelligent commentary.
The other gaynet response, from LA, for lack of any intelligent
attempt at rebuttal, reduces the debate to obscenity an
name-calling.
Well, I've got news for you, if you're tired of this debate, you
can just get your behind on out of here, because you're going
going to be hearing about murky origins of AIDS for the rest of
your life. I have more endurance than you do.
Imagine an ignorant fool who just lost a bet to someone who said
that they could toss 40 heads in a row. Imagine the scam artist
trying to confuse the slightly suspicious but ignorant person.
What might the scam artist say?
"You can't PROVE anything, so it's all just theory that I cheated
you. What a paranoid! You just don't trust people, do you?".
"A sample of 40 is too small to be statistically significant.
You need a MUCH larger sample to tell you anything!"
"Why, ANY permutation that I throw is equally improbable. If I
throw
HHHTHTTHTTTHTTTTHTHTTTHHTHHHTH
If is just as unlikely as throwing all heads!"
"So it seems unlikely. Winning the Megabucks is unlikely, too.
You can convict a man of stealing if he wins the megabuck, so you
can't convict me for throwing 40 heads. So, I'm lucky- it's
exactly that- just luck!"
"Anyway, I don't have the coin anymore that we used for the bet,
so you can't test it to see if was weighted on one side. You'll
just have to trust me, because you're just guessing and
theorizing that I cheated you. I'm very offended."
The ignorant dummy who got rooked might fall for these lines, all
of which are twisted half-truths to cover up a lie.
The odd of 40 heads are a trillion to one. You don't need 400
tosses to tell you something- 40 will quite suffice, at those
odds. All the permutations are equally unlikely, but the scam
artist threw a very specific permutation, not just any
permutation.
It doesn't matter if the scam artist melted down the coin that he
used. You do not need it in order to reach a verdict, beyond
reasonable doubt.
You could in very good conscience put the scam artist in jail for
years.
The ignorant fool just needs someone to explain the statistical
realities. Unless, of course, the ignorant fool is from gaynet,
in which case he'd spit in you in the face for trying to tell him
that he'd been cheated.
You can tell something from 40 AIDS victims, just as you can tell
something from 40 coin tosses.
There were 41 New York AIDS victims in the first epidemic year,
of which a large percentage had been in a vaccine trial of just
1000+ men.
That simply could not happen by random chance. The connection
isn't explained by promiscuity, because there were far too many
promiscuous gay men in the pool.
If you have a glass jar full of marbles, 100 green, 10 red, 32
yellow, 80 black, and you draw 5 marbles, it is a straightforward
affair to calculate the odds of drawing any given mix of colors.
The pink marbles are gay men. The red marbles are gay men who
took part in a vaccine trial. The white marbles are straight men.
The total number of marbles in the glass jar is the total adult
population of the city.
It's not one damned bit different. It is a real number, with
real meaning, that can really be calculated.
I'm showing that the probability comes out FAR lower than 40
consecutive tosses of a "head".
The gay community is an ignorant dupe, with no head for
statistics, never realizing that it has been cheated., no matter
how trivially obvious that fact ought to be. Not cheated. Most
probably, murdered.
Tom Keske
Boston, Mass.
===========================================================
Subject: Manipulated Media? AIDS/Statistics, Part 1
From: Tom Keske (trkeske@yahoo.com)
Date: 1998/11/26
Forums: bit.listserv.gaynet
Manipulated Media: AIDS/Statistics, Part 1
A couple weeks ago, I was touting statistical analysis as one of
the best means for cutting through the thickets of disinformation
regarding AIDS and its most probable origins.
I couldn't have imagined that statistics was imminently about to
become a trendy subject for the Boston area news media. They
seemed more preoccupied with sensational, scandalous fluff of the
day, like Monica Lewinsky.
Look out, Monica, here comes the next Big Thing. Immediately
after I broadcast my statistical arguments, implicating hepatitis
vaccines as having sparked AIDS among gay men, came an improbable
flurry of news articles, smearing statistics in general, and
their value in analyzing epidemics, in particular.
Could it be a statistical, hairline crack in the wall of silence
surrounding AIDS origin that made the local Boston media blink,
at least for a minute, and shift their propaganda machines into
high gear?
Bay Windows, the Boston gay paper, ran an article titled "AIDS in
the 90's: Lies and Statistics". The article concludes,
"Statistics don't always lie, but liars almost always seem to use
statistics."
The trust of the article is supposedly to discredit the "AIDS
dissident" movement, which claims that HIV does not cause AIDS.
The AIDS dissidents were accused of misrepresenting their
statistical data.
Ironically, this same sentiment about statistics had been
expressed by Leonard Horowitz, an author who suggests that AIDS
may have been instigated deliberately. However, when he laments
that "You can prove anything with statistics", he is referring
more to misrepresentations by institutions such as the Centers
for Disease Control.
Horowitz saw little credibility in the "AIDS dissident" movement.
In fact, he surmised that they might be a deliberate "straw man",
set up specifically so that they could be knocked down with ease
by other scientists and the media. It is a great convenience,
to be able to discredit all "alternative" theories about AIDS, by
lumping them together, as if they shared a guilt by supposed
association.
The Boston Globe ran a couple articles, both on the central theme
of how you just can't trust the whole, nasty notion of
"statistics", especially when it comes to diseases and epidemics.
One article concerned a group called the Statistical Assessment
Service (STATS), which "plies the debunking trade."
The article describes how STATS tries to skewer fallacious
statistical claims related to heart diseases, breast cancer, etc:
That scary fact you read someplace? Based
on a
flawed analysis of the data. The latest
link
between a suspected toxin and a disease?
Not
statistically significant. That
intriguing tidbit
you heard? An overblown claim from an
advocacy
group.
The article concludes, "Statistics means never having to say
you're certain."
Another article was titled "Lyme Disease Statistics May be
Misleading." Lyme disease, by the way, is yet another disease
never known to exist before the 1970's, a banner decade both for
biowarfare experimentation, and for the emergence of strange, new
diseases.
Are statistics really a barrier to finding truth? In perfect
irony, the Bay Windows article used its own statistics to refute
the "AIDS dissidents", even though the same article questioned
the value of ALL statistics. Hypocritical? Hmm…
The "STATS" organization obviously does the same thing.
As I pointed out in a letter to Bay Windows, which they have not
yet printed: The media, the government, the CDC, the gay
community… everyone, in fact, uses statistics, all the time.
When we say that 30% of gay youth attempt suicide, that is a
statistic. We cite hate crime statistics, to back our calls for
legislation. We cite statistics as to how gay people vote, what
income level they have, in efforts to influence politicians or
corporations to attend to our concerns.
We are often accused of propagandizing when we use such
statistics. Mostly, we are accused falsely. The statistics shine
a light on genuine social injustices that need to be addressed.
Our opponents use statistics, also. Conservative groups
sometimes cite statistics from Dr. Paul Cameron, who alleges that
gay "lifestyle" is unhealthy, because most gay men die in their
40's.
Does it mean that statistics are useless, because they can be
falsified? Not at all.
What happens when Paul Cameron makes up his hateful statistics?
We challenge them, we demand to know his sources. We discover
that he is taking down ages exclusively from obituaries of gay
men who have died of AIDS.
We point out the obvious: he is not taking into account the
lifespans of ALL gay men, especially those who did NOT die of
AIDS.
Bad statistics fool you mostly when there is no critical
examination, no public discussion. True Believers will mostly
cling to their biases, but impartial observers stand a good
chance to find truth as a byproduct of the mutual debate.
Scientists have been known sometimes to fake test results,
outright. Does this mean that the whole concept of scientific
method is useless?
If a lie is perpetrated, it is primarily because the safeguards,
such as critical review and duplication of results, have not been
followed faithfully. Scientific method has few peers when it
comes to reliability, and statistical analysis is an
indispensable component of scientific method.
The local media talked plenty in recent weeks about statistics
and AIDS dissidents, statistics and Lyme disease, statistics and
nearly everything except the real issue that they don't wish to
admit exists: the link of vaccines and AIDS.
I routinely barrage the Boston Globe with my AIDS-related essays.
I had sent nothing to Bay Windows. The sight of gay media,
marching so suspiciously in lockstep with the mainstream,
straight media, is a bit chilling. It would be nice if we could
assume that everyone who represents us is really working for us,
but a rich historical record makes it clear that this would be a
naïve assumption.
If they have something to say, why do they beat around the bush?
Why do they post nothing to this newsgroup, if they read
something here that piqued their interest in statistics and their
supposed misuse?
I am by no means the only person in the world who has a question
about vaccines and AIDS. The Horowitz book was a best-seller,
and would have made the New York Times list, had this fact not
been censored. Many prestigious scientists have raised the same
concern. The Globe knows it. Bay Windows knows it.
It is an utter lie to say that the media has already dealt with
the subject of AIDS and vaccines. They have given it only the
most superficial brush-off. They have in no way given fair time
to the opposition. They have not allowed the most damning
details to find their way into widespread print. I do believe
that they simply couldn't dare to do so.
It is they who shrink from any real public debate, letting all
sides have their full say. It is a sham of theirs, to pretend
that there isn't enough evidence to merit a debate. It is a sham
to pretend that it is "irresponsible" to discuss this subject.
They do not debate the subject because they know that they would
be blown out of the water by the opposition whom they have
dismissed so arrogantly. A full airing of the facts would rock
the established political order, and that is what they really
fear.
I am certainly not the one who is evading debate or public
scrutiny. I will approach the "Statistical Assessment Service",
and send them copies of all my essays. I will post their full
response, verbatim, if they have any.
I challenge the media, gay and straight alike, to stop knocking
down the easy strawmen like the "AIDS dissidents". If the
extreme beliefs of such a group can merit discussion, it is
difficult to pretend that the wealth of revealing facts brought
to us by authors like Leonard Horowitz and Don Cantwell do not
deserve equal discussion.
Tom Keske
Boston, Mass.
===========================================================
Subject: Seeking Larger Truth Through Statistical Analysis
From: Tom Keske (trkeske@yahoo.com)
Date: 1998/10/31
Forums: alt.philosophy
We should study statistics like we would study sacred Scripture.
It is a reliable guide in searching for larger Truths, that we
might have imagined would be forever unknowable.
A case study to illustrate the point:
PROVING THE AIDS/VACCINE LINK
You would think that it would not be too difficult to find a
smoking gun, when that gun has killed or wounded some 30 million
people.
My friends sometimes tell me that the gay community will never
listen to claims that AIDS was unleashed through vaccine trials
in the late 1970's, even if it is true, because "nothing can be
proven, anyway".
One should not give up, so easily. After analyzing some data
concerning those vaccine trials, I believe that I can produce
statistical evidence as damning as an O.J. Simpson DNA test,
pointing unequivocally to a deliberate murder.
I am sure that the details can be quibbled, but I am equally
confident that the bottom line will be unchanged. It is no
longer a "theory" that AIDS was seeded through vaccine trials- it
is for all intents and purposes a fact, with as high a level of
certainty as most any other belief that you may care to hold.
When you have an explosive, new epidemic, the first few cases
tend to tell you the most about the epidemic's origins. Most of
what follows tends to get lost in an exploding confusion that
attends the exploding epidemic.
I decided to focus my attention on the gay men who were among the
first to be diagnosed with AIDS, and how many of those had
participated in the hepatitis B vaccine trials that were held in
New York and San Francisco, starting in the late 1970's.
The prevalence of vaccine trial participants among the first AIDS
cases has sometimes been dismissed on the grounds that
promiscuous men were chosen for the vaccine trials, and
therefore, supposedly, it was nothing suspicious that they should
be the first to get AIDS.
Relative to a supposedly non-promiscuous straight population,
that might have been true. However, the relevant comparison is
not against the straight population. The promiscuous vaccine
trial participants, and their rate of AIDS, needs to be compared
against that of other promiscuous gay males, in the same cities,
during the same time period.
The CDC issued a report pretending to show that vaccine
participants did not have a higher AIDS rate than the general
population. Before I refute that claim, a bit of context is
needed on the general subject of "damned lies and statistics".
This trite saying about statistics has probably done more harm to
the cause of Truth than bad statistics could ever do.
Statistics are like guns: Statistics do not lie. People lie with
statistics.
However, the commission of this crime requires a willing victim.
Rather than becoming an empty-headed cynic about all statistical
analysis, your personal goal should be to become sophisticated
enough in your understanding of statistics, that you can
determine for yourself whether they are being used for the
purpose of Truth or Lies.
If a person came up to you and made a bet that he could toss a
coin and get 4 heads in a row, and then did so, is he likely to
have cheated you? How about 10 heads in a row? 20 heads? 40
heads?
Four heads in a row, the odds are 1 in 16- you'd let it pass and
pay up. Ten heads, the odds go up to 1 in 1000. Twenty heads, 1
in 1,000,000. Forty heads, 1 in a trillion.
If the man were accused of a scam, and you were the jury, would
you convict, if the man repeatedly made bets and threw 40 heads
in a row? Would you need to know exactly how he cheated, or
would the statistical evidence alone at some point become
sufficient?
At 40 heads in a row, it always COULD be luck, but you would be a
fool to conclude anything other than you had been cheated. Are
the statistics lying to you? Emphatically, they are not.
The same applies to genocide. You need not care who laced the
vaccines with HIV, why they did it, how they did it. For now,
you need merely to convince yourself of the fact that it DID
happen that way.
The CDC's statistical analysis is questionable in part simply on
the grounds that the CDC, having a connection to the trials, has
a natural bias, even to the point of potentially lying, outright.
Feeding this suspicion is the fact that our government has hidden
most the vaccine trial data, on grounds of "national security",
much to the outrage of AIDS investigators, and much to the
ignorance of most of the general public.
Supposed you had 100 vaccine participants in a city of 1,00,000,
and an epidemic occurred shortly thereafter. The government that
sponsored the vaccine test assured that the rate of death among
the vaccine participants was no higher than that of the city in
general. Can you believe them?
Not necessarily. Suppose, for example, that they forgot to tell
you that everyone in the city died. The death rate of the vaccine
participants would have been 100%, and the death rate for the
city would have been 100%. Of course, they were the same.
Suppose also that they didn't tell you how the vaccine
participants all got the new disease among the very first, then
members of their families got it next, then friends of family
members got it next, etc. Taking a statistical study a few years
into the epidemic would not reveal the true story, would it?
Propagandists trying to cover-up the man-made origins of AIDS
frequently love to dismiss contrary evidence by saying that
"Correlation is not causation".
This is most certainly true, and it is most certainly not a
refutation.
As a tongue-in-cheek example: suppose you took government
propagandists who were attempting to cover-up a major scandal,
and stuffed socks in their mouths, after which they became
refreshingly silent. Their newly acquired silence is correlated
with the stuffing of the socks. It is unlikely that they merely
decided to become silent at the exact moment of the
stock-stuffing, out of kindness or consideration. In this case,
it is very justified to conclude that the correlation is also
very much a causation.
Another classic example of the opposite situation is a
correlation between ice cream sales and pregnancy- the higher the
ice cream sales, the higher the rate of pregnancies.
A fallacious conclusion would be that ice cream CAUSES pregnancy.
Correlation is not NECESSARILY causation, but correlation does
require EXPLANATION. In the case of ice cream, the explanation
is that higher ice cream sales are tied to higher temperatures,
which is when people also tend to have more sex.
With gay men, AIDS, and the vaccine trials, the alternate
explanation to "refute" a causal link is that the vaccine
participants were chosen to be promiscuous.
The problem with this is that urban gays in the late 1970's were
very commonly promiscuous. Why should the promiscuous, gay,
vaccine participants be more likely to get AIDS, compared to any
other promiscuous gay males?
After all, anti-gay forces tell us all the time that gays have
such extensive AIDS because gays are all supposed to be
promiscuous. When I finish this statistical analysis, the
anti-gay, pro-coverup propagandists might have to do an
about-face, and start to argue that we are NOT promiscuous. If
they do so, it would all the more reveal their insincerity.
I am not addressing in this essay, the question of whether AIDS
was engineered or natural. For now, it is enough to demonstrate
statistically that the virus had to be present in the vaccines.
If the virus occurred in nature, fine. If its monkey predecessor
SIV existed for decades or centuries before HIV, perhaps all
someone needed to do was to discover it, and coax it to adapt to
human tissue.
Or, if the virus adapted itself to human tissue by natural means,
then all someone needed to do was to discover a new virus in
remote African villages, and use it for genocide. The
realization that the virus was already "on the loose", and
already likely to spread inevitably in time, could tempt a
genocidal madman all the more. Little was left to lose in
targeting a population of undesirables to be hit first, and hit
hardest.
With HIV, I was intrigued at statement of Dr. Paul O'Malley, the
health investigator who headed up the Merck/CDC hepatitis B
study. Dr O'Malley reported that of the first 24 AIDS cases in
San Francisco, 11 were from the vaccine trial [1].
This seemed suspicious on an intuitive level. What other AIDS
investigators have heretofore failed to do is to attempt to
compute statistical odds for or against this being a natural
occurrence.
Similarly, in New York, of the first 41 AIDS cases, some 25-50%
were reported to be participants of the vaccine trials [2]. For
my purposes, I'll take a middle figure of 37.5%, or 15 men.
In San Francisco, some 6700 men participated in the hepatitis
vaccine tests. In New York, it had been some 1000.
The only remaining information needed to make a ballpark estimate
of the statistical odds are figures for the numbers of
promiscuous gay men that existed in these cities, in the late
1970s.
It is difficult to get accurate information, since there is no
formal gay census. However, you can make some reasonable,
conservative estimates.
The population of the city of San Franciso is about 700,000, and
the metropolitan area is about 1.7 million. Most gays would
estimate 10% of the population as being gay, while I tend to use
a more conservative 5% figure. New York and San Francisco
should have higher percentages than the national average, but to
be conservative, you can stick to the overall average.
Another yardstick that I used was the Pride Parade attendance,
about 200,000 in San Francisco.
Estimates about venereal disease, and surveys about unsafe sex
practices can give an estimate of what percent of the gay
population might be termed "promiscuous".
These measures are not precise, but they are reasonable. From
such sources, I'm estimating about 100,000 sexually active gay
males in San Francisco in the late 1970s, and another 100,000 in
New York. I consider these numbers to be more likely
conservative than inflated. If anyone has more credible numbers,
and can credibly demonstrate that fact, then I'll be happy to
refine the calculations.
This becomes a relatively straightforward problem in binomial
distributions. If you want to calculate the probability of
getting r of one kind of thing in a sample of n things, the
probability is:
(n! / (n-r)!r!) x (q ^ (n-r) x p^r)
where "!" means "factorial, "^" means "raised to the
power".
p is the probability of getting the item of interest, and q is
the probability of getting the other item.
For SF, p is (6700/100000) = .067. q is (93300/100000) = .933.
n is 24 and r is 11 (as discussed above).
The above formula gives the probability of getting 11 vaccine
participants out of a sample of 24. What we want is the
probability of getting 11 OR MORE, so I wrote a program to sum
repetitively for the chances of getting 11, 12, 13 … 24.
For San Francisco, the odds against getting such a high
percentage of vaccine participants in the first 24 AIDS cases are
about 1 in 7.7 million. In New York the chance of getting 15
vaccine participants in the first 41 AIDS cases were even more
dramatic, about 1 in 2.2 x (10 ^ 19).
For the overall probability in NY and SF, you can take the
product of these two figures, giving about 1.7 in 10 ^ 26 (this
being a figure of 1 followed by a string of 27 zeroes).
May I emphasis against, this is strictly comparing the odds for
promiscuous, gay vaccine participants versus other promiscuous
gay men in the same cities, to have contracted HIV as they did.
Figures in this range leave a great deal of room for error,
without changing the bottom-line conclusion: the connection
between the vaccines and the outbreak of AIDS is not random, and
is not explained by the promiscuity of the men who took the
vaccines.
For the next installment of this series, I will explain why the
vaccines were almost certainly contaminated by deliberate intent,
not by accident.
Tom Keske
Boston, Mass.
[1] "Emerging Viruses, AIDS & Ebola", Leonard Horowitz
[2] "Designer Diseases', http://www.afrinet.net/~hallh/afrotalk/
afrooct95/1934.html
===========================================================
Subject: Proving the AIDS/Vaccine Link
From: Tom Keske (trkeske@yahoo.com)
Date: 1998/11/15
Forums: alt.conspiracy
>Wrong! The analysis is skewed by omitting consideration of the
>Diagnosed vs. Undiagnosed cases
>it almost stands to reason that infected participants in the
>tests were recognized as such in the course of the monitoring of
>their health
This argument has been used before, and it is not convincing. In
the vaccine trials, we are talking about men who were tested to
be 100% healthy at the outset of the test. There were cases of
vaccine recipients getting full-blown AIDS within a few months.
When you are covered with purple lesions and dying, you don't
need your "health monitored" in order to know that something is
wrong.
What gives you the right to proclaim so emphatically that the
conclusion is "wrong"? You are *guessing* that it is wrong.
Truth is, you are doing what we so-called "conspiracists" are so
often accused of doing- assuming that only one possibility can
possibly be correct. Or, in your case, there is a hard
assumption that certain possibilities must be excluded from all
serious consideration- that genocide, biowar, HIV-laced vaccines
are all for some reason outside the pale of legitimate
consideration.
There are plenty of gay men who get regular health checkups. The
monitoring of vaccine participants is far too weak of a factor to
explain such a staggering statistical correlation.
The genuine pool that should be considered is not just San
Franisco. There are gay men in Boston, in Chicago, in Florida,
all over the country- who are just as likely to fly to Haiti for
a vacation, who travel to Africa, who have just as much sex.
Any of them had equal chance to get AIDS.
If I made any major mistakes, it is focusing too narrowly on SF,
as if this were the size of the marble jar. The country, the
world are the real size of the marble jar.
In view of this, the statistical odds become so unimaginable,
that is is really quite pathetic to imagine any factors to
account for the correlation, other than a direct one- HIV in the
vaccines themselves.
Not SIV, not SV40, not random monkey retroviruses. HIV, already
complete, in its present form.
Tom Keske
Boston, Mass.
===========================================================
Subject: Naming Names
From: Tom Keske (trkeske@yahoo.com)
Date: 1998/12/12
Forums: bit.listserv.gaynet
Naming Names
The CDC is now advising the recording of names of HIV patients,
allowing states to use "unique identifier" systems only as a
secondary alternatives.
As long as we are naming names, let's put this out on the table:
this is the spirit of people like Jesse Helms, Pat Buchanan, Pat
Robertson, and Trent Lott, that is really behind the CDC move.
It is some red meat tossed to right-wingers who hate gays and
people with AIDS. It is laundered and sanitized through the
CDC, coming out sounding all scientific, all clean, caring and
concerned. It is like mobster drug money that gets laundered
through a legitimate bank.
Collecting names is cumbersome and error-prone. Unique
identifier systems can be adequately effective for tracking the
epidemic.
Don't kid yourself that this is anything but an ominous move. It
is a move to satisfy people who harbor secret desires for
round-ups, like Helms, Buchanan, and Robertson. Not tomorrow,
not right away, but just in case they ever should feel like it.
Better to fight it now, than to fight it when you get the rude
shock of discovering how far this crowd would be willing to go,
someday.
Tom Keske
Boston, Mass.
===========================================================
Subject: Past Prediction: AIDS & Statistics
From: Tom Keske (trkeske@yahoo.com)
Date: 1998/12/12
Forums: bit.listserv.gaynet
PAST PREDICTIONS: AIDS & STATISTICS
So far, I've shown why there is an overwhelming statistical
connection between the original outbreak of AIDS in American gay
males, and hepatitis B vaccines that were administered in the
late 1970's. This connection is explainable neither by
coincidence alone, nor by the sexual promiscuity of the vaccine
trial participants. If anything, I've grossly understated the
strength of the statistical connection, as I'll discuss more,
after the holidays.
For now, I want to give a couple past examples, how statistical
analysis has helped in seeing realities beyond the conventional
wisdom of the day.
In the very early days of the AIDS epidemic, more than a decade
ago, I was incensed that the news media was trying to reassure
the public by emphasizing how few people actually had AIDS, and
how low was the probability of getting AIDS. I was aggravated
by a newspaper piece that projected a few years into the future,
saying how there would still be a relatively small number of
people with AIDS, and not much to worry about.
No one had yet printed a projection of a million or more people
with AIDS, in our lifetimes (or at least, none that I had ever
seen).
I realized that AIDS growth was exponential, and that is was
extremely misleading, to be looking only a few years into the
future. I did my own projections, looking further, and sent a
letter to the Boston Globe, arguing that at current growth rates,
we would easily see a million people in the not-too distant
future (I forget exactly what time frame I estimated).
All the while, I felt on the defensive, making this forecast. The
math seemed so simple, yet I could scarcely believe my eyes. How
could all the scientific experts have missed something so
obvious? It seemed like too fantastic of a conclusion. Was I
just being a hysterical gloom-and-doomer? Was I making some naive
mistake?
I was also arguing in the letter that the media was making a
mistake to try to reassure the public by downplaying the
epidemic. It might reassure the public, but it was hardly going
to encourage the right behavior changes.
Now that we have the benefit of hindsight, what do think of this
wild prediction? Was it REALLY possible that we would live to
see a million people with AIDS in our lifetimes? Was this wild
prediction maybe even a slight understatement?
Just before I became interested in the subject of AIDS origin, I
had taken a fancy in the subject of cryptography (I once had a
job interview with the NSA, which went sour after they asked me
about homosexuality under a polygraph test).
This infatuation gave me some good experience in learning how
political propaganda can obfuscate even a purely technical
subject, and how even professionals in that subject can remain
clueless under the spell of propaganda.
The NSA has vested interest in maintaining the fiction that
code-breaking, their pride and joy, is still an important and
relevant field. They have enjoyed many years of lavish funding
for this art, practically given a blank check by Congress.
In short time, I became utterly convinced by a combination of
statistical analysis and logical reasoning, that the art of
code-breaking was in fact utterly dead, killed by the advent of
computers. I concluded that the evolution of more powerful
computers could only make this fact even more true. I concluded
that all the fuss about encryption methods being too weak was an
entirely artificial problem, created by arbitrary government
dictates. I also concluded that the government was in fact
powerless to enforce controls over encryption, because they could
be circumvented like child's play, by simple application of
steganography tricks (making your encrypted data look like
something else, like sales figures).
I felt defensive arguing these points, also. I talked with other
professionals who worked with cryptography and specialized in
corporate security. I was dismayed that they relied on standards
that they treated mostly as a "black box", without ever really
trying to think about the subject in an original way.
I concluded that even technically oriented trade journals were
effectively playing Devil's Advocate, almost surely manipulated
by government interests. When you fully, clearly understood the
truths, it became obvious that they had to know better than the
side-stepping sleights-of-hand that they were trying to pass off
on the public.
The cryptography newsgroups had sarcastic know-it-alls, ready to
demolish the ego of any neophytes who dared to think that they
could possibly come up with anything new, anything better than
the pitiful, government-sanctioned encryption methods offered on
the market.
I wondered if I were crazy, to feel myself so at odds with
conventional wisdom, in a subject where there were experts who
had invested far more years of study. I had some to the seemingly
arrogant conclusion that it was actually child's play to come up
with encryption methods to beat the NSA's best supercomputers.
With hesitation and self-doubt, yet confident of the analysis, I
laid a $1000 reward on several cryptography newsgroups (not even
a bet, justing laying the money down on the table). Most
challenges were more on the order of $100.
I provided the complete program source, explained its principle,
provided 90% of the plain text as a clue, and asked for just a
couple remaining lines.
No one could claim the money. Eventually, buried in a 1000+ page
book by a homophobic NSA historian (David Kahn, the
codebreakers), I found near-admissions of most of the very points
that I had been trying to make. What the author didn't admit, in
his mostly pro-NSA propaganda, was how utterly and how easily
defeated were the NSA's best efforts.
When I began to get wind of a much larger issue in the world- the
real origins of AIDS- I felt guilty, almost kicking myself for
wasting time on something as comparatively unimportant as
cryptography. But I can see now that it was a very good
preparation for the work to come. It gave me a confidence in
the power of a combination of statistics and reasoning. It also
gave me a clear insight into how even technical professionals can
be manipulated on subject matters where they ought to know
better, by the powers of politicized propaganda, orchestrated
through an obedient media.
It also gave me the thick hide needed to ignore the sarcastic
crap of provocateurs, having seen so much of the same on
cryptography newsgroups. I learned that eventually, their bluffs
could be called, and they could be beaten at their game.
Tom Keske
Boston, Mass.
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