Chika-Lika-Zika

Know what?

I could start a global health crisis tomorrow with the help of about three people.  I could do it alone, but I might break a sweat, and that wouldn't do.

I get my camera buddy and a Western actor, preferably female.  I put her in a lab coat...no, even better, an environmental suit.  We all go down to one of Indonesia's Level III wards - those are the ones with 20 people in one room, no A/C or TeeVee, just basic ultra-cheap medical care.  There's always someone moaning, since one room can have everything from a mild flu to a sucking chest wound.  The folks on that ward don't worry about things like Talent Releases and the families are just happy to be on TeeVee.  They don't care about privacy or any of those abstract ideas.

Now, I stage the shot a bit: open some of the curtains, pay a couple of nurses and families to mill around in the background.  I stand my actress in front of the scene, making sure I have a second mic picking up the environmental sounds of pain and suffering.  I have her spout some medical-sounding gobble-di-gook about viruses, lack of innoculation and throw in mention of WHO and Doctors Without Borders, just for good measure.

We wrap it up and head back to the office, stopping for a hot bowl of bakso on the way.

Back in the office, I put my white girl behind the camera and dress my Indo guy in a nice suit and put him in front of a green screen.  I give him a script to read - in Indonesian, of course, because stupid Americans can barely speak English, much less some tropical language.

When he's done, I drop some subtitles over the "doctor" and CGI a news set on an Indo network.  Doesn't even matter if it's a real organization, no one will ever search it to see if the network actually exists.

I upload it to YouTube and blast the link to my social network of two or three thousand folks.  I also call my buddies at CBS and Fox and tell them I've got a hot news story for them.  It gets picked up, I manufacture a couple more videos - let's say out in the jungle this time - and viola!  I just created a global health scare.  With the proper setup, I could do this in an afternoon, with another day to do some follow-up videos about an hour south of Jakarta in the mountains.

Since folks believe anythng they see on TeeVee, and almost never check facts, I could create...oh, I do't know, how about a virus called Zika that was discovered in Africa in the 50s, but somehow is causing...um, what sounds really scary?  Ooh!  How about babies born with micro-brains!  I'll get my chums over at the CDC to release some pseudo-facts and BS statistics on a weekly basis.  No need to actually show anyone suffering from the virus.  Just need to tell them that it is spreading and coming way too close to their home town.  That should scare the shit out of them.

Hell, while I'm at it, I'll issue a travel warning to Indonesia.  After all, there are "thousands" affected and we don't want it to spread.  That should kill the tourist trade and punish those evil Indonesians for not passing that bankster friendly law last month.

It's that easy folks.

Takes about a week and most of it is paperwork and phone calls.

And since you will believe anything on the TeeVee, and can/will never check the facts, and will panic on command, I will always win.

Honestly, before a few months ago, had you ever heard of Zika?  Most of the info I can find on it is only a couple of years old, even though it was supposedly discovered in Africa in the 1950s.  On top of that, I live in the tropics, and everyone here has had, or knows someone who has had most of the nasty little bugs that live in the tropics - dengue, yellow fever, hemorrhagic fever, amoebic dysentery, typhus, etc. ad nauseum.  But I can't find a single person who ever heard of Zika, much less had it before, and all references that are easily scared up on Google are within the past few hours or days.

Suddenly, just before the Rio Olympics and just when President Rouseffe was under fire for thinking her country's oil and mineral wealth belonged to the Brazilians, this Zika virus comes out of nowhere, infects thousands of folks, causes microcephaly (lit. small brain) births, spreads all over North America, and is transmitted by casual and sexual contact.

Pardon me if I don't buy this truck-load of horseshit for a moment.

OK, so it causes microcephaly, and you can show me all kinds of pictures of rashes, deformed babies and people suffering, but I have no way of knowing if these photos are connected to Zika.  You can show me live video of someone with fever and all sorts of nasty things, but I couldn't tell you if it was a virus or chemical poisoning, much less Zika,  There are no test results posted anywhere that I can find, and even if there were, there is no chain of evidence proving that the results are tied to any particular patient, and even if there were, I have no way to verify that the patient actually exists, since I know precisely how to manufacture such "evidence" with exactly the same "look and feel" as anything I can find in the media.

There may be thousands of people in Brazil and elsewhere suffering some kind of symptoms, but do you have ANY proof whatsoever that they are suffering from Zika infection?  As for the microcephaly, do you have any way of knowing that it was caused by a virus and not, say...Monsanto products?  In fact, do you have any way of verifying that any of these cases exist at all, other than reports in controlled media?

I didn't think so.

It is so easy to manufacture false stories.  I can destroy people's lives and mark them for life with nothing more substantial than a well-spun story.

We, the masses, never stop to ask questions.  We just sit in front of our TeeVees and absorb the party line.  Global events can be completely manufactured in minutes or hours with no more than about 10 people who know the truth.  More than 99% of the population will believe anything that has the smell of "authority" on it.  That's no more than a group of high school chums creating the news that drives the world of seven billion people.

When you think about it, the only reason we think there are seven billion people is because an "authority" gave us that number.  Have you verified the data?  Have you ever researched how that number is created?  Have you ever thought about anything you've been told is true?

All I need is some yahoo in a lab coat with a stethoscope spouting gibberish, and you'd never know the difference.  Especially if I can call on two or three buddies to help spread the word.

I am personally responsible for shooting video that was sold to the world as a race riot in South Africa, when in fact it was a blood feud between two black families over some chickens.  Even now, my confession will change nothing.  And you really think a conspiracy cannot be propagated without someone knowing the truth?  I know the truth.  I can give you dates, times and which major media network published it, and on which dates.  It won't change the fact that South Africa was destroyed over a manufactured problem to achieve goals that had nothing to do with human rights.

I quit mass media with a promising career because I had too much integrity to take money for fooling millions of people.  In the theater, people pay for tickets both knowing and wanting to be fooled, but with mass media, we assume that what we see is true.  It's frightening...really frightening.

Question everything!