Bio-Weapon

The Secret Project to Create Weaponized Ebola in the 1980’s

Oct 20, 2014 | 2020 Relevant, Government Agenda, News, Video

Confronting Doctor Death from Bob Coen on Vimeo.

Following leads on the anthrax trail took us across four continents – filming outside the high security perimeter fences of some of the world’s most secret germ war labs (and inside a couple), tracking down and talking to experts and scientists some of whom were members of the so called “International Bio-Weapons Mafia”. None was more chilling than the face to face we got with the man they call Doctor Death – Wouter Basson, the army scientist who headed apartheid South Africa’s secret germ war program – Project Coast.

Shrouded in mystery and hidden behind front companies that used worldwide intelligence connections, the shocking activities of the program only emerged after the fall of apartheid – revealing a shockingly sophisticated operation that had 200 scientists developing germ war agents to be used against the country’s black population.

This was one of the very few interviews Doctor Death has given and for the first time he talks candidly about the help the received from the West, his relationship with David Kelly and the creation of “the Black Bomb” an agent that could sterilize blacks without their knowledge.

And then there’s his strange relationship with Larry Ford, the Mormon gynecologist to Hollywood stars who was also moonlighting for the South Africans and had CIA connections.

Some experts are wondering whether Doctor Deaths’s program provided a convenient off-shore operation for Western germ war experimentation?

Operating out of South Africa during the Apartheid era in the early 1980’s, Dr. Wouter Basson launched a secret bioweapons project called Project Coast. The goal of the project was to develop biological and chemical agents that would either kill or sterilize the black population and assassinate political enemies. Among the agents developed were Marburg and Ebola viruses.

Basson is surrounded by cloak and dagger intrigue, as he told Pretoria High court in South Africa that “The local CIA agent in Pretoria threatened me with death on the sidewalk of the American Embassy in Schoeman Street.” According to a 2001 article in The New Yorker magazine, the American Embassy in Pretoria was “terribly concerned” that Basson would reveal deep connections between Project Coast and the United States.

In 2013, Basson was found guilty of “unprofessional conduct” by the South African health council.

Bioweapons expert Jeanne Guillemin writes in her book Biological Weapons: From the Invention of State-Sponsored Programs to Contemporary Bioterrorism, “The project‘s growth years were from 1982 to 1987, when it developed a range of biological agents (such as those for anthrax, cholera, and the Marburg and Ebola viruses and for botulinum toxin)…“

Basson’s bioweapons program officially ended in 1994, but there has been no independent verification that the pathogens created were ever destroyed. The order to destroy them went directly to Dr. Basson. According to the Wall Street Journal, “The integrity of the process rested solely on Dr. Basson’s honesty.”

Basson claims to have had contact with western agencies that provided “ideological assistance” to Project Coast. Basson stated in an interview shot for the documentary Anthrax War that he met several times with Dr. David Kelly, the infamous UN weapons inspector in Iraq. Kelly was a top bioweapons expert in the United Kingdom. He was found dead near his home in Oxfordshire in 2003. While the official story claims he committed suicide, medical experts highly doubt this story.

In a 2007 article from the Mail Online, it was reported that a week prior to his death, Dr. Kelly was to be interviewed by MI5 about his ties to Dr. Basson.

Dr. Timothy Stamps, Minister of Health of Zimbabwe, suspected that his country was under biological attack during the time that Basson was operating. Stamps told PBS Frontline in 1998 that “The evidence is very clear that these were not natural events. Whether they were caused by some direct or deliberate inoculation or not, is the question we have to answer.”

Stamps specifically named the Ebola and Marburg viruses as suspect. Stamps thinks that his country was being used as a testing ground for weaponized Ebola.

“I’m talking about anthrax and cholera in particular, but also a couple of viruses that are not endemic to Zimbabwe [such as] the Ebola type virus and, we think also, the Marburg virus. We wonder whether in fact these are not associated with biological warfare against this country during the hostilities…Ebola was along the line of the Zambezi [River], and I suspect that this may have been an experiment to see if a new virus could be used to directly infect people.”

The Ghanaian Times reported in early September on the recent Ebola outbreak, noting connections between Basson and bioweapons research. The article points out that, “…there are two types of scientists in the world: those who are so concerned about the pain and death caused to humans by illness that they will even sacrifice their own lives to try and cure deadly diseases, and those who will use their scientific skill to kill humans on the orders of… government…”

Indeed, these ideas are not new. Plato wrote over 2,000 years ago in his work The Republic that a ruling elite should guide society, “…whose aim will be to preserve the average of population.” He further stated, “There are many other things which they will have to consider, such as the effects of wars and diseases and any similar agencies, in order as far as this is possible to prevent the State from becoming either too large or too small.”

As revealed by The Age, Nobel prize winning Australian microbiologist Sir Macfarlane Burnet secretly urged the Australian government in 1947 to develop bio weapons for use against the “overpopulated countries of South-East Asia.” In a 1947 meeting with the New Weapons and Equipment Development Committee, the group recommended that “the possibilities of an attack on the food supplies of S-E Asia and Indonesia using B.W. agents should be considered by a small study group.”

This information gives us an interesting perspective on the recent unprecedented Ebola outbreak. Is it an organic natural phenomenon? Did this strain of Ebola accidentally escape from a bioweapons lab? Or, was it deliberately released?

EXCLUSIVE: Origins of the Zombie Apocalypse Hollywood Narrative

Sep 10, 2014 | Hollywood Programming

George A. Romero’s Vital Role in Paving the Road for Today’s Zombie Film

The first feature length film to employ zombies as a vehicle for social commentary was Abel Gance’s J’Accuse (1919), which is also memorable for featuring authentic footage from the battlefields of the first World War. In the 1930’s, many zombie films were inspired by mostly misinterpreted Haitian mythology. Today, zombie film and culture now permeate virtually all mass media, everything from video games, to TV shows, to graphic novels. Zombies are used as a narrative device to discuss any number of issues, from oppressive, military states, to contagions and pandemics, to xenophobia and social stigma. We owe most of this to George A. Romero.

Zombie films, and indeed exploitation films in general, would not exist as we know them today if not for Romero’s influence. From his early work with the groundbreaking films Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1978), and Day of the Dead (1985) that set the zombie genre in motion to his recent works like Land of the Dead (2005), Diary of the Dead (2007), and Survival of the Dead (2010) Romero set the standard for the zombie movie in ways that changed how we watch the genre entirely.

Night of the Living Dead, although black and white and also shot on a shoestring budget, has a depth that was surprising for the time. Although the film didn’t shy away from explicit onscreen violence, it wasn’t the blood and guts alone that made this film revolutionary. After all, by 1968, exploitation filmmakers like Herschell Gordon Lewis had already been churning out over-the-top gory films like Blood Feast (1963) for a few years. What distinguished Romero’s film was that it didn’t rely exclusively on sensational gimmicks, but it endeavored to tell a meaningful story with characters that elicited emotional responses from viewers. The film focused more on the human relationships during the post apocalyptic backdrop, and it offered poignant commentary about humanity’s inability to reconcile conflicting self-interests in crisis situations. The film is also notable for featuring a black actor (Duane Jones) as its male lead. What’s more, the film had the audacity to have its main character killed off — and what’s more, the black male lead is shot by a white militia. Bear in mind that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated around the time of the film’s release, and Malcolm X had been assassinated a mere three years prior.

His next installment in the Dead saga was Dawn of the Dead (1978), which mostly takes place inside an overrun shopping mall and also focuses on the survivors of a zombie outbreak. We are told that the zombies flock to the mall because they have vague memories of the site holding personal significance for them. It’s Romero’s stab at consumer culture, and the unhealthy degree of importance assigned to material wealth.

In 1985’s Day of the Dead Romero envisions an underground military base where zombies have been kept for experimentation. It evokes sympathy for the zombies, and vilifies the power-crazed military officials (especially the psychopathic Captain Rhodes, who meets an especially gruesome end). Day, with it’s scaything criticism of governmental abuse of power and ethical issues surrounding military service, is perhaps the most socially relevant of all the Dead films. Not only is it attracting fresh attention because of regular screenings on TV, particularly the new grindhouse/horror-oriented El Rey cable network (more info here), but the film also laid the groundwork for modern zombie productions like The Walking Dead, and 28 Days Later. And moreover, his films have been remade and adapted, proving that they are still as relevant as ever to a modern day audience.

While his film Land of the Dead (2005) did offer unique criticism of the Bush administration, his follow-ups, Diary of the Dead (2007), and Survival of the Dead (2010) failed to gain widespread attention like his earlier works did but they still prove to be potent additions to the zombie film genre catalog. His most recent outings lack the potency as the earlier films. However, these movies were not totally without merit and, in fact, only upheld the idea that Romero is an incredibly important figure in the zombie genre who had an integral role shaping what it is today.

In more recent, unrelated works like The Walking Dead and 28 Days Later, the very ideas those films were founded upon are the same ideas that Romero laid out in his earlier works and upheld in his later films. Surely, if not for Romero’s works and contributions, the zombie genre that we know and love to today would seem infinitely less-thrilling, and considerably less relevant, than it is today.