OCTOBER 26, 2009. It’s a tradition. Friday is the day when the White House press office releases stories that will land softly. That’s their hope. The White House doesn’t want outrage and argument and resistance. It wants the cushion of the weekend, when everyone is paying less attention.

So Obama signed his national state of emergency on Friday night, and hoped it would be a fait accompli. Too late, by Monday, for howls of protest.

As of Friday night, though, the Swine Flu state of emergency theoretically empowered FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) to oversee the “epidemic.”

The president assumed the right to do whatever he wants to, in order to stem “the threat” of what? Another mild flu season. Swine Flu is, like SARS, like West Nile, like the smallpox attack, like bird flu, a dud.

In fact, if you believe CDC statistics on regular ordinary flu deaths, Swine Flu is a respite.

But the feds have ordered millions of doses of vaccine, and it wants to use them. Manufacturers want the ability to insert mercury or (toxic) chemical boosters in the vaccines, and this Obama declaration will make that easier---because it’s in the service of “protecting the populace.” During the national emergency.

Both the federal government and vaccine manufacturers want to do everything they can to make this flu season seem like a very big deal, because if they fail in that propaganda effort, fewer and fewer people will believe anything they say about medical matters from here on out. And next year, instead of 20% of the people getting the vaccine, it’ll be 5%.

Another word about the chemical boosters in the vaccine. They’re called adjuvants, and they allow manufacturers to use less H1N1 virus in the vaccine. If we can believe these drug companies, their efforts to make flu vaccine this year are being slowed by the time it’s taking to grow the H1N1 in chicken eggs. So these companies want two things: They want to use the adjuvants so they can make more vaccine with less H1N1, and they want the public to buy into the epidemic nonsense for another month or two, while the vaccines are delivered.

A national state of emergency helps those causes.

In that sense, Obama’s Friday night declaration was a nod in the direction of Big Pharma. The CDC made its own bow in that direction last Thursday, when its director lied through his teeth and claimed that “many millions” of Americans have Swine Flu. The CDC’s ability to float pure bullshit is apparently endless.

There is another reason this state of emergency was declared: to desensitize Americans to the idea of the executive branch taking over the affairs of the country.

Here we are not just talking about future fake epidemics, but also economic emergencies stemming from the financial crisis and the fake bailout.

The more the White House uses the word emergency, the more it assumes extraordinary powers, the more the citizenry becomes used to that “new status quo.”

Finally, a medical state of emergency allows the opportunity for what seem to be reasonable quarantines. Then, if you put the notion of FEMA and quarantine side by side, you see a pattern. FEMA plans these scenarios all the time, and runs drills on them. “Suppose we had a national disaster of some kind?” FEMA asks. “What are the levels of organization we have firmly in place? Is our infrastructure sound? Can we mobilize thousands of our people? Can we accomplish quarantine and detention of large numbers of people? Can we coordinate with other agencies? Can we retain control of the situation?”

With Obama’s declaration on Friday night, FEMA now has a greater role. How far that goes is something we’ll see. So far, I believe FEMA will be limited to “offering assistance to hospitals with overflow patients who believe they have Swine Flu.”

The emperor has no clothes. Swine Flu is a bust and a dud. It was from the beginning. But to cover that up, the government will keep trying to engender fear, because in this kind of situation, that’s all it has.

JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com