This discussion is augmented by the 2017 disclosures of Dr. Alexander Kouzminov, an ex-intelligence operative who worked for the Soviet-Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) during the 1980-90s and who specialized in intelligence operations involving bioweapons-related activities in target countries before he resigned from the SVR and emigrated to New Zealand.
“Psychological” or “Information Bioterrorism” involves the use of fear of an infectious disease to control people and their behavior. It is a very effective method for mass manipulation of populations and works by creating a state of heightened anxiety and fear of death in the people who are targeted. This fear is often grounded in misleading, poorly documented historical stories- essentially folk tales or parables- about historic pandemics of very dangerous diseases.
Often, these parables have little relevance to modern society with its sophisticated sanitary practices, hospital networks, and wide spectrum of antibiotics, antifungals, antiparasitics, and anti-inflammatory drugs.
One example of such a story is the tale of the global “Spanish Influenza” pandemic of 1918. This story has long been used to justify the need for mass annual influenza vaccination to avoid a future influenza pandemic. But this story is misleading folklore. It has been repeated for over a century since these events occurred and still incites deep fear in the minds of many.
The truth is that the waves of mass death from infectious disease, which did occur around 1918, were not really due to the H1N1 Influenza strain, which DID infect and cause upper respiratory sickness in many people all over the world- but did not actually cause mass death. Instead, current scientific analysis indicates that these deaths were primarily due to bacterial pneumonia, which co-circulated with the H1N1 influenza virus, together with inappropriate use of non-pharmaceutical public health measures, including masks, and inappropriate dosing with a newly discovered pharmaceutical drug – aspirin. A much more nuanced reality, but not one that supports the need for annual influenza vaccination.
The recent global surge in propaganda concerning the strain of H5N1 (Avian Influenza) that is now circulating in large chicken flocks (and a wide range of wild birds) provides a great case study of how a Psychological or Information Bioterrorism event campaign is crafted and deployed.
1) A Time factor: Psychological bioterrorism provides a practical method for immediate global transmission and development of widespread panic through electronic means of communication.
2) A Vulnerability factor: People feel helplessness when confronting the threat, due to lack of effective means of defense. This creates panic among the general population which can then be directed or exploited to support other objectives.
3) An Uncertainty factor: A lack of factual information about the source of the Bioterror threat and its spread creates an opportunity to manipulate masses of people by those that initiate the threat. Initiating and promoting a psychological bioterror event creates an opportunity to craft and promote an explanation of the event, and to fashion propaganda narratives which serve or support other (typically hidden) objectives.
In the case of the current “Bird Flu” narrative, these objectives may include promoting acceptance of mRNA-based genetic vaccination of dairy cattle, and promoting the objective of culling cattle herds to mitigate the claimed effects of cattle on CO2 emissions.
4) A “lack of control” factor: Every person who accepts the promoted Bioterror narrative develops and internalizes a sense of being “out of control”, because he/she is a suspicious object, liable to have the disease, and therefore is a threat to everyone else.
This creates chronic internal anxiety in those vulnerable to the Bioterror campaign, which is then easily manipulated by promotion of narratives requiring compliance with a series of actions – effective or ineffective- which serve to create a sense of purpose, identity and belonging to an “in group” that have achieved protected status (from the manufactured Bioterror threat) by performing a ritual or modifying their behavior in some way.
Large scale Psychological Bioterrorism, or Information bioterrorism, or “information biological blackmail”, is usually secretly deployed by foreign or domestic “intelligence” or “security” services, and is implemented as an “active operation” in target countries using a variety of witting or unwitting allies.
The existence and deployment of an active Psychological Bioterror operation can be detected as a scripted series of active operational deployment stages, each involving well defined strategies, actors, roles and responsibilities.
These strategies, actors, roles and responsibilities include the following:
1) An “Active operation”: this is an activity of a secret service (typically a foreign intelligence service), which is aimed at a “Target audience” (an object it wants to influence), and is carried out at the request of an “Interested party” with “Supporters” and “Auxiliary means” in order to achieve the required “Planned impacts”.
The “Active operation” is carried out with the support of agents, supporting persons and interested organizations. Usually, the “intelligence” or “security” service (mercenary or governmentally associated) conducts the “active operation” using “false flags”; third party agents or cutout organizations. In other words, it hides its main objectives under the cover of a (politically) neutral non-governmental organization, a government bureaucracy, an academic institution, or otherwise hides its goals under some kind of a falsely crafted problem. These agents, supporting persons, and organizations can include networks of interested parties that share similar, related, or complementary objectives.
2) ‘Interested parties’- During the Cold War, ‘interested parties’ were usually the government or its special (secret) services, normally foreign intelligence. Today, the ‘Interested party’ could be single corporate conglomerate, pharmaceutical companies, banks and other large financial consortia, corporatist associations, national or global non-governmental organizations, private and political groups, lobbyists, etc.
3) “Target”- The objects or target audience of an ‘active operation’ may be governments, high-ranking military officials, secret services of the enemy, political parties, banks, companies, etc., as well as ordinary populations, where the aim is to cause some kind of an impact and effect.
4) “Executor”: This is some form of secret service, generally but not necessarily foreign intelligence. Usually, the “Executor” carries out the “Active operations” using one or more “false flag” operations, which means that it masquerades the true operation by covering it up with a false story or threat.
5) “Supporters”: Examples of supporters include academics, “influencers” in the entertainment, social media, or arts, and neutral third parties (the latter are not with the secret service); these can help the “Executor” to realize the “Active operations”. Supporters are typically recruited using a wide variety of means, including direct overt payments involving fee-for-service agreements and more covert indirect payments or incentives.
6) “Mass media”: The role played by mass (corporate and/or social) media is to implement active operations by auxiliary means. Mass media (corporate press and social media) is one of the key ways in which an active operation is implemented. The Executor uses mass media to achieve the maximum impact on the Target audience/Object of influence. For example, by raising a threat, spreading rumors, and promoting false information. All of this is really for spreading disinformation in order to distract from the true operation, to masquerade it.
7) “Planned impacts”: Information strategy and objectives sent out to impact a specific audience have to be ‘sharp.’ It is important to influence the intended object. Information is put together purposefully, usually as a threat or a big problem, as if it’s a real problem. The target audience should never doubt the information and should have no awareness of who or what is planning and guiding the messaging and distribution.
The main stages of the active operation, through which the Psychological Bioterror event can be created, are as follows:
Phase 1: the Executor (e.g. intelligence service), with the help of Supporters (e.g. agents) and Auxiliary Means (e.g. mass media), throws out false information (in our case, - imminent pandemic of bird flu) onto the Target Audience (e.g. public) with a pre-tense that it’s real.
Phase 2: Executors, Supporters and Auxiliary Means accelerate the problem, making it a hot topic (maximum interest needs to be created). Once the false problem is created, it grows like a snowball, rolling and rolling, independently building size as though it’s becoming a legitimate concern.
Phase 3: the actual objective of the operation is realized (secretly) – monetary gains are obtained, government stability is undermined (e.g. economic loss), and any other planned impacts are achieved.
As Phase 3 is achieved, the target (general population) is told that the problem is being solved and risks are contained. This is done with side-line information (news stories, social media posts, interviews etc.). However, ideally the problem is left hanging, so that the Executor can use it again. Ideally, having successfully crafted, inserted and amplified the fear narrative, the general sense of fear and anxiety about the risks of the Psychological Bioterror threat agent (in this case Avian Influenza or “Bird Flu”) should be maintained at a low level so that it is easy to resurrect for future use.
First, there needs to be some report of a local outbreak of avian influenza in chickens or other animals which the interested party can use to advance its own interests. This of course is false information. Avian influenza is endemic in a wide range of bird populations.
There can also be a report that it’s a supposed ‘leak’ from a secret military-medical laboratory, academic laboratory or army ‘biodefense research’ center. Such a situation can be crafted by the Executor (secret service) deliberately, to create great interest, awe and fear.
Media (‘Auxiliary means’, also including ‘Supporters’, e.g. agents of influence) starts to ‘heat’ the public.
Front pages of newspaper, TV channels, internet, social media, – are already there with alarming titles – ‘highly pathogenic virus’, ‘new contagious disease’, ‘new flu outbreak into a pandemic’, ‘be ready for corpses, flu plan says’ – all heightening the threat and scaring everyone!
Mass-media and interested organizations issue warning signs/messages like ‘the disease breaks human-to-human barrier’ and “predict” that “the disease would infect up to millions people globally”. For example, “A super-flu could kill up to 1.9 million Americans, according to a draft of the government’s plan to fight a worldwide epidemic”.
Health authorities/senior officials/experts/agents of influence express concerns that a virus will mutate into a form that can spread from one human to another and this could lead to a world-wide pandemic, and claim that an influenza pandemic would likely lead to high rates of morbidity (sickness) and mortality (death). For example, “…the death toll from a human pandemic of avian influenza could be anything from 5 to 150 million”. Also, “There is no time to waste. The virus [bird flu] could ignite the next human flu pandemic. I do not need to tell you of the terrible consequences that could bring to all nations and all peoples”.
Soon after, the World Health Organization (WHO) may announce a new strain or clade of avian influenza, a public health emergency of international concern, and soon an influenza pandemic alert is raised to five on a six-level warning scale, meaning that a pandemic is considered imminent.
Governments around the world have little choice; under pressure from businesses and citizens, they must respond to the WHO’s pandemic declaration by spending billions on drugs and/or vaccines (if available), and throw all available resources at fighting the disease once the WHO has declared the pandemic is under way. This triggers a wave of “panic buying of vaccine and antivirals” by governments around the world, in many cases involving far more money than hundreds of million dollars.
Authorized and interested organizations recommend national governments to use specific antivirals and flu-fighting drug(s) and inform them that a new, more ‘effective vaccine’ is being developed and will be ready to use shortly.
For example, after the prior “swine flu” Pandemic scare, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) highlighted the existence of a secret WHO emergency committee that advised the WHO Director-General on when to declare the pandemic. It was claimed that “WHO was being advised by a group of people who were deeply embedded with the pharmaceutical industry, and had a lot of gain by beating this epidemic into a pandemic”. The BMJ reported that WHO had, in February 2009 (about a month before the first cases of the 2009 “swine flu” outbreak were reported), amended the definition of the pandemic by removing that pandemic can cause “enormous numbers of deaths and illness”, lowering the bar for pandemic announcements.
Psychological bioterrorism is an inexpensive method for exerting global influence and is one form of psychological warfare, or PsyWar. From the perspective of consequences and harm, it can often be even more effective than the actual damage that can be caused by a physical bioterror event.
First, Psychological-bioterrorism, in comparison with an act of bioterror, is not and does not require strategic or military kinetic warfare complications or cost. Nor does it require political assassination or acts of sabotage to disrupt local infrastructures, harm the health of the local population or animals, or disrupt the environment of a certain country.
Second, its organizers and interested organizations use the potential pandemic threat in order to achieve a wide range of hidden intentional consequences.
Third, in the case of Psychological Bioterrorism, the ‘threat’ is not hidden, as it would be in the case of a bioterrorism attack, but rather is widely publicized in the mass media. The wider the spread of mass media stories, the better for the organizers of the psychological bioterrorism event. In contrast, the organizers of a more standard bioterrorism event will never tell about their plans.
Fourth, economic losses from information bioterrorism are quite a bit higher than the costs of acts of actual bioterrorism. In the case of bioterrorism, the loss for an individual country—in monetary value—may range from a few hundreds of thousands to a few hundred million dollars, taking into account the loss for the economy, expenses for the affected infrastructure, loss of exports, expenses for health services, etc.
However, in the case of psychological bioterrorism, the costs are quite different – tens to hundreds of millions to many billions of dollars. For example, the World Bank evaluates economic losses from SARS outbreaks in 2002–2003 as more than $15 billion in the Asian region alone. The SARS cost for the global economy was estimated at about $30 billion. Economic losses from the Avian influenza (‘bird flu’) pandemic in 2006–2007 were estimated at up to 20 times higher than SARS, and it was estimated that it could cost the Asian economy up to $283 billion. The expected worldwide economic disaster would cost as much as $800 billion if a human pandemic lasts for a year.
Fifth, organizers of bioterrorism do not gain any money. This is because its goal is first of all to ruin and harm government infrastructure, the health of people, farm animals, and the environment. However, the organizers of psychological bioterrorism frequently yearn to actually gain some monetary value or, in other ways, to financially benefit from the event. They aim to promote fear of a world catastrophe – one of the main peculiarities of psychological bioterrorism. Its organizers earn huge money – hundreds of millions to billions of dollars, for example, through the manufacture and sale of antiviral drugs, vaccines, and other protectives means; this is inevitable when people are told that there’s (yet another) scary virus, which they cannot stop. One example of this is the recent EU purchase of large numbers of “Bird Flu” vaccine doses.
The idea of a pandemic and its trade is actively pushed and continues to develop with surprising persistence in mass media and even on government websites–for example, on USA websites such as pandemicflu.gov or avianflu.gov. For example, the USA government puts in millions of dollars to support the idea that a global pandemic may happen, putting hundreds of millions of dollars for the creation of vaccines against these ‘mass’ horrors while also funding “gain of function” dual-purpose (academic and military) research involving the creation of more pathogenic and more infectious viral agents. Recent examples of such dual-purpose gain of function viral research have involved Sarbeco- coronaviruses, H5N1 avian influenza, and monkeypox.
This includes physicians and corporations that amplify fear of a pathogen like H5N1 in order to sell drugs, vaccines, or nutritional supplements.
This includes individual scientists or virologists who assert that H5N1 will kill all COVID mRNA-based vaccine recipients when there are no data demonstrating active human-to-human transmission, let alone evidence of human H5N1 mortality in COVID-19 vaccine recipients. This is attention-seeking behavior and should be condemned. There is a human cost that is paid by the naive in terms of depression, suicide, and mental health damage when these types of fear-based narratives are promoted.
This includes state governments, which assert that H5N1 constitutes a public health emergency when there are no data demonstrating active human-to-human transmission.
This includes corporate media, which build viewership and readership by broadcasting or publishing speculative and unsupported fear regarding H5N1.
This includes governmental centers for Disease Control and Drug Regulators (FDA, EMA), NGOs, and global "health" agencies and organizations (WHO) which promote misleading, inflated high H5N1 human mortality narratives based on rare infection events.
This includes academic physicians and scientists whose careers are advanced by promoting irrational public fear of infectious diseases, including H5N1.
These are all examples of psychological bioterrorists.
We need to learn to protect ourselves from the economic, social, and psychological damage that is caused by permitting psychological bioterrorism. This is truly a crime against humanity, and one which can only be stopped when politicians with integrity and the general public become aware that they are being manipulated, refuse to play along, and socially, economically, and politically shun those who promote and deploy psychological bioterrorism.