Say It Ain't So Porky!

I really wanted to do a piece about Ol’ Dirty Bastard, unfortunately the threat of a Swine Flu pandemic possibly bringing on the apocalypse trumps the dirty fatherless one for right now. Initially, I wasn’t really all that worried about the threat of the N1H1, or "Swin", influenza strain spreading across the world.  But shit started to get real when I heard that the World Health Organization's pandemic meter rose from 3 to 4 in just one day. Now that might not seem like a lot until you consider the fact that we are only 2 levels from the same type of all encompassing pandemic that killed off 20 to 40 million in the influenza pandemic of 1918. Shook yet? Well if your not consider the fact that in Mexico City, where this particular strain of the Swine Flu began, the number of already confirmed dead from the Swine Flu has reached 149. In reaction to this, Mexican officials have shut down all schools throughout the country and have limited public gatherings. I know news like this can seem stark, but the possibility of a Swine Flu pandemic is very real. The only good news is that out of the 40 confirmed cases being reported in the United States, the CDC states that all those infected have survived and will more than likely make full recoveries. But, and I hate being the pessimistic dude in the room, it is still too early to really tell what the eventual outcome will be. This thing could turn out to be as frivolous as the West Nile scare was a few years ago or we could be looking at pandemic the likes we haven’t seen in modern time. Who really knows? In the mean time, here is a list of some of the symptoms and precautions we should all take until all the facts are known:

 

 The disease's symptoms resemble those of seasonal flu – fever, sore throat, cough, congestion, chills, headache, body aches and fatigue. Some patients also report diarrhea and vomiting.

 Swine flu can lead to pneumonia or respiratory failure and worsen chronic health problems.

 If you have symptoms, see your doctor. A medical provider's diagnosis is important, and prescription antiviral drugs are most effective when given within 48 hours of the appearance of symptoms.

 If you are ill, avoid travel and don't go to work or school.

 Wash your hands often with soap and warm water for at least 20 seconds or use alcohol-based cleansers.

 Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze, then discard the tissue. Or use your upper sleeve – not your hands.

 If you're healthy, wash your hands often and avoid ill people. The flu's incubation period is 24 to 48 hours.

 

If you have any further questions please log on to cdc.gov/flu/swine.

Into the abyss we go.

So things are looking really bad for the former heads of the Bush administration right now. Bad isn't even a good word, rather ghastly or some other synonym that sounds horrifyingly worse than bad. I stress this because by now everybody should know that Obama recently made public the restricted CIA reports which detailed the Bush administration’s part in the torturing of “enemy combatants”. Now, the CIA report basically proves that there were high ranking officials within the Bush White House, like the abominable Vice President Dick Cheney, who sanctioned the use of various torture techniques. Most notably in this Tom Clancy novel gone wrong was a memo written in 2002 by then assistant Attorney General Frank Bybee. In his memo, Bybee not only brazenly sanctioned CIA operatives’ usage of “cruel, inhumane, and degrading” interrogation techniques, but also suggested that operatives could justify the severity of their interrogations by stating that the procedures were done out of “necessity or self-defense”.

            But the worst news from this spiraling black hole of lawlessness came with the release of the Senate Armed Service Committee’s (SASC) report on Tuesday. Beginning in December of 2001, the SASC’s report chronicles the interrogation tactics at such storied military prisons as Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. Among the reports most shocking facts is that military interrogators were instructed to take on interrogations techniques used in the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) training program. This program was initially developed by the military as a way to train personnel, military contractors, and Department of Defense workers whose job responsibilities place them in high risk of being captured behind enemy lines is high. In the program, students are taught how to evade capture, survive in hostile wilderness situations, resist torture, and how to escape imprisonment. So, what do the heads of the Bush administration do with the SERE program? Well the geniuses at the helm of our nation in late 2001 took this program’s lessons on how to resist torture and “reversed engineered” them in order to develop better interrogations methods. But the messed up thing about the government’s reverse engineering of SERE is that the program’s torture resistance training was based mainly off of America’s experiences in the Korean War. Why is this important? Well during the Korean War American combatants were tortured by their North Korean captors in a manner which didn’t look to foster vital information. Rather, the torture techniques used by North Korea were implemented to acquire false information that was later used in propaganda for the North Korean war effort. American POWs were featured on film renouncing America and making assertions that were unfounded. So, in knowing this, our government based its torture program off of techniques created to purposely acquire false information. Insane doesn’t even define how ridiculous that is. And to top it off, our government not only spread these tactics to all of the branches of the armed force and intelligence agencies, but they did so before we even had “enemy combatants” in prison. But what’s really fucked up is that these interrogation techniques didn’t work and they were used as a recruiting tool by Islamic extremist. Doesn’t this sound like our government had this shit plotted out a little too far ahead of time? Doesn’t this sound like our government meshed the plot lines of V for Vendetta, The Manchurian Candidate, and 1984 together and came up with one of the most devastatingly intricate plot lines of all time?Unfortunately, this is real life and people were really brutally tortured and even murder in this tale of power run amok   

 

 

Do you think I'm Crazy?

Yesterday, Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinjad, was the keynote speaker at the UN’s forum on racism in Geneva. Sounds crazy, right? I mean, how can a guy who stated that the country of Israel should be wiped off the face of the planet even be given the opportunity to take the podium at a conference on racism? Well, I found out that UN bylaws give heads of state preferential treatment over other speakers if they’re part of their country’s delegation as Ahmadinjad was yesterday. Still, it’s kind of crazy to hear him speak at a conference on racism. So anyway, I’m watching clips of what happened yesterday and I see these hecklers wearing clown wigs jump out from nowhere and begin calling Ahmadinjad a racist. Then, before security could usher them out, the group began to throw what looked like deflated balloons at him. Yet, what really killed me was when most of the attending European delegations like France and Finland walked out during his speech. It’s as if they didn’t know how Mahmoud Ahmadinjad got down when he’s placed in front of a camera. Come on now, Ahmadinjad is like Ol’ Dirty Bastard: at some point in time he’s going say or do something ridiculously crazy in front of everybody.

However, the problem that people have with Ahmadinjadisn't isn't that he has a tendency to say crazy things like the Holocaust never happened. No, rather the reason why people have a problem with him is because he has a tendency to point out glaring hypocrisies that we in the west hate admitting to. For instance, one of the reasons why Israel didn't participate in yesterday’s conference is because they knew that Ahmadinjad’s speech would be littered with criticism of Israel’s treatment of their Arab citizens. Now you can argue all day about who is justified in this war, but, to be honest, neither side has presented a fully compelling argument in why they are justified in their continued actions towards the other. Still, western media outlets' coverage of the continuing conflict depict Jews as the innocent victims, while Muslims are viewed as barbarous hate mongers. Well in my 26 years on this earth I've come to realize that very few things in this world are black and white, rather the world in which we live is filled with hues of gray. For instance, was it not just in December of last year when Israel began to send guided missiles into Gaza, killing more than 1400 people? Sure, they were trying to stave off attacks from Hamas, but their reckless led to the death of innocent women and children. Now, from the eyes of someone looking objectively, this kind of recklessness shows contempt for the lives of innocent Muslims in the same way that Hamas’s terrorism shows contempt towards the lives of innocent Jews. Also, in borrowing a talking point from Ahmadinjad's speech on Monday, the establishment of Israel as a Jewish state was partially engendered by the actions of Jewish terror cells after WWII. It was during this time that Jewish terrorist bombed British armaments and killed Palestinian citizens in order to force the passage of Israel as a Jewish state. It's therefore funny to me how western media vilifies Muslim extremist for their fight to obtain state sovereignty when Jewish terror cells involved themselves in the same actions to establish state sovereignty in the 40’s. This isn't to say that I agree with Muslims extremist that engaging in terrorist actions. Nonetheless, the double standard at practice in this particular example is too blatant for me to look past.

Personally, I feel that western media outlet’s biased coverage of the continued struggle in the Middle East exacerbates the situation. For instance, when video of the walk out during Ahmadinjad’s speech was aired on television, a great number of political pundits praised the European delegations for their bold actions. At the same time, these same pundits vilified Ahmadinjad for his brash remarks about Israel and his false imprisonment of Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi. Now I’m not saying that their points were not valid: Ahmadinjad has said some really crazy shit in his Presidency and the imprisonment of Roxana Saberi is truly unjustified. Yet, no one commented on Ahmadinjad’s remarks about the treatment of Arabs by Israel or the hypocrisy expressed through his reference to Jewish terrorism during the 40’s. This loss of objectiveness in western media’s coverage of the continued drama in the Middle East goes against the purpose of the media. The media’s job is to present both sides of the story and let the reader come to their own conclusions about the information being presented. I personally don’t agree with the majority of what Ahmadinjad says in regards to Israel or the Holocaust. Yet, when he says things that have factual information to substantiate his claim, I can’t help but agree. It’s my feeling that Ahmadinjad should be taken serious because he does make valid points at times. But more importantly Ahmadinjad should be taken seriously because his views towards the west and Israel are held by a lot of people in the Muslim world. When we play him off like he’s a lunatic, it’s almost like playing off the millions of people who hold onto similar views as him. And it is from this passive take towards their opinions which fosters feelings of disrespect from the Muslim world. This in turn plays a part in emboldening Islamic extremist to continue in their reign of terrorism.