Racism just isn't racist anymore

A Boston police officer who sent a mass e-mail referring to Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. as a "banana-eating jungle monkey" has apologized, saying he's not a racist.

Officer Justin Barrett told a Boston television station on Wednesday night that he was sorry for the e-mail.

"I regret that I used such words," Barrett told CNN affiliate WCVB-TV. "I have so many friends of every type of culture and race you can name. I am not a racist."

...In Barrett's e-mail, which was posted on a Boston television station's Web site, he declared that if he had "been the officer he verbally assaulted like a banana-eating jungle monkey, I would have sprayed him in the face with OC (oleoresin capsicum, or pepper spray) deserving of his belligerent non-compliance."

Barrett used the "jungle monkey" phrase four times, three times referring to Gates and once referring to Abraham's writing as "jungle monkey gibberish."

It's getting so hard to be racist these days. Nobody's racist anymore. All these people who publicly say and do things that used to be considered racist, like the above pig, like Don Imus, like the pig who arrested Gates, or pigs who use the letter "N" to denote black people's race on traffic tickets, they just aren't racist now. Sure, they hate black people and everything, fuck with them based on their skin color, but I guess they just don't mean it. Maybe they're accidental racists. Unwilling racists.

Anyway, when I call someone a banana-eating jungle monkey, I want them to be offended, in a serious way. And they used to be. Unfortunately, they won't anymore, since it's no longer a racist term. I get it all the time these days. When I go out to eat, the person waiting on me often says, "Do you know what you'd like to order, you banana-eating jungle monkey?" When the UPS guy comes to our door, he frequently tells me, "Hey banana-eating jungle monkey, I've got a package for you." At the health food store, where they know me, most of the staff greets me with, "Hello banana-eating jungle monkey, how are you today?" And I'm not even black. I get it all the time though, you know? What a bummer.

What's it gonna take? I think we need new terms. The old ones are played out and have long since lost their sharp edge due to constant use. Who would have thought that banana-eating jungle monkey would become common, non-offensive parlance? I guess everything changes with time. It's like how "bad" started to mean "really awesome" in the 1960s.

We suffer so that you may acquire "knowledge"

which you then immediately discard, thinking "That's interesting."

Research/torture/confinement/starvation for its own sake. Science. Progress.

One monkey is on a calorie restricted diet, the other is not. Both look profoundly sad and forlorn.

Sick, sadistic fucks pursuing useless information. Wanna see what their conclusions are and what they may mean?

Few people can keep to a diet with 30 percent fewer calories than usual. So
biologists have been looking for drugs that might mimic the effects of caloric
restriction, conferring the gain without the pain.

Dietary restriction seems to set off an ancient strategy written into all
animal genomes, that when food is scarce resources should be switched to tissue
maintenance from breeding. In recent years biologists have had considerable
success in identifying the mechanisms by which cells detect the level of
nutrients available to the body. The goal is to find drugs that trick these
mechanisms into thinking that famine is at hand. People could then literally
have their cake and eat it, too, enjoying the health benefits of caloric
restriction without the pain of forgoing rich foods.

Brilliant, simply fucking brilliant. Let's do this "experiment" with premises that are virtually untenable in real life, and then maybe we can make some drugs to fuck with biology a little more. The outcomes are fantastic - drug companies get rich, people (really just Americans and those who have enough money and resources to emulate them) can still be the fat, undiscerning fucks that they are and be able to do so much longer, world population will increase as life spans do the same, and we will burn out the planet at ever greater speeds.

Thanks science. Thanks for continually pressing on, undeterred, to find the maximum fucking velocity at which to hurtle towards hell.

CORPORATE FUCKING AVENGER

This tour is coming next month. Dates announced SOON. Fucking fuck yes, we are so psyched on this shit. It's been a long time in the works.

Of course, we don't fault the police either. Corporate Avenger, they're the Howard Stern of...fuck, just music in general. They say what everyone is thinking but no one wants to say.

Stay the fuck out of my mind. And my Slipknot gasmask.

Congratulations to humanity

We've done it again, managing to globalize and homogenize ants through another one of our magnificently ignorant, witless stumbles towards destruction.

A single mega-colony of ants has colonised much of the world, scientists have discovered.

Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same inter-related colony, and will refuse to fight one another.

The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination.

What's more, people are unwittingly helping the mega-colony stick together.

Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) were once native to South America. But people have unintentionally introduced the ants to all continents except Antarctica.

These introduced Argentine ants are renowned for forming large colonies, and for becoming a significant pest, attacking native animals and crops.

In Europe, one vast colony of Argentine ants is thought to stretch for 6,000km (3,700 miles) along the Mediterranean coast, while another in the US, known as the "Californian large", extends over 900km (560 miles) along the coast of California. A third huge colony exists on the west coast of Japan.

A resounding chorus of applause is in order here.

The most plausible explanation is that ants from these three super-colonies are indeed family, and are all genetically related, say the researchers. When they come into contact, they recognise each other by the chemical composition of their cuticles.

"The enormous extent of this population is paralleled only by human society," the researchers write in the journal Insect Sociaux, in which they report their findings.

Cool. Hopefully they'll help take us out.

Hipster bike culture

blows. From an email I got from Timbuk2 advertising this piece of shit. Makes me want to send my bag back in disgust. If I could afford something else, I would. And also take a dump in it.

Mind you, it only holds PBR.

I guess it's fitting to also use the fourth of July as a celebration of alcoholism.

I despise your killing and raping...You're...despicable

More war. For nothing. Fight and fight. Attack. Return the attack. Go nowhere. No progress. Just moving sideways. Domination. New masters. Old masters return. No one wins. Same process, new participants. Ad nauseam. Ad annihilation.

Vicarious pleasure

This man functions as a wonderful stand-in for all those who have fucked with someone on a bike.

Something serious did indeed just happen.

I fucking hate this country, pt. 2

You're gonna need more than "Obama's help."

Here you have the SHAC people in prison for some organized crime bullshit with a "terrorism" enhancement for trying to shut down an animal testing corporation, but those fascistic, woman-hating hicks who kill people, they don't go to prison until they kill/try to kill someone.

There is undoubtedly a long history of organized terrorism, as in actual terrorism, as in trying to intimidate and coerce people into changing what they do through threats and practices of extreme violence and death, when it comes to anti-choice people and groups. These people have their little "activist" organizations, loads of websites, prisoner support groups, and endless protests. Clearly, they have an agenda, one that has long included premeditated murder.

But the government doesn't do much about that one, do they? They bust people after they kill. They don't try to silence Operation Rescue or others like them, who clearly and adamantly promote an agenda of fear, violence and death, even having the audacity to openly celebrate the murders of doctors. Their intimidation goes unchecked, and not just by the government - we let them have their ways, we let them push people around. I think if they faced some of the same, they wouldn't be nearly so bold.

No, they go after SHAC, a bunch of people accused of running a website. That's who the state says terrorists are. Or people who try to get in the way of industry gone wild. And of course the standard religious targets. A succinct summary of today's perceived terrorists:

1. Muslims
2. People who come in between business and profit.

Why not prosecute the anti-choice thugs? It's not for lack of feasibility. There's obviously ample evidence and ability, at least judging by the government's success in going after SHAC and people involved with the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front. I see a few reasons why they don't go after God's Army Of Loving Christ Crusaders For The Cross Of The Baby Most Holy In Jesus' Name - one, the people who run this country are and have always been varying degrees of sexist, misogynistic and male-centric. Abortion is a "woman's issue." Another is that people in this country are, by and large, religious and socially/politically conservative, so there is not a whole lot of support for abortion rights, at least not in comparison to something like support for gun rights. Finally, and this is a huge one in my eyes, that abortion doesn't generate a lot of money, and certainly not in a concentrated way. Animal exploitation industries, on the other hand, those are huge money makers, along with other ALF/ELF targets, like the timber industry, luxury home construction industry and producing genetically modified crops. There is no real abortion industry lobby to fill politicians' coffers. If abortion were to be outlawed tomorrow, the economy would not suffer a substantial loss and no CEO would lose his job.

As an addendum, I would add that this war on choice helps to promote the chaos of daily life, making it essentially impossible for people to focus on and unite against their common oppression under capital and industry, and also does some of the ugly groundwork necessary to keep women subjugated, anxious, afraid and marginalized. The government could absolutely ameliorate this ridiculous tide of fear and violence, but they won't.

I fucking hate this country

Straight up. Fuck this place.

People in general are out of their minds, on a species level, but some of us actually try to rein it in. Not so in so many places, such as Louisville, Kentucky.

Ken Pagano, the pastor of the New Bethel Church here, is passionate about gun rights. He shoots regularly at the local firing range, and his sermon two weeks ago was on “God, Guns, Gospel and Geometry.” And on Saturday night, he is inviting his congregation of 150 and others to wear or carry their firearms into the sanctuary to “celebrate our rights as Americans!” as a promotional flier for the “open carry celebration” puts it.

“God and guns were part of the foundation of this country,” Mr. Pagano, 49, said Wednesday in the small brick Assembly of God church, where a large wooden cross hung over the altar and two American flags jutted from side walls. “I don’t see any contradiction in this. Not every Christian denomination is pacifist.”

Right on, Ken. God and guns. Fucking fantastic. Go America. Hell fuckin yeah bro. Right on. Right fucking on. Bang bang - is that the sound of two knees hitting the ground or two bullets leaving the barrel? Is there a difference?

Fuck this place. Fuck everyone's shitty, empty religion. I don't care what it is, fuck it. It's stupid and fake. Whatever god you worship doesn't exist, unless you're a staunch capitalist, cause money surely exists. Fuck everyone's stubborn refusal to think.

They want their guns in church. Isn't that supposed to be their refuge, their time to be the flock of sheep to their boundlessly loving shepherd?

Uh oh - looks like Big Brother is comin for ya Jethro! Better hide the guns in the pig feed!

Arkansas and Georgia recently rejected efforts to allow people to carry concealed weapons in church. Watching the debate in Arkansas was John Phillips, pastor of the Central Church of Christ in Little Rock. In 1986, Mr. Phillips was preaching in a different church there when a gunman shot him and a parishioner. Both survived, but Mr. Phillips, 51, still has a bullet lodged in his spine.

In a telephone interview, he said he found the idea of “packing in the pew” abhorrent.

“There is a movement afoot across the nation, with the gun lobby pushing the envelope, trying to allow concealed weapons to be carried in places where they used to be prohibited — churches, schools, bars,” Mr. Phillips said.

What does he know? If everyone else had guns, they could have shot the guy who shot him! That bullet in his spine just makes for cooler x-rays. But no, prohibition is the PROBLEM, don't you see? Of course we need more guns in schools and bars. Definitely, what a great idea. Yes, guns in bars. I'm all for it. The quicker to weed us out. Guns wherever we want them - hospitals, nursery schools, roller coasters, mental hospitals, airplanes, comic book conventions, wherever. I WANT MY FUCKING GUN, DON'T YOU GET IT??????

And no, I'm not a pacifist either. It's just that I'm not a single issue lunatic who thinks that guns = freedom, that there is no better measure.

We live in a backwards country overflowing with dumb hicks who believe and fear things like the GUVMENT CUMMIN TO TAKE MUH GUNS AWAY. That's your fucking priority? THAT'S your concern? THAT'S your big issue? Fucking GUN CONFISCATION? THAT'S what really troubles you in the grand scheme of the world? Fuck. How could I ever fit in a place like this. I can't, that's how. Cause I'm an alien.

Tour

We're going out on tour this coming August with Corporate Avenger. They are fucking sick and represent all that is good in the world, and certainly the future of music. Fuck yes. Dates to come soon.

In God We Trust

Empire of dirt

Last night, half of us (Phil and Chris), along with two former Write Back Soon vocalists, Brain and Enron, attended the Nine Inch Nails/Jane's Addiction performance at the PNC Bank Arts Center. Really.

We were pretty psyched, cause we all like Nine Inch Nails (except Enron, who was just in it for Jane's Addiction) a lot. They are one of my favorite bands, since early high school. Fuck, those first three records are incredible - Pretty Hate Machine, Broken and The Downward Spiral. All amazing, and quite different from one another. The Downward Spiral is one of the most sonically and lyrically brutal records I have ever heard.

But none of us has ever gotten to see them, cause they always play huge places and tickets are a million dollars. The fact that Trent announced this as their last tour motivated us to go see them while we still could, knowing full well we would be kicking ourselves, and one another, were we to never see them.

So, armed with our $25 lawn seat tickets, we trekked to the Arts Center, in Holmdel, New Jersey. Getting there was easy enough. Once we got there, things got weird.

These types of performances are not the variety that any of us frequents. I haven't been to anything like this in years, since someone gave me tickets to see the Pyschedelic Furs, the B-52s and the Go Gos at the same venue in the year 2000. While my memories of it are not sharp, they are fairly fond. It was entertaining and not a stressful event.

I think we all went into this expecting something along the same lines, where we would stand on the grass and watch Nine Inch Nails and it would be cool.

Trying to park gave us our first indications that we had gotten ourselves involved with something unexpected. As we drove through/past lot after parked up lot of cars, we saw an unsettlingly large number of people pregaming, including one group of people congregated around a Hummer and blasting Soundgarden. Many of these people were already visibly/audibly trashed by 7:30. The tribal tattoos and sleeveless/rolled up shirts were plentiful, as well as a good number of men who judged shirts to be unnecessary. Just in the parking area, we saw a horrific collection of manly men and their bellicose, drunken attitudes. I suppose we should chalk this up to our naivety regarding "concerts" and the standard behavior that accompanies them, but none of us expected a crowd so heavily populated with these types.

The lengthy walk through the parking lots up to the entrance gates of the venue was further eye-opening in a likewise manner. We exchanged a good number of exclamatory "wow"s and wide-eyed, open-mouthed glances. Disbelief, I tell you.

As we arrived at the lines to pick up our tickets (We got will call, cause to be honest, I don't trust printing my tickets at home. It seems like it could cause avoidable problems.) and pass through the gates, it became dishearteningly apparent that we were indeed in an open-air bar, packed front to back, side to side with a good deal of the filthiest specimens of humanity. The whole night, we never became desensitized to the endless displays of depravity, baseness and indulgence. Similarly, we never became desensitized to the literal constant streams of smoke from tobacco, clove cigarettes and weed.

So many adults, a good number of them considerably older than any of us, acting as three year olds, their abilities to control themselves or to make any real decisions regarding doing so long thrown out the window. They were playing the part crafted for them by corporations and media so well, imbibing at the big concert. Getting wasted and seeing live music, even distantly on a screen, go hand in hand, they reveal in ads. I've never understood why, and no one has ever been able to explain why, outside of "fun." I'd rather remember what I did and paid for. Nearly everyone we encountered was smoking or drinking something. And just like the disgusting "punks" in the basement, they weren't just drinking, they were getting wasted.

Intoxicant consumption aside, holy fuck were these people trashy. Where do they keep them during the day? I wish I had a camera to document these sights. We felt like anthropologists, on an excursion into a strange culture.

There was this guy behind us wherever we went who was raging HARD the whole time. He did a good job of being a metal stereotype, with long, black frizzy hair, a Cattle Decapitation shirt, cutoff shorts and boots. He was also remarkably drunk. He was behind us in line, he showed up behind us while watching Nine Inch Nails, and then when I moved because I did not fancy him hitting me from behind while standing on a hill, he came and stood in front of me. My, was he a waste. He was going off all by his lonesome during the "hard" songs or whatever (Mr Self Destruct, Reptile, March of the Pigs), and doing so in an irresponsible manner. I had very little tolerance for this behavior and the two times he fell down, Phil and I not only refused to help him up, we held him down for a little bit. Thankfully, his girlfriend had the clarity to see that he was causing problems for himself and kept chilling him out whenever he would get too rowdy. I really did not want to get in a fight or whatever, but god was this guy a shitbag. I decided that I was done after the second time he crashed into us and contemplated the potential outcomes of either grabbing hold of his hair while he tried to thrash about in an otherwise placid crowd or kneeing him in the back while he fell down. I suppose that it's much better that it didn't come to that, as I really just wanted to see Nine Inch Nails and be left alone.

Adding a vile layer of shit into the spectacle we were temporarily living, this woman, also in front of us, and directly next to Metal Manic, insisted upon relentlessly grinding on her visibly uncomfortable and unenthused friend. They were both drunk, but Grinder seemed to handle her alcohol quite poorly. For at least the first half of Nine Inch Nails' one hour and forty-five minute set, she did not look in the direction of the stage once, instead grinding on her friend, yes, to Nine Inch Nails, mouthing random lyrics and pointing to her friend whenver a pronoun like "you" or "she" would come up, all the while holding her beer as far skyward as her arm would allow, like a hard-earned trophy. For some reason, Grinder moved on to a guy next to them, who, on the other hand, was VERY enthusiastic. He wouldn't keep his hands off of her once that started and very clearly was trying to get her to hang around for a bit longer than the end of the performance. He got real bummed when she got bored with him and started up with another guy, staring at her the whole time. I thought that Grinder and her first friend were about thirty-five, but Brain informed me that he went to high school with her, making her no older than twenty-three. Wow. He said he knew that he was doing something right in life, by virture of her failure to recognize him. Not only that, but they didn't even offer us any of the joint they were passing around. Man, how selfish.

Perhaps by now you have forgotten that I am writing about seeing Nine Inch Nails, or that I didn't really pay attention. I did, I swear. It's just that the above situations were in my direct line of sight, and were impossible to ignore.

Nine Inch Nails though, they were fantastic. So tight. They are a very "professional" band who clearly rehearse relentlessly and have everything down well beforehand. Long gone are the days of chaos where Trent would trash a keyboard mid-song or throw a mic stand at the drummer. Not a lick of that. They played, played well, and played hard. They were pretty relentless, going song after song. Not a whole lot of breaks in there. Also, they are a smaller band than I have seen on film over the years - Trent, a guitar player, a drummer, and a bassist. A four piece.

Also, as you can see up top, Trent is fucking ripped now, if you didn't know. From what I understand, he was basically at death's door a few years back, living on drugs. It seems that, at some point, he said "I'm forty, time to knock this shit off and get jacked." And damn, did he. Barely has a neck anymore. Good for him. Strange turn of events, though.

So anyway, they finished with Hurt (which was accompanied by a sea of cell phones recording it) and on went the lights. We left RIGHT fucking quickly. I love Jane's Addiction, but I wasn't too into seeing them anyway, as they broke up eighteen years ago. It's kind of after the fact now. I'm not one for reunions, generally. However, I was open to the prospect of sticking around if they were good, but we couldn't take being there any longer. ANY longer. We left immediately, and boy did it feel good. Ron though, he stayed and watched, getting a ride back with another friend. That was the whole reason he went, you know? He said that they played well, Perry Farrell talked about being wasted (quite an accomplishment for a fifty year old man) and the crowd was only a hair less shitty.

All said, we were quite glad that we went. It was totally worth it. We finally got to see Nine Inch Nails. Sure, it wasn't under the best circumstances, but there haven't really been great circumstances under which to see that band in a long fucking time.

Misery Hangs Over Gaza Despite Pledges of Help

Gaza is fucked. Thanks to the New York Times for this profound insight:

Dozens of families still live in tents amid collapsed buildings and rusting pipes. With construction materials barred, a few are building mud-brick homes. Everything but food and medicine has to be smuggled through desert tunnels from Egypt...

Four months after Israel waged a war here to stop Hamas rocket fire and two years after Hamas took full control of this coastal strip, Gaza is like an island adrift. Squeezed from without by an Israeli and Egyptian boycott and from within by their
Islamist rulers, the 1.5 million people here are cut off from any productivity or hope...
There are tens of thousands of educated and ambitious people here, teachers, engineers, translators, business managers, who have nothing to do but grow frustrated. They cannot practice their professions and they cannot leave. They collect welfare and smoke in cafes. A United Nations survey shows a spike in domestic violence...

Many here are especially worried about the young. At a program aimed at helping those traumatized by the January war, teenagers are offered colored markers to draw anything they like, says Farah Abu Qasem, 20, a student of English translation who volunteers at the program.

“They seem only to choose black and to draw things like tanks,” she said. “And when we ask them to draw something that represents the future, they leave the paper blank.”

No surprises there, and I'm not really sure why this story has been deemed headline worthy. I don't think it would have occurred to me to mention it, were it not for the deep irony in the juxtapostion of headlines.

Consider the New York Times headline, above, with this one from the same day - "Despite No Links to Violence, Founders of Muslim Charity Sentenced to Lengthy Terms for Donations to Needy Palestinians in Occupied Territories." That one is from Democracy Now!, a long-running and well-regarded independent media outlet from New York. Here's a synopsis of what happened:

Five founders of the Holy Land Foundation, once the nation’s largest Muslim charity, have received prison terms of up to sixty-five years on charges of supporting the Palestinian group Hamas. The five were never accused of supporting violence and were convicted for funding charities that aided needy Palestinians. The government’s case relied on Israeli intelligence as well as disputed documents and electronic surveillance gathered by the FBI over a span of fifteen years.

I think that might be part of the reason that, as a Palestinian man stuck living in Gaza said, “Right after the war, everybody came — journalists, foreign governments and charities promising to help,” said Hashem Dardona, 47, who is unemployed. “Now, nobody comes.” It's hard when they're shut down and locked up. That type of persecution sets a heavy example for others who would wish to do the same things.

Of course, we can never neglect to remember the fact that Israel is a piece of shit terror state run by fanatics with hardons for war: "in an effort to squeeze Hamas, Israel rations aid daily, allowing in about 100 trucks of food and medicine. Military officers in Tel Aviv count the calories to avoid a disaster." Brilliant. The pig fucks count calories of food rations going into Gaza so that not too many Palestinians starve or suffer malnutrition. I'm sure they thank their Israeli masters for that every day. I know I would.

Let's make that very plain: Israeli military commanders decide how much food people in Gaza are allowed to have. They decide when they can have it, and what kinds. Were they in such a mood, they could decide that Gazans get no food. What would happen? People would starve. Israel would face "international diplomatic pressure." The Israeli government would show no remorse or compunction and would surely blame those who died. In short, nothing would change. I wonder where "terrorism" comes from.

In Gaza, you have no control. You are controlled by shitbags of all stripes above you. And they pull those strings tight.

Fantasy pig world

Holy shit. I realize that most other people don't view the police like I do, but at the same time, it's shocking to see how highly people regard pigs and what they will tell you does not go on behind closed doors, or when video cameras aren't around, for that matter. Check this Supreme Court decision handed down today, about how the police can start asking questions without your lawyer:

Writing for the court majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said there was little if any chance a defendant will be badgered into waiving the right to have counsel present during police-initiated questioning.

Who actually believes that? Insane. Completely insane. The police will not hassle you? They will not try to do things that are inconsistent with the law? Then why the fuck did they make this part of the law today?

Now it's on you to invoke your right to an attorney, officially. The pig fucks can start in on you right away, legally. WHAT THE FUCK.

Arms Sent by U.S. May Be Falling Into Taliban Hands

As opposed to a few years back, when they were sent by the U.S. and put into Taliban hands. The article completely ignores that point, that Americans are fighting a force that the CIA funded, armed and trained. Fucking brilliant. Forget the past, they tell us every day. But remember the parts that serve them well, like 9/11. That one, you're supposed to never forget. You know? As though they'd let you forget anyway.

From the New York Times today:

KABUL — Insurgents in Afghanistan, fighting from some of the poorest and most remote regions on earth, have managed for years to maintain an intensive guerrilla war against materially superior American and Afghan forces.

Arms and ordnance collected from dead insurgents hint at one possible reason: Of 30 rifle magazines recently taken from insurgents’ corpses, at least 17 contained cartridges, or rounds, identical to ammunition the United States had provided to Afghan government forces, according to an examination of ammunition markings by The New York Times and interviews with American officers and arms dealers.

Haha, pretty good contribution to the spectacle.

Paying sweatshop wages at American embassies

I guess government jobs are regarded pretty well here. Good benefits, job security, lots of days off compared to most other jobs, decent pay. Not so in the rest of the world.

Foreign nationals working for the American government in foreign lands get paid shit, says the State Department. Three to four dollars a day doesn't go far anywhere:

...some lower-grade foreign nationals who work for the State Department earn so little that they must cut back to one meal a day and send their children out to peddle on the streets.

This is comparable to what you hear about Nike factories or whatever. Except those Nike factories are maybe just in Honduras or Malaysia. American embassies are in approximately 170 countries. I bet the government could loosen up some money to pay its shitworkers a bit better if it ended a war or two.

Don't tase me bro!!

I'm just a stuffed animal.

Watch as ten police come together and collectively decide to unload on a plush cougar.

Thanks for the swine flu, you sadistic fucks

What do you know, swine flu has been hanging around for over thirty years in factory pig farms.

Over decades, H1N1 evolved in pigs into a mild, purely swine flu, and became genetically fairly stable. In 1976, there was an outbreak of swine H1N1 in people at a military camp in New Jersey, with one death. The virus did not spread efficiently, though, and soon fizzled out...

We could have seen this coming, though. This type of virus emerged in the US in 1998 and has since become endemic on hog farms across North America. Equipped with a suite of pig, bird and human genes, it was also evolving rapidly...

But in 1998, says Richard Webby of St Jude's Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, swine H1N1 hybridised with human and bird viruses, resulting in "triple reassortants" that surfaced in Minnesota, Iowa and Texas. The viruses initially had human surface proteins and swine internal proteins, with the exception of three genes that make RNA polymerase, the crucial enzyme the virus uses to replicate in its host. Two were from bird flu and one from human flu. Researchers believe that the bird polymerase allows the virus to replicate faster than those with the human or swine versions, making it more virulent...

Thankfully, swine flu has been dutifully ignored over the years, so you can worry about American Idol instead.

The swine flu virus has been a serious pandemic threat for years, New Scientist can reveal - but research into its potential has been neglected compared with other kinds of flu.

I guess the fact that it's tied directly to multibillion dollar death house operations has gotten in the way of "scientists" (if they were really scientists and gave a fuck about their progress and helping people, they wouldn't be so dominated and pushed around by business) researching it. Can't harm industry. That's cardinal rule number one of capitalism, our political system.

And yes, industry seems like the place to put all of this blame. The Independent reports on what's going on in a small town in Mexico desecrated by a monstrous pig death factory in its midst:

Downwind of Xaltepec – where 15,000 squealing hogs are squeezed into 18 warehouses – residents of La Gloria blame Smithfield, Luter's firm, for an outbreak of respiratory problems that swept the town last month, killing two children. Now with Mexican authorities identifying a four-year-old from the town, Edgar Hernandes, as one of the first-known cases of swine flu, furious residents believe that they are ground zero of a pandemic threatening the world. The very suggestion has sent a shudder through the ranks of campaigners who have long argued that the sort of industrialised pig farming that has turned Smithfield into one of the most powerful corporations in the US, with a market value of $1.4bn, was a disaster waiting to happen...

Starting in February, one in six of the 3,000 residents reported health problems. The government initially dismissed the spike as a late-season rise in ordinary flu, but by April, health officials sealed off the town and sprayed chemicals to kill the flies that residents said were swarming about their homes...

The reports of swarming flies, terrible smells and pictures of rotting pigs left scattered around the perimeter of its industrialised pig farms in Mexico are echoes of the concerns that have long been troubling environmental activisits, campaigning against Smithfield in all the countries in which it operates, not least in the US. Critics say that – even on top of any questions about the humane treatment of the pigs – the sheer quantities of manure that have to be disposed of when thousands, or tens of thousands, of animals are housed together make it impossible to run this business in a safe way.

The manure is collected in a lake underneath the pig pens and then washed into giant pools or lagoons. It is eventually sprayed on nearby fields, but the lagoons have a habit of leaking or flooding.

This company has a history of destroying the areas in which it conducts its reprehensible operations, and doing so with a profound disregard for any outcomes. Money rules. Always.

In 1997 Smithfield was fined $12.6m for violation of the federal Clean Water Act. Its most recent financial reports show it is being sued in Missouri by residents near a facility there who accuse it of being a public nuisance, while a farm in Pennsylvania is under federal investigation over releases into the local water in 2007.

The other risk, scientists say, of concentrating so many pigs together is the risk of diseases spreading fast, a problem that farmers overcome by pumping the livestock full of vaccines and other drugs. In 2007 an outbreak of swine flu at its farms in Romania cost the company $13m.

Twelve million dollar fine. That's nothing. That's like taking twelve dollars from someone who has a thousand. Twelve thousand from someone who has a million. It's nothing.

Trashing the planet to trash the planet

Thankfully, and with a great deal of foresight, Russia is constructing five floating and submersible nuclear power plants in the Arctic, so that they may drill for petroleum. There are no problems that could arise from this decision. Russia has an excellent history of nuclear safety and consideration for the natural world. The world needs the gas and oil deposits they may find, so that we may continue hemorraghing safe, non-toxic fumes and chemicals into the air, water and land. These deposits must be extracted at any cost, and Russia is the country for the job.

Here are some asinine things environmentalists have to say about this glorious achievement:

"It is highly risky. The risk of a nuclear accident on a floating power plant is increased. The plants' potential impact on the fragile Arctic environment through emissions of radioactivity and heat remains a major concern. If there is an accident, it would be impossible to handle," said Igor Kudrik, a spokesman.

Environmentalists also fear that if additional radioactive waste is produced, it will be dumped into the sea. Russia has a long record of polluting the Arctic with radioactive waste. Countries including Britain have had to offer Russia billions of dollars to decommission more than 160 nuclear submarines, but at least 12 nuclear reactors are known to have been dumped, along with more than 5,000 containers of solid and liquid nuclear waste, on the northern coast and on the island of Novaya Zemlya.

They are crazy people who hate progress and worship at the altar of Howard Dean.

Eating meat still kills you

And makes you sick and unhealthy for a long time before you die. And trashes the planet. From the New York Times last week:

The increase in mortality risk tied to the higher levels of meat consumption was described as “modest,” ranging from about 20 percent to nearly 40 percent. But the number of excess deaths that could be attributed to high meat consumption is quite large given the size of the American population.

Extrapolated to all Americans in the age group studied, the new findings suggest that over the course of a decade, the deaths of one million men and perhaps half a million women could be prevented just by eating less red and processed meats, according to estimates prepared by Dr. Barry Popkin, who wrote an editorial accompanying the report.

To prevent premature deaths related to red and processed meats, Dr. Popkin suggested in an interview that people should eat a hamburger only once or twice a week instead of every day, a small steak once a week instead of every other day, and a hot dog every month and a half instead of once a week.

Hahaha, hot dog every month and a half. That's great.

Anyway, the kinds of meat you eat don't change much:

In place of red meat, nonvegetarians might consider poultry and fish. In the study, the largest consumers of “white” meat from poultry and fish had a slight survival advantage.

Big surprise:

Likewise, those who ate the most fruits and vegetables also tended to live longer.

I wonder when people will get it. I mean, you tell people, you show them so clearly that they are destroying themselves with what they eat, but most won't change. How profoundly stupid - to intractably eat things that ruin us. We will not be moved. What are we proving to anyone? "I don't take advice from anyone. I won't consider anything you say." Great mindset. Nothing positive, that's for sure.

You can also show people, as has been done quite often, especially in the last few years, that their diets absolutely decimate the entire planet on which they and their children live:

Anyone who worries about global well-being has yet another reason to consume less red meat. Dr. Popkin, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina, said that a reduced dependence on livestock for food could help to save the planet from the ravaging effects of environmental pollution, global warming and the depletion of potable water.

“In the United States,” Dr. Popkin wrote, “livestock production accounts for 55 percent of the erosion process, 37 percent of pesticides applied, 50 percent of antibiotics consumed, and a third of total discharge of nitrogen and phosphorus to surface water.”

But that won't do much either. At least it doesn't seem to. It's nearly unfathomable how much we waste in the pursuit of self-destruction. You can't free range egg your way out of this one. What will it take?