[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Calling American Swine

[Bill Totten]

by Dmitry Orlov

Club Orlov (May 03 2009)


A lot of people are panicked by the swine flu (H1N1) that has recently
emerged in Mexico and has since spread across the American continent and
far beyond. Panicking is a perfectly normal human response to
frightening new things, one which we humans share with our relatives the
apes and the monkeys. And, just like them, once we are done panicking,
we try to find out what it was that had us panicked.

Swine flu seems like a flu like any, spread through coughing and
sneezing and (my personal favorite) wet kisses. If you catch it, you
will develop a high fever, your joints and muscles will ache, and a day
or so into it you might develop a dry cough. My friends in Mexico tell
me that misting your throat with a weak solution of grapefruit seed
extract effectively stops the cough. In three days or so your fever will
subside somewhat, and in a week to ten days you will recover. Unless
there are complications.

It just so happens that, for the next couple of weeks, I will be taking
the subway between East Boston and Downtown. It's just a short hop
through a harbor tunnel, but at the same time it is a commute between
Latin America (on the East Boston side) and New England. I hardly ever
hear any English on that train. I would bicycle, but the bike ride is
circuitous and very long. Perhaps you'd think that I should consider
myself directly in the path of this new contagion, but I probably am
not. The carriers are probably mostly tourists and other recent
travelers, not the local Latinos.

Flu kills hundreds of thousands of people every year, mainly because
they are not healthy to start with. All those drunken bums I see lolling
around the Financial District next to half-empty bottles of Listerine
antiseptic mouthwash look really unhealthy, and will probably die of
something sometime soon. I would venture a guess that their cause of
death will be noted as something other than terminal halitosis. Swine
flu seems like an impressive-sounding thing to put down on a death
certificate. The actual cause of death will probably be something like
"Despair" but that just doesn't sound scientific enough for us.

One thing that makes this particular panic interesting is that American
public officials are stoking the panic by declaring a state of
emergency. (Even our brave Vice President, "Amtrak" Joe Biden,
apparently forbid his family to ride public transportation.) There is a
simple reason behind these quick declarations of emergency: there is
quite a financial drought right now, state budgets are being cut and
public workers furloughed. By declaring a state of emergency, public
officials gain access to emergency funds. So swine flu is just an excuse
for them to vacuum up and spend some loose change.

Another thing that's peculiar is that some nations, notably China and
Russia, have banned the import of American pork. Many other countries
are following their example. The flu is not spread through eating pork,
and so banning it is an economic move and a symbolic gesture rather than
a medically motivated public safety measure. But the popular appeal of
the symbolism is irresistible: here they have a chance to ban American
Swine!

American Swine come in three main varieties: the Hog, the Bankster, and
the Neocon. The Hog is often a public safety menace, because factory
farming practices result in large groups of immunocompromised animals
confined in conditions that are perfect for incubating new diseases.
These practices should be banned, and banning American pork around the
world seems like a step in the right direction.

The Banksters who have crashed the world financial system through their
fraudulent activities should be banned around the world as well. In
addition, it would be nice if they were rounded up and herded into
capitalist reeducation camps, where, thanks to hard physical labor,
daily capitalist indoctrination sessions, and compulsory public
self-criticism, they would, over the course of months or years, be
reformed into model capitalists, ready to rejoin a free market economy.
Perhaps our Chinese friends would be nice enough to send over some
advisers, to help us set up these camps.

Unlike the Hogs and the Banksters, the Neocons who illegally murdered,
imprisoned and tortured countless civilians across the world should be
exported - extradited, that is, to stand trial at an international war
crimes tribunal. The list is not that long: Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld,
Rice, Gonzales and a few others. All the ones who "were only following
orders" are not important enough. The United States government is bound
by international treaty to either prosecute or extradite these people.
Since prosecution in the US is unlikely to be carried out properly,
extradition remains as the only option. President Obama's recent paying
of lip service to this being "a nation of laws" is no substitute for action.

Of the three varieties of American Swine, the actual pigs seem like the
least troublesome, swine flu notwithstanding. We should certainly do all
we can to stay healthy, but in the meantime we should stay focused on
doing something about the other two varieties of American Swine.

http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2009/04/calling-american-swine.html


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