"Castaway" would never happen

June 6th, 2009 – Air France flight 447 left Rio de Janeiro on May 31st, but never made it to its Parisian destination via Senegal. Instead, freak weather conditions downed the plain approximately 1,100 km off the coast of Brazil, a rough estimate at best. The official responses from implicated airports, Air France and the Brazilian gouvernment were unsurprising, we will hope for the best as we send out waves of reconnaissance crafts and rescue helicopters but there is very little chance anyone survived a 10 km high crash into the middle of the Atlantic. This stark reminder of airplane crashes’ universal fatality was then promptly forgotten by mainstream media in favour of some more wildly ridiculous false hope.

Throughout the week, more and more search vehicles were sent and news reports gave us the hopeful trail of radio signals, suspicious oil slicks and random debris. To say this is a needle in a haystack search is misleading; consider that the plane could be anywhere in a hundred kilometer radius and then consider that it can be anywhere down into a third dimension, hiding as far as 6 km on a dark and jagged seabed. Finally on June 5th, we were told some hard evidence pointed to the aquatic crash site, some floating debris. We all imagined a turbine or some fuselage boasting “447” on the side waiting to give up a black box and some perfectly preserved corpses waiting for a decent burial. Fast forward to today, June 6th, we are finally shown this “debris” and unfortunately told it did not come from the flight in question. And yes, this picture below is actually the crucial evidence they had, a non-descript wooden palette.


The media still holds out hope and pushes it onto the voyeuristic masses meanwhile any scientist could tell them that we probably won’t find anything this century. In fact, there are only 3 vehicles on this planet (all unmanned) that could even take a flashlight down to the seabed to painstakingly scrounge around for the plane (or pieces of it) crawling along like an old lady looking for her dentures in the dark…but instead of a bathroom counter it’s a few dozen football fields.

Forget about it

When thinking of downed crafts and recoveries, people may instantly evoke the “Titanic” find in the XXth century by James Cameron (or whatever). It must be said that this ship took decades to even find and it was in relatively shallow and clear water. A more appropriate parallel can coincidentally be found in the obscure pages of this week’s news.

In 2007, an American “deep sea treasure-hunting company” (no, I didn’t make that up) discovered the remains of the Mercedes, a Spanish naval frigate shipwrecked in 1804. Although buried in centuries of sediment and under a few kilometers of Atlantic Ocean, the Company followed ancient maps and investigative reports to forage around the seabed. With an incredible amount of luck, they fell upon what they were looking for as well as a bonus 500,000 Spanish gold and silver coins in the hull. The reason why it was in the news this week is that a US judge slapped the Company on the wrist and ordered them to return the Spanish ship and Spanish money to Spain (they will surely appeal under the US constitutional law of “finders keepers, losers weepers).

The first point here is that, despite great technological advances, the seafloor reaches down two kilometers further than Everest is high, we barely know how to even get there. We have built a few machines that can do the equivalent of scoop up sand with a colourful plastic beach shovel but we are extremely far from being able to survey anything down there at 1500 times the pressure we have at sea level. The second subsequent point then becomes that news services dishing out false hope (and as you have seen the word FALSE should be in meter-tall red letters) are just thoughtless little piggies cashing in on the misery of others and appealing to the darkest voyeur perversions of society.

…then again, they took this concept and made 9/11 their Woodstock. How can I be surprised now?

(Look at it, the Titanic was just begging for it - Evidence - The new Airbus models just look plain ridiculous.)

End.

Defcon 1

Wednesday May 27th, 2009 – Kim Jong-Il, communist dictator of North Korea, has pulled out of the ceasefire agreement that ended the Korean War in 1953. After Jong-Il’s weeklong boasting of his new nuclear arsenal and testing of long-range launch systems, the automatic answer of the Western World (see US administered NATO) was to impose economic and diplomatic sanctions. This is already the umpteenth time that such penalties were imposed on Pyongyang and North Korean Communism and as we all see, it has had lasting positive results.

Jong-il announced the scrapping of the tenuous treaty that defined the South-North Korean border and averted a nuclear denouement during the cold war. The immediate effects are moderate although drastic: all foreign ships off of North Korea’s coast will be fired upon. Nevertheless, America and Europe are very worried but nowhere near as much as their Asian allies. Interviews with South Koreans and people from Japan unmistakably evoke Hiroshima and Nagasaki, events that have become cinematic in the West but which remain fresh on the alarmed minds of Asia.

There are clearly two options to the immediate aftermath of this act of war. Firstly, as has been the case multiple times before, the United-States will fold and offer oil, money and other economic incentives to coerce North Korea back into a less aggressive position. The caveat here is that President Jong-Il is clearly nearing the end of his life and may very well want to go out with a literal bang. Secondly, war could be declared on North Korea by a United Nations resolution (such a declaration has not formally happened since World War II) and a frantic invasion will be launched. Most probably within a day of declaration, troops will occupy Pyongyang at great loss of life in the hope of deposing the current government before they can launch everything. This second option may be weighing more heavily now on the minds of the deciders than ever because every passing day brings North Korea closer towards the technological ability to launch a preemptive global thermonuclear strike. Unfortunately, there is also a caveat here (apart from the obvious death of potentially millions), it is that President Obama and the Democrats are not necessarily the administration that would take such action after the Iraq debacle.

I am apprehensive and nervous for the near future, bearing the panic of the millions of people that can’t even put North Korea on a map and only know Kim Jong-Il as a funny Asian puppet in the movie Team America World Police.

A slap on the wrist

The historical parallel here is quite simple; imposing economic sanctions on a country that does something uneighbourly has NEVER solved anything. At best, it has postponed the inevitable.

In the 1930s for example, Japan launched a large-scale amphibious invasion of China, raping, pillaging and usurping as they went. The League of Nations (precursor to the UN) imposed heavy economic sanctions on the land of the rising sun and no, it did not convince Tokyo’s war council to drop everything and apologize. In fact, they left their seat at the League of Nations and would eventually declare war on all the western nations.

Similarly for Italy, Mussolini was penalized for his blatant and unfair invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, a desperate attempt to endow Italy with a colonial empire just like the big boys. It was unfortunately 30-50 years too late for that and France and England wagged their finger at Rome. It was no longer okay to subjugate the Third World…if you weren’t France or England that is. As a result, Italy also pulled out of the League of Nations and allied themselves with the only European power that didn’t shun them, Nazi Germany.

Finally, the United States has imposed an economic embargo on communist Cuba for half a century. The first result is that the Communist regime, championed by Fidel Castro who will seemingly never die are still as strong as they were in 1959. The second one is that the people suffer. Despite the extraordinary literacy rate and accessible universal healthcare system, it is very much a developing country with extreme poverty, limited human rights and no access to a Big-Mac or Coca-Cola.

In parting, I encourage you to read up on North-Korea, the 1953 Korean War armistice and the nuclear threat they pose today. It may soon be very much in the news and the cause of an international reshaping of alliances and war plans.

(Pictured: Cuba's Fidel Castro and the USSR's Nikita Khruschev teamed up during the Cuban missile crisis of 1963 - Russia is one of Communist North Korea's neighbours that is not so worried.)

End.

A Letter to Burmese General Than Shwe

May 15th, 2009 – The South-East Asian country of Burma is administered by a military dictatorship that has refused to hold fair elections since their power grab in 1988. In fact, the leader of the only party that would oppose it, Aung San Suu Kyi of the National League for Democracy has once again been imprisoned based on fabricated charges. Without counting the possible next five years she will spend under house arrest, she has spent over half of the past two decades incarcerated at the hands of Burma’s fascist junta and their glorious leader, General Than Shwe. I doubt the good General would read this blog as is so I decided to blatantly address him in letterform.

My letter

O glorious General, we have been hearing in the news about your troubles with Mrs. Suu Kyi and her democrats. It must really be frustrating to have such dissidence when you worked so hard to stabilise your rule over Burma over the past 21 years. I mean, on top of Suu Kyi’s disciples demanding her release after the 2007 expiry of the maximum 5-year prison term you gave her and the Buddhist monks that violently protested last year, few countries on earth even recognise your administration. Seriously, you took power by military coup, lost 1990 elections to Suu Kyi’s party in a landslide yet ignored it, moved the country’s capital to a secret location and alienated most international organisation; some African countries have surely done as much and are still allowed in the United Nations, you really shouldn’t be singled out and punished like that.

I also understand that you plan on overturning the situation, holding free elections in 2010 and finally legitimising your claim to Burma in the eyes of international scoffers. Unfortunately, what will prevent Suu Kyi from running and winning again? I mean, you may be offering the omnipresent security and invasive censorship that the population needs to be safe but she’s offering insane things like public and private liberties, healthy international relationships, periodic elections and basically the right to choose.

Oh, ah, now I see. This week, there was a crazy American that swam across a lake to Suu Kyi’s house. He was arrested and then Suu Kyi was changed with breaching the terms of her house arrest. Pure genius, I see it now, you allowed this man to get there and now are going to sentence Suu Kyi to 5 more years, making her ineligible to run for elections next year. I salute your brilliant scheme General but next time you might opt for more subtlety, international attention seems to be catching on, especially the part where there are police officers and soldiers everywhere yet a man was able to enter the country and swim miles up to the supervised prison compound. At least your “electors” will never know about it, you effectively control all national media. What they don’t know can’t hurt them right?

I not only sympathise with your troubles but will also offer a friendly warning. You should know that, as has been proven time and time again, imprisoning political dissidents not only doesn’t stop their ideas, it amplifies them and makes things a whole lot worse.

Ring a bell?

For example, when the British gouvernment of India imprisoned Mahatma Gandhi for the first time in 1922, he came back stronger than ever, devising a new non-cooperation movement and united the hundreds of millions of Hindi and Muslim people in India. When they jailed him for a second sentence in 1942, he encouraged the Quit India non-violent sovereignty movement from prison, resulting in the non-cooperation of Indian elements withing the British army who were desperately needed and also in the final overthrow of the brave British masters in 1947.

Around the same time, Nelson Mandela was being tried for sabotage and sedition in South Africa. He actively fought against the state mandated racism called apartheid and never lost momentum or support despite spending 27 years in jail. For encouraging violent revolt against the white dominant caste, he was not only successful (in 1994) but was attributed a Nobel Peace prize for crying out loud. Could you imagine if Suu Kyi and her followers were actually fighting back? That’s not something we want to encourage now is it?

On to the ever-so-righteous United-States, they were not above incarcerating seditious elements of their population in the mid XXth century. Unfortunately, even they were not safe from the fermenting of revolutionary thought in prison. Malcolm X was jailed for inciting violence and racism against the dominant white race. While in prison, he converted to the fundamentalist “Nation of Islam” and became one of the most feared advocates for African-American rights in American history. And that’s the US, you should REALLY be careful.

Finally, it may not be the most tasteful example, but it definitely fits my model of imprisonment for dissidence - having some time to think - revolutionary movement is amplified and succeeds. Adolf Hitler gathered a few friends in 1923 and decided to overthrow the German gouvernment. It was a monumental failure and thus he was sent to jail. While there, he gained quite a following as he decried the “November criminals” who had surrendered Germany in WW1, the republican and democratic leaders that were now making the country weak and the international Jewry orchestrating all of this behind the scenes. I submit to you, General, that it was in prison that Hitler wrote Mein Kampf, the dogmatic document of the Nazi Party which would permit him to overthrow and assassinate all German officials in the 1920s and 30s.

You would think it would be easier to just kill Aung San Suu Kyi but unfortunately, if she dies of anything except ripe old age, no matter how “accidental”, it will immediately be determined to be your doing and your people WILL overthrow you. You should try something crazy like including her and her democratic party into your own gouvernment. I know what you’re thinking but it WOULD work. She could be your vice-president, you extend some civil liberties and some olive branches internationally and voilà. You would be an elected and legitimate leader of Burma without having the ever-pending threat of revolution or civil war.

Think about it, I’m just saying.

Good luck.

(Pictured: Don't kid yourself, Gandhi was a bad-ass - If you're not careful, this little Asian lady will be your end.)

End.

(PS: I would include a picture of you although no one has ever been allowed to photograph you. Bummer.)

Dijongate

May 8th, 2009 –President Obama and Vice-President Biden went out this week to grab a bite at a Washington deli. Why it took two of MSNBC’s senior correspondents to cover the event is beyond comprehension. Why and how Fox News used the “event” as fodder to fuel the next two days of "news" is even more insane (or have we come to expect it from this “news” source). In fact, Fox came up with the term "Dijongate" to refer to President Obama's choice of condiments, good stuff.

Indeed, the President ordered a burger topped with mustard, “or do you have any hot mustard or Dijon" he rivetingly asked. The first problem here is that Fox News pundit Sean Hannity accused MSNBC of a cover-up as the two commentators spoke over Obama’s request for the devil’s mustard (surely offering a gripping history of world leaders and their favourite foods). I offer to Mr. Hannity that they were speaking over this mustard order because IT WAS A MAN ORDERING CONDIMENTS FOR A BURGER! For crying out loud, Hannity reeks of paranoia and I suspect the smelt it, dealt it axiom applies: it sounds like something a republican administration would have done, therefore... The second problem with “Dijongate” is that it is French, a people they do not like, and it is upper class, making president Obama an elitist liar that doesn’t really care about the working classes.

All of this, please keep in mind, because the president ordered a particular condiment sold at fast food chains across America. It’s as if the right-wing media desperately want attention since they lost their ally in the White House and have become complacent and jingoistic with their media coverage (jingoism – a terrific term meaning extreme patriotism and bias, aggressively promoting one’s country as better than anything else). At least, that is what I originally thought. Then, I remembered a few more examples during the Bush era and even a long time ago in the Woodrow Wilson era. It seems the conservatives are not above elevating mundane minutiae into national threats and consequently responding with the grossest and most ridiculous of overreactions.

That'll show them

As a recent example that we may all remember, in 2003, certain republicans in the US congress had enough of France opposing an invasion of Iraq. A simple “screw the French” could have sufficed as an inappropriate reaction from elected officials, but no, they went much, much further. They passed a congressional motion to have all gouvernmental cafeterias rename French fries and French toast as “freedom fries” and “freedom toast”. And yes, it was utterly ridiculous. In a relatively ignored yet truly hilarious response from Washington DC’s French embassy, the media were told “someone should tell them French fries are actually from Belgium". Conversely, over 75% of Dijon mustard produced on the planet is from Canada...

Further back, with the World War I hatred and fear of all things German, Britain and the US had already begun this tradition of a petty naming war. German biscuits in the UK were changed to “empire biscuits” which they remain today. The aristocratic family Battenberg and the royal house of Saxe-Coburg Gotha were also respectively changed to Mountbatten and Windsor (Oh yes, Queen Victoria, and therefore all the royal houses of Europe, are German). In the United States, the same lack of imagination as in 2003 brought about “liberty cabbage” instead of sauerkraut and “liberty measles” oddly needed to be “jingoed”, stealing them away from their preferred term “German measles”.

To nuance my historical argument, there certainly is a difference in context here. When it first happened, millions were dying at war. Then in 2003, September 11^th was not far behind, two wars were being fought in the Middle-East and most brown people were potentially just about to rape you. In 2009, with a nice juicy recession and some sexy bird flu to talk about, there was a news director somewhere that thought “Dijongate” was a valid and newsworthy story. It must be true what they say, TV will rot your brain, especially if you work in it.

It may seem innocuous and inoffensive but jingoism of the sort easily leads to discrimination and racism. The Hutu broadcasters of Rwanda were guilty of the same national and racial complacency in 1994. Historians now singularly point the finger at that radio station for provoking the 800,000 deaths that ensued.

Finally, jingoism leads to ultranationalism. To end with an oversimplification and overreaction on this particular blog medium that I own and direct, I boldly claim that it is people like Sean Hannity that elected Hitler in 1932 (Oh yes, Hitler was elected).

(Note: I have invented and own the copyright on the verb “jingoed”)

(Pictured: Hitler allegedly invaded France because of the lack of German mustard varieties (citation needed) - Obama loves a spicy burger.)

End.

Also in the news

- The Pope hilariously lectures Muslim leaders on the misuse of Religion for political gain.

- Vladimir Putin can sing - and can perhaps do much more we don't know about.

- Women of Kenya have gone on a sex strike to raise rape awareness - confused and horny, some men are suing them.

PANIC!

April 30th, 2009 – Great Scott! A new strand of porcine influenza has stricken at the demographic and economic heart of Latin America and is rapidly spreading across the globe. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has thus assigned a five out of six to this public health threat, creating widespread fear and panic amongst the media-hungry masses. The dangerous disease, fatal even, is now effectively a level shy of full on pandemic such as the medieval Black plague, 19th century Smallpox or 20th century Polio and AIDS.

Thusly, I encourage all my readers from Vancouver to Minsk and Johannesburg to Hanoi to raid their local Wal-Mart in search of canned food, bottled water, face masks, latex gloves, batteries a portable toilet and a few gallons of anti-bacterial soap. Setting up a fortress of hygiene in your basement/nuclear fallout shelter/local underground parking for the next two years should be simple enough. I will establish why I am so sure that the pandemic of global proportions will subside in two years but first, let us take a look at our epic killer as portrayed by the media.

“Global pandemic”, “No one is safe”, “No cure or Vaccine”, “Run for the hills”, “Revenge of the Pork”, “Al Gore says I told you so” and “Worst than SARS, bird flu and West Nile virus combined” have been the headlines flooding our television sets and newsstands this week and I got some more news for you: it’s far from being over. If you remember what a fuss North America makes every year about West-Nile virus, you wouldn’t suspect that the mild disease only kills a handful of frail and/or elderly people every year. As for Bird Flu, we heard about it for years even though less than a thousand people died from it in South-East Asia and less than 50 in the Americas. I do not wish to belittle the death of 1000 South-East Asians, I am just putting into perspective that the media do not even remember the tsunami of 2004 that killed hundreds of thousands of the same people. To be blunt, a disease is more sexy because it is invisible and can potentially be everywhere at any time; it is fear. To be blunter, that disease is a million times sexier if it affects people with white skin. To prove a point and to inform those of you that don’t know, there still is no cure for AIDS. There are antiretrovirals available to us in the industrialised world that have greatly diminished the number of victims but millions are infected and dying in Africa = old and boring news.

Pig Vs. Human

Let us take a look at this disease; it is only prudent seeing as CNN won’t stop pestering me about proper hygiene when coughing and even the newspaper I work for has a daily update about where the disease has struck and when it will potentially get to a location near me, resulting in a painful and messy death. Porcine influenza or “Swine flu” boasts a misleading title associating it with pigs. It could simply be called the flu since it biologically and chemically IS the flu. The difference here, as with the old bird flu, is that they represent a distinct strand of the virus that mainly affects the animal they are named for. In very rare cases, the disease can be passed on to humans and even more rarely, it can be transmitted between humans. For the current “pandemic” of swine flu, there has been a minor mutation that allows its free transmission between humans, spreading as the regular flu does. This is the important point: the symptoms are mostly the same. Runny nose, congested sinuses, coughing, feeling weak, headaches, a slower immune system and a small chance of it progressing to pneumonia, sinusitis and other manageable infections will occur when you have the flu, human or otherwise. The second important point, if you really think about it, is that I am probably the first one to tell you what the symptoms of swine flu are. You see if the BBC News Service comes out and tells you that a lot of people are getting the flu in Mexico, there is no real story there. If they use words like “pandemic”, conceal the true risks of the disease, polish it up as a shiny new dangerous ailment and then tell you it is inching it’s way closer to your home, sneeze-by-sneeze they have found the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

That being said, porcine, avian and the good-old regular flu are no laughing matters. Thousands upon thousands of people die every year from their complications, mostly young infants, the elderly and immunocompromised people. It could even be called a pandemic but instead we accept this disease as an inevitable occurrence that strengthens our immune system and then we go on with our lives. I cannot accuse the media of doing their jobs excessively; I accuse them of hiding certain facts to focus on the more sensational aspects of their selling point (just like the make millions quick infomercials that spend 30 minutes telling you how much money each of these pretty people won with the advertised “method” or “system” but never tell you how). They will get some shiny awards in journalism and the rest of the world will panic unduly for something that is, for all intents and purposes, banal.

Now, to conclude with a historical link and to leave you feeling confused and ambiguous about this article, I present you with one of the deadliest pandemics of human history.

The great influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 was shadowed and intensified simultaneously by a period of great war in Europe although it was truly global. From inner Siberia to the South Pacific, the disease was similar to the common cold yet added a very strong propensity towards pneumonia and death. Over 50 million died worldwide although upwards of 25% of the world population was infected. Modern medicine was still no match for the disease and all responses rather revolved around spraying things, quarantines and campaigns against public spitting (things that could still work and that may be proposed soon across the world). Its origin is probably American yet the Americans blamed the Spanish…for kicks. This is why today; we may hear this disease and this episode referred to as “the Spanish Flu”. Its biology, its method of spreading and its incredible virulence remains unknown; what we do know is that it was porcine influenza, a simple mutation of swine flu.

(Pictured: Doctors sent to "help" victims of the medieval plague wore long-nosed masks containing fresh herbs; it was thought that smells carried diseases - A theory about how swine flu spreads to humans)

End.