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peristaltorI once heard from one author speculating on the subject that the anthrax letters were mailed by the 9/11 hijackers themselves as a kind of farewell and fuck you to the system they were attacking. That seemed reasonable. Without thinking too much about the recipients and circumstances under which they were received (as I discussed in the last Saga), I thought nothing of them. Case closed. When it was revealed that the powder was definitely, without question, weaponized by the US, that in fact no other country even got close to packing as many spores into a gram as we in the Yew Ess of Aye . . . and when this undisputed piece of information was greeted with a resounding leaden silence, a deafening thud by, well, just about everyone, things in my brain started to change. I was faced with more and more unresolved information. Unresolved, that is, under the official cover story, the dominant paradigm, the sanctioned mythos, the one I had embraced for so many years.
Once this process of transformation starts, it's all but impossible to stop . For years, I've heard the theories that this disease or that was actually a bio-terrorism agent developed at or for the spooks at Langley. AIDS was an especial favorite amongst the self-appointed congizenti. Never mind that researchers now believe the pandemic has probably been around for 100 years, far longer than viral manipulation has been possible. Still, the theory got lots of play. New and novel diseases were no longer reserved for epidemiologists; they were supposedly targeted bioweapons designed to attack primarily non-whites and gays. (Frank Zappa even used such rumor as the backdrop for his album Thing Fish. Heck, that's where I first read of such a thing, in the liner notes.)
I never bought into these rumors. After all, why would someone engage in such activity? Mere racism or homophobia simply doesn't stand the smell test. Designing a virus is delicate work. Yes, it can be done, but the investment in time and the requirements of secrecy cause the inquisitive mind to balk at the suggestion. Furthermore, viruses have a nasty habit of mutating quickly once released beyond the confines of the lab. That designer, bespoke concoction you intended only to sicken or debilitate your irritating neighbors across the picket fence or national border could easily infect and kill your children or grandchildren no matter how painstakingly one attends to the details of the bugs' construction. Very few scenarios, if any, are worth such risk.
But there's another piece of information: Demographics. Remember that we are facing an unprecedented crisis with Peak Oil. This will affect -- and may already be affecting -- our planet's ability to feed itself.
This graph should illustrate the situation nicely. As I've noted before, I believe that only the technological exploitation and continued refinement of wind, coal and oil energy have enabled the human population to attain its current size. Once those cheap and easily available energy sources are gone, we can expect the human population to decline. John Michael Greer touches on this phenomenon, catabolic collapse, in his book. From the book, he lists the four phases of such a collapse:
There's a flip-side to his list, however. Let's say either economic contraction or collapsing public health happen first. What can we expect to happen? Since both the economy and a healthy workforce drive energy consumption, hiccups in either will slow that consumption. (Speculation on the economic collapse we're currently experiencing will come in a later post.) Yes, both will lead to political turmoil; but an enormous security and intelligence apparatus newly empowered with legislation rammed through congress under the threat of bio-weapons might survive any but the largest existential threat.
There's another, far more serious consideration: Demographics. From Homer-Dixon again:
So, the population of largely Caucasian Europe will decline as the largely non-Caucasian lands surrounding it will explode. While Homer-Dixon was reviewing the very real threat posed by income imbalance and disparity, there is also a very real thought that those people might pose a real threat to the EU countries when the food starts to run out no matter what kind of money either might have in the bank.
Knowing all of this, and having recently read what Michael Ruppert outlined about the suspicious deaths of 14 leading microbiologists and virologists in the course of a few months (Michael Ruppert, Crossing the Rubicon, New Society Publishers, 2006, pp. 510-524), everything I heard about disease takes on a more urgent and underlying theme. For example, I heard this BBC story from The Naked Scientists Podcast, where host Chris Smith interviews Adrian Gibbs, a virologist based in Canberra. They discuss the origins of the current H1N1 strain:
I loved how carefully Prof. Gibbs avoided even the slightest insinuation that this "laboratory accident" could have been deliberate. Just a few months ago, I might have also avoided all verbal wanderings into such dangerous territory. Then, though, just a few days later, this local story concerning H1N1 aired putting that earlier interview into frightening context:
Could the swine flu, so convincingly artificial to a viral researcher, really be a targeted disease, one designed to reduce the growth disparity and future competitive and destabilizing threat posed by the earth's non-white population in a coming time of limited food resources? These are the kind of thoughts that meander through a mind so thoroughly changed from abject skepticism on the topic by a very thoughtful and convincing read.
Damn it.
Once this process of transformation starts, it's all but impossible to stop . For years, I've heard the theories that this disease or that was actually a bio-terrorism agent developed at or for the spooks at Langley. AIDS was an especial favorite amongst the self-appointed congizenti. Never mind that researchers now believe the pandemic has probably been around for 100 years, far longer than viral manipulation has been possible. Still, the theory got lots of play. New and novel diseases were no longer reserved for epidemiologists; they were supposedly targeted bioweapons designed to attack primarily non-whites and gays. (Frank Zappa even used such rumor as the backdrop for his album Thing Fish. Heck, that's where I first read of such a thing, in the liner notes.)
I never bought into these rumors. After all, why would someone engage in such activity? Mere racism or homophobia simply doesn't stand the smell test. Designing a virus is delicate work. Yes, it can be done, but the investment in time and the requirements of secrecy cause the inquisitive mind to balk at the suggestion. Furthermore, viruses have a nasty habit of mutating quickly once released beyond the confines of the lab. That designer, bespoke concoction you intended only to sicken or debilitate your irritating neighbors across the picket fence or national border could easily infect and kill your children or grandchildren no matter how painstakingly one attends to the details of the bugs' construction. Very few scenarios, if any, are worth such risk.
But there's another piece of information: Demographics. Remember that we are facing an unprecedented crisis with Peak Oil. This will affect -- and may already be affecting -- our planet's ability to feed itself.
This graph should illustrate the situation nicely. As I've noted before, I believe that only the technological exploitation and continued refinement of wind, coal and oil energy have enabled the human population to attain its current size. Once those cheap and easily available energy sources are gone, we can expect the human population to decline. John Michael Greer touches on this phenomenon, catabolic collapse, in his book. From the book, he lists the four phases of such a collapse:
- Declining Energy Availability
- Economic Contraction
- Collapsing Public Health
- Political Turmoil
(John Michael Greer, The Long Descent, 2008, New Society Publishers, pp. 82-83.)
There's a flip-side to his list, however. Let's say either economic contraction or collapsing public health happen first. What can we expect to happen? Since both the economy and a healthy workforce drive energy consumption, hiccups in either will slow that consumption. (Speculation on the economic collapse we're currently experiencing will come in a later post.) Yes, both will lead to political turmoil; but an enormous security and intelligence apparatus newly empowered with legislation rammed through congress under the threat of bio-weapons might survive any but the largest existential threat.
There's another, far more serious consideration: Demographics. From Homer-Dixon again:
The (population) situation is particularly serious for Europe, as the continent's population shrinks while nearby populations explode. . . . (Leading demographer Paul Demeny) illustrates this point by comparing the past, present, and future populations of the European Union's twenty-five countries with the past, present, and future populations of the twenty-five neighboring countries in North Africa and West Asia. These countries, stretching from Morocco and Algeria to Pakistan and Afghanistan, are all large sources of migration to Europe.
Demeny's results are astonishing: in 1950, Europe's neighbors had less than half Europe's population (163 to 350 million; by 2000, their population had almost quadrupled to surpass Europe's (587 to 451 million); and by 2050, according to UN projections, their population will be more than three times larger than Europe's (1.3 billion to 401 million). By mid-century, Europe's population will have shrunk by 50 million people from today's level. In fact, it will be falling by 2 million annually, the decline will will be accelerating, and half the population will be older than fifty. Meanwhile, the population of North Africa and West Asia will be growing by about 16 million a year, and almost half will be under thirty. Demeny notes, "Apart from catastrophic events of incalculable magnitude, there is no demographic scenario that could substantially modify [these] ongoing shifts in relative population sizes."
. . . . In 1950, there were about two poor people for every rich person on Earth; today there are about four; and in 2025, when the world's population will be about 8 billion, there will be nearly six poor people for every rich person. (Thomas Homer-Dixon, The Upside of Down, Shearwater Press, 2006), pp. 64-65, emphasis decidedly mine.)
So, the population of largely Caucasian Europe will decline as the largely non-Caucasian lands surrounding it will explode. While Homer-Dixon was reviewing the very real threat posed by income imbalance and disparity, there is also a very real thought that those people might pose a real threat to the EU countries when the food starts to run out no matter what kind of money either might have in the bank.
Knowing all of this, and having recently read what Michael Ruppert outlined about the suspicious deaths of 14 leading microbiologists and virologists in the course of a few months (Michael Ruppert, Crossing the Rubicon, New Society Publishers, 2006, pp. 510-524), everything I heard about disease takes on a more urgent and underlying theme. For example, I heard this BBC story from The Naked Scientists Podcast, where host Chris Smith interviews Adrian Gibbs, a virologist based in Canberra. They discuss the origins of the current H1N1 strain:
Adrian - Well, the problem I'm interested in and with my two colleagues is where has this ‘flu, this new pandemic ‘flu, come from because if you really want to stop a pandemic in occurring, the best thing is to try and nip it in the bud at the very beginning. We’ve got to try and learn where these pandemics are coming from, what their conditions are. Then we can decide how we can best control them.
Chris - What are the present theories about how they arise?
Adrian - Well, the simplest theory that has been put out is that perhaps it’s an entirely natural occurrence. We believe that most ‘flus are getting around in birds so presumably it’s got around in birds. However, this new flu shows no relationship with birds. All of its most immediate ancestors are viruses of pigs. Therefore, you’ve got to believe where it’s got around in pigs. But the real problem with that is that it clearly has three separate parents. And one of those parents was in North America some years ago. One was in South East Asia. And one was in Europe. So you got to think of getting three pigs from different parts of the world together to make the new virus.
Chris - So what you’re saying is when you, sort of, molecularly interrogate the genetic history of what we’re seeing as the H1N1 swine flu pandemic, you can see that it must have three independent bits of parentage. And the big question is, “Well, how on Earth did all those parents come together to infect the first person who got this?”
Adrian - That’s right. So if they were brought together by pigs, for example, say through live pig trade between continents, it means that quarantine, which has worked for dozens of years in the past, has somehow broken down on at least two occasions. If you got to get three things together in one part of the world, one might be there originally. The other two have to come through quarantine to leave the country and come through quarantine to get into a country. So that’s one possibility. The other possibility which we have put into this paper that we have published is that we’ve been thinking, could have they got together by some sort of laboratory error? We know that virologists pass viruses from one another around the world for use in their laboratories, for identification, for making vaccines and so on. What sort of conditions might three viruses have got together in one place in order to be able to shuffle their genes and produce the new pandemic flu? (Emphasis mine yet again.)
I loved how carefully Prof. Gibbs avoided even the slightest insinuation that this "laboratory accident" could have been deliberate. Just a few months ago, I might have also avoided all verbal wanderings into such dangerous territory. Then, though, just a few days later, this local story concerning H1N1 aired putting that earlier interview into frightening context:
King County health officials say they have reason to worry. They point to the last outbreak this spring as an indicator of what could happen. Between April and August this year, there were 565 confirmed cases of the H1N1 virus. 70 people were hospitalized; 3 died. And when they took a closer look at the numbers, they noticed more than half of people infected with the virus were non–white. Dr. Tao Kwan–Gett is an epidemiologist with Seattle & King County Public Health.
Kwan–Gett: "H1N1 is not an equal opportunity infection. It did seem to affect certain communities more than others and these communities are some of the same ones at high risk for chronic conditions such as asthma and diabetes. So it's quite possible that some of the same factors that contribute to disparities in those chronic conditions played a role in those disparities for H1N1 that we saw in the spring." (Emphasis mine, don't ya know.)
Could the swine flu, so convincingly artificial to a viral researcher, really be a targeted disease, one designed to reduce the growth disparity and future competitive and destabilizing threat posed by the earth's non-white population in a coming time of limited food resources? These are the kind of thoughts that meander through a mind so thoroughly changed from abject skepticism on the topic by a very thoughtful and convincing read.
Damn it.