US CORPORATE PIG FARM POSSIBLE FLU EPICENTER

EASY READING CULTURE OF LIFE NEWS:

picture-49

It turns out, the epicenter of this H1N1 outbreak might possibly have been connected to a huge agribusiness pig farm in Oaxaca, Mexico.  Smithfield denies they are the cause.  We won’t know unless there is an investigation.  Corporate pig farms are one of the top industrial-animal businesses that irritate neighbors and menace communities. For example, during hurricanes and floods, the pig feces ponds can overflow and the concentrations of nutrients kills plants and spreads diseases.

As usual, it pays to visit places via satellite photos.  In this case, the epicenter of the viral contagion is in the ridge of jungle-covered mountains that run like a squeezed ridge from central Mexico to the Panama Canal.  This ridge separates the Gulf of Mexico/Atlantic Ocean systems from the great Pacific Basin waters.  It is very wet in the higher elevations due to the air rising up from the two oceans.  The satellite photos show these clouds forming as we see below:

The Associated Press: Mexico says suspected swine flu deaths now at 149

picture-37Cordova also suggested an earlier timeline for documented swine flu cases inside Mexico. The first death confirmed by the government involved a woman who succumbed from swine flu on April 13 in southern Oaxaca state. But Cordova said tests now show that a 4-year-old boy contracted the disease at least two weeks earlier neighboring Veracruz state, where a community has been protesting pollution from a large pig farm.

The farm is run by Granjas Carroll de Mexico, a joint venture 50 percent owned by Virginia-based Smithfield Foods, Inc. Spokeswoman Keira Ullrich said the company has found no clinical signs or symptoms of the presence of swine influenza in its swine herd or its employees working at its joint ventures anywhere in Mexico.

Smithfield Foods Company Information | Investor Relations | Community Involvement | Pork and Turkey Brands and Recipes

picture-118

  • Our Mission:  To be a trusted, respected and ethical food industry leader that excels at bringing delicious and nutritious meat and specialty food products to millions every day while setting industry standards for corporate social responsibility.Our Core Values:  We will constantly strive:
    1. To produce safe, high-quality, nutritious food.
    2. To be an employer of choice.
    3. To advance animal welfare.
    4. To protect the environment.
    5. To have a positive impact on our communities.

As usual, there is a lot of fine, fine talk but not much fine, fine actions.  It is easy to claim, one is responsible and careful but I know from close up, when running farms, they are not hospitals. They also have to make money and with commodity prices going to the moon and then crashing, it would not surprise anyone to see corners cut.  

Besides, the problem is one of human/animal interactions.  It is hard, keeping clean, especially while cleaning hogs.  Modern hog farms use lots and lots of water which is probably why this hog farm in Mexico is high up the mountainside where there is lots of rain water that can be tapped.  

To clean the hogs in their cement bunkers, water is hosed on everything in huge amounts.  This is where the human/viral intersection probably is: the hog waste water ponds leeching into the water table.

Article – WSJ.com

  • U.S. meat producers Smithfield Foods (SFD, $9.08, -$1.24, -12.02%) and Tyson Foods Inc. (TSN, $9.87, -$1.06, -9.70%) fell on concerns pork sales may be blunted by the swine flu outbreak, though Smithfield said it’s found no signs or symptoms of swine flu in the company’s herd or employees at its Mexican venture. The price of hogs were tumbling in trading despite authorities rushing to reassure consumers that it is safe to eat pork.

The pork isn’t diseased at all.  It is perfectly fine.  It is the FECES that is probably diseased.  Jungles also have lots and lots of birds since it is mainly a tree environment.  We know in Africa, human/ape/monkey/bird interactions can create really dangerous viral diseases that are particularly hard on humans.

This part of Mexico is very much like the ecosystem of the Congo River Basin’s surrounding mountains.  Human carelessness while concentrating animals in small areas create biogenetic breeding grounds much beloved by some of the oddest and oldest life forms on earth, the viral community. Diverse and devious, these things have no minds or sense of will but the awe-inspiring forces of evolution work very hard within this conglomeration of strange life forms that are not living but are living at the same time, a twilight zone in the biosphere.

But local residents are convinced they were sickened by air and water contamination from pig waste.

There was a widespread outbreak of a particularly powerful respiratory disease in the area early April, and some people reported being sick as early as February. Local health workers intervened in early April, sealing off the town of La Gloria and spraying to kill off flies they said were swarming through their homes.

Pig piss and poo ponds generate flies.  Flies are the insect equivalent of viral life forms. They love being a vector for bad stuff and wittingly or unwittingly, work hard on behalf of the viral Conquistadores.

Cordova said the community was suffering from ordinary influenza — not swine flu. But only one sample was preserved — that of the boy. It was only after U.S. and Canadian epidemiologists discovered the true nature of the virus that Mexico submitted the sample for international testing, and discovered what he suffered from.

This is why there is some reasonable alarm: the H1N1 viral group is, due probably to many thousands of years of human/pig evolution in tandem, is very dangerous for us.  Horses and cows, for example, must roam free in order to breed, raise their offspring and eat.  Only in recent human history, have humans been able to feed horses and cows while confining them to barns.

The same is even more true of sheep: they also can share unpleasant diseases with us [including, er, sexual diseases] but they have very clean droppings that are small, dark balls, like deer droppings.  But pigs are another matter.  From earliest times, they had to be confined.  Pigs, in the wild, are dangerous, even escaped domestic ones revert to their ancient prototype which are, to this day, fearful hunting opponents.  Calydonian Boar for example, was considered a terrible monster.  300px-regius_-_calydonian_boar1

Medieval boar spears were the most fearsome weapons a hunter could use.  For arrows didn’t bring down the wild boar.  The spears and swords that hacked down these boars show the degree of fear they inspired.  Penned up boars become, over time, pigs.

If you fall into a pig sty, you can get killed.  When I was young and saw ‘The Wizard of Oz’, the movie had Dorothy fall into a pig sty.  Modern watchers think, the only fear was, her dress might be dirtied.  I knew, as a child, how dangerous pigs were and the fear of the other characters as they risk their lives to save Dorothy, scared me.  

Pigs are DANGEROUS.  Yet, across the planet, they are kept in pens, close at hand, fed food wastes and are then eaten.  And unlike sheep, they are very messy.  So are cows, incidentally.  But we can turn the cows loose in pastures.  Not pigs.  For they can dig and dig deep.

Oaxaca – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Population (2005)
 – Total 3,506,821 (Ranked 10th)
 – Density 37/km2 (95.8/sq mi)

The accomplishments of these civilizations included the domestication of many plants and animals including maizebeans,cacaotomatoeschili pepperssquashpumpkin, andturkeys.[citation needed] Also available in the fertile region of Oaxaca were pineapplesavocados, zapotes, and maguey. In the south, the Pacific Ocean was an important food source. The civilizations built by these groups are reflected in important archaeological sites includingMonte AlbánMitlaGuiengola and Huijatzoo. Monte Albán was a great ceremonial center built on a flattened mountain top by the Zapotec people which reached its zenith between 600 and 900 AD The ancient Zapotec village of Teotitlán del Valle near the city of Oaxaca is one of the oldest human settlements in Mexico.[citation needed]

Dense populations are the other side of the disease vector.  The population in Oaxaca is quite dense if we leave out the uninhabitable mountain areas.  This state has seen a lot of native agitation since it has one of the biggest Indian mix populations in Mexico.

Tenochtitlan fell to the Spanish in August of 1521 and with it all of the Aztec empire. The Spanish crown granted Oaxaca to the conquistador Hernan Cortes as his prize for conquering New Spain. On November 25, 1521, Francisco de Orozco arrived in the central valley to claim it in the name of Cortes. Cortes was thereby named Marques del Valle de Oaxaca. The same year, the Spanish founded settlement Segura de la Frontera, later known as Nueva Antequera, and in 1532 it was officially raised to the category of a royal city by decree of Emperor Charles V(Carlos I) with the name of Antequera de Guaxaca.

Transformation was swift in the central valley; the Spanish introduced new food and new methods of cultivation. Cortes ordered the cultivation of wheat in the Valley of Etla and the construction of mills. The Spanish cultivated sugar cane and imported silkworms. Diseases introduced by the Spanish greatly diminished the native population of Oaxaca, as did the insatiable appetite for gold, which led more and more Oaxacans into the dangerous mines.

Gold, conquest and disease: the story of the last 500 years.  Now, let’s leave Oaxaca and go look some more at the viral world:

2009 swine flu outbreak – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dr. Anne Schuchat, interim Deputy Director for CDC Science and Public Health, said that the American cases were found to be made up of genetic elements from four different flu viruses – North American swine influenza, North American avian influenza, human influenza, and swine influenza virus typically found in Asia and Europe – “an unusually mongrelised mix of genetic sequences.”[64] Pigs have been shown to act as a potential “mixing vessel” in which reassortment can occur between flu viruses of several species.[65][66] This new strain appears to be a result of reassortment of human influenza and swine influenza viruses, presumably due to superinfection in an individual human. Influenza viruses readily undergo reassortment because their genome is packaged in 8 pieces (see Orthomyxoviridae).

Director Schuchat said that the virus was resistant to amantadine and rimantadine, but susceptible to oseltamivir(Tamiflu) and zanamivir (Relenza).[67][68][69][70]

Cytokine storm – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The cytokine storm (hypercytokinemia) is the systemic expression of a healthy and vigorous immune system resulting in the release of more than 150 inflammatory mediators (cytokines, oxygen free radicals, and coagulation factors).[citation needed] Both pro-inflammatory cytokines (such as Tumor necrosis factor-alphaInterleukin-1, and Interleukin-6) and anti-inflammatory cytokines (such as interleukin 10 and interleukin 1 receptor antagonist) are elevated in the serum of patients experiencing a cytokine storm.[citation needed]

Cytokine storms can occur in a number of infectious and non-infectious diseases including graft versus host disease (GVHD), adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), sepsisavian influenzasmallpox, and systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS).[2]

The first reference to the term cytokine storm in the published medical literature appears to be by Ferrara et al.[3] in GVHD in February 1993.

[edit]Role in pandemic deaths

It is believed that cytokine storms were responsible for many of the deaths during the 1918 influenza pandemic, which killed a disproportionate number of young adults.[1] In this case, a healthy immune system may have been a liability rather than an asset. Preliminary research results from Hong Kong also indicated this as the probable reason for many deaths during the SARS epidemic in 2003.[citation needed] Human deaths from the bird flu H5N1 usually involve cytokine storms as well.[citation needed] Recent reports of high mortality among healthy young adults in the2009 swine flu outbreak point to cytokine storms as being responsible for these deaths.[4]

The Hong Kong flu was another form of the dreaded H1N1 family of viruses.  I remember very much how my lungs filled up and struggling to breathe.  Several things: one has to drink lots and lots of something and my Chinese friends gave me lots of ginger dark tea.  I couldn’t swallow well so I got it through a straw.  Every time I was awake, I sucked down this mixture that was made with ‘royal jelly’ which is a honey extract from China that came in these tiny glass tubes.

I also recommend not sleeping lying flat but when awake, lying on the stomach with some cushions that hold the chest higher than the bed and then leaning down, chocking up the debris in the lungs.  I did this for days and days.  I knew that it bothered people so I did it mostly alone.  It was a blessing that someone would come by and clean up the bowls and sterilize the place.  Of course, changing the bedding frequently and using plastic or rubber between sheets and mattress is also highly recommended.

Needing food and unable to eat, friends would give me eggs from our chickens [we all had them] and give me the yoke, raw, with coconut juice and banana all mushed up with a blender and I would drink this with a straw, too.  Feeding people when they are in bad shape is an art form.  My Hispanic and Chinese friends were endlessly useful when it came to figuring out how to feed me, etc.  I can’t thank them all enough. 

Here is a text book about the evolution of viruses:

Biology Direct | Full text | The ancient Virus World and evolution of cells

Viruses are ubiquitous companions of cellular life forms: it appears that every cellular organism studied has its own viruses or, at least, virus-like selfish genetic elements [1]. Recent environmental studies have shown that viruses, primarily, bacteriophages, are “most abundant biological entities on the planet” [2], with the total number of virus particles exceeding the number of cells by at least an order of magnitude [3,4]. Viruses actively move between biomes and are thought to be major agents of evolution by virtue of their capacity to operate as vehicles of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) [5].

A remarkable feature of viruses is the diversity of their genetic cycles, in a sharp contrast to the uniformity of the cellular genetic cycle [69] (Fig. 1). Viruses with different genome strategies span a vast range of genome sizes (the genomes of the largest known virus, the mimivirus, and the smallest viruses, e.g., circoviruses, differ by three orders of magnitude) and show a non-uniform and non-trivial distribution among the host taxa (Fig. 1). For example, the extraordinary diversity of double-stranded (ds) DNA bacteriophages is in a stark contrast to the absence of bona fide dsDNA viruses in plants. Conversely, RNA viruses are extremely abundant and diverse in plants and animals but are currently represented by only two compact families in bacteria, and so far have not been detected in archaea (Fig. 1).

picture-76

Viruses and other selfish elements: the replication strategies, genome size distribution, global ecology, and hallmark proteins. For each class of viruses and related elements, the approximate range of genome sizes is indicated (kb, kilobases). ‘+’ denotes positive strand (same polarity as mRNA) and ‘-‘ denotes negative strand. Tr, transcription; T, translation; R, replication; E, encapsidation; A, archaea; B, bacteria; F, fungi; Mz, Metazoa; P, plants; UE, unicellular eukaryotes. For each class of viruses (elements), characteristic structures of hallmark proteins and characteristic electron-microscopic images of viruses are shown. RdRp, RNA-dependent RNA polymerase; JRC, jelly-roll capsid protein; RT, reverse transcriptase; RCRE, rolling-circle replication (initiating) endonuclease. The rightmost panel shows the host range, with the size of the respective image and acronym roughly proportionate to the abundance of the given virus class in the respective taxon.

picture-85

Evolution of the virus world: origin of the main lineages from the primordial gene pool. Characteristic images of RNA and protein structures are shown for each postulated stage of evolution, and characteristic virion images are shown for the emerging classes of viruses. Thin arrows show the postulated movement of genetic pools between inorganic compartments. Block arrows show the origin of different classes of viruses at different stages of pre-cellular evolution.

On top of all this, we had  major earthquake near Oaxaca, Mexico, today!

IRIS – Seismic Monitor

picture-55And an aside: the Jews are not happy about Swine Flu getting Jews sick in Israel. It has already spread there via tourists:

‘Israel must call new disease Mexico Flu, as swine unkosher’ – Haaretz – Israel News

Ultra-Orthodox Deputy Health Minister Yakov Litzman on Monday declared that Israel would call the new potentially deadly disease that has already struck two continents ‘Mexico Flu,’ rather than ‘Swine Flu, as pigs are not kosher. 


“We will call it Mexico flu. We won’t call it swine flu,” Litzman told a news conference on Monday, assuring the Israeli public that authorities were prepared to handle any cases. 

I don’t think the Mexicans will appreciate this.  Why not a compromise?  Call it ‘The Smithfield Flu’?

ΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩ

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24 Comments

Filed under evolution, Geology, nature

24 responses to “US CORPORATE PIG FARM POSSIBLE FLU EPICENTER

  1. For an excellent background briefing on flu matters, I direct you to a recent blog by Elaine Meinel Supkis. Have a healthy week. — By James Howard Kunstler in Life After the Oil Crash
    .
    Somewhere, I have come across information that this new “swine flu” does not appear to be affecting pigs. I have also read that, according to the CDC, this virus (at least presently) is susceptible (sensitive) to oseltamivir (Tamiflu ®) and zanamivir(Relenza ®). There are many photos on the web showing people wearing masks, but no gloves. The masks are not nearly as useful as gloves for flu protection, according to some who should know.
    .
    Now, this “swine” influenza A (H1N1) virus is composed of a very odd and unexpected combination of bird, swine, and human genomic segments. My guess, at 80% odds, is that this virus was created in some university experiment that breached containment. Possibly most major universities feel the need to run experiments with these deadly pathogens these days. It is possible (but seems unlikely) that some person who was suffering from low-grade swine flu was given a vaccination containing different “killed” viruses that retained genomic segments, which became incorporated into the H1N1 flu.
    .
    Tell’s comment included a link to a Global Research ca article by Patricia Doyle. She is a veterinarian (DVM) whose blog has been the go-to spot for pandemic illness for many years. Here old site’s server is now “missing,” but she is building a new site Emerging Disease Website, which will be a great resource.
    .
    My general take on animals as viral “reservoirs” is that there is great variation among species. It appears that ducks are far more “dangerous” than chickens, swine are far more “dangerous” than dogs, and so on. Here’s what goes on at the universities these days:
    .

    University of Wisconsin – Madison News Scientists isolate genes that made 1918 flu lethal
    Dec. 29, 2008
    by Terry Devitt
    .
    [….]
    To find the gene or genes that enabled the virus to invade the lungs, Kawaoka and his group blended genetic elements from the 1918 flu virus with those of a currently circulating avian influenza virus and tested the variants on ferrets, an animal that mimics human flu infection. .
    For the most part, substituting single genes from the 1918 virus onto the template of a much more benign contemporary virus yielded agents that could only replicate in the upper respiratory tract. One exception, however, included a complex of three genes that, acting in concert with another key gene, allowed the virus to efficiently colonize lung cells and make RNA polymerase, a protein necessary for the virus to reproduce.
    [….]

  2. nah

    i like pigs… pork is rad… sometimes you eat the pig and sometimes the pig eats you
    .

    .
    we are the robots
    ΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩ
    ELAINE; Sorry, had to ditch the link, nah.

  3. For an excellent background briefing on flu matters, I direct you to a recent blog by Elaine Meinel Supkis. Have a healthy week. — By James Howard Kunstler in Life After the Oil Crash
    .
    Somewhere, I have come across information that this new “swine flu” does not appear to be affecting pigs. I have also read that, according to the CDC, this virus (at least presently) is susceptible (sensitive) to oseltamivir (Tamiflu ®) and zanamivir(Relenza ®). There are many photos on the web showing people wearing masks, but no gloves. The masks are not nearly as useful as gloves for flu protection, according to some who should know.
    .
    Now, this “swine” influenza A (H1N1) virus is composed of a very odd and unexpected combination of bird, swine, and human genomic segments. My guess, at 80% odds, is that this virus was created in some university experiment that breached containment. Possibly most major universities feel the need to run experiments with these deadly pathogens these days. It is possible (but seems unlikely) that some person who was suffering from low-grade swine flu was given a vaccination containing different “killed” viruses that retained genomic segments, which became incorporated into the H1N1 flu.
    .
    Tell’s comment included a link to a Global Research ca article by Patricia Doyle. She is a veterinarian (DVM) whose blog has been the go-to spot for pandemic illness for many years. Here old site’s server is now “missing,” but she is building a new site Emerging Disease Website, which will be a great resource.
    .
    My general take on animals as viral “reservoirs” is that there is great variation among species. It appears that ducks are far more “dangerous” than chickens, swine are far more “dangerous” than dogs, and so on.

  4. Here’s what goes on at the universities these days:
    .

    University of Wisconsin – Madison News Scientists isolate genes that made 1918 flu lethal
    Dec. 29, 2008
    by Terry Devitt
    .
    [….]
    To find the gene or genes that enabled the virus to invade the lungs, Kawaoka and his group blended genetic elements from the 1918 flu virus with those of a currently circulating avian influenza virus and tested the variants on ferrets, an animal that mimics human flu infection. .
    For the most part, substituting single genes from the 1918 virus onto the template of a much more benign contemporary virus yielded agents that could only replicate in the upper respiratory tract. One exception, however, included a complex of three genes that, acting in concert with another key gene, allowed the virus to efficiently colonize lung cells and make RNA polymerase, a protein necessary for the virus to reproduce.
    [….]

  5. Elaine,

    I think nah’s long link has inadvertently blown up the frame of the comments, and its hell to read. You should be able to put it into standard HTML. Maybe this will then revert to the normal margins.

  6. emsnews

    Blues, research has to be done. We can’t figure out how to prevent a disease if they don’t do genetic experiments. This is because viral agents are basically stripped-down genetic delivery packages.
    .
    And yes, ducks are like pigs: they are much, much messier than chickens, for example. And they are waterbirds. Water is the great force at work here. Pigs, in the wild, are less a vector than domestic pigs.

  7. Jimmy

    Hong Kong flu was the emergence of H3N2 in humans. It was Influenza “A” but not H1N1 such as in 1918 and 2009.
    .
    “Pandemic influenza H2N2 viruses emerged in humans in 1957 and caused widespread morbidity and mortality in humans until 1968 when they were displaced by emerging H3N2 viruses.”
    http://tinyurl.com/dxsfr8
    .
    “The Hong Kong Flu was a category 2 flu pandemic caused by a strain of H3N2 descended from H2N2 by antigenic shift, in which genes from multiple subtypes reassorted to form a new virus.”
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H3N2
    ΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩ
    ELAINE; Thanks, I will correct it.

  8. payAttention

    ‘the concentrations of nutrients kills plants and spreads diseases’

    Not exactly. Nitrogen, mainly expressed as ammonium bicarbonate with a ph in the high eights burns the soil until nothing will grow. However the proliferation of corporate pig farms is a bane, yes. I guess you should know this since you farm.

    ‘Medieval boar spears were the most fearsome weapons a hunter could use. ‘

    Perhaps for the Nortons. East of the Rhine, a forked sapling sufficed to bring the boar down with the help of dogs. However the Nortons always counted on the people of the steppes to keep horrible things at bay.

    ‘Pigs are DANGEROUS.’ Correct. Since you live in an antispetic Norton world, you have never heard of pig preying on humans. Particularly children. I suggest you read Junot Diaz to get an idea of what that means. Or perhaps you could go to the old film, ‘The Outlaw Josey Wales’ where the fallen troops are preyed upon by a herd of swine.

    ‘Several things: one has to drink lots and lots of something and my Chinese friends gave me lots of ginger dark tea.’

    That’s ridiculous and dangerous. If you are interested in moderating cytokine responses through nutritional supplementation, I suggest you look at Mark Konlee’s site, which documents his triumph over HIV over the course of twenty years. I also hope that you send him a donation and receive his book, which could save your life.

  9. payAttention

    And yes I am astonished that Kunstler threw a link your way after the scurrilous, bad tempered screed that you threw his way. American Jews, go figure. As well, his craftsmanship stands clouds above yours.

  10. Raymond in Guelph ON

    Kunstler’s link to Elaine’s blog is the first such link that I have come across since “Dollarcollapse.com” linked to her a couple of years ago, which led me to discover her site. That was an exciting day.

    I credit Kunstler his craftmanship, but Elaine’s intellectual and moral breadth and depth, coupled with the sheer prolific quantity of her analysis, puts her in a league by herself. Kunstler is a weekly snack to Elaine’s three full meals a day. It has been hard keeping up with her these past two years but her posts are too compelling to miss.

    Has Josh Smith checked in, and would he be the contrarian JSmith (at least, contrarian to most of the posters here)? Wouldn’t he be the last of your readers to have a run-in with the powers that be?
    ΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩ
    ELAINE: Josh Smith isn’t JSmith. He is a very young footloose guy. JSmith is an old codger who is a supervisor.

  11. payAttention

    Thain complains of being unemployed since then — though one wonders why he doesn’t just shut the fuck up, buy half of Nantucket with his untold millions of booty, and learn to play the oboe or something.

    – Kunstler

    Now that’s funny, and that’s writing.

  12. billibaldi

    I do have to point out that the Wild Boar is a heraldic animal. For the most part they are shy animals of great intelligence that disappear when they see, hear or smell humans. When cornered they will fight and they use their tusks. This is why anything that the human uses against the boar had better be able to put at least four feet between the human and the pig. The wild boar is the kind of symbol you would choose to say that you do not look for a fight but if you do have fight it will be with heart and soul.

    Having said that, people do hunt feral pigs here in Australia with a knife and at least two dogs. The breed is a working breed normally a sort of cross between mastiff/staffordshire cross. If the dog does not have scars then it is not a real pig dog.

  13. billibaldi

    My favourite phrase from Jim Kunstlers latest post is “…the remaining Big Boyz are still lurching through the landscape like so many Frankenbanks, jazzed up on electric surges of digital cash.”

    Jim also mentioned a blogger worth reading – Charles Hugh Smith.

    I was worried since CHS, Jim and Elaine are all regular reads. Am I getting stuck in a rut?

  14. payAttention

    CHS went into denial mode. Prez iz not feeding the street traitors rope, he is regurgitating their campaign payola. I wish he were right though.

  15. David

    Billibaldi:
    __
    “people do hunt feral pigs here in Australia with a knife and at least two dogs. The breed is a working breed normally a sort of cross between mastiff/staffordshire cross. If the dog does not have scars then it is not a real pig dog.”
    ___
    Here in the woodlands of the Southeastern US, Swine were the preferred farm animals in times past before the days of refrigeration. The swine or hogs were allowed to forage through the woodlands and swamps and then were killed and the meat was packed with salt and sugar to preserve it. Since grazing cattle require a couple of acres per animal to sustain them, they were not very popular except for keeping a couple for milk/cheese production.
    ___
    Hogs are dangerous. They are omnivorous and will eat meat or plants…and they will roam and forage in packs…much like dogs. In fact, there are instances of hunters and farmers raising pigs that then joined in with packs of hunting dogs…and the pigs are much more intelligent than the dogs…and make good hunters…have a keen sense of smell just like dogs.
    ___
    During Army basic training, I was at a military base in the swamps between Georgia and Florida, and there were feral hogs there that roamed and foraged in groups. Our permanent training sergeants kept their personal firearms on base and checked them out after hours on weekends and hunted the wild hogs…and it was said to be a harrowing experience to be charged by a big boar because if you missed, he might cut you to pieces with his tusks.
    ___
    In the mountains of North Carolina there is still a hunting season on Russian boar. These dangerous animals were brought there during first of the twentieth century by the Vanderbilt Railroad millionaires who had a huge estate in the mountains…and they have flourished and spread since that time. The things are said to be very fast and very dangerous in a close encounter and you have to shoot very fast to down one, especially if he is charging you.
    ___
    We once owned a Vietnamese pot bellied pig for a pet. She was very intelligent, and we built her a house that could be heated for winter….a very sweet,clean animal if cared for properly, but she had her own ideas about things and she manipulated us into doing things her way.
    ___
    If you have ever owned swine of any type, you know that they suffer from the same diseases as humans, and if you have a cold or the flu, you do not interact with them or feed them or they will catch your diseases.
    ___
    An old hog farmer once told me that the best way to control a hog charge was to always carry a very limber long stick and strike the hog on the snout if it came at you….the danger is being knocked down. The hog cannot twist its head on its shoulders and can only make upward swipes with its tusks against you legs which are not deadly, but if it can knock you off your feet, it can grab your limbs fully in its mouth and can control you while it rips you apart.
    ___
    Large males are very dangerous and are very fast when they are young, and they will attack in groups.
    ___
    Domesticated females will attack with deadly results if they have a litter of little pigs…and you do not want to be near nursing females because they are very protective and very dangerous.
    Children should be kept away from swine at all times.
    ____

  16. JT

    A PBS documentary from 2006 on H1N1 1918 virus research.

    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/video/3318/w02-220.html

    Great video.

    Spanish flue attacked lower lugns and caused cytoksine storms and thats why it was so lethal.

    My home flu remedies:
    raw carlic (chop one clove up and let it sit for 15 min before swallowing the bits)
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allicin

    When you feel the flu coming on, take raw garlic, a huge overdoze on vitamin-c (2000mg) and a couple of pain killers and hit the bed for couple of days.
    Repeat for 3 first days of the flu.

    I also drink tea with raw ginger in it.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginger

    And when you wake up, change the sheets, ventilate your house and try to take a shower once a day.
    And just sleep it off don´t try to fight it.

    Works for me and ordinary flu at least.

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  18. JSmith

    “We won’t know unless there is an investigation.”
    .
    Since when do we need an investigation to know the capitalist United States is to blame? I thought that was an article of faith.

  19. emsnews

    JT, if you are unable to even stand up, you can’t do all those things. But yes, garlic is very good, I actually began taking garlic pills back then for this reason. These sorts of hyperflues are very dangerous the first 60 hours.
    .
    About boar hunting: I have done this out west with the wild peccary pigs. The one time a wild animal pack really, really scared me was when a pack of these pigs went after me near Kitt Peak. I ran into a mesquite tree and swung up into it and crouched there as they snorted and scurried below then they ran off. This is why I decided being armed when running in the desert [I was doing long distance running for competitive purposes].
    .
    In farmlands, pigs MUST be confined. In swamp/mountain areas, not so much. Feral pigs are very bad for farms and I had English Masiffs [wonderful dogs!] that patrolled for bears and such. This is the only way to keep these critters at bay. And of course, coyotes. Coyotes will take down many smaller dogs but not Mastiffs.

  20. charlottemom

    When will the MSM pick up on the Smithfield Farms connnection to the swine flu. It’s all over the Mexican press, but nary a whisper in the US. Media blackout on this aspect of the story as MSM too busy reporting all panic all the time

  21. CEO Nutcracker

    Great article. Thanks for the background on this funky virus. It had shades of the ‘anthrax scare’, that still reeks of scandal.

    Below the CEO, Joseph Luter III, of Smithfield, was honored with the “Grinch of the Year” award for ill treatment of his workers.

    http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/6297/

    I don’t eat meat except on rare occasions. And it is only organically farmed and raised when I do. All the major food manufacturers care very little about food safety. Go local and organic when it is possible.

  22. emsnews

    http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/6297/

    With 28% of nearly 10,000 votes cast, Smithfield Chairman Joseph Luter III narrowly beat out American Airlines CEO Gerard Arpey to win the seventh annual online “Grinch of the Year” election sponsored by National Jobs with Justice. Nominated by the Justice @ Smithfield Campaign, the company is criticized for maintaining an environment of fear and intimidation for workers. For over ten years now, workers at the Tar Heel plant have fought relentlessly for a voice on the job.

    American Airlines President and CEO Gerard Arpey came in a very close second with 27% of the vote. In 2003, workers gave concessions to keep the airline out of bankruptcy. Now that the company is back in the black, upper-level management is reaping the benefits with millions of dollars in bonuses, but workers get nothing. Fifteen percent of the votes went to Verizon Business’ Bob Toohey for his efforts to suppress worker organizing. Another 13% of the vote went to write-in candidate United Airlines’ CEO Glenn Tilton, and the remaining votes were split among Burger King CEO John W. Chidsey, American Motion Picture and Television Producers President J. Nicholas Counter III, and a number of write-in candidates.

  23. Paul S

    The Arpey’s and Luter’s of this world will never learn it seems. I guess this is the type of manager one gets when the Jack Welch/GE “method” is adopted. GE may have to declare bankruptcy soon, but the Welch acolytes are STILL mouthing the GE/Six Sigma mantras. This is world class innovation???HAHAHAHA

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