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| -Signs, Portents, and the Weather- |
| Ebola, Islam and Hillary |
| 2014-10-27 |
| [JEWISHWORLDREVIEW] Alicia Colon discusses the three most pressing problems the country faces right now. Since I retired I never seem to have time to think, or maybe my thought processes are grinding to a halt. I still have a few turns of the piston left, so I'll expound my own views. Ebola According to the CDC, "Ebola is spread through direct contact with blood and body fluids of a person already showing symptoms of Ebola. Ebola is not spread through the air, water, food, or mosquitoes." They're saying that the disease isn't spread by airborne means. I have my suspicions about the mosquitoes. They suck blood and they don't brush their suckers or siphon tubes after feasting. Given the numbers, and the infection of people who in theory are wearing gloves and at least a layer of clothing while caring for the victims, my thought is "How much contact is necessary with the precious bodily fluids?" The nurse who was shrieking about the violation of her basic human rights is in the same category as people who intentionally spread HIV. We (the civilized world) used to have epidemics of typhoid, typhus, cholera, measles, mumps, chicken pox and probably spavins and galls. And don't forget plague--black, bubonic, pneumonic, and other varieties. In 1918 Spanish flu struck a half billion people and killed one out of five. Quarantine during the incubation period of diseases was and remains the thing to do to stop it. Without it you get Typhoid Mary: 53 people infected, of whom three died. They kept her quarantined for thirty years. Vaccine development looks like it's become a pretty speedy process, at least to people who aren't infected. The death wagons picking up corpses on the streets for mass burial aren't in the national future. Probably we can expect an infection rate comparable to that of the great Swine Flu Epidemic of a few years back. So what else has ebola done? It's all political. First of all, the World Health Organization has been shown to be about as useful as a brassiere on a steer. Probably I've missed something, but its function seems to be to exist. The formerly respected CDC doesn't look well. It's got (C. Northcote) Parkinson's disease. The reflected glare of the Obama regime is highlighting all its sluggish and contradictory responses and probably making it look worse than it actually is. The regime response has been occasionally hilarious, but we all knew it was a mess, from the time B.O. claimed to be the smartest fellow in the room. We don't have a surgeon general because the guy nominated thinks guns are a public health problem. They're lots of things, but they're not a communicable disease. The idea of withdrawing the nomination and settling on someone who's chosen for his medical and administrative knowledge seems to have never occurred to anyone. Hillary Clinton The Clintons are a cross between old southern county court house politix and Saul Alinksy. Obama's the smartest person in the room; Hillary's the smartest woman in the world. Where does the difference lie? Clinton's record as a senator was lackluster. Her time as secretary of state was lackluster until Benghazi. She's given to outlandish claims: She's named after Sir Edmund Hillary, who climbed Mount Everest a couple years after she was born (her middle name's not Norgay, either); they were flat broke when they left the White House; she was under sniper fire when she went to Bosnia. Rumor has it she's got a bad heart, or she's had a stroke. Other rumor has it that Chelsea's thinking about going into the family business. The final analysis: She's a politician. She hasn't yet been turned into a pillar of salt. She might run in 2016 if she thinks she has a chance. That's two years from now. There are other things more important--next week's elections if you're into politix over all other things. Islamic State I'm probably prejudiced in the matter, but this is the most important subject of the three. Al-Qaeda is anemic as a result of dronezaps. Zawahiri isn't as much of a leader as the late Osama was. When was the last time you saw a Zawahiri tee shirt? All the "cool" Qaeda branches are pledging their undying devotion to Caliph al-Baghdadi. The Caliphate is what all those Qaeda-affiliated terror groups were supposed to be working toward. No one wanted an Ottoman restoration (except for Erdogan) but everybody with a turban thought the Abbasids were pretty nifty and they were going to be palace guards or grand viziers or something in the chain of command, while the peasantry would remain peasants only they'll be required to be devout. Long-term, this sort of stupidity is self-limiting. Nigeria is infested with Boko Haram, which translates as "Western Education is Forbidden." They're driving trucks right now and shooting guns and that sort of fun thing. Next generation, with their education firmly rooted in the Koran as taught in the right madrassas, will regard the guns and rockets and trucks as magick because it takes something more than being able to recite the Koran from memory to keep them going. In Libya's Derna, where Ansar al-Shariah has pledged to the Caliphate, the turbans have banned the teaching of foreign languages, mathematics and science. In Mosul, which we might consider IS's heartland, they've implemented a shariah school curriculum that bans art, music, national history, literature and Christianity. Just shut up, tighten your turban, and wave your weaponry. In the short run, IS is a danger. They're the Abu Musab al-Zarqawi wing of Qaeda writ large. Terror is a tool, though we sometimes forget it's not the only one in the box. We're not looking at the junior varsity, but at the hard core. They're waging war to the death against "crusaders." Meanwhile, back in Crusaderland, the regime is piddling along doing community organizing and trying to suppress the growth of the Tea Party. Contrary to published reports, "right wing extremism" isn't the world's most pressing problem. The longest-term danger isn't from IS, which will fall because of its own brutality, but colonization. Streams of Moslems and Africans are showing up in Europe and living in enclaves of their own culture. The Ostrogoths used to do that. Eventually there was a Visigoth kingdom in Spain, or maybe it was Vandals. North Africa, prior to the Moslem colonization, was ruled by the Empire, then by more recent Germanic conquerors (Vandals, if I recall). Turkey used to be chock full of Greek speaking Christians. Those later Romans were all for diversity. Warfare is so expensive, and it can be dangerous. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #3 Africa has plenty of mosquitoes and there is no evidence of mosquitoes as a vector for infesting people w Ebola. To do this the virus would have to survive the digestion cycle of the female mosquito (only the female draws blood) for the three or four hours between bites. Malaria, for example, has evolved to be able to do this. Ebola probably hasn't yet. |
| Posted by: lord garth 2014-10-27 19:09 |
| #2 Agreed with one exception. Hillary doesn't have a bad heart, she has no heart whatsoever. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2014-10-27 17:07 |
| #1 Now there's a troika of pestilence. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2014-10-27 15:41 |