is swine flu the new al qaida...?

[teuchter]

The thread had a question mark in its title, but folk seem to have missed that...

True, but your subsequent posts seem to indicate you have a fairly strong idea of what you reckon the answer to your question is:

Thousands will die this year from swine flu in britain? Well, let's come back in five months and see how your prediction stands up. I doubt somehow this will come to bear. Maybe a hundred or two.

Worst public health issue for decades? Again, seems like alarmist nonsense to me. Almost as deadly as all that terrorism that was coming to kill all those american and british and australian lives. That's why i compared the two. It's all bullshit. People have always died of flu. Nothing new here except the media hype that seems to have snared so many, including yourself.

But you then seem to recognise the role that corporate interests play in all of this. It's all interconnected. Swine flu is simply another one of those tools they use to keep us all in a cloud of fear. So much easier to manipulate.

 

[tarannau]

The 'I haven't made up my mind' bollocks is basically a nutless excuse to repost loosely sourced nonsense from Fela's favoured conspiracy loving websites.

At least Jazzz has the courage of his convictions. Fela spends significant time pontificating to others and implying what 'we' should think/are thinking whilst leaving himself a get out clause of 'open minded' questioning. It's a bit of a sneak trick tbh

 

[Dillinger4]

How many people has he called 'closed minded' yet?

 

[8den]

The 'I haven't made up my mind' bollocks is basically a nutless excuse to repost loosely sourced nonsense from Fela's favoured conspiracy loving websites.

At least Jazzz has the courage of his convictions. Fela spends significant time pontificating to others and implying what 'we' should think/are thinking whilst leaving himself a get out clause of 'open minded' questioning. It's a bit of a sneak trick tbh

Yeah I'm reminded of his attempts to claim to be on the fence on all those 9/11 threads. "Just asking questions?" "I don't know what to think!" "I haven't made my mind up, but here's this link". Fela is a complete intellectual coward, incapable of supporting his own paranoid convictions, and do la la conspiracy theories.

Do fuck off Fela theres a good chap.

 

[Dillinger4]

Funny how these threads always turn out exactly the same.

You would think somebody as open minded as fela would be open minded to being wrong.

 

[elbows]

'always unpredictable'? Sounds like newspeak. flu has always as straightforward as a bag of chips during my lifetime.

Well sure there are some constants, but as influenza is quite unstable, its considered hard to predict in detail. For example, I doubt you saw the 1999 epidemic coming years in advance. i doubt you could work out what seasonal strains to put in the vaccine years in advance. I doubt you can say what the death rate will be from this pandemic, nor were various experts correct when they applied the knowledge of seasonal flu patterns to this swine flu - it didnt die down over summer in anything like the way that was assumed.

 

[bluestreak]

Swine Flu is not al-quaeda. For a start, I have swine flu, whereas al-quaeda aren't giving me a sore throat and headache.

 

[fogbat]

I think Fela has it the wrong way around: Al Qaeda are actually the new Spanish Flu.

I saw it on a website.

 

[8den]

Swine Flu is not al-quaeda. For a start, I have swine flu, whereas al-quaeda aren't giving me a sore throat and headache.

I think I speak for everyone here when I say

 

[skyscraper101]

Swine Flu is not al-quaeda. For a start, I have swine flu, whereas al-quaeda aren't giving me a sore throat and headache.

Well quite.

However I did hear that al-quaeda are now sending out emails telling you that you can catch swine flu from tinned pork

I reckon its just spam though.

 

[fela fan]

It's not really about "believing". It's about being able to assess the relative plausibility of different contentions.

As far as swine flu is concerned, we have two suggestions:

- Swine flu appeared naturally as do most viruses
- Swine flu was engineered and deliberately released into the population to political ends.

I cannot say with 100% certainty that it's the former but having looked at the evidence, the former seems vastly more probable than the latter.

You seem to have come to a different conclusion. Reading this thread suggests that you have come to this conclusion on the basis of unreliable evidence.

Well, you've managed to be privy to evidence that i've not had the advantage of seeing. Unless you have a different understanding of what constitutes evidence. I thought the whole point of evidence was to deliver certainty. You seem to be contradicting yourself there.

I have come to no conclusion. I find it quite fantastical that certain people could be prepared to introduce deliberately a virus that could kill so many people, and in addition to then create a vaccine, enforce it to the populations of 194 nations with the idea that the vaccine will then kill millions more. I cannot get my head around this. But then i remember our species' history, including the likes of hitler, pol pot, stalin, amin, mao, nixon, kissinger, reagan, and any number of despots who had no problem in causing millions to lose their lives, and millions more to suffer dreadfully.

So you see while i find it next to impossible to accept the version that burgermeister writes about (for one), how can i rule out such a course of action when our history has plenty of precedents?

Furthermore, the power and money that is involved in pharma, food, alcohol, tobacco industries is overwhelming. And with the knowledge of what power, and absolute power, does to human beings, then again i cannot rule out what appears to me a very unlikely scenario.

I have a distinctly unmade up mind teuchter, unlike many on urban who seem to have absolute certainty that the unlikely version could in fact be the real one, and when i hear of evidence they've consulted it just describes closed minds to me mate. I'd be really interested in the evidence you've got available. I would love to just accept your first vetrsion.

 

[fela fan]

When will we be free from the pandemic of cynicism that robs us of what little power we possess?

The leadership we have, and the influence and power big industry has over them, leave us with very little. In fact arguably we're left with just enough to stop us from revolting. I think it's always been a balancing act that those criminal elements in political power, and those greedy and profit-obsessed industrialists manage on the whole to tread quite skilfully.

It helps when you have ordinary punters who scream all sorts of abuse at those who continue to ask questions of our leaders and our system, while displaying such certainty in their own views. This last bit of course is steeped in irony because that certainty they have is one of the planks of their accusations of others.

Over the last few years it has become obvious to so many more millions of people that the leaders will lie at ease. We've seen it over twat time and time again. People have come to realise this. Yet, here we are with all this information about a pandemic, and many of those same millions have reverted back to believing our leaders are working on our behalf instead of big industry.

They must be laughing all the way to the bank. Amazing what power you have if you control the media. That way you spread fear into the population, and clarity of thought is the loser. This has been proven time and time again, yet here we are with the latest global 'problem', and still people want to believe their leaders. It's almost quaint really. It is twat all over again.

 

[fela fan]

How many people has he called 'closed minded' yet?

About three here on urban. Including yourself.

But by definition of most humans, they exist with closed minds. Just about everybody has their mind closed to a certain degree... culture, society, education, peer pressure, need to conform, need for non-alienation, manipulative media, all these are influences on closing the mind to what it doesn't want to hear. Again, this can be seen throughout human history, and is particularly prevalent at this juncture, despite many thinking we've made progress on this front.

And there are quite a few closed minds here on this thread, and the psychologically interesting thing is that they can't see it!!!

 

[Badger Kitten]

Swine flu is an easily-spread influenza virus, Al Qaeda is a proscribed terrorist organisation that has expanded into a kind of brand name for violent extremist takifiri Islamisim. They are no more connected to each other than the 'Real IRA' is the 'new measles'

And this thread is just an excuse to wheel some tired old conspiraloonery tropes in under the guise of medical and political topicality.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

"Kitten" - is that a Jewish name?

 

[Badger Kitten]

It's a Bilderberg honorific title

 

[Dillinger4]

About three here on urban. Including yourself.

But by definition of most humans, they exist with closed minds. Just about everybody has their mind closed to a certain degree... culture, society, education, peer pressure, need to conform, need for non-alienation, manipulative media, all these are influences on closing the mind to what it doesn't want to hear. Again, this can be seen throughout human history, and is particularly prevalent at this juncture, despite many thinking we've made progress on this front.

And there are quite a few closed minds here on this thread, and the psychologically interesting thing is that they can't see it!!!

Do you have a closed mind?

 

[elbows]

The leadership we have, and the influence and power big industry has over them, leave us with very little. In fact arguably we're left with just enough to stop us from revolting. I think it's always been a balancing act that those criminal elements in political power, and those greedy and profit-obsessed industrialists manage on the whole to tread quite skilfully.

It helps when you have ordinary punters who scream all sorts of abuse at those who continue to ask questions of our leaders and our system, while displaying such certainty in their own views. This last bit of course is steeped in irony because that certainty they have is one of the planks of their accusations of others.

Over the last few years it has become obvious to so many more millions of people that the leaders will lie at ease. We've seen it over twat time and time again. People have come to realise this. Yet, here we are with all this information about a pandemic, and many of those same millions have reverted back to believing our leaders are working on our behalf instead of big industry.

They must be laughing all the way to the bank. Amazing what power you have if you control the media. That way you spread fear into the population, and clarity of thought is the loser. This has been proven time and time again, yet here we are with the latest global 'problem', and still people want to believe their leaders. It's almost quaint really. It is twat all over again.

Well let me try again to explain my position.

Firstly the attempt to paint everyone into 2 camps, that people either believe the government and have concrete assumptions about things, or they are wide-open truth-seekers on a pathway to expose the true horror, is false.

Belief is not an all or nothing thing, its a spectrum. There are plenty of people who are relatively open minded, who recognise many of the problems, lies and horrors that power, governments, beurocracy, systems, big business, markets, etc bring to humanity. Yet they might still decide that sometimes the government, or certain sections of it, are sometimes right or are at least trying to act in the right way to a situation that affects their population. They may be all too aware of the horrors, but they have a more balanced view about why things are done a certain way, about the motivations of those with some sort of power. Their level of cynicism towards government & business may still be high, but simply has different boundaries, different personal instinct about what the limits are to terrible acts committed by government.

Such things can also be heavily influenced by other personal beliefs, ideologies, ideas about how humans should organise themselves, etc. And sometimes its quite obvious that we coose to believe certain things because it helps us in some way, supports our current worldview or agenda or sense of self and role in the world, fighting for the good cause, whatever that cause may be.

So then there are people who decide to go further, whose suspicions about what government & friends are capable of cause them to talk in ways that end up being ridiculed by a lot of people. What draws people to such a position? The same factors as with anybody else, but the balance ends up a little different. Some may find it more convenient or enjoyable to completely demonize the enemy, to paint them as an even darker and far more lopsided phenomenon than may actually be the case. Thre is certainly enough horror and corruption in the world, its understandable that one possible reaction to it is to have an even more sinister picture of the world than may actually be the case. Other anxieties and fears and events in life, and in some cases paranoia, further shape this.

Anyway I could ramble on some more about that stuff but I'll skip to the bottom line.

What are you trying to achieve?

Focus on your beliefs about how things should be, and how to get there, more than trying to make the horror story we already live in even gorier.

Most people probably have enough reasons to dislike governments, institutions, etc, they have their own experiences and beliefs, they dont need a whole new bunch of unproven stuff thrust in their face, and I would not trust any movement that was trying to tap into 'good versus evil' emotions of the masses via highly emotive fact-free rhetoric.

If you must try to tackle the beast head on by exposing it, rather than focussing on what to do instead, then at least try to genuinely shed a light on murky areas. Speculation and lurching to worst-case evil conspiracy possibilities are no torch. Many people know to trust them even less than government, they can quite rightly make a mockery of being asked to wake up and stop believing the crap, only to be fed a bunch of even bigger crap. There are many fine examples of humans going against the flow and exposing some truth and some good coming of it. Conspiracy theorists do not seem to have fallen into this category often. Even in a world where things are covered up and bad stuff happens, pointing at shadows doesnt help. And its true that people with beliefs which are out of step with the time, contrary or dangerous, or just plain uncomfortable for people to consider, will face a hard time of it. So you have to try even harder, even if you dont think thats fair, its what you have to do if the aim is actually to make a difference, as opposed to just enjoying feeling special to be one of the awake ones preaching to the bozos. You have to be more open, accountable, credible, precise and knowledgeable than those who you attack.

 

[Dillinger4]

He wont read that you know.

 

[elbows]

And as for the flu, here is how and why my brain formed the opinion it has at the moment:

Flu is real, large outbreaks cause issues for some individuals and aspects of a society as a whole, therefore various scenarios have to be planned for and talked about, and when things happen, some sort of management of the situation and action is required. But because talking about flu causes all sorts of reactions in people, and because flu can be unpredictable and affects people in a wide variety of ways, ranging from not even knowing you've had it to dying, its always going to be messy. The media has features that make it prone to being sloppy and scaremongering, governments make mistakes, systems get overloaded or make bad decisions, modern medicine isnt perfect, commercial pressures exist,humans make mistakes, we can never fully control the situation.

These factors all seem to be in play right now. There are various useful debates to be had about various aspects of vaccines, ranging from safety to who should get them as a priority. People will continue to question whether there has been too much or too little response, the government may get some stick if intensive care capacity turns out to be inadequate at peak of pandemic waves, or if vaccine gets delayed past their optimistic forecasts. If we get out of the pandemic with little more than a boatload of complaints about government & media overreaction, we will be very lucky, its the best outcome we could get if thats all we've got to worry about. Still too early to tell.

As for theories about more sinister things going on, well my views on that are fairly simple. Its not impossible, but I would need to see some bloody good evidence because it isnt all that likely. Governments tend to mess with other countries or with specific subsections of their population. Flu isnt good for that, it cant be aimed precisely, it gets everywhere. So when man influences the evolution of flu, its usually by accidents, which will inevitably happen once in a while.

And as for vaccines, there are some interesting health aspects to be debated with vaccines in general, but if you strip away the hysteria then there are sensible reasons why vaccination is so used, that go beyond the profit motive. Its one of the main weapons they've got, the temptation to perhaps overuse it has proven hard to resist. The story of vaccinations has many tales of dramatic success, just as there are also some people who have suffered. To point out the dangers without fully acknowledging the scale of successes and the deaths that have been avoided through vaccination, makes a mockery of the debate and is yet another example where conspiracyspeak gets in the way of the truth, and sends us back to the dark ages.

 

[Badger Kitten]

Cracking post(s), elbows.

especially the second to last one

 

[Jazzz]

To point out the dangers without fully acknowledging the scale of successes and the deaths that have been avoided through vaccination, makes a mockery of the debate and is yet another example where conspiracyspeak gets in the way of the truth, and sends us back to the dark ages.

Piffle. The truth is that all the grand vaccine success stories fall apart if you look at them objectively, which very few do.

If they have saved lives so dramatically anywhere, this should be very obvious from the appropriate death rate graph, showing a sharp and corresponding decline in the death rate of the disease following the introduction of vaccination.

It's the simplest of statistics.

There is no such graph.

 

[Bob_the_lost]

Piffle. The truth is that all the grand vaccine success stories fall apart if you look at them objectively, which very few do.

If they have saved lives so dramatically anywhere, this should be very obvious from the appropriate death rate graph, showing a sharp and corresponding decline in the death rate of the disease following the introduction of vaccination.

It's the simplest of statistics.

There is no such graph.

They don't but it's nice to see the same old bullshit and lies being trotted out time and time and time again. You are an unchanging rock in the river of knowledge.

 

[elbows]

It's the simplest of statistics.

There is no such graph.

Its not quite the simplest of statistics because accurately recording the cause of death for all people of the world is not trivial, there is plenty of estimation involved.

However there should still be some graphs which show clear trends, I will try to find some, not sure how you can proclaim that no such graphs exist, just because the graphs you've seen on crackpot sites try to demonstrate the opposite.

What I would expect such graphs to show would be a general decline in cases due to general improvements to healthcare, and then the decline accelerating when vaccine is introduced.

 

[elbows]

And whilst I havent found a graph for it yet, just estimates, Im amazed if you are in complete denial about smallpox - do you think it was not a serious problem before vaccination, that it did not kill many millions? Or do you think it wa eradicated for reasons other than vaccine?

Either way Ive wasted more than enough time on your baloney, Im off to do something productive like learning a motion graphics application so I can make videos to counter the quacking bullshit merchants.