World War E

World War E
(Ebola)


A call to violence flies the wind,
and wakes the sleeping horde;
display butterflies unpinned,
resurrected from their board!

Crack!  The specimen window glass
like a stone back rolled;
life and death in stark contrast,
command as quisling lord!

The rumor’d wars, the pandemics
us to their bidding bind;
we cannot run, we cannot mix,
as the civil knots unwind!


--

Written September 17, 2014 upon hearing about President Obama's plan to combat Ebola.
Disease, Poverty, and Ignorance are much greater enemies than ISIS could ever hope to be, for all that is needed for peace is for enough men to kill each other and to exhaust the capability of warfare.

I greatly disagree with arming the Syrian rebels, for that is exactly how we helped to created ISIS, which itself followed our Frankenstein-like creation of Al Qa'ida.
To continue to follow such a grotesque and monstrous policy is the path to ruin.

Hopefully, we may reclaim ourselves by the much more difficult battle against Ebola, which requires a commitment to the world for the present and for the future, and whose aim is solely that of the welfare of the peoples of the world.

How long has it taken us to respond to a crisis which is not political and whose implementation is not problematic? The photo above is from the following blog article:
http://leschroniquesderorschach.blogspot.com/2014/03/une-epidemie-debola-ravage-la-guinee-et.html

Les Chroniques de Rorschach
samedi 22 mars 2014
Une épidémie d'Ebola ravage la Guinée et la Sierra Leone 

The date is Saturday, March 22, 2014 and the title is "Ebola epidemic raging in Guinea and Sierra Leone".

So it has been at least all of 2014 until now that the world is mounting a response that might possibly succeed.

Let this also be a warning to those who think the elites that run the world are competent to maintain the health and well-being of the world community.

--

Ebola

There is a person in California who is in isolation for possible Ebola virus infection. He is exhibiting signs of viral infection, and he was recently somewhere in West Africa.

Death by epidemic was one of my favorite obsessions back in the 90s, along with financial melt-down and future dystopia. Such themes have also been frequent in films and books, and they form the " lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate " embellishing the entrance to the cavern of the future for our generation.
("Abandon all hope, you who enter here"; from Dante's Inferno)

Science is on top of things, but the scientific process is not terribly robust, it being but a human endeavor and prone to human failings, like viable smallpox cultures hidden away in a desk for 40 years.

Although we are told that Ebola cannot be transmitted through the air ( as an aerosol, a colloid composed of fine particles and liquids in gas - in this case, the gas is air ).

I believe that exactly means that Ebola cannot be transmitted through the air between human beings, and not that it is entirely impossible that the Ebola virus can be in some sort of infectious aerosol.
Studies have been done:

Are we *sure* Ebola isn’t airborne?
Posted by Tara C. Smith on August 3, 2014 
http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/2014/08/03/are-we-sure-ebola-isnt-airborne/

[...]
Let me back up. The paper in question was an experimental study done in the wake of the 2008 finding of the Reston Ebola virus in pigs and a previous study looking at the Zaire virus in pigs. In the air transmission study, they inoculated pigs with Ebola and examined transmission to macaques (who were not in direct contact with the infected pigs). They did find aerosolized Ebola in air samples, and some of the macaques did come down with symptoms of Ebola. So, it looked like pigs could spread Ebola through the air, which is something that had already been suggested by the epidemiology of the 2008 pig Ebola outbreak. It’s always nice when experimental data matches up with that observed during a real-life occurrence of the virus.

*However*, the kicker was not that Ebola is transmitted by air in human outbreaks, but rather that there may be something unique about pig physiology that allows them to generate more infectious aerosols as a general rule–so though aerosols aren’t a transmission route between primates (including humans, as well as non-human primates used experimentally), pigs may be a bigger threat as far as aerosols. Thus, this may be important for transmission of swine influenza and other viruses as well as Ebola.
[...]

(underline emphasis mine)

If air-borne transmission is heavily dependent upon the virus-carrying aerosols, there should be investigation into the nature of pig aerosols and how they differ from aerosols produced by humans (such as the aerosols produced by sneezing). However, the question of how pig aerosols significantly differ from human aerosols has not received a lot of attention.

At the beginning of this month, it seems that orders went out to burn the bodies of Ebola victims in Western Africa.
Heat may produce aerosols, such as a laboratory situation where a hot loop is introduced into a culture. A body which is not uniformly subjected to virus killing heat may produce an aerosol, I should think.
What the nature of those aerosols are is anybody's guess.

And, by the by, the Ebola virus is transmitted by contact with bodily fluids, such as are contained in spit, blood, urine, feces, etc.
The old belief that aerosols are created when one flushes the toilet are actually true; in experiments where toilet bowls were swabbed with some bacterium, measurable amounts of bacteriua-containing aerosols were detected after the first few flushes.

--

The Next Systemic Crisis

[I have picked the illustration at random from a grab-bag of "coming crises".
Prepare for two things:
(1) to meet your Maker, and
(2) the death of money....... or some other nonce notion that inhabits the minds of those who make Money from the frightened.]

I have heard quite enough about possible financial crises recently, including from my mother, who has become a believer in vigorous market corrections after the Dow dropped 300 points or so last week (It did the same in February last, but she forgot).
She had a financial advisor whose job was to collect sizable fees, leaving her and my father fully invested in Real Estate as 2007 lapsed into 2008.

She has a litany of how many people lost money, and it could not be helped. She forgets my story of how I bailed out of everything in March, 2008, and pretty much put my money in my mattress. I am but a foolish offspring who lost nothing. She also forgets that the stock market has climbed back since 2008, and losses have been eclipsed.
I am neither a good steward nor a foolish steward; I am a "kid".

The present crises in the minds of such people, many of whom listen to FOX, are mostly due - I think - to the fact that something is not quite right... and Obama is President!

I don't see a financial crisis. We are all too aware of such things. We are on the qui vive!, so the French say: our eyes are peeled!
There will be scams, to be sure, but real systemic crises need to flourish in the shadow world where there are no newspapers, blogs, TV reporters, or any information media.

Back in 2007 and 2008, there was plenty of warning, only it was not in the "popular" media, but in more arcane and professional type publications.

The next crisis is quite obvious, but we cannot evaluate it even though it is plainly before us, for we have not lived through its destruction yet.
We appreciate a financial crisis because we've lived through one. But our rationality and understanding continues to be befuddled by things we have not personally experienced, nor which form a robust part of a Political or Religious or Social Narrative already. That is, we can believe fervently in a Story that we already believe in...
That is how we operate.

The Crisis is the failure of government to govern in such a way that the interests of all the Stakeholders in the country derive some benefit.

Majority Rule in a Democracy implies two things:
(1) there actually is governance, or "rule",
(2) the majority needs to comprehend the needs of the minority within its program.

If not, then the majority rule is Anarchy or Tyranny.

--

More Headaches !

Eureka Alert:

Comprehensive analysis of impact spherules supports theory of cosmic impact 12,800 years ago
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-05/uoc--cao052113.php

(Santa Barbara, California) ––

About 12,800 years ago when the Earth was warming and emerging from the last ice age, a dramatic and anomalous event occurred that abruptly reversed climatic conditions back to near-glacial state. According to James Kennett, UC Santa Barbara emeritus professor in earth sciences, this climate switch fundamentally –– and remarkably –– occurred in only one year, heralding the onset of the Younger Dryas cool episode.

The cause of this cooling has been much debated, especially because it closely coincided with the abrupt extinction of the majority of the large animals then inhabiting the Americas, as well as the disappearance of the prehistoric Clovis culture, known for its big game hunting.

"What then did cause the extinction of most of these big animals, including mammoths, mastodons, giant ground sloths, American camel and horse, and saber- toothed cats?" asked Kennett, pointing to Charles Darwin's 1845 assessment of the significance of climate change. "Did these extinctions result from human overkill, climatic change or some catastrophic event?" The long debate that has followed, Kennett noted, has recently been stimulated by a growing body of evidence in support of a theory that a major cosmic impact event was involved, a theory proposed by the scientific team that includes Kennett himself.

Now, in one of the most comprehensive related investigations ever, the group has documented a wide distribution of microspherules widely distributed in a layer over 50 million square kilometers on four continents, including North America, including Arlington Canyon on Santa Rosa Island in the Channel Islands. This layer –– the Younger Dryas Boundary (YDB) layer –– also contains peak abundances of other exotic materials, including nanodiamonds and other unusual forms of carbon such as fullerenes, as well as melt-glass and iridium. This new evidence in support of the cosmic impact theory appeared recently in a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences.

12,800 years ago was not all that long past. The Clovis culture mentioned was a human culture in the Americas... they experienced meteoric climate change...

Could happen again... maybe?
What's our response as a common species? SSDD, as Stephen King writes in Dreamcatcher. SSDD... observation, adage, maxim... and epitaph.

--

The Disaster Leitmotif

reprint from 2007

This deals with our recurring Disaster Theme of History, and follows on the latest shootings. I think many of us feel that we are in a dead end without any exits. There is at least one exit, and that is our own faith and optimism.


I was trained in the British-American tradition of philosophy. In my senior year at University, I discovered Sartre. I resisted at first, but then fell into complicity with him. I do not think I have ever come across a philosopher I did not like. I mean, I agree with them all. Where some people see some chasm or dichotomy between the British and the Continental tradition, I see different ways of looking at the same phenomena and a sort of a parable about men in blindfolds describing a pachyderm: the one touching the truck says that the elephant resembles a tentacular creature while the man touching the leg say it resembles the pillars at the ends of the earth.

I think one of the things about the Roman Catholic Church I found most displeasing was the tradition of Thomas Aquinas' philosophy and little else: a myopia in philosophy. I could never quite reconcile my vision of Jesus with the mediaeval obsession with philosophy applied to divine things. I always had a sneaking suspicion that if somehow Jacques Maritain could appear to Jesus in His own day, Jesus would think a new type of Pharisee had come for a visit.

Jean Beaudrillard passed on this year and he spoke of hyperreality. The realm of philosophy is similar to other realms of hyperreality. I have always been fascinated by the enclosures of fancy we create and then try to insulate them from contamination by an intrusive reality. I considered the run up to the War in Iraq just such a hyperreality. It was an excellent experiment to observe how such things are created.
We see today in Global Research http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CHI20070521&articleId=5720  

The National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive, signed on May 9, 2007 declares that in the event of a “catastrophic event”, George W. Bush can become what is best described as "a dictator": "The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government." This directive, completely unnoticed by the media, and given no scrutiny by Congress, literally gives the White House unprecedented dictatorial power over the government and the country, bypassing the US Congress and obliterating the separation of powers. The directive also placed the Secretary of Homeland Security in charge of domestic “security”. The full text is below. A critical analysis on the directive can be found here. This is another step towards official martial law (see “US government fans homeland security fears”), which suggests that a new "catastrophic event" 9/11-type pretext could be in the pipeline.

It may be surprising that the most interesting thing I find in this is that it is another thread of End Of Time, or Approaching Disaster, or Armageddon Is Just Around The Corner; these are the hyperrealities which infest our minds.
There is a difference between a dispassionate appraisal of reality and a hyperreality, a virtual reality, if it please you, that exists in another dimension, whether it be in the individual mind, or the collective social awareness of a nation, or in cyberspace.

Since 9-11, we have been mostly dealing in states of hyperreality. We have chosen up sides and each side has striven to delineate the parameters of its own hyperreality. Then we scream back and forth. We scream because the taste and smell of the real is so intense, how could we see that hyperreality is not the same as reality?
Hyperreality is constructed of the same building blocks of Remembered and Historical Events with which we create the real. Thus, its smell must be the smell of reality. Its taste must be the taste of reality. Its remembered beauty must be the remembered beauty of reality. It is the Logic that has lost its sense of direction.
The Logic which compels the construction of Reality is no longer the hidden algorithm of many nodes, web-like wherein we balance like spiders in a filmy gauze suspended above the void. The Logic has become distorted and no longer an inborn song of creativity. It is an inflexible and rigid mechanism, unbending and without a sense of History - neither coming from the past nor going to the future, but merely a focus of a moment of present obsession.

The Themes of Disaster flows in and out of our lives: from Virginia Tech to Iraq to Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD). The Disaster Figure always wears a new face: Virginia Tech or John Muhammed or Saddam Hussein...or Iran...or the Religious Right or Islamic Fundamentalism. But the god of Disaster is always there in our minds and in our prayers...and in our hyperreality. When I have said the mind can be a prison, this is what I was referring to. Philosophy should not enslave, not incarcerate.

Unspeakable Horror

Heard on the Sunday morning news-blab:  How could a quiet science student have committed such an unspeakable horror?

We have inured ourselves to horror; it takes more and more of the old "unspeakable" to move us anymore: more blood, more gore, more sexual sadism....  does the most popular ebook come to mind yet, people?
We really cannot get enough, can we? We live in the Age of Drones (murder made squeaky clean) and Sadism (sex made squeaky cold).

Welcome to the future.
--

Entanglement

Warner Bros. also moved to pull trailers for its upcoming movie "Gangster Squad" from showings of "The Dark Knight Rises." The trailer of the film, which stars Sean Penn and Ryan Gosling in a ruthless war between '40s Los Angeles police and the mob, includes a scene of mobsters firing into a movie theater from behind the screen.

Our society more and more resembles its fantasies, as as those fantasies are deadly, so will be our future. We have gone into a world of depressions, armageddons, despair, and end-of-times zombies, and we are beginning to lose our sense of a way out.
No one knows what to do anymore.
--

Philosophy And HyperReality

I was trained in the British-American tradition of philosophy. In my senior year at University, I discovered Sartre. I resisted at first, but then fell into complicity with him. I do not think I have ever come across a philosopher I did not like. I mean, I agree with them all. Where some people see some chasm or dichotomy between the British and the Continental tradition, I see different ways of looking at the same phenomena and a sort of a parable about men in blindfolds describing a pachyderm: the one touching the truck says that the elephant resembles a tentacular creature while the man touching the leg say it resembles the pillars at the ends of the earth.

I think one of the things about the Roman Catholic Church I found most displeasing was the tradition of Thomas Aquinas' philosophy and little else: a myopia in philosophy. I could never quite reconcile my vision of Jesus with the mediaeval obsession with philosophy applied to divine things. I always had a sneaking suspicion that if somehow Jacques Maritain could appear to Jesus in His own day, Jesus would think a new type of Pharisee had come for a visit.

Jean Beaudrillard passed on this year and he spoke of hyperreality. The realm of philosophy is similar to other realms of hyperreality. I have always been fascinated by the enclosures of fancy we create and then try to insulate them from contamination by an intrusive reality. I considered the run up to the War in Iraq just such a hyperreality. It was an excellent experiment to observe how such things are created.
We see today in Global Research http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CHI20070521&articleId=5720  

The National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive, signed on May 9, 2007 declares that in the event of a “catastrophic event”, George W. Bush can become what is best described as "a dictator": "The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government." This directive, completely unnoticed by the media, and given no scrutiny by Congress, literally gives the White House unprecedented dictatorial power over the government and the country, bypassing the US Congress and obliterating the separation of powers. The directive also placed the Secretary of Homeland Security in charge of domestic “security”. The full text is below. A critical analysis on the directive can be found here. This is another step towards official martial law (see “US government fans homeland security fears”), which suggests that a new "catastrophic event" 9/11-type pretext could be in the pipeline.

It may be surprising that the most interesting thing I find in this is that it is another thread of End Of Time, or Approaching Disaster, or Armageddon Is Just Around The Corner; these are the hyperrealities which infest our minds.
There is a difference between a dispassionate appraisal of reality and a hyperreality, a virtual reality, if it please you, that exists in another dimension, whether it be in the individual mind, or the collective social awareness of a nation, or in cyberspace.

Since 9-11, we have been mostly dealing in states of hyperreality. We have chosen up sides and each side has striven to delineate the parameters of its own hyperreality. Then we scream back and forth. We scream because the taste and smell of the real is so intense, how could we see that hyperreality is not the same as reality?
Hyperreality is constructed of the same building blocks of Remembered and Historical Events with which we create the real. Thus, its smell must be the smell of reality. Its taste must be the taste of reality. Its remembered beauty must be the remembered beauty of reality. It is the Logic that has lost its sense of direction.
The Logic which compels the construction of Reality is no longer the hidden algorithm of many nodes, web-like wherein we balance like spiders in a filmy gauze suspended above the void. The Logic has become distorted and no longer an inborn song of creativity. It is an inflexible and rigid mechanism, unbending and without a sense of History - neither coming from the past nor going to the future, but merely a focus of a moment of present obsession.

The Themes of Disaster flows in and out of our lives: from Virginia Tech to Iraq to Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD). The Disaster Figure always wears a new face: Virginia Tech or John Muhammed or Saddam Hussein...or Iran...or the Religious Right or Islamic Fundamentalism. But the god of Disaster is always there in our minds and in our prayers...and in our hyperreality. When I have said the mind can be a prison, this is what I was referring to. Philosophy should not enslave, not incarcerate.