The way the media is stoking this fire, you would expect nothing short of a biblical plague. Too bad the facts don't support it.

 

At last count, there have been a grand total of 68 confirmed deaths worldwide, and all of them in Mexico. My regular readers will know that Mexico isn't exactly a bastion of good sanitation right now, what with the water being shut off to roughly 5 million people and all...

 

So here's the situation. You have a sub-tropical country that is literally 5 seconds away from collapsing. You have millions of people who keep pigs tied to their front door frames as part of their food supply. The same people who live 10 to a hut and hug everyone they meet. They are constantly dodging bullets fired by their own army and the drug cartels. You take these people and cut off their water, and then act surprised when disease breaks out?

 

Frigging retards.

 

Oh, and to those people who think this is some form of bio warfare, I'm going to have to rain on your parade. Don't get me wrong, I like a good conspiracy as much as the next guy. But in this case, the facts just don't support it.

 

It looks like "patient 0" might have been an employee at, or resident near a Smithfield Farms industrial pig farm in Vera Cruz. It appears that the residents of Vera Cruz have been involved in ...given the state of government in Mexico, I'm hesitant to call it "legal action"... against the Smithfield Farms subsidiary, Granjas Carroll, for it's unsanitary practises. It appears that their sanitation regime consisted of shoveling pig feces into the local drinking water. Imagine that? A pig farmer, who spends all day shoveling pig shit into the river, then goes home and actually drinks that water, and he comes down with swine flu. Someone better call Mr. Ripley.

 

"But 'twister, I heard it was genetically engineered!"

 

OK, it's time for biology 101. Let's pretend you have this stupid lazy pig farmer. He goes to work one day with the flu because if he doesn't go in, his boss will give his job to some other stupid lazy pig farmer. So this pig farmer transmits his flu to the pigs. Yeah, it happens all the time. There's a reason most of the world's religions forbid the eating of pork, and this is it. WE SHARE DISEASES.

 

Anyway, back to our little piggies. So now they have this nasty flu that is a mix of North American and European flu, contracted from our dirty naco friend. The piggies run around, happily spreading human flu amongst themselves. When along comes Porky, our friendly neighborhood swine flu carrier pig. Porky (carrying swine flu) noses up to Petunia (carrying human flu) and they make pig kissy faces and swap virii. Now you have 2 distinct strains of flu in 1 carrier. Well you can't leave those 2 crazy kids alone for a moment, because before you know it, they've had a little baby flu. (Just imagine the looks on the other pigs' faces when Porky shows up at the country club with Petunia and their half-breed flu baby!) But pigs are no less vulnerable to trends than the humans who eat them. Soon all the little piggies want to have a pet cross-bred flu of their own.

 

But here comes the crazy part!

 

Imagine if you will, one of those migrating birds that always seem to be carrying H5N1 - the dreaded avian flu. Maybe a flock of Chinese ducks got lost and ended up over Mexico. (I guess they can't drive any better than Chinese people. Who knows). Anyway, your flock of avian flu carriers fly over our happy little flu factory and shit all over the pigs. Naturally, if this farm were in a country that had sanitation standards, this wouldn't be an issue. All of the little piggies would get hosed down regularly, and the feces would be isolated. But not in Mexico! In Mexico, the pigs can wallow in their own shit for days, reinfecting themselves with swine, human and now avian flu!

 

You see, the flu virus can survive in feces. And when the pigs infect themselves with this third type of flu, their genetic material gets mixed in with the human and swine variants, and you get a brand new strain. This strain gets shoveled into the town's water and VOILA! Instant pandemic!

 

Isn't science fun?

 

But I digress. Back to my main point.

 

This new variant of flu was detected on April 9th. That means in the last 20 days, 68 people have died worldwide. That works out to 3.4 deaths per day. To put that into perspective, within the last 24 hours, 3,288 people around the world were killed in car accidents*. That means at this stage, you are literally 1,000 times more likely to get killed in a car accident than you are to be killed by this "terrifying pandemic".

 

But of course, if your only source of information is the mainstream media, you are probably shitting bricks right now (not to mention, not reading this blog. Everybody knows people who get their news from television can't read).

 

I seriously hope nobody is surprised by this, because I have been warning about it since at least September 2007.

 

Those guys over at the Long War Journal (Forget the name, they actually do some pretty good work) Put together this map in February, outlining just how much of Pakistan had fallen under the control of the Taliban. Have a gander:

 

 

The map excludes data about the northern tribal areas (Because they are technically autonomous, though completely under Taliban control), and everything east of Islamabad (Because by that point, it doesn't matter any more).

 

And now here's the situation just 2 months later:

 

 

Government forces have ceeded control of 3 provinces in just 2 months. Taliban fighters are now within 60km of Islamabad. You want to talk about balls? After the federal government surrendered Buner district to the Taliban, they drove a convoy of 10 trucks back to Malakand, passing by a military base and through the home town of the province's Chief Minister. It's as if they are saying "We dare you to try it, bitches."

 

So while the Pakistani government surrenders it's positions faster than the French in 1940, the Obama administration continues to conduct it's war as though this were a conventional army: assasinating leaders. NEWS FLASH! That doesn't work! You can't play this game with a top-down approach, because the "top" is meaningless. The Taliban (and al Quaeda) don't so much issue orders as they preach ideology. They take that whole "army of one" philosophy very seriously. The guy on the front lines isn't sitting around waiting for orders from the cave, he acts independantly on his own timetable and with his own resources.

 

And there are only 2 ways to deal with that kind of distributed insurgency: Capitulation, or extermination. That means if you aren't willing to kill every man, woman and child in the entire theatre, you might as well go home.

 

But whatever the decision is, we need to move quickly. Islamabad (and the keys to the nukes) are now just 60km away.

I was going to write something tremendously clever and sarcastic, but I decided against it. The facts speak for themselves: