[Mb-civic] Questioning sanity of Bush & Congress + bird flu propaganda

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=48883

WorldNetDaily.com February 18, 2006

March madness

Gholamali Haddadadel, "speaker" of Iran's Parliament – in Cuba
last week–dismissed the possibility of a U.S. pre-emptive attack
against Iran, finding it "impossible" to 'believe" that the U.S. would
want "to repeat the experience of Iraq."

"We hope the United States is not so stupid," he said.

Presumably, Haddadadel meant to say, "We hope that President
Bush, his vice president, his secretary of state and his ambassador to the
United Nations are not so stupid."

Now, some or all of the above may be stupid. But their stupidity is not
what Haddadadel and the rest of the world need to concern themselves with.

It's their sanity.

As well as the sanity of a majority of members of Congress.

Up until the eve of Bush's pre-emptive invasion of oil-rich Iran's Islamic
neighbor – oil-rich Iraq – Bush et al. repeatedly stressed that "we"
wanted to settle – through "diplomatic means, if at all possible" – the
international "crisis" triggered by revelations by "Slam-Dunk" Tenet that
Iraq had reconstructed its nuclear weapons program.

But, by March 2003, on-the-ground inspectors of the International
Atomic Energy Agency knew – and so reported to the U.N. Security
Council – that there was no "indication" whatsoever of a nuclear
weapons program in Iraq.

Moreover, polls show that the majority of Americans now know what
Tony Blair knew four years ago. Bush was determined to depose
Saddam Hussein no matter what the IAEA inspectors found or didn't find.

Why?

Well, most Americans are still puzzled about "why."

But, most Americans now realize that Bush lied to them – that he
didn't pre-emptively attack Iraq because he believed Saddam had
nukes he planned to give to terrorists.

Of course, congressional leaders knew that all along.

And most members of Congress should have at least suspected when
they voted overwhelmingly for the Authorization to Use Military Force
Against Iraq that the presumption was false that:

Iraq both poses a continuing threat to the national security of the United
States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region and
remains in material and unacceptable breach of its international
obligations by, among other things, continuing to possess and develop a
significant chemical and biological weapons capability, actively seeking a
nuclear weapons capability, and supporting and harboring terrorist
organizations.

So, how to explain the adoption this week – by a vote of 404-4 – of
House Concurrent Resolution 341 "condemning the government of Iran
for violating its international nuclear nonproliferation obligations and
expressing support for efforts to report Iran to the United Nations
Security Council."

In particular, what "violations" are they talking about?

Whereas Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stated, "It is obvious that if
Iran cannot be brought to live up to its international obligations, in
fact, the IAEA Statute would indicate that Iran would have to be referred
to the U.N. Security Council."

OK, what "international obligations" is Condi talking about?

Well, it's not clear. But, Condi does refer to the IAEA Statute. So, the
House assumes she must be referring to the safeguards agreement that Iran
concluded with the IAEA way back in 1973.

Whereas on Feb. 4, 2006, the IAEA Board of Governors reported Iran's
noncompliance with its IAEA safeguards obligations to the Security Council



But, the House is mistaken. The IAEA Board didn't report any such thing.
In fact, the Board didn't "report" anything.

Rather, the IAEA Board "requested" that Director-General Mohamed
ElBaradei "report" to the Security Council the absolutely outrageous and
discriminatory demands that the Board had made on several occasions,
[http://tinyurl.com/87gtr] calling on Iran to – among other things –
implement "transparency measures" which "extend beyond the formal
requirements of the Safeguards Agreement and Additional Protocol, and
include such access to individuals, documentation relating to procurement,
dual-use equipment, certain military-owned workshops, and research and
development as the Agency may request in support of its ongoing
investigations."

As of this writing, ElBaradei has made no such report and is unlikely to
do so before late March. By then, of course, Bush will probably have
already launched a pre-emptive attack against Iran.

What will be his authority?

[Congress] calls on all members of the United Nations Security Council 

to expeditiously consider and take action in response to any report of
Iran's noncompliance in fulfillment of the mandate of the Security Council
to respond to and deal with situations bearing on the maintenance of
international peace and security.

What Security Council mandate is Congress talking about?

Apparently the same one Bush didn't have when he 'took action' against
Iraq.

March madness.

***

"Much more likely is that before starting out, they picked up the
virus from farms, either from infected poultry or their faeces. Mute
swans often graze agricultural fields, and are likely to have come
into contact with poultry manure spread as a fertiliser."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4721598.stm

BBC News     February 17, 2006

Viewpoint

Reality takes wing over bird flu

By Leon Bennun

Vested interests mean wild birds are being blamed for the spread
of avian flu, argues Dr Leon Bennun in this week's Green Room,
whereas responsibility really lies with modern farming. Demands for
culling and the destruction of nesting sites threaten, he says, to bring
rare species to extinction, but will do nothing to halt the disease.

During the second week in February, Western Europe reported its first
cases of the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of avian flu in wild birds.

Across Italy, Greece and Slovenia, more than 25 mute swans died; by
Valentine's Day, the virus had also been found in wild swans in Austria
and Germany.

Conservationists, poultry keepers and health officials are bracing
themselves for more widespread outbreaks.

Fuelled in part by alarmist press reports and by the attempts of
governmentagencies to draw blame away from farming, there are now
calls for drastic measures against wild bird populations.

I believe these measures would put some species at risk of extinction,
without having any effect on the spread of avian flu.

Catching the culprits

The likelihood is that the swans now dying in Western Europe had
recently arrived from the Black Sea, driven south and west by freezing
conditions that prevented them feeding.

They may have caught the disease from other wild birds; but this is
unlikely given the tens of thousands of waterfowl that have tested
negative for H5N1 over the last decade.

Much more likely is that before starting out, they picked up the virus
from farms, either from infected poultry or their faeces. Mute swans often
graze agricultural fields, and are likely to have come into contact with
poultry manure spread as a fertiliser.

If wild birds had been spreading the disease across continents there
would have been trails of outbreaks following migration routes; but this
hasn't happened.

The "wild bird" theory for the spread of H5N1 also provides no explanation
as to why certain countries on flight paths of birds from Asia remain
flu-free, whilst their neighbours suffer repeated infections.

What is striking is that countries like Japan and South Korea, which
imposed strict controls on the import and movement of domestic poultry
after initial outbreaks, have suffered no further infections. Myanmar has
never had an outbreak.

In fact, countries which have not yet developed a large-scale intensive
poultry industry have also been largely spared. The UN Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports that in Laos, 42 out of 45
outbreaks affected intensive poultry units.

Lethal evolution

Highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses are very rare in wild birds.

But in intensively farmed poultry, the high density of birds and
constant exposure to faeces, saliva and other secretions provide ideal
conditions for the replication, mutation, recombination and selection
through which highly lethal forms can evolve.

Add to this repeated misdiagnosis, industry and government cover-ups, and
panic selling or processing of potentially infected birds, and we have the
explanation for why H5N1 is now endemic in parts of South-East Asia.

Factor in the global nature of the poultry industry, and the international
movement of live poultry and poultry products both before and after the
Asian outbreaks, and we have the most plausible mechanism for the spread
of the virus between places which are not connected by the flyways of
migratory birds.

The timing and pattern of outbreaks has been largely inconsistent with
wild bird movements; but they have often followed major trade routes.

The view that poultry movements have played a major role in the spread of
the disease is supported by an analysis of viral strains recently
published in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences.

Some of the agencies attempting to monitor and control avian flu,
such as the FAO, seem to have been reluctant to draw attention to the role
of intensive agriculture, because of the impact on national economies and
on access to cheap sources of protein.

Senseless destruction

For this and other reasons, the role of migratory wild birds in the
transmission of the disease has been exaggerated, and further
sensationalised in the press.

In some countries there has been a backlash against bird conservation,
leading to calls for the culling of whole populations, draining of
wetlands and destruction of nesting sites.

In fact, H5N1 outbreaks in wild birds have so far mostly burned themselves
out without culls or other human interventions.

Some of the world's most threatened birds may be put at risk. But there is
also the near-certainty of damage to ecosystem services on which people
and economies depend.

Alarmingly for those who fear a human bird flu epidemic, such a distorted
picture also means that the right questions are not being asked, and the
most effective protection measures may not be undertaken.

BirdLife is calling for an independent inquiry into the spread of H5N1
which gives due weight to the role of the global poultry industry, and
maps both official and unofficial poultry trade routes against the pattern
of outbreaks.

It may also be time to take a long, hard look at the way the world feeds
itself, and to decide whether the price paid for modern farming in terms
of risks to human health and the Earth's biodiversity is too high.

Dr Leon Bennun is Director of Science, Policy and Information for BirdLife
International.

The Green Room is a series of opinion articles on environmental issues
running weekly on the BBC News website

A series of thought-provoking environmental opinion pieces


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"A war of aggression is the supreme international crime." -- Robert Jackson,
 former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice and Nuremberg prosecutor

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