Just when Dallas thought the world would forget about that JFK thing …
James Howard Kunstler on the dread disease in Dallas –
Real Life is Not Spin Art
The authorities keep emphasizing that the nurse who caught ebola from Thomas Eric Duncan was sealed in her haz-mat suit the whole time she cared for the poor fellow and blah blah nobody knows how she could possibly catch the darn thing…. But the newspapers and cable news networks are not asking: What about all the people, ordinary civilians, that this nurse was consorting with off-work, after she took off her haz-mat suit and, let’s say, at some point stopped by the Kroger Store’s fabulous steam table display of take-out goodies behind the helpful and reassuring sneeze-guard on her way back home? It sounds like a new Netflix drama – The Fatal Mac and Cheese.
If one more person in that chain of circumstance falls ill, Rick Perry will have to ring-fence Dallas faster than you can say Guadalupe Hidalgo and then we’ll be off to the quarantine races in America. It will be interesting to see who’s shorting the airline stocks a few hours from now. . . . (more)
http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/real-life-is-not-spin-art/
Note: Zero Hedge and POTR blog are covering Elboa well.
flying cuttlefish picayune 
Thanks. That makes sense that people could be short-selling airline stocks. Obviously, the most suspicious is that GSK pharm’s stocks had plunged due to China corruption allegations and then were able to start their Ebola tests and stock went up. A British banker on BBC laid out the impacts of Ebola on western businesses, so this idea that cutting off Liberia being bad for business was non-sense. They just announced that Senegal is “ebola free” because they closed their borders to Guinea. What annoys me is that Louisiana has the person who should be the top world epidemiologist on the topic at Tulane – Payne prof, formerly head of Tropical Medicine, William Bertrand. He was in Zaire for 5 or 10 years setting up a school of public health and should be able to tell the the relationship between AIDs and Ebola (for instance)-, i.e. if people are getting it faster because they have AIDs. I did find that DRC (former Zaire) has an excellent network of community health-workers so it should have been easy to get data. Not one word from him that I’ve found. It’s too bad you aren’t in Louisiana for someone should go visit or call him. If you look online he was in Zaire starting in the 1980s. Was he just navel gazing his whole career? He’s not an MD but expert in social stats and disease transmission. I finally found that WHO said they were clueless about the impacts of immune suppression- duh! Weakened immune system from HIV or other tropical diseases or hunger or from rad exposure should make them more susceptible to any disease! Also pregnancy suppresses immunity! Studies show that up to a quarter of people get sick without showing symptoms (Gabon research). The French have an abandoned uranium mine in Gabon dumping in the river and there is a major manganese mine (toxic and could be uranium mix). Dogs are also carriers – 2% of French dogs are carriers of Ebola! Someone wrote a book saying the plague was Ebola, which would make most whites immune because their ancestors survived. I always thought that Africans should be more generally immune because of the climate, but looking at google maps I think they may be more like the American Indians with inadequate immune defences. It’s very hard to tell what is mining as the zoom is blocked often in Africa and the tiny villages nestled in huge forests look like surface mines. The plague also selected for HIV defense, according to some, which is supposed to mean that 18% of European ancestry people are immune to it! It’s not necessarily that they become immune but that the better genes are selected out. Of course, coincidence can just be that. I really thought that if Scotland left that the UK would make sure there was an Ebola outbreak there and clamp down with martial law. I find it strange that the UK’s only two terrorist attacks occurred in Scotland. Scotland stayed but just when you would expect it to happen – sure enough the outbreak started in the US. So, it looks like a spurious correlation. Please read the Prostitute State, if you haven’t. I started reading it and it promises to be the best book of its type since C. Wright Mills’ Power Elite. It’s probably better than the Power Elite. I know that you will finish it ahead of me. It is available through lulu and ibooks. The author is McCarthy, originally from the Rebel County of Cork (Ireland). He was mentored by Conrad Russell, son of Bertrand Russell, himself student of Alfred North Whitehead. Conrad Russell was the first Lord to sit as a Lib-Dem. His family was fairly progressive Lords for 300 years. Oh, the things which no one is telling and you need to know about Ebola that I’ve found in research: 1) Some humans along with many animals get the disease with no symptons. Animals include dogs and pigs. 2) people remain contagious for 3 months after recovery, including sexual transmission 3) it’s transmitted from pigs to monkeys in labs. First outbreaks in Gabon were gold-mining communities. It seems to have impacted large primates more and in the dry season when toxins or radiation would be more concentrated. The monkeys fall dead from trees and people or animals eat them. That makes it sound like mercury or other toxins are killing the monkeys and then the people eat them and get the Ebola. Perhaps monkeys can be silent carriers. The US, btw, switched from using 4 year degrees (RN?) to 2 year degrees (LPN) to cut costs around 15 years ago. Some LPNs have said that they are clueless when they first arrive on the hospital floor! Hospitals for profit in the US started about 30 years ago. Before they were to be not for profit. Did you read about the guy who was half American-half Russian who skipped quarantine when he had incurable TB? They threw him in very poor jail conditions so he didn’t do it again. He was a US citizen and they quarantined him, as they should. The only cure for that TB is having your lung removed. Duncan was not a US citizen. It’s a crazy world! Either the elites are very very smart or very very dumb. Have you decided which? I can’t decide.
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my grandfather had TB and had 1 lung…. back then all they could do is tell people to go for sunny climes. He went to Arizona and wrote westerns.
Just reading Financial Vipers of Venice (around time of 4th crusades) and in it they say Venice bankers used/spread black plague to make moolah.
Nothing has changed,
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Oh! It is available on ibooks. I must hurry and buy it before I lose the title. This, the San Francisco book you spoke of and the Prostitute State sound like the 3 must-have books. The plague actually made wages go up for everyone. I really think that these plagues are side-effects of exploitation and urban overcrowding without sanitation. They did throw plague bodies over the walls during sieges, though. I guess they were short-sighted even then. And, I haven’t read the book. I think they should revive the sanitarium. They were nice and rich people went there, such as Austrian Queen Sissy. That’s the thing that we are back to, resistant TB, resistant gonorrhea, etc. But, now they allow people to spit everywhere for decades. It used to be illegal. Don’t even get me going about the medical system in the so-called “developed” world. GSK was fined for allegedly playing up the risk of flu, I think. They paid a fine for allegedly bribing US docs. They have so played up everything that no one believes anything anymore. It’s hard to beat basic hygiene, good food and water. How much has radiation weakened us. Sounds like you are in a good location now and happy. You felt like you had some Caribbean influence, but then you have lots of different influences.
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Oh, I forgot to say that the biggest vector for transmission of these blood-borne diseases has long been said to be dirty health-care needles. I’ve heard this from Africans; from business people in Africa (who carry their own); and read it. I guess we get to the sin of omission or commission. The immunization is really injecting disease, as conspiracy theorists say, but it’s because they can’t bother to pay for clean needles! I got to thinking of that recently because a Norwegian blogger was incensed that they weren’t allowed to teach about condom use. But, in places where health-care providers don’t have gloves STILL, condoms can’t be accessible. I recalled stories of people washing out their condoms and reusing and even sharing them! Then read that they do this with health care gloves too, but supposed to bleach these. I think that immunizations in the developed world are often a way to on the cheap by-pass basic hygiene, meaning instead of doctors practicing basic hygiene they want everyone to get Hep B shots. Of course, they make money, I guess, but how much is just laziness! It is so frustrating. I’m sure I will die of something that I could have been saved from simply because the risks of going to the doctor almost everywhere seem so high.
Who wants to get your intestine checked when they may give you hepatitis for instance? Better risk of cancer or hepatitis? Oh, re-using knives for scarification and circumcision is also a problem. How much tetanus from that, I wonder? Even from the needles. You should read “life in the year 1,000”. You would like it. The only real medical improvement is c-sections and even that was a revived tradition.
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The infamous Fred Upton comes to the forefront again. This time, he cancelled the only scheduled debate with his opponent, Paul Clements, in the Congressional race for Michigan’s 6th district. His reason? He had an emergency meeting in DC about Ebola. Paul Clements is a serious contender for this seat and it appears Fred may be a bit concerned this time as he actually left a recorded message on my home phone telling who he was, and hoping he could count on my vote and signed off with a “God Bless..” This was the first time in all Fred’s years in office and campaigning that a message directly from him has been sent to phones that I’m aware of, and I’ve been in his district many moons. This Ebola fear mongering reminds of the months leading up to Dubya’s second term and the color codes for so-called terrorist alerts. I knew they’d stop after the election, but even I was surprised that there was not a single more alert after GWB’s win. Now, in the news from Grand Rapids, MI local TV stations, they’re touting fracking as the reason for lowered gas prices around there and particularly Chesapeake Energy, who the President, Aubrey McLendon just happens to be married to Fred’s first cousin. I wonder if the drug company who will supposedly come up with a vaccine will be Pfizer, who also is in Fred’s district. Hmmmm…. Let’s watch to see if we start hearing Fred’s voice as the messiah in saving the US from death from ????
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while they have been hyping up elboa thing the courts just denied all the older veterans compensation for the diseases they got in the armed forces from being exposed to toxic drinking water, chemicals, chemical weapons etc. etc.
Now hey are all dying from things like Agent Orange with no $$$ to help with high bills.
Truly a shame. They are dropping like flies and being ignored by the news!
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Upton’s apparently a nuclear skunk too: “In a statement on the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s website, Committee chairman Fred Upton (R-MI), a steadfast supporter of all things nuclear, called the report “game-changing,” and said the American public can now have confidence that the repository would be in fact “safe for a million years.” http://www.nirs.org Upton must be watched. What bothers me about the conspiracy theories is that they take away people from examining the question of the poverty, economic and environmental roots of Ebola and Islamic extremism. Also, the slobby for profit hospitals (along with slobby state hospitals having had state budget cuts).
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That is an absolutely valid point about so-called conspiracy theories taking the focus and examination away from what are the roots of poverty, environmental and economic disparity. But isn’t it all connected? Perhaps it’s not being discussed in depth here on this blog, but I’m fairly certain you, miningawareness, and myself and friends discuss those concerns at great length with many others.
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That’s good to know. There is hope then. I think that Flying Cuttlefish puts these things to stimulate thought. I find it all very intellectually overwhelming. I intend to keep an eye out for Pfizer and Upton. Thanks.
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speaking of big pharma ……
check this vid out!
It explains a LOT!!
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I got a bunch along those lines on the parent, FC, blog.
Anyway, discuss here away as long as we have little info about Lake FUBAR.
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You are very welcome. While you are watching, if you have the time, you may be interested in looking at Fred’s mining connections. Of course, nuclear uses uranium, fracking is all about mining; his family corporation, Whirlpool, uses metals and other materials in it’s production of appliances-and by the way, Whirlpool purchased Maytag a while back so now has pretty much a monopoly on the home appliance industry as Maytag owned Amana, Kitchenaid, Kenmore, and pretty much all the other common household appliances. And Whirlpool’s CEO, Jeff Fettig sits on Dow’s Board of Directors. Fred’s political career began in MI’s 4th district-Dow’s hometown. Dow is all about mining also. It began by mining for brine. The thing that bothers me about enenews is that the commenters, as brilliant as they are, keep referring to TPTB, rather than mentioning names. Like the Wizard of Oz, the curtains these people stand behind are the curtains called by the names of corporations and politics. The Attorney General in Michigan, Bill Schuette’s stepdad was Carl Gerstacker, president of Dow. Look at the connections of the people doing the mining and destruction of our environment, here I’m the US and all around the world. Get to the source and do not be afraid to name who is standing behind the curtains. And vote to either remove or seat. Well, enough for my Sunday morning sermon. You are all awesome. And yes, Flying Cuttlefish, thank you for allowing us to speak and sharing your own wisdom.
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don’t forget this blast from the past on DOW ….
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Ha! FC, we ARE on the parent blog!! Just not used to seeing us here:-)
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oopsie!
by the by ….
I like this (on econ slide)
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Thanks! Amazing intell!
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I think that Dow was tied into the early Atomic bomb plants, as was Monsanto. I wish I could grow more time. Thanks again.
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Gotta say quickly about the NYU suicide – the end part about pharma is actually a better model for Ebola even than for suicide – destroy society and then offer them a med or vaccine. NYU students are still dying. The student antidepressant issue was a problem decades ago. Need to be short for now but ironically I ran into your reblog of the Monju NPP guy who got pushed off the sky-scraper. Also, just when I thought the NYU vid said it all I recalled the Orange Telecom (France Telecom) suicides. All long stories and I am behind!
One of those days too when too tired to think much. Also, I have to re-read your summary of the Venice book – I think you talked about creation vs. destruction and that is the choice. An economy based on creation or on destruction. There’s money in creation why are they doing destruction? Also for the first time really wondered if they ARE trying to do Africans like the American Indians – Caribbean Indians. Not only are there the resources but despite the mining it may not be as polluted as some other places. I always thought that they would be more immune because of the climate but the Africans in isolated villages are probably more like the Caribbean and other Indians.
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Someone has it out to for Africa…. I think heirs of hateful Rhodes guy (Rhodesia)…..
Venie book author has a blog that’s good ….
http://gizadeathstar.com/
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Fred Upton is Mary Landrieu’s evil twin: http://energycommerce. house.gov/press-release/committee-leaders-applaud-nrc-decision-say-yes2energy McFarlane quit the NRC. You reminded me of the story about the prominent New Orleans man who had opposed the highway through the French quarter in his youth and won and was opposing the land-based casino and committed suicide with a shot-gun on the levee when jogging. People said it’s almost impossible to commit suicide with a shot-gun. He was stressed at work due to privatization of some pet projects. He had contacts all over the world. The person at Tulane who should be telling us all about Ebola because he worked in Zaire for years in the 1980s, and is conspicuously silent, said that the man had been depressed in 1968 and maybe hospitalized. He was killed or committed suicide in summer of 1993 several months or a year and a few months before Marcello died, though Marcello was already sick I think. Someone told me years ago how they refused burial of a man because he had committed suicide and 25 years later it was proven that he was murdered. Scary world and scary place. Louisiana is so much like Haiti.
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That Abramoff scandal all lead to that issue too. Some mob deaths with that i think. Wasn’t he doing a mobbed up slush fund for Reagan kind of like CREEP for Nixon? And evangelical pal Ralph Reed was exposed shilling for delta casinos. He took tons of televangelism cash and put it into attacking casino-owning southern tribes (as they compete with the mob). He used religion as some sort of an election talking point when casino referendums came up on the ballot. But attack on Indian’s autonomy was really just a casino feud. The mob won and got those “offshore” casino barges legalized. Several mystery deaths over that period (before/after Biloxi gambling).
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This is a summary of the book (which I haven’t read). Since you are a Louisianaphile you may want to read it. Book costs $80 to $225, summary is free: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/neworleans.cfm
It’s Baumbach who was found dead on the levy in 1993. What with the death of the Total guy, I’m started to think about various other people who might have been done-in. I’m certain people are going to say we are mean but it wasn’t just me that thought the Total guy hitting a snow plow in a Dassault jet while violating sanctions-visiting Putin was poetic justice or even funny. Poetic justice is rare. Too often only the good die young. It looks like it’s the Dassaults or at least Serge Dassault who are a big force in keeping France nuclear.
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I also paid attention to that snow plow story.
Aviation is extra dangerous for certain people!
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Oh yeah! I remember reading that recently about them going after the Mississippi Choctaw. For a second I thought you were speaking of Putin’s kingmaker Roman Abramovich, who made a mining-oil and gas fortune in the Russian northeast. He built the natives a cute little town, while taking their resources. While that was better than nothing, I guess, I remain unimpressed. Working on Beny Steinmetz in Sierra Leone reminded me. Abramovich was the last oligarch left standing when Putin came in and supposedly introduced Putin to halls of power and is becoming a major landowner in the UK.
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