Showing posts with label Mexico. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mexico. Show all posts
Sunday, April 7, 2013
Sugary Drink-Related Deaths
Article URL:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2013/03/19/the-top-countries-for-sugary-drink-related-deaths-u-s-ranks-third/
Here's a story, and it underscores two interesting things:
1. That there is a highly undereported obesity epidemic in Mexico that is even greater than what it is in the US (where increasing health awareness appears to be slowly reversing the course);
2. This may surprise some people since it's coming from me, but the bogeyman status of high fructose corn syrup is slightly overrated. Yes, HFCS looks to be worse for the body than regular sugar, but overconsumption of any sugars is bad. Case in point: Mexico does not subsidize corn syrup as a sugar use, which is why Mexican Coke has real sugar in it. Yet the underlying problem is the nation's overconsumption of sugar, not the form it is taken...
Monday, September 17, 2012
Mexican leftist asks for presidential recount
Lizbeth Diaz
MEXICO CITY | Tue Jul 3, 2012
Full Article
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/03/us-mexico-election-leftist-idUSBRE86216W20120703
The runner-up in Mexico's presidential election said on Tuesday he would ask election authorities to recount the votes from Sunday's contest, alleging it was riddled with fraud.
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who finished about 6.5 percentage points behind President-elect Enrique Pena Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), said the election had been corrupted by PRI vote-buying and other abuses.
Stirring up memories of the 2006 election, when he refused to accept defeat and unsettled financial markets by calling out his supporters to stage massive demonstrations in the capital for weeks, Lopez Obrador followed through on hints he dropped during the campaign that he might contest the result.
He said his campaign would ask the Federal Electoral Institute to recount the votes.
"We're going to ask them to clean up the election and make it transparent," the he told reporters in Mexico City. "For the good of the democracy and the good of the country, they need to count all the votes."
Financial markets were unmoved by his announcement on Tuesday.
Lopez Obrador, 58, has repeatedly accused the telegenic Pena Nieto of using illicit funding, breaching campaign spending limits and being supported by Mexico's mainstream media...
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Collapse of Mayan Civilization Traced to Dry Spells
Charles Choi
23 February 2012
http://www.livescience.com/18624-collapse-mayan-civilization-climate-change.html
The collapse of the ancient Mayan civilization may have been linked to relatively modest dry spells, researchers now say.
The ancient Mayan empire once stretched across an area about the size of Texas, with cities and fields occupying what is now southern Mexico and northern Central America, including the countries of Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and Honduras. The height of the Mayan empire, known as the Classic period, reached from approximately A.D. 250 to at least A.D. 900.
The ancient Maya had what was arguably the most advanced civilization in the Americas. For instance, they made dramatic breakthroughs in astronomy that helped them very accurately predict where the moon and other planets would be in the sky centuries in the future. They also left behind many books and stone inscriptions regarding the stories of their gods and the history of their divine kings and queens.
For unknown reasons, the ancient Mayan civilization then disintegrated more than a millennium ago. The number of people declined catastrophically to a fraction of the empire's former size, and the ruins of its great cities are now largely overgrown by jungle.
Scientists have long drawn connections between the slow decline of the ancient Maya, which took about two centuries, "to climate change, and especially to drought," said researcher Martín Medina-Elizalde at the Yucatan Center for Scientific Research in Mexico. "No sound estimates had been made about the severity of this drought, but some have suggested extreme scenarios."
To see how much rainfall the ancient Maya saw before the demise of their civilization, the researchers combined the four most detailed records of past climate changes known regarding the civilization's collapse — three from nearby lakes and one from a stalagmite, a mineral formation that grows upward from a cave floor. This helped develop a model of "the region's balance between evaporation and rainfall," Medina-Elizalde said.
The scientists found that rainfall in the region decreased episodically for periods as long as a decade at a time.
"Our results show rather modest rainfall reductions between times when the Classic Maya civilization flourished and its collapse between 800 to 950," said researcher Eelco Rohling, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Southampton in England. "These reductions amount to only 25 to 40 percent in annual rainfall, but they were large enough for evaporation to become dominant over rainfall, and open water availability was rapidly reduced. The data suggest that the main cause was a decrease in summer storm activity."
The timing of these dry spells might help explain why modest reductions in rainfall still may have helped cause the demise of a well-established civilization.
"Summer was the main season for cultivation and replenishment of Maya freshwater storage systems and there are no rivers in the Yucatan lowlands," Rohling said.
It appeared to Rohling that the ancient Maya had become reliant on continuous rainfall supplies, and had stretched the capacity of their farmlands to a fine limit based on normal levels of rain. "Then, even a rather subtle climatic change was enough to create serious problems," he told LiveScience. "Societal disruptions and abandonment of cities are likely consequences of critical water shortages, especially because there seems to have been a rapid repetition of multiyear droughts."
Rohling emphasized they are not saying that climate ended the ancient Mayan civilization. "We are documenting that there was a reduction in rainfall, and that reservoirs of water were evaporating," he said. This may in turn have led to societal unrest or diseases or both, "which are more likely to explain the actual collapse of society."
The scientists noted that the droughts they saw during the demise of the ancient Mayan civilization were similar in severity to those projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for the near future in the same region. [10 Surprising Results of Global Warming]
"There are differences too, but the warning is clear — what seems like a minor reduction in water availability may lead to important, long-lasting problems," Medina-Elizalde said. "This problem is not unique to the Yucatan Peninsula, but applies to all regions in similar settings where evaporation is high. Today, we have the benefit of awareness, and we should act accordingly."
The scientists detailed their findings in the Feb. 24 issue of the journal Science.
23 February 2012
http://www.livescience.com/18624-collapse-mayan-civilization-climate-change.html
The collapse of the ancient Mayan civilization may have been linked to relatively modest dry spells, researchers now say.
The ancient Mayan empire once stretched across an area about the size of Texas, with cities and fields occupying what is now southern Mexico and northern Central America, including the countries of Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and Honduras. The height of the Mayan empire, known as the Classic period, reached from approximately A.D. 250 to at least A.D. 900.
The ancient Maya had what was arguably the most advanced civilization in the Americas. For instance, they made dramatic breakthroughs in astronomy that helped them very accurately predict where the moon and other planets would be in the sky centuries in the future. They also left behind many books and stone inscriptions regarding the stories of their gods and the history of their divine kings and queens.
For unknown reasons, the ancient Mayan civilization then disintegrated more than a millennium ago. The number of people declined catastrophically to a fraction of the empire's former size, and the ruins of its great cities are now largely overgrown by jungle.
Scientists have long drawn connections between the slow decline of the ancient Maya, which took about two centuries, "to climate change, and especially to drought," said researcher Martín Medina-Elizalde at the Yucatan Center for Scientific Research in Mexico. "No sound estimates had been made about the severity of this drought, but some have suggested extreme scenarios."
To see how much rainfall the ancient Maya saw before the demise of their civilization, the researchers combined the four most detailed records of past climate changes known regarding the civilization's collapse — three from nearby lakes and one from a stalagmite, a mineral formation that grows upward from a cave floor. This helped develop a model of "the region's balance between evaporation and rainfall," Medina-Elizalde said.
The scientists found that rainfall in the region decreased episodically for periods as long as a decade at a time.
"Our results show rather modest rainfall reductions between times when the Classic Maya civilization flourished and its collapse between 800 to 950," said researcher Eelco Rohling, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Southampton in England. "These reductions amount to only 25 to 40 percent in annual rainfall, but they were large enough for evaporation to become dominant over rainfall, and open water availability was rapidly reduced. The data suggest that the main cause was a decrease in summer storm activity."
The timing of these dry spells might help explain why modest reductions in rainfall still may have helped cause the demise of a well-established civilization.
"Summer was the main season for cultivation and replenishment of Maya freshwater storage systems and there are no rivers in the Yucatan lowlands," Rohling said.
It appeared to Rohling that the ancient Maya had become reliant on continuous rainfall supplies, and had stretched the capacity of their farmlands to a fine limit based on normal levels of rain. "Then, even a rather subtle climatic change was enough to create serious problems," he told LiveScience. "Societal disruptions and abandonment of cities are likely consequences of critical water shortages, especially because there seems to have been a rapid repetition of multiyear droughts."
Rohling emphasized they are not saying that climate ended the ancient Mayan civilization. "We are documenting that there was a reduction in rainfall, and that reservoirs of water were evaporating," he said. This may in turn have led to societal unrest or diseases or both, "which are more likely to explain the actual collapse of society."
The scientists noted that the droughts they saw during the demise of the ancient Mayan civilization were similar in severity to those projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for the near future in the same region. [10 Surprising Results of Global Warming]
"There are differences too, but the warning is clear — what seems like a minor reduction in water availability may lead to important, long-lasting problems," Medina-Elizalde said. "This problem is not unique to the Yucatan Peninsula, but applies to all regions in similar settings where evaporation is high. Today, we have the benefit of awareness, and we should act accordingly."
The scientists detailed their findings in the Feb. 24 issue of the journal Science.
Friday, December 2, 2011
Alien ET Cities You Can Visit On Earth Now
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
http://beforeitsnews.com/story/1383/629/NL/Alien_ET_Cities_You_Can_Visit_On_Earth_Now.html
Ever dream of visiting alien worlds and studying their amazing wonders? Well, you don't have to leave Earth to do that—you can travel right now to cities where aliens visited, even lived.
Walk the pathways along many of Earth's ancient cities and you're walking in the footsteps of the gods. At least that's what the legends and myths of the civilizations that seem to have sprung from nothing overnight record in their earliest records.
Anthropologists agree the human race is at least two million years old and ancient Man was much like us more than one million years in the past.
Mankind and help from the stars
So, why did the human race scavenge like animals and live in caves and the hollows of trees—supposedly for 990,000 years—if humans back then were so much like us?
While some evidence exists that supports the idea that humans had advanced civilizations as far back as 100,000 years ago, that still leaves uncounted some 900 millennia where human beings made very little progress in anything important.
Were they that stupid?
Perhaps they were. Perhaps real advancement didn't start happening until extraterrestrials appeared. Researchers like Erich von Däniken and others have argued as much while being viscously attacked or mocked by debunkers, self-styled skeptics, and orthodox science.
Why humans seem so ignorant for so many hundreds of thousands of years remains a mystery, but clues to the rise of civilization are filled with testimonies of interaction with aliens from the stars starting about 8,000 years ago and continuing through the millennia into the records of religious writings by the ancient Indians and Hebrews.
While modern scientists and archaelogists shrug off what some ancients believed important enough to paint onto or carve into stone for posterity—or to include in their religious texts—remnants of impossible architecture and artifacts that hint at other worlds cannot be easily dismissed…unless a lucrative research grant is at stake.
Yes, money sometimes trumps real science and knowledge suffers as a result.
Ancient manuscripts, scrolls, glyphs and cylinders recorded human meetings with Sky Gods—beings that came from the stars to help Mankind build (or rebuild) civilizations. Did they tame the Earth, erect massive monuments and construct the world's first cities?
Five of the most fascinating alien cities still exist: the earliest human civilizations guided by the all-powerful gods from the stars.
You can visit these amazing alien cities because they're still right here on Earth.
ET City 1: Eerie Hopi Reservation, American Southwest
Where the Hopi came from is a mystery to scholars. Academics theorize the Southwestern natives originated from the earlier Anasazi. The Hopi deny this, however, calling the Pueblo people Hisatsinom: The Ancient People.
The Hopis explain their ancestors arrived from deep within the earth, ascending upwards through massive caverns called kivas to the surface, The Fourth World.
Hopi art and myth is bursting with images and imagery of otherworldly contact—not only with a rich spirit world, but also with advanced beings from other worlds.
Because their origin mythology is interlaced so tightly with actual alien contacts it is sometimes difficult to separate the two. But there's little doubt the early Hopi did have some contact with ETs, as did other Mesoamerican tribes such as the Anasazi, Olmecs, Incas, Mayans and Aztecs.
ET City 2: The amazing Aztec Teotihaucan, Mexico
Rising from the fall of the mighty Mayan civilization that preceded it, the Aztecs were to the Romans, as the Mayans were to the Greek city states.
The Aztec origins were built upon much of the earlier Mayan knowledge including the Mayan records that bluntly stated: "Men came from the stars, knowing everything, and they examined the four corners of the sky and the Earth's round surface." [From the Mayan Popol Vuh text]
Today you can walk the ruins of the magnificent city, sift through the centuries with your fingers, and walk the pathways where men once commiserated with gods from the stars.
ET City 3: The mysterious Tiwanaku, Bolivia
With an estimated population of 250,000 to 1.5 million people, Tiwanaku has no surviving written history. Its power and influence peaked around 700 A.D., but it's origins are believed to go far back into time.
A power of the Andes, like the amazing Incas that preceded them, the people of Tiwanaku believed that gods from the sky taught them survival skills.
The few records that survive suggest E.T.s shared with them some of the secrets once taught the mighty Incas…or so their legends claim. But what did they know, right? They only lived through the experience.
ET City 4: The fabled Babylon, Iraq
The fabled Babylon, at one time the virtual center of world civilization may owe its existence to the Sumerians. The Babylonians borrowed heavily from Sumer, adopting parts of their culture and technology in a fashion similar to Rome's adaption of the Greek culture thousands of years later.
The Babylon mysteries continue to confound: their knowledge of batteries, advanced mathematics, belief that superior beings lived on planets orbiting other star systems. Where did they come upon such knowledge in the 23rd Century B.C.?
How did they know all this?
Much of what the Babylonians knew they adopted from ancient Sumer. The Sumerians knew. They had the first-hand, original knowledge because they met and lived with with the Sky Gods.
Paleocontact, according to the research of Zacharia Sitchen—that literally fills volumes—involves a vastly superior race that contact with the people of Sumeria. These aliens helped build Sumer's culture and steer the Sumerian people towards a higher level of learning and technology.
The Sumerians were the first people on Earth to develop writing enabling them to chronicle their advancements and history and—perhaps most importantly—document their contact with alien intelligences for posterity.
Although paleocontact's been researched extensively, the works and conclusions drawn by its two leading proponents, von Däniken and Sitchen, are mostly dismissed by academics and not taken seriously.
Yet the records tell a tale of meetings and interactions with advanced beings from the stars. The evidence survives to this day in fragile cylinder seals, stunning artwork, and the rich tapestry of Sumerian mythology...myths built upon contact with extraterrestrials.
Translation mentions beam weaponry
This translated excerpt from one of the Babylonian texts relates an episode where one of the female ETs takes a new Earthman as her husband and elevates him to the ruling class. She boasts that his power will be greater than a "Power-Weapon" that curiously sounds like a high energy laser or beam weapon:
"I have cast for you the spell, exalting you in the Assembly of the gods.
To counsel all the gods I have given you full power.
Truly, you are supreme, you are my only consort!
Your utterance shall prevail over all the Anunnaki!"
She gave him the Tablet of Destinies, fastened on his breast:
"As for you, your command shall be unchangeable, your word shall endure!"
As soon as Kingu was elevated, possessed of the rank of Anu,
they decreed the fate for the gods, his sons:
"Your word shall make the first subside shall humble the `Power-Weapon,' so potent in its sweep!" [Enuma Elish ("When on high...")]
Visit Babylon and walk where gods walked
The city of Babylon, heir to Sumer and the Land of the Sky Gods, can still be visited. Mostly a giant mound with ruins spread from central radial points, what was Babylon is in present-day Al Hillah, Babil Province, Iraq some 55 miles south of Baghdad.
ET City 5: 'Impossible' Xianyang pyramid city, Mount Baigong Qinghai, China
China is the focus of legends, myths and stories of alien visitations and many of them center on the Xianyang pyramid.
Local villagers claim their distant ancestors spoke of sky great ships that navigated the heavens and used the pyramid as a landing, refueling and resupply site.
20th Century historians have called the early Chinese culture an "enigma wrapped in a mystery."
Tales of China's ancient days are crammed with stories about the "sky people" and the "god-men" who came from the stars using the Earth as a base for exploration.
Along the way these beings taught some of the primitive peoples they met the basics of technology, engineering, farming, and the complex structure of the universe.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Konformist Book Club: MYSTERY OF THE OLMECS
http://adventuresunlimitedpress.com/proddetail.php?prod=MOLM
MEET THE OLMECS -- MYSTERIOUS ANCIENTS OF MEXICO!! Author David Hatcher Childress has traveled around the world several times over, but finds one of the most fascinating mysteries of history very close to home--the Olmec culture of ancient Mexico. The Olmecs were not acknowledged to have existed until an international archeological meeting in Mexico City in 1942. Now they are slowly being recognized as the mother culture of Mesoamerica having developed metallurgy, writing and the calendar long before the Maya. The statuary left behind by these enigmatic people very clearly depict features that seem to indicate residents of the Land of Olman came from Africa, Asia and Europe. Was the narrow isthmus of southern Mexico an important part of a trade route that spanned both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans? Examine the evidence in this fascinating book by one of the most interesting historians around. You might learn more than you wanted to know about these strange people who populated the old New World! -- JOURNEY TO THE FASCINATING WORLD OF OLMAN!
Price: $20.00
Thursday, May 5, 2011
10 Lost Cities Of The World
These ancient wonders are well worth a visit, even in troubled times.
Morgan Brennan
http://travel.yahoo.com/p-interests-39274939
1. Petra, Jordan
Country: Jordan
Civilization: the Nabataeans
Inhabited: sixth century B.C.
This rose-colored city carved from cliffs garnered fame in the West thanks to the 1980s blockbuster Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
2. Chichen Itza, Mexico
Country: Mexico
Civilization: the Mayans
Inhabited: 600 to 1000 A.D.
Site of one of Mesoamerica's largest ball courts, this royal city is located near a massive underground cenote, or sinkhole, where the bodies of human sacrifices were dropped.
3. Derinkuyu Underground City, Turkey
Country: Turkey
Civilization: possibly the Phrygians
Inhabited: Approximately eighth century B.C.to 10th century A.D.
This underground network has more than 10 floors and room for up to 50,000 people, plus livestock. It is rumored to have been a hideout for early Christians escaping Roman persecution.
4. Machu Picchu, Peru
Country: Peru
Civilization: the Incas
Inhabited: 15th and 16th centuries A.D.
Conquistadors carrying small pox wiped out the inhabitants of this royal mountaintop fortress, but the Lost City of the Incas was never actually discovered by the Spanish--in fact, it wasn't discovered until 1911.
5. Angkor, Cambodia
Country: Cambodia
Civilization: the Khmer Empire
Inhabited: ninth century to 15th century A.D.
More than a thousand temples, including Angkor Wat, populate this long-time Khmer capital. It declined after a successful attack by invaders from what is now Thailand.
6. Pre-Roman Carthage, Tunisia
Country: Tunisia
Civilization: the Phoenicians
Inhabited: 650 to 146 B.C.
Carthage was home to the Roman Empire's arch-nemesis, Hannibal. It was burned and the earth salted during the final Punic War.
7. Pompeii, Italy
Country: Italy
Civilization: the Roman Empire
Inhabited: seventh/sixth century B.C. to 79 A.D.
Pompeii was a cultural center and vacation destination for Roman high society until it was destroyed in 79 A.D. by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Left behind are naturally ash-encased mummies.
8. Memphis, Egypt
Country: Egypt
Civilization: the Ancient Egyptians
Inhabited: third millennium B.C. to seventh century A.D.
Located at the mouth of the Nile delta, Memphis thrived for centures as a center of trade, commerce, religion and royalty. Foreign invasions, including one by Alexander the Great, let to its demise.
9. Teotihuacan, Mexico
Country: Mexico
Civilization: possibly the Totonac people
Inhabited: 100 B.C. to 250 A.D.
This city, the founders of which remain a mystery, is home to some of the largest pyramids in pre-Columbian America. It inspired several major empires, those of the Zapotec and Mayans.
10. Mosque City of Bagerhat, Bangladesh
Country: Bangladesh
Civilization: Khan Jahan Ali
Inhabited: 15th century A.D.
The city formerly known as Khalifatabad was founded by a Turkish general. It boasts more than 50 Islamic monuments and the Sixty Pillar Mosque, constructed with 60 pillars and 80 domes.
Morgan Brennan
http://travel.yahoo.com/p-interests-39274939
1. Petra, Jordan
Country: Jordan
Civilization: the Nabataeans
Inhabited: sixth century B.C.
This rose-colored city carved from cliffs garnered fame in the West thanks to the 1980s blockbuster Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
2. Chichen Itza, Mexico
Country: Mexico
Civilization: the Mayans
Inhabited: 600 to 1000 A.D.
Site of one of Mesoamerica's largest ball courts, this royal city is located near a massive underground cenote, or sinkhole, where the bodies of human sacrifices were dropped.
3. Derinkuyu Underground City, Turkey
Country: Turkey
Civilization: possibly the Phrygians
Inhabited: Approximately eighth century B.C.to 10th century A.D.
This underground network has more than 10 floors and room for up to 50,000 people, plus livestock. It is rumored to have been a hideout for early Christians escaping Roman persecution.
4. Machu Picchu, Peru
Country: Peru
Civilization: the Incas
Inhabited: 15th and 16th centuries A.D.
Conquistadors carrying small pox wiped out the inhabitants of this royal mountaintop fortress, but the Lost City of the Incas was never actually discovered by the Spanish--in fact, it wasn't discovered until 1911.
5. Angkor, Cambodia
Country: Cambodia
Civilization: the Khmer Empire
Inhabited: ninth century to 15th century A.D.
More than a thousand temples, including Angkor Wat, populate this long-time Khmer capital. It declined after a successful attack by invaders from what is now Thailand.
6. Pre-Roman Carthage, Tunisia
Country: Tunisia
Civilization: the Phoenicians
Inhabited: 650 to 146 B.C.
Carthage was home to the Roman Empire's arch-nemesis, Hannibal. It was burned and the earth salted during the final Punic War.
7. Pompeii, Italy
Country: Italy
Civilization: the Roman Empire
Inhabited: seventh/sixth century B.C. to 79 A.D.
Pompeii was a cultural center and vacation destination for Roman high society until it was destroyed in 79 A.D. by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Left behind are naturally ash-encased mummies.
8. Memphis, Egypt
Country: Egypt
Civilization: the Ancient Egyptians
Inhabited: third millennium B.C. to seventh century A.D.
Located at the mouth of the Nile delta, Memphis thrived for centures as a center of trade, commerce, religion and royalty. Foreign invasions, including one by Alexander the Great, let to its demise.
9. Teotihuacan, Mexico
Country: Mexico
Civilization: possibly the Totonac people
Inhabited: 100 B.C. to 250 A.D.
This city, the founders of which remain a mystery, is home to some of the largest pyramids in pre-Columbian America. It inspired several major empires, those of the Zapotec and Mayans.
10. Mosque City of Bagerhat, Bangladesh
Country: Bangladesh
Civilization: Khan Jahan Ali
Inhabited: 15th century A.D.
The city formerly known as Khalifatabad was founded by a Turkish general. It boasts more than 50 Islamic monuments and the Sixty Pillar Mosque, constructed with 60 pillars and 80 domes.
Monday, December 6, 2010
Ancient Canal Builders in America
http://www.ancientcanalbuilders.com/
Ancient Canal Builders in America
Canal Complexes in America
This site is a review of some empirical evidence that will forever change the history of pre-diluvial America, shifting our paradigm from what we think we know about America to a whole new standard of 'Truth' about pre-historic civilizations on the North American continent.
Ancient Cities on our Coasts
There are hundreds of miles of coastline, from Maine to Florida, continuing across the Gulf States including Texas and parts of Mexico, that are covered with vestiges and remnants of a very sophisticated, enormously large water borne culture or civilization that existed BEFORE current sea level rose an average of 12 to 25 feet, or more.
Sophisticated Geo Engineers: The evidence you are about to see, shows nearly every swampy piece of marsh land on most of the Eastern US Coast and Gulf of Mexico, to have been 'worked' and 'inhabited' by a very large, very sophisticated population of canal builders during some remote pre-flood period.
Age of the Complexes
These complexes were built BEFORE the water table rose to its present level. Some of the structures run down to depths of 12-25 feet BELOW current sea level. We will use 15' as an average. The chart to the right, from Globalwarmingart.com, shows a 5 meter rise in the last 8,000 to 10,000 years.
That's an approximate rise of 16 feet since about 7,500 BCE. It appears these complexes existed a very long time ago.
Please note, you MUST have Google Earth, or a Google Earth 'Plug In' to view these images.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
El día de los Muertos
http://blog.lavacocktail.com/2009/11/02/el-dia-de-los-muertos.aspx
El día de los Muertos
Jaye Beldo
LavaCocktail.com
11-2-9
On November 1st and 2nd of every year, there is a tradition in Mexico called El Día de los Muertos-where the dead are remembered in a most colorful and glorious way. In villages and cities throughout the country an exuberance of sugar skulls, calacas (skeletons) marigolds and other colorful wonders serve to honor the dead whether they be human or animal. Candlelight processions also serve to illuminate what would be otherwise be a rather somber occasion.
Each year during this time (which coincides with All souls Day) I choose to remember the dead in my own personal way. All the innocent people that were murdered in Central America during the Reagan years as a result of the Iran-Contra scandal are foremost in my mind during El Día de los Muertos. I choose to focus on this bit of grimness because of how successfully whitewashed the whole sordid affair has become in the last 25 years and that it is not even a wisp of a memory for most Americans (who cannot even recall some of the more recent slaughters perpetrated by the US government). I envision millions of sugar skulls and calacas stacked atop one another in the manner of the victims of Pol Pot's genocide that are currently displayed in Cambodia, although this does nothing to alleviate the sorrow and bitterness.
While ruminating on this State funded, wholesale murder, I also honor the living-those still grieving the loss of their loved ones at the hands of the Contras. One would think that the Marigolds on the ofrendes (altars) would fade in light of such a tragedy, but for me they grow brighter in this regard-somehow nourished by the sorrow and offering a bit of hope. At times,I'm tempted to put Noam Chomsky's, "The Culture of Terrorism" which describes in horrendous detail, what went down in Central America under Reagan's watch, on the altar. But soon it would get pushed out of view, by other subversive tractates describing those forced to work in the maquiladoras set up by US corporations-raped and worked to death at gunpoint or kidnapped for the slavery market. l also am tempted to garnish this crowded altar with offerings to those murdered-trying to escape these death camps with no choice but to flee el norte only to get gunned down by border guards as they reached the land of the free. All this would be followed by a ,no doubt , futile prayer requesting that those who despise illegal aliens come to the realization that US corporations have made life so damn miserable in Mexico that the oppressed have no choice but to slip into America in desperate hopes of a better life.
Hardest of all during these days of funerary remembrance is to acknowledge an even far more insidious form of death-the death of memory itself; the inability and unwillingness to see that America itself rests on the back of third world corpses. Meditating on this alone causes the sugar skulls to melt into sickening sweet pools. The calacas turn to dust and the myriad petals of the marigolds fall off and blow away, leaving only their dried stems.
Perhaps, if more of us celebrate El día de los Muertos-the memories will reemerge from the hole they all funneled into and brought back to life in blood red colors. Perhaps a painful but welcome exuberance will then be found, one that can resonate beyond our collective indifference that continues to encourage us into deadly forgetfulness.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
New UFC champ Velasquez maintains brown pride
http://mmajunkie.com/news/21139/new-ufc-champ-velasquez-maintains-brown-pride-looks-forward-to-dos-santos.mma
New UFC champ Velasquez maintains brown pride, looks forward to Dos Santos
Steven Marrocco
Oct 24, 2010
ANAHEIM, Calif. – Cain Velasquez (9-0 MMA, 7-0 UFC) says he'll continue to represent Mexico as the newly crowned UFC heavyweight champion.
In fact, he'd like to keep fighting where he feels closest to his people: Southern California, Arizona, and of course, Mexico.
Velasquez shook the roof of the Honda Center in Anaheim, Calif., when he took Brock Lesnar's belt in 4 minutes and 12 seconds Saturday night at UFC 121, and from early indications of the stir he created in the Hispanic community, it could mean big things for the UFC's push into the Latino market.
"Sweet feeling," the usually stoic Velasquez said of his joy following his TKO win.
Many MMA pundits expected Lesnar (5-2 MMA, 4-2 UFC) to dominate the headlining fight with a 20-pound size advantage and superior amateur wrestling credentials. But those paper advantages proved to be little protection for Velasquez's striking. After an initial bull-rush and takedown failed to keep the challenger at bay, Lesnar withered under a relentless ground and pound attack.
The heavily pro-Velasquez crowd erupted in an ear-splitting frenzy when referee Herb Dean waved off the bout after ample punishment had been distributed.
"We knew his game plan going in, and it kind of surprised me how hard he did go for it in the beginning," said Velasquez of the fight's opening moments. "I kind of froze just a little bit. I wasn't as relaxed as I should have been, but I think after that takedown he got on me, that's when I was like, 'OK, relax.'"
After admittedly getting away from his own gameplan by trading wild shots with the champion, Velasquez had to again remind himself to relax when Lesnar went down for the first time.
"I knew the ref wasn't going to stop it that early," Velasquez said. "So we had to pick our shots. I wasn't just going to go crazy [with] punches if he was on bottom.
"He was covering up well. I wanted some punches to connect, and some elbows to get in there, so I took my time and really thought about where I should throw the punches and where I should give the elbows."
Of the much-hyped size difference, Velasquez said it was a non-issue when the two first locked up.
"I felt his strength, and I felt his power, and I was definitely used to competing with guys that were just as strong as him," he said. "I just think I was well-prepared for this fight."
UFC president Dana White said the UFC's push to promote Velasquez in the Latino community was a huge success, though he wasn't sure whether the new champion's victory would advance the promotion's goals in Latin America.
"I think it's big deal," UFC president Dana White told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com). "Anybody who was at the weigh-ins [Friday] saw that he had a huge following. Here tonight you saw that he had a huge following. (He became) a huge star overnight, and he went out and looked incredible."
Velasquez, however, thinks a surge is already underway.
"I think [Latinos] bring a fighting style that's always forward," he said. "We don't stop. We have that blood in our heart that won't stop. That's the kind of fights people want to see, and that's the kind of fights we bring."
Velasquez said he'd now like to take some time off with his family before attacking his next challenge, an expected meeting with Brazilian Junior Dos Santos.
"I have to be a much better fighter," he said. "I have to keep evolving. I think [Dos Santos is] the best standup fighter that there is as far as heavyweight, so he's extremely tough.
"He has great takedown defense. He gets right back up if you take him down. He's really relaxed in his boxing, so I definitely have my work cut out for me."
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Farm workers: Take our jobs, please!
http://money.cnn.com/2010/07/07/news/economy/farm_worker_jobs/index.htm
Farm workers: Take our jobs, please!
Most farm workers in the U.S. are illegal immigrants, but a union representing these workers has offered their jobs to Americans.
Aaron Smith, staff writer
July 10, 2010
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Facing growing anti-immigrant rhetoric, the United Farm Workers union is challenging Americans to take their labor-intensive, low-paying farm jobs.
As communities nationwide grapple with tenacious unemployment, migrant workers are often accused of stealing jobs from Americans. The union believes this accusation is without basis, and intends to demonstrate this with a newly-launched campaign called "Take Our Jobs."
"Farm workers do the work that most Americans are not willing to do," said union president Arturo Rodriguez in the announcement of the campaign.
At least half a million applicants are needed to replace the immigrant workforce, so the union has posted an online application for Americans who want to work on a farm.
Through its Web site, at www.takeourjobs.org, the union promises to connect applicants with farm jobs in their area.
Since June 24, at least 4,000 people have responded to the application, said Rodriguez. Some are serious responses and others are hate mail. "Only a few dozen have really followed through with the process," he said.
Most applicants quickly lose interest once the reality sinks in that these are back-breaking jobs in triple-digit temperatures that pay minimum wage, usually without benefits, according to the union. Some small farms are not required to pay minimum wage and in 15 states farms aren't required to offer workers' compensation.
Despite the dismal job market in the U.S., where the unemployment rate is 9.5% and 14.6 million people are out of work, there have been few takers.
"I think everybody in our society is pretty clear that the least desirable job in the U.S. is being a migrant farm worker," said Rob Williams, director of the Migrant Farm Worker Justice Project. "If someone said to me, 'Here's a hazardous job and there's no worker's compensation,' I'd say, 'No thanks, It's kind of a no-brainer."
The Department of Agriculture counts nearly one million farm workers in the United States. According to the Migrant Farm Worker Justice Project, 85% of farm workers are immigrants -- and up to 70% of them are illegal.
Rodriguez, the union president, said the campaign is meant to draw attention to the need for immigration reform, such as the so-called AgJobs bill currently held up in Congress. The bill would grant temporary legal status to immigrants, which would become permanent if they continue to work on farms for a specific period of time.
"If [members of Congress] can't do their job in passing the bill, then they should come work in the fields," he said.
Illegal workers are rich fodder for anti-immigration leaders such as Gov. Janice Brewer, R-Ariz., who told reporters in June that the "majority" of immigrants crossing the border from Mexico are smuggling drugs for cartels. The governor also signed into law requirements for state police to "determine the immigration status" of anyone under "reasonable suspicion" of being an illegal alien.
The Justice Department on Tuesday sued the state of Arizona to overturn its new immigration law.
The proponents for migrant farm workers insist that they help, not hinder, the U.S.
Williams said that if people who oppose immigration "got their wish and all the unauthorized people went home tomorrow, we would have a crisis. We wouldn't have anyone to pick the crops, milk the cows, or take care of the Christmas trees."
He added, "It may be the least desirable job, but it's the most important job for all of us, because we all eat."
Farm workers: Take our jobs, please!
Most farm workers in the U.S. are illegal immigrants, but a union representing these workers has offered their jobs to Americans.
Aaron Smith, staff writer
July 10, 2010
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Facing growing anti-immigrant rhetoric, the United Farm Workers union is challenging Americans to take their labor-intensive, low-paying farm jobs.
As communities nationwide grapple with tenacious unemployment, migrant workers are often accused of stealing jobs from Americans. The union believes this accusation is without basis, and intends to demonstrate this with a newly-launched campaign called "Take Our Jobs."
"Farm workers do the work that most Americans are not willing to do," said union president Arturo Rodriguez in the announcement of the campaign.
At least half a million applicants are needed to replace the immigrant workforce, so the union has posted an online application for Americans who want to work on a farm.
Through its Web site, at www.takeourjobs.org, the union promises to connect applicants with farm jobs in their area.
Since June 24, at least 4,000 people have responded to the application, said Rodriguez. Some are serious responses and others are hate mail. "Only a few dozen have really followed through with the process," he said.
Most applicants quickly lose interest once the reality sinks in that these are back-breaking jobs in triple-digit temperatures that pay minimum wage, usually without benefits, according to the union. Some small farms are not required to pay minimum wage and in 15 states farms aren't required to offer workers' compensation.
Despite the dismal job market in the U.S., where the unemployment rate is 9.5% and 14.6 million people are out of work, there have been few takers.
"I think everybody in our society is pretty clear that the least desirable job in the U.S. is being a migrant farm worker," said Rob Williams, director of the Migrant Farm Worker Justice Project. "If someone said to me, 'Here's a hazardous job and there's no worker's compensation,' I'd say, 'No thanks, It's kind of a no-brainer."
The Department of Agriculture counts nearly one million farm workers in the United States. According to the Migrant Farm Worker Justice Project, 85% of farm workers are immigrants -- and up to 70% of them are illegal.
Rodriguez, the union president, said the campaign is meant to draw attention to the need for immigration reform, such as the so-called AgJobs bill currently held up in Congress. The bill would grant temporary legal status to immigrants, which would become permanent if they continue to work on farms for a specific period of time.
"If [members of Congress] can't do their job in passing the bill, then they should come work in the fields," he said.
Illegal workers are rich fodder for anti-immigration leaders such as Gov. Janice Brewer, R-Ariz., who told reporters in June that the "majority" of immigrants crossing the border from Mexico are smuggling drugs for cartels. The governor also signed into law requirements for state police to "determine the immigration status" of anyone under "reasonable suspicion" of being an illegal alien.
The Justice Department on Tuesday sued the state of Arizona to overturn its new immigration law.
The proponents for migrant farm workers insist that they help, not hinder, the U.S.
Williams said that if people who oppose immigration "got their wish and all the unauthorized people went home tomorrow, we would have a crisis. We wouldn't have anyone to pick the crops, milk the cows, or take care of the Christmas trees."
He added, "It may be the least desirable job, but it's the most important job for all of us, because we all eat."
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Is Swine Flu A Biological Weapon?
http://www.prisonplanet.com/is-swine-flu-a-biological-weapon.html
Is Swine Flu A Biological Weapon?
Or are relatively limited number of deaths an indication that the panic is worse than the actual threat?
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, April 27, 2009
There are some factors that suggest the swine flu killing people in Mexico may be a biological weapon, but obviously no such conclusion can be drawn at this time. The World Health Organization and the U.S. government have been quick to deny such claims.
The swine flu virus is described as a completely new strain, an intercontinental mixture of human, avian and swine viruses. Tellingly, there have been no reported A-H1N1 infections of pigs.
According to a source known to former NSA official Wayne Madsen, “A top scientist for the United Nations, who has examined the outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in Africa, as well as HIV/AIDS victims, concluded that H1N1 possesses certain transmission “vectors” that suggest that the new flu strain has been genetically-manufactured as a military biological warfare weapon.
Madsen claims that his source, and another in Indonesia, “Are convinced that the current outbreak of a new strain of swine flu in Mexico and some parts of the United States is the result of the introduction of a human-engineered pathogen that could result in a widespread global pandemic, with potentially catastrophic consequences for domestic and international travel and commerce.”
However, it’s important to stress that it is far too early to make this assumption. We have to bear in mind that the number of victims has been comparatively low when one considers the fact that hundreds of thousands in Mexico contract infectious diseases every year related to poverty like tuberculosis and malaria.
Fort Detrick, the U.S. Army Medical Command installation that was the source of the 2001 anthrax attacks, is again attracting suspicion in light of the swine flu panic after it was revealed that criminal investigators are probing whether virus samples recently went missing from its biolabs.
“Chad Jones, spokesman for Fort Meade, said CID is investigating the possibility of missing virus samples from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases,” reports The Frederick News.
In February, USAMRIID halted their work when virus samples were discovered that were not listed in its inventory. Criminal investigators from the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division unit at Fort Meade are now probing whether virus samples are missing from the Army’s top biolab, which also studies pathogens including ebola, anthrax and plague.
Obviously, in light of the current swine flu scare, and the new strain’s possible synthetic origin, the fact that virus samples may have gone missing from the same Army research lab from which the 2001 anthrax strain was released is extremely disturbing.
A 2008 FBI and DOJ investigation concluded that Bruce Edwards Irvins, a microbiologist, vaccinologist, and senior biodefense researcher at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Fort Detrick, Maryland, was responsible for mailing anthrax to members of Congress and the media in September and October 2001.
The fact that Irvins apparently committed suicide shortly before the announcement led many to suspect that he was a patsy in a wider plot. Despite the suspicious circumstances, no autopsy was carried out on Irvins’ body. His attorney was certain that Irvins, who had cooperated with the 6-year investigation, was innocent of the five anthrax deaths.
The Department of Justice initially considered Dr. Steven Jay Hatfill to be a strong suspect in the anthrax attacks, but he later sued the government and won $5.8 million in damages. A New York Times piece on Irvins’ suicide asked the hypothetical question: “What if Dr. Hatfill had committed suicide in 2002, as friends feared he might? Would the investigators have released their evidence and announced that the perpetrator was dead?”
Fears that a mass pandemic was being readied as a biological attack have rumbled on in the conspiracy community ever since 9/11. Investigators point to the highly unusual number of deaths of top microbiologists to suggest that people with knowledge of the program are being eliminated.
Is Swine Flu A Biological Weapon?
Or are relatively limited number of deaths an indication that the panic is worse than the actual threat?
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, April 27, 2009
There are some factors that suggest the swine flu killing people in Mexico may be a biological weapon, but obviously no such conclusion can be drawn at this time. The World Health Organization and the U.S. government have been quick to deny such claims.
The swine flu virus is described as a completely new strain, an intercontinental mixture of human, avian and swine viruses. Tellingly, there have been no reported A-H1N1 infections of pigs.
According to a source known to former NSA official Wayne Madsen, “A top scientist for the United Nations, who has examined the outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in Africa, as well as HIV/AIDS victims, concluded that H1N1 possesses certain transmission “vectors” that suggest that the new flu strain has been genetically-manufactured as a military biological warfare weapon.
Madsen claims that his source, and another in Indonesia, “Are convinced that the current outbreak of a new strain of swine flu in Mexico and some parts of the United States is the result of the introduction of a human-engineered pathogen that could result in a widespread global pandemic, with potentially catastrophic consequences for domestic and international travel and commerce.”
However, it’s important to stress that it is far too early to make this assumption. We have to bear in mind that the number of victims has been comparatively low when one considers the fact that hundreds of thousands in Mexico contract infectious diseases every year related to poverty like tuberculosis and malaria.
Fort Detrick, the U.S. Army Medical Command installation that was the source of the 2001 anthrax attacks, is again attracting suspicion in light of the swine flu panic after it was revealed that criminal investigators are probing whether virus samples recently went missing from its biolabs.
“Chad Jones, spokesman for Fort Meade, said CID is investigating the possibility of missing virus samples from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases,” reports The Frederick News.
In February, USAMRIID halted their work when virus samples were discovered that were not listed in its inventory. Criminal investigators from the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division unit at Fort Meade are now probing whether virus samples are missing from the Army’s top biolab, which also studies pathogens including ebola, anthrax and plague.
Obviously, in light of the current swine flu scare, and the new strain’s possible synthetic origin, the fact that virus samples may have gone missing from the same Army research lab from which the 2001 anthrax strain was released is extremely disturbing.
A 2008 FBI and DOJ investigation concluded that Bruce Edwards Irvins, a microbiologist, vaccinologist, and senior biodefense researcher at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Fort Detrick, Maryland, was responsible for mailing anthrax to members of Congress and the media in September and October 2001.
The fact that Irvins apparently committed suicide shortly before the announcement led many to suspect that he was a patsy in a wider plot. Despite the suspicious circumstances, no autopsy was carried out on Irvins’ body. His attorney was certain that Irvins, who had cooperated with the 6-year investigation, was innocent of the five anthrax deaths.
The Department of Justice initially considered Dr. Steven Jay Hatfill to be a strong suspect in the anthrax attacks, but he later sued the government and won $5.8 million in damages. A New York Times piece on Irvins’ suicide asked the hypothetical question: “What if Dr. Hatfill had committed suicide in 2002, as friends feared he might? Would the investigators have released their evidence and announced that the perpetrator was dead?”
Fears that a mass pandemic was being readied as a biological attack have rumbled on in the conspiracy community ever since 9/11. Investigators point to the highly unusual number of deaths of top microbiologists to suggest that people with knowledge of the program are being eliminated.
Flu Pandemic Hype
http://www.prisonplanet.com/flu-pandemic-hype-another-pretext-for-world-government.html
Flu Pandemic Hype: Another Pretext for World Government
Kurt Nimmo
Prison Planet.com
Monday, April 27, 2009
During the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) Summit in Montebello, Canada in 2005, the “three amigos” (Bush, Harper and Calderon) released “North American Plan for Avian and Pandemic Influenza,” described as a “collaborative North American approach that recognizes that controlling the spread of avian influenza or a novel strain of human influenza, with minimal economic disruption, is in the best interest of all three countries.” The plan outlines how “Canada, Mexico and the United States intend to work together to prepare for and manage avian and pandemic influenza.”
Ban Ki-moon said the Mexican flu outbreak is the “first test” of the “pandemic preparedness work undertaken by the international community over the past three years.”
It was hardly a coincidence that at the same time the U.S. Northern Command, or NORTHCOM, created a webpage dedicated to avian flu and subsequently ran exercises in preparation for the possible use of U.S. military forces in a continental domestic emergency involving avian flu or pandemic influenza.
In 2006, NORTHCOM held an international exercise with more than 40 international, federal, and state agencies “designed to provoke discussion and determine what governmental actions, including military support, would be necessary in the event of an influenza pandemic in the United States.” In addition, NORTHCOM participated in a nationwide Joint Chiefs of Staff-directed exercise code-named Exercise Ardent Sentry 06 to rehearse cooperation between Department of Defense and local, state, federal agencies, and the Canadian government.
In 2005, then president Bush shifted U.S. policy on avian flu and pandemic influenza and placed the U.S. under international guidelines. “The policy shift was formalized Sept. 14, 2005, when Bush announced a new International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza to a High-Level Plenary Meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, in New York,” Jerome Corsi wrote in September, 2007. “The new International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza was designed to supersede an earlier November 2005 Homeland Security report that called for a U.S. national strategy that would be coordinated by the Departments of Homeland Security, Health and Agriculture.”
In other words, any U.S. response to an avian flu pandemic would be directed under WHO, WTO, U.N. and NAFTA directives. Congress and U.S. agencies would be cut out of the picture. “The U.N.-WHO-WTO-NAFTA plan advanced by SPP features a prominent role for the U.N. system influenza coordinator as a central international director in the case of a North American avian flu or pandemic influenza outbreak,” Corsi adds.
Dr. David Nabarro, WHO executive director of sustainable development and health environments, was appointed the first U.N. system influenza coordinator. In 2005, Nabarro said during a press conference that his number one priority was to prepare for the H5N1 virus, known as the avian flu. Nabarro played into the global fear that an epidemic was inevitable.
“I’m not, at the moment at liberty to give you a prediction on numbers, but I just want to stress, that, let’s say, the range of deaths could be anything from 5 to 150 million,” said Nabarro. On March 8, 2006, during a U.N. press conference Nabarro predicted an outbreak of the H5N1 virus would “reach the Americas within the next six to 12 months.”
On Monday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stoked the fear of a global flu pandemic. He said the Mexican flu outbreak is the “first test” of the “pandemic preparedness work undertaken by the international community over the past three years.” Ban Ki-moon said if “we are indeed facing a pandemic, we need to demonstrate global solidarity. In our interconnected world, no nation can deal with threats of such dimension on its own.”
For Ki-moon and the global elite, “global solidarity” in “our interconnected world” translates into yet another push for world government. Ki-moon’s dire warning falls on the heels of the G20 summit where plans were announced for implementing the creation of a new global currency to replace the U.S. dollar’s role as the world reserve currency. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and others repeatedly called for “global governance” and a “New World Order.”
The current flu pandemic hype serves as punctuation mark between the G20 held in London and the upcoming one to be held in Italy in June. “The G20 summit has agreed to try to kick start stalled Doha trade liberalization talks at the next G8 meeting,” Reuters reported on April 2. So-called “trade liberalization” is code for the neoliberal plan to “privatize” public and private industries around the world, impose “flexibilization” of labor markets (create massive unemployment), “deregulate” consumer and financial markets, and foster foreign buyouts, layoffs, wage cuts, transient employment, higher prices, and potentially destabilizing capital flows.
As noted by the Eagle Forum in October, 2007, the SPP’s North American Plan for Avian and Pandemic Influenza “is not only about combating a flu epidemic but is far-reaching in seeking control over U.S. citizens and public policy during an epidemic.” The Plan would give authority to international bureaucrats “beyond the health sector to include a coordinated approach to critical infrastructure protection,” including “border and transportation issues.”
On April 26, Infowars covered the Department of Defense’s “Implementation Plan for Pandemic Influenza” that proposes nothing less than the militarization of health care, military augmentation of civilian law enforcement, and the mass vaccination of the population as directed by the government.
Ki-moon, the United Nations, and the globalists, with the participation of the globalist-dominated corporate media and the ruling elite in Mexico, are hyping the flu outbreak as a possible pandemic in order to sell us their scheme for world government.
It is an ongoing process.
Flu Pandemic Hype: Another Pretext for World Government
Kurt Nimmo
Prison Planet.com
Monday, April 27, 2009
During the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) Summit in Montebello, Canada in 2005, the “three amigos” (Bush, Harper and Calderon) released “North American Plan for Avian and Pandemic Influenza,” described as a “collaborative North American approach that recognizes that controlling the spread of avian influenza or a novel strain of human influenza, with minimal economic disruption, is in the best interest of all three countries.” The plan outlines how “Canada, Mexico and the United States intend to work together to prepare for and manage avian and pandemic influenza.”
Ban Ki-moon said the Mexican flu outbreak is the “first test” of the “pandemic preparedness work undertaken by the international community over the past three years.”
It was hardly a coincidence that at the same time the U.S. Northern Command, or NORTHCOM, created a webpage dedicated to avian flu and subsequently ran exercises in preparation for the possible use of U.S. military forces in a continental domestic emergency involving avian flu or pandemic influenza.
In 2006, NORTHCOM held an international exercise with more than 40 international, federal, and state agencies “designed to provoke discussion and determine what governmental actions, including military support, would be necessary in the event of an influenza pandemic in the United States.” In addition, NORTHCOM participated in a nationwide Joint Chiefs of Staff-directed exercise code-named Exercise Ardent Sentry 06 to rehearse cooperation between Department of Defense and local, state, federal agencies, and the Canadian government.
In 2005, then president Bush shifted U.S. policy on avian flu and pandemic influenza and placed the U.S. under international guidelines. “The policy shift was formalized Sept. 14, 2005, when Bush announced a new International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza to a High-Level Plenary Meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, in New York,” Jerome Corsi wrote in September, 2007. “The new International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza was designed to supersede an earlier November 2005 Homeland Security report that called for a U.S. national strategy that would be coordinated by the Departments of Homeland Security, Health and Agriculture.”
In other words, any U.S. response to an avian flu pandemic would be directed under WHO, WTO, U.N. and NAFTA directives. Congress and U.S. agencies would be cut out of the picture. “The U.N.-WHO-WTO-NAFTA plan advanced by SPP features a prominent role for the U.N. system influenza coordinator as a central international director in the case of a North American avian flu or pandemic influenza outbreak,” Corsi adds.
Dr. David Nabarro, WHO executive director of sustainable development and health environments, was appointed the first U.N. system influenza coordinator. In 2005, Nabarro said during a press conference that his number one priority was to prepare for the H5N1 virus, known as the avian flu. Nabarro played into the global fear that an epidemic was inevitable.
“I’m not, at the moment at liberty to give you a prediction on numbers, but I just want to stress, that, let’s say, the range of deaths could be anything from 5 to 150 million,” said Nabarro. On March 8, 2006, during a U.N. press conference Nabarro predicted an outbreak of the H5N1 virus would “reach the Americas within the next six to 12 months.”
On Monday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stoked the fear of a global flu pandemic. He said the Mexican flu outbreak is the “first test” of the “pandemic preparedness work undertaken by the international community over the past three years.” Ban Ki-moon said if “we are indeed facing a pandemic, we need to demonstrate global solidarity. In our interconnected world, no nation can deal with threats of such dimension on its own.”
For Ki-moon and the global elite, “global solidarity” in “our interconnected world” translates into yet another push for world government. Ki-moon’s dire warning falls on the heels of the G20 summit where plans were announced for implementing the creation of a new global currency to replace the U.S. dollar’s role as the world reserve currency. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and others repeatedly called for “global governance” and a “New World Order.”
The current flu pandemic hype serves as punctuation mark between the G20 held in London and the upcoming one to be held in Italy in June. “The G20 summit has agreed to try to kick start stalled Doha trade liberalization talks at the next G8 meeting,” Reuters reported on April 2. So-called “trade liberalization” is code for the neoliberal plan to “privatize” public and private industries around the world, impose “flexibilization” of labor markets (create massive unemployment), “deregulate” consumer and financial markets, and foster foreign buyouts, layoffs, wage cuts, transient employment, higher prices, and potentially destabilizing capital flows.
As noted by the Eagle Forum in October, 2007, the SPP’s North American Plan for Avian and Pandemic Influenza “is not only about combating a flu epidemic but is far-reaching in seeking control over U.S. citizens and public policy during an epidemic.” The Plan would give authority to international bureaucrats “beyond the health sector to include a coordinated approach to critical infrastructure protection,” including “border and transportation issues.”
On April 26, Infowars covered the Department of Defense’s “Implementation Plan for Pandemic Influenza” that proposes nothing less than the militarization of health care, military augmentation of civilian law enforcement, and the mass vaccination of the population as directed by the government.
Ki-moon, the United Nations, and the globalists, with the participation of the globalist-dominated corporate media and the ruling elite in Mexico, are hyping the flu outbreak as a possible pandemic in order to sell us their scheme for world government.
It is an ongoing process.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
WHO: Swine Flu Could Trigger Global Pandemic
http://www.prisonplanet.com/who-swine-flu-could-trigger-global-pandemic.html
WHO: Swine Flu Could Trigger Global Pandemic
Unheard of new strain is hybrid resulting from a combination of four different viruses
Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Friday, April 24, 2009
The World Health Organization has warned that a new form of influenza that may have spread from Mexico into the U.S. could develop into a pandemic-type virus.
Hundreds of people in Mexico have been infected and 60 have died from suspected swine flu, while seven human cases have been confirmed in the United States, a World Health Organisation spokeswoman has said.
U.S. labs are still running tests on the Mexican strain of the virus, results of which will be released by the will be released later today by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
At this point it is not yet clear whether the two strains are the same. Some media reports have failed to make this clear, while the Drudge report has jumped in head first declaring an “OUTBREAK” with a giant frothing red headline.
Five of the U.S. cases were recorded in California with a further two in Texas. The first two cases in Southern California appeared almost simultaneously, 100 miles apart, indicating that the virus can silently spread. Neither case was due to contact with swine, and family members had symptoms before and after the confirmed cases, indicating that the H1N1 swine flu is being efficiently transmitted human to human.
Most of the Mexican cases were found in healthy young adults with no known record of prior illness, according to reports.
Schools in Mexico City and the surrounding areas have been temporarily closed and people with flu symptoms have been advised to stay home from work. The Mexican government has launched a huge vaccination campaign.
The WHO has also pointed out that pigs have been implicated in the emergence of new influenza viruses responsible for two of the previous century’s influenza pandemics, including the 1918 pandemic strain which spread to nearly every part of the world killing an estimated 2.5 to 5% of the human population - somewhere in the region of 50 million to 100 million people.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has reiterated the WHO comments, writing on it’s website:
“The infection of humans with a novel influenza A virus infection of animal origins as has happened here is of concern because of the risk, albeit small, that this could represent the appearance of viruses with pandemic potential.”
According to scientists at the CDC, genetic analysis indicates that the virus is “highly unusual”:
“It is a hybrid that resulted from a combination of four different viruses — one that typically infects people, one that originated in North American birds and two from pigs in Europe and Asia,” Anne Schuchat, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told the Washington Post.
“The good news is all seven of these patients have recovered,” she said. The virus appears to be resistant to two drugs normally used to treat the flu, but two others appear to be effective against it.
“This combination has not been recognized before in the U.S. or elsewhere,” Schuchat said.
Other scientists have warned that if a pig is simultaneously infected with a human and an avian influenza virus, it can serve as a “mixing vessel” for the two viruses that could combine to create a new more virulent strain.
Though this story has broken in the mainstream media today, authorities have been tracking it for some time. One week ago, the Public Health Agency of Canada contacted health and quarantine services to inform them that Mexican health authorities had advised Canada to be on alert for possible infections.
WHO: Swine Flu Could Trigger Global Pandemic
Unheard of new strain is hybrid resulting from a combination of four different viruses
Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Friday, April 24, 2009
The World Health Organization has warned that a new form of influenza that may have spread from Mexico into the U.S. could develop into a pandemic-type virus.
Hundreds of people in Mexico have been infected and 60 have died from suspected swine flu, while seven human cases have been confirmed in the United States, a World Health Organisation spokeswoman has said.
U.S. labs are still running tests on the Mexican strain of the virus, results of which will be released by the will be released later today by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
At this point it is not yet clear whether the two strains are the same. Some media reports have failed to make this clear, while the Drudge report has jumped in head first declaring an “OUTBREAK” with a giant frothing red headline.
Five of the U.S. cases were recorded in California with a further two in Texas. The first two cases in Southern California appeared almost simultaneously, 100 miles apart, indicating that the virus can silently spread. Neither case was due to contact with swine, and family members had symptoms before and after the confirmed cases, indicating that the H1N1 swine flu is being efficiently transmitted human to human.
Most of the Mexican cases were found in healthy young adults with no known record of prior illness, according to reports.
Schools in Mexico City and the surrounding areas have been temporarily closed and people with flu symptoms have been advised to stay home from work. The Mexican government has launched a huge vaccination campaign.
The WHO has also pointed out that pigs have been implicated in the emergence of new influenza viruses responsible for two of the previous century’s influenza pandemics, including the 1918 pandemic strain which spread to nearly every part of the world killing an estimated 2.5 to 5% of the human population - somewhere in the region of 50 million to 100 million people.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has reiterated the WHO comments, writing on it’s website:
“The infection of humans with a novel influenza A virus infection of animal origins as has happened here is of concern because of the risk, albeit small, that this could represent the appearance of viruses with pandemic potential.”
According to scientists at the CDC, genetic analysis indicates that the virus is “highly unusual”:
“It is a hybrid that resulted from a combination of four different viruses — one that typically infects people, one that originated in North American birds and two from pigs in Europe and Asia,” Anne Schuchat, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told the Washington Post.
“The good news is all seven of these patients have recovered,” she said. The virus appears to be resistant to two drugs normally used to treat the flu, but two others appear to be effective against it.
“This combination has not been recognized before in the U.S. or elsewhere,” Schuchat said.
Other scientists have warned that if a pig is simultaneously infected with a human and an avian influenza virus, it can serve as a “mixing vessel” for the two viruses that could combine to create a new more virulent strain.
Though this story has broken in the mainstream media today, authorities have been tracking it for some time. One week ago, the Public Health Agency of Canada contacted health and quarantine services to inform them that Mexican health authorities had advised Canada to be on alert for possible infections.
Flu Is Deadly Mix Of Never-Before-Seen Viruses
http://www.prisonplanet.com/medical-director-swine-flu-was-cultured-in-a-laboratory.html
Swine Flu Is Deadly Mix Of Never-Before-Seen Viruses
Alarm spreads as human to human infection confirmed, bug is an intercontinental mix of never-before-seen human, avian and pig viruses, top globalists stand to benefit from Tamiflu stockpiling
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Swine flu panic is spreading in Mexico and soldiers are patrolling the streets after it was confirmed that human to human transmission is occurring and that the virus is a brand new strain which is seemingly affecting young, healthy people the worst, and that the bug is a never-before-seen intercontinental mixture of human, avian and pig viruses from America, Europe and Asia.
Clues that the virus may be a synthetic creation are already manifesting.
According to reports, the virus is a “never-before-seen form of the flu that combines pig, bird and human viruses” which consists of an intercontinental mix of viruses from North America, Europe and Asia.
“CDC officials detected a virus with a unique combination of gene segments that have not been seen in people or pigs before,” according to an Associated Press report.
“This strain of swine influenza that’s been cultured in a laboratory is something that’s not been seen anywhere actually in the United States and the world, so this is actually a new strain of influenza that’s been identified,” said Dr. John Carlo, Dallas Co. Medical Director (video clip here).
Alarming reports are now filtering in about people catching the illness who have had no contact with pigs whatsoever. These include a man and his daughter in San Diego County, a 41-year-old woman in Imperial County and two teenagers in San Antonio, Texas. In fact, in all U.S. cases, the victims had no contact with any pigs.
Dr. Wilma Wooten, San Diego County’s public health officer, told KPBS “We have had person-to-person spread with the father and the daughter,” says Wooten, “And also with the two teenagers in Texas, they were in the same school. So that also indicates person-to-person transfer.”
“Dr. Wooten says it’s unclear how people were exposed to swine flu. She says none of the patients have had any contact with pigs,” according to the report.
Although the situation in the U.S. looks under control, panic is spreading in Mexico, where 800 cases of pneumonia in the capital alone are suspected to be related to the swine flu and the virus has hit young and healthy people, which is very rare with an flu outbreak. Despite the danger of a pandemic, the U.S. border with Mexico remains open.
“Mexico has shut schools and museums and canceled hundreds of public events in its sprawling, overcrowded capital of 20 million people to try to prevent further infections,” reports Reuters.
“My level of concern is significant,” said Dr. Martin Fenstersheib, the health officer for Santa Clara County. “We have a novel virus, a brand-new strain that’s spreading human to human, and we are also seeing a virulent strain in Mexico that seems to be related. We certainly have concerns for this escalating.”
The WHO insists that the outbreak has “pandemic potential” and has been stockpiling supplies of Tamiflu, known generically as oseltamivir, a pill that can both treat flu and prevent infection, according to officials.
As we previously highlighted, those that have a stake in the Tamiflu vaccine include top globalists and BIlderberg members like George Shultz, Lodewijk J.R. de Vink and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Indeed, Rumsfeld himself played a key role in hyping an outbreak of swine flu back in the 1976 when he urged the entire country to get vaccinated. Many batches of the vaccine were contaminated, resulting in hundreds of sick people and 52 fatalities.
The fact that the properties of the strain are completely new, that the virus is spreading from people to people, and that the young and healthy are being hit worst, has disturbing parallels to the deadly 1918 pandemic that killed millions.
It is unclear as to why, if the virus is a brand new strain, that public health officials are so confident programs of mass vaccination, which are already being prepared, would necessarily be effective.
It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that deadly flu viruses have been concocted in labs and then dispatched with the intention of creating a pandemic.
When the story first broke last month, Czech newspapers questioned if the shocking discovery of vaccines contaminated with the deadly avian flu virus which were distributed to 18 countries by the American company Baxter were part of a conspiracy to provoke a pandemic.
Since the probability of mixing a live virus biological weapon with vaccine material by accident is virtually impossible, this leaves no other explanation than that the contamination was a deliberate attempt to weaponize the H5N1 virus to its most potent extreme and distribute it via conventional flu vaccines to the population who would then infect others to a devastating degree as the disease went airborne.
However, this is not the first time that vaccine companies have been caught distributing vaccines contaminated with deadly viruses.
In 2006 it was revealed that Bayer Corporation had discovered that their injection drug, which was used by hemophiliacs, was contaminated with the HIV virus. Internal documents prove that after they positively knew that the drug was contaminated, they took it off the U.S. market only to dump it on the European, Asian and Latin American markets, knowingly exposing thousands, most of them children, to the live HIV virus. Government officials in France went to prison for allowing the drug to be distributed. The documents show that the FDA colluded with Bayer to cover-up the scandal and allowed the deadly drug to be distributed globally. No Bayer executives ever faced arrest or prosecution in the United States.
In the UK, a 2007 outbreak of foot and mouth disease that put Britain on high alert has been originated from a government laboratory which is shared with an American pharmaceutical company, mirroring the deadly outbreak of 2001, which was also deliberately released.
As we reported yesterday, last time there was a significant outbreak of a new form of swine flu in the U.S. it originated at the army base at Fort Dix, New Jersey.
Swine Flu Is Deadly Mix Of Never-Before-Seen Viruses
Alarm spreads as human to human infection confirmed, bug is an intercontinental mix of never-before-seen human, avian and pig viruses, top globalists stand to benefit from Tamiflu stockpiling
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Swine flu panic is spreading in Mexico and soldiers are patrolling the streets after it was confirmed that human to human transmission is occurring and that the virus is a brand new strain which is seemingly affecting young, healthy people the worst, and that the bug is a never-before-seen intercontinental mixture of human, avian and pig viruses from America, Europe and Asia.
Clues that the virus may be a synthetic creation are already manifesting.
According to reports, the virus is a “never-before-seen form of the flu that combines pig, bird and human viruses” which consists of an intercontinental mix of viruses from North America, Europe and Asia.
“CDC officials detected a virus with a unique combination of gene segments that have not been seen in people or pigs before,” according to an Associated Press report.
“This strain of swine influenza that’s been cultured in a laboratory is something that’s not been seen anywhere actually in the United States and the world, so this is actually a new strain of influenza that’s been identified,” said Dr. John Carlo, Dallas Co. Medical Director (video clip here).
Alarming reports are now filtering in about people catching the illness who have had no contact with pigs whatsoever. These include a man and his daughter in San Diego County, a 41-year-old woman in Imperial County and two teenagers in San Antonio, Texas. In fact, in all U.S. cases, the victims had no contact with any pigs.
Dr. Wilma Wooten, San Diego County’s public health officer, told KPBS “We have had person-to-person spread with the father and the daughter,” says Wooten, “And also with the two teenagers in Texas, they were in the same school. So that also indicates person-to-person transfer.”
“Dr. Wooten says it’s unclear how people were exposed to swine flu. She says none of the patients have had any contact with pigs,” according to the report.
Although the situation in the U.S. looks under control, panic is spreading in Mexico, where 800 cases of pneumonia in the capital alone are suspected to be related to the swine flu and the virus has hit young and healthy people, which is very rare with an flu outbreak. Despite the danger of a pandemic, the U.S. border with Mexico remains open.
“Mexico has shut schools and museums and canceled hundreds of public events in its sprawling, overcrowded capital of 20 million people to try to prevent further infections,” reports Reuters.
“My level of concern is significant,” said Dr. Martin Fenstersheib, the health officer for Santa Clara County. “We have a novel virus, a brand-new strain that’s spreading human to human, and we are also seeing a virulent strain in Mexico that seems to be related. We certainly have concerns for this escalating.”
The WHO insists that the outbreak has “pandemic potential” and has been stockpiling supplies of Tamiflu, known generically as oseltamivir, a pill that can both treat flu and prevent infection, according to officials.
As we previously highlighted, those that have a stake in the Tamiflu vaccine include top globalists and BIlderberg members like George Shultz, Lodewijk J.R. de Vink and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Indeed, Rumsfeld himself played a key role in hyping an outbreak of swine flu back in the 1976 when he urged the entire country to get vaccinated. Many batches of the vaccine were contaminated, resulting in hundreds of sick people and 52 fatalities.
The fact that the properties of the strain are completely new, that the virus is spreading from people to people, and that the young and healthy are being hit worst, has disturbing parallels to the deadly 1918 pandemic that killed millions.
It is unclear as to why, if the virus is a brand new strain, that public health officials are so confident programs of mass vaccination, which are already being prepared, would necessarily be effective.
It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that deadly flu viruses have been concocted in labs and then dispatched with the intention of creating a pandemic.
When the story first broke last month, Czech newspapers questioned if the shocking discovery of vaccines contaminated with the deadly avian flu virus which were distributed to 18 countries by the American company Baxter were part of a conspiracy to provoke a pandemic.
Since the probability of mixing a live virus biological weapon with vaccine material by accident is virtually impossible, this leaves no other explanation than that the contamination was a deliberate attempt to weaponize the H5N1 virus to its most potent extreme and distribute it via conventional flu vaccines to the population who would then infect others to a devastating degree as the disease went airborne.
However, this is not the first time that vaccine companies have been caught distributing vaccines contaminated with deadly viruses.
In 2006 it was revealed that Bayer Corporation had discovered that their injection drug, which was used by hemophiliacs, was contaminated with the HIV virus. Internal documents prove that after they positively knew that the drug was contaminated, they took it off the U.S. market only to dump it on the European, Asian and Latin American markets, knowingly exposing thousands, most of them children, to the live HIV virus. Government officials in France went to prison for allowing the drug to be distributed. The documents show that the FDA colluded with Bayer to cover-up the scandal and allowed the deadly drug to be distributed globally. No Bayer executives ever faced arrest or prosecution in the United States.
In the UK, a 2007 outbreak of foot and mouth disease that put Britain on high alert has been originated from a government laboratory which is shared with an American pharmaceutical company, mirroring the deadly outbreak of 2001, which was also deliberately released.
As we reported yesterday, last time there was a significant outbreak of a new form of swine flu in the U.S. it originated at the army base at Fort Dix, New Jersey.
Swine flu death toll in Mexico rises to 103
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N26489254.htm
Swine flu death toll in Mexico rises to 103
MEXICO CITY, April 26 (Reuters) - The death toll in Mexico from an outbreak of a new type of swine flu has risen to 103 people, Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova said on Sunday.
Cordova told Mexican television that around 400 people were in hospital out of a total of around 1,600 suspected cases.
The outbreak of a new strain of flu in Mexico in the last few days has stoked fears of a global epidemic as new cases cropped up in the United States and Canada. Possible infections are also being checked in Europe, Israel and New Zealand.
"The most recent reports we have are of 1,614 cases, with 103 deaths, and we still have around 400 patients in hospital," Cordova told the Televisa network, explaining that around two-thirds of the sick patients had recovered.
Millions of Mexicans stayed indoors at the weekend or ventured out wearing surgical masks, especially in Mexico City where the government stopped public events and shut museums, bars and stadiums closed to try and contain the virus.
(Reporting by Miguel Angel Gutierrez)
Swine flu death toll in Mexico rises to 103
MEXICO CITY, April 26 (Reuters) - The death toll in Mexico from an outbreak of a new type of swine flu has risen to 103 people, Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova said on Sunday.
Cordova told Mexican television that around 400 people were in hospital out of a total of around 1,600 suspected cases.
The outbreak of a new strain of flu in Mexico in the last few days has stoked fears of a global epidemic as new cases cropped up in the United States and Canada. Possible infections are also being checked in Europe, Israel and New Zealand.
"The most recent reports we have are of 1,614 cases, with 103 deaths, and we still have around 400 patients in hospital," Cordova told the Televisa network, explaining that around two-thirds of the sick patients had recovered.
Millions of Mexicans stayed indoors at the weekend or ventured out wearing surgical masks, especially in Mexico City where the government stopped public events and shut museums, bars and stadiums closed to try and contain the virus.
(Reporting by Miguel Angel Gutierrez)
U.S. Declares Public Health Emergency
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/world/27flu.html
U.S. Declares Public Health Emergency Over Swine Flu
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
April 26, 2009
Responding to what some health officials feared could be the leading edge of a global pandemic emerging from Mexico, American health officials declared a public health emergency on Sunday as 20 cases of swine flu were confirmed in this country, including eight in New York City.
Other nations imposed travel bans or made plans to quarantine air travelers as confirmed cases also appeared in Mexico and Canada and suspect cases emerged elsewhere.
Top global flu experts struggled to predict how dangerous the new A (H1N1) swine flu strain would be as it became clear that they had too little information about Mexico’s outbreak — in particular how many cases had occurred in what is thought to be a month before the outbreak was detected, and whether the virus was mutating to be more lethal, or less.
“We’re in a period in which the picture is evolving,” said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, deputy director general of the World Health Organization. “We need to know the extent to which it causes mild and serious infections.”
Without that knowledge — which is unlikely to emerge soon because only two laboratories, in Atlanta and Winnipeg, Canada, can confirm a case — his agency’s panel of experts was unwilling to raise the global pandemic alert level, even though it officially saw the outbreak as a public health emergency and opened its emergency response center.
As a news conference in Washington, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano called the emergency declaration “standard operating procedure,” and said she would rather call it a “declaration of emergency preparedness.”
“It’s like declaring one for a hurricane,” she said. “It means we can release funds and take other measures. The hurricane may not actually hit.”
American investigators said they expected more cases here, but noted that virtually all so far had been mild and urged Americans not to panic.
The speed and the scope of the world’s response showed the value of preparations made because of the avian flu and SARS scares, public health experts said.
The emergency declaration in the United States lets the government free more money for antiviral drugs and give some previously unapproved tests and drugs to children. One-quarter of the national stockpile of 50 million courses of antiflu drugs will be released.
Border patrols and airport security officers are to begin asking travelers if they have had the flu or a fever; those who appear ill will be stopped, taken aside and given masks while they arrange for medical care.
“This is moving fast and we expect to see more cases,” Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at the news conference with Ms. Napolitano. “But we view this as a marathon.”
He advised Americans to wash their hands frequently, to cover coughs and sneezes and to stay home if they felt ill; but he stopped short of advice now given in Mexico to wear masks and not kiss or touch anyone. He praised decisions to close individual schools in New York and Texas but did not call for more widespread closings.
Besides the eight New York cases, officials said they had confirmed seven in California, two in Kansas, two in Texas and one in Ohio. The virus looked identical to the one in Mexico believed to have killed 103 people — including 22 people whose deaths were confirmed to be from swine flu — and sickened about 1,600. As of Sunday night, there were no swine flu deaths in the United States, and one hospitalization.
Other governments tried to contain the infection amid reports of potential new cases including in New Zealand, Hong Kong and Spain.
Dr. Fukuda of the W.H.O. said his agency would decide Tuesday whether to raise the pandemic alert level to 4. Such a move would prompt more travel bans, and the agency has been reluctant historically to take actions that hurt member nations.
Canada confirmed six cases, at opposite ends of the country: four in Nova Scotia and two in British Columbia. Canadian health officials said the victims had only mild symptoms and had either recently traveled to Mexico or been in contact with someone who had.
Other governments issued advisories urging citizens not to visit Mexico. China, Japan, Hong Kong and others set up quarantines for anyone possibly infected. Russia and other countries banned pork imports from Mexico, though people cannot get the flu from eating pork.
In the United States, the C.D.C. confirmed that eight students at St. Francis Preparatory School in Fresh Meadows, Queens, had been infected with the new swine flu. At a news conference on Sunday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said that all those cases had been mild and that city hospitals had not seen a surge in severe lung infections.
On the streets of New York, people seemed relatively unconcerned, in sharp contrast to Mexico City, where soldiers handed out masks.
Hong Kong, shaped by lasting scars as an epicenter of the SARS outbreak, announced very tough measures. Officials there urged travelers to avoid Mexico and ordered the immediate detention of anyone arriving with a fever higher than 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit after traveling through any city with a confirmed case, which would include New York.
Everyone stopped will be sent to a hospital for a flu test and held until it is negative. Since Hong Kong has Asia’s busiest airport hub, the policy could severely disrupt international travel.
The central question is how many mild cases Mexico has had, Dr. Martin S. Cetron, director of global migration and quarantine for the Centers for Disease Control, said in an interview.
“We may just be looking at the tip of the iceberg, which would give you a skewed initial estimate of the case fatality rate,” he said, meaning that there might have been tens of thousands of mild infections around the 1,300 cases of serious disease and 80 or more deaths. If that is true, as the flu spreads, it would not be surprising if most cases were mild.
Even in 1918, according to the C.D.C., the virus infected at least 500 million of the world’s 1.5 billion people to kill 50 million. Many would have been saved if antiflu drugs, antibiotics and mechanical ventilators had existed.
Another hypothesis, Dr. Cetron said, is that some other factor in Mexico increased lethality, like co-infection with another microbe or an unwittingly dangerous treatment.
Flu experts would also like to know whether current flu shots give any protection because it will be months before a new vaccine can be made.
There is an H1N1 human strain in this year’s shot, and all H1N1 flus are descendants of the 1918 pandemic strain. But flus pick up many mutations, and there will be no proof of protection until the C.D.C. can test stored blood serum containing flu shot antibodies against the new virus. Those tests are under way, said an expert who sent the C.D.C. his blood samples.
Reporting was contributed by Sheryl Gay Stolberg from Washington, Jack Healy from New York, Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong and Ian Austen from Ottawa.
A version of this article appeared in print on April 27, 2009, on page A1 of the New York edition.
U.S. Declares Public Health Emergency Over Swine Flu
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
April 26, 2009
Responding to what some health officials feared could be the leading edge of a global pandemic emerging from Mexico, American health officials declared a public health emergency on Sunday as 20 cases of swine flu were confirmed in this country, including eight in New York City.
Other nations imposed travel bans or made plans to quarantine air travelers as confirmed cases also appeared in Mexico and Canada and suspect cases emerged elsewhere.
Top global flu experts struggled to predict how dangerous the new A (H1N1) swine flu strain would be as it became clear that they had too little information about Mexico’s outbreak — in particular how many cases had occurred in what is thought to be a month before the outbreak was detected, and whether the virus was mutating to be more lethal, or less.
“We’re in a period in which the picture is evolving,” said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, deputy director general of the World Health Organization. “We need to know the extent to which it causes mild and serious infections.”
Without that knowledge — which is unlikely to emerge soon because only two laboratories, in Atlanta and Winnipeg, Canada, can confirm a case — his agency’s panel of experts was unwilling to raise the global pandemic alert level, even though it officially saw the outbreak as a public health emergency and opened its emergency response center.
As a news conference in Washington, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano called the emergency declaration “standard operating procedure,” and said she would rather call it a “declaration of emergency preparedness.”
“It’s like declaring one for a hurricane,” she said. “It means we can release funds and take other measures. The hurricane may not actually hit.”
American investigators said they expected more cases here, but noted that virtually all so far had been mild and urged Americans not to panic.
The speed and the scope of the world’s response showed the value of preparations made because of the avian flu and SARS scares, public health experts said.
The emergency declaration in the United States lets the government free more money for antiviral drugs and give some previously unapproved tests and drugs to children. One-quarter of the national stockpile of 50 million courses of antiflu drugs will be released.
Border patrols and airport security officers are to begin asking travelers if they have had the flu or a fever; those who appear ill will be stopped, taken aside and given masks while they arrange for medical care.
“This is moving fast and we expect to see more cases,” Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at the news conference with Ms. Napolitano. “But we view this as a marathon.”
He advised Americans to wash their hands frequently, to cover coughs and sneezes and to stay home if they felt ill; but he stopped short of advice now given in Mexico to wear masks and not kiss or touch anyone. He praised decisions to close individual schools in New York and Texas but did not call for more widespread closings.
Besides the eight New York cases, officials said they had confirmed seven in California, two in Kansas, two in Texas and one in Ohio. The virus looked identical to the one in Mexico believed to have killed 103 people — including 22 people whose deaths were confirmed to be from swine flu — and sickened about 1,600. As of Sunday night, there were no swine flu deaths in the United States, and one hospitalization.
Other governments tried to contain the infection amid reports of potential new cases including in New Zealand, Hong Kong and Spain.
Dr. Fukuda of the W.H.O. said his agency would decide Tuesday whether to raise the pandemic alert level to 4. Such a move would prompt more travel bans, and the agency has been reluctant historically to take actions that hurt member nations.
Canada confirmed six cases, at opposite ends of the country: four in Nova Scotia and two in British Columbia. Canadian health officials said the victims had only mild symptoms and had either recently traveled to Mexico or been in contact with someone who had.
Other governments issued advisories urging citizens not to visit Mexico. China, Japan, Hong Kong and others set up quarantines for anyone possibly infected. Russia and other countries banned pork imports from Mexico, though people cannot get the flu from eating pork.
In the United States, the C.D.C. confirmed that eight students at St. Francis Preparatory School in Fresh Meadows, Queens, had been infected with the new swine flu. At a news conference on Sunday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said that all those cases had been mild and that city hospitals had not seen a surge in severe lung infections.
On the streets of New York, people seemed relatively unconcerned, in sharp contrast to Mexico City, where soldiers handed out masks.
Hong Kong, shaped by lasting scars as an epicenter of the SARS outbreak, announced very tough measures. Officials there urged travelers to avoid Mexico and ordered the immediate detention of anyone arriving with a fever higher than 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit after traveling through any city with a confirmed case, which would include New York.
Everyone stopped will be sent to a hospital for a flu test and held until it is negative. Since Hong Kong has Asia’s busiest airport hub, the policy could severely disrupt international travel.
The central question is how many mild cases Mexico has had, Dr. Martin S. Cetron, director of global migration and quarantine for the Centers for Disease Control, said in an interview.
“We may just be looking at the tip of the iceberg, which would give you a skewed initial estimate of the case fatality rate,” he said, meaning that there might have been tens of thousands of mild infections around the 1,300 cases of serious disease and 80 or more deaths. If that is true, as the flu spreads, it would not be surprising if most cases were mild.
Even in 1918, according to the C.D.C., the virus infected at least 500 million of the world’s 1.5 billion people to kill 50 million. Many would have been saved if antiflu drugs, antibiotics and mechanical ventilators had existed.
Another hypothesis, Dr. Cetron said, is that some other factor in Mexico increased lethality, like co-infection with another microbe or an unwittingly dangerous treatment.
Flu experts would also like to know whether current flu shots give any protection because it will be months before a new vaccine can be made.
There is an H1N1 human strain in this year’s shot, and all H1N1 flus are descendants of the 1918 pandemic strain. But flus pick up many mutations, and there will be no proof of protection until the C.D.C. can test stored blood serum containing flu shot antibodies against the new virus. Those tests are under way, said an expert who sent the C.D.C. his blood samples.
Reporting was contributed by Sheryl Gay Stolberg from Washington, Jack Healy from New York, Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong and Ian Austen from Ottawa.
A version of this article appeared in print on April 27, 2009, on page A1 of the New York edition.
Mexico City becomes 'strange zombie city'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/5225712/Swine-flu-Mexico-City-becomes-strange-zombie-city-as-residents-hide-behind-doors.htmlSwine flu: Mexico City becomes 'strange zombie city' as residents hide behind doors
The normally bustling streets of Mexico City were virtually empty yesterday, with millions preferring to stay in their houses rather than risk contagion from the killer swine flu.
By Ioan Grillo in Mexico City
26 Apr 2009
A mixture of fear, suspicion and frustration set in across the country as the death toll from swine flu rose and the government took an increasingly tough position to stop it spreading.
Many of those who did venture out wore the blue face masks that were being handed out by soldiers at check points along the main avenues.
New Zealand students 'highly likely' to have swine flu "It's like we're in a strange zombie movie or something," said Gerardo Garcia, a 23 year old student, hurriedly stocking up with groceries.
"You don't know who could be carrying this plague so it is best to just keep behind closed doors as much as possible."
A shutdown of all schools, universities, museums and theatres was extended to bars and discos, which the government decreed they could forcibly close if they did not shutter their doors voluntarily.
Sunday Masses normally celebrated by millions in this strongly Roman Catholic country were also cancelled - the first such closure since Mexico's religious wars of the 1920s.
Health workers on the ground were overwhelmed with people reporting the key symptoms of the epidemic such as coughs, aching muscles and diarrhoea - although many may have had traditional forms of flu.
In total, 1,300 people were fighting the virus in hospital beds across Mexico with as many as 81 people dying of the disease.
Feelings of anxiety also swept through the 1,000 strong British expatriate community in the city.
Bar owner Umair Khan, 35, of Wembley, London, said he was getting increasingly worried seeing how events were developing.
"Originally, I wasn't in a major panic. But now that everything is shutting down it shows how serious it is," Khan said. "I have been here for 11 years and I have never seen anything like this."
Mr Khan said he shut his business - A British-style pub called the Black Horse - on Saturday after the government decree.
"It's a loss of money but you can't be angry about it," he said. "The last thing I would want is for someone to die after getting sick in my bar."
School teacher Gavin Judd, 38, from Birmingham has also been given a holiday from work.
"My plans are to avoid to going out as much as possible," he said. "If this is serious enough for the government to shut my school then I think it is a very real threat."
Mr Judd said he had no immediate plans to leave Mexico City, but said he will go if the government continues the school shut down until the end of the summer.
However, some others were taking the threat less seriously.
Hugh Carroll, a 56 year old investment broker from Glasgow, said he was unconcerned about the virus.
"I'm not worried in the slightest. It's probably been over exaggerated," he said. "Most people here don't trust what the Mexican government say and I don't believe them either."
Mr Carroll said he had not heard the declarations from the World Health Organization. He planned to go out and meet friends as usual.
Some Mexicans shared this disbelief, alleging it could be some kind of government conspiracy.
"It's probably all just made up to keep our minds off the global recession," said Roberto Santino, a 60-year-old building site foremen.
"Our government has been using these tactics for years."
Mr Santino claimed new government powers to fight the virus - including the power to search suspects and houses - were just an excuse to trample on people's rights.
Another conspiracy theory was that warring drug cartels, who killed eight civilians in a grenade attack in September, could be behind the misery.
"Who knows what is going on. Are the narco cartels using a secret weapon?" asked Lionel Trujillo, a 42-year old salesman, nervously fingering a surgical mask covering his mouth and nose.
Those at health centres showed more frantic worry.
At the Santiago Acahualtepec public clinic in Mexico City's working class Iztapalapa neighbourhood, a queue of patients, mostly clad in face masks, packed out the waiting room and stretched into the street.
"My daughter started showing signs of the sickness overnight - her temperature has shot up and she has been in a lot of pain," said Maria Angeles Garcia, a 33-year old teacher, waiting anxiously to be seen. "I am just praying that she does not have this plague."
New U.S. swine flu cases spread pandemic fears
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30398682
New U.S. swine flu cases spread pandemic fears
2 cases found in Kansas and 8 more likely in NYC
April 25, 2009
At least two cases of the human swine influenza have been confirmed in Kansas and one more in California, bringing the U.S. total to 11 and stoking fears that the virus could trigger a pandemic.
At least eight students at a New York City high school probably have swine flu, but health officials said Saturday they don’t know whether they have the same strain of the virus that has killed scores of people in Mexico.
A strain of the flu has killed as many as 81 people and sickened more than 1,300 across Mexico. The World Health Organization chief said Saturday the strain has “pandemic potential” and it may be too late to contain a sudden outbreak.
Kansas health officials said Saturday they had confirmed swine flu in a married couple living in the central part of the state after the husband visited Mexico. The couple, who live in Dickinson County, were not hospitalized, and the state described their illnesses as mild.
Dr. Jason Eberhart-Phillips, the state health officer, said, “Fortunately, the man and woman understand the gravity of the situation and are very willing to isolate themselves.”
The man traveled to Mexico last week for a professional conference and became ill after he returned home. His wife became ill later. Their doctor suspected swine flu, but it wasn’t confirmed until flu specimens were flown to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
NBC News has also learned there are suspected cases in Minnesota.
Puzzling differences across border
Swine flu is a respiratory disease of pigs caused by type A flu viruses. Human cases of swine flu are uncommon but can happen in people who are around pigs and can be spread from person to person. Symptoms of the flu include a fever of more than 100 degrees, body aches, coughing, a sore throat, respiratory congestion and, in some cases, vomiting and diarrhea.
Health officials are puzzled over why the swine flu engulfing Mexico been deadly there, but not in the United States?
Nearly all those who died in Mexico were between 20 and 40 years old, and they died of severe pneumonia from a flu-like illness believed caused by a unique swine flu virus.
The 11 U.S. victims cover a wider age range, as young as 9 to over 50. All those people either recovered or are recovering; at least two were hospitalized.
"So far we have been quite fortunate," said Dr. Anne Schuchat of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Saturday, just hours before three new U.S. cases were confirmed.
Still, it may be too late to contain the sudden outbreak, warned the CDC, which has stepped up surveillance across the United States. "We are worried," Schuchat said.
“We don’t think we can contain the spread of this virus,” said Schuchat, interim deputy director for the Science and Public Health Program. “We are likely to find it in many other places.”
Health experts worry about a flu that kills healthy young adults — a hallmark of the worst global flu epidemics. Deaths from most ordinary flu outbreaks occur among the very young and very old.
They are also concerned because people appear to have no immunity to the virus, a combination of bird, swine and human influenzas. Also, the virus presents itself like other swine flus, but none of the U.S. cases appears to involve direct contact with pigs, said Eberhart-Phillips, who called the strain “a completely novel virus.”
“It appears to be able to transmit easily between humans,” Eberhart-Phillips said. “It’s something that could potentially become very big, and we’re only seeing, potentially, the very beginning of a widespread outbreak.”
Specialty drug maker Baxter International Inc. is working with the World Health Organization to develop a vaccine.
New York health officials said more than 100 students at the private St. Francis Preparatory School, in Queens, had come down with a fever, sore throat and other aches and pains in the past few days. Some of their relatives also have been ill.
New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden said nose and throat swabs had confirmed that eight students had a non-human strain of influenza type A, indicating probable cases of swine flu, but the exact subtypes were still unknown.
Samples had been sent to the CDC for more testing. Results were expected Sunday.
Parent Elaine Caporaso’s 18-year-old son Eddie, a senior at the school, had a fever and cough and went to a hospital where a screening center had been set up.
“I don’t know if there is an incubation period, if I am contaminated,” Caporaso told the Daily News. “I don’t want my family to get sick, and I don’t want to get anybody else sick.”
The symptoms in the New York cases have all been mild, Frieden said, but the illnesses have caused concern because of the deadly outbreak in Mexico.
Frieden said that if the CDC confirms that the students have swine flu, he will likely recommend that St. Francis Preparatory remain closed on Monday “out of an abundance of caution.”
“You could say, 'All you’ve got is a lot of kids with mild illness. Why close a school?”’ Frieden said.
One factor, he said, is that the illness appears to be moving efficiently from person to person, affecting as many as 100 to 200 people in a student body of 2,700.
“We’re very concerned about what may happen,” he said, although he noted that the pattern of illness appeared different from in Mexico, where much larger groups of people have become much sicker. Overall, flu cases have been declining in the city in recent weeks, he said.
“If we were to see, as they have in Mexico City, a large number of people becoming seriously ill with flu, that would be a very different situation from what we have now,” he said.
New York Gov. David Paterson on Saturday directed the state Department of Health to mobilize its infectious-diseases, epidemiology and disaster preparedness workers to monitor and respond to possible cases of the flu. He said 1,500 treatment courses of the antiviral drug Tamiflu had been sent to New York City.
The city health department has asked doctors to be extra vigilant in the coming days and test any patients who have flu-like symptoms and have traveled recently to California, Texas or Mexico.
Investigators also were testing children who fell ill at a day care center in the Bronx, Frieden said. And two families in Manhattan had contacted the city, saying they had recently returned ill from Mexico with flu-like symptoms.
Frieden said New Yorkers having trouble breathing due to an undiagnosed respiratory illness should seek treatment but shouldn’t become overly alarmed. Medical facilities in the part of Queens near St. Francis Prep, he said, had already been flooded with people overreacting to the outbreak.
Texas school closing
The Texas health department announced Saturday that Byron Steele High School in Cibolo, near San Antonio, will temporarily close as local health and school officials work to keep the virus from spreading.
Swine flu was confirmed earlier this month in two students from the school, and a third student is listed as a probable case with confirmatory lab test results pending. The original two have recovered, and the third is recovering.
"The purpose is to reduce the risk to students, staff and the community," said Sandra Guerra, M.D., the public health authority for Guadalupe County, Texas.
Past flu pandemics
1918:
The Spanish flu pandemic that started in 1918 was possibly the deadliest outbreak of all time. It was first identified in the U.S., but became known as the Spanish flu because it received more media attention in Spain than in other countries, which were censoring the press during World War I. The 1918 flu was an H1N1 strain — different from the one currently affecting Mexico and the U.S. — and struck mostly healthy young adults. Experts estimate it killed about 40 to 50 million people worldwide.
1957:
The 1957 pandemic was known as the Asian flu. It was sparked by an H2N2 strain and was first identified in China. There were two waves of illness during this pandemic; the first wave mostly hit children while the second mostly affected the elderly. It caused about 2 million deaths globally.
1957:
The most recent pandemic, known as the Hong Kong flu, was the mildest of the three pandemics this century. It was first spotted in Hong Kong in 1968 and it spread globally over the next two years. The people most susceptible to the virus were the elderly. About 1 million people are estimated to have been killed by this pandemic, an H3N2 flu strain.
New U.S. swine flu cases spread pandemic fears
2 cases found in Kansas and 8 more likely in NYC
April 25, 2009
At least two cases of the human swine influenza have been confirmed in Kansas and one more in California, bringing the U.S. total to 11 and stoking fears that the virus could trigger a pandemic.
At least eight students at a New York City high school probably have swine flu, but health officials said Saturday they don’t know whether they have the same strain of the virus that has killed scores of people in Mexico.
A strain of the flu has killed as many as 81 people and sickened more than 1,300 across Mexico. The World Health Organization chief said Saturday the strain has “pandemic potential” and it may be too late to contain a sudden outbreak.
Kansas health officials said Saturday they had confirmed swine flu in a married couple living in the central part of the state after the husband visited Mexico. The couple, who live in Dickinson County, were not hospitalized, and the state described their illnesses as mild.
Dr. Jason Eberhart-Phillips, the state health officer, said, “Fortunately, the man and woman understand the gravity of the situation and are very willing to isolate themselves.”
The man traveled to Mexico last week for a professional conference and became ill after he returned home. His wife became ill later. Their doctor suspected swine flu, but it wasn’t confirmed until flu specimens were flown to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
NBC News has also learned there are suspected cases in Minnesota.
Puzzling differences across border
Swine flu is a respiratory disease of pigs caused by type A flu viruses. Human cases of swine flu are uncommon but can happen in people who are around pigs and can be spread from person to person. Symptoms of the flu include a fever of more than 100 degrees, body aches, coughing, a sore throat, respiratory congestion and, in some cases, vomiting and diarrhea.
Health officials are puzzled over why the swine flu engulfing Mexico been deadly there, but not in the United States?
Nearly all those who died in Mexico were between 20 and 40 years old, and they died of severe pneumonia from a flu-like illness believed caused by a unique swine flu virus.
The 11 U.S. victims cover a wider age range, as young as 9 to over 50. All those people either recovered or are recovering; at least two were hospitalized.
"So far we have been quite fortunate," said Dr. Anne Schuchat of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Saturday, just hours before three new U.S. cases were confirmed.
Still, it may be too late to contain the sudden outbreak, warned the CDC, which has stepped up surveillance across the United States. "We are worried," Schuchat said.
“We don’t think we can contain the spread of this virus,” said Schuchat, interim deputy director for the Science and Public Health Program. “We are likely to find it in many other places.”
Health experts worry about a flu that kills healthy young adults — a hallmark of the worst global flu epidemics. Deaths from most ordinary flu outbreaks occur among the very young and very old.
They are also concerned because people appear to have no immunity to the virus, a combination of bird, swine and human influenzas. Also, the virus presents itself like other swine flus, but none of the U.S. cases appears to involve direct contact with pigs, said Eberhart-Phillips, who called the strain “a completely novel virus.”
“It appears to be able to transmit easily between humans,” Eberhart-Phillips said. “It’s something that could potentially become very big, and we’re only seeing, potentially, the very beginning of a widespread outbreak.”
Specialty drug maker Baxter International Inc. is working with the World Health Organization to develop a vaccine.
New York health officials said more than 100 students at the private St. Francis Preparatory School, in Queens, had come down with a fever, sore throat and other aches and pains in the past few days. Some of their relatives also have been ill.
New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden said nose and throat swabs had confirmed that eight students had a non-human strain of influenza type A, indicating probable cases of swine flu, but the exact subtypes were still unknown.
Samples had been sent to the CDC for more testing. Results were expected Sunday.
Parent Elaine Caporaso’s 18-year-old son Eddie, a senior at the school, had a fever and cough and went to a hospital where a screening center had been set up.
“I don’t know if there is an incubation period, if I am contaminated,” Caporaso told the Daily News. “I don’t want my family to get sick, and I don’t want to get anybody else sick.”
The symptoms in the New York cases have all been mild, Frieden said, but the illnesses have caused concern because of the deadly outbreak in Mexico.
Frieden said that if the CDC confirms that the students have swine flu, he will likely recommend that St. Francis Preparatory remain closed on Monday “out of an abundance of caution.”
“You could say, 'All you’ve got is a lot of kids with mild illness. Why close a school?”’ Frieden said.
One factor, he said, is that the illness appears to be moving efficiently from person to person, affecting as many as 100 to 200 people in a student body of 2,700.
“We’re very concerned about what may happen,” he said, although he noted that the pattern of illness appeared different from in Mexico, where much larger groups of people have become much sicker. Overall, flu cases have been declining in the city in recent weeks, he said.
“If we were to see, as they have in Mexico City, a large number of people becoming seriously ill with flu, that would be a very different situation from what we have now,” he said.
New York Gov. David Paterson on Saturday directed the state Department of Health to mobilize its infectious-diseases, epidemiology and disaster preparedness workers to monitor and respond to possible cases of the flu. He said 1,500 treatment courses of the antiviral drug Tamiflu had been sent to New York City.
The city health department has asked doctors to be extra vigilant in the coming days and test any patients who have flu-like symptoms and have traveled recently to California, Texas or Mexico.
Investigators also were testing children who fell ill at a day care center in the Bronx, Frieden said. And two families in Manhattan had contacted the city, saying they had recently returned ill from Mexico with flu-like symptoms.
Frieden said New Yorkers having trouble breathing due to an undiagnosed respiratory illness should seek treatment but shouldn’t become overly alarmed. Medical facilities in the part of Queens near St. Francis Prep, he said, had already been flooded with people overreacting to the outbreak.
Texas school closing
The Texas health department announced Saturday that Byron Steele High School in Cibolo, near San Antonio, will temporarily close as local health and school officials work to keep the virus from spreading.
Swine flu was confirmed earlier this month in two students from the school, and a third student is listed as a probable case with confirmatory lab test results pending. The original two have recovered, and the third is recovering.
"The purpose is to reduce the risk to students, staff and the community," said Sandra Guerra, M.D., the public health authority for Guadalupe County, Texas.
Past flu pandemics
1918:
The Spanish flu pandemic that started in 1918 was possibly the deadliest outbreak of all time. It was first identified in the U.S., but became known as the Spanish flu because it received more media attention in Spain than in other countries, which were censoring the press during World War I. The 1918 flu was an H1N1 strain — different from the one currently affecting Mexico and the U.S. — and struck mostly healthy young adults. Experts estimate it killed about 40 to 50 million people worldwide.
1957:
The 1957 pandemic was known as the Asian flu. It was sparked by an H2N2 strain and was first identified in China. There were two waves of illness during this pandemic; the first wave mostly hit children while the second mostly affected the elderly. It caused about 2 million deaths globally.
1957:
The most recent pandemic, known as the Hong Kong flu, was the mildest of the three pandemics this century. It was first spotted in Hong Kong in 1968 and it spread globally over the next two years. The people most susceptible to the virus were the elderly. About 1 million people are estimated to have been killed by this pandemic, an H3N2 flu strain.
Friday, March 6, 2009
A Simple Fish Story
A small boat docked in a tiny Mexican village. An American tourist complimented the Mexican fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took him to catch them.
"Not very long”," answered the Mexican.
"But then, why didn't you stay out longer and catch more?" asked the American.
The Mexican explained that his small catch was sufficient to meet his needs and those of his family.
The American asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your time?"
"I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, and take a siesta with my wife. In the evenings, I go into the village to see my friends, have a few drinks, play the guitar, and sing a few songs. I have a full life."
The American interrupted, "I have an MBA from Harvard and I can help you! You should start by fishing longer every day. You can then sell the extra fish you catch. With the extra revenue, you can buy a bigger boat."
“"And after that?" asked the Mexican.
“"With the extra money the larger boat will bring, you can buy a second one and a third one and so on until you have an entire fleet of trawlers. Instead of selling your fish to a middle man, you can then negotiate directly with the processing plants and maybe even open your own plant. You can then leave this little village and move to Mexico City, Los Angeles, or even New York City! From there you can direct your huge new enterprise.”"
"“How long would that take?" asked the Mexican.
"Twenty, perhaps twenty-five years”," replied the American.
"And after that?" asked the Mexican.
"Afterwards? Well my Friend, That's when it gets really interesting," answered the American, laughing. "When your business gets really big, you can start selling stocks and make millions!"
"Millions? Really? And after that?"” said the Mexican.
"After that you'll be able to retire, live in a tiny village near the coast, sleep late, play with your children, catch a few fish, take a siesta with your wife and spend your evenings drinking and enjoying your friends."
And the moral is.......
Know where you're going in life... you may already be there.
"Only dead fish go with the flow".
"Not very long”," answered the Mexican.
"But then, why didn't you stay out longer and catch more?" asked the American.
The Mexican explained that his small catch was sufficient to meet his needs and those of his family.
The American asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your time?"
"I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, and take a siesta with my wife. In the evenings, I go into the village to see my friends, have a few drinks, play the guitar, and sing a few songs. I have a full life."
The American interrupted, "I have an MBA from Harvard and I can help you! You should start by fishing longer every day. You can then sell the extra fish you catch. With the extra revenue, you can buy a bigger boat."
“"And after that?" asked the Mexican.
“"With the extra money the larger boat will bring, you can buy a second one and a third one and so on until you have an entire fleet of trawlers. Instead of selling your fish to a middle man, you can then negotiate directly with the processing plants and maybe even open your own plant. You can then leave this little village and move to Mexico City, Los Angeles, or even New York City! From there you can direct your huge new enterprise.”"
"“How long would that take?" asked the Mexican.
"Twenty, perhaps twenty-five years”," replied the American.
"And after that?" asked the Mexican.
"Afterwards? Well my Friend, That's when it gets really interesting," answered the American, laughing. "When your business gets really big, you can start selling stocks and make millions!"
"Millions? Really? And after that?"” said the Mexican.
"After that you'll be able to retire, live in a tiny village near the coast, sleep late, play with your children, catch a few fish, take a siesta with your wife and spend your evenings drinking and enjoying your friends."
And the moral is.......
Know where you're going in life... you may already be there.
"Only dead fish go with the flow".
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Basking in Xcalak
http://blog.lavacocktail.com/2009/02/20/basking-in-xcalak.aspx
Basking in Xcalak
2-20-9
Wanting to jettison myself from the frozen wastelands of Minnesota where the coldest winter in one hundred years has been persisting, I recently chose an appropriate place for some much needed climactic counterpoint: Xcalak, Mexico-an old fishing village terminus of sorts where the highway ends and approx. seven miles to the south, Belize begins. A bit freaked by the Mexican government issued ‘travel advisories’ forwarded to me by a concerned relative and which morbidly tallied the number of gringos who have disappeared recently, either the victims of drug war cross fire, riots or fair game targets of the numerous Banditos marauding the country’s roads, I had hesitations about traveling alone. However, in light of this info., I made sure to call on angelic forces for protection during my five plus hour drive from Cancun where I landed -particularly the archangel Michael and this most certainly helped ease my nerves a bit.
Such trips south of the border are not without the requisite rite of passage as it took me nearly two hours to get out of Cancun, thanks to a military check point set up to ‘catch’ drug smugglers and which blocked one lane just north of Highway 307 ,causing mucho aggravation indeed. I later learned that it was put on for a new general of the Mexican army ‘concerned’ about corruption amongst enforcement agents hired to keep the drug lords in check. Once freeing myself of the L.A. like traffic jam and accelerating to 120 Km so as to breathe a bit easier, it wasn’t too long before I was in Mayan territory, passing by busload after busload of turistas destined for the pyramids of Chitzen Itza, et. Al. Based on the garish descriptions offered by a friend of mine who’d been to these sites-of Knights of Columbus geriatrics trying to climb the ruins using walkers and ‘Solar Initiate’ New Agers wearing white gowns and ‘shift facilitating’ at the base of the ruins around the solstices and equinoxes, I chose not to investigate these traps and worked my way further south to Tulum where the energy was exuberant and served to relax me further and caused me to forget about potential hijackings of the economy sized Matiz I was driving and my physical body as well. It really felt like a positive vortex opened above me as a welcome, a nice prelude to birth me into what lay ahead at the literal end of the road.
According to the directions I downloaded off the internet-I was advised to fill my tank well before arriving, which I did as there are no gas stations whatsoever in Xcalak. There are no banks either. So with a money belt brimming with pesos, I traveled on with a bit of lingering trepidation which seemed to wane the closer I got to my destination. If you choose to go to Xcalak, it is advised to bring a laptop with you to make payments for such things as fishing outings, dive instruction and the like. I was able to use my I-Phone to make such purchases, but keying in information with one finger on the Pay Pal page can be a bit tedious, esp. with an unreliable third world internet connection that cut out from time to time.
Xcalak is certainly the proverbial sleepy village miraculously escaping the intensive development found further north. My immediate impression after arriving and riding a sea rusted bicycle aptly named ‘The Hurricane’ was the absence of beggars and obnoxious vendors forcing one to buy handicrafts, dope and by-the-hour putas as they do in Cancun with a relentlessness that is unmatched in any country I’ve been to (other than Kashmir in Northern India). This allowed me to relax even further and take in the delightful profusion of flora and fauna which grace the community such as Tropical Mockingbirds, Yucatan Jays, Magnificent Frigate birds and Brown Pelicans which command the shores from morning to night. Exploring the jungles which buttressed the wash-boarded ‘roads’ was out of the question. According to the owners of the Tierra Maya hotel where I resided, there’s a Mayan pyramid about three hundred yards across the road from them, completely hidden by the jungle and which would take an entire day to get to. There are laws, thankfully, prohibiting the use of machetes to hack through the thickets of Mangrove that make foot travel nearly impossible. The surrounding jungle is home to Panthers and a colorful variety of poisonous snakes and other scaled vermin-so it would be wise before setting out without the necessary precautions and to find a local guide you can trust to take you into truly untrampled territory.
The primary reason for my escape to Xcalak, besides soaking up sun and surf, was to get PADI certified as a scuba diver-something I’ve always wanted to do. Booking the course at one of the local dive centers, I then met my instructor Benito-who in the course of a week managed to get me over every single one of my fears of going under water, making emergency ascents, equalizing and breathing. With treacherous conditions often prevailing in the mornings, I would return in a few hours and the wind would calm down enough for us to go out and do the required exercises needed for certification such as taking ones mask off underwater, putting it back on and evacuating all water by exhaling forcefully through the nose. No need for a Neti pot when you do this and the sensation of having your sinuses reamed with salt water is unlike any other. However, it was actually enjoyable to surmount the mostly mind generated obstacles and actually scuba dive, which overall is a very relaxing venture.
We did four open water dives to approx. 60 ft. and it was a letdown every time to see Benito give me the thumbs up sign, meaning we had to start to surface as our tanks were running low. In the half hour that our air tanks afforded us underwater time, we took in as much of the bewildering and resplendent marine life as we could. Mi compadre showed me such wonders as upside down Freshwater Jelly fish, sea turtles and Barracudas along with brilliantly colored sponges, elliptical star coral, venus sea fans and four eye butterfly fish. I felt such a sense of peace beneath the turmoiled waves and skies above. As I swam along the edge of one of the reefs, I envisioned a summit meeting being held there by world leaders and thought that a viable, life sustaining consensus would be reached, well before the tanks ran out of oxygen, in regards to our emperiled planet and how to go about healing it. “The ocean is the ultimate solution.” as Frank Zappa aptly titled one of his instrumental compositions. I certainly appreciated his observation even more after exploring it as extensively as possible off the shores of beautiful Xcalak. Perhaps those in power will finally listen to it and get the answers they need.
Sadly, the certification week went by too quickly, but I passed all the tests even as exhausted as I was. Benito was kind enough to come into the dive center on his day off to check my test scores and I found this otherwise rare hospitality to be the norm throughout Mexico. Scuba diving is the most physically and mentally demanding of sports-even more so than climbing, cross country skiing and snowshoeing, IMO. It felt like I had been steamrollered several times and I could barely move around in the evenings after a dive. Extensive yoga and a supplement called Cell Food saved me from total exhaustion and muscle soreness along with periodic doses of the homeopathic Arnica. I also found my psychic abilities greatly amplified underwater. More on this in Part II.
The one experience during my Xcalak stay that did totally wipe me out however, was an encounter with a glittered klatsch of beautiful people pawing each others jewelry and clothing, hypnotized by the Margarita glasses they toasted each other with. The scenario served as a stark contrast to the genuinely kind souls of the indigenous locals I encountered in such a heart warming and endearing way. The dreaded encounter took place at the Leaky Palapa restaurant where the food was fabulous but the vampiric clientle I had no choice but to observe in a captive audience kind of way, knocked the spiritual stuffing out of me and I had bad dreams all night of these vampires which fortunately stay together north of the bridge in Xcalak (where the photo below was taken), hidden in their well manicured enclaves.
Xcalak is a place I will most certainly return to as I truly felt at home there-something very rare in my world travels indeed. Tune in for Part II soon.
Cheers,
Jaye Beldo
www.lavacocktail.com
Basking in Xcalak
2-20-9
Wanting to jettison myself from the frozen wastelands of Minnesota where the coldest winter in one hundred years has been persisting, I recently chose an appropriate place for some much needed climactic counterpoint: Xcalak, Mexico-an old fishing village terminus of sorts where the highway ends and approx. seven miles to the south, Belize begins. A bit freaked by the Mexican government issued ‘travel advisories’ forwarded to me by a concerned relative and which morbidly tallied the number of gringos who have disappeared recently, either the victims of drug war cross fire, riots or fair game targets of the numerous Banditos marauding the country’s roads, I had hesitations about traveling alone. However, in light of this info., I made sure to call on angelic forces for protection during my five plus hour drive from Cancun where I landed -particularly the archangel Michael and this most certainly helped ease my nerves a bit.
Such trips south of the border are not without the requisite rite of passage as it took me nearly two hours to get out of Cancun, thanks to a military check point set up to ‘catch’ drug smugglers and which blocked one lane just north of Highway 307 ,causing mucho aggravation indeed. I later learned that it was put on for a new general of the Mexican army ‘concerned’ about corruption amongst enforcement agents hired to keep the drug lords in check. Once freeing myself of the L.A. like traffic jam and accelerating to 120 Km so as to breathe a bit easier, it wasn’t too long before I was in Mayan territory, passing by busload after busload of turistas destined for the pyramids of Chitzen Itza, et. Al. Based on the garish descriptions offered by a friend of mine who’d been to these sites-of Knights of Columbus geriatrics trying to climb the ruins using walkers and ‘Solar Initiate’ New Agers wearing white gowns and ‘shift facilitating’ at the base of the ruins around the solstices and equinoxes, I chose not to investigate these traps and worked my way further south to Tulum where the energy was exuberant and served to relax me further and caused me to forget about potential hijackings of the economy sized Matiz I was driving and my physical body as well. It really felt like a positive vortex opened above me as a welcome, a nice prelude to birth me into what lay ahead at the literal end of the road.
According to the directions I downloaded off the internet-I was advised to fill my tank well before arriving, which I did as there are no gas stations whatsoever in Xcalak. There are no banks either. So with a money belt brimming with pesos, I traveled on with a bit of lingering trepidation which seemed to wane the closer I got to my destination. If you choose to go to Xcalak, it is advised to bring a laptop with you to make payments for such things as fishing outings, dive instruction and the like. I was able to use my I-Phone to make such purchases, but keying in information with one finger on the Pay Pal page can be a bit tedious, esp. with an unreliable third world internet connection that cut out from time to time.
Xcalak is certainly the proverbial sleepy village miraculously escaping the intensive development found further north. My immediate impression after arriving and riding a sea rusted bicycle aptly named ‘The Hurricane’ was the absence of beggars and obnoxious vendors forcing one to buy handicrafts, dope and by-the-hour putas as they do in Cancun with a relentlessness that is unmatched in any country I’ve been to (other than Kashmir in Northern India). This allowed me to relax even further and take in the delightful profusion of flora and fauna which grace the community such as Tropical Mockingbirds, Yucatan Jays, Magnificent Frigate birds and Brown Pelicans which command the shores from morning to night. Exploring the jungles which buttressed the wash-boarded ‘roads’ was out of the question. According to the owners of the Tierra Maya hotel where I resided, there’s a Mayan pyramid about three hundred yards across the road from them, completely hidden by the jungle and which would take an entire day to get to. There are laws, thankfully, prohibiting the use of machetes to hack through the thickets of Mangrove that make foot travel nearly impossible. The surrounding jungle is home to Panthers and a colorful variety of poisonous snakes and other scaled vermin-so it would be wise before setting out without the necessary precautions and to find a local guide you can trust to take you into truly untrampled territory.
The primary reason for my escape to Xcalak, besides soaking up sun and surf, was to get PADI certified as a scuba diver-something I’ve always wanted to do. Booking the course at one of the local dive centers, I then met my instructor Benito-who in the course of a week managed to get me over every single one of my fears of going under water, making emergency ascents, equalizing and breathing. With treacherous conditions often prevailing in the mornings, I would return in a few hours and the wind would calm down enough for us to go out and do the required exercises needed for certification such as taking ones mask off underwater, putting it back on and evacuating all water by exhaling forcefully through the nose. No need for a Neti pot when you do this and the sensation of having your sinuses reamed with salt water is unlike any other. However, it was actually enjoyable to surmount the mostly mind generated obstacles and actually scuba dive, which overall is a very relaxing venture.
We did four open water dives to approx. 60 ft. and it was a letdown every time to see Benito give me the thumbs up sign, meaning we had to start to surface as our tanks were running low. In the half hour that our air tanks afforded us underwater time, we took in as much of the bewildering and resplendent marine life as we could. Mi compadre showed me such wonders as upside down Freshwater Jelly fish, sea turtles and Barracudas along with brilliantly colored sponges, elliptical star coral, venus sea fans and four eye butterfly fish. I felt such a sense of peace beneath the turmoiled waves and skies above. As I swam along the edge of one of the reefs, I envisioned a summit meeting being held there by world leaders and thought that a viable, life sustaining consensus would be reached, well before the tanks ran out of oxygen, in regards to our emperiled planet and how to go about healing it. “The ocean is the ultimate solution.” as Frank Zappa aptly titled one of his instrumental compositions. I certainly appreciated his observation even more after exploring it as extensively as possible off the shores of beautiful Xcalak. Perhaps those in power will finally listen to it and get the answers they need.Sadly, the certification week went by too quickly, but I passed all the tests even as exhausted as I was. Benito was kind enough to come into the dive center on his day off to check my test scores and I found this otherwise rare hospitality to be the norm throughout Mexico. Scuba diving is the most physically and mentally demanding of sports-even more so than climbing, cross country skiing and snowshoeing, IMO. It felt like I had been steamrollered several times and I could barely move around in the evenings after a dive. Extensive yoga and a supplement called Cell Food saved me from total exhaustion and muscle soreness along with periodic doses of the homeopathic Arnica. I also found my psychic abilities greatly amplified underwater. More on this in Part II.
The one experience during my Xcalak stay that did totally wipe me out however, was an encounter with a glittered klatsch of beautiful people pawing each others jewelry and clothing, hypnotized by the Margarita glasses they toasted each other with. The scenario served as a stark contrast to the genuinely kind souls of the indigenous locals I encountered in such a heart warming and endearing way. The dreaded encounter took place at the Leaky Palapa restaurant where the food was fabulous but the vampiric clientle I had no choice but to observe in a captive audience kind of way, knocked the spiritual stuffing out of me and I had bad dreams all night of these vampires which fortunately stay together north of the bridge in Xcalak (where the photo below was taken), hidden in their well manicured enclaves.
Xcalak is a place I will most certainly return to as I truly felt at home there-something very rare in my world travels indeed. Tune in for Part II soon.Cheers,
Jaye Beldo
www.lavacocktail.com
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