JUDGING from reactions to my last posting, its a big crime in this country to question statistics of any kind. Gosh, what happens if those numbers are wrong? Some empiricists could lose their jobs while we all get into a flap about fowls dying of influenza, or mother hens keeling over from the sniffles. Imagine, if we’re wrong, your budgerigar could die.
Aside from not being much of a bird lover (Okay, okay, I do like pelicans and flamingos) I would rather be a dead duck than be forced to believe some bird-brained bullshit I don’t believe in, which is why I am willing to fight to the last penguin standing for my freedom to speak. Call me a common tit but as far as I’m concerned, Independent Group are a bunch of parrots, repeating whatever they find on the wires and unwilling to check the facts.
After being placed under discursive sanctions for questioning AIDS statistics, I was finally banned for my post-911 views on US imperialism and the war on terror. Nobody believes in the War against Terror anymore, but there are sure as hell a lot of people who believe in the Bird Flu Pandemic (50 deaths and counting).
Did I forget to mention AIDS? Used to be a deadly disease until it got downgraded by the Centre for Disease Control after a scientific breakthrough in 1996. Knocked you off your perch, didn’t I?
PS: Aren’t we all terrified about the thought of cows dying from HIV? Did anybody bother to ask them how they feel, or was the last MAD COW EPIDEMIC just another one of those newsroom decisions, one makes on the spur of the moment, and with profits in mind?
PPS: Any guess as to how much is going to be spent on keeping the official death toll from BIRD FLU secret? How much is this story worth to the media in terms of bullshit and spin-doctoring? Public interest organisations that stand to make millions from scare stories about the 1918 flu disaster in a world before antibiotics and vaccines…and the hysteria continues.
Well, I missed the last post you mentioned but I’m right there with you on this issue.
I had reason recently to be in touch with several people in different media, mostly print, and I was amazed to see that large newspapers have moved from being journos to merely information processors – receive all the crap running on the wires, internet, whatever and pick out what’s seems interesting and put in for print.
There is no judgement whatsoever. They don’t even care – just fill those damn blank pages.
I’m more and more convinced that it’s becoming an industry with no soul – if it hasn’t already arrived.
AS for the issue of “pandemics” or threatened pandemics – my question is what are we being distracted from. LOOK EVERYONE – BIRD FLU! While we’re all tranfixed we’re being buggered somewhere else.
How dangerous is this? How many have died, according to media? About 100. Who gives a shit?
How many died right here in SA yesterday from crime, drugs, poverty, psychiatric drugging and other forms of abuse?
Same with the aids issue. Every time this is questioned (as it was by Mbeki some years ago) the idiots come out of hiding. How many people actually KNOW what aids is all about. Very few. Most go with whatever the mainstream says – and that’s a fucking disaster.
Scribble
The terrible tragedy of our time, is not the AIDS phenomenon per se (some people dying, others living, still others seemingly immune) but that our national debate has been polarised by the mass media, who basically milked the story for all it was worth, even going so far as to induce a national crisis, in an effort to dethrone MBEKI, one of South Africa’s truly great individuals. The truth about AIDS is rather different from the mass hysteria generated by ignorance and media manipulation.
Yes, people need ARVs, Yes, there are problems with delivery of health care, Yes you need to wear a condom and campaign for better service, but freedom of thought is a terrible burden and not worth sacrificing. The problem with the scientific paradigm (as related by the media) is that it presumes an ability to predict the outcome of events.
If one buys into science without freedom of thought, you end up in a psychotic world, filled with hazard, a 30seconds-to-midnight paranoid schizo hell in which nothing is real, nor ever curable, and considered safe.We may be as paranoid about TB and BIRD FLU as we are about AIDS, but only those open minded enough not to swollow the lies will avoid getting caught in a knot about Birds having sex, or TB sufferers having an absolute right to anonymity and privacy. I say make AIDS a notifiable disease and settle the problem of statistical analysis once and for all.
That way, we will all sleep a lot better, knowing that the stats haven’t been manipulated for political ends. That’s right, what we have right now is basically the same kind of bullshit you get at a riot, with the Police downplaying numbers and rioters exagerating crowds, in the expectation something can be gained from loading the bases on either perspective.
NOTE: I AM NOT AN AIDS DENIALIST AND HAVE NEVER DENIED THE EXISTENCE OF MEDICAL SCIENCE.
Hope that sorts out the way I feel. As for that problem with Independent. After taking their word for it, I actually went looking for victims, and hospital wards overfilling with patients, only to find that most of them had been sent home with medication, and that ARVs actually worked, too my utter surprise. The story from a laymans perspective wasn’t considered worthwhile investigating further, and I was subjected to verbal abuse from Judith Soal, and discursive sanctions from Cape Times assistant editors, Colin Howel and Jen Crocker, and that was just for starters.
what a good place to go to look for parrot stuff