~ burning rhubarb on the beach & swine flu

I drove to Camberwell Market through the cold and fog this morning in search of books that might be suitable for my eBay endeavour. During my time there, from a number of sources, I learned some extraordinary things about the current swine flu pandemic.

For one, independent scientists are apparently saying that the flu couldn’t possibly be of natural origin, suggesting that it was deliberately created in secret US government laboratories. H1N1 is genetically a mixture of swine, bird and human influenza strains that have been brought together from distant regions of the globe, spliced and then released in nearby Mexico …

Now why, you might ask? And does its apparent lack of lethality mean that they have failed? Nothing so simple. One pundit told me that once you’re infected with the flu, only then can Tamiflu deliver its fatal blow – but this seems a little pointless, doesn’t it? Perhaps not, if you’re part of some secret cabal like, say, the Illuminati, who, recognising that climate change will destroy the Earth, are endeavouring to clear it of a good percentage of its human inhabitants.

The lack of fatalities was also explained to me by the fact that swine flu is just a trial run for some monstrous vital genocide to come …

What makes a little more sense is the suggestion that a lot of heavily connected industrialists are deeply invested in Roche pharmaceuticals [manufacturer of tamiflu] and have purposefully engineered the pandemic to force up stock prices. Among them, of course, are the likes of Rumsfeld, Cheney and, surprisingly, Barack Obama who is, I have learnt, just as much a neo-con puppet as was Bush.

I’m not sure that this works, at least in Australia, where tamiflu stocks, if I recall correctly, were about to be replaced anyway, as they are approaching their use-by.

When I looked on the web, the scenario became even more complicated. One site offers a sceptical list of potential conspiracy scenarios: the US anti-immigration lobby is attempting to close the Mexican border once and for all. PETA may be trying to make chickens and pigs too dangerous to exploit. Suspicion is also leveled at drug cartels, Islam, the media, mask manufacturers and the Catholic church. Additionally, I discovered a recommendation for something called oscillococcinum in case of influenza.

While I give this stuff very little credence at all, I do like to ponder about it and I respect the imaginative effort that's been made.

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This last week I’ve been working hard on my benefit gig; hopefully a cast of characters will solidify through the coming days, but it’s almost certain to occur in early to mid August.