Lord of the 'Flus'

 

This article and accompanying Bertoon appeared in today’s Malta Independent on Sunday.

It is now official: every animal involved or committed to giving you an English breakfast is (or has been) implicated at one time or another in the last decade with a pandemic-threatening disease. First we had the bovine spongiform encelopathy, known commonly as the mad cow disease. Beef based bangers and steak exited from the scene and the breakfast was reduced to simple eggs and bacon. The conspiracy did not stop there – 2003 brought us severe acute respiratory syndrome or SARS.

You did not need two adjectives to know that the chicken thing was bad. Whether you liked them sunny-side up, twice fried or poached, even the eggs had to exit the scenario for a little time and the pretty contribution of the sweet two legged suppliers of a staple protein diet had to be cautiously avoided. Now we have the pigs spitting in the face of Orwell and his Animal Farm. I wonder what Napoleon (the pig, not the frog) would make of this indiscriminate virus that knows no preference between the porkies and homo sapiens. “Four legs good, two legs suit me fine” must be the motto of the virus strain of the type H1N1.

So you see – even your bacon ain’t safe. Or at least it would not be if there were any danger that you could get this virus from food. It would be easier to contain it if were so, but instead this virus is as slyly adaptable as a PLPN electoral unit and does not go for an attack through ingestion. What our swine influenza virus (although you cannot call it that anymore thanks to WHO) favours are epithelial cells in your nose, throat and lungs. Hence the bastard, like an expat’s vote, travels via the air that you breathe. In short you can only hope that no ill wind is blowing in your direction.

But despair not. Foodwise, carnivores are still left with panoply of flesh with which to make a feast. First and foremost come our woolly friends baa-baaing away with wanton abandon. Hooray for sheep and hooray for lamb. Don’t forget the ever so friendly and non-influenza carrying turkeys and boars and deer. Above all, don’t forget that even pork itself is not dangerous and that if well cooked it can still form part of a scrumptious carnivorous diet (especially when marinated in honey, pineapple juice, soy sauce and ginger).

Malthus

Thanks to H1N1, the ghost of Malthus is back. Malthus was a British (obviously) clergyman who produced some very important work on political economy and demography. Population, according to Malthus, would increase geometrically (there’s Euclid again) while subsistence will only increase arithmetically. That “only” in that phrase cannot be good. Every now and then the earth’s population threatens to grow too much and cannot be sustained.

In the words of the black poet turned white, “It don’t matter if you are black or white” (or yellow, café latté or grey as in my case) – when the limit for world sustenance is reached then we are in real “do-do hitting the rotor blades of a cooling mechanism” time. Thankfully, Mother Earth has proven time and again that she is fully capable of coming up with self-regulatory mechanisms in order to keep the population of some rather persistent species in check. Theories abound about how this could be behind a possible explanation of how the “saurs” of the world disappeared to make way for us.

Malthusian theory crosses paths with the Darwinian “the strongest survive” theory, and that brings us to an explanation of how humanity has to cope with anything from natural disasters of the geophysical kind to the epidemic of pandemics. Hopefully, we are done with the dumbass self-regulating mechanisms of the Hitlerian sort (though as a whole humanity does exhibit a crassly ignorant habit of persisting in repeating stupidities of its past).

Tamiflu

Then again the appearance of TVFKASI (the virus formerly known as swine influenza) might have nothing to do with the self-regulatory dynamics of Gaia (that’s Mother Earth to you) but rather with another much less noble and natural cause. Some (and there are always a “some” of this kind) are speculating that the whole kerfuffle regarding TVFKASI is none other than an international conspiracy by powerful drug companies eager to sell off their stocks of flu medicines. Apparently, all the useless flu jabs at the start of winter were not getting a sufficient enough turnover, so the companies created a whole hullabaloo about an exotic virus in order to get governments like the UK to stock up on loads of pills.

They won’t be getting a penny out of me since I swear by the good old homeopathic Oscil-lococcinum. I was never one for conspiracy theories anyway – except of course those juicy conspiracy theories about how the two bungling parties in our country manage to throw such a hilarious show day in day out.

I am sorry if I switch subjects as abruptly as a WHO change of virus name but I had stopped typing just after the last paragraph and went out for one of my bi-weekly doses of my new second-favourite sport (nothing will dethrone football). Having lost miserably in my seventh hour (ever) of playing tennis, I returned to the computer only to find that in the meantime Inhobbkom Joseph had been busy attacking the government’s pussyfooting with regard to yet another batch of immigrants.

What happened this time is that the Gonzi government had suddenly discovered a rare streak of humanitarian spine and given in to the insistence of the ridiculous Italian government to take 66 immigrants who had been found floating on a boat close to Lampedusa. The PN government did what it should have done the first time round and given shelter to 66 human beings while making a point with the Azzurri that this did not mean that they were giving in on principle.

Let’s be clear. The Government of the Short Man Who Puts Veline (Soubrettes) on His Electoral Lists is absolutely wrong on this issue. I do not say this because I am Maltese or Gozitan but because it is clear to anybody who wants to follow the laws and agreements in place that the country closest to the immigrants found at sea is bound to take them in. Unfortunately for the Government of the Slick Man Who Puts Token Candidates on His Eclectic Electoral Lists, it is facing an equally opportunistic government on this matter.

Which means that now we have more parties eager to mark their winning points on the “Illegal Immigrants” issue. And boy are we confused.

Viral

So we have Inhobbkom Joseph demonstrating once again that he has absolutely no credentials or aspirations to international credibility. His weak May Day attempt to gain political mileage puts all his words of standing united to solve the immigrant problem to shame. He could have stood square behind Gonzi’s angry government and condemned the chicken-brained attempt of the Italian government to flaunt its international obligations. That would have won him enough brownie points in the game called Solutions to the Immigration Problem.

Not Inhobbkom Joseph. He had to tell Gonzi that Gonzi had fallen into Berluska’s trap. If you still harboured any doubts whether this was pre-electoral showmanship, Joseph chose to allay these for you by telling you he has a letter from Martin Schultz, the leader of the EP socialists, promising help for Malta. According to Joseph, Schultz said, “Malta could not afford to wait for the EU anymore and needed to be treated as a special case”. Which begs the question: If the EU is no longer a possible solution, is Martin Schultz going to don a Superman cape and fly around the Med warding off boatloads of immigrants?

Which begs another question: How much more faeces of horned bovines can the Maltese public take? There’s Joseph Muscat who has absolutely no clue of how to use EU channels to his benefit. Then there are the Nationalists busy causing a whole ruckus about a vote on a REPORT in the European Parliament that will have absolutely no practical and direct consequence on your life, except for the fact that Nationalist propaganda will repeat ad nauseam that Labour MEPs voted incoherently on this inconsequential report.

It all boils down to election fever. Greens, reds and blues alike are eager to be seen to be doing something about this immigrant business. Labour is not helping with its swiping statements and incoherent ramblings. The Nationalist Party is still obsessed with past voting patterns on documents that cannot even classify as “soft law”. Meanwhile, across the Med election fever has also gripped our “cousins” in the EPP and we have become a soft partner that can be disposed of for electoral expediency.

Electoral frenzies are very dangerous since they do not allow for level-headed thinking. In our case our particular brand of politics rarely allows for level-headed thinking anyway so we could do with a bit of calm – particularly on this kind of issue.

Physalia Phisalis

Trouble, they say, never comes singly. Us poor citizens have to bear the brunt of an economic crisis, as well as face the fears of a fast spreading virus. As if that was not enough, this week we had to contend with a very ugly bit of news. Apparently, the creature of God known to scientists as Physalia Phisalis has finally made it to Mediterranean waters. If that’s all Greek to you (it isn’t actually, it’s Latin) then let me translate: Physalia Phisalis is what is normally referred to in common parlance as a Portuguese Man o’ War.

I am vaguely aware that one of the three readers of this column might be well versed in history, but I am not referring to a seafaring vessel of the “floating above water” kind, but rather to the deadly seafaring gooey being of the “floating along with water currents” kind. The Portuguese Man o’ War is a jellyfish. A very big and deadly jellyfish with a hell of a sting. Scientists in Spain (not Portugal) have reported that it has been sited in considerable quantities off the shore of Spain in the Mediterranean. Apparently the jellyfish was pushed to this rather anomalous (for the jellyfish) region of the world by a combination of winds and currents and warm waters.

The danger is that the jellyfish might like the warm waters of the Med sufficiently to breed and multiply. Swimming at Ghadira might be about to become as dangerous as swimming in the notoriously dangerous waters of Australia. Unless Inhobbkom Joseph has a contingency plan for that one too of course!

Windmills

Finally, a standing ovation from J’accuse for the decision to try our hand at wind powered energy. There’s loads of the big mills in this area of the world from whence cometh the daily fare of J’accuse. They’re pleasantly calm to look at (although I must confess that I find the view of the nuclear station at Cattenohm equally overwhelming) and there’s the added satisfaction of knowing that they are clean.

Of course we will be switching to this kind of energy slowly not because of some forward thinking by our parties in Parliament but because we are obliged to do so by the European Union goals of 2015. When it comes to forward planning the majority of Maltese citizens have never done anything better than voting yes in a referendum over five years ago.

Not all of them knew it at the time but that YES meant shifting the important decisions out of the reach of the opportunistic local band-wagon riding politicians. Before you knew it Maghtab Mountain vanished, Spring Hunting was on its way out and yes, despite a little resistance even departure taxes were destined to disappear. It was not thanks to Gonzi or Muscat or your favourite snazzy MEPs for that matter… but thanks to your YES vote.

Use your vote wisely next time round… it may be more valuable than you think.

Jacques continues to explain how he is getting more and more convinced about a cross-party vote in the next elections on http://www.akkuza.com. The election debate is just warming up so make sure you do not miss it!