The Hypocrisy Weblog

Ah, so now it finally happened, the bird flu is now inside the borders of the EU. The greek island of Inousses is reported to have sick turkeys on it’s farms, though it is not yet known if these sick birds have lethal H5N1-strain of the bird flu virus, or a virus that “only” transmits between birds and not bird to human.

Reuters posted an article, which both speaks about the greek newsmedia running amok (as usual) and a small island of 600 whose population is around 680 people, mostly elderly, being invaded by a horde of scoop-hungry journalists and where the whole world of these 680 people getting thrown upside down, where neighbours turn on neighbours and where fingers are pointed.

Also, the mainland of Greece is being svept by panic, and all bird flu vaccines are sold out at local pharmacists. This is really bad planning from the Greek state’s side, as the limited amount of vaccine should only be given to those individuals that are needed to keep the country going – it shouldn’t be a “up for grabs” kind of system. If there is a pandemic, then the lack of planning from the Greek government’s side will bite them in their backsides, but more important: the citizens will suffer from this, in fact – the whole of Europe will suffer.

As the bird flu found in Turkey was of the deadly H5N1-strain, I am worried, to say the least. If this virus mutates further, the vaccine that we have today is totally useless, and we’ll be seeing people dying like flies, economies collapsing and general human suffering.

If there is a god, I hope he / she is fair to us in our near future.

Here’s an IT-related post about Katrina:

DirectNIC, a datacenter company in New Orleans rode out hurricane Katrina. Brave employees at this Internet Service Provider is keeping power on, repairing the uplinks to the Internet etc.

If you want to follow their work, go to “The Interdictor” at LiveJournal. There you can follow their struggle (one man operation?) to keep operations running via text, a webcam live-feed and also get amazed of the fans that this relatively anonymous provider is getting.

For further information and comments, visit Slashdot, read the Wired-article, Netcraft’s coverage (Uptime graph) and browse their photo gallery.

So, Hurricane Katrina has now died down and the aftermath is painfully clear. There are talks about over 10.000 deaths, women and children are getting raped, people are getting murdered, looting is widespread. There are many thoughts that goes through one’s mind when thinking about the events alongside the american gulf-coast.

My very first thought, beside feeling appalled&disgust a quick comparison to both Iraq and Somalia came to mind. Everyone have heard about both Iraqis and Somalians “acting like animals”, but the events in New Orleans clearly show that it’s not a racial nor a religious problem that people do act like animals – it has to do with socio-economic prerequisite. Of course, one can’t “free” an individual from guilt due to that, but this is the root of the evil. I just hope that those that talk about arabs as animals will think again before saying this, as similar actions happened in their own backyard.

I must say that I’m also surprised over the late and inadequate response from the american government. Michael Moore took the opportunity to publish an open letter to his archenemy George W Bush stating:

“I especially like how, the day after the hurricane, instead of flying to Louisiana, you flew to San Diego to party with your business peeps. Don’t let people criticize you for this — after all, the hurricane was over and what the heck could you do, put your finger in the dike?”

This is really really bad!!! (Do note that I don’t go wild over Michael Moore in general) I’m shocked to see that all focus wasn’t on New Orleans when it was clear that a possible category 5 hurricane was about to hit this city, laying beneath the sea’s waterlevel. Yes, it is not the central governments fault that the infrastructure is bad and not enough to handle a storm even weaker than the one that hit New Orleans – this should have been handled on a local level, but there should be at least some advance planning in case of a possible emergency. It’s a disgrace that a country such as the United States of America can’t handle a crisis like this. It’s a shame that countries that want to send aid to the area are refused due to the “logistics not being in place to handle such aid”.

I heard on the Swedish news that the airplane that was filled with water-cleanining machinery, instant-housing equipment and mobile network-related equipment (yes, Swedish authorities together with Ericsson have an emergency team that can go out and set up temporary mobile networks in distaster areas) was set to “return to hangar” due to no official request coming from the american administration for, well-needed, help. Just imagine that the houses would make a difference for many of those having to live in sports-arenas, packed like sardines in a tinbox – having bullets flying by their heads.

The aura of incompetence shines around George W Bush, and he will not be able to joke this one away like he usually does. I am not a “Bush-hater”, this is written from a neutral stand-point, so all pro-Bush people out there, do not bother to try and dissect and cut down this blogpost, thank you. The effects for the republican party will be vast. People who regularly do not vote, will probably register to vote in order to punish the party that in their eyes did nothing to help them, their relatives, their friends, their class.

If the spindoctors fail, we will all see a democrat majority and a democrat president next time around…