August 17 2010 by The Systemic Analyst.

The news is awash with the parents in Barrie who attempted to block the use of Wi-Fi in their children’s elementary school and lost. Call me crazy, but if parents didn’t want something that they believe is harmful to their children, and which isn’t likely necessary for their education, why is it imposed on their offspring? The School Board is there to serve the parents and children, no? Not there to rule them. Or have I missed something?

The focus on the debate as to whether or not Wi-Fi and the electromagnetic radiation it produces, (regardless of how slight,) is harmful misses a bigger point: why do elementary school children even need to have Wi-Fi access? Shouldn’t they be learning to read and acquiring other fundamental mental skills, not surfing the internet and dependent on technology for answers?

As a society we have become mental midgets. Ask anyone under 30 to navigate a road trip without the aid of a GPS and see how far you get. What if all of Canada’s spellchecks failed in computers one day, would documents created be intelligible?  Heaven forbid the electricity ever going out for an extended period of time - most Canadians wouldn’t know what to do with themselves, much less survive.

The issue with Wi-Fi isn’t just a health concern, it’s one of mental competence.

Posted in In The News, Health Preparedness, Environment | No Comments »

August 16 2010 by The Systemic Analyst.

Here is an unsettling story; apparently, the equivalent of 1.16 micrograms of bisphenol A was traced per litre of urine. Along with the plastic hardener, some 88 percent of Canadians also had noticeable amounts of mercury in their blood. While the thought is unsettling, it shouldn’t be surprising, just consider the crap we are putting in and on ourselves - cardboard fast food, chemical creams and dyes, botox injections - and this is to say nothing of the containers in which we store consumables. In a city such as Toronto where the sewage is treated and then water reclaimed from it released into Lake Ontario, the main water supply for city dwellers, the list of additional chemicals that might be found in bodies there could be even more startling.

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April 24 2009 by The Systemic Analyst.

Several news outlets are reporting the emergence of a new variant of swine influenza which has infected 130 people in Mexico, killing 20. As Bloomberg reports “Experts believe the so-called 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, which may have killed as many as 50 million people, began when an avian flu virus jumped to people.”

For more information on the story click here.

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October 17 2008 by The Systemic Analyst.

The movie below is written and directed by Peter Joseph. It is 123 min long and offers a lot of food-for-thought. We welcome your comments.

Posted in Health Preparedness, Economic Issues, In The News, Identity, Security Measures, Environment, Food Security, Water Issues, Politics | No Comments »

March 26 2008 by The Systemic Analyst.

The International Herald Tribune has published the following article:

Efforts to contain bird flu are failing in Indonesia, increasing the possibility that the virus may mutate into a deadlier form, the leading U.N. veterinary health body warned.

The H5N1 bird flu virus is entrenched in 31 of the country’s 33 provinces and will cause more human deaths, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said in a statement released late Tuesday.

“I am deeply concerned that the high level of virus circulation in birds in the country could create conditions for the virus to mutate and to finally cause a human influenza pandemic,” FAO Chief Veterinary Officer Joseph Domenech said.

Indonesia “has not succeeded in containing the spread of avian influenza,” Domenech said, adding that there must be “major human and financial resources, stronger political commitment and strengthened coordination.”

The H5N1 virus has killed at least 236 people in a dozen countries worldwide since it began ravaging poultry stocks across Asia in 2003. It has been found in birds in more than 60 countries, but Indonesia has recorded 105 deaths, almost half the global tally, according to the World Health Organization.

FAO’s sharp warning comes amid a flurry of bird flu outbreaks across the region. Chinese officials earlier this week announced the H5N1 virus was responsible for killing birds in poultry markets in the southern city of Guangzhou. Meanwhile, India last week confirmed a fresh poultry outbreak near Calcutta. The country has been battling the virus since January, resulting in the death or slaughter of some 4 million birds.

In addition, Vietnamese health officials on Monday announced that the virus had killed an 11-year-old boy in the north, marking the country’s 52 human death. The virus has resurfaced in several provinces, including the capital Hanoi, prompting the prime minister to put the entire country on alert. Two children in Egypt also were recently diagnosed with the disease.

We’re due for another pandemic. It’s unfortunate that thanks to modern mass media we are desensitized so easily. The threat of a pandemic hasn’t decreased by any means, but already our interest in the subject matter has waned.

What’s perhaps more disconcerting are the continued “promises” by our health care system that it’s ready for anything. I have one simple question in response to those shaking vows: when was the last time you visited the emergency room?

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March 4 2008 by The Systemic Analyst.

At the end of January, we posted the latest Indonesian death toll which at that time was 100.  As of February 16th the toll was at 140 - that’s 4o deaths in under 20 days! Where is the global concern, folks? At any time Bird Flu can become the next Human Flu, rapidly spreading across the globe. Perhaps we firmly believe that the ever under-stocked Tamiflu will save us. Or maybe it’s just that a vaccine for a strain of influenza whose make up we have no way of predicting will be developed in advance. It’s likely, however, that as we haven’t faced a threat of such magnitude for so considerable a period of time we have forgotten what the impact on our social stability might be and as a result are content to rely on drugs as the answer.

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January 30 2008 by The Systemic Analyst.

The BBC has reported that:

“The human death toll from bird flu in Indonesia has risen to 100 - almost half of the total worldwide fatalities.

Two Indonesians from the outskirts of Jakarta succumbed to the H5N1 strain of the disease over the weekend, said Joko Suyono of the National Bird Flu Centre.Indonesia is the nation worst affected by bird flu and has struggled to contain the virus.

Since the H5N1 virus emerged in South East Asia in late 2003, it has claimed more than 220 lives around the world.

Suyono said a nine-year-old boy and a 23-year old woman had died from the disease over the weekend.

“The woman died yesterday [Sunday] but we just received the results that she’s positive with bird flu,” Suyono told AFP news agency.

“The total number of deaths is now 100 out of 124 positive cases.

“Indonesia is one of the only countries to log human deaths year-round.Almost all infected people are thought to have contracted the disease from poultry.

But scientists fear the virus could mutate into a form which could be easily passed from human to human, triggering a pandemic and potentially putting millions of lives at risk.”

Is anyone paying attention as the death tolls (those which are recorded) slowly rise?

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December 4 2007 by The Systemic Analyst.

James Ridgeway has published an excellent article highlighting several different perspectives on food security in the United States. It is well worth the read:

“While most Americans were planning for the annual ritual of overconsumption known as Thanksgiving, the good folks at the Heritage Foundation, America’s leading architects of conservative thought for at least three decades, were doing their part to add to the holiday cheer. According to a November 13 Heritage article, well-off revelers could stuff their faces unhampered by guilt about the less fortunate, because there are no longer any hungry people in the United States.

You have to hand it to Heritage for always being first out of the gate to exploit the latest event or finding to advance its aims—this is the same think tank that issued a comprehensive strategy, two weeks after Katrina hit shore, for using the hurricane as an excuse to slash federal social programs. This time, its thinkers found inspiration in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s annual report on Household Food Security in the United States, which is as close as the federal government comes to providing statistics on hunger among the nation’s poor. The latest report states that 11 percent of Americans were “food insecure” for some part of 2006, and 4 percent—11.1 million people—experienced “very low food security.”

These Orwellian euphemisms are a triumph for the conservative agenda; the USDA altered its terminology last year on the recommendations of an “expert panel” convened back in 2003. “Very low food security,” for example, used to be “food insecurity with hunger.” The experts asked the department to eliminate “hunger,” which, they argued, “should refer to a potential consequence of food insecurity that, because of prolonged, involuntary lack of food, results in discomfort, illness, weakness, or pain that goes beyond the usual uneasy sensation.” To some, that might better describe starvation, but the panel’s reasoning wouldn’t be a stretch for the Bush administration, which claims “torture” must entail pain “equivalent in intensity” to the pain of “serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.” Click here for more.

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November 13 2007 by The Systemic Analyst.

The following is an interesting article posted on the Continuity and Business blog managed by John Fernandes:

Time to return to a theme we have sounded on numerous occasions in the past three years. In a recent post we called for a renewed investment in our public health and social service infrastructure as the best strategy. The object is to harden local communities and make them more resilient to all kinds of shocks, not just a pandemic. We should have added, however, that this means local preparation can’t be too local: only looking after ourselves and our families. Of course families should prepare, to the best of their ability, and having some reasonable stockpile will stand them in good stead whether it is a pandemic, a flood, a hurricane or a blizzard. But the more important point is that making a community more resilient requires structures that allow us to help each other, not just protect ourselves.

People react in different ways to community disasters. Some hunker down and wall themselves off from their neighbors. In a pandemic, this will serve a useful purpose and I don’t condemn anyone for doing it. But experience shows many people will also try to help their neighbors, even if it entails added risk to themselves. If you aren’t a helper, you could easily be among the helped. Communities where the impulse to help is encouraged and facilitated will do much better than those where helping others depends on individual heroic initiative. In practical terms, this means looking ahead to organizing and using volunteers efficiently, establishing means of communication (like neighborhood visiting groups) that allow others to know when a family is in distress, having community stockpiles and resources available for those who need it (e.g., essential medications or baby formula) are all part of thinking like a community, not just acting like anonymous individuals and isolated families.

It’s easier to prepare individually than to get your neighborhood or community moving in the right direction and individual prepping is a good thing. But it’s not the only thing.

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November 8 2007 by The Systemic Analyst.

Every week several articles run all over the world on the threat of future pandemics. The question begs, how many more warnings does the Western world need before it actually does something in preparation? Surface level planning won’t prepare society for the fallout of a pandemic. More must be done to educate and engage the general public. More articles with warnings by scientists, followed by more articles from health officials with shaky claims of preparedness do little to achieve such necessary public engagement. It’s time to try a new approach.

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