The first case of H5N1 bird flu in Africa is likely
to be followed quickly by others, creating a "very severe situation",
the UN's top expert says.
The UN's World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) confirmed that the
expected and worrisome spread of highly pathogenic H5N1 into Africa
with the positive tests from poultry flocks in Nigeria (BBC News).
Dr David Nabarro of the World Health Organization (WHO) told the BBC the virus "might be quite widespread".
It comes after the strain deadly to humans was detected on a farm in Kaduna in northern Nigeria.
Officials are investigating whether poultry in other states have also died from the virus.
Dr Nabarro said the WHO was anticipating further outbreaks in other parts of Africa.
"If it's in Nigeria it might also be in other countries that are less well-equipped."
He said governments and ordinary people would have to
take "very, very strong precautions" to protect themselves and stop the
disease spreading.
Nigeria says it will cull all infected birds and compensate farmers.
But a northern Nigerian farmer told the BBC News website that people fear they will not be paid.
"The dead birds are being sent to market to be sold as
meat... because people are not sure if the government will assist
them," said Auwalu Haruna from Kano.
It is thought bird flu may have been carried to Nigeria by migrating birds or the smuggling of infected chickens from abroad.
Dr Nabarro said the WHO was anticipating further outbreaks in other parts of Africa.
"If it's in Nigeria it might also be in other countries that are less well-equipped."
Experts point out that cross-infection to humans is
still relatively rare, and usually occurs where people have been in
close contact with infected birds.
China and Hong Kong, too, are reporting fresh outbreaks (Reuters). In China's coal-mining north several hundred thousand chickens were culled.
China
has both more people and more poultry than anywhere else, and they live
closely together. There are been more than 30 official poultry
outbreaks in China and ten human cases, but most experts believe the
actual number of each is greater. The first human cases were reported
in Hong Kong in 1997 and since then the City has taken timely and
extremely strong control measures, most recently banning all backyard
poultry farming. But authorities concede the disease is now endemic
there, illustrating the futility of wiping out this disease by
controlling it in birds.
Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza
(HPAI) H5N1 is moving from a regional panzootic to a global panzootic.
Since its reappearance in southeast Asia in 2003 it has rapidly picked
up speed in geographic spread. Because migratory bird pathways tend to
run North - South it is unclear how long it will take to reach birds in
North and South America.
Could bird flu reach
North America through migrating birds? Biologists in Alaska and Canada
are keeping an eye out and say it's possible by next year.
Scientists from several agencies have been monitoring large flocks in
the northern part of this continent since last summer, collecting both
live birds and thousands of samples from bird droppings. The results of
those tests are pending, but so far scientists have not found the virus
that is spreading across Asia.
Of course, the bigger fear is that bird flu will
mutate into a flu that is both contagious and deadly to people and
which would quickly spread around the globe through international
travel. The current bird flu is not easily spread to people.
Among
the Arctic species under suspicion are hardier, long-distance fliers
like eiders, gulls and geese. "It probably will be spread by one that
isn't killed very easily by it,'' Brand said.
Many bird researchers say more dangerous
transmission routes are the commercial poultry trade and the illegal
trade in parrots and other rare birds for pets and collections. In both
cases, birds are raised and transported in very cramped conditions.
The lone case of bird flu in Britain was a South American parrot that died while in quarantine with birds from Taiwa
"If avian influenza has
one predictable property, it is that it is not predictable,'' said Ohio
State University biologist Richard Slemons. "It has made a fool of us
more than once.'' Predictions with this virus are, like the virus
itself, dangerous. So take this guess for what it's worth, about the
price I am charging you for it.
Ritter said plans for a June attack on Iran have been submitted to
President George W. Bush, and that the president has approved them. He
also asserted that knowledgeable sources say U.S. officials "cooked"
the results of the Jan. 30 elections in Iraq. The former Marine also said that the Jan. 30 elections, which George W.
Bush has called "a turning point in the history of Iraq, a milestone in
the advance of freedom," were not so free after all. Ritter said that
U.S. authorities in Iraq had manipulated the results in order to reduce
the percentage of the vote received by the United Iraqi Alliance from
56% to 48%. Ritter said an official involved in the manipulation was the source,
and that this would soon be reported by a Pulitzer Prize-winning
journalist in a major metropolitan magazine -- an obvious allusion to
New Yorker reporter Seymour M. Hersh. Scott Ritter said that although the peace movement failed to stop the
war in Iraq, it had a chance to stop the expansion of the war to other
nations like Iran and Syria. He held up the specter of a day when the
Iraq war might be remembered as a relatively minor event that preceded
an even greater conflagration.
As news breaks of four more demonstrators being shot
dead in Kabul, fresh evidence has surfaced lending credibility to the assertion
that the Muslim riots are a staged psyop or at the very least based on false
pretenses.
Yesterday leading Russian MP Vladimir
Zhirinovsky said that the riots were a manufactured psychological
operation on the part of the US in an attempt to enlist hardened EU support
for a military strike against Iran.
More
evidence has come to light that confirms fake and misleading caricatures
were bundled in with the more tame cartoons that were printed in Danish
newspapers. Muslims were misled into believing that all the images were
printed in newspapers when they were not.
The feasibility of demonstrators in Gaza having immediate
access to a plethora of pristine Danish flags as soon as the furor began
has also been put under scrutiny.
Were the misleading images intended to add fuel to
the fire? Many have pointed out that depictions of Muhammad appear universally
throughout the world. A stone
sculpture in the US depicting Muhammad has been in place since
the 1930's. An Australian
newspaper piece lists depictions of Muhammad, both flattering
and insulting that appear regularly in the West and beyond.
Many painters, including William Blake, Gustave Dore,
Auguste Rodin and Salvador Dali, have depicted Mohammed in illustrations
of Dante's Inferno, where the Muslim prophet ends up in hell with his entrails
hanging out."
Why the outrage now? And why were more degrading images
that were not even printed thrown into the mix?
A CNN International news anchor reported
that the United Nations had foreknowledge that protests in Beirut were going
to erupt on Sunday.
"ANTHONY MILLS, CNN
INTERNATIONAL: My understanding is, as well, that UN sources were reporting
this morning that this was going to be a chaotic day, if you will... Or,
certainly they were reporting --they were suggesting -- their workers shouldn't
go to work today."
So, indications in advance, I think, probably that
something was going to happen here, that some form or sort of violent protest
might erupt."
A top Russian parliamentary leader has told Ekho Moskvy radio station that
an attack on Iran is inevitable and that it will occur on March 28th. The leader
of the Liberal Democrats Vladimir Zhirinovsky also believes that the Muslim
riots were orchestrated by the US to garner European backing for the military
strike.
Rhetoric has heated significantly in the past week with Donald Rumsfeld yesterday
warning that a military option was on the table, echoing the comments of Senate
Majority Leader Bill Frist who said that the US was prepared to take military
action.
Also, Israeli acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stated that Iran would pay
"a very heavy price" if the Islamic Republic defiantly resumes full-scale
uranium enrichment to build nuclear weapons.
Zhirinovsky told the Russian radio station that, "The war is inevitable
because the Americans want this war. Any country claiming a leading position
in the world will need to wage wars. Otherwise it will simply not be able to
retain its leading position."
"The date for the strike is already known — it is the election day
in Israel (March 28). It is also known how much that war will cost,” said
Zhirinovsky.
Commenting on the Muslim riots sweeping the Middle East and Europe, Zhirinovsky
(pictured above) said that the publication of the offensive cartoons was a planned
psyop on the part of the US and aimed to “provoke a row between Europe
and the Islamic world”.
“It will all end with European countries thanking the United States and
paying, and giving soldiers,” said Zhirinovsky.
The possible inorganic manufactured nature of the riots has to be seriously
considered. The three most offensive cartoons that caused the outrage were not
even printed in the Danish Jyllands-Posten newspaper but were added in and handed
out by Danish imams who “circulated the images to brethren in Muslim countries,”
according to the London Telegraph.
It also appears highly suspicious that Muslims in Gaza City and other places
had gained access to a plentiful supply of Danish flags to burn in front of
the waiting world media as soon as the controversy broke out.
The violent demonstrations, on the back of last November's French riots, are
clearly having the effect of hardening European sympathy towards Muslims, even
as the governments of major European countries open the floodgates to mass immigration.
This greases the skids for an accelerated invasion of Iran who yesterday announced
they were cutting trade with Denmark over the offensive cartoons.
Director of the Russian Political Research Institute Sergei Markov previously
warned that Israel was likely to conduct air strikes against Iran in the spring.
TEHRAN - The United States and Israel may be contemplating military operations
against Iran, as per recent media reports, yet Iran is not wasting any time in
preparing its own counter-operations in the event an attack materializes.
A week-long combined air and ground maneuver has just concluded in five of the
southern and western provinces of Iran, mesmerizing foreign observers, who have described
as "spectacular" the
massive display of high-tech, mobile operations, including rapid-deployment
forces relying on squadrons of helicopters, air lifts, missiles, as well as
hundreds of tanks and tens of thousands of well-coordinated personnel using
live munition. Simultaneously, some 25,000 volunteers have so far signed up at
newly established draft centers for "suicide attacks" against any potential
intruders in what is commonly termed "asymmetrical warfare".
Behind the strategy vis-a-vis a hypothetical US invasion, Iran is
likely to recycle the Iraq war's scenario of overwhelming force, particularly
by the US Air Force, aimed at quick victory over and against a much weaker
power. Learning from both the 2003 Iraq war and Iran's own precious experiences
of the 1980-88 war with Iraq and the 1987-88 confrontation with US forces in
the Persian Gulf, Iranians have focused on the merits of a fluid and complex
defensive strategy that seeks to take advantage of certain weaknesses in
the US military superpower while maximizing the precious few areas where
they may have the upper hand, eg, numerical superiority in ground forces,
guerrilla tactics, terrain, etc.
Today, in the evolution of Iran's military doctrine, the country relies on
increasingly precise long-range missiles, eg, Shahab-3 and Fateh-110, that can
"hit targets in Tel Aviv", to echo Iranian Foreign Minister Kemal Kharrazi.
Chronologically speaking, Iran produced the 50-kilometer-range Oghab artillery
rocket in 1985, and developed the 120km- and 160km-range Mushak artillery
rockets in 1986-87 and 1988 respectively. Iran began assembling Scud-Bs in
1988, and North Korean technical advisers in Iran converted a missile
maintenance facility for missile manufacture in 1991. It does not seem,
however, that Iran has embarked on Scud production. Instead, Iran has sought to
build Shahab-3 and Shahab-4, having ranges of 1,300km with a 1,600-pound
warhead, and 200km with a 220-pound warhead, respectively; the Shahab-3 was
test-launched in July 1998 and may soon be upgraded to more than 2,000km, thus
capable of reaching the middle of Europe.
I'm wondering whether or not
bush will go after Iran. They say that most of Iran's oil is in the
part of the country which is nearest Iraq. I'm not sure about that, but
saying it implies that bush has the option of grabbing for it.
And if the US or Israel does airstrikes on
the reactors, the Iranians can lay enough anti-ship mines in the
Straits of Hormuz that you could walk across on them, without getting
your feet wet. And there's the little matter of the Shia and what happens in Iraq and Afganistan after the bombings start.
Sadr, and
Musharraf, in Pakistan, have both recently said that they will support
Teheran if bush attacks Iran. Sadr and Musharraf's offer won't include
troops, but they have lots of ways to bedevil us, if they want to. If
Bush attacks Iran, we won't have ENOUGH F-16 squadrons to give
Pakistan, to get them to keep letting junior sniff Bin Laden's
abandoned bicycle seat.
I just don't think that Bush has the Iran option,
anymore. But then, he can't stop and admit that the dream of an American Century of Empire is already over. All he can
do is keep screaming: "If we don't go deeper into the swamp, the crocs
will get us." When the Shock & Awe looks more like Crash & Burn, the question is if Bush marches on, who besides the ChickenHawks will be following him. God only knows what happens in Iraq, but it won't be pretty.
The UN's World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) confirmed that the
expected and worrisome spread of highly pathogenic H5N1 into Africa
with the positive tests from poultry flocks in Nigeria (
As news breaks of four more demonstrators being shot
dead in Kabul, fresh evidence has surfaced lending credibility to the assertion
that the Muslim riots are a staged psyop or at the very least based on false
pretenses.
