Thursday, May 28, 2009

Ignorance is Bliss

Seven people have been arrested for "allegedly carrying the banned meat in their vehicle." Referring, of course, to pig meat. "Earlier this month a large quantity of pig meat was seized at the Causeway." So much for bringing bacon over from Bahrain, regardless of the fact that you cannot get swine flu from pork. What the heck. Let's not cloud the matter and let facts get in the way, right? Let's just all panic. Who do we blame for this? I blame the U.S. government and the jeja's team for their howling about how it is a pandemic [which we all know was and is just a prelude to getting nationalized health care pushed through and in place]. The first case of swine flu was reported in Bahrain yesterday, or the day before. People are going to over-react. And, predictably, they have. Although it seems to me that The Sandbox has its own "pandemic" to be concerned about: dengue fever. Are you going to somehow keep mosquitoes from crossing the Causeway to get to Saudi Arabia???

Obesity is a "pandemic," then, too, is it not? Three million Saudis are obese. Out of a population of how many? Almost 28,000,000. Quick math makes just over 9% of the population obese. Does that qualify? There are more obese women than men. Why? Well for starters, let's not forget that women should not exercise and jump around, lest they... Never mind.

Or, let's examine the "pandemic" of PCRC. Road accidents here and more deaths as a result of road accidents takes a whole lot more lives than swine flu. No one seems to be overly concerned with that, though. But by all means, lets make sure no bacon comes to The Sandbox from Bahrain! A death yesterday and a couple of injuries, here. A bus accident, in which eight people were killed and 20 were injured, here [the bus driver is being blamed for deliberately causing the accident as he only received cuts and bruises - expect his "confession," shortly].

Finally, let's just touch on the topic of the "pandemic" of disposable workers. And, by that I mean, workers that come here and end up dead by accident or torture or however... How many per month? More than the swine flu is killing. Yesterday we learned of a poor Indonesian maid who was tortured by the wife of her employer - and that man was sentenced to nine months in prison "for failing to intervene to save the maid's life." Kudos to Arab News for having the chutzpah to say, today, "A Saudi employer..." Of course we all knew he was Saudi because it was completely omitted in yesterday's Saudi Gazette article. Vice consul at the Indonesian Embassy, Wishnu Krishnamurthi, says "There is another case of cold-blooded murder from Eastern Province in which a Saudi employer is being tried for beating his maid to death. The police have found the sticks used in the assaults and the blood-stained clothes of the maid, Suryapi Dulbari, 31." The Saudi family has offered to pay SR200,000 in blood money to the woman's family. That is what the life of a maid is worth here, $53,619.30. That is it. That must be the going rate. That is what the man currently in prison and his teacher-wife paid for beating their maid to death, as reported yesterday. Two recent cases. How many more are there? Still more deaths - accidental, or otherwise - of imported workers, here, than cases of swine flu.

Oh, yeah. Ignorance is bliss...

5 comments:

  1. Things are really bad over there....jeez.

    But I wonder about your blog not being screened by Saudi officials. I sure hope you never get into any trouble!

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  2. About pandemics -
    remember the word basically means widespread, unlike epidemic. A single case of flu in Massachusetts and another single case in Zimbabwe is a pandemic, seven cases in a kindergarten with twenty pupils is an epidemic (even if only one class is affected).

    There, now you can scoff at ninety-six per cent of all news media stories about health.

    In the case of "disposable workers" you are unfortunately describing an epidemic, and worse it may be of pandemic dispersal.

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  3. I am hoping, not, Steve... No doubt my blog gets screened just like any others out of this side of the world.

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  4. I went with the first definition of the word, John [instead of reading the whole thing], "epidemic over a wide geographical area; a pandemic outbreak of malaria." "Wide geographical area." And I put it in quotes for a reason. Perhaps not necessarily used correctly for the whole post... the gist remains the same. I will, of course, continue to scoff at ninety-six percent of all news media stories about health and, of course, politics...

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  5. The gist remains, yes, I tend to be a annoyingly pedantic (by fifth grade I was reading random entries in the dictionary for fun). I get annoyed with the news media not even realizing there is a distinction, never mind mentioning it.

    "I will, of course, continue to scoff..."

    Good. I am not actually as skeptical as I should be, but the Internet has helped by providing access to links to sites with [lnks to the] actual data and studies behind the headlines. Not sure how inerested you are, but a good one for health scares is junkfoodscience.com - and at the very bottom it has a Google-powered search, which is also useful - especially as I don't remember how to set up one.

    ReplyDelete

 
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