|
Blue jays, West Nile virus and silvery minnows TRACKSIDE © by John D’Aloia Jr. August 5, 2003 A dead bird on the patio and a newsletter received this week gave pause for thought. The dead blue jay had no visible evidence of an encounter with the feline predators that prowl the area. Could it be a West Nile Virus victim? It now lies frozen, waiting for the West Nile Virus center at Kansas State University to tell us if they want it for examination. The July issue of the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness Newsletter was titled "West Nile Virus." Besides discussing the medical aspects of the disease, and exploring the possibility that its introduction into the U.S. was a terrorist attack launched from Cuba, the article homes in how the disease can be controlled - kill mosquitos, or prevent being bitten by mosquitos. Once infected by a virus-carrying mosquito, there is little medical science can do - some will die (about seven percent based on 2002 data,) some will never recover fully. Sadly, another highly contagious disease that runs rampant amongst the Guardians, the madness that results in a belief that people are inferior to critters, has deprived us of a proven mosquito killer. When the nation bought Rachael Carlson’s claim that DDT was an environmental horror that would poison us all and was killing birds, we banned it. We eliminated an effective weapon in the fight to control mosquitoes and drastically reduce mosquito-borne diseases, a weapon which the scientific evidence has now demonstrated is not the devil or the bird-killer that the ecofascists made it out to be. By letting mosquitoes run rampant, we are racking up a toll of dead critters, and dead and sick people around the country - and around the globe as governments world-wide succumbed to the pressure brought by the U.S. to ban DDT production and use. That the ecofascists continue to rail against the use of chemicals, any chemicals, to control known dangers to mankind - malaria kills one million plus each year - reinforces the conclusion that their goal is not about critters or the environment. Their goal is depopulation, both in absolute numbers and for vast areas of the country. (They of course are excluded, their mission too vital to be subject to the same restrictions they demand be placed on everyone else.) For them, the ends justify the means. They are willing to see people die from preventable diseases and they twist the Constitution to use the power of government to force people off the land they covet. The Endangered Species Act is a favorite weapon of choice for the ecofascists. In the ESA, Congress codified the theory that the rights of critters trump any and all human rights. I suspect that the core congressional ESA supporters knew exactly the nature of the coup they were pulling off. The rest who signed on went along based on the lies and smokescreens that enveloped them, not much different than the majority in the Kansas legislature that went along with the "streamlined sales tax" law that is now generating its own firestorm across the state. Birds (not WNV infected I hope) may be coming home to roost. To date, the ESA has been used to clobber individual citizens or small groups of citizens in rural America, numbers which did not raise a blip on the radar screen of the vast majority of the public. The Rio Grande silvery minnow may be the critter that brings down the ESA. The city of Albuquerque depends on the waters that feed the Rio Grande for its water supply. When the silvery minnow was declared a threatened species, all concerned entered into a plan by which the fish and the citizens would get enough water to survive. This was not good enough for the ecofascists. They filed suit for more water and the 10th Circuit obliged, ruling that the city’s contracts for water could be overridden, that the water had to be diverted to the river for the fish. The dissenting judge nailed it when he wrote "Under the court’s reasoning the ESA, like Frankenstein, despite the good intentions of its creators, has become a monster." Enter New Mexico’s two senators, Pete Dominici and Jeff Bingaman, ESA supporters up to this point in spite of its impact on their constituents. They now feel political pressure and are in the fray, introducing a bill that would overturn the court’s decision. Could it be that the ecofascists, by setting up a situation where Albuquerquians could be forced into an economy devastating, severe water rationing situation, have triggered a backlash amongst their base, the urban dwellers who did not think the environmental laws had any adverse impact on them? I hope so. We do not need any more blue jays in the freezer.
|