This afternoon a member of the World Health Organisation (WHO) dismissed claims that more than 150 people have died from swine flu, saying it has officially recorded only seven deaths around the world.

Vivienne Allan, from WHO’s patient safety program, said the body had confirmed that worldwide there had been just seven deaths – all in Mexico.

Associated Press said countries confirmed with the illness included Mexico (19 people), USA (66), Canada (13), Spain (2), Israel (2) and New Zealand (3).

The BBC website said the United Kingdom had two confirmed cases of swine flu and reported Germany’s first confirmed case in Bavaria.

Mexican health authorities say the virus is suspected in 159 total deaths. They say it has infected over 2000 in Mexico alone.

“Unfortunately that [150-plus deaths] is incorrect information and it does happen, but that’s not information that’s come from the World Health Organisation,” Ms Allan told Australia’s ABC Radio today.

“That figure is not a figure that’s come from the World Health Organisation and, I repeat, the death toll is seven and they are all from Mexico.”

[From Swine flu: Tamiflu more accessible, death toll still at seven - National - NZ Herald News]

3000 people die of Malaria every day.

Hell, I’m a little late to this but damn this is wicked..and the album

I’m not sure what to make of all this fuss over the very unfortunate death of the young-ish former NZ soldier in the dark (and quite ugly) depths of Kuta a week or so ago. What I do know is that it likely didn’t need to happen, and, more, that the story and the spin coming out of the New Zealand media in the last period is best generously described as ill-informed and reflects fairly badly on what New Zealand, also generously, calls reporting.

Taking a step back, and with some local knowledge, what it looks like to me is a very confused, very likely quite inebriated, 19 year old in a very, very alien and overpowering scenario simply finding herself unable to cope with an increasingly serious situation, which ended with the death of her fiancé. It’s a pretty terrible situation to find oneself in and I have some sympathy, especially as she has to live with that, even if she’s perhaps not being honest with those around her. The one person with the experience to cope was unconscious.

Unfortunately that’s not the way it reads in the NZ press, which, to anyone who’s ever had the misfortune to spend any time in The Bounty or it’s neighbouring clubs, comes across like a transmission from a parallel universe:

About 2.30am Sunday, they tried to redeem the coupon at the Bounty Bar. Staff sent them upstairs and downstairs, and then the bartender swore at them and ignored them.

As they walked away Mr Headifen accidently knocked over a glass.

Miss Whitburn turned to see the bartender pick up a fishbowl glass and throw it at Mr Headifen.

They both rather come across as victims here, so it’s perhaps important to throw a little reality into the mix.

Firstly, and this excuses nobody, but The Bounty, where the damage was done, is the key establishment in a gruesome strip of nightclubs aimed fairly and squarely at the lower end of the Australian bogan market. It’s like a sleazier low rent take on the uglier side of the mostly now defunct hell-holes that used to fill the back streets of Kings Cross. It’s a place where loud, often quite racist and thuggish blokes and their sheilas from the working class ‘burbs of Australia drink cheap but potent ‘cocktails’ of nameless spirits from large jars and get very drunk. They then as often as not, staggering from floor to floor, end up either unconscious or in brawls. And get thrown out.

Now, I may have missed something here, but, as ugly as these venues may be, they don’t have a history of killing, or even beating up their patrons, and Balinese are simply not known for beating up tourists or guests. More importantly, I’d argue that the patrons of these sorts of dumps would provide some pretty major provocations to the staff every night, and said staff seem pretty practiced at holding back. So the idea that, after politely trying to redeem a voucher, the accidental knocking over of a glass led to the sort of unprovoked abuse and violence against Mr. Headifen described rather defies belief.

Lets call it for the nonsense it is. I’d more inclined to buy the local version, in the Indonesian press…that they were too drunk, the club said no more, and he started a fight, which got out of hand.

So, to outside. Firstly, the ATMs in the street give up to RP10 million. You just have to do the withdrawal several times. But she could be forgiven for not knowing that… the Indonesian banking system is not known for its user friendliness on any level.

Setting aside the thought that anyone is crazy to travel to any country without decent medical insurance, but most especially one like Indonesia, where everything costs, the tourist orientated medical facilities, like BIMC, the one that they allegedly tried to take him to, have full credit card facilities. But all that aside, within 20 metres of the hotel, there are, 24 hours a day, a steady stream of taxis, any of which would’ve been happy to have taken Mr. Headifen to any hospital, which would’ve treated him as a matter of course, without demanding pre-payment. These are international standard medical facilities, staffed and managed by fully trained and competent doctors and staff, the equal of any you’d find in any emergency room anywhere in the world. The fare..about Rp30,000 (US$2.60), and the distance about 2km.

The hotel would’ve known all this, which leads me to question the next part about the hotel’s actions.

None of this, of course, comes through in any of the New Zealand reporting which leaves the reader with some pretty twisted impressions of both Bali and the risks tourists take coming here. This is not Palmerston North, but neither is it some hell-hole where you take your life in your hands simply by being here. The simple reason these bars and the environs are so ugly is because of the Australians and New Zealanders that fill them. If you filled these with Balinese or Indonesians you’d have no such issues. In fact the average Saturday night in Palmerston North or Levin would put you far more at risk than any bar anywhere in Indonesia.

Sadly this guy seems to have been the victim of too much booze leading to too much aggression, as is often the case, most especially in the sorts of bars that young Australasians like to inhabit the world over, coupled with the confused inaction of a young girl who simply didn’t have the faintest idea where she was and, too, was legless and thus unable to cope.

Very sad, but lets not make more of it than it is.

I may be odd, but I’m rather excited at the time wasting opportunities offered by the fact that Google now has almost every issue of Billboard online, from 1942 through to last year (but is still missing the one where we were featured on page one, circa ’97).

The cutting, blurry as it is, from 1986, below is a pointer that little has really changed in recent decades..as I recall TVNZ went on to win that round as the labels backed down.

Ohhh, big noise, big fuss in New Zealand over it’s entry into the global flu game. Of course one hopes that the kids in question are all fine and the deaths in Mexico (although nowhere else, where the Swine Flu seems to date to be milder than the average dose of yer run of the mill influenza) are terrible, as any deaths of young folks are anywhere. Places like Mexico City are especially open to these sorts of mini-pandemics, with their suspect hygiene, close human proximity and ridiculously high levels of pollution, both in the air and in the water. Although such realities are rather alien to someone sitting in Browns Bay, or Taupo, overwhelmed by a sense of panic and impending doom. Hell, try explaining to half of NZ that the traffic lights often don’t work in Bali and see the utter confusion…..

There really seems to be a rather urgent need for someone in New Zealand to loudly scream ‘get a grip, for god’s sake’.

The nation revels in these things. Returning to NZ in the past few years there seemed to be a kind of national disappointment that the nation hadn’t been selected for a visitation of the, to date, rather more deadly (althought in real terms extraordinarily rare) Bird Flu. Here in Indonesia of course, where the disease had hit rather harder than anywhere else, where people actually live and sleep with their fowl, there was no sense of panic to speak of. Instead sensible culling and regional precautions were the order of the day.

In New Zealand it was something rather different. There was a mild national panic, and folks battened down. And there was a tangible sense of national disappointment that NZ hadn’t got the nod for a visit from the virus. The nation, and the media seemed to be jumping up and down and hollering ‘us, us!’ as if a visitation would give the country some sense of mattering.

We, here in Bali, were subjected to relentless questions from NZ asking if we were ‘alright’ (after, of course the questioning had died down as to whether we’d survived the tsunami intact…many of my countrymen are very geographically challenged).

Of course it wasn’t to be. Isolated and extraordinarily clean New Zealand was probably the least likely breeding ground or festering zone for bird flu on the planet. And NZ felt somehow left out.

And so now, despite the fact that millions of folks cross the US-Mexico border daily, and that Mexico has a population of 110 million, 1000 folks have come down with this flu (and that number is unconfirmed) and about 20 in the US..and NZ has, uhhh, 20 cases. You can almost feel that national relief…we really do matter….

I may sound callous, but I think, regardless of whether these test positive or not, a little reality and perspective needs to intrude into this.

The best comments to date come from Juha Saarinen on Twitter, who asked ‘Would it be all right to call in sick with wine flu, if you’ve been out a bit too long the night before?’, and Gareth Ward on Public Address with ‘God help us all if Tony Veith gets swine flu’ (don’t worry..only New Zealanders get that one).

Of course, inevitably, it’s all gone partisan in the USA.

Just as of course, this is all going to turn nasty and I’m going be seen as some sort of inhuman bastard for posting any of this.

More Indo election goodies. The first, well, clearly this guy sees himself as a peacemaker, bringing together, in harmony, two worthy but competing global factions. I’m sure the American people would be keen to to outstretch the hand of friendship to Osama. Remember, these folks have been nominated by their parties to take a seat in the assembly of the 4th biggest nation on the planet. They see themselves as players, if you will.

The second guy (it is a guy I think) is clearly running to target the Golkar’s potential fetish voter (and there are a few of those amongst the devout, to be sure). Or the local KKK / Golkar Coalition ticket.

And so it’s election day in Indonesia today. Actually it’s the first of two. Today, hopefully, sees the legislature, elected and it’s structure, in a particularly irrational Indonesian way, decides who can run for president in a couple of months.

As in all things here, it’s thoroughly disorganised and you scratch your head at the chaos of it all, but when all is said and done, it’s truly a mighty thing and something that this nation, spread across so many islands, each of which is increasingly self serving (it’s a problem that any future leader is going to have to deal with…just jailing folks for talk of independence or raising flags doesn’t make it go away) as it tries to find a way past the endemic corruption that plagues the nation at every level, rightly takes great pride in.

The fact that Indonesia, not too far in the past the home of one of the 20^th Century’s worst dictators, is now on to it’s third, largely fair and unrestricted embrace of universal suffrage, would’ve seemed a bizarre fantasy to much of the world just 15 years back. And the credit for that goes to the people here who’ve done this almost without outside help (lets not forget that until he looked like falling Suharto was, despite his, as bad as Saddam, murderous excesses, backed by most Western powers..and even after the students overthrew him, hailed by John Howard) or much more than vague moral support.

No, this is particularly Indonesian revolution and it now proudly sits as the 4th largest functioning democracy in the world.

I’m watching this process with some fascination. There are all the trappings of democracy found globally, from the self serving nutters you find on the periphery of power…in NZ it’s Rodney Hide’s ACT, here, rather more dangerously, it’s the PKS, a party targeting the establishment of a Caliphate, who are currently polling near the margin of error despite doing rather better last time: most Indonesians simply don’t want the sort of Saudi funded medievalism that these folks (who recently nominated Suharto to be elevated to Hero Of Indonesia status, a small elite that mostly consists of Independence War heroes. The nomination was ignored by the government who, prior to their recent disastrous polling paid rather more attention to these guys) want, to the huge promises from candidates across the board which will likely be quickly forgotten after today.

So, allowing for the aforesaid chaos (down the road from us is a polling station..in the rather filthy forecourt of a garbage processing plant…why not use one of the many schools in the area? One soon learns never to apply logic to any process here if you want to remain sane) we should have a result in a day or two, followed closely by an intense period where any result is scrutinised for the inevitable questions about an odd result here or there. In Bali there are many stories of villages being told by the Banjar (the male only organisation which controls all life at a local level) which way to vote, and I think privacy in the booth may be an alien concept…..rural life in Indonesia often lives under it’s own rules regardless of what central government may or may not say. One would be naïve to assume that it’s not the case. But such is also widely accepted and any such direction would only come after rather intense banjar discussion. You have to be very wary of applying western styled scrutiny to democratic processes in Indonesia at every level.

But the most important part of this whole process, for the long term survival of Indonesia as a functioning nation, comes in a couple of months when the next president is elected. Common wisdom is that the current incumbent, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, will romp in again, and there could be a worse result. He’s overseen a moderate attack on the corruption here and the economy has grown steadily, if unspectacularly. And moderate is the key word: he’s moderate in just about everything and seems to be a firm democrat…and the west loves him.

But like the growth, he too is rather unspectacular and few actually know what he really stands for. He smiles and signs things and has a big motorcade. He’s failed to date to take on the most corrupt institutions in the nation: the police and the courts….the rule of law remains a very vague concept in Indonesia; and his funding for that most crucial of all things, education, still sits at the lowest percentage of GDP outside Africa. Environmental issues too, are largely ignored as are public health and wellbeing.

All of which has led to many wanting a return to someone stronger..perhaps the rather suspect Prabowo Subianto, a Suharto relative and a former General from the bad old days.

I guess we will see.