11 June 2003

On Mad Cows And Conspiracy Theories

I think I need professional help.

When the whole Mad Cow scare started here in Alberta I found amusement in the idea that the root cause of the scare was someone encountering my ex-wife.

Now I know that was a cheap shot and a nasty little insult and probably not worth repeating in polite company. I happen to agree with all of that. It was a cheap shot on my part, but it was also a cheap shot that had me folded over a newspaper box killing myself laughing for five minutes.

For the record I do not consider my ex-wife to be a mad cow, but I still retain my belief that we never should have gotten together in the first place.

But enough about the marriage.

I was discussing the possibility of needing professional help.

You see, every now and again these thoughts appear in my head. Some of them become the roots of ideas for short story and novel projects. Some of them provide me with a quick moment of amusement and are subsequently forgotten as not being worth remembering. But every now and again I start coming up with ideas for conspiracy theories.

Now don't get your knickers in a knot. I have no intention of developing into a person like Mel Gibson's character in the movie Conspiracy Theory. I have no intention of spending the rest of my life looking for conspiracy theories and finding new and improved ways of revealing them to a world who thinks that I'm nuts. The main reason I have no intention of doing this is that the world already thinks I'm nuts enough as it is and I have no intention of lowering that existing opinion.

However, if you can find some way to prove to me that I would land Julia Roberts in the process I might just change my mind.

Now then, back to the mad cows.

I saw a newspaper headline today that stated that if the border between the United States and Canada were not opened to shipments of Alberta Beef by a specific date, then we were toast. I have not had the opportunity to read the text of the article as of yet, but I think that I can guess what it says. It will say something along the lines of the possibility of Canada's Beef Industry recovering from its losses due to Mad Cow are pretty damn close to zero if the border is not opened within a specific time frame.

So I was out running errands today and while I was checking off items on my to do list my brain was churning up possibilities. Consider the following.

Fact: Canada was one of the most visible countries to refuse to support the American war against Iraq. Since that decision was made relations between Canada and the United States can best be described as strained. The Americans aren't too terribly happy with us because we dared to speak up against them on such an important issue as this phase of the war against terrorism.

Of course, the fact that Prime Minister Chrétien (whom I will herein describe as Prime Minister Cretin) did not speak out against the war but specifically stated that Canada had no desire to get involved unless the operation was sanctioned by the United Nations is irrelevant. In fact, as far as the Americans are concerned there is really no difference at all. And although no member of the Bush government has come forward and specifically said that it was coming one very definitely has the feeling that there is some sort of reckoning coming.

Fact: Great Britain has had its own problems with Mad Cow in the past. In addition, the Limeys are one of the most vocal supporters of the American operation against Iraq. When you watched or read the news coverage you always saw mention of British regiments fighting alongside the American ones. These two countries above all others were the single most visible allied component of the War Against Iraq.

Now with those two elements in place we have the framework to piece together a purely hypothetical scenario.

Before I present the scenario allow me to state the following, publicly and for the record: This is a theory. I have no proof. I do not want proof. I have no desire to investigate this matter and gain the kind of evidence that would prove that things happened this way. I present this purely for the purpose of inviting discussion, of inspiring people to think about what may have happened and to talk about it because the more people think about things and talk about things the more they are inspired to find out exactly what happened and the closer we come to seeing actual truth.

Right. Now, give me a moment to look over my shoulders to make sure that nobody is watching as we'll begin.

Britain has had its own problems with Mad Cow. I do not have all the details but I do know that the problem was of such significance that it actually warranted mention in International News reports. So, given the British experience with Mad Cow disease is it not logical to assume that somewhere along the line British scientists managed to isolate the disease? Therefore, is it not logical to assume that somewhere in a vault in England is a collection of sealed test tubes in cold storage somewhere labeled in some kind of code which simply denotes Mad Cow?

Now let's carry things one step further. I have no problem picturing a scenario in which some highly placed member of the American Intelligence Community, acting under orders from a source much higher in the food chain, takes a trip to London to meet with his opposite number and requests a sample of the disease for continued scientific analysis, to make certain that it never strikes the North American continent. “You do see our concerns, don't you?” he would say. “If this disease were to strike in North America it could conceivably destroy our cattle industry. We don't want that to happen, now do we?”

Of course under circumstances like that the British would not hesitate to hand over whatever samples they may have had. The request is perfectly logical, after all, and there's no telling what could happen by getting someone else involved. Between the Americans and the British they might just come up with a way to cure the damn disease once and for all.

Now consider this. There is next to no security on the border crossings between the United States and Canada. Why would there be? We are allies after all.

I don't see it being too terribly difficult for an agent of the Intelligence community to come up with a way to transport a sample of the disease across the border and make a bee line for the West. From that point all he would have to do is pick a farm at random, wait until nightfall, and then infiltrate the herd and inject one single animal with the disease. Instant Mad Cow scare. Actual effort expended: next to none.

Now, there's a problem with this theory. Injecting a cow in this manner would likely leave some kind of trace which would have been discovered when the animal was being examined to be diagnosed.

Of course, there is always the possibility that the attending veterinarian would have missed it.

But now we start getting into probabilities and possibilities, and this is where the fun part of things stops. Now comes the debate.

Do I think I'm right? Hell no! I've never been right about a damned thing in my life. Why would I want to start by being right about this?

Do I believe that it could be possible? Of course it isn't possible! Why isn't it possible? Simple, it came from my mind. As my mind is geared primarily to the writing of fiction then I do not believe that it is geared to the writing of fact and therefore any such scenario that my mind envisions must be regarded as having as much chance of being real as the possibility of getting drunk off of American Beer, which all of us know is rather like making love in a canoe: fucking close to water.

So, ask me again. Do I think I'm right and do I believe that it could be possible? Hell, in this world anything can happen.