Top U.S. & World Headlines — April 23, 2020

Democracy Now!

Published on Apr 23, 2020

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“The Virus Is Still Out There”: Infectious Disease Expert Warns Against Reopening States Too Soon

Democracy Now!

Published on Apr 23, 2020

Despite strong objections of public health officials, governors in Georgia, Tennessee and South Carolina still plan to reopen parks, beaches and nonessential businesses. Even Trump reversed his support. Increased testing is critical for the whole country. But where are the tests? We look at the path ahead with Dr. Syra Madad, infectious disease specialist and special pathogens expert, who was recently featured in the Netflix docuseries “Pandemic.”

Webinar recording: Recipe for Disaster – Globalised food systems, inequality and COVID-19

Transnational Institute

Apr 15, 2020

A dialogue between Rob Wallace, author of Big Farms Make Big Flu and agrarian justice activists from Myanmar, Palestine, Indonesia and Europe.

The webinar explored how globalised industrial food systems set the scene for the emergence of COVID-19, the structural connections between the capitalist industrial agriculture, pathogens and the precarious conditions of workers in food systems and society at large. It also touched on the kind of just and resilient food systems we need to transform food and agriculture today?

Panellists:

-Rob Wallace author of Big Farms Make Big Flu and co-author of Neoliberal Ebola: Modeling Disease Emergence from Finance to Forest and Farm.
– Moayyad Bsharat of Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), member organization of La Via Campesina in Palestine.
– Arie Kurniawaty of Indonesian feminist organization Solidaritas Perempuan (SP) which works with women in grassroots communities across the urban-rural spectrum.
– Sai Sam Kham of Metta Foundation in Myanmar.
– Paula Gioia peasant farmer in Germany and member of the Coordination Committee of the European Coordination Via Campesina.

Monthly Review | Big Farms Make Big Flu: Dispatches on Infectious Disease, Agribusiness, and the Nature of Science

 

by Rob Wallace

$20.40 – $89.00

Thanks to breakthroughs in production and food science, agribusiness has been able to devise new ways to grow more food and get it more places more quickly. There is no shortage of news items on the hundreds of thousands of hybrid poultry—each animal genetically identical to the next—packed together in megabarns, grown out in a matter of months, then slaughtered, processed, and shipped to the other side of the globe. Less well known are the deadly pathogens mutating in, and emerging out of, these specialized agro-environments. In fact, many of the most dangerous new diseases in humans can be traced back to such food systems, among them Campylobacter, Nipah virus, Q fever, hepatitis E, and a variety of novel influenza variants.

In Big Farms Make Big Flu, a collection of dispatches by turns harrowing and thought-provoking, Rob Wallace tracks the ways influenza and other pathogens emerge from an agriculture controlled by multinational corporations. With a precise and radical wit, Wallace juxtaposes ghastly phenomena such as attempts at producing featherless chickens with microbial time travel and neoliberal Ebola. Wallace also offers sensible alternatives to lethal agribusiness. Some, such as farming cooperatives, integrated pathogen management, and mixed crop-livestock systems, are already in practice off the agribusiness grid.

While many books cover facets of food or outbreaks, Wallace’s collection is the first to explore infectious disease, agriculture, economics, and the nature of science together. Big Farms Make Big Flu integrates the political economies of disease and science into a new understanding of infections.

In Big Farms Make Big Flu, Rob Wallace stands boldly on the shoulders of giants in clearly expressing the problems with our agroindustrial system that so many already see but far too few are willing to say. With mordant wit and a keen literary sensibility, Wallace follows the story of this dysfunctional—and dangerous—system wherever it may lead, without regard to petty concerns of discipline or the determined ignorance of the commentariat and mainstream research institutions. Big Farms Make Big Flu shows the power, possibility, and indeed, absolute necessity of political ecology, lest we not only fail to properly understand the world, but fail to change it.”

—M. Jahi Chappell, Ph.D., Senior Staff Scientist, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP)

These essays put you in the company of a delightful mind. Wallace is filled with curiosity, deep learning, and robust skepticism. In his company, you’ll learn about phylogeography, clades and imperial epizoology. He can also weave a mean story, with the kinds of big picture analysis that puts him alongside minds like Mike Davis’s. Who else can link the end of British colonial rule in China or the devaluation of the Thai Baht to the spread of bird flu? This collection is a bracing innoculant against the misinformation that will be spewed in the next epidemic by the private sector, government agencies and philanthropists. My copy is highlighted on almost every page. Yours will be too.

—Raj Patel, Research Professor, University of Texas at Austin, author, Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System

This collection of short, provocative essays challenges the reader to draw important connections between industrial farming practices, ecological degradation, and viral epidemiology. Wallace deftly links political analysis of biological and economic phenomena, demonstrating the importance of place, capital and power in discussions about disease outbreak dynamics.

—Adia Benton, Department of Anthropology, Program of African Studies, Northwestern University, author, HIV Exceptionalism: Development through Disease in Sierra Leone

If you’ve missed the wit and brilliance of Stephen Jay Gould, here’s consolation: holistic, radical science from the frontlines of the battle against emergent diseases. Using the wide-angle lens of political ecology, Rob Wallace demonstrates the central roles of the factory-farming and fast-food industries in the evolution of avian flu and other pandemics that threaten the entire planet. Bravo to MR Press for publishing this landmark collection of essays.

—Mike Davis, author, Monster at Our Door and Planet of Slums

Eye-opening and disturbing, Big Farms Make Big Flu calls into question the status quo of livestock farms. Chapters directly address both potential hazards, and prospective solutions that could prove more humane for both the farm animals and humanity as a whole. Extensive notes and an index round out this alarmist yet highly recommended scrutiny.

…(read more).

How to Beat Coronavirus Capitalism

Haymarket Books
Please join an online teach-in with Naomi Klein, Astra Taylor, and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, with a musical performance by Lia Rose

Thursday, March 26, 2020, 5 PM Eastern

Sponsored by Haymarket Books, The Leap, Debt Collective, and Democratic Socialists of America

The current crisis is laying bare the extreme injustices and inequalities of our economic and social system.

We are in a battle of visions for how we’re going to respond to this crisis. We will either be catapulted backward to an even more brutal winner-takes-all system — or this will be a wake-up call.
Ideas that were dismissed as too radical just a week ago are starting to seem like the only reasonable path to get out of this crisis and prevent future ones.
We need to use every tool that we have that allows us to hear each other’s voices, to read each other’s words, to see each other’s faces, even if it’s just on screens, to stay organized and stay connected. We have to create spaces where we’re able to deliberate and strategize about what it means to protect our neighbors, our rights, and our planet.
We have to have the confidence to say this is the moment when we change everything.

Naomi Klein
@NaomiAKlein
https://naomiklein.org/

Coronavirus crisis exploited through ‘disaster capitalism’

Al Jazeera English

Mar 20, 2020

As the world reacts to the coronavirus pandemic, analysts are warning of ways the crisis may be exploited – through so-called “disaster capitalism”. Basic medical necessities – such as face masks, hand wash and sanitisers – are being sold at inflated prices online as demand soars. And – while US authorities have struggled to make testing available – some private companies are said to be offering home tests for those who can pay. There is also a growing concern of alleged “congressional insider trading” after two senators sold stocks following a White House briefing – before markets crashed. Then there are fears governments might use the crisis to implement political agendas. China has already announced it will relax environmental supervision to try to boost its economy – and the US has tightened its border controls – yet again. Sam Pizzigati, an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, talks to Al Jazeera.

Coronavirus Capitalism — and How to Beat It

The Intercept

Premiered Mar 16, 2020

Governments around the world are busily exploiting the coronavirus crisis to push for no-strings-attached corporate bailouts and regulatory rollbacks.

“I’ve spent two decades studying the transformations that take place under the cover of disaster,” writes Naomi Klein. “I’ve learned that one thing we can count on is this: During moments of cataclysmic change, the previously unthinkable suddenly becomes reality.”

In recent decades, that change has mainly been for the worst — but this has not always been the case. And it need not continue to be in the future.

This video is about the ways the still-unfolding Covid-19 crisis is already remaking our sense of the possible. The Trump administration and other governments around the world are busily exploiting the crisis to push for no-strings-attached corporate bailouts and regulatory rollbacks. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is moving to repeal financial regulations that were introduced after the last major financial meltdown, as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act. China, for its part, is indicating that it will relax environmental standards to stimulate its economy, which would wipe out the one major benefit the crisis has produced so far: a marked drop in that country’s lethal air pollution.

But this is not the whole story. In the United States, we have also seen organizing at the city and state levels win important victories to suspend evictions during the pandemic. Ireland has announced six weeks of emergency unemployment payments for all workers who suddenly find themselves out of work, including self-employed workers. And despite U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden’s claims during the recent debate that the pandemic has nothing to do with Medicare for All, many Americans are suddenly realizing that the absence of a functioning safety net exacerbates vulnerabilities to the virus on many fronts.

This crisis — like earlier ones — could well be the catalyst to shower aid on the wealthiest interests in society, including those most responsible for our current vulnerabilities, while offering next to nothing to the most workers, wiping out small family savings and shuttering small businesses. But as this video shows, many are already pushing back — and that story hasn’t been written yet.

Naomi Klein: Sanders “Broke the Spell” of Neoliberalism as Trump Pushes Coronavirus Capitalism

Democracy Now!

Apr 9, 2020

We talk to journalist and activist Naomi Klein about Bernie Sanders’s historic presidential campaign as he suspends his bid for the 2020 Democratic nomination, and about coronavirus capitalism — President Trump’s response to the pandemic. Sanders “opened up the window of what was possible politically in this country,” says Klein, a senior correspondent at The Intercept, Rutgers University professor and longtime Sanders supporter.

Mehdi Hasan and Naomi Klein on Coronavirus Capitalism

The Intercept

Streamed live on Apr 7, 2020

The Intercept’s Mehdi Hasan speaks with Senior Correspondent Naomi Klein about coronavirus capitalism and the selective use of emergency measures to offload risks onto workers and families, while the people who are relatively more secure get no-strings-attached bailouts.

“Coronavirus Capitalism”: Naomi Klein’s Case for Transformative Change Amid Coronavirus Pandemic

Democracy Now!

Mar 19, 2020

Author, activist and journalist Naomi Klein says the coronavirus crisis, like earlier ones, could be a catalyst to shower aid on the wealthiest interests in society, including those most responsible for our current vulnerabilities, while offering next to nothing to most workers and small businesses. In 2007, Klein wrote “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.” Now she argues President Trump’s plan is a pandemic shock doctrine. In a new video for The Intercept, where she is a senior correspondent, Klein argues it’s vital for people to fight for the kind of transformative change that can not only curb the worst effects of the current crisis but also set society on a more just path.