Mike Davis: Capitalism and the flu

by Mike Davis  
from Socialist Worker (US)
27 April 2009

Mike Davis, whose 2006 book The Monster at Our Door warned of the threat of a global bird flu pandemic, explains how globalised agribusiness set the stage for a frightening outbreak of the swine flu in Mexico.

The spring break hordes returned from Cancun this year with an invisible but sinister souvenir. The Mexican swine flu, a genetic chimera probably conceived in the fecal mire of an industrial pigsty, suddenly threatens to give the whole world a fever.

Initial outbreaks across North America reveal an infection rate already travelling at higher velocity than the last official pandemic strain, the 1968 Hong Kong flu.  

Continue at http://socialistworker.org/print/2009/04/27/capitalism-and-the-flu  

See also Swine flu and a sick social system: Why the poor die and the rich sniffle

Political Lies and Media Disinformation regarding the Swine Flu Pandemic

by Michel Chossudovsky from Global Research 1 May 2009 The World Health Organization (WHO) raised its pandemic alert level to Phase 5 on a 6 point scale. The WHO's Phase 5 alert means "there is sustained human-to-human spread in at least two countries and that global outbreak of the disease is imminent... It also signals an increased effort to produce a vaccine... Human cases have been confirmed in Mexico, the United States, Canada, Britain, Israel, New Zealand and Spain." (emphasis added) Continue at http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13433