The systemic nature of swine flu

ABSTRACT: Today’s global crisis is not just a multidimensional crisis extending from the economic to the ecological fields and from the political to the social; it is also a serious biological crisis which is expressed with the dramatic worsening of the public health, as a result of its deadly embrace by the pharmaceutical TNCs and the planetary catastrophe brought about by the intensive agricultural system that accompanied the flourishing of neoliberal globalisation and the reproduction of consumer society all over the world. Factory animal farming in particular has delivered enormous growth in global meat production over the last three decades, with consumers persuaded to buy its cheap products with the same ease as they were getting the freely-offered loans of the financial boom, without asking any questions on how such consumption could be sustained or what the eventual consequences might be. It is, therefore, not surprising at all that the outbreak of swine flu in Mexico is linked to industrialised farming methods designed to provide cheap food for consumers.The multidimensional crisis and now the biological crisis provide ample evidence that what is good for the elites who control not only our way of living but our survival itself is far from good for us. Furthermore, the elites’ actions show why it is so imperative to build a massive movement for the establishment of a genuine democracy, an Inclusive Democracy, so that it is ourselves, rather than criminal elites interested only in making more money, who decide what our needs are and how best to meet them.; CHAPTERS: The record so far; Plot theories on the swine flu; Irrationalism in medical practice and research; The systemic character of the swine flu and of the measures taken against it; Conclusions