I. H1N1
A. Swine flu--so named because two strains of the influenza virus effect both pigs and people--influenza A and influenza C. The strain named H1N1 (the current strain causing the high level of concern) is a combination of human, swine, and avian flu, which is why public health officials are concerned about the possibility of it becoming a pandemic.
1. Swine flu--Generally, during the past forty to fifty years has been fairly stable--meaning that the virus has not radically transformed itself during that time period.
B. Industrialization of Agriculture--during the last forty years or so, more and more industrial methods have been brought to bear on agriculture. While much attention has been paid to corporate farms growing crops, especially the genetic modification (GM) of food grains, the greatest effect has been on the animals raised for human consumption. The “intensification” of animal husbandry entails the close enclosure of animals, high caloric diets (particularly feed contain maize/corn), and the use of drugs to fight diseases endemic because of their enclosure and to spur growth.
1. Cattle--generally take the longest of the domesticated animals to raise for meat, Ruminant animals like cattle (as well as sheep and goats) generally prefer to eat grassy plants, but farmers have found that by feeding them extensive amounts of maize, they put on weight faster, and the beef produced has a higher fat content, which humans like to consume.
a) Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE)--better known to us as Mad Cow Disease, caused in part by mixing dead livestock killed by the disease with feed. This was especially prevalent in Great Britain as a way to cut feed costs--but BSE jumped from infecting hoofed animals to human beings, and hundreds of people in the British Isles were infected with this fatal disease. The resultant panic over British beef almost killed the industry there.
2. Chickens--touted by the Poultry Council as a health alternative, most chickens bought at the supermarket are less than a month old. From the time they hatch, they are kept in enclosures with bright lights burning; chickens eat as long as it is light by instinct. When the lights finally go out after twenty-eight days or so, the chickens drop where they had been standing from exhaustion; this makes them easy to kill for the “chicken-chokers,” and then the birds can be processes for Sunday dinner.
a) Avian flu--domesticated birds have long added their sicknesses--particularly influenza--to the human disease pool. The intensive husbandry of fowl in Thailand was ground zero for the brief outbreak of avian flu several years ago.
3. Hogs--most hogs consumed world-wide today are raised in confinement, and like cattle are fed a steady diet of maize and antibiotics
a) Hog farming has been especially intensified during the past forty hears. In 1965, there were 53 million hogs on more than 1 million farms in the United States; today 65 million hogs are concentrated on in 65,000 facilities. The reason this concentration is important will be explored below.
b) Early reports from Mexico have placed the outbreak of this strain of swine flu near Veracruz, to a hog facility called Granjas Carroll--a subsidiary of the US company Smithfield Foods, the largest pork-producer in the world--where last year 950,000 hogs were processed. It should be noted that Smithfield denies any involvement in this outbreak, and says that none of the animals processed there have exhibited any influenza symptoms.
C. Shit Happens!--the transference of influenza is explained by humans being in close contact with diseased animals; most of that contact is with the fecal matter the animals produce.
1. Pig shit--pigs produce three times as much fecal matter as do humans, but little is done to process this mountain of feces. North Carolina, for example, has just over 9 million people, and more than 10 million hogs. Most of the hogs are raised on huge facilities in the eastern part of the state, which is drained by warm, slow moving rivers that also created salt marshes. The effect of this pollution several years ago had a devastating effect on the state’s shellfish population--and sickened hundreds of fishermen
2. Chicken shit--recall that during the avian flu panic several years ago, much attention was paid to the possibility of wild birds alighting with domesticated fowl, and infecting them--and then the workers who fed and cleaned the enclosures.
D. The Many Blessing of Capitalism--while the intensification of animal husbandry has kept meat fairly inexpensive, this practice in not without costs.
II. Capitalist Hegemony Challenged
A. France
1. May 1968--began as student protests about the restrictive practices of French universities, it broke open with the inclusion of workers, resulting in the largest general strike in history. Charles deGalle, who had been given near-dictatorial powers as a result of the upheaval over the Algerian War for Independence, fled the country for an air base in Germany before being forced to return. The treachery of the Confédération Générale du Travail and the Communist Party of France, betraying the workers’ cause to curry favor with the deGaulle government, led to the defeat of the workers. These events, however, drastically changed French society, liberalizing many aspects of the day-to-day life in the country.
B. United States
1. Student protest movement--inspired by the Civil Rights Movement (which many of the early leaders of the protest movement took part in) and the disenchantment with the escalation of the conflict in Vietnam, students began challenging the restrictions placed on them while in college.
a) Berkeley Free Speech Movement
b) Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)
c) The Mobilization Against the War (The Mobe)
2. Cultural changes--like in France, the greatest success came with the cultural changes that the movement inspired, rather than any revolutionary political victories.
a) Women’s Liberation--women in the protest movements rebelled against being relegated to making food and other “female” roles.
b) Gay Liberation--Stonewall
3. Economic changes--International capitalism (or, to use the new term, “globalization”), using the mobility of capital, brings workers back under their thumb.
4. Political changes--the New Deal coalition (blue collar white workers, African Americans, and Southern oligarchs) breaks apart from the strains of the white backlash over the Civil Rights Movement. The “Southern Strategy” of the Republican Party (first under Richard Nixon, then under Ronald Reagan) temporarily lured blue collar whites to support the party, but their economic policies (and the large number of non-whites holding blue collar jobs) have combined to make the Republicans resemble a rump regional party.
III. The Capitalist Future?
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