SACW | Apr 29 - May 1, 2009 / Nepal's Maoists / BJP Dreamworld / Capitalism and Swine Flu / Israel's budding autocracy

Thu Apr 30 20:23:26 CDT 2009

South Asia Citizens Wire | April 29 - May 1, 2009 | Dispatch No. 2620  
- Year 11 running
From: www.sacw.net

[1] Nepal: State of the Maoist state (Kanak Mani Dixit)
[2] Pakistan:  Stop the Taliban advance (Rubina Saigol)
    + Living with the Taliban (Ali Dayan Hasan)
    + Where is the Pakistan army? (Dr Farrukh Saleem)
[3] India and Its Far Right:
    + The BJP Dreamland (Jean Drèze)
    + Gujarat: the Ghosts of the Past and the Future (Mukul Dube)
    + Transcript: FT interview with Raj Thackeray
[5] Capitalism and the Swine Flu
   - How not to tackle flu crisis: India must rethink strategy  
(Antara Dev Sen)
   - The swine flu crisis lays bare the meat industry's monstrous  
power (Mike Davis)
   - Swine Flu Is Related to Virus Born on U.S. Hog Factories in 1998  
(Michael Greger)
   - Investors Buy Up Shares of Flu Drug Makers (David Jolly)
[6] Israel's budding autocracy (Dimi Reider)
[7] Announcements:
Conference: Appropriating the past: the uses and abuses of cultural  
heritage (Durham University, UK, 6-8 July 2009)

_____

[1] Nepal:

Himal SouthAsian, May 2009

STATE OF THE MAOIST STATE

by Kanak Mani Dixit

Three years after they came aboveground, the Maoists of Nepal seem to  
have neither the vision nor the statecraft with which to energise  
society. Leading the coalition government, they continue to use  
violence and threat of violence as a tool of politics, and do not  
show an interest in the  constitution-writing. The relentless  
political instability holds the future hostage.

Nine months after the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) took charge  
of the government following success in the elections to the  
Constituent Assembly, the national condition in Nepal today is  
characterised by a series of absences: of rule of law, of government,  
of development, of reconstruction and rehabilitation, while of  
investment and economic revival. The elections of April 2008 threw up  
a Maoist party that had yet to be socialised into open society, while  
the leadership began projecting the election win as an endorsement of  
the decade-long ‘people’s war’.

The public pins its hope on the constitution-writing, but the work  
has barely begun halfway to the stipulated deadline, because the  
newly renamed United Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) is unable or  
unwilling to lead the process. Meanwhile, the peace process itself is  
threatened by the Maoists’ sudden reluctance to abide by previous  
understandings on integration and rehabilitation of their combatants,  
themselves verified at more than double their conflict-period  
estimated numbers.

All the while, an enormous volume of human resources and time is  
going waste, as tens of thousands of professionals in all sectors,  
who should be enthusiastically engaged in reconstruction and growth,  
take a wait-and-see attitude. They are not convinced with the words  
that emanate from a fickle, utilitarian, opportunistic Maobaadi  
leadership. And while entrepreneurs gasp for air amidst closures,  
strikes and electricity brownouts, opportunists and crony capitalists  
scamper after the ministers. A culture of silence is taking over the  
districts, as Maoist and former-Maoist goons throttle journalists,  
human-rights defenders, community leaders and local politicians.

Nepal’s peace process has been rightly applauded for showing the  
world a tantalisingly swift way out of brutal conflict Due to the  
magnanimity of the political parties, a sense of realism within the  
Maoist party itself, and an India finally willing to push its weight,  
in just two years an insurgent force was elevated from the forest to  
become the largest party in Parliament (the Constituent Assembly  
doubles as a legislature). But now the peace process is stuck. The  
former rebels have revealed an inability to rise to the height where  
the people placed them. While simultaneously tackling their own  
internal rivalries and contradictions, they ineffectually stayed on  
the watch while the economy tumbled and rule of law disappeared. They  
have proactively sought to undermine the constitutional presidency,  
judiciary, military, bureaucracy and media, leading the government  
but trying to dismantle the state.

[. . .]
http://www.himalmag.com/State-of-the-Maoist-state_nw2917.html

_____

[2] Pakistan:

The News
April 29, 2009

STOP THE TALIBAN ADVANCE

by Rubina Saigol

The writer is a researcher specialising in social development

While all forms of colonisation and occupation spell disaster for the  
way of life of the conquered, whose institutions and systems are  
demolished and replaced by new ones, the most recent colonisation of  
large parts of Pakistan by the Taliban is by far the most dangerous  
one, as it seeks to destroy the very basis on which the state and  
society rest.

The Taliban occupation resembles most other forms of colonial  
occupation in a number of ways, including: 1) Forcible control over  
territory and large swathes of the population; 2) use of violence and  
force to accomplish political aims; 3) imposition of a specific  
minority version of religion not accepted or followed by the  
majority; 4) induction of collaborators from among the local people  
to further their aims; 5) planned demolition of the political,  
economic and social systems of the defeated; 6) belief in the  
superiority of the values, practices and systems of the coloniser,  
coupled with complete disregard for the culture and ways of the  
vanquished.

1. Forcible control over territory and population: The Taliban  
established control over large parts of FATA, a territory which was  
never properly integrated into Pakistan. In the past few months, the  
Taliban have speedily acquired control over Swat, first through armed  
violence and finally legally and politically through the Nizam-e-Adl  
agreement signed by President Zardari on April 13 and supported by  
Pakistan's elected assembly. As Farrukh Saleem informs us, the  
Pakistani state has ceded another 5,337 square kilometres of Pakistan  
adding to the 14,850 square kilometres of Chitral and 5,280 square  
kilometres of Dir which were already under the control of Sufi  
Muhammad's Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi. According to Dr  
Saleem this constitutes around 16 percent of our landmass.

Ecstatic over their triumph in Swat the Taliban quickly moved on to  
Buner, Shangla and are said to be close to Mansehra and Haripur and  
about 60 miles from Islamabad. They have openly declared that they  
will impose their own brand of Shariat on the whole of Pakistan and  
ultimately the entire Muslim world. Such imperial fantasies of world  
conquest portend disaster not only for Pakistan but for the world  
beyond.

2. Use of Violence for political aims: Like many other marauding  
hordes in history, the Taliban have demonstrated their enormous  
propensity for violence, brutality and savagery. The reign of terror  
in Swat before it finally fell involved beheading, murder, public  
display of decapitated bodies, flogging of women and cold-blooded  
murder of men and women accused of "immoral" behaviour in the  
Taliban's distorted code of morality. Those killed, butchered and  
tortured had not violated any Pakistani law while the Taliban have  
committed capital crimes against Pakistan's law and Constitution.

3. Imposition of minority religion: Pakistan constitutes a plural and  
multiple society where different religious groups, sects and beliefs  
have co-existed for centuries. There are Deobandis and Barelvis,  
Shias and Sunnis and followers of Sufi saints like Bulleh Shah,  
Sultan Bahoo, Sachchal Sarmast, Rehman Baba, Ghulam Farid, Khushhal  
Khan Khattak, Shah Abdul Lateef Bhitai and others. Additionally,  
Pakistan has a substantial population of Hindus in interior Sindh and  
Christians all over the country.

Pakistan is a multi-religious society where one single religion  
cannot be imposed on everyone. The Taliban represent a Wahhabi  
version of religion to which a tiny minority subscribes. Their  
notions of the universe represent a grotesque version of religion  
that carries no moral purpose other than its own imposition, and  
prohibits no crime, butchery or violence in single-minded pursuit of  
power, territory and control. Subsidised by the sale of poppy and the  
underground drug and arms trade, this version of "religion" makes a  
mockery of religion itself and reduces it to bloodshed, cruelty and  
barbarism. It is a version that has been rejected by mainstream  
religious leaders also.

4. Collaboration: Local and national administrations and political  
leaders of our country have become forced collaborators in the  
Taliban enterprise of destruction. The failure of our security forces  
to protect the country and its people has led to the capitulation by  
the National Assembly and the government to their illegal and  
unconstitutional demands. The fear generated by the no-holds-barred  
violence of the Taliban has led to the muting of any critique of  
their inhuman actions. The civilian government and legislators,  
dependent upon the police, administration and the army to protect  
civilians against the occupation of their country, had no choice but  
to relent when those responsible for protecting the country seemed to  
be retreating.

5. Demolition of political, economic and social systems: Like all  
colonisers, who entrench themselves in the society of the colonised  
and make sweeping changes in local systems and institutions, the  
Taliban have already threatened to destroy democracy which was only  
recently wrested from the hands of a dictator reluctant to relinquish  
control.

The Taliban have declared democracy, the judiciary and the  
Constitution as being western impositions to be removed by them once  
they gain power in Islamabad. They are not bothered by the obvious  
contradiction that they themselves are a product of the same western  
world that they so despise. Their version of religion comes from a  
westerly direction and is not an indigenous manifestation of the rich  
South Asian context.

Their own worldview comes from the west from west Asia, to be more  
specific and has no roots within the subcontinent which boasts  
syncretic versions of religion that are tolerant of difference and  
are peaceful in their actions. The Taliban threaten the essential  
multiplicity of South Asia and the traditional peaceful tolerance of  
its people by planning to transform the political, economic, social  
and cultural landscape of the country.

The worst sufferers of the Wahhabi imperialism that they represent  
will be women and the minorities, as is already evident. The  
Taliban's insecurities often tend to be focused on cultural and  
religious policing of the weaker sections of society. The prohibition  
of women's education and work
as well as of all music, art and higher culture is as clear a sign of  
degradation as any and promises a world in which civilisation would  
become a thing of the past.

6. Belief in superiority: Like the former colonisers, whether Muslim  
or non-Muslim, the Taliban have a deeply embedded view of their own  
superiority. They believe that the cultural and social norms and  
values that they represent are better than those of most Pakistanis,  
and that it is the Bearded Man's Burden to correct the morals of  
society and inculcate higher values among the populace.

In spite of the fact that they kill, butcher, cut off limbs and heads  
with wild abandon and loot and plunder resources mercilessly  
(demonstrated by the takeover of the Emerald Mines), they project all  
their vices onto "the other." They accuse liberal and progressive  
people of lacking virtue, morality and piety. Yet, it is the Taliban  
who clearly lack any moral compass and have been reared on an  
ideology of hate, bloodshed and violence.

The onslaught of the Taliban must be resisted with all the resources  
at our disposal administrative, political, military, intellectual and  
cultural. If we have to fight them, we must fight; if we have to  
dance and sing, we must dance and sing to challenge their Stone Age  
worldview and to assert our own humanity. It is no use blaming our  
civilian elected leaders for capitulating to the Taliban under  
pressure, as disappointing as that may be. The real issue is, why is  
a 600,000-strong army powerless against them? Why was the army not  
able to subdue an insurgency in Waziristan before the poison spread  
to the settled areas?

The Pakistani people give a huge chunk of their hard-earned resources  
to the army the largest chunk after debt-servicing. All they want in  
return is protection, security and not abdication of responsibility.  
Why is a half-a-million-strong army ineffective against 5,000  
marauders, criminals and thugs?

It has become our national pastime to blame only our elected  
governments when in reality they have no options and have been forced  
to accept Talibanisation of Swat due to the failures of others. If we  
do not fight back the Taliban today, we may not even live to regret  
it, for they will not spare our lives.

o o o

LIVING WITH THE TALIBAN
by Ali Dayan Hasan
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/29/pakistan-taliban- 
human-rights-india

o o o

The News
April 26, 2009

WHERE IS THE PAKISTAN ARMY?
by Dr Farrukh Saleem

Five thousand square kilometres of Swat are now under Taliban control  
-- de jure. Chitral (14,850 sq km), Dir (5,280 sq km), Shangla (1,586  
sq km), Hangu (1,097 sq km), Lakki Marwat (3,164 sq km), Bannu (1,227  
sq km), Tank (1,679 sq km), Khyber, Kurram, Bajaur, Mohmand, Orkzai,  
North Waziristan and South Waziristan are all under Taliban control  
-- de facto. That's a total of 56,103 square kilometres of Pakistan  
under Taliban control -- de facto.

Six thousand square kilometres of Dera Ismail Khan are being  
contested. Also under 'contested control' are Karak (3,372 sq km),  
Kohat (2,545 sq km), Peshawar (2,257 sq km), Charsada (996 sq km) and  
Mardan (1,632 sq km). That's a total of 16,802 square kilometres of  
Pakistan under 'contested control' -- de facto. Seven thousand five  
hundred square kilometres of Kohistan are under 'Taliban influence'.  
Additionally, Mansehra (4,579 sq km), Battagram (1,301 sq km), Swabi  
(1,543 sq km) and Nowshera (1,748 sq km) are all under 'Taliban  
influence'. That's a total of 16,663 square kilometres of Pakistan  
under 'Taliban influence' -- de facto. All put together, 89,568  
square kilometres of Pakistani territory is either under complete  
'Taliban control', 'contested control' or 'Taliban influenced';  
that's 11 per cent of Pakistan's landmass.
[. . .]
http://www.thenews.com.pk/arc_news.asp?id=9

_____

[3] India's Far Right:

(i)

http://www.sacw.net/article869.html

THE BJP DREAMLAND

by Jean Drèze,

sacw.net, 28 April 2009

“No nation can chart out its domestic or foreign policies unless it  
has a clear understanding about itself, its history, its strengths  
and failings.” Jawaharlal Nehru could not have put it better. The  
author of this noble statement, however, is none other than Murli  
Manohar Joshi, in his preamble to the manifesto of the Bharatiya  
Janata Party (BJP), signed by him as Chairman of the Manifesto  
Committee.

Ironically, this statement is at odds with the preamble itself, which  
peddles a series of myths (of the “India Shining” variety) about  
Indian history and civilization. According to this preamble, India  
used to be “a land of great wealth and even greater wisdom”. It was  
not only the most fertile land but also far ahead of other countries  
“in the technical and educational fields”, with “a well organized  
health care system” as early as 400 AD. Even “plastic surgery” has  
been “practiced for centuries” in India according to Mr. Joshi. These  
achievements had their roots in the “Bharatiya or Hindu world view”  
of ancient sages and Vedic Rishis.

Interestingly, the evidence given for these feats does not consist of  
Indian historical records. Instead, Mr. Joshi invokes scattered  
testimonies of foreign travellers, including some rather unreliable  
ones such as Megasthenes, whose account of India was embellished with  
stories of dog-headed giants and other fantastic creatures. The  
testimonies are highly selective, and, in some cases, grossly  
distorted. A few illustrations may help.

Mr. Joshi describes pre-colonial India as a “land of abundance”, with  
an “economy as flourishing as its agriculture”. Hunger and famines,  
in his perception, were obviously unknown in that period. But the  
fact is that famines have a long history in India. They are mentioned  
in the Jatakas, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Arthasashtra, and  
Manu’s Dharmashastra, among other ancient texts. As historian Romila  
Thapar notes: “Famine was common and is mentioned in Indian texts. We  
do not have to go looking for certificates of merit from foreign  
visitors.”

In a similar vein, Mr. Joshi states that Gandhi was “absolutely right  
in saying that India was more illiterate in 1931 [than] in 1870”. The  
fact, however, is that Gandhi was wrong on this. We know that from  
Census data. Perhaps Mr. Joshi considers Gandhi as a more  
authoritative source than the Census. But Gandhi, for all his wisdom,  
was not infallible, and this is not the only occasion when he was  
carried away. Elsewhere he touchingly described “the Indian shepherd”  
as “a finely built man of Herculean constitution”, at a time when the  
vast majority of the Indian population was wasted and stunted, with a  
life expectancy of less than 30 years. His hasty comment on literacy  
belongs to the same genre – wishful thinking.

The most insidious part of the BJP Manifesto’s preamble is a fake  
quote attributed to Thomas Babington Macaulay. According to Mr.  
Joshi: “India’s prosperity, its talents and the state of its high  
moral society can be best understood by what Thomas Babington  
Macaulay stated in his speech of February 02, 1835, in the British  
Parliament. ‘I have travelled across the length and breadth of India  
and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief, such  
wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of  
such high caliber, that I do not think we would ever conquer this  
country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is  
her spiritual and cultural heritage…”

This “quote” (abridged here) is a wonderful prop for Mr. Joshi’s  
arguments. But there is a catch – Macaulay never said this. The quote  
is a well-known fabrication, which has been the subject of many  
comments and articles. This does not prevent it from being publicized  
on numerous Hindutva websites. On a dissenting note, one of these  
websites (www.dandavats.com, dedicated to the cause of ISKCON)  
advises against using this quote, as it “has a bad reputation amongst  
scholars of Indology who generally ridicule it”. Mr. Joshi is  
evidently not among these “scholars of Indology”, despite his  
emphasis on the need for the nation to “understand itself”.  
Incidentally, Macaulay was in India on 2 February 1835, making it  
rather unlikely that he would have addressed the British Parliament  
that day.

Hopefully, these examples suffice to show that the BJP Manifesto’s  
preamble is an exercise in obfuscation. As it happens, large portions  
of this preamble were posted the same day on Wikipedia, in the entry  
on “Indian culture”. Perhaps a well-wisher thought that inserting  
this gem in Wikipedia would add credibility to Mr. Joshi’s  
propaganda. Be that as it may, this entire portion of the “Indian  
culture” entry was removed from the Wikipedia website a few days later.

Behind this fairy tale are useful insights into the psychology of  
Hindutva leaders and the political strategy of the BJP. The dominant  
theme of Mr. Joshi’s preamble is the hurt pride of the higher castes  
(or “of India” as he calls it). Humiliated by foreign dominance in so  
many fields today, their coping strategy is to claim that “we were  
actually ahead all along”. Their agenda is to restore India’s lost  
glory as they perceive it. This lost glory is nothing but the  
traditional, exploitative social order dominated by them. Over the  
centuries, this domination has been achieved partly through force,  
and partly through deception. The BJP Manifesto’s preamble continues  
this tradition of “deceive and rule”.

[A different version of the above paper under the title  
"Interpretation of Dreams" appeared in The Times of India, 28 April  
2009]

o o o

(ii)

To appear in Mainstream Weekly

GUJARAT: THE GHOSTS OF THE PAST AND THE FUTURE

by Mukul Dube

On 27 April 2009, over seven years after the cataclysmic violence in  
Gujarat, the Supreme Court of India directed the Special  
Investigation Team (also known as the Raghavan Committee) to look  
into the role of Narendra Modi, then as now the Chief Minister of  
Gujarat, in that violence. The focus is naturally on Modi, although  
the SIT was asked also ?to probe the roles of 62 other top ranking  
politicians, bureaucrats and police officers of the state?.
There have been two reactions to this. One is to say, ?Der aye,  
durust aye:? that is, even if it comes late, the right step has been  
taken (a variant is a dry ?And about time too.?). The other reaction  
is to refer to the dictum that justice delayed is justice denied.
I suggest that the second reaction is the valid one in the unusual  
circumstances that we are considering. The reason is that those who  
ruled Gujarat in 2002 still rule that state. They are widely held to  
have been responsible for the violence or at least to have taken no  
steps to prevent it or, later, to punish the perpetrators. They did  
nothing to ameliorate the suffering of the tens of thousands of  
Muslims who were reduced to living in camps. Indeed, their leader  
Modi was callous enough to describe the camps as ?breeding  
factories?, and his wit was duly rewarded by the guffaws of his  
acolytes.
Two thousand or more Muslims were killed in the violence.1 This was  
justified by calling them ?enemies?, ?outsiders?, ?Pakistanis? and ? 
terrorists?. Muslims in Gujarat continue to be described in these  
terms, and they continue to be treated as aliens who have no rights,  
not even the right to return to their own homes. The areas in which  
they live ? and these have been called ghettos ? are denied the basic  
amenities of water, sewage collection and electricity. No banks serve  
them and there are no schools in them. They are in the ?Hindu Rajya?  
yet not in it, in the ?Hindu Rashtra? yet not in it. A neighbourhood  
in which Muslims live is labelled ?Pakistan? and is treated as enemy  
territory. Certainly it is not part of ?Shining India?, the fiction  
about which the Hindu Right cried itself hoarse.

Time is the great healer, they say; and then there is the excellent  
idea of ?forgive and forget?. We have before us the relatively recent  
example of South Africa, where literally millions of the gravest  
crimes against humanity were exposed and then buried in the name of ? 
truth and reconciliation?. It is truly sound reasoning to look not at  
the past but to the future; but there are compelling reasons why that  
cannot be done in the instance of Gujarat.
?I doubt that that woman?s wounds will ever be healed who was raped,  
whose husband and brother were killed before her eyes, whose unborn  
foetus was held aloft on the point of a sword, whose house was  
destroyed with exploding gas cylinders.? This is what I wrote two  
years after the Godhra railway carriage fire (?Answer to a Question?,  
published on the Internet on 28 February 2004). The truth of it has  
since been underscored by something I had not foreseen: for all these  
years, killers and rapists have swaggered about, free as air, and  
have each day held up the threat of repetition ? no less real for  
being unspoken ? to their victims. And the prisons of Gujarat have,  
over this entire period, housed without trial many hundreds of  
victims whom a criminal state apparatus has declared criminals.

Those people can forgive and forget, they can let bygones be bygones,  
who have recovered from a trauma and who are leading normal lives  
once again. There is much evidence to show that the Muslims of  
Gujarat are weighed down today by the very forces that ran them into  
the ground over seven years ago. The ghosts that torture them are not  
only of the past but also of the present. They do not lead normal  
lives, not by a long shot. The memories of Gujarat 2002 are daily  
renewed. The genocide of seven years ago is not an event of the past:  
it remains a lived reality.
Some people ? blinded, I assume, in their cocoons of security and  
freedom from basic concerns ? go so far as to describe the crimes of  
Gujarat 2002 as ?old hat?, matters which no longer deserve to be  
thought about or written about. Among them are sections of the media  
which have shown themselves to have both short memories and a talent  
for making absurdly tall claims about their imagined achievements.

Mercifully, the Supreme Court is not so blinded. After seven long  
years, seven years of a daily grinding of humanity into the dust,  
there is a ray of hope for the survivors of the Gujarat Genocide. It  
is obvious that, in ordering the SIT to look into ?old? crimes, the  
Supreme Court had in mind the established principle that there are  
crimes to which the statute of limitations does not apply.

It remains to be seen, of course, just how the Supreme Court  
characterises the crimes of Gujarat 2002 and just what kind of  
punishment and compensation it will see fit to order, assuming that  
the process beginning with the SIT ends in the identification of  
criminals and victims.

II

Not long after the Gujarat Genocide, K.G. Kannabiran (Hindu, 25 March  
2002) called for a special Indian law against genocide. He argued  
that the existing laws were inadequate to cope with a phenomenon that  
was qualitatively different from the general run of criminal acts,  
including rape and murder. That this is not a hasty, ill considered  
view becomes clear when we consider that the United Nations General  
Assembly had adopted, on 9 December 1948, the Convention on the  
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, of which I  
reproduce Article 2:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts  
committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,  
ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life  
calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

If these are the features of genocide, then there can be no doubt  
that Gujarat 2002 was genocide. India does not at this time have a  
special law against genocide, and various reasons seem likely to keep  
it from applying the U.N. Convention to Gujarat. It remains possible,  
though, for the ends of justice ? responsibility, punishment,  
compensation ? to be tailored to the exceptional nature of the crimes  
and the suffering which characterised that example of genocide.
The violence cannot but be described as being of the ?rarest of rare?  
variety, and if all the evidence already before us is any guide, the  
existence of conspiracy will become clear. This is the thought that  
comes to those many who would like Modi to be hanged.
The ?eye for an eye? expression of justice, however, will do nothing  
to help the victims forget how they were wronged, it will do nothing  
to make their now miserable lives liveable. That is the function of  
compensation, which ideally should lead to rehabilitation.

In the ordinary dispensing of modern justice, there is no link  
between offender and victim. The State punishes the one and  
compensates the other. It may be legitimate to argue, though, that  
the crimes of the Gujarat Genocide call for a different approach.

If offenders are identified, then economic consequences should  
accompany imprisonment or death, whichever is awarded. If this  
happens, then would-be offenders would be shown clearly that the path  
to riches is another one. More important, it is my belief that  
monetary compensation would mean more to a victim if it is known to  
have come from the coffers of the wrong-doer.

This is no more than an idea, and I know that it may seem an  
outlandish one. Whether and how it is to be given practical  
expression must be worked out by those who have the necessary  
knowledge and skills. My sole ? and sufficient, I believe ?  
justification for thinking on these lines is the unusual nature of  
the crime of genocide. When the crime is exceptional, there is no  
compulsion to stay with ordinary punishment and compensation: and  
there is every reason to consider whether punishment and compensation  
of unusual kinds will not better serve the ends of justice.
The enormity of the crime of genocide cannot and must not be  
forgotten. A petty thief cannot and must not be let off with a slap  
on the wrist if he decides, or if he is fooled into believing, that  
some Higher Purpose calls for him to rape and murder a child.

III

Aiming to buttress my argument with facts and figures, I searched the  
Internet for the words ?Modi? and ?compensation? occurring together.  
For the reader?s amusement and edification, here are four pages that  
came up early. They do not need to be explained.

1. http://www.gujaratglobal.com/nextSub.php?id=3769
2008-03-12, Gujarat Global News Network, Gandhinagar
The state government has announced a compensation of Rs.50,000 for  
the infant who was killed in an incubator accident this morning.

2. http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/aug/22godhra.htm
August 22, 2003. Gujarat riots: Rs. 300,000 damage, but Rs. 100  
compensation...
Mehrunissa Sheikh, a resident of Mehendi Kuva area of Madhavpura ...  
before the Nanavati-Shah Commission...

3. http://infochangeindia.org/Agenda/Migration-Displacement/In- 
Gujarat-s-ghettos.html
In Gujarat's ghettos by Deepa A
The question of compensation remains a grey area in Gujarat. The  
state government returned Rs. 19 crore sent by the Centre for riot  
victims, claiming that it had completed all its rehabilitation work.

4. http://indianmuslims.in/relief-for-gujarat-riot-victims-justice- 
still-eludes/
Mohib Ahmad
[The] Indian government took one step ... for the victims of [the]  
Gujarat violence today by announcing a $77 million compensation  
package .... [Gujarat] Health minister and government spokesperson  
Jaynarayan Vyas [reacted thus]:
?...this package is discriminatory. Between the 1984 anti-Sikh riots  
and 2002 Godhra riots, many riots have taken place in the country.  
Why such kind of compensation have not been given to the other riot  
victims?? Vyas asked.

[foot-note / end-note]

1. There are different estimates of the number of people killed in  
the Gujarat Genocide. I propose an easy way to get the real figures.  
It is known that the rapists and murderers who were let loose ? some  
of them apparently ?experts? brought in from outside Gujarat ? were  
rewarded on the basis of their individual scores: so much for a ? 
kill?, so much for a ?kill plus?, etc. Someone must have kept the  
records of the gala sports meet and of the cash prizes awarded.  
Gujarat cannot have achieved success in the mercantile field without  
good munims. And careful organisation was in evidence during the  
mayhem: for example, the marauding bands had print-outs identifying  
Muslim localities and even Muslims? houses and Muslim-owned  
businesses in other localities.

o o o

(iii)

Financial Times FT.com
April 28 2009

TRANSCRIPT: FT INTERVIEW WITH RAJ THACKERAY

Joe Leahy, Mumbai bureau chief, Varun Sood, Mumbai reporter, and  
James Fontanella-Khan, India editor FT.com, interviewed Raj  
Thackeray, founder of Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) or Maharashtra  
Renaissance Army, with Anil Shirode, General Secretary of MNS,  
present last April. Here is an edited transcript of the interview  
translated from Hindi.

http://tinyurl.com/cf7u6y

_____

[4]  CAPITALISM AND THE SWINE FLU

[http://www.sacw.net/article884.html]

The Asian Age
April 30, 2009

HOW NOT TO TACKLE FLU CRISIS: INDIA MUST RETHINK STRATEGY

by Antara Dev Sen

April.30: First SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), then the  
bird flu, now the swine flu. Curious new respiratory tract infections  
seem to be popping up every now and then, killing people swiftly,  
creating worldwide panic. This week the swine flu, which has already  
killed about 150 in Mexico and infected scores in several countries,  
seems poised to turn into a global pandemic. Sadly, as individual  
countries spring gallantly to protect their own citizens, the world  
population still remains as vulnerable as ever.

India — like the US, Canada and the European Union — has issued  
travel advisories warning against travelling to countries where there  
have been cases of swine flu (including the US, Canada and some  
countries of Europe), people entering India are being screened at  
some airports, the government has got busy, medical institutes have  
got active. Meanwhile Canada has declared a state of emergency, as  
has California state, and the US is trying to channelise $1.5bn to  
deal with the threat at home.

But this is a global health concern, and needs a global response.  
Piecemeal treatment and protection of populations is very likely to  
fail in the long run. For a rapidly spreading, airborne flu that  
infects effortlessly cannot be contained without tackling the larger  
issues — of public health, of the role of big pharmaceutical  
companies, of the urgent need for honest international cooperation in  
health and medicine.

When it comes to public health, India has very little to show. Our  
disgraceful lack of health services and callousness of medical  
professionals cannot be evened out by stringent anti-smoking laws and  
attempts at curbing alcohol use. Besides, for this flu, we also need  
to look at labour laws, since a lot of airborne infections are spread  
by infected people who continue to go to work because they don’t have  
paid sick leave or are afraid of losing their jobs.

Then there is the other shameful issue — of big pharma pushing their  
bottomlines at the cost of human lives. They hold on to copyright  
issues, blocking access to life-saving drugs that poorer countries  
cannot afford, refusing to allow low-cost generic drugs to reach  
those in need. And international cooperation is essential to tackle  
fast-travelling global infections. But countries still refuse to  
share health data, and when they do, they are often economical with  
the truth.

Take the bird flu, which has been fluttering around our country for  
some years now. Yet our government has blocked access to anti-viral  
drugs that fight it. We have the drug that fights the bird flu and  
the swine flu — both the original, high-priced, foreign Tamiflu, as  
well as our own, generic, affordable Antiflu, produced challenging  
patent laws in the face of a potential bird flu pandemic in India in  
2006. But we are not allowed to access it. Because the government, in  
its wisdom, has decided against retail sales. Both the imported and  
Indian versions of this flu-fighter that could control a potential  
pandemic like the swine flu, can only be sold to government  
hospitals. And those who have experience of government hospitals  
would know how frustrating that can be.

In our country, only the rich have a choice — they have the expensive  
flu shot. For ordinary folk, the affordable option of preventing and  
fighting swine flu, bird flu or simple influenza is barred. Thousands  
die of the ordinary flu in India every year. The deaths are quietly  
attributed to lung failure, heart failure or respiratory  
complications. In other countries, the elderly and the vulnerable are  
given anti-viral drugs to prevent the flu. Not for us such a  
preventive measure.

This preventive feature makes Tamiflu and Antiflu important for  
officials dealing with the disease. But government hospitals don’t  
seem to have the drug, and during the bird flu we saw that even  
culling officials and those handling poultry did not get it. They  
could not go out and buy it either, because the government won’t  
allow it in the market.

To counter potential pandemics, apart from drugs, we need  
information, concerted effort, political will, health infrastructure,  
adequate funds and cross-border cooperation. We don’t seem to have  
had much luck in any of the above. During the bird flu last year, for  
example, that killed hundreds in Southeast Asia, Bangladesh refused  
to reveal which strain their bird flu virus was. Which made it very  
difficult for its neighbours — like India and Nepal — to deal with  
the health emergency that had spilled into their territories.  
Earlier, China’s refusal to properly communicate about SARS and bird  
flu had stunned the world.

Refusing to share information on a potential pandemic defies common  
sense, ethics and political wisdom. The swine flu is said to be a  
combination of the bird flu, the pig flu and human flu. The air-borne  
virus may mutate further, and even become drug resistant. It can  
travel the world freely, posing enormous dangers to unsuspecting  
people in distant lands, as we can see today, affecting commuters,  
air passengers, travellers by train or bus or car — anyone at all. We  
travel a lot now and stay in air-conditioned comfort more than ever,  
breathing each other’s breath in the canned air.

As the world gets smaller and we get cosy in the global village, such  
silent, natural biological bombs could devastate us all. They could  
pose a bigger hazard than the new strains of drug resistant  
tuberculosis that have already surged in developing countries. The  
only way to check this effectively is by sharing information.  
Regional and international borders become irrelevant in the face of  
this global danger.

The recent comeback of the swine flu (yes, it has existed for years)  
reminds us once more that the rich countries cannot just contemplate  
their own limited populations and future. They need to see the larger  
picture. It’s time the international community woke up and helped  
poorer countries battle this virus. The poorer countries are the  
worst affected, being densely populated and with less access to  
healthcare or sanitation, less awareness of the dangers or ways to  
prevent infection. Once infected, they become the ideal breeding  
ground for killer diseases. Like Mexico has proved with the swine flu  
this week.

The world cannot fight the swine flu unless the international  
community steps in. We need to address trade practices, the norms of  
poultry and livestock industries, lifestyle changes, health  
infrastructure, access to drugs and general education. Then we need  
to put in practice that marketing mantra of successful worldwide  
challenges: think global, act local.

Antara Dev Sen is editor of The Little Magazine. She can be contacted  
at: sen at littlemag.com

o o o

The Guardian
27 April 2009

THE SWINE FLU CRISIS LAYS BARE THE MEAT INDUSTRY'S MONSTROUS POWER

The Mexico swine flu outbreak should alert us to a highly globalised  
industry with global political clout

by Mike Davis

The Mexican swine flu, a genetic chimera probably conceived in the  
faecal mire of an industrial pigsty, suddenly threatens to give the  
whole world a fever. The initial outbreaks across North America  
reveal an infection already travelling at higher velocity than did  
the last official pandemic strain, the 1968 Hong Kong flu.

Stealing the limelight from our officially appointed assassin, H5N1,  
this porcine virus is a threat of unknown magnitude. It seems less  
lethal than Sars in 2003, but as an influenza it may be more durable  
than Sars. Given that domesticated seasonal type-A influenzas kill as  
many one million people a year, even a modest increment of virulence,  
especially if combined with high incidence, could produce carnage  
equivalent to a major war.

Meanwhile, one of its first victims has been the consoling faith,  
long preached by the World Health Organisation, that pandemics can be  
contained by the rapid responses of medical bureaucracies,  
independent of the quality of local public health. Since the initial  
H5N1 deaths in Hong Kong in 1997, the WHO, with the support of most  
national health services, has promoted a strategy focused on the  
identification and isolation of a pandemic strain within its local  
radius of outbreak, followed by a thorough dousing of the population  
with antivirals and (if available) vaccine.

An army of sceptics has contested this viral counter-insurgency  
approach, pointing out that microbes can now fly around the world  
(quite literally in the case of avian flu) faster than WHO or local  
officials can react to the original outbreak. They also pointed to  
the primitive, often non-existent surveillance of the interface  
between human and animal diseases. But the mythology of bold,  
preemptive (and cheap) intervention against avian flu has been  
invaluable to the cause of rich countries, like the US and UK, who  
prefer to invest in their own biological Maginot lines rather than  
dramatically increasing aid to epidemic frontlines overseas, as well  
as to big pharma, which has battled developing-world demands for the  
generic, public manufacture of critical antivirals like Roche's Tamiflu.

The swine flu may prove that the WHO/Centres for Disease Control  
version of pandemic preparedness – without massive new investment in  
surveillance, scientific and regulatory infrastructure, basic public  
health, and global access to lifeline drugs – belongs to the same  
class of Ponzified risk management as Madoff securities. It is not so  
much that the pandemic warning system has failed as it simply doesn't  
exist, even in North America and the EU.

Perhaps it is not surprising that Mexico lacks both capacity and  
political will to monitor livestock diseases, but the situation is  
hardly better north of the border, where surveillance is a failed  
patchwork of state jurisdictions, and corporate livestock producers  
treat health regulations with the same contempt with which they deal  
with workers and animals. Similarly, a decade of urgent warnings by  
scientists has failed to ensure the transfer of sophisticated viral  
assay technology to the countries in the direct path of likely  
pandemics. Mexico has world-famous disease experts, but it had to  
send swabs to a Winnipeg lab in order to ID the strain's genome.  
Almost a week was lost as a consequence.

But no one was less alert than the disease controllers in Atlanta.  
According to the Washington Post, the CDC did not learn about the  
outbreak until six days after Mexico had begun to impose emergency  
measures. There should be no excuses. The paradox of this swine flu  
panic is that, while totally unexpected, it was accurately predicted.  
Six years ago, Science dedicated a major story to evidence that  
"after years of stability, the North American swine flu virus has  
jumped onto an evolutionary fasttrack".

Since its identification during the Great Depression, H1N1 swine flu  
had only drifted slightly from its original genome. Then in 1998 a  
highly pathogenic strain began to decimate sows on a farm in North  
Carolina and new, more virulent versions began to appear almost  
yearly, including a variant of H1N1 that contained the internal genes  
of H3N2 (the other type-A flu circulating among humans).

Researchers interviewed by Science worried that one of these hybrids  
might become a human flu (both the 1957 and 1968 pandemics are  
believed to have originated from the mixing of bird and human viruses  
inside pigs), and urged the creation of an official surveillance  
system for swine flu: an admonition, of course, that went unheeded in  
a Washington prepared to throw away billions on bioterrorism fantasies.

But what caused this acceleration of swine flu evolution? Virologists  
have long believed that the intensive agricultural system of southern  
China is the principal engine of influenza mutation: both seasonal  
"drift" and episodic genomic "shift". But the corporate  
industrialisation of livestock production has broken China's natural  
monopoly on influenza evolution. Animal husbandry in recent decades  
has been transformed into something that more closely resembles the  
petrochemical industry than the happy family farm depicted in school  
readers.

In 1965, for instance, there were 53m US hogs on more than 1m farms;  
today, 65m hogs are concentrated in 65,000 facilities. This has been  
a transition from old-fashioned pig pens to vast excremental hells,  
containing tens of thousands of animals with weakened immune systems  
suffocating in heat and manure while exchanging pathogens at blinding  
velocity with their fellow inmates.

Last year a commission convened by the Pew Research Center issued a  
report on "industrial farm animal production" that underscored the  
acute danger that "the continual cycling of viruses … in large herds  
or flocks [will] increase opportunities for the generation of novel  
virus through mutation or recombinant events that could result in  
more efficient human to human transmission." The commission also  
warned that promiscuous antibiotic use in hog factories (cheaper than  
humane environments) was sponsoring the rise of resistant staph  
infections, while sewage spills were producing outbreaks of E coli  
and pfiesteria (the protozoan that has killed 1bn fish in Carolina  
estuaries and made ill dozens of fishermen).

Any amelioration of this new pathogen ecology would have to confront  
the monstrous power of livestock conglomerates such as Smithfield  
Farms (pork and beef) and Tyson (chickens). The commission reported  
systemic obstruction of their investigation by corporations,  
including blatant threats to withhold funding from cooperative  
researchers .

This is a highly globalised industry with global political clout.  
Just as Bangkok-based chicken giant Charoen Pokphand was able to  
suppress enquiries into its role in the spread of bird flu in  
southeast Asia, so it is likely that the forensic epidemiology of the  
swine flu outbreak will pound its head against the corporate  
stonewall of the pork industry.

This is not to say that a smoking gun will never be found: there is  
already gossip in the Mexican press about an influenza epicentre  
around a huge Smithfield subsidiary in Veracruz state. But what  
matters more (especially given the continued threat of H5N1) is the  
larger configuration: the WHO's failed pandemic strategy, the further  
decline of world public health, the stranglehold of big pharma over  
lifeline medicines, and the planetary catastrophe of industrialised  
and ecologically unhinged livestock production.

o o o

http://www.hsus.org/farm/news/ournews/ 
swine_flu_virus_origin_1998_042909.html

SWINE FLU IS RELATED TO VIRUS BORN ON U.S. HOG FACTORIES IN 1998
April 29, 2009

  	Crowded conditions on factory farms create breeding grounds for  
new viruses. ©iStockphoto

By Michael Greger, M.D.

Factory farming and long-distance live animal transport apparently  
led to the emergence of the ancestors of the current swine flu threat.

A preliminary analysis of the H1N1 swine flu virus isolated from  
human cases in California and Texas reveals that six of the eight  
viral gene segments arose from North American swine flu strains  
circulating since 1998, when a new strain was first identified on a  
factory farm in North Carolina.

Plaguing People and Pigs

The worst plague in human history was triggered by an H1N1 avian flu  
virus, which jumped the species barrier from birds to humans[1] and  
went on to kill as many as 50 to 100 million people in the 1918 flu  
pandemic.[2] We then passed the virus to pigs, where it has continued  
to circulate, becoming one of the most common causes of respiratory  
disease on North American pig farms.[3]

For media interviews with Dr. Michael Greger, please contact Liz  
Bergstrom at ebergstrom at humanesociety.org or 301-258-1455. ©The HSUS	

In August 1998, however, a barking cough resounded throughout a North  
Carolina pig factory in which all the thousands of breeding sows fell  
ill.[4] A new swine flu virus was discovered on that factory farm, a  
human-pig hybrid virus that had picked up three human flu genes. By  
the end of that year, the virus acquired two gene segments from bird  
flu viruses as well, becoming a never-before-described triple  
reassortment virus—a hybrid of a human virus, a pig virus, and a bird  
virus—that triggered outbreaks in Texas, Minnesota, and Iowa.[5]

Within months, the virus had spread throughout the United States.  
Blood samples taken from 4,382 pigs across 23 states found that 20.5%  
tested positive for exposure to this triple hybrid swine flu virus by  
early 1999, including 100% of herds tested in Illinois and Iowa, and  
90% in Kansas and Oklahoma.[6] According to the current analysis,  
performed at the Columbia University's Center for Computational  
Biology and Bioinformatics, it is from this pool of viruses that the  
current swine flu threat derives three-quarters of its genetic  
material.[7]

Tracing the Origins of Today's Virus

Since the progenitor of the swine flu virus currently threatening to  
trigger a human pandemic has now been identified, it is critical to  
explore what led to its original emergence and spread. Scientists  
postulate that a human flu virus may have starting circulating in  
U.S. pig farms as early as 1995, but "by mutation or simply by  
obtaining a critical density, caused disease in pigs and began to  
spread rapidly through swine herds in North America. [emphasis  
added]"[8] It is therefore likely no coincidence that the virus  
emerged in North Carolina, the home of the nation’s largest pig  
production operation. North Carolina has the densest pig population  
in North America and reportedly boasts more than twice as many  
corporate pig mega-factories as any other state.[9]

The year of emergence, 1998, was the year North Carolina's pig  
population hit ten million, up from two million just six years  
earlier.[10] Concurrently, the number of pig farms was decreasing,  
from 15,000 in 1986 to 3,600 in 2000.[11] How can five times more  
animals be raised on almost five times fewer farms? By crowding about  
25 times more pigs into each operation.

In the 1980s, more than 85% of all North Carolina pig farms had fewer  
than 100 animals. By the end of the 1990s, operations confining more  
than 1,000 animals controlled about 99% of the state's pig population. 
[12] Given that the primary route of swine flu transmission is  
thought to be the same as human flu—via droplets or aerosols of  
infected nasal secretions[13]—it's no wonder experts blame  
overcrowding for the emergence of new flu virus mutants.

Intensive Crowding and Long-Distance Transport

Starting in the early 1990s, the U.S. pig industry restructured  
itself after Tyson's profitable chicken model of massive industrial- 
sized units. As a headline in the trade journal National Hog Farmer  
announced, "Overcrowding Pigs Pays—If It's Managed Properly."[14] The  
majority of U.S. pig farms now confine more than 5,000 animals each.  
A veterinary pathologist from the University of Minnesota stated the  
obvious in Science: "With a group of 5,000 animals, if a novel virus  
shows up it will have more opportunity to replicate and potentially  
spread than in a group of 100 pigs on a small farm."[15]

Dr. Robert Webster, one of the world's leading experts of flu virus  
evolution, blames the emergence of the 1998 virus on the "recently  
evolving intensive farming practice in the USA, of raising pigs and  
poultry in adjacent sheds with the same staff," a practice he calls  
"unsound."[16] North Carolina is also one of the nation's largest  
poultry producers, slaughtering nearly three-quarters of a billion  
chickens[17] and confining enough hens to produce nearly 3 billion  
eggs.[18]

Once the new viral mutant appeared in 1998, the rapid dissemination  
across the country has been blamed on long-distance live animal  
transport.[9] In the United States, pigs travel coast to coast. They  
can be bred in North Carolina, fattened in the corn belt of Iowa, and  
slaughtered in California.[20] While this may reduce short-term costs  
for the pork industry, the highly contagious nature of diseases like  
influenza (perhaps made further infectious by the stresses of  
transport) needs to be considered when calculating the true cost of  
long-distance live animal transport.

"A Recipe for Disaster"

The remaining two gene segments of the H1N1 swine flu virus now  
spreading in human populations around the world appear to come from a  
swine flu viral lineage circulating in Eurasia, where similar  
conditions may be to blame. "Influenza [in pigs] is closely  
correlated with pig density," said a European Commission-funded  
researcher studying the situation in Europe.[21] As such, Europe's  
rapidly intensifying pig industry has been described in Science as "a  
recipe for disaster."[22] Some researchers have speculated that the  
next pandemic could arise out of "Europe's crowded pig barns."[23] In  
Europe in 1993, a bird flu virus had adapted to pigs, acquiring a few  
human flu virus genes and infected two young Dutch children,  
displaying evidence of limited human-to-human transmission.[24]

The European Commission's agricultural directorate warns that the  
"concentration of production is giving rise to an increasing risk of  
disease epidemics."[25] Concern over epidemic disease is so great  
that Danish laws have capped the number of pigs per farm and put a  
ceiling on the total number of pigs allowed to be raised in the  
country.[26] No such limit exists in the United States.

Warnings Unheeded

The public health community has been warning about the risks posed by  
factory farms for years. More than five years ago, in 2003, the  
American Public Health Association, the largest and oldest  
association of public health professionals in the world, called for a  
moratorium on factory farming.[27] In 2005, the United Nations urged  
that "[g]overnments, local authorities and international agencies  
need to take a greatly increased role in combating the role of  
factory-farming," which, they said, combined with live animal  
markets, "provide ideal conditions for the [influenza] virus to  
spread and mutate into a more dangerous form."[28]

Last April, the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production  
released its final report. The prestigious, independent panel chaired  
by a former Kansas Governor and including a former U.S. Secretary of  
Agriculture, former Assistant Surgeon General, and the Dean of the  
University of Iowa College of Public Health, concluded that  
industrialized animal agriculture posed "unacceptable" public health  
risks: "Due to the large numbers of animals housed in close quarters  
in typical [industrial farm animal production] facilities there are  
many opportunities for animals to be infected by several strains of  
pathogens, leading to increased chance for a strain to emerge that  
can infect and spread in humans."[29]

Specific to the veal crate-like metal stalls that confine breeding  
pigs like those on the North Carolina factory from which the first  
hybrid swine flu virus was discovered in North America, the Pew  
Commission asserted that "[p]ractices that restrict natural motion,  
such as sow gestation crates, induce high levels of stress in the  
animals and threaten their health, which in turn may threaten human  
health."[30] Unfortunately we don't tend to "shore up the levees"  
until after the disaster, but now that we know swine flu viruses can  
evolve to efficiently transmit human-to-human we need to follow the  
Pew Commission's recommendations to abolish extreme confinement  
practices like gestation crates as they're already doing in Europe,  
and to follow the advice of the American Public Health Association to  
declare a moratorium on factory farms.

A "Reservoir of Viruses" in the U.S.

With massive concentrations of farm animals within whom to mutate,  
these new swine flu viruses in North America seem to be on an  
evolutionary fast track, jumping and reassorting between species at  
an unprecedented rate.[31] This reassorting, Webster's team  
concludes, makes the 65 million strong U.S. pig population an  
"increasingly important reservoir of viruses with human pandemic  
potential."[32] "We used to think that the only important source of  
genetic change in swine influenza was in Southeast Asia," said  
Christopher Olsen, a molecular virologist at the University of  
Wisconsin, Madison. Now, "we need to look in our own backyard for  
where the next pandemic may appear."[33]

Dr. Michael Greger is director of public health and animal  
agriculture for The Humane Society of the United States.

References

[1] Belshe RB. 2005. The origins of pandemic influenza-lessons from  
the 1918 virus. New England Journal of Medicine 353(21):2209-11.

[2] Johnson NPAS, Mueller J. Updating the accounts: global mortality  
of the 1918–1920 "Spanish" influenza pandemic. Bull Hist Med.  
2002;76:105–15.

[3] Zhou NN, Senne DA, Landgraf JS, et al. 1999. Genetic reassortment  
of avian, swine, and human influenza A viruses in American pigs.  
Journal of Virology 73:8851-6. http://birdflubook.org/resources/ 
ZHOU8851.pdf.

[4] Wuethrich B. 2003. Chasing the fickle swine flu. Science  
299:1502-5. http://birdflubook.org/resources/WUETHRICH1502.pdf.

[5] Zhou NN, Senne DA, Landgraf JS, et al. 1999. Genetic reassortment  
of avian, swine, and human influenza A viruses in American pigs.  
Journal of Virology 73:8851-6. http://birdflubook.org/resources/ 
ZHOU8851.pdf.

[6] Webby RJ, Swenson SL, Krauss SL, Gerrish PJ, Goyal SM, and  
Webster RG. 2000. Evolution of swine H3N2 influenza viruses in the  
United States. Journal of Virology 74:8243-51.

[7] Rabadan, R. 2009. Influenza A (H1N1) "swine flu": worldwide (04)  
[1] ProMED Digest 2009. 28 April. Volume 2009 : Number 196. http:// 
www.promedmail.org/pls/otn/f? 
p=2400:1001:1580522401053605::NO::F2400_P1001_BACK_PAGE,F2400_P1001_
PUB_MAIL_ID:1000,77250.

[8] Webby RJ, Swenson SL, Krauss SL, Gerrish PJ, Goyal SM, and  
Webster RG. 2000. Evolution of swine H3N2 influenza viruses in the  
United States. Journal of Virology 74:8243-51.

[9] Environmental Defense. 2000. Factory hog farming: the big  
picture. November. http://www.edf.org/documents/ 
2563_FactoryHogFarmingBigPicture.pdf.

[10] Duke University Center on Globalization, Governance and  
Competitiveness. 2006. Hog farming overview. February 23. http:// 
www.soc.duke.edu/NC_GlobalEconomy/hog/overview.php.

[11] North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.  
2001. North Carolina agriculture overview. February 23. http:// 
ncagr.com/stats/general/livestoc.htm.

[12] Wuethrich B. 2003. Chasing the fickle swine flu. Science  
299:1502-5. http://BirdFluBook.org/resources/WUETHRICH1502.pdf.

[13] Brown IH. 2000. The epidemiology and evolution of influenza  
viruses in pigs. Veterinary Medicine 74:29-46. http://BirdFluBook.org/ 
resources/Brown29.pdf.

[14] 1993. Overcrowding pigs pays-if it's managed properly. National  
Hog Farmer, November 15.

[15] Wuethrich B. 2003. Chasing the fickle swine flu. Science  
299:1502-5. http://BirdFluBook.org/resources/WUETHRICH1502.pdf.

[16] Webster RG and Hulse DJ. 2004. Microbial adaptation and change:  
avian influenza. Revue Scientifique et Technique 23(2):453-65.

[17] USDA. 2009. Poultry Slaughter 2008. Annual Summary. http:// 
usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/PoulSlauSu/ 
PoulSlauSu-02-25-2009.pdf

[18] USDA. 2009. Chickens and Eggs 2008 Summary. http:// 
usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/ChickEgg/ChickEgg-02-26-2009.pdf

[19] Wuethrich B. 2003. Chasing the fickle swine flu. Science  
299:1502-5. http://birdflubook.org/resources/WUETHRICH1502.pdf.

[20] Shields DA and Mathews KH Jr. 2003. Interstate livestock  
movements. USDA Economic Research Service: Electronic Outlook Report  
from the Economic Research Service, June. usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/ 
reports/erssor/livestock/ldp-mbb/2003/ldp-m108-01.pdf.

[21] MacKenzie D. 1998. This little piggy fell ill. New Scientist,  
September 12.

[22] Ibid.

[23] Delgado C, Rosegrant M, Steinfeld H, Ehui S, and Courbois C.  
1999. Livestock to 2020: the next food revolution. Food, Agriculture,  
and the Environment Discussion Paper 28. For the International Food  
Policy Research Institute, the Food and Agriculture Organization of  
the United Nations and the International Livestock Research  
Institute. http://ifpri.org/2020/dp/dp28.pdf.

[24] Webster RG, Sharp GB, and Claas CJ. 1995. Interspecies  
transmission of influenza viruses. Americal Journal of Respiratory  
and Critical Care Medicine 152:525-30.

[25] MacKenzie D. 1998. This little piggy fell ill. New Scientist,  
September 12, p. 1818.

[26] Ibid.

[27] American Public Health Association. 2003. Precautionary  
moratorium on new concentrated animal feed operations. Policy number  
20037. www.apha.org/advocacy/policy/policysearch/default.htm?id=1243.

[28] United Nations. 2005. UN task forces battle misconceptions of  
avian flu, mount Indonesian campaign. UN News Centre, October 24.  
un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=16342&Cr=bird&Cr1=flu

[29] Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production. 2008.  
Expert panel highlights serious public health threats from industrial  
animal agriculture. Press release issued April 11. www.pewtrusts.org/ 
news_room_detail.aspx?id=37968. Accessed August 26, 2008.

[30] Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production. 2008.  
Putting meat on the table: industrial farm animal production in  
America. Executive summary, p. 13. www.ncifap.org/_images/ 
PCIFAPSmry.pdf. Accessed August 26, 2008.

[31] Wuethrich B. 2003. Chasing the fickle swine flu. Science  
299:1502-5. http://birdflubook.org/resources/WUETHRICH1502.pdf.

[32] Webby RJ, Rossow K, Erickson G, Sims Y, and Webster R. 2004.  
Multiple lineages of antigenically and genetically diverse influenza  
A virus co-circulate in the United States swine population. Virus  
Research 103:67-73. http://BirdFluBook.org/resources/webby67.pdf.

[33] Wuethrich B. 2003. Chasing the fickle swine flu. Science  
299:1502-5. http://BirdFluBook.org/resources/WUETHRICH1502.pdf.

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