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Society buckled and is damaged but has never disappeared
Economics, UK Economy
Remember that her own party got rid of her in the end because she even became a liability to them. She was always a liability to the prosperity of the British people and despite her obsession with incentives and individual action, she undermined both by wrecking the macroeconomy in Britain. The news today is all about the death of the former British PM. There will be a lot of revisionism going on. I don't plan on a chapter and verse discussion of the legacy of the shopkeeper's daughter. Apart from the cruelty that was imposed on individuals, particularly the poor, her policies hollowed out the British economy and opened up the door for the parasitic financial sector to take centre stage, with the disastrous consequences that are now for all to see. I could talk about all of that. But to me the biggest impact of her period in office was that it marked the beginning of the end of the social democratic parties. Labour and the Tories became neo-liberal lookalikes. Sure enough, the Tories spoke better and had better table manners. But when the economic policy positions were distilled to their essence, the Labour Party, like so-called progressive parties everywhere, started to sound more right-winged than the Tories themselves. That is what I think is her grim legacy for the weak and the poor of the world.
I lived in England for part of her period in office and was there during the coal miners' strike, at the height of the union bashing and the attacks on workers. I lived just around the corner from Eddie Shah's Stockport Messenger factory, which Thatcher used as the stalking horse to destroy the print unions.
Thatcher's new anti-union laws were first unveiled at this little local paper in the North of England (Warrington). The National Graphical Association (the union) were fined £50,000 for defending their workers.
There were mass pickets of the Warrington plant and the police were brutal in the way they dealt with the workers.
The laws allowed for the full sequestration of its assets. By the end of the dispute the NGA had been fined around £650,000 (which was the largest fine in British legal history to that date) and the publishers had claims for millions of pounds of writs outstanding against them.
The print unions sought support from the peak body, the TUC which by then was dominated by right-wing leaders from the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation (Bill Sirs) and the AUEW (Terry Duffy). The TUC was compliant with the pernicious new laws and kept a distance. Eddie Shah had a phalanx of conservative and monied interests behind him and the police muscle to physically intimidate the workers.
The union lost. Thatcher had the first victory in her campaign to divide and conquer the representatives of labour and to drive down working conditions. The NGA struggle was the first of many in that sector, which eventually led to Murdoch's News Limited's decampment from Fleet Street to Wapping, with all the ramifications that followed for workers and their job security.
I lived there in England when unemployment soared and public infrastructure was run down. I lived there when privatised bus services cut "unprofitable" routes into the Pennines and an old lady died because she could not get to her clinic anymore. It was an awful time in Britain.
I lived there when she attacked a small island off Argentina at a time she was about to lose office. The little two-up-two-down working class terraces in the grimy streets that I lived in up in Manchester were adorned with British flags and the working class tories impoverished by Thatcher's Monetarist assault on them multiplied and she won the next election. An amazing sense of denial of reality was in the streets – similar I think to the tea party morons who will suffer the most materially from the policies they are supporting.
Mass delusion is very hard to explain when drugs are not present. At least in the late 1990s etc, the neo liberals were able to run amok and cut this and that and transfer massive amounts of real income to the top-end-of-town because they opened up the credit tap and we all happily sedated ourselves bingeing on consumption goods bought on the never never.
However, despite all that personal hurt and loss of public dignity, one of the most significant consequences of this era was that it was marked the beginning of the end for the social democratic parties – such as British Labour, Australian Labor Party, etc.
It was during this period – under the onslaught of Monetarism – that these parties all abandoned the ideals of social democracy and public purpose that had shaped their policy platforms since their inception.
Instead, they adopted neo-liberal narratives about individual incentives and private endeavour and today represent a pathetic version of the great ideals they used to profess.
While the politicians railed against Madam Thatcher's claims about there being no such thing as society, they embraced her message wholeheartedly and stopped understanding or refused to listen to those who did understand that systemic constraints overwhelm individual choice in a macroeconomy.
The lessons of the Great Depression were forgotten. The 1930s were redefined by compliant conservative historians. Even today that is going on. I was talking with someone last night and we laughed in that tragic sort of way when we reflected on the claims by conservatives that the CCC and WPA programs in the US during the Great Depression did nothing to reduce unemployment. Sure enough that is true if you count the millions of workers who toiled for pay under those programs as being still unemployed!
These social democratic parties fell prey to the basic fallacy of composition that Keynes and others had pointed out during the Great Depression – that what might work at the individual level may well have the opposite (negative) impact if the same strategy is employed at the aggregate level.
They thought it was smart politics to adopt the economic policies of the right – mostly without really understanding that the basic propositions of neo-liberal macroeconomics are myths. They also didn't realise that by adopting these policy positions they would change the public debate so much that the substantive policy issues that defined their existence – recognition and care for the collective – would become unpalatable to an increasingly indoctrinated public.
The so-called progressive politicians started mindlessly mouthing off about the need for budget surpluses as if they are an end in themselves. They started to quote public debt ratios as if they had some independent relevance to anything. They started to tell us that the markets had to be calmed and obeyed without realising that the bond markets are just another public welfare recipient and will go cap in hand to government on whatever terms the latter offers should it have the economic gumption to realise who is in charge.
I suspect hardly any of the Labour-type politicians had a clue about anything they were talking about. But the damage they caused to society has been immense.
In the 1980s, we began to live in economies rather than societies or communities. It was also the period that unemployment persisted at high levels in most OECD countries. The two points are not unrelated. Unemployment arises because there is a lack of collective will. We have been indoctrinated to believe that government is somehow an impost on us rather than being the essential facilitator for economic well-being.
We support governments, which deliberately constrain aggregate demand below the level necessary to maintain jobs for all. Then we turn our scorn on the victims of that shortfall as if they are all to blame. We have been schooled to think individual and ignore the collective.
We have been dumbed down to ignore systemic constraints. The lack of collective will in the public setting has been the principal casualty of the influence of neo-liberalism.
The solidaristic or collective approach to problems is sometimes called the All Saints approach. Collective will is important when a nation goes into recession because it provides the political justification for sharing the costs and benefits of economic activity more generally.
More generally, collective will is a state where the citizens empower the sovereign government to use net spending (deficits) to ensure there are enough jobs available for all those who want to work. We used to think that governments had an obligation to create work if the private market fails to create enough. That was one of the lynchpins of a progressive social democratic agenda.
It reflected a sophisticated understanding that when system constraints are imposed individuals become powerless. If there are not enough jobs then 5 or 10 into 1 wont go (in integer units).
That sophisticated understanding led us to demand that the Government use its fiscal capacity to generate enough jobs!
The neo-liberals hate collective will. Remember Margaret Thatcher's famous epithet while being interviewed by Women's Own Magazine (published October 31, 1987) was:
I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand "I have a problem, it is the Government's job to cope with it!" or "I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!" "I am homeless, the Government must house me!" and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and … there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then also to help look after our neighbour and life is a reciprocal business and people have got the entitlements too much in mind without the obligations, because there is no such thing as an entitlement unless someone has first met an obligation and it is, I think, one of the tragedies in which many of the benefits we give, which were meant to reassure people that if they were sick or ill there was a safety net and there was help, that many of the benefits which were meant to help people who were unfortunate—"It is all right. We joined together and we have these insurance schemes to look after it". That was the objective, but somehow there are some people who have been manipulating the system and so some of those help and benefits that were meant to say to people: "All right, if you cannot get a job, you shall have a basic standard of living!" but when people come and say: "But what is the point of working? I can get as much on the dole!" You say: "Look" It is not from the dole. It is your neighbour who is supplying it and if you can earn your own living then really you have a duty to do it and you will feel very much better!"
There is also something else I should say to them: "If that does not give you a basic standard, you know, there are ways in which we top up the standard. You can get your housing benefit."
But it went too far. If children have a problem, it is society that is at fault. There is no such thing as society … There is living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate.
You can read more about this interview and its context at – Interview for Woman's Own.
I think that mentality infested the progressive parties who were starting to struggle because they failed to make the transition from the fixed exchange rate, gold standard system to the fiat currency system. The ridiculous requests from the Callaghan government in the 1970s to the IMF for funds, which paved the way for Thatcher, exemplified this confusion.
Things went downhill after that.
The recent evidence of my thesis is found in the article published in the UK Guardian at the weekend (April 6, 2013) – Labour plans radical shift over welfare state payouts – which reports that the British Labour Party is considering a "radical shakeup of the welfare state, under which benefit payments to those out of work or on low incomes will vary according to their past contributions to the state".
There was a rather tawdry surge in welfare bashing last week in Britain with the Philpott case being used by the Chancellor in an opportunistic and disgusting manner to further his own mindless ideological attack on the weak and the poor.
I am not being politically partisan here. Remember when Tony Blair was shadow homesecretary and he thought he could score a point or two against the Conservatives (in the period just after Thatcher's demise as leader) – by claiming that the slaughter of little James Bulger was somehow due to the conservative economic policy.
In both cases, it was innocent children that had died. But that seemed to escape these politicians.
The trend over this period is for the right to come out with some outrageous proposition that they backup with a massive media campaign courtesy of their stooges in the media. In response, the Labour Party (or equivalent in whatever country you like) comes out with something to counter the attacks.
They have stopped questioning the agenda and, instead, try to trump the conservatives on their own ground. In macroeconomic policy, for example, it becomes a battle of who can promise the biggest budget surplus. Hang the consequences. The surplus becomes the only goal even though neither side of politics seems to understand that the government cannot control the fiscal outcome that emerges anyway because it depends on the state of the cycle and the spending and saving decisions of the non-government sector.
The government can influence the outcome but not control it. In that sense, it is a mindless and counterproductive goal to pursue.
The real agenda is what does a budget deficit or surplus mean in the context of other spending aggregates and the state of capacity utilisation in the economy. That agenda is lost in the "battle for the biggest surplus".
The British Labour Party are trying to leverage off the latest conservative attacks on welfare recipients at a time when unemployment is obscenely high and the economy is going backwards.
Apparently, they want to address the:
… "something-for-nothing" culture.
So, falling into the trap of the false premise. Those who receive unemployment benefits don't do "nothing". They endure – every day – the alienation and dislocation from the distribution system. From work. From their social networks (which increasingly shrink). From their dignity. They endure massive personal costs. That is a big "something".
In return, they get a pittance and are harassed by bureaucracies which seek to deny their rights as citizens to expect their governments will honour international human rights' treaties, which say the government will create work for all.
The Guardian article reports that British Labour's shadow work and pensions secretary, Liam Byrne wrote in the Observer that Labour is committed to a:
… return to the "old principle of contribution" championed by William Beveridge after the second world war. "There are lots of people right now who feel they pay an awful lot more in than they ever get back," Byrne writes. "That should change."
Yes it should change. If this character really understood the historical reference he was invoking he would realise that the Beveridge Report, which defined the modern welfare state in Britain (Australia, New Zealand, Canada etc), was cast in a time when the prevailing macroeconomics paradigm was very different to what the British Labour Party is proposing to maintain now.
If British Labour really wants to recast its welfare policy then it has to start by recasting its macroeconomic policy.
Beveridge was writing immediately after the Great Depression which only really ended when government spending associated with the prosecution of the Second World War accelerated.
The Great Depression taught us that, in the absence of government intervention, capitalist economies are prone to lengthy periods of unemployment, the Second World War experience proved that full employment could be maintained with appropriate use of budget deficits.
The employment growth following the Great Depression was in direct response to the spending needs that accompanied the onset of the War rather than the failed Neoclassical remedies that had been tried during the 1930s. The problem that had to be addressed by governments at War's end was to find a way to translate the fully employed War economy with extensive civil controls and loss of liberty into a fully employed peacetime model.
That was the context that Beveridge was working within.
The Post World War 2 economic and social settlement in most Western countries was based on three main pillars. First, the Economic Pillar was defined by an unambiguous commitment to full employment.
Second, the Redistributive Pillar was designed to ameliorate market outcomes and defined much of the equity intervention by government. It recognised that the free market was amoral and intervention in the form of income support and wage setting norms was a necessary part of a sophisticated society.
Third, the Collective Pillar provided the philosophical underpinning for the Full Employment framework and was based on the intrinsic rights of citizenship. We accept that our depiction is a stylisation and that there were many individual nuances in particular countries over the period considered.
William Beveridge's work in the 1940 (noted above) was entirely consistent with the emerging Keynesian orthodoxy of the time, which saw unemployment as a systemic failure in demand and moved the focus away from an emphasis on the ascriptive characteristics of the unemployed and the prevailing wage levels.
Beveridge (1944, 123-135) said that:
The ultimate responsibility for seeing that outlay as a whole … is sufficient to set up a demand for all the labour seeking employment, must be taken by the State.
Welfare support for the unemployed was conceived as short-term support rather than a permanent source of income support. It was taken for granted that the state would use its fiscal policy capacity to ensure there were enough jobs available.
Governments used a range of fiscal and monetary measures to stabilise the economy in the face of fluctuations in private sector spending and were typically in deficit.
Please read my blog – Back to William Beveridge requires a commitment to true full employment – for more discussion on previous spurious contributions from Mr Byrne.
The point is that the "Labour Parties" around the world keep harking back to their glorious roots as if they will lull traditional voters into supporting them. However, the modern politicians haven't a complete grasp on the historical context or the full suite of policies that have to be proposed and implemented to be faithful to the "glorious past".
If you want to return to an unemployment benefits system, which was always only meant to provide very short-term support to workers who were in between jobs in an otherwise fully employed economy, then you have to restore true full employment.
No-one was meant to live on unemployment benefits for very long. The fact that workers have now eked out (diminished) lifestyles on income support in the face of a massive shortage of work doesn't signal to me that there is some sort of deep moral decay.
It signals what it is – there are not enough jobs because macroeconomic policy is unnecessarily constraining aggregate demand, and unemployed workers and their families are powerless to relieve that systemic constraint.
And … they have to eat and put a roof over their heads. And perhaps even smile once in a while. But then the scarcest sign that they might be enjoying a moment of their life is evidence to these socio-path policy makers and would-be Labour politicians that they are getting "something-for-nothing".
Margaret Thatcher was an important cog in the mentality changes that have led to these politicians being able to peddle such myths and nonsense but still command the public stage.
Warren Mosler is staying in Darwin with me at present. We are off to the Northern Territory Treasury this afternoon to present a workshop on how federal government policy constrains the choices of state and territory governments and leaves them picking up for the unemployed etc.
While I am in Darwin I have agreed to give a monthly workshop on macroeconomic matters to help build capacity in the Treasury department. It is a very receptive audience and we are going to have a lot of fun over the next year or so.
I would never shed any tears for Margaret Thatcher.
Tuesday, April 9, 2013 at 16:45
Yep. That just about sums it up.
Judith Robinson says:
I know someone in Darwin who would be interested in what you have to say.
Please send a contact nunmber to me so that I can forward.
Esp Ghia says:
I can't think of any parasite – I mean, politician – that I would shed a tear for.
Erik Jochem says:
O.K. Bill so just give us the whole account of Warren's visit: who's Oskar ? ;-)
sujie says:
"Warren Mosler is staying in Darwin with me at present."
This explains this video.
http://moslereconomics.com/2013/04/07/teaching-oscar-how-to-save-australia/
Will you do a presentation/workshop in sydney?
I'm sure you'd get a large crowd willing to pay just to listen to you two talk about economic and financial issues. I know I would.
PC says:
"I lived there when she attacked a small island off Argentina at a time she was about to lose office."
While I agree with everything else you wrote this is simply factually inaccurate. Rightly or wrongly the Falklands were a British territory. Unless somehow you believe that she incited the Argentinians to invade the didn't 'attack' the islands, the Argentinian junta was the aggressor. Yes, the war won her re-election but that isn't why she did it. Any British government would have done the same thing – i.e. wage a war to reclaim the territory. She just got lucky.
You mention 'revisionism' in your first paragraph but that's exactly what you're doing here.
Ben Johannson says:
Dr. Mitchell,
Is young Oscar in Warren's video a relative of yours?
Matt Scott says:
What a beautifully structured and brilliantly argued piece.
But this blog does overlook one or two points. To produce full-employment demand on the scale of the 1930s, we'd have to remilitarise as we did then. For that of the 1940s, we'd have to rebuild the nation as if after a war (and introduce slapdash 1950s/60s architecture to keep the ball rolling cheaply. We'd have to reintroduce National-Service conscription. We'd have to roll back on the safety-net giveaways government has introduced for its voters ever since. The NHS would have to shrink as a proportion of GDP, as would the education budget. So too for that matter would the welfare budget.
We'd have to slash the population by between a quarter and a third. A deer cull maybe? We'd have to return mums to their kitchens and remove them from the nation's workplaces. We'd have to uninvent mechanisation of factory lines and the computer. We'd have to force other countries to buy our goods (with gunboats maybe) to reestablish defunct trade agreements. And we'd have to suppress wages to a fraction of today's to compete with those of the overseas economies that have stayed over there and Taken All Our Jobs.
That, as I see it, is the historical context of Mitchell's full-employment paradigm and it is lost forever. (At least I hope so; otherwise we'll have had the deer cull imposed on us with war exceeding the scale even of 1914-18 or 1939-45, reducing the supply side of the economy and recreating the demand side that existed back then.) Or have I, one of Thatcher's children with natural social-democratic leanings, been indoctrinated with the neo-liberal consensus?
Let me make just 3 brief remarks:
1 – The Thatcher years weren't bad for everybody. They were good years for the riches 25%, or at least for most of them.
2 – Thatcher didn't attack Argentinian islands, but she liberated British islands from a totally illegitimate Argentinian occupation brought about by a vicious military regime. The Falklanders are British and want to remain part of the UK.
3 – In the end, Thatcher didn't reduce the British welfare state all that much. This demonstrates that the welfare state is popular enough to survive even a dogmatic neoliberal government.
Philip Pilkington says:
"The ridiculous requests from the Callaghan government in the 1970s to the IMF for funds, which paved the way for Thatcher, exemplified this confusion."
I think everyone would really appreciate if you wrote something one this topic.
Wow. What a devastating rebuttal analysis. Thank you Sir for giving me (someone who wasn't there) a glimpse into the mind of a Thatcherite. "To produce full-employment demand on the scale of the 1930s", first "we'd have to remilitarise as we did then." And then "We'd have to slash the population by between a quarter and a third".
Sue Davies says:
Bill, could I second Philip Pilkington's suggestion that you write something about Denis Healey calling in the IMF. It is certainly one of the sticks that the Tories have always used to demonstrate Labour's economic incompetence relative to themselves. Ironic when so few politicians appear to do more than spout their received wisdom from the City.
Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at 0:03
"Or have I, one of Thatcher's children with natural social-democratic leanings, been indoctrinated with the neo-liberal consensus?"
You have.
Try starting with a world where the machines do everything and work backward.
Another superb article here from Ken Capstick
Unlike Margaret Thatcher, miners believed in society
From Maggie's quote one can conclude she would have in favour of the JG
pebird says:
Excellent summation of Thatcher's legacy. A lengthy detailed article by Michael Hudson is available over at Naked Capitalism – he could not have written that in only 2 days – it is well worth the time.
Have a successful workshop and maybe you can provide some surf lessons.
Dan Kervick says:
Bill, just one thing on fall of the Social Democratic parties. I resist the idea that some have that Thatcher and Reagan were "revolutionaries" who through the power of their amazing charisma and political skills managed to topple an order that could have survived if they had not come along. Thatcher and Reagan were just the main conservative figures who were around to take advantage of broad changes in social and economic attitudes resulting from a long evolutionary transformation of the postwar economy. The left failed to devise a new progressive vision (they are still failing) to replace the war-and-industry model that was forged in WWII and the Cold War. Neoliberalism wasn't the result of a few prominent "great men". It was the result of class shifts, economic dislocations and de-unionization that in a way resulted from the left's own success.
Dear PC and others who have mentioned Falkands
Your position is solely dependent on your denial of the Argentinean claim to sovereignty. That matter is unresolved. My Argentinean friends certainly deny the British-centro view of the history of the legitimacy of the British occupation. So what we construct as an invasion or not depends on which position you consider has merit. Sure enough the British live there now. But Australians from a European background live in Australia now but are considered to be invaders by the indigenous Australians who have lived on the land mass for more than 30,000 years.
It all depends. There was no revisionism going on in my blog. More a statement of support for indigenous claims. But I admit the matter is contentious and either position can be argued with merit.
re: IMF loan.
Synopsis here – http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/themes/sterling-devalued-imf-loan.htm
In 1976 the US (with the IMF) decided that sterling was undervalued, the US part-funded a loan to the Brits of $5.3Bn so that we could buy pounds, the pound continued to fall, however the Yanks insisted on the loan being repaid (at the end of '76) and we had to "borrow" $3.6Bn from the IMF to do that. In fact it was a loan "facility" which was never used. The £/$ exchange rate quickly 'improved' as demand for sterling grew due to oil exports and the loan was easily repaid. The moral of that story (for nations sovereign in their own currency) is never, ever, borrow in a currency you don't issue.
Daniel D says:
I really do think that the Steven Patrick Morrissey correctly summarized Madame Thatcher.
Thatcher Was a Terror Without an Atom of Humanity
She gave the order to blow up The Belgrano even though it was outside of the Malvinas Exclusion Zone – and was sailing AWAY from the islands! When the young Argentinean boys aboard The Belgrano had suffered a most appalling and unjust death, Thatcher gave the thumbs up sign for the British press.
OkieLawyer says:
Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at 10:18
Many people do not understand that Keynesianism is a counter-cyclical economic theory producing a more "steady Freddy" type economy. Keynesianism works because it benefits those of the working class to keep their incomes intact and generating economic activity. Another benefit I have discovered in this current period of economic malaise is that such severe recessions result in low interest rates, which is the optimal time to borrow. On a micro level, such downturns affect large swaths of working people who lose economic power due to getting laid off, which reduces their buying power. On the other hand, such deflationary periods benefit those who have tremendous wealth stored up (i.e. "savers"). The people who benefit the most from the virtuous and vicious cycles — also known as "booms and busts" — are these "savers" (something I refer to as a "bi-polar economy;" so named for bi-polar disorder, a psychiatric condition wherein an individual experiences extremes of mania and depression). Therefore, it is in their personal economic interests to oppose government borrowing, as any reduction in the deflationary cycle (i.e. the vicious cycle) reduces their economic advantage.
What I find perplexing is that anyone in Great Britain (where John Maynard Keynes is from and where he developed his theories) — or anyone else in the English-speaking world — would adopt an Austrian "hard money" school of thought over a tried-and-true economic model such as Keynesianism. It was just 40 years ago that even the conservatives acknowledged "We are all Keynesians now." It is amazing how rapid such proven ideas have fallen into disfavor.
And in response to a commenter above:
Under the Keynesian model, it does not matter what kind of work people need to do, as long as it gets them working and earning income, which they can use to rebuild their personal balance sheets (even paying down debts has a useful purpose). You merely need to get them to do something. It is a conservative perversion of Keynes' theories to state that it would have to be militaristic in nature. It is time that people learn that it is possible to be patriotic about something other than war. Furthermore, public works projects — of which there are probably endless possibilities — represent neglected activities that are ignored during economic expansions. Deflationary periods wherein interest rates are the lowest (like now) are the most optimal time to borrow and spend on public works projects.
Additionally, there are other reasons why this is so beneficial. For instance, there is an old proverb that says: "Idle hands are the Devil's workshop." Putting people back to work reduces the risk of marginal workers falling into criminal enterprises. This is a positive externality that is often not considered in the equation.
I came to the US in 1971 from the Philippines. There, as in much of Southeast Asia, most consider "welfare" to be beneath the dignity of someone who should find a way to work no matter what it took. Of course, we would have likely made exceptions for the aged and infirm, but for the large part this was the reality of a gritty place like Metro Manila. My friends here in Florida scarcely know of or can relate to such poverty, as the "poor" in the US often have refrigerators, air conditioning, cell phones, at least one car, and multiple televisions. So of course "poverty" is a relative thing.
Back in the early 1980s I was a fervent supporter of Ronald Reagan and his counterpart Ms. Thatcher. Their rhetoric about self-reliance and thrift resonated with me because it was how I was living my life as an immigrant here. I never even considered applying for public assistance because I was young, able-bodied and of sound mind. (I've raised my five children in the same manner) After working at menial jobs for scant wages, I nevertheless was able to save small amounts and launch my own business (I know it may sound stereotypical, but I was an excellent seamstress who realized I could do far better once I started marketing my own designs – eventually I became informally known as the prom-dress queen of Orange County, CA).
I always reasoned that there was nothing all that special about me, and if I could do it, others could (and were) do it as well. But I also realized there was a culture of "entitlement" in the US, which seemed to basically say "I don't have to do anything because I am owed a certain level of existence simply because I am an American." Aside from the matter of how to support this, it seemed awfully arrogant when I thought of how many others around the world would do almost anything to win "the visa lottery" and come here – and not because of the "safety net" but for the chance to make it on their own.
The philosophy being espoused here (aside from the logic of MMT and the nature of "modern money" – which I believe I basically understand and agree with) seems to devalue the honest effort of people like me who never asked for anything beyond what we believe we have earned. I fully support the MMT concept of a Job Guarantee because anyone receiving some kind of government check (aside from the aged and infirm) ought to do something for it in return. My principal beef with Reagan and Thatcher now is not their supposed "cruelty" but their opposition to using government to achieve and maintain full employment, and the obsession with deficit spending as some kind of "evil" (perhaps the opposition is religious-based as I alluded to yesterday). Due to this understanding, my positions today are rejected by most conservatives who cling to the outdated Austrian school and other gold-standard era constructs. I enjoy taking them on because it's fun to watch their expressions change from outrage to confusion, and sometimes even acceptance of the arguments.
Yuu Kim says:
here's a funny story for you guys: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/09/ding-dong-the-witch-is-dead-heads-to-top-of-uk-charts-after-death-of-margaret-thatcher/
Dion R says:
To be fair to the Labour Party the article in The Guardian also mentions that the party is considering a return to a commitment to full employment as a policy goal, which is surely to be supported.
Guaranteeing or forcing someone to stock shelves in Tesco after 2 years unemployment is not a full employment policy or a Job Guarantee scheme. I think the main idea of that policy was to show they could be as tough on benefit scroungers as the Tories.
Looks like they want to continue Thatcher's legacy.
Let's not forget that before Thatcher, there were big problems that were getting steadily worse. Thatcherism was the wrong solution IMO but a solution was needed. Labour Unions had massive power to bring things to a halt. The government stepped in and nationalized industries as the unions rendered them unworkable for the private sector. The Unions then continued strikes and disruption of the nationalized industries. I appreciate that labour unions can be credited with totally transforming pay and safety standards since the 1800s. The whole economy has benefited from that. However the way they went about things was incapable of making any further progress. If everyone is on strike half the time, the economy goes into free fall. Thatcher was a reaction to that.
I think the labour movement was very stupid to not face up to what was going on and fix it before Thatcher. I think what was needed was for the employees (perhaps through the unions) to have actually owned the companies. The unions were so powerful at that time; wouldn't that have been an achievable aim? If the employees owned the companies, then all of the "class conflict" nonsense could have been forgotten and workers could have benefited from the work they did. Much of the economy could have become like the John Lewis Partnership. Everyone would have been better off.
James Schipper, the falklands are not part of the UK, and AFAIK they don't want to become one. They are, and the overwhelming majority of the population wish to remain, part of the British Empire (or whatever its called nowadays).
Bill, you seem to be under the false impression that the Falklands had an indigenous Argentinian population before the British came.
In response to Thatcher's trolling i would say that we as a society must come together to solve problems affecting our society. If there is unemployment we should buid a society where there are as many job offerings as there are jobseekers.
"as many job offerings as there are jobseekers". That's a popular but near meaningless concept. First, there is no hard and fast way of measuring "job offerings" or "jobseekers".
Second, there is no more logic in the above "equality" than in trying to make the number of pistons in your car engine equal to the number of windows the car has.
I.e. if it's feasible to get the number of job seekers down to 90%, 80% etc of the number of job offerings, then why not? The official unemployment count in Switzerland in the 1960s twice declined to zero. I don't have a problem with that. Do you?
gastro george says:
"Labour Unions had massive power to bring things to a halt. The government stepped in and nationalized industries as the unions rendered them unworkable for the private sector. The Unions then continued strikes and disruption of the nationalized industries."
That's a rather partial view, IMHO. In reality, management and unions in the UK deserved each other. management was quite happy to play divide-and-rule with the unions, which led to their fragmentation and competing interests. Management in the UK has historically been more concerned to act as rentiers and look for short term profits and short term "solutions", rather than develop their industries with investment and better work practices. Taking the car industry as an example, it's no surprise that foreign management have had no problems with British workers by taking a more enlightened view of industrial relations and work practices.
Gastro George, am I right in thinking that the foreign owned car plants have come to the UK only AFTER the unions were crushed? I don't think it should be a blame game. Everyone failed to sort the issue out. If the workers had taken ownership of the companies then the workers could have their chosen managers just as John Lewis Partnership workers do.
About the Falklands: Argentinians believe a nation is a land. Brits believe a nation is a people. The Falklands are Argentinian land inhabited by British people- so both sides find the other side's argument unfathonable.
Ralph,
I throw that out as a general "rule of thumb" for a society where jobs are plentiful. I cannot say "full employment" anymore because mainstream economists have defined that term to mean unemployment rate that is as high as 5-8 percent with this NAIRU concept.
@stone: "am I right in thinking that the foreign owned car plants have come to the UK only AFTER the unions were crushed?"
Yes, of course. But these plants are currently unionised, and those foreign companies also worked with unions in their own countries in the 70s and 80s, so the problem can't be unions per se. The problem was the specific relationship between UK management and UK unions at that particular time. Like I said, they deserved each other.
@Gastro George, there is a huge difference between current disempowered unions and the unions when Thatcher first came to power
@stone
But how did we get to the situation when Thatcher came to power? All I'm saying is that the world is somewhat more complex than you suggest. There are reasons for union militancy that are not just down to the attitude of unions.
It shouldn't be forgotten that the German union structure is largely a British construction. After the war, the British went to German y to help rebuild the society, one of the goals being union restructuring. When they returned to the UK in around 1947 to do the same thing here, they discovered it was too late, as the union structure was already too entrenched. There are a number of serious misconception concerning British unions, but the most formidable of which is that is was the size and related issues that were the problem.
The real problem of the UK union structure, which still persists today to some extent is the number of unions. At the time of Healey, there were around 600 unions scattered about firms throughout the UK. A union with, say, 6 members, could shut down a plant due to them being central to the operation of the plant as a whole; and the other unions at the plant could do nothing about it.
There is another problem that resides within the union/firm relationship. Union members tend not to be on the boards of companies or effectively integrated into management, and the management of the firm and the workers on the shop floor tend to be recruited from different social classes. If engineers, for example, are accepted into management, they have to effectively give up engineering, which means giving op all their contacts on the shop floor, people who may have been their friends for years, thus leading to social isolation and a sound basis for brainwashing of the former blue collar worker by while collar management. This does not happen in the US or Germany. There, firm management and union leadership are better integrated.
This is a serious social problem bequeathed to Britain by its history which it has never been able to overcome.
I should have mentioned that these organizational problems fed into Thatcher's ideological agenda perfectly and, rather than tackle the problems themselves, she decided to destroy the unions instead or, as she said, bring the unions to their knees.
Part of her fury directed at the miners' union may have been fed by being outwitted and thus humiliated by the then head of the miners' union, Joe Gormley in a stark dispute of the union with government and the Coal Board. Unfortunately, Gormley's successor, Scargill, never had Gormley's brains or guile. As a consequence, Thatcher outwitted him, and in the process completely destroying the mineworkers' union and the mining communities. A number of these communities have never recovered from this lethal and virtually overnight destruction of their livelihood and way of life.
Living through Thatcher could be hazardous to your physical and mental health. And we are now going through it again. No wonder antidepressant usage is on the rise.
@larry
"I should have mentioned that these organizational problems fed into Thatcher's ideological agenda"
I might rephrase this slightly and say that they corresponded perfectly to Thatcher's world view – and that of UK management generally – that industrial relations were essentially oppositional.
F. Beard says:
The need for labor unions came about because of the existence of the government-backed banking union (cartel). Why? Because the existence of the government-backed banking cartel allows businesses to bypass paying honest interest rates for their workers' savings and/or sharing equity with them. Instead, business has used loans from the cartel to automate and outsource their workers' jobs away!
Thursday, April 11, 2013 at 16:55
Of course it is possible to have labour unions and company share holders who work together constructively to improve the company for all concerned. It is also in theory possible to have a gift economy where people go to work in an efficient way and only take what is appropriate without using any money or coercion whatsoever. I'm just saying that the whole architecture of "unions versus owners" is intrinsically broken by design and only ever works if the people involved actually rise above those flaws and in effect act as though they were in a gift economy. The whole point of economics is so as to NOT have a system that is so broken by design that it relies on people ignoring the system and falling back to our primordial gift economy way of doing things. From what I can see the only way to align interests is if workers actually own much of the company as in the John Lewis Partnership. Unless that is the case, the union will be letting down its workers if it allows the shareholders to have enough to warrant any investment in the future of the company. Remember the logical extension of union power is to have globalized unions across all companies in all countries just as there are multinational companies. We don't need to re-balance power by being obstructive. We need to re-balance power by being constructive. Unions are a great way to wrest power for workers but a dismal way to try and use that power to constructively build the economy.
@larry, the USA car makers used to be an example of where staff were paid a lot such that the economic earnings of the industry were high despite the profitability for shareholders being modest. However the management of the companies hollowed them out in an effort to juice shareholder returns and the industry has been wrecked.
Japan perhaps does seem to sort of work but I wonder whether it is a case of people rising above the system and acting as though they were in a gift economy. Companies own shares in connected companies in the supply chain and seem to not care about how those shares perform in a financial sense. There seems to be a general sense of getting the job done rather than attending to the bottom line. I'm happy to be corrected though if I've totally got this wrong.
Bill:I was talking with someone last night and we laughed in that tragic sort of way when we reflected on the claims by conservatives that the CCC and WPA programs in the US during the Great Depression did nothing to reduce unemployment. Sure enough that is true if you count the millions of workers who toiled for pay under those programs as being still unemployed!
No, it is not true even then, even on the basis of official figures which insult ones intelligence. Based on them, conservatives claim that the New Deal did not reduce unemployment below 15 or 10 % or left X millions still unemployed. Sometimes they then illegitimately exaggerate this and say "so it did nothing."
But since the multiplier effect of these programs reduced private sector unemployment, the last leap is an additional error. Even crazily counting these government employees as unemployed, the New Deal employment programs clearly did do something against unemployment. The New Deal wins the fight, in a wheelchair and with both hands tied behind its back.
Matt Scott: To expand on Neil's comment, as I understand it. These statements are so wrong, so anti-logical that neoliberal, neoclassical Austerian economics is far to the left of them. A striking illustration of how a few decades of nonsensical propaganda can turn "natural social-democratic leanings" into something far "more right-winged than the Tories themselves."
None of them makes the slightest sense. Deer cull? Deer cull? None of the measures proposed would be necessary or helpful, and would have the opposite consequence to what is claimed. All the things proposed to be reduced should be expanded if you want to increase demand, growth and employment. Reducing them would reduce demand, not increase it, and modern economies are generally demand, not supply constrained. No conscription, no remilitarization necessary or helpful. Where is the war? Expand the safety net, NHS, education and welfare and see demand, growth and employment rise. Do the opposite – uninvent mechanisation, suppress wages etc and see them fall.
Full employment is not, has nothing to do with a deer cull, and is very easy to attain. When societies or people become wealthier, as they have, even with the ardent and arduous efforts of elites to make them stagnate for the last 40 years, amputating members of the society or their limbs does not help further growth and wealth accumulation, but hinders it. War and destruction are bads, not goods. Those views could only come from having "your head fuddled with nonsense for years and years", squared.
archytas says:
Friday, April 19, 2013 at 9:04
I agree with Bill and have lived in the UK most of my life. I've been in retreat for a few days to avoid the witches' funeral. Our unions needed sorting out properly, not a slayer. Thatcher would have gone without the Falklands, even with a Labour Party stocked with dullards. The "smart money" here was always on the idea she was after the oil rights and access to the Antarctic – a reflush of British imperialism. The war was fought against all odds – a total farce when you consider we and the US had been denaturing their arms for years – they had 5 or 6 exocets when Iraq and Iran squandered them in hundreds. Their airforce outnumbered ours 16 : 1 but we had air superiority in days. We had as much right to the islands – but then the Argentinian claim goes back to the time when there was no Argentina. British-Argentinian relations go back a long way and involved our manufactures at high prices for their beef – and the crushing of any working class there. Argentina, on resources and size could have rivaled the USA and between the wars had the 4th highest GDP per capita. The Falklands was a neo-con war.
Thatcher was a dullard who read well-researched scripts and only answered scripted questions. She took no part in ad hoc debate.


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Posted on 27th April 2020 27th April 2020 by Org!
Pronunciation for the dignity of the Yacuiba university | Statement
During statements made in Yacuiba, to the media on April 23, 2020, by José Quecaña of the Transitional Regional Executive of the Autonomous Region of Chaco, utilised language that violated the dignity of the Public University and which are aimed at guiding the actions of the State to provocatively violate University Autonomy.
For this reason, the "Autonomía" University Front affiliated to the FEBA and adhered to the IFA associative pact, pronounces:
First. The Repudiation of any declaration or intention by the Bolivian State to violate the University Autonomy.
Second We demand, a public retraction of the José Quecaña of Transitional Regional Executive of the Autonomous Region of Chaco, for his statements that violate the legal principle of University Autonomy.
Third Confirmation that, faced with threats to University Autonomy, the student body will unite in the sole cause of defending the dignity of the University.
Fourth We request solidarity support from the student movement, to stop any attempt to violate the grounds of the University Campus of Yacuiba. ■
Yacuiba, 24th April 2020
Original statement
https://bit.ly/358MCkw
For context of the situation students face in Yucuiba here is a report from el Popular
For José Quecaña "the university autonomy does not matter" and affirms that the state will have the environments of the UAJMS in Chaco
The Transitional Regional Executive of Chaco, together with other local authorities, decided to use the University Campus of the Juan Misael Saracho Autonomous University (UAJMS), so that its facilities are transformed into a temporary shelter for more than 500 people with Bolivian nationality, who will return from Argentina after being stranded in that country.
The repatriation of Bolivians is scheduled for the first days of May 2020, the Minister of Defense, Luis Fernando López, together with the authorities of the Region, toured the environments of the UAJMS in Yacuiba, which will be used as a temporary shelter. or quarantine center.
Subsequent to this determination, the Rector of the UAJMS, Gonzalo Gandarillas denied the use of the environment for the installation of the Yacuiba quarantine center.
The Rector reminded the Chaco authorities of the existence of a co-government for decision-making within university autonomy, "there is a definitive legal impediment that makes it impossible to grant the requested university properties, due to the rule of law and why doing so otherwise -as provided by the EOU- commits the university authorities to authorize such legal nonsense and manifest illegality, before our own regulations, "explained Gandarillas, in a formal letter sent to the Minister of Defense.
In addition, he warned that following the request to use the university premises located in the north of Yacuiba, as a quarantine center, would put the continuity of the semester at risk, it was categorical, the students would lose the semester.
"The fact of following the request of his ministerial office, considering that the entry of compatriots would be the first days of May and they must be in quarantine for 14 days, would seriously jeopardize the health of our students and teachers who provide services in the Faculty of Integrated Sciences of the Gran Chaco – Yacuiba and would determine the loss of the semester "
In relation to this response, the Transitional Regional Executive of Chaco, José Quecaña, recalled that all the infrastructures in the Region were built, with economic resources from Chaco, "no one has to oppose," he warned, explaining that it will be the State (referring to the central level), which will have the environments "the infrastructures in the Chaco are of the State (…) you cannot tell the State (referring to the response of the Rector of the UAJMS) that you are not going to provide an environment that the State built" Quecaña indicated. "Now there is a (negative) answer, it can be autonomous, not autonomous (referring with disdain to university autonomy) the State has to enforce," he said, stating that the UAJMS will not have the last word regarding the use of environments. from the Yacuiba university campus, infrastructure that must be transformed from the last week of April into a Quarantine Center.
Categories: Announcements, International, Statements
Tags: Bolivia, student, Yacuiba
Posted on 14th November 2019 14th November 2019 by Org! — Leave a comment
Bolivia: A Very Latin American Coup | International
FACT. What just happened in Bolivia is a coup d'etat if we consider the dictionary definiton which is "the sudden, violent overthrow of an existing government by a small group. The chief prerequisite for a coup is control of all or part of the armed forces, the police, and other military elements. "
It is being said the former president Evo Morales resigned so he was not overthrown. It is also said he committed fraud and that is why he left. It is also said it is not a coup because Evo himself called it 'civic and police coup' as oppose to military cup. Wait.
This view is quite simplistic and does not go deep into the history of Bolivia, how the elections were held, and votes counted, and what was achieved in 13 years 9 months and who benefited and who did not, and who took power, how and what has happened I Bolivian streets since then.
During what his opponents call 'dictatorship', Evo Morales Ayma, the first Indigenous president ever in Bolivia, and South America, reduced poverty from 35% to 15%, increased the minimum wage 127%, and very importanly, nationalised natural resources including natural gas and lithium, redistributed the lands among indigenous peasants, and made healthcare universal and free. Also, Bolivia was named by the UN as free of illiteracy, and unemployment levels fell.
Bolivia held elections on the 20th of October. After the count of the overall votes he was declared victor with 47% against Carlos Mesa, right wing, with 36%. The latter immediately challenged this supported by the Church, and the governments of the USA, Brazil, and Argentina's soon to be ex president, Neo-liberal, Macri, with the complicity of the American States Organisation (OEA) whose General Secretary, Luis Almeguer said in press conference on 12th of November that what was happening in Bolivia was not a coup and the military was not involved. All of this should should ring bells.
Evo Morales agreed to have international observers after his opponents accused him of stealing the election. On 2th of October he called for a second election. In the streets, there were clashes between supporters and police and opponents. Evo Morales was forced to resign to avoid bloodshed and was offered political asylum by Mexico who sent a plane to Paraguay for him which he boarded on the early hours 12th of November.
But that is not all that happened. During all this time, right-wing opposition gangs kidnapped family members of cabinet ministers and forced them to resign, burnt Evo Morales' sister's house, looted his own home, and burned the homes of some politicians loyal to the regime, and Patricia Arce, mayor of Vinto, was attacked, asasulted and publicly humiliated by an angry right wing mob. Ordinary people, mostly indigenous supporters, were also attacked, and graffiti appeared saying 'Indios out" and "Bolivia free of "Indios" and the Wiphala flag, a symbol of unity of Original Nations has been burned and taken from police officers uniforms.
The perpetrators of this coup, some alleged quite simplistically is the USA. The European left forgetting that Latin American is a continent still colonised mentally and in all aspects of life. We do have agency and reactionary and fascist powers of our own that do not really need US support, even f they do look for it and they do get it.
That the CIA has backed every single coup in our continent since the 50's is a given, however it is a fact that the plots come first from within. The USA usually provides money, weapons and a blessing.
The perpetrators of this very Latin American Coup D'Etat, which started being arranged as early as July 2019 , according to audio and documents seen by the new progressive elected government of Argentina to be made public soon, are many.
Carlos Mesa, the neo- liberal candidate to presidency, a privateer of course, but he is not leading this. The real brain behind this is Luis Camacho, a multi millionare religious fundamentalist which much to lose in a plurinational nation led by a socialist president. His family profited from the sale of Bolivia's natural resources and health insurance. He is also a fascist leader of the separatist Union Juvenil Crucenista,(UJC) whose young members seems to have taken a leaf from the SS and Hitler Youth book. There are pictures of them sieg heiling, in fact.
The role of the evangelical churches in this coup and the far right in the whole continent must be mentioned too. The UJC are fanatics and there is now also an army of Christian youth in Argentina with fascist leanings, too. The Catholic church, as they have done historically in Latin America, are either keeping quiet or actively preaching to keep the oligarchy in power.
Important to mention the fact that the coup happened just a week after Evo Morales stopped a multimillion deal to exploit the country's lithium resources.
Camacho entered the Palace of Government as soon as Evo had resigned waving a flag, and donning a bible. A sign of things to come. He has made speeches quoting the bible and has vowed to bring it back to governmental circles.
In terms of the army involvement, the Chief of the Armed Forces, General Williams Kaliman called for Evo to resign and after he did, the general gave a speech consecrating the army to Jesus Christ. They have also attempted to bribe Evo Morales' security with 50 000 dollars to hand him in before he had to flee.
The army, too, have being asked by the police force to assist them in the streets to control the thousands of people who support Evo and who have pledged to revolt if he is not reinstated. I am talking about Indigenous organisations, Community leaders, Farmers and doctors.
Contacts in Bolivia now have reported to me that their friends have been arrested or attacked by young fascists or the police, with video evidence, and, oddly, they say a large number of indigenous people out in the streets last night seem to have vanished. There is also the fear of not knowing what side the neighbours are in or if they can leave the house.
The resistence is huge and grassroots and Indigenous, and community organisations are leading it. EveN doctors have taken to the streets. A the time of writing this, the Bolivian Workers Central (COB),who reject the coup, has pledged to call for a general strike and deploy all its affiliated workers to La Paz if consitunional order is not restored in 24 hours (13th of November 23.00 GMT) . 20 provinces are, I am told, going to La Paz to resist.
Unfortunately, today after midnight GMT, Jeanine Anez, a right wing senator proclaimed herself president of Bolivia, clutching a bible, with NO elections but standing by her side were Luis Camacho, and a leader of the UJC and was approved by the army, police and the elite. No indigenous people around despite them being 62% of the population. It must be stressed that this goes against articles 161, 169 and 420 that forbid this categorically.
Make no mistake. In words of Adriana Guzman, leader of Feminists of Abya Yala (The pre colonial name for what is now South America in Guna language) "The coup d'etat in Bolivia is racist, patriarchal, ecclesiastic and oligarch" A very Latin American coup, then.
Tais is a Mexican Native and activist based in London. She has been part of the student and Indigenous movements in Mexico and has been involved in animal rights, Antifascism and solidarity work in Ireland and the UK for many years.
(Article originally posted on Freedom)
Categories: Articles, Current Events, International
Tags: Bolivia, Coup, Latin America, Morales
Posted on 21st June 2019 21st June 2019 by Org! — Leave a comment
Anarchism and the Student Movement in Yacuiba
The student movement in the south of Bolivia has a long history, as well as diverse ideological influences. Denying the existence of a student movement in the domain of public universities, especially with the ideological influences of the symbol that it was, affirms that apoliticity on the issue of education is a contradiction; as Paulo Freire says: "The political nature of such a task exists independently of whether we are aware of it or not." (p 137, Letters to Guinea Bissau, Freire). If indeed secondary school and university students or teachers, all students, were walking in the Chaco Plain without meeting one another, this wouldn't mean that their paths would never cross, such as in May 2001, when the "Guevarista"-influenced current in the classrooms of the Universidad Pública en Yacuiba (Public University of Yacuiba) decided to meet with the leadership of the secondary student movement at the centre of the Student Coordinator popularly known as Asoces (Asociación de Centro de Estudiantes – Central Association of Students). For the last three years of the twentieth century this became a space in the south of Bolivia to criticise the policies of the neoliberal Educaional Reform Bill of 1994. Continuing this legacy, in the first decade of the twenty-first century came the revival of the Federación Estudiantil Secundarista (Federation of Secondary Students), but it was then (May 2001) that university and secondary students in Yaciuba really understood the necessity of pushing for the consolidation of higher education in Chaco. We mustn't forget that in 2001, the University of Tarija wanted to close the only option for public higher education in Yacuiba.
That attempt, which would have succeeded because the fight didn't resonate with the public (the local bourgeoisie showed no interest in supporting the consolidation of public higher education in Chaco), would still find an opposition in the students who organised in the Asoces, in an agreement with the union which would later repeat itself at other levels of decision. A quote from Bakunin says, "The union is strength. This is a well-known truth that no one will want to contradict. However, it is important to understand it well. For the union to produce that effect, it must be real and sincere at all times and not mean the hypocritical exploitation of one party for the benefit of another." (Letter, Bakunin, 1870) It is important to note that the majority of the militants of the Asoces had an inclination towards anarchism, belonging to a group descended from the thought of Liber Forti. This anarchist intellectual played an important role for the constitution of the Universidad Obrera de Llallagua (Workers University of Llallagua), having contributed to the formation of a nucleus of militant anarchists during his visits to the city border of Yacuiba in the second half of the twentieth century. Towards the end of that century, these anarchists would pass their knowledge to a new generation, who would discover a revolutionary truth in the writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Errico Malatesta, Mikhail Bakunin and Piotr Kropotkin. Without that knowledge, the anarchist student movement in Yacuiba would not have been able to construct a solid discourse of struggle and unity.
On the subject of the union, Bakunin states: "Trust makes the union, and the union creates strength. We have here, without doubt, two truths that no one will try to deny. Moreover, to be true, two things are necessary: that the trust is not a farce and that the union, equally sincere for all parties, must not be an illusion, a lie, or the hypocritical exploitation of one party by the other. The parties who unite must forget completely, not forever, no doubt, but for the time that the union should last, their particular, necessarily opposed interests." (The Knouto-germanic Empire and Social Revolution, Bakunin, 1870). The economic crisis of the capitalist system which hit the people of Yacuiba in 2002, the consolidation of the secondary student movement in 2003, the consensus of the Encuentro Nacional Libertario (Libertarian National Conference) in Paukaparta (La Paz, 16 October 2004) and the expansion of public higher education in Chaco from 2002, would set the stage for the signing of the founding statement of the Frente Autonomia (Autonomous Front), a student organisation which with time pushed for the creation in 2007 of their own Federación Universitaria Local (Local University Student Federation) [FUL] for Chaco (since 2018 this instance of co-government is no longer classified in a separate list in the directory of the regional FUL, thus burying ten years of an experience of government which respects the particular characteristics of university life in Yacuiba). Since the student elections in 2008, Autonomía has been growing as an anarchist student organisation, on the platform of "a strong student movement, built from the bottom up" (Documento Político para Transformar la Educación superior Pública, Autonomía, 2014). It mobilised students in defence of their rights in various Student Government leadership spaces in the Faculty of Integrated Sciences of Gran Chaco, part of the University of Tarija. By March 2018, it would reach the historical milestone of being the driving force of a university movement at the departmental level, challenging the ruling cliques of the most neoliberal universities of the Bolivian higher education system. The passage of time has allowed for the consolidation of a Yacuiban anarchist group into a model of organisation, direction and unity for the rest of the Bolivian student movement.
Since 2018, Autonomía has been the fundamental pillar in building the Federación Estudiantil Boliviana Anarquista [FEBA], a diverse space for discussion between the popular and anarchist student organisations, which fight the hierarchy and corruption of the leadership of the Student Governments, in addition to the opportunistic electoralism of short-lived groups which, stripped of all ideology, seek only the crumbs of power for their own benefit, forgetting the large majority of students who are victims of authoritarian teachers and the despotism of the university authorities. "It is the students who are the victims of the worst learning conditions, due to the ruling cliques of teachers who silence all protest and the cowardly student representatives who don't speak up against them," (Declaración por el día del trabajo, Autonomía, 2019). With this philosophy, affiliated to the FEBA and adhering to the associative pact of the IFA, the Autonomía Frente Universitario is the only student organisation which is currently continuing to defend public higher education in Yacuiba, true to its history and commitment to transform education into an instrument of liberation and social justice.
Article by José Luis Claros López originally shared in Spanish on his blog. Desde Yacuiba
Translation by Organise!
Categories: Articles, International
Tags: Bolivia, International, José Luis Claros López, Yacuiba
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La iglesia de San Vital de Rávena (it. San Vitale di Ravenna) es uno de los templos más importantes del arte bizantino y, como otros de la misma ciudad, se reformó por deseo expreso del emperador Justiniano a partir de construcciones anteriores, con el objetivo de acelerar la integración de los territorios conquistados por el Imperio bizantino (en el 402, Rávena fue la capital del Imperio romano de Occidente, en tiempos del emperador Honorio, y en el 493 fue la capital del reino ostrogodo de Italia, en tiempos de Teodorico). La obra se financió con el dinero del acaudalado banquero Juliano Argentario, de origen griego (aportando una cantidad aproximada de 26 000 besantes de oro), y fue supervisada por el arzobispo de la ciudad, Maximiano, quien la consagró en el año 547. Todos estos personajes aparecen en la decoración musivaria que se realizó entre los años 546 y 548, año de la muerte de la emperatriz Teodora. Estos mosaicos son el mejor ejemplo de las artes figurativas bizantinas y nos dan una idea de lo que pudieron ser las obras que fueron destruidas, durante la Querella Iconoclasta de los siglos  y , y con la caída de Bizancio a manos de los turcos. En San Vital se han preservado, en el primer caso, porque Rávena se posicionó en contra de los iconoclastas y, en segundo lugar, porque ya no era bizantina durante la invasión turca. Por estas razones, las imágenes se salvaron de ambas catástrofes artísticas.

La iglesia tiene la consideración de basílica menor desde el 7 de octubre de 1960. En 1996 la iglesia, con otros edificios paleocristianos, fue declarada Patrimonio de la Humanidad por la Unesco, con el nombre de «Monumentos paleocristianos de Rávena».

Tipo de edificio y función
El templo había sido comenzado en el año 527 bajo el patrocinio del arzobispo Ecclesio, cuando Rávena aún pertenecía a los ostrogodos; más tarde, tras la conquista bizantina, se decidió que sería el templo oficial para el gobernador de la región occidental del imperio, el llamado Exarcado de Rávena.

La iglesia consagrada a San Vital, es la más rica de todas las que erigieron los bizantinos en Rávena (Italia). Se levantó para dotar a esta gran ciudad de un templo digno de la que era segunda capital de su imperio, por lo que tenía un fuerte contenido propagandístico.

Se desconoce el nombre del arquitecto o arquitectos que realizaron el diseño, que es muy similar al de la iglesia de los Santos Sergio y Baco, en Bizancio. Sin embargo, San Vital está más alejado aún de la tradición paleocristiana, sustituyendo la idea de «espacio-camino» de las primeras basílicas, por el de la contemplación del ámbito celestial, con mayor carácter ascensional, gracias al esbelto tambor que sostiene la cúpula. Se accede al templo por un nártex descentrado que da paso a una sala de oración de planta central, con un doble anillo octogonal formado por el deambulatorio sobre el que se dispone la tribuna, sostenida por pilastras que delimitan un oratorio circular cubierto por la citada cúpula semiesférica; esta, está rodeada de exedras de dos órdenes superpuestos con miradores de triple arcada hacia el altar mayor. El presbiterio (en el lado suroriente del octágono) está al fondo, con un tramo cubierto por una bóveda de arista y un cierre en bóveda de horno; a cada lado, las dos estancias pastophorias, típicas de la arquitectura bizantina: al norte del ábside, la próthesis (lugar destinado a preparar, consagrar y custodiar el pan y el vino) y al sur, el diakonikón (recinto donde se guardan los enseres litúrgicos).

Todo el edificio ha sido diseñado respetando muchos de los elementos de la tradición eclesiástica antigua, en la que se exigía la separación de sexos durante los actos de culto, así como la posibilidad de que asistiesen altas jerarquías, siguiendo un protocolo estricto reflejado simbólicamente en los mosaicos.

Así, el nártex tiene dos puertas: una para los hombres y otra para las mujeres. Estas debían entrar por la nave de la epístola (al sur) y, si estaban casadas, asistir a la eucaristía desde la tribuna o matroneum, situada en el piso superior, sobre el deambulatorio. La tribuna dispone también de palcos que dan directamente al presbiterio, reservados a las altas jerarquías; teóricamente, el emperador y su esposa, pero, dado que nunca llegaron a conocer el templo concluido, sería el exarca o gobernador quien les representase.

Para los hombres se reservaba la parte norte o del evangelio, aunque de hecho ocuparían la planta principal. Si bien se ha perdido, es de suponer que la iglesia dispuso de un iconostasio, que separaba y ocultaba el altar durante ciertas fases de la liturgia, y un templete o ciborio sobre el mismo.

Materiales de construcción y decoración
En el exterior, sumamente sobrio, volumétrico, apreciamos que la iglesia está hecha de materiales ligeros pero resistentes con paramentos de ladrillo macizo reforzados en las esquinas por grandes arbotantes, además de lesenas (pequeños contrafuertes que rematan en el alero del tejado) y arcos de descarga embebidos en el muro. El cimborrio que oculta la cúpula es octogonal y va aligerado por medio de caños concéntricos de terracota. Al contrario, su interior está ricamente decorado con mármoles veteados, antepechos, columnas y capiteles troncopiramidales con cimacio finamente tallados al trépano —probablemente importados de los talleres del Proconeso, una isla de mar de Mármara cercana a Bizancio—, frescos y, sobre todo, mosaicos, que son los de mayor calidad y los más variados del arte bizantino. El efecto del interior es el de un espacio dilatado e inmaterial, lleno de continuos contrastes de color y luz, que penetra  generosamente por las grandes ventanas del tambor.

Aunque la decoración de la iglesia está parcialmente dañada, la parte del presbiterio se conserva prácticamente en su estado original, y es de un valor inestimable, pues se trataría del único edificio áulico bizantino virtualmente intacto, que nos da una vaga idea de la riqueza del palacio del emperador u otras grandes edificaciones oficiales de Constantinopla, actualmente destruidas.

Los mosaicos
Los mosaicos de San Vital forman un gran conjunto musivario centrado en el tema de Dios salvando a los hombres por medio de la eucaristía (predominan las escenas de ofrendas similares a la consagración y los emperadores portan objetos relacionados con este acto litúrgico: un cáliz y una patena), aunque, como ocurre en toda iglesia bizantina, el orden de las figuras, responde a un reflejo de la cosmogonía cristiana de la iglesia cristiana oriental, con lugares específicamente reservados a las figuras según su jerarquía. Los lugares centrales y altos de bóvedas y arcos se reservan a las figuras asociadas a Dios o sus personificaciones, alrededor ángeles de alto rango y, más cerca de la Tierra, los santos, como intermediarios ante los hombres. Todo ello ribeteado de una decoración naturalista de tradición helenística, todas las paredes estaban literalmente forradas de teselas de vivos colores, consiguiendo un efecto de gran opulencia y creando una atmósfera desmaterializada, que camufla la estructura, presentando un mundo ideal que eleva al creyente a las alturas.

Estilísticamente, los mosaicos de la bóveda recuerdan mucho a la tradición clásica a causa de la vivacidad de sus colores, a la representación de cierto sentido de la perspectiva y el naturalismo de las formas, incluso de los paisajes. De hecho, esta parte fue terminada antes de la llegada de los bizantinos, cuando Rávena estaba aún bajo el control de los ostrogodos.

En el intradós del arco triunfal se desgrana un rosario de medallones, con Cristo en la clave, seguido de los doce apóstoles y los santos Gervasio y Protasio, hijos de San Vital de Milán. En el cascarón de la bóveda hay una teofanía que podría ser un precedente del típico Pantocrátor medieval, se data en el año 525 y también destaca su profusa decoración vegetal en la que se enmarañan numerosas flores, pájaros, y cuernos de la abundancia, todo rodeando a un Cristo de aspecto helenístico (joven, imberbe, rubio…), sentado sobre el globo terráqueo, con la mano derecha ofrece la corona del martirio a San Vital, y, con la izquierda recibe la maqueta del templo del arzobispo Ecclesio.

Más abajo, varias escenas del Antiguo Testamento: la visión de Mambré de Abraham con una posible representación de la Trinidad, el sacrificio de Isaac, las ofrendas de Abraham y de Melquisedec… muy similares a otros mosaicos que encontramos en la basílica paleocristiana de Santa María la Mayor (Roma). A ambos lados de las paredes aparecen representados los emperadores Justiniano y Teodora con sus respectivos séquitos.

Los mosaicos de Justiniano
Los mosaicos representan la presunta ceremonia de consagración de la iglesia de San Vital (que nunca tuvo lugar tal como está representada, pues los emperadores ya eran ancianos cuando se terminó el templo y no viajaron a la ciudad italiana, de hecho Teodora murió ese año). Todos los personajes importantes están perfectamente individualizados y son reconocibles por sus retratos.

 En el lado izquierdo: el emperador Justiniano lleva como ofrenda una gran patena de oro; va precedido por dos altos dignatarios eclesiásticos, uno de ellos lleva el incensario y el otro el misal, y por el arzobispo Maximiano, que lleva una cruz, todas estas ofrendas aparecen ricamente decoradas con gemas, cabujones y esmaltes. Tras el arzobispo, en segundo plano, el banquero Juliano, que financió la construcción de la iglesia. Detrás del emperador hay dos altos funcionarios del estado con toga, el primero sería el general Belisario, conquistador de Rávena. Cierra el cortejo la guardia personal del emperador con el crismón en sus escudos.

 En el lado derecho: la emperatriz Teodora lleva un cáliz de oro, va precedida por dos dignatarios de la corte y seguida por Antonia, esposa del general Belisario y su hija Juana. Cierran el cortejo las doncellas de la emperatriz.

Rasgos estilísticos

Es innegable el parentesco de estos mosaicos con los relieves del Ara Pacis Augustæ, sobre todo en su temática, pero en su estilo hay algunas diferencias esenciales:
Abundan los convencionalismos como la isocefalia, el hieratismo, la frontalidad, la ausencia de perspectiva, el horror al vacío, los gestos repetitivos de los personajes, ausencia de movimiento —las figuras están petrificadas, pero se sugiere la dirección que siguen con la posición de las manos—, idealización de los rostros...

Los personajes están retratados con realismo y tienen mucha fuerza expresiva, pero son hieráticos y distantes. Su mirada es fija y penetrante, refleja el poder espiritual del emperador y sus seguidores. Sus pies en «V» flotan en un fondo neutro, indefinido, aludiendo a los lazos con lo sobrenatural y el alejamiento de lo terrenal. Todo indica que estas figuras están más allá de la simple humanidad.

Numerosos símbolos y atributos sitúan a cada figura en una jerarquía muy rígida. Los monarcas están en el centro y tienen las vestimentas más ricas y las joyas más lujosas, además de ir coronados —poder terrenal— llevan un halo de santidad —poder espiritual—, constituyendo un claro paradigma del cesaropapismo bizantino: el emperador posee una categoría moral superior, la Iglesia y el estado son uno sólo en él, que es rey/basileus (Βασιλεύς) por mandato divino y mayordomo del mismo Dios, archisacerdote, isapóstolos (ἰσαπόστολος), de ahí su rostro juvenil (era sexagenario).

El resto de los personajes, cuyos retratos son más fieles y se respeta su edad, se disponen simétricamente en torno a Justiniano y Teodora, tanto más cerca están de ellos, cuanto más importantes son, llevando uniformes propios de su rango (casullas para los eclesiásticos, togas sujetas con fíbulas para los funcionarios y eunucos de la corte, armas para los soldados, etc.).

La perspectiva no existe, y ha sido sustituida por un fondo neutro, dorado y verde en el caso del mosaico de Justiniano, y por un esquemático fondo arquitectónico en el caso del de Teodora. Tampoco hay sensación alguna de profundidad.

El artista se ha permitido ciertas licencias en el mosaico de Teodora que no se hallan presentes en el de Justiniano, quizá porque el protocolo del séquito femenino no era tan rígido o quizá porque son obras de distintos artistas: el color es más rico y variado, los brocados, las telas y las joyas tienen más detalles e incluso existe un fondo arquitectónico con cortinas, fuentes y una venera situada sobre la emperatriz.

Contextualización histórica

El emperador Justiniano (527-565) fue el protagonista del periodo de máximo esplendor del Imperio bizantino, la Primera Edad de Oro (). Justiniano intentó revivir la gloria del antiguo imperio romano emprendiendo la conquista del Mediterráneo. Entre sus capturas se incluye Italia, donde se encontraba la ciudad de Rávena, que se convirtió, en el , en la ciudad más importante del mundo bizantino en occidente. Fue la segunda capital del imperio y estuvo gobernada por el exarca, un auténtico virrey rodeado de poder, pompa y boato. Es normal, por tanto, que allí se construyesen los más ricos edificios bizantinos de occidente: San Apolinar in Classe, San Apolinar Nuovo y este de San Vital.

El templo de San Vital fue declarado por la Unesco, junto con otros siete edificios de Rávena, Patrimonio de la Humanidad en el año 1996.

Véase también

 Historia de las cúpulas medievales árabes y de Europa occidental

Referencias

Bibliografía
 . Páginas 279-284

 . Páginas 284-307

Enlaces externos

 Situación de la iglesia de San Vital, en Ravena, desde Google maps
 Mosaicos en el arte cristiano antiguo (en italiano)
 San Vital de Rávena (en italiano)

Basílicas de Emilia-Romaña
Vital
Bienes individuales inscritos Patrimonio de la Humanidad en Italia (Monumentos paleocristianos de Rávena)
Pintura bizantina
Vital
Arquitectura de Italia del siglo VI
Imperio bizantino en el siglo VI
Ravena
Arte paleocristiano
Construcciones de Justiniano I
Iglesias con cúpula de Italia

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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text:
Grey-headed flying fox bats in Byron Bay, Australia. While not considered a major threat to people, the bats do carry zoonotic pathogens, including a rabies-like virus. Credit: Carlyn Kranking.
From Chicago to Uganda, scientists track the wildlife diseases that could infect humans—or spark the next pandemic
By Carlyn Kranking, January 19, 2021
https://thebulletin.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/cropped-bats-150x150.jpg
The lab is in an unassuming rectangular building on the side of a standard, flat Illinois road. Inside are offices, a laboratory, aquariums with endangered species of fish, and thousands of preserved ant and bee specimens. In a storage room in this Elgin, Ill., lab, ultra-low temperature freezers line the walls. There is one thing, however, that makes these otherwise nondescript containers stick out: a yellow sticky note with the words "Raccoon blood FULL."
Chris Anchor maintains these freezers at around -80 degrees Centigrade, cold enough to preserve the animal blood and tissue samples inside, some of which date back to 1986. Anchor, a wildlife biologist with the Forest Preserve District of Cook County, uses these samples to monitor local animal populations for diseases with the potential to infect humans.
Biologist Chris Anchor opens a freezer of animal specimins. Credit: Carlyn Kranking.
Anchor can look at the history of disease in the county's animals by pulling samples and testing them for antibodies to past infections. Using data from transmitters that record animals' locations, he can predict how diseases will travel across the region. And he notices which pathogens are staying the same and which ones are mutating and evolving. At a local level, Anchor is doing what scientists are attempting at a global scale: surveilling the pathogens in wildlife that could pose a threat to humans or animals. These pathogens are known as zoonotic; they can leap from animals to humans. Experts consider such disease surveillance as being key to avoiding another pandemic like COVID-19. In the forest preserves around Chicago, Anchor is working to prevent human infection.
"By maintaining that understanding of what [diseases are] actually out there and what's happening, it keeps us one step ahead," Anchor said. "It allows us to be proactive instead of reactive."
Many of the most threatening pandemics in history—including HIV/AIDS, Ebola, and COVID-19, which is thought to be linked to bats—spilled over from wildlife populations to humans. Over the last century, scientists believe about two viruses a year have been passed to people from their natural animal hosts. Identifying emerging infectious disease threats in animals before they can spread into human populations may help quash a future outbreak before it begins.
Pathogens can "spill over," or spread to humans, in a few ways. Contact with animal bodily fluids or surfaces contaminated by animals, consumption of infected meat or contaminated water, as well as contact through a vector like a flea, mosquito, or tick could all spread zoonotic diseases to people.
The Forest Preserve District of Cook County hired Anchor in 1986 when a study found that the deer population in Illinois had grown too large. Initially, Anchor's principal concern was managing the county's urban deer removal program. Last year, this initiative provided over 16,000 pounds of venison to food pantries in the Chicago area, Anchor said. He took an interest in disease and tested meat from the program to tell what infections the animals were exposed to. Though his job began with deer, it's grown much broader, and his lab now handles about 900 to 1,500 animals each year.
Anchor and his colleagues do more than just identify diseases; they try to trace their paths. In the past, epidemiologists generally didn't track contact rates between species, Anchor said. But he is doing just that by attaching transmitters to animals like deer, coyotes, bats, and fish. "When animals interact with each other, there's a record made of it," he said. "You can follow how disease moves across the landscape."
When local skunks and raccoons got sick with distemper in the 1990s, Anchor used these transmitters to find the source of the viral disease, which can cause diarrhea, vomiting, coughing, and other symptoms in animals. The animals had been pilfering trash cans in the forest preserves, "coming nose to nose," Anchor said, and spreading the illness.
What Anchor is doing on the local level in Cook County is being done on a massive scale around the world. One key effort began in 2009. A United States Agency for International Development program called PREDICT has detected over 1,100 viruses, including 949 that were previously unknown. Despite an impressive track record, PREDICT may be just scratching the surface. The Global Virome Project, a scientific collaboration aiming to catalog 99 percent of all zoonotic viruses with the potential to become pandemics or epidemics, estimates there are over 500,000 still undiscovered zoonotic viruses.
Ultimately, Anchor hopes to create a similar catalog-like resource for Cook County. Before he retires, he wants to enter all of his data into a spreadsheet, including geographic information of animals' home ranges. This would show where animals' habitats overlap and determine where there is potential for disease transmission.
Gone with the winds? What happens if there is a 'global terrestrial stilling'
Carlyn Kranking
Carlyn Kranking is a graduate student at Northwestern University specializing in health, environment and science journalism. She is most passionate... Read More
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The Ned Brown Preserve in Cook County, Ill. Credit: Allanscottwalker via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.
Preventing pandemics
Zoonotic diseases come from animals, but human activity makes it easier for these infections to spread. As development creates more opportunities for contact between humans and animals, the chance of a viral spillover event increases. "There are general things we're doing to the world that are creating conditions that favor the emergence of zoonotic diseases," Tony Goldberg, a disease ecologist and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said. "The ultimate solution is to stop those drivers, but that's easier said than done."
His research targets areas where humans and wildlife come into unusually high rates of contact, like the zones on forest edges. Goldberg has done research in Kibale National Park in Uganda. Population growth around the biodiverse park means people and animals are living closer together. He's seen domestic livestock grazing near monkeys and children getting water at the same place where baboons are drinking—both potentially risky scenarios.
"These edges tend to be dynamic areas where animals come out a little bit [and] people go in a little bit," Goldberg said. "It's not just Africa; we have them in North America and Europe. They're any place where there's a boundary between wildlife habitats and human habitats."
To make the world safer from pandemics, humans should have less interaction with wildlife. Instead, people are accelerating it. Deforestation breaks down the edges of natural areas and creates "launch-pad zones" for virus transmission, Princeton University evolutionary biologist Andrew Dobson and his colleagues wrote in a July article in Science.
Deforestation can lead to contact between humans and wildlife, raising the risks that a zoonotic pathogen spills over from animals to people. This aerial photo shows the division between agricultural land and forest in Brazil. Credit: Kate Evans/CIFOR. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
"If you look across the Amazon in areas that have been deforested, there's—in the four to five years following deforestation—huge increases in rates of vector-borne diseases," Dobson said. "People getting not only novel diseases, but diseases that have been there for a long time: malaria, dengue fever."
Dobson's article highlights the live animal trade and intensive agriculture as dangers to global health. Both of these activities pack large numbers of animals together, allowing disease to spread rapidly. "When pathogens spread, they have the opportunity to evolve and to potentially attack people," Goldberg said.
Climate change, too, may be creating more opportunities for spillover. As the planet warms, animals can migrate and move into new habitats. Some species may move toward the poles to seek cooler environments, while heat-loving animals may expand their territory to areas that are warming. Some of the solutions to mitigate climate change—for instance, reducing deforestation—could also help reduce spillover risks by keeping disease-harboring animals in forests.
This shift in where animals live can accelerate disease transmission: In the highlands of Ethiopia and Colombia, warmer temperatures allowed mosquitos to live at higher altitudes, resulting in an increase in malaria distribution, according to a 2014 study in Science.
Back in Illinois, Anchor believes he has seen the effects of climate change over the course of his career. He never saw the lone star tick when he started his job in 1986, but the insect has been expanding its range northward and appeared in Cook County in the 1990s. The authors of a 2019 article in the New England Journal of Medicine wrote that the expansion of the lone star tick's territory is "consistent with climate change," though they noted that populations in New York are genetically different from lone star ticks in their more southern historical range. The tick is associated with numerous diseases, such as STARI, which can be misdiagnosed as Lyme disease.
"Rising global temperatures, ecologic changes, reforestation, and increases in commerce and travel are all important underlying factors influencing the rate and extent of range expansion for ticks and tickborne pathogens," the researchers wrote.
COVID-19 isn't the end
There are steps society can take to reduce the risks of zoonotic spillover. Dobson, the Princeton biologist, and his colleagues recommended pandemic prevention measures and estimated their costs. Their strategies included ending the wild meat trade in China, reducing world deforestation by half, limiting spillover from livestock, monitoring the wildlife trade, and operating surveillance programs to detect and control zoonotic diseases. According to the paper, using their recommendations for 10 years would cost only 2 percent of what COVID-19 has cost the world so far.
The world just got serious about dealing with climate damage
"Since that paper has come out, the estimates of the cost of COVID have doubled," Dobson said. "So that 2 percent drops to 1 percent, which makes it an even better deal."
With the proper steps, humans can minimize the risk of another zoonotic outbreak. Some steps are big, like reducing deforestation, reforming intensive agriculture, and ending the live wildlife trade.
"If we could stop the international wildlife trade, I think we would effectively halve the risk of new pandemics occurring," Dobson said.
Smaller steps, too, have a place in pandemic prevention. Anchor emphasizes the importance of educating both individuals and physicians. "Most of the zoonotic diseases, if you come down with them and you present yourself at an emergency room, it looks like the flu," he said. "It's fever; it's body aches." Doctors need to understand which zoonotic diseases exist in order to give accurate diagnoses and monitor conditions spreading through patient populations.
For a way out of the COVID-19 crisis, all eyes are on pharmaceutical companies and governments as they rush vaccines through approval processes and distribution. The vaccines will be critical in getting through this pandemic. But Goldberg believes a more general tool will be key to preventing future emerging infectious disease crises: education. Pandemics, he said, often originate with a poor decision by one person or a small group.
"What we need to do is change the way that people make choices about interacting with nature," Goldberg said. "We want people to think twice before they hunt a certain species, or before they fail to take personal precautions when they interact with wildlife, or when they decide where they're going to put a big farm."
As the coronavirus crisis shows, we need science now more than ever.
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Keywords: Coronavirus, climate change, deforestation, pandemic, spillover, zoonotic diseases
Topics: Disruptive Technologies
Charles Forsberg
Following the world's viruses is a lost cause. Sealing off humans from the larger environment is a lost cause. What one can do is put in engineering barriers to stop pandemics. Water-borne viruses were stopped with sewer and clean water. If a new super virus shows up in natural water supplies, it makes no difference. Malaria has primarily been stopped by killing mosquitoes. Air-borne viruses such as the flu and Covid can be stopped by filtered air in mass transit, sealed buildings and other locations that regularly crowd people together ( https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2020/08/11/engineering-solutions-may-be-better-for-coronavirus-than-social-ones/#416a7aa66680; https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-11/how-to-know-if-a-building-has-good-ventilation). These solutions work against all parasites–from the… Read more »
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This cheese is made solely within the Doubs region of France. It can be consumed only in autumn as the milk comes from the summer-grazing cows.
This cheese has a round shape and the period of ripening is about three to four weeks. The rind is washed regularly with whey which gives the cheese a delicate taste and soft & supple pate. It tastes delicious with a glass of red wine.