Why is VCFA encouraging students to read this book, and then have the mandates in place that they do? Has anyone else read this book?
COVID:
In March 2015, Bill Gates showed an image of the coronovirus during a TED talk and told the audience that it was what the greatest catastrophe of our time would look like. The real threat to life, he said, is ‘not missiles, but microbes.’ When the coronovirus pandemic swept over the earth like a tsunami five years later, he revived the war language, describing the pandemic as ‘a world war’.
The ‘coronovirus pandemic pits all of humanity against the virus’, he said.
In fact, the pandemic is not a war. The pandemic is a consequence of war. A war against life. The mechanical mind connected to the money machine of extraction has created the illusion of humans as separate from nature, and nature as dead, inert, raw material to be exploited. But, in fact, we are part of the biome. And we are part of the virome. The biome and the virome are us. When we wage war on the biodivirsity of our forests, our farms, and in our guts, we wage a war on ourselves.
The health emergency of the coronovirus is inseperable from the health emergency of extinction, the health emergency of biodivirsity loss, and the health emergency of the climate crisis. All of these emergencies are rooted in a mechanistic, militaristic, anthropocentric worldview that considers humans separate from - and superior to - other beings. Beings we can own, manipulate, and control. All of these emergencies are rooted in an economics model based on the illusion of limitless growth and limitless greed, which violate planetary boundaries, and destroy the integrity of ecosystems and individual species.
New diseases arise because a globalized, industrialized, inefficient agriculture invades habitats, destroys ecosystems, and manipulates animals, plants, and other organisms with no respect for their integrity of their health. We are linked wordwide through the spread of diseases like the coronovirus because we have invaded the homes of other species, manipulated plants and animals for commercial profits and greed, and cultivated monocultures.
As we clear cut forests, as we turn farms into industrial monocultures that produce toxic, nutritionally empty commodities, as our diets become degraded through industrial processing with synthetic chemicals and genetic engineering, and as we perpetuate the illusion that earth and life are raw materials to be exploited for profits, we are indeed connecting. But instead of connecting on a continuum of health by protecting biodivirsity, integrity, and self-organization of all living beings, including humans, we are connected through disease.
According to the International Labour Organization, ‘1.6 billion informal economy workers (representing the most vulnerable in the labour market), out of a worldwide total of two billion and a global workforce of 3.3 billion, have suffered massive damage to their capacity to earn a living. This is due to lockdown measures and/or because they work in the hardest-hit sectors. According to the World Food Programme, a quarter of a billion additional people will be pushed to hunger and 300,000 could die every day. (note #4) These, too, are pandemics that are killing people. Killing cannot be a prescription for saving lives.
Health is about life and living systems. There is no ‘life’ in the paradigm of the health that Bill Gates and his ilk are promoting and imposing on the entire world. Gates has created global alliances to impose top-down analysis and prescriptions for health problems. He gives money to define the problems, and then he uses his influence and money to impose the solutions. And in the process, he gets richer. His ‘funding’ results in an erasure of democracy and biodiversity, of nature and culture. His ‘philanthropoy’ is not just philanthrocapitilism. It is philanthroimperialism.
I had a bad feeling about the "violence" Vandana keeps talking about and animals with this pandemic. All I did was search "animals testing covid" and several articles came up. This one is from a local source. Heartbreaking. I have a close relationship with horseshoe crabs living on long island sound's coast. Why is human life considered more important than any other organism? Where does that ego come from?
The coronovirus pandemic and lockdown have revealed even more clearly how we are being reduced to objects to be controlled, with our bodies and minds as the new colonies to be invaded. Empires create colonies, colonies enclose the commons of the indigenous living communities and turn them into sources of raw material to be extracted for profits. This linear, extractive logic is unable to see the intimate relations that sustain life in the natural world. It is blind to diversity, cycles of renewal, values of giving and sharing, and the power and potential of self-organising and mutuality. It is blind to the waste it creates and to the violence it unleashes. The extended coronovirus lockdown has been a lab experiment for a future without humanity.
On March 26, 2020, at a peak of the coronovirus pandemic and in the midst of the lockdown, Microsoft was granted a patent by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Patent WO060606 declares that ‘Human Body Activity associated with a task provided to a user may be used in a mining process of a cryptocurrency system…’
The ‘body activity’ that Microsoft wants to mine includes radiation emitted from the human body, brain activities, body fluid flow, organ activity, body movement such as eye movement, facial movement, and muscle movement, as by images, waves, signals, texts, numbers, degrees, or any other information or data.
The patent is an intellectual property claim over our bodies and minds. In colonialism, colonisers assign themselves the right to take the land and resources of indigenous people, extinguish their culture and sovereignty, and in extreme cases exterminate them. Patent WO 060606 is a declaration by Microsoft that our bodies and minds are its new colonies. We are mines of ‘raw material’ - the data extracted from our bodies. Rather than sovereign, spiritual, conscious, intelligent beings making decisions and choices with wisdom and ethical values about the impacts of our actions on the natural and social world of which we are a part, and to which we are inextricably related, we are ‘users’. A ‘user’ is a consumer without choice in the digital empire.
Presenting my semester work idea: I have created three possibilities (when looking at materials used) for sculptures/work that are inspired by organisms such as mushroom, lichen and moss.
I have created three creatures. They look like they could be alive in some capacity. I want to push that idea, especially because they are created with mass produced, imported materials and some are even derivative of fossil fuels (plastic, polyester, etc.)
In the same way that Bill Gates and his ilk are promoting this idea of nature being separate from humans and our culture - I want to promote these three creatures as being the newest human made invention to cure the woes of the outdoors.
Something like this:
“After looking at the data from the past two years of the coronovirus pandemic, the numbers for people seeking outdoor recreational activities have increased ten fold.”
"Here at the lab, we discovered, created and patented the latest technology to bring you - anywhere in the world - an organism that won't decay, smell, or send off any of those nasty spores that can cause death. Man-made organisms! Look at those colors! Say goodbye to needing to identify what's in your backyard - just treat the ground with our patented "Life Spray" which will remove any and all organic pests, and then place however many human-made creatures as you want without needing to worry about any decay on top of unwanted growth, worms, bugs, squirrels or even birds!"
But wait, there's more! Buy now (while supplies last) and receive a free Bluetooth-Alexa integrated Man-made organism (5G of course) that can play music, search the web, or take photos wherever you decide to put your new technologically savvy mushroom friend!
Buy yours TODAY!"
This is your brain / this is your brain on money.