Tuesday 28 April 2009

Blamin' the Yanks

Ross has produced a handy Q&A on Mexican Swine 'Flu, which includes this:

Mexico is right next door to the United States, is there any means by which we can blame America for the crisis? Not yet but researchers are investigating various possibilities.

Tim W reports that The Graun made a half-hearted attempt, which he dismantled here.

Here's my attempt:

"The USA imposed a free trade agreement (NAFTA) on Mexico, which prevents the Mexicans from protecting and developing their fledgling economy. As a result, Mexicans are reduced to meeting the Americans' instatiable appetite for basic agricultural products. The USA deprives Mexico of the capital required for investment in modern hygienic farming methods, so Mexican pig-farming is very labour-intensive, which exposes the workers to a high risk of intra-species infection."

As this is a lefty theory, I haven't bothered backing this up with any facts or evidence (thus making it all the more difficult to refute).

7 comments:

Bill Quango MP said...

McDonalds, the face of Capitalism, is demanding Mexico supply the entire pig, for use in Breakfast meals.
This means the pig is mulched by being fed into a wood chipper. The pig splatters the poor Mexican workers with blood and bone, giving rise to contagion, and subsequently to swine flu.
McDonalds has damaged the planet, through intensive farming, pollution and now, actually killed us all.

Good enough for liberal conspiracy?

Mark Wadsworth said...

BQ, too much detail. We know it's a respiratory disease, so being 'splattered with blood and bone' wouldn't actually infect you. But you get several bonus points for mentioning McDonalds.

Ross said...

Submit that to the Guardian comment editor under and you'll have a good chance of getting that published. Especially if you pose as the Mexican editor of a minor left wing weekly in Tijuana or something.

Simon Fawthrop said...

Its a lot simpler than that:
America is evil, except for Saint Barack of Obama, pbuh, and was even more evil under Bush when this disease was being incubated.

Swine fever is evil, ergo it is an evil American plot to subvert the world and frighten Muslims which St Barack, pbuh, didn't have time to stop.

But it wouldn't have happened at all if Maggie Thatcher, boo hiss, had never lived.

neil craig said...

Talking of editors of small left wing rags BBC radio scotland, for some reason supportively gave the editor of the Ecologist several minutes to explain that swine flu is all because of factory farming of pigs (actually done in disgustingly sterile conditions) & therefore has nothing to do with peasant farms where where the conditions don't exist for pigs, chickens & people to come in contact.

Previously I had thought Zac Goldsmith had described himself as the editor of the Ecologist, all funded with daddy's cash, but presumably he is too busy, what with being a Tory candidate & testifying how violence should be encoureged at Kingsnorth, to bother with the mundane editing, if he ever did.

Anonymous said...

It originated in an American owned factory (which is true as it happens).

North Northwester said...

"Mexicans are reduced to meeting the Americans' instatiable appetite for basic agricultural products."

So this would be the evil USA's agricultural protectionism that the World's Left so hates, except when it wants its own protectionism to keep all that hard currency (or even dollars!) from coming into their nice clean hovels and poisoning their virtuous peasant communities.

"The USA deprives Mexico of the capital required for investment in modern hygienic farming methods,"

Which is what happens when you keep sending money to a country to grow or raise food for you, right? They spend all the profits on sombreros, tequila, wire-cutters, portable printing presses, pole-vaulting lessons and maps of the north of their lovely country and Texas, and they never, ever think of investing in - say - intensive farming.
By the way, 'intensive farming is not the same as 'modern hygienic farming methods.' M'kay?

"...so Mexican pig-farming is very labour-intensive,"

Man, don't you Guardianistas just HATE that high employment!

"...which exposes the workers to a high risk of intra-species infection."