New releases by Interpol, Phoebe Bridgers, Lambchop
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Germ of a solution
JOHN GREEN recommends a revelatory account of global pandemics and the ways they can be prevented in future
HARD FACT: Soldiers of French 87th Regiment in their trenches on Hill 304 at Verdun, 1916 - during WWI the average soldier stood more chance of becoming disease fodder than cannon fodder
[National Army Museum/Creative Commons]
ANGUS REID urges us to understand the persecution of Jason Arday from a political and historical perspective, and to see the victim in human terms
Re-releases of the classics Gypsy Rhumba and Buena Vista Social Club, and a stunning album by Palestinian artist Faris Ishaq
Nothing, says ANDY HEDGECOCK, can rescue this undistinguished amalgam of ponderous melodrama and shallow philosophical speculation
JAMIE BRITTON invites readers to visit 3,500 locals as part of a marathon artistic pub crawl
JOHN GREEN welcomes a valuable and incisive analysis of a world become hyperpolitical but without the mass movement institutions to represent it
New Pandemics, Old Politics: Two Hundred Years of War on Disease and its Alternatives
by Alex de Waal
(Polity Press, £50)
IN NEW Pandemics, Old Politics, Alex de Waal takes to task what he calls the gargantuan error of characterising the current pandemic as the “war on disease.”
When we most need a narrative to make sense of such a devastating pandemic, that epithet “not only fails but also stops us recognising our failures,” he writes.
Reviewing past pandemics such as cholera, so-called Spanish Flu and Aids he demonstrates — alarmingly — how administrative measures taken in response to the virulent Spanish Flu in 1918-19 were almost exactly the same as today.
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JOHN GREEN welcomes a valuable and incisive analysis of a world become hyperpolitical but without the mass movement institutions to represent it
Poverty, refugee displacement, child labour and militia violence are exacerbating the challenge of health workers to limit this deadly contagious disease. CONSTANT SAME BAGALWA and MARK BANCHEREAU report
From summit to summit, imperialist companies and governments cut, delay or water down their commitments, warn the Communist Parties of Britain, France, Portugal and Spain and the Workers Party of Belgium in a joint statement on Cop30