Portside

In March 2015, Bill Gates showed an image of the coro­n­avirus 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 coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic swept over the earth like a tsuna­mi five years lat­er, he revived the war lan­guage, describ­ing the pan­dem­ic as ​“a world war.”

“The coro­n­avirus 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 bio­di­ver­si­ty of our forests, our farms, and in our guts, we wage war on ourselves.

The health emer­gency of the coro­n­avirus is insep­a­ra­ble from the health emer­gency of extinc­tion, the health emer­gency of bio­di­ver­si­ty 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 eco­nom­ic 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 or their health. We are linked world­wide through the spread of dis­eases like the coro­n­avirus 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 bio­di­ver­si­ty, 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. 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 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 ​“phil­an­thropy” is not just phil­an­thro­cap­i­tal­ism. It is philanthroimperialism.

The coro­n­avirus 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 coro­n­avirus lock­down has been a lab exper­i­ment for a future with­out humanity.

On March 26, 2020, at a peak of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic and in the midst of the lock­down, Microsoft was grant­ed a patent by the World Intel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Orga­ni­za­tion (WIPO). Patent WO 060606 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, blood flow, organ activ­i­ty, body move­ment such as eye move­ment, facial move­ment, and mus­cle move­ment, as well as any oth­er activ­i­ties that can be sensed and rep­re­sent­ed 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 cul­tures 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.

But that’s not the total­i­ty of Gates’ vision. In fact, it is even more sin­is­ter — to colonise the minds, bod­ies, and spir­its of our chil­dren before they even have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to under­stand what free­dom and sov­er­eign­ty look and feel like, begin­ning with the most vulnerable.

In May 2020, Gov­er­nor Andrew Cuo­mo of New York announced a part­ner­ship with the Gates Foun­da­tion to ​“rein­vent edu­ca­tion.” Cuo­mo called Gates a vision­ary and argued that the pan­dem­ic has cre­at­ed ​‘a moment in his­to­ry when we can actu­al­ly incor­po­rate and advance [Gates’] ideas…all these build­ings, all these phys­i­cal class­rooms — why with all the tech­nol­o­gy you have?’

In fact, Gates has been try­ing to dis­man­tle the pub­lic edu­ca­tion sys­tem of the Unit­ed States for two decades. For him stu­dents are mines for data. That is why the indi­ca­tors he pro­motes are atten­dance, col­lege enroll­ment, and scores on a math and read­ing test, because these can be eas­i­ly quan­ti­fied and mined. In reimag­in­ing edu­ca­tion, chil­dren will be mon­i­tored through sur­veil­lance sys­tems to check if they are atten­tive while they are forced to take class­es remote­ly, alone at home. The dystopia is one where chil­dren nev­er return to schools, do not have a chance to play, do not have friends. It is a world with­out soci­ety, with­out rela­tion­ships, with­out love and friendship.

As I look to the future in a world of Gates and Tech Barons, I see a human­i­ty that is fur­ther polar­ized into large num­bers of ​“throw away” peo­ple who have no place in the new Empire. Those who are includ­ed in the new Empire will be lit­tle more than dig­i­tal slaves.