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Stay Home if You Have Swine Flu, Unless You Work at Wal-Mart

During the summer, when swine flu was not yet a widespread reality in the United States, giant retailer Wal-Mart made the news for being in talks with the government about possibly distributing the swine flu vaccine through its extensive network of stores.
But now the swine flu has Wal-Mart under scrutiny for a very different reason: [...]


Immigration Needs an Overhaul, Not a Shift

The Obama administration’s announcement last week that it was making a slight shift on immigration policy, to target employers who hire illegal workers rather than the workers themselves, is a good move but not nearly good enough, The New York Times wrote in a powerful Sunday editorial.
At the end of April, the Department of Homeland [...]


Scientific Reports Suggest Possible Link Between Swine Flu and Industrial Pig Farms

Since bloggers at Grist and Biosurveillance first starting pointing to a subsidiary of the U.S. pork producer Smithfield Foods as a possible source of the swine flu everyone’s now so panicked about, the mainstream media has started picking up on the story.
Although Smithfield is still denying that its hogs could possibly have been the source [...]


Swine Flu Rhetoric Part of Broader Anti-Immigration Strategy

Whether it’s a struggling economy or the threat of a pandemic, immigration reform is debated in the context of problems at hand.


Obama Security Team Member May Have Swine Flu

Breaking news from The Washington Post:
A member of the security advance team for President Obama’s recent trip to Mexico is suspected of having contracted the swine flu, a senior White House official says.


U.N. to Investigate Industrial Pig Farm in Mexico as Possible Swine Flu Source

United Nations food inspectors are going to Mexico to investigate reports that industrial pig farms were the source of the swine flu outbreak, the BBC reports.
As I wrote yesterday, based on some excellent reporting in Grist and elsewhere, local residents in La Gloria, Mexico, where the swine flu outbreak may have originated, suspect that the [...]


Health Expert: Closing Borders Won’t Stop Swine Flu, But Could Undermine Treatment

Lawmakers and immigration restrictionists advocating closure of the border with Mexico to prevent the spread of swine flu into the United States may want to stop and listen to what Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy and a longtime adviser to the U.S. government on public [...]


Arizona’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio Instructs Deputies to Protect Themselves From Illegal Immigrant-Borne Swine Flu

It was the perfect opportunity for Maricopa County, Ariz. Sheriff Joe Arpaio. After all, it’s been more than a month since he was in the national spotlight when the federal government announced that it was investigating his office in Maricopa County for racial profiling and other civil rights abuses stemming from his eagerness to crack [...]


Smithfield Pork’s Got Problems

If Smithfield Foods, which I wrote about in an earlier post, rang a bell, it may be because the company has recently gotten some bad press for its troubled labor relations. The problems are heating up with the company’s latest announcement that it’s closing six plants and cutting 1,800 jobs.


Right-Wing Restrictionists Blame Illegal Immigrants for Swine Flu

It was just a matter of time, but right-wing bloggers, restrictionist immigration groups and now even some politicians are blaming illegal immigrants and the government’s failure to keep them out for the swine flu pandemic.
Michelle Malkin writes, “hey maybe we’ll finally get serious about borders now,” adding that she’s “blogged for years about the spread [...]