This book argues that the catastrophe of COVID-19 provided a momentous time for groups, institutions, and states to reassess their worldviews and relationship to the entire world. Following multiple case studies across dozens of countries throughout the course of the pandemic, this book is a timely contribution to cultural knowledge about the pandemic and the viral politics at the heart of it. Mapping the various forms of global consciousness and connectivity engendered by the crisis, the book offers the framework of "viral worlding," defined as viral forms of relationality, becoming, and communication. It demonstrates how worlding or world-making processes accelerated with the novel coronavirus. New emergent forms of being global "went viral" to address conditions of inequality as well as forge possibilities for societal transformation. Considering the tumult wrought by the pandemic, Bui analyzes progressive movements for democracy, abolition, feminism, environmentalism, and socialism against the world-shattering forces of capitalism, authoritarianism, racism, and militarism. Focusing on ways the pandemic disproportionately impacted marginalized communities, particularly in the Global South, this book juxtaposes the closing of their lifeworlds and social worlds by hegemonic global actors with increased collective demands for freedom, mobility, and justice by vulnerable people. The breadth and depth of the book thus provides students, scholars, and general readers with critical insights to understanding the world(s) of COVID-19 and collective efforts to build better new ones.
Will your chosen world be one chosen without your consent? The current & alternate futures described in this book include those of a world of "secure freedoms" which the UN SC's Consultancy Committee has chosen for us, with our passive consent, complicity, or fear of rendition and torture via Dershowitz Certificates [Torture Warrants] From the smoking landscape of Israel-Palestine, a New Israel has relocated, WMD & all, to a territory in Canada comprising most of Alberta, Saskatchewan, & Manitoba. Recalcitrant Reservations Natives who refuse resettlement offers and a new Occupation are classified as Palestine-like Terrorists - with dire consequences. Diana and Dodi Fayad's murders are shown as the context for the UK Establishment's staunchly anti-Islamic policies and eventual destruction of Iraq with the Crusader alliance led by the US, UK & Australia, guided by the Neo-Cons. The locales are Canada & the Middle East, today & explores a time when Toronto has become a province, while its 200-storey towers at Jane-Finch, & other towering edifi ces of institutional inequality comprised of a city block are now mini-cities. The Jane-Finch mini-city inhabitants are classifi ed as low economic value denizens'. Better off Citizens' occupy numerous, semiautonomous, 200 to 300 story edifi ces - also mini-cities - at Bay-King, Rosedale, Thornhill. PharmaCorps occupying a few city blocks are special corporate Mini-Cities, whose employees are integrated into the giant, sky-scraper condos on site,. These corporate mini-cities have the legal power to make laws and regulations outside of the now debased "Charter Of Rights and Secure Freedoms' for Persons including Corporations and Organizations." Each chapter of CHOSEN WORLD deals with possible alternative futures or comments on dramatic recent events such Challenger ́s role in the weaponization of space by the US and its major ally. Several chapters deal with the dilemma of a future Pope who has to vote for or against a Christian and Jewish war against Islam and the forced rewriting and re-interpretation of the Q ́uran by Christians and Zionists. He dreads the consequences. During this time he is being blackmailed by a group that wants to direct his decision. CHOSEN WORLD will challenge your world view. Book Reviews "The premis of "Chosen World" is that we all live in a world that is chosen, either by ourselves or by someone else. Which world do I choose to live in and how can I live in it when others are choosing a world other than what I'm choosing? The importance of recognising the other "choosers" and their right to make their choices AND my right to make my choices and to live by them is paramount. RESPECT of each other and Non interferance with others even when they choose to live differently from us are key factors in getting along in this world. I found the book challenging and insightful. It's not bed time reading for me but I highly recommend it to those who want to be enlightened about what's going on in our world and who's making the choices that impact your life." ---Jake Schmidt, Therapist / Counsellor, Keystone Counselling Associates "This is not an easy book to read. Like the incredibly popular Da Vinci Code, this book weaves fact, fiction and speculation. And at first this, along with the mixing of different fonts, it is a little jarring. But what really makes the book not so easy to read is the demand it places on you to not take for granted that power is being exercised by our culture, by our country and by other entities and forces who would want to make choices for us. Once you get over the inclination to stop and search out each movement of the story in order to validate and explore it, you let the story unfold and simply let it inspire you to take your place in this world with a little more seriousness, sobriety and resolve. A tal
The Anvil of the World is the tale of Smith and his feud-prone people, the Children of the Sun. Smith, formerly a successful assassin, is trying to retire, hoping to live an honest life in obscurity in spite of all those who have sworn to kill him. But when he agrees to be the master of a caravan from traveling from the inland city of Troon to Salesh by the sea, trouble follows. As always, Baker's approach is charmingly distinctive. Smith's adventure is certainly the only fantasy featuring a white-uniformed nurse, gourmet cuisine, one hundred and forty-four glass butterflies, and a steamboat.
The End of White World Supremacy explores a complex issue—integration of Blacks into White America—from multiple perspectives: within the United States, globally, and in the context of movements for social justice. Rod Bush locates himself within a tradition of African American activism that goes back at least to W.E.B. Du Bois. In so doing, he communicates between two literatures—world systems analysis and radical Black social movement history—and sustains the dialogue throughout the book. Bush explains how racial troubles in the U.S. are symptomatic of the troubled relationship between the white and dark worlds globally. Beginning with an account of white European dominance leading to capitalist dominance by White America, The Endof White World Supremacy ultimately wonders whether, as Myrdal argued in the 1940s, the American creed can provide a pathway to break this historical conundrum and give birth to international social justice.
When people settle in one place they often express a desire to clarify their place in the world through the creation of small, self-contained worlds. These small worlds help orient people within the greater world by creating centers and boundaries around and within which the events of life take place. “One's identity is contingent on the sense of belonging to a place. The creation of place and entry is a fundamental human activity, enacted by all humans, beginning with the archetypal children's game of creating “houses” for themselves under tables, in boxes, or out of found materials.”2 Small worlds take form in many shapes on many scales, from individual rooms and buildings to complete communities and cultures, each imaginable as a whole though connected through thresholds to larger realities. "The act of settling in a place was often mythologized as the creation of the world, and...the creation of a sacred place has principally provided the existential means for people to establish a center and thus define their place in the world."3
