Stray thoughts on Myanmar

Coincidentally (or perhaps not, because Anu Garg often comments obliquely on political situations) the Word of the Day yesterday was "Faustian".  Did Aung San Suu Kyi strike a Faustian bargain with Min Aung Hlain when she accepted continued military domination of the political process in  return for free elections in which she would undoubtedly achieve power de jure? It did seem unlikely that the person who delivered an eloquent speech to our parliament in defence of democracy and human rights should have her heart in the persecution of the Rohingya in Rakhine State. 

If that was so, the erstwhile commander-in-chief now has her body as well as her soul. 

A young Burmese speaking to a TV reporter movingly described his country's brief glimpse of democracy. We were a bird just learning how to fly, he said, then the military came along and broke our wings.

Former Bank of England governor to provide "Get out of jail free" card to polluters?

 DeSmog UK reports:

Many of the world’s most polluting companies are being handed a “get out of jail free” card by being invited to shape a scaled-up offsetting market, campaigners claim.

The Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets is due to publish its “roadmap for implementation” on Wednesday, four months after it was launched by former Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, who is now a UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance.

Carney’s group wants to hugely scale up the existing market, making it “large, transparent, verifiable and robust”. This, it claims, will help private corporations meet the UK’s net zero target by 2050, in line with Paris Agreement targets to limit the worst impacts of climate change by restricting global warming to 1.5C or “well below” 2C.

But critics have questioned whether the taskforce’s membership – which includes oil majors, banks and airlines – is best placed to shape the future of that market, given their problematic histories of delivering carbon offsetting projects.

Death of the Compass boss was surely preventable

 Last week, there was published the report into the light airplane crash in Australia which killed Richard Cousins, his fiancee, his two sons and her daughter. It was found that the pilot had become confused by ingress of carbon monoxide through various cracks and holes. The inquiry recommended fitting of active carbon monoxide detectors in airplane cabins.

This is not the first time that a carbon monoxide leak has been implicated in a fatal crash of a light aircraft. The year before the Australian tragedy, a float plane had flown into a hillside near Anchorage, Alaska, killing the experienced pilot. It was quickly established that CO must have been the primary cause. If CO detection devices had been made mandatory by national air safety authorities as a result of the NTSB inquiry on that occasion, then several other fatal crashes may have been prevented, including that which took the life of newly-signed Cardiff footballer Emiliano Sala.

Covid-19 continued

 Further to yesterday's post, a correspondent to Radio 4's PM programme revealed that Westminster health minister Matt Hancock had intervened when the Oxford University vaccine research team proposed to partner up with a US company to produce their vaccine. He judged that the UK government - and indeed Europe - needed more control over future supplies and instead brokered a marriage with AstraZeneca, the Anglo-Swedish company headquartered in Cambridge. 

As to Pfizer, an industry commentator stated that the prices that the American company obtained for the BioNTech vaccine were $14 a shot in the UK, $19 in the EU and $28 for Israel.

Covid-19 finger-pointing

Various demands from EU members are not helpful. EU officials said today "that AstraZeneca's two UK plants making its coronavirus vaccine must share production with the EU under the contract the drugs firm signed with Brussels" according to RTE in Ireland. This unfortunately feeds into the paranoia of those voters in England and Wales we would hope to persuade to apply to rejoin the Union.

One can dismiss the claim that AstraZeneca is in the vaccine game solely to maximise its profits, when the company and its research partners in Oxford University have undertaken to deliver their product at cost to developing countries. Another point that the EU president and her health minister do not take into consideration is that, because the UK government committed early to purchase the Oxford vaccine, AstraZeneca was encouraged to start production in its British facilities even before the phase three trials had finished. Thus, any production difficulties could be spotted at an early stage. The EU's hesitation and bureaucracy told against a similar outcome in AstraZeneca's continental factories. 

Unfortunately, the tit-for-tat which some EU members seek, denying export of the BioNTech vaccine to the UK from the Pfizer fa ctory in Belgium, may gain wider support. By committing our stock of this vaccine to a first inoculation, presumably relying on the next Pfizer delivery to provide the necessary booster, the Westminster government has laid us open to a threat that the second shot will not be available even at the end of twelve weeks which their advisors believe is optimal. (It has to be said that few immunoogists outside the UK are prepared to agree that departing from the manufacturer's specified interval is going to be effective.)

WHO investigation

Their fortnight's quarantine over, the investigators from the World Health Organisation left their hotel by bus for Wuhan this morning. One hopes that they will be allowed to speak one-to-one on a professional level with the renowned researchers in the Wuhan Institute without having to go through political intermediaries. Their task has been made more difficult by the unverifiable accusation by the dying Trump regime that SARS/CoV2 was released accidentally from the institute. It is hardly credible that one of the leading research bodies in the field, which was far more aware of the dangers of zoonoses than administrations in the West and indeed consistenly issued warnings about them, would have such lax procedures as to jeopardise their fellow-citizens.

Having said that, I would not be surprised if it turned out that the Wuhan wet market was not the place where the virus first jumped from bat (or pangolin) to human. We have the evidence of infections in France and Italy before Dr Li spotted that a new killer disease was about in the wet market. It is possible that the tourists who brought the virus to Europe came from another province of China, maybe even another Asian country. Personal witness evidence may be inhibited by the Chinese authorities, but there should be enough samples preserved at the institute and in clinics to provide a genomic trail.

"Father of Neurology"

 Today is the 500th anniversary of Thomas Willis, the pioneering physician.

Falklands - Malouines - Malvinas

 In January 1771, Spain formally - but with reservations - ceded control of the Falkland Islands to England. Thus the seeds of one of the key conflicts of the twentieth century were sown.

As to the name of the Islands, this paper implies that "Falklands" has precedence, since the first recorded landing on the islands was on 27 January 1690, by the crew of the British ship "Welfare", whose Captain, John Strong, named the sound between the two islands after Viscount Falkland, the Treasurer of the Royal Navy.

Milton Obote was deposed fifty years ago

 In a coup which UK agencies may have had a hand in, Idi Amin seized power in Uganda on 25th January 1971. Thus began a decline into economic trouble and genocide of probably the most prosperous of Britain's former possessions in East Africa.

A return to democracy in 1986 has since declined into an elective dictatorship. Yoweri Museveni has again been returned as president in an election which many outside observers have seen as flawed. It is a sign of this government's abandonment of international responsibility that the US has been more concerned about that.