- Written by: Kamran Mofid
- Hits: 785
‘The Wuhan lab leak theory is more about politics than science.’
‘Environmental Degradation as the Origin of the Current Pandemic.’
‘The climate crisis is still raging. A year ago, news headlines were dominated by the climate youth movement and a sense of urgency. But COVID-19 has displaced that interest and awareness. In fact, the causes of both crises share commonalities, and their effects are converging. The climate emergency and COVID-19, a zoonotic disease, are both borne of human activity that has led to environmental degradation. Neither the climate emergency nor a zoonotic pandemic were unexpected. Both have led to the preventable loss of lives through actions that are delayed, insufficient, or mistaken. However, aligning responses presents an opportunity to improve public health, create a sustainable economic future, and better protect the planet's remaining natural resources and biodiversity…’- THE LANCET
Photo: EDHEC Business School
‘In the last century, about half of the emerging infectious diseases of zoonotic origin resulted from changes in land use, agricultural practices and food production to respond to such demands...
‘We should not forget that the origins of this pandemic, as well as the origins of the greatest risks acknowledged in the current Global Risks Report, are related to environmental degradation...’-Cristina O'callaghan, ISGlobal, Barcelona Institute for Global Health
‘While the origin of the outbreak and its transmission pathway are yet to be asserted, we know diseases passed from animals to humans (zoonotic diseases) are on the rise, as the world continues to see unprecedented destruction of wild habitats by human activity. “Nature is sending us a message with the coronavirus pandemic and the ongoing climate crisis” according to the UN’s environment chief, Inger Andersen and other environmental experts.
‘According to an IPBES report released in October 2020, future pandemics will emerge more often, spread more rapidly, do more damage to the world economy and kill more people than COVID-19 unless there is a transformative change in the global approach to dealing with infectious diseases. The same human activities that drive climate change and biodiversity loss also drive pandemic risk through their impacts on our environment. Changes in the way we use land; the expansion and intensification of agriculture; and unsustainable trade, production and consumption disrupt nature and increase contact between wildlife, livestock, pathogens and people…’- Continue to read
‘The Wuhan lab leak theory is more about politics than science.’
By Robin McKie, Via The Observer
‘Whatever this week’s Biden review finds, the cause of the pandemic lies in the destruction of animal habitats.’
Photo: Adam Maida / The Atlantic / Science Photo Library / Gett
...“I think there is very strong evidence for this being caused by natural spillovers but that argument simply does not suit some political groups. They promote the idea that Covid-19 was caused by a lab leak because such a claim deflects attention from increasing evidence that indicates biodiversity loss, deforestation and wildlife trade – which increase the dangers of natural spillovers – are the real dangers that we face from pandemics.”-Professor James Wood, Cambridge University
‘In other words, fiddling with viruses in laboratories is not the dangerous activity. The real threat comes from the wildlife trade, bulldozing rainforests and clearing wildernesses to provide land for farms and to gain access to mines. As vegetation and wildlife are destroyed, countless species of viruses and the bacteria they host are set loose to seek new hosts, such as humans and domestic livestock. This has happened with HIV, Sars and very probably Covid-19.’- Robin McKie, Via The Observer
'Tip of the iceberg': is our destruction of nature responsible for Covid-19?'
By John Vidal, Via The Guardian
'As habitat and biodiversity loss increase globally, the coronavirus outbreak may be just the beginning of mass pandemics'
…’“There’s misapprehension among scientists and the public that natural ecosystems are the source of threats to ourselves. It’s a mistake. Nature poses threats, it is true, but it’s human activities that do the real damage. The health risks in a natural environment can be made much worse when we interfere with it,” -Richard Ostfeld, distinguished senior scientist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York.
'Ostfeld points to rats and bats, which are strongly linked with the direct and indirect spread of zoonotic diseases. “Rodents and some bats thrive when we disrupt natural habitats. They are the most likely to promote transmissions [of pathogens]. The more we disturb the forests and habitats the more danger we are in,” ...
‘Felicia Keesing, professor of biology at Bard College, New York, studies how environmental changes influence the probability that humans will be exposed to infectious diseases. “When we erode biodiversity, we see a proliferation of the species most likely to transmit new diseases to us, but there’s also good evidence that those same species are the best hosts for existing diseases,” she wrote in an email to Ensia, the nonprofit media outlet that reports on our changing planet…’- Continue to read
‘After the COVID-19 crisis we should adopt a planetary health approach: protecting the
environment is an essential strategy for avoiding other major health crises.’-Cristina O'callaghan
A selection of related readings from our GCGI archives
Tarn Reflection, Mt Taranaki/Egmont, Egmont National Park, NZ.-Dave Young, Creative Commons
Why Love, Trust, Respect and Gratitude Trumps Economics
Nature the Best Teacher: Re-Connecting the World’s Children with Nature …
On the 250th Birthday of William Wordsworth Let Nature be our Wisest Teacher …
Season of Creation: Walking Together, Sowing Seeds of Hope
4000 Weeks To Live: Let's Live it Well
Slow Food for the Common Good to save the World
Sustainable Development Goals: Where is the Common Good?
Do we love the world enough to look after it, to save it?
‘Nature and Me’: A Beautiful and Inspiring Path to repair our relationship with life
‘Nature and Me’: Realigning and Reconnecting with Mother Nature’s Wisdom- A Five Part Guide
Detaching Nature from Economics is ‘Burning the Library of Life’
- Written by: Kamran Mofid
- Hits: 1077
A Reflection on a World in Crises, Imbecile leadership and the Failure of Education to Educate and Inform
After two decades of pain and destruction and trillions spent, to export western hubris, Taliban fighters take control
of the Afghanistan presidential palace after the president Ashraf Ghani fled the country.-Photo:AP
Debacle after Debacle! Humiliation after Humiliation! Defeat after Defeat!
And the consequences of people’s collective failure when they keep electing imbeciles
However, the fundamental question is: Why do the imbeciles keep winning?
- Written by: Kamran Mofid
- Hits: 918
War on Terror, Mission Accomplished and the Magnitude of Western Hubris
The hypocrisy, pomposity and arrogance of ‘Mission Accomplished’ when nobody knew what the mission was, although we all now know well what has been accomplished!!
Illustration: Steve Bell/The Guardian
Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen,...You name it: Western intervention is a catalogue of failure in ‘nation building fantasy', ‘democratisation’ and ‘civilising the sullen peoples, half devil and half child, like in The White Man's Burden’
But, lest we forget, these amoral western interventions in other people's lands and lives, have been extremely successful and profitable for the merchants of death and their immoral military industrial complexes!!
This, indeed, is the continuing saga of western so-called ‘democracies’ immorality and greed, so manifestedly showcased during the Iran/Iraq war, when arms and weapons of mass destruction were sold to both, so that the war can be continued and huge profits could be made from death and destruction for many years to come.
Interested readers on these issues can see further my analysis of the cost of the war, arms trade and more in the book I had published in 1990: The Economic Consequences of the Gulf War .
Furthermore, to my mind, perhaps, the best way to understand Afghanistan today is to understand the criminal actions in Chile in 1973: Forty Years On: Remembering 9/11, 1973, The Butchering of Chile
And Will They Ever Learn!
This is what president George Bush had said 28 after the tragedy of Chile, when the U.S.-led coalition launched ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ with air and missile strikes in Afghanistan:
‘I don’t care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some asses!’
‘F**k diplomacy’! ‘We are going to war!’
And what a war they have had, lest we forget!
Reverting back to the debacle of recent wars of choice, the following links provide an excellent analysis:
‘If historians of the future wish to understand the ignorance and hubris that accompanied the decline of the west’s power, this week’s emergency parliamentary debate on Afghanistan will provide an insightful case study. The delusions that have long characterised British foreign policy remained intact when Iraq was destroyed for the sake of nonexistent weapons of mass destruction; when British soldiers were forced into a humiliating retreat from Iraq’s southern city of Basra at the hands of Iranian-backed Shia militias; and when Libya was left as a failed state. It seemed unlikely that the Taliban casually waltzing into Kabul would finally break the spell.
Take the much celebrated contribution from Theresa May, who asked, “Where is global Britain on the streets of Kabul?” and rued the repercussions of Britain depending “on a unilateral decision taken by the United States”. The former prime minister is a fantasist: Britain has not had a foreign policy independent of the United States since the 1950s, and indefinite occupation of Afghanistan, which has been proposed as an alternative to withdrawal, effectively means transforming the country into a colony…’-Continue to read
‘The magnitude of the United States’ failure in Afghanistan is breathtaking. It is not a failure of Democrats or Republicans, but an abiding failure of American political culture, reflected in US policymakers’ lack of interest in understanding different societies. And it is all too typical.
Almost every modern US military intervention in the developing world has come to rot. It’s hard to think of an exception since the Korean War. In the 1960s and first half of the 1970s, the US fought in Indochina – Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia – eventually withdrawing in defeat after a decade of grotesque carnage. President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat, and his successor, the Republican Richard Nixon, share the blame.
In roughly the same years, the US installed dictators throughout Latin America and parts of Africa, with disastrous consequences that lasted decades. Think of the Mobutu dictatorship in the Democratic Republic of Congo after the CIA-backed assassination of Patrice Lumumba in early 1961, or of General Augusto Pinochet’s murderous military junta in Chile after the US-backed overthrow of Salvador Allende in 1973…’-Jeffrey Sachs, ‘Blood in the Sand’,Tikkun, 18 August 2021
How the US military got rich from Afghanistan
‘The Middle East region spent $289bn on defence procurement, based on orders and contracts that were signed between 2010 and 2019. Of the $289bn, $66bn was spent on buying UK arms.’
Britain, the Middle East and arms sales: A breakdown
Imbecile leadership and Debacles after Debacles
The Immorality and Inhumanity of the Politics and Economics of ‘Shoulder to Shoulder’ in Debacle!
The Shame of the Labour Party that Should Have Known Better
President George W. Bush presented the Medal of Freedom to Tony Blair during a ceremony at the White House
in 2009 for his services to ‘Shoulder to Shoulder!) ( Image: Getty)
Can Buffoons Learn Lessons? Can they show remorse and repent?
Buffoon #1: ‘Shoulder to Shoulder’ With George!
Buffoon #2: Humiliated by Joe for the Services rendered by Buffoon #1
A very special relation!! Photo:TrendingintheNews
‘Boris Johnson was first blindsided by Joe Biden’s decision to pull out of Afghanistan, then today he was rebuffed -
Britain has gone from standing shoulder-to-shoulder with America to being given the cold shoulder’
'Humiliation for Johnson as America gives Britain cold shoulder in brutal lesson'
And now this is the Debacle of ‘Shoulder to Shoulder!
Afghanistan and the UK’s Illusion of Strategy
Chilcot report slams Tony Blair over U.K.'s botched involvement in Iraq war
How Tony Blair’s disingenuous line on Iraq eroded our faith in politicians
The Hypocrisy of Mission Accomplished When Nobody Knew What the Mission was,
although We Now Know Well What has been Accomplished!!
Illustration: Nicola Jennings /The Guardian
The Afghanistan Debacle: How Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden Bamboozled the American Public
The fall of Kabul: a 20-year mission collapses in a single day
Taliban triumph: anatomy of a disaster in Afghanistan
Britain’s Afghan failure: a military and political disaster
After 20 years and $2tn spent in Afghanistan, what was it all for?
(The war in Afghanistan cost the lives of 454 British servicemen and women, exceeding the death toll of the Falklands War in 1982. Total deaths of coalition forces (Britain, USA and allies) totalled 3,486. A further estimated 2,000 British military and civilian personnel were wounded in action and Financially the war in Afghanistan cost the UK at least £37 billion - roughly £2,000 per household.)
It has taken 20 years to prove the invasion of Afghanistan was totally unnecessary
The Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan has laid bare the magnitude of western hubris
US deserves big share of blame for Afghanistan military disaster
How US-Funded Abuses Led to Failure in Afghanistan
The Afghan war: A failure made in the USA
Afghanistan: two decades of Nato help leaves a failed and fractured state on the brink of civil war
Czech president: NATO's failure in Afghanistan puts its legitimacy in question
Nota bene
Whilst researching to write this piece, I came across an article I had written on 12 February 2010, pleading with President Obama to be for the Common Good in all he had planned to do.
Alas that is now all history. But, nonetheless, reading what I had written over 11 years ago made me quite emotional. What if somehow, President Obama, had seen or read my humble plea? Would the Middle East, the US, The world be a better place today? Alas I can only dream!
Please see the link below:
Dear President Obama, this is my plea to you: Be for the Common Good
And at this point, lest we forget, this is how the delusional imperialists show their love, care and humanity for Afghanistan, the Afghanis, women and children: They invade their land, humiliate them, colonise them, and when they are defeated, they shed crocodile tears for their victims, and then, at the most critical time, when Kabul is about to fall to the Talibans, the clowns pack their bags and go on holidays!!
Afghanistan: Boris Johnson And Dominic Raab Slammed For Going On Holiday While Kabul Fell
Photo:unilad
......
And now finally, the most important lesson to learn from the
- The IPCC Report- I Refuse to give up Hope: Earth Is A Mother that Never Dies
- A sad day for humanity: The passing of ‘Maestro of humanity’, Dr. Gino Strada
- Happy Teachers, Happy Pupils, Happy Schools, Better Education, Better Lives, Better World
- 4000 Weeks To Live: Let's Live it Well
- Coventry The City That Made Me