A conclusive victory over the Covid-19 pandemic would be of major significance to humanity as a whole. For this to happen, victory must be on a global scale. The resources and knowledge to achieve it are available.
Humankind would have shown that it can mobilise to meet an unexpected challenge that brought so much suffering and had the potential to be even more deadly. A victory of this sort gives hope that humankind can overcome other threats that do challenge us globally, such as on climate change.
What is however disquieting in the whole story is that polemics have arisen... and will arise... about how fair the process was by which the final response to the pandemic developed. The claim... not to be lightly dismissed... has been that in the strategy laid out to safeguard public health, nations which possessed the greatest wealth and the best resources benefitted from better protection that the poorer nations.
This is true.
Many more people died in the “poorer” countries than in the “richer”.
In itself, such a global injustice... one that is widely well recognized... constitutes another huge threat to world stability and peace.
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LABOUR CANDIDATES
It is noteworthy how the Labour Party is attracting new candidates for the coming elections. This is a very positive step forward. One could argue that the PN too is also doing the same. But around the PN, despite the misfortunes that the party continued to experience in recent years, there still exist networks of personal and commercial interests that provide backing to candidates (especially if they come from the traditional professions) after having politically committed themselves.
I doubt whether the same happens within the Labour Party and its surrounding context, even though the party has now spent years in government. For Labourites, the systems within the overall society that promote and support candidates are not so deeply rooted as they are for Nationalists – never mind the ongoing slanders that repeatedly get dished out against the Labour side.
That the Labour party is succeeding to sustain and widen its list of top quality candidates is indeed a very good sign.
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GENOCIDES
In the past week, the largest two member states of the EU publicly accepted responsibility for genocides in Africa.
Via its foreign affairs minister Heiko Maas, Germany admitted that it was guilty of genocide when in the beginning of the twentieth century, its army exterminated two Namibian tribes – and expressed its sorrow for this. Via President Macron, France accepted its great responsibility in the genocide that happened some thirty years ago in Ruanda – with the proviso that it had not actually participated in the massacres that took place.
Two disturbing queries came to mind as one read these declarations, which probably took courage to make, even if they came late in the day.
--How many other genocides carried out by “Western” Europeans remain undeclared and for which responsibility has not yet been accepted?
--While “Western” Europeans now proclaim the values of human rights and so on, can the descendants of their victims take their preachings at face value?