The Geneva Summit
16/6/2021
Biden routing
racism, Putin’s sea of waste
Ø We know how to pile up falsehoods that look genuine; we also know when we wish how to utter truths.(Hesiod)
Ø While you live shine, have no grief at all, for life exists but for a while, and time demands it’s due. (Ancient Greek song)
Ø I use index cards to make sense of the universe. (Gary Soto)
The management of
paradox is dichotomous. Which will it be left or right, up or down, sink or
swim, numerator or denominator. Increasing the delay on climate change
governance will further disrupt homeostasis and physiological immunity. One
misstep with nuclear weapons and evolution can unravel and human consciousness
and culture disintegrate. Artificial intelligence can be a boon to doom or help
in the reduction of coming hostilities. These problems are interrelated and one
mix leads to greater inequality and social dementia. The promotion of
oversimplified solutions to a complex issue is however, a disservice to
mankind. The coming Summit can provide a recalibrated compass.
The world has
witnessed several false alarms and near calamities. Retaliation was fortunately
ruled out by smart thinkers. We have also lived many false promises. One
American Secretary of Health correctly predicted that the administrative plan
was to promote prevention by spending as little as possible. It occurred as two
prestigious scientists testified on Capitol Hill when the issue of prevention
of disease and health promotion was debated. The entry of the great surgeon
caused a Senatorial stampede to touch his white coat. Meanwhile, a man of
public health who had saved millions through smallpox eradication sat ignored,
waiting his turn to testify. His proposal then to develop a network of health
promoting and disease preventing institutions would have benefited COVID today,
but never made it. Let me remind you that Henderson was ASPHER’s guest in
Yerevan.
COVID has not yet
left us and may never do so. No country of size has achieved herd immunity. Although
vaccine coverage is increasing it is far removed from a time when prevention
measures can be relaxed. As India slowly comes out of COVID it is being hit by
the colonial disease of black fungus. Messages for COVID protection still
remains muddled. ASPHER’s recent Statement on the Abolition of Mandatory
Prevention Measures in the US for Fully Vaccinated Individuals calls
attention to this.
Sanitation and
environmental pollution are significant issues in soil, air and water. Siberia
burns earlier this year. Freshwater lakes are being depleted of oxygen. People everywhere
face increasing inequality; masks now float in the oceans where fins are hacked
from sharks. The effects of Chernobyl
and Fukushima will be with us for a long time to come. The words that should be
our universal guide today, come from the Russell-Einstein Manifesto on nuclear
disarmament, 1955, we appeal as human beings to human beings: remember your
humanity, and forget the rest. In the certainty that people of goodwill
everywhere are bound by their common humanity and a great resolve to build a
better world, a world where everyone
can breathe freely.
Public health is
one basic element and practical ingredient, for mankind’s hope for a future. Is
anyone actively listening though? Public Health is society’s means of dealing
with unpleasant surprise and transforming noise into music. Disaster trails just behind
populism and fanaticism. Recently the Capital was attacked in Washington and
educational seminars stormed in Moscow.
In a few days the
Biden-Putin Geneva Summit has a chance to ensure the world that the likelihood
of nuclear conflict between the two superpowers approaches, zero. It takes
place at a time of elevated tensions between America and Russia as NATO troops,
warships, aircraft participate in military exercises designated Steadfast
Defender 21 stretch that span the Atlantic, Europe and the Black Sea region. It
is a simulated response to attack of any one of its members. It takes place just
after Russian troops massed along the Ukrainian border and as Belarus populates
its prisons with protesters and receives aid from Moscow. It is an opportunity to apply the
principle of No First Use.
In perpetuity, the
Summit should with sincerity give us the etiology of how existential problems
have come to be and how each of the two leaders will move to a higher level of
neutrality in a creative and hopeful fashion. It should provide a win-win
framework to temper adversarial positions. It is a great opportunity to
investigate the origins of the coronavirus in tandem with the development of public
health as a global security issue. It would be a fantastic humanitarian gesture
if Alexei Navalny was freed and if a pardon was extended to the Kings Bay
Ploughshares7. It would be overwhelmingly symbolic. To establish an agenda of
mutual activities relating to rapprochement through public health would be a
godsend as well as an agenda on hate reduction against women, children and the
other, which would be a blessing.
With COVID we live
in a parallel pandemic of ordinary individuals being destroyed, killed,
designated dissidents, dangerous and detained, imprisoned, incarcerated and
tortured, sucked out of society by the state and Para state organs. Most recently, Roman Protasevich a journalist
was arrested by Belarusian authorities following an extraordinary diversion of
his flight, to Minsk . Meanwhile
Columbia, Myamar, Palestine, Yemen…….
The ongoing arms
race and colossal profits with weakening of institutions and democracy make
peace promotion much more difficult. Without the humane efforts of world
leaders to reduce inequality, emphasize meritocracy and institutional autonomy
and give education a more philosophical bent leading it to life’s fulfillment,
nothing much will change. It has to better empower Youth. Youth can imagine and create a better future.
We do have an
obligation to examine any and all attempts that consciously and continually
refuse, rewrite, and persistently deny well known happenings or attempt to
destroy individuals. We do have an obligation to de-falsify false historical
narrative. Do keep in mind two useful
maxims arising from Public health; unlikely events can have extreme impact and
well-designed interventions can take us down the wrong road. Here and now the
EU must stop pussy-footing and respond to the demands of ASPHER made on its 50th
anniversary in Athens, 2016. ASPHER must continue to amplify its unique but suppressed voice as it creates
the conditions for a new narrative.
Let me finish on a
note of humorous irony and recall an earlier leader who gave lots of money to a
famous Academician to research his pet theory on longevity only to die
relatively early. It prompted the leader’s utterance of, he swindled all of
us.
Jeffrey Levett
References
My latest ASPHER BLOG https://www.aspher.org/articles,4,119.html
https://wsimag.com/economy-and-politics/66077-springtime-begins-in-saken
1821: freedom or death: History, drama of ceaseless struggle, 16 April 2021, Jeffrey Levett, wsimag
Lamentations describes Babylon’s destruction of Jerusalem, 587 BC; the affliction, oppression and starvation of the people.
References
My latest ASPHER BLOG https://www.aspher.org/articles,4,119.html
https://wsimag.com/economy-and-politics/66077-springtime-begins-in-saken
1821: freedom or death: History, drama of ceaseless struggle, 16 April 2021, Jeffrey Levett, wsimag
Lamentations describes Babylon’s destruction of Jerusalem, 587 BC; the affliction, oppression and starvation of the people.