Chidakasha

The UK is country with the seventh worst figures in deaths per million attributed to Covid-19. As of 18th December the number is 66,541 which is 978 per million of the country’s population. The UK has done slightly worse than the US, which has reported 320,182 Covid-19 deaths or 965 deaths per million. This is particularly remarkable as all Covid-19 deaths in the US are routinely blamed on Donald Trump.

But it is not the comparison with the US or France, Italy or Belgium, all in the top 10 of countries worse afflicted with the virus, that is most interesting it is the comparison with countries like Ethiopia which, with a population of over 116 million has reported a total of only 1,843 Covid-19 deaths, 16 per million of population. It would not be unfair to say that Ethiopia seems not to have experienced a ‘pandemic’ at all.

If Ethiopia were a solitary outlier it would make sense to look at Ethiopia and ask what factors caused it to be so little affected by Covid-19. But Ethiopia is of course not the only country to be much less affected than the UK. There is a huge difference between Finland’s reported 88 deaths per million and the UK’s 978 deaths per million.

A lot of energy and of course money has gone into creating vaccines to protect people against the virus but very little effort seems to have been put into examining factors that might account to huge disparities between nations in the impacts on them of the coronavirus.

Why does China with a population of over 1 billion people, and where the Covid-19 infection reportedly originated, record only 4364 deaths or 3 per million of population? Why does Congo, one of the poorest nations on the planet report only 100 deaths, 18 per million?

What about Madagascar, Malawi and Malaysia with 9, 10 and 13 deaths per million?

The success of New Zealand in keeping numbers very low has been celebrated. Less so (well not at all) the successes of Nicaragua, Niger and Nigeria. Why? Is it supposed that nothing can be learned from these countries?

Here are a few more countries. The figures show that Tanzania and Thailand, with populations numerically similiar to the UK’s, have hardly been touched by the pandemic.

A world map showing the occurence of Covid-19 cases lines up somewhat with the map of temperature zones.

Countries in the tropical zones have much fewer recorded cases of Covid-19 in some cases the figures can be called negligible.

However Brazil with high Covid mortality in a tropical zone and China with low Covid mortality in a temperate zone are very big exceptions to this observation.

What can we make of these observations? I’m not qualified to make much of them but I think it would be useful for people who are qualified to look at the differences between countries. I think that if it is the case that tropical zone countries are vastly less vulnerable to Covid-19 infection and mortality they should not model their responses to Covid-19 on the responses of temperate zone countries; they do not need to trash their economies and should perhaps seek to benefit economically from their lesser vulnerability. Also, if there are factors apart from climate that contribute to the lesser vulnerability of Madagascar, Malawi and Malaysia then though factorts should surely be identified in only to increase our understanding of the virus and to better inform our dialogue.

I have completed the ‘first chapter’ of an Interactive Fiction (IF) story called ‘Prisonship‘. I wrote it using Twine 1.3.4. It is in the style of a webcomic using Comic Life software from Plasq. Most images were taken from Pixabay and manipulated and captioned in Comic Life. I’m enchanted by the simplicity of Twine 1.3.2 and the ease with which the story can be viewed on both PC and smartphone screens. I’d previously written a previous short IF story called Lucid Dreaming using Squiffy , another interesting tool.

I’m thinking seriously about using the webcomic, interactive fiction format as a way of expressing what I want to express. Learning to draw is probably a better way to go for me than learning new digital design skills. I’ll probably be posting some of my efforts over the next few week and months ..

Postscript: I’ve added some music to the Prisonship story using a script I found at Glorious Trainwrecks. The music from a Public Domain site is Strauss’s The Blue Danube

I don’t do political theory a lot and I don’t like doctrine at all but there are certain important concepts, ideas and models for moving forward together that seem to me to be simple, obvious and necessary. These ideas are not ‘mine’ but they resonate with my way of thinking. I understand the following articulations so I’m sharing them I may have changed the wording slightly in some cases but I’ve noted all the sources:

Dialogue
To enter into dialogue presupposes equality amongst participants. Each must trust the others; there must be mutual respect and love (care and commitment). Each one must question what he or she knows and realize that through dialogue existing thoughts will change and new knowledge will be created.

Praxis (Action/Reflection)
It is not enough for people to come together in dialogue in order to gain knowledge of their social reality. They must act together upon their environment in order critically to reflect upon their reality and so transform it through further action and critical reflection.

Conscientization
The process of developing a critical awareness of one’s social reality through reflection and action. Action is fundamental because it is the process of changing the reality.

Conversational Leadership
Conversational Leadership is about appreciating the extraordinary but underutilized power of conversation, recognizing that we can all practice leadership and adopt a conversational approach to the way in which we live and work together in an increasingly complex world.

Distributed Leadership
The rise of the distributed leadership movement comes in response to the problems that arise when we rely on ‘Hero Leaders’. Many community institutions/initiatives have leaders who do everything, so much so that when they leave, vast amounts of knowledge and skill upon which the initiative departs with them. The void that they leave behind is difficult to fill and the community struggles to maintain any legacy from the departed Hero Leader and the period of transition with new leadership can be very turbulent indeed. Distributed leadership, therefore, was born out of the idea that if leadership of an institution/initiative and its activities are distributed across many leaders, both formal and informal, it can continue to grow and flourish as leaders come and go. The focus is shifted from organisational structures and hierarchies being key to the initiative’s long-term success more towards an investment in community capital that is able to successfully renew itself, as skills and knowledge are retained in the community.

Horizontalism
Over the past ten years, the world has been witnessing an upsurge in prefigurative revolutionary movements; movements, that create the future in the present. These new movements are not creating party platforms or programs. They do not look to one leader, but make space for all to be leaders. They place more importance on asking the right questions than on providing the correct answers . They do not adhere to dogma and hierarchy, instead they build direct democracy and consensus. They are movements based in trust and love.

Anarcho-syndicalism
Anarchism is a revolutionary political tradition that declares “freedom without socialism is privilege and injustice and socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality.” Syndicalism is the workers’ movement. Deriving from the French word for trade unionism (syndicalisme), it seeks to unite workers to fight for their interests at work. Anarcho-syndicalism is anarchism applied to the workers’ movement. From small educational groups to mass revolutionary unions, libertarian organisation grows and is controlled from the bottom up. The role of anarcho-syndicalist networks is to advocate and organise mass meetings of all workers or community members involved in each struggle so that the workers or community members involved retain control. Within these mass meetings anarcho-syndicalists argue for the principles of solidarity, direct action and self-organisation. In this way anarcho-syndicalism is completely different to trade unionism, which seeks to represent our economic interests, and the so-called ‘workers parties’ which seek to represent our political interests. Instead, anarcho-syndicalism unites the political and the economic and opposes representation in favour of self-organisation.

Learning and Making Culture
Making is fundamental to what it means to be human. We must make, create, and express ourselves to feel whole. There is something unique about making physical things.These things are like little pieces of us and seem to embody portions of our souls. To feel whole as a community there must be a sense of us being makers and learners, of being productive as collectives and as members of collectives. Making things in the community roots learning in the community and creates value for the community. It can include everyone from the youngest to the eldest.

Sources:
Paulo Freire
Distributed Leadership
Anarcho-Syndicalism
Sitrin (Ed.) – Horizontalism – Voices of Popular Power in Argentina

I note that my name has been mentioned in “an investigation into Joshua Garfield’s complaint relating to antisemitism in the Newham Labour Party”

See: https://www.onlondon.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/john-gray.pdf

I am not much interested in this but since my name is mentioned in the report (page 4) I will take the time to comment on that section specifically:

“Gavin Sealey is allowed to publish an antisemitic article from the website ‘Exposing Zionism UK’ on the Newham Labour Facebook group (18 January 2020).”

I don’t recall the particular article. Looking for the ‘website’ I found a Facegroup group: https://www.facebook.com/EZUKFP1/

“Gavin Sealey had been suspended from membership of the Labour Party at that time and he was finally expelled in February 2020, for antisemitism. He was a public supporter of the well known antisemite Gilad Atzmon.”

I note that there is no instantiation to support the charge of antisemitism against me unless it is being ‘a public supporter of well known antisemite Gilad Atzmon’. I shared a number of posts by Atzmon over a period of five years but I do not know that this constitutes being ‘a public supporter’ of Atzmon.

For anyone interested in knowing why I was expelled from the LP there is a lengthy account here: https://52.netstorms.org/case-number-3641/ but what I want to highlight is my comment at the end:

54. I am asked if there are further matters I wish to raise in my defence. I do not perceive anything I have said as a defence. The only further matter I wish to raise concerns the motivation for this charge or inquiry or whatever it is. What motivated the Labour Party to trawl through five years of my Facebook posts. These are presented as ‘evidence’ but evidence of what? Evidence in support of what charge? Think about it; evidence is usually sought in support of some allegation or conjecture. What is the allegation that preceeded the search for ‘evidence’ in this case?

I can only speculate as to whether my coming to the attention of Newham Councillor Joshua Garfield had anything to do with me being investigated by the Party.

Returning to the Hirsh Report, it says that the particular post from ‘Exposing Zionism’ “named Lisa Nandy as ‘one of the five Zionist stooges left in the Labour leadership contest’. It says that ‘all five have grovelled before the Board of Deputies in order to get endorsement from the Israeli lobby group’. The report says that this image is antisemitic.

I cannot remember the post or the context in which I presented it but it is very likely the context in which I commented, on my website, on the Labour Leadership candidates acceptance of the ‘Ten Pledges’. This was my view then and remains my view now: https://52.netstorms.org/a-crisis-of-antirationalism/

I am a very polite person and, although I do not hide my views, I do not use terms such as ‘grovelling’ to describe other people’s behaviour. I do not necessarily dismiss an article for its use of such imagery in relation to public figures but I do not approve it.

According to the report:

“Gavin Sealey’s introduction and defence of this piece is antisemitic because, as Joshua Garfield puts it in his complaint, it will have ‘radicalised average Labour members to distrust Jewish people’s concerns and think ill of Jewish organisations’. Sealey portrays the Board of Deputies … as inherently Conservative and anti-Labour. In this way it inaccurately gives the impression that Jews, including Labour Jews, are on the whole are Conservative and antiLabour. This portrayal of mainstream Jews as hostile to the Labour Party and its values fosters an antisemitic image of Jews in the minds of Labour People.”

I find the image of myself ‘radicalising average Labour members’ particularly ludicrous. A characterisation of the political stance of a particular Jewish institution does not imply an intention to characterise Jewish people in general as having that same stance. To imply that would be stupid and to infer it is stupid. I do not believe that ‘average Labour members’ are stupid but the only inference I can take from Garfield’s comment is that he does.

This ‘investigation’ has been reported in the Newham Recorder: https://www.newhamrecorder.co.uk/news/politics/newham-labour-antisemitism-report-leaked-1-6916897

It has also been reported on the On London website: https://www.onlondon.co.uk/newham-whats-going-on-with-the-mayor-and-the-fight-against-labour-antisemitism/

I do not want to go back to a normal where my worse days are better than the best days of many children across the world.

I do not want to go back to a world where the goods I take for granted are in fact granted by the exploitation and dispossession of billions.

Our freedoms can be taken from us, our wealth can be misappropriated and our communities can be broken so easily because we permitted freedom and wealth to be taken from others and felt no sense of community with them.

Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere.

Our freedoms of speech have been restricted, our freedoms of thought have been limited and manipulated, and our collective wealth has been misappropriated long before the current dispensation.

“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our mind”

Resolutions, revolutions and religions depend not only on a clear vision of a perfectionable future but on the releasing of the past. As is often the case the Christ put it very well when he warned against putting new wine in old wineskins. But we hesitate to make a clean break with the past and in hesitating the future and the present are lost.

Autumn is a time for letting go .. I realise that there is much that I need to release, to clear out of my life, in order to move on.

Socialism is a political theory and a set of principles that people calling themselves socialists argue about. These principles derive from correct ethical premises concerning the equal worth of individuals and our essential unity of being. A fuller understanding of and commitment to the premises would facilitate the implementation of socialism’s mostly correct principles but most socialists regard the premises I mentioned as metaphysical and prefer talk about scientific materialism, about the rights of groups rather than individuals and seek to implement new pecking orders rather than work to eliminate hierarchical orders altogether.

It is not what we call ourselves that matters, it is what we do.

The Internet is both boon and bane. It is an externalisation of the collective conscious and unconscious of its users. As an information world it interacts with the power dynamics of the material world on which it is built but these dynamics are not necessarily the same.

Everyone does what they do. For better or worse writing on the Internet is what I do. I may put together a book at some point but wrting like this, conversationally, has value of a different sort. I like the transcience of it.

It matters what people think of what I write and if they think of it at all. I won’t pretend it doesn’t. The thing is not to fear what men say .. caring what men (and women) say is human.

To practice unconditional love with ourselves or anyone is to automatically practice it with everyone since being anyone in particular, including being ourselves, is merely a condition of being and unconditional love must love every state of being.

It is not a particular condition of Being that is to be loved it is the Beingness beneath the condition.