The other vaccine we need

The WHO has rolled out the world’s first malaria vaccine to all children in Africa. The vaccine was developed way back in 1987. It is only 30% effective and administering it is cumbersome because it requires four doses and protection fades after four months. But given that there are more that 200 million cases and 400,000 deaths per year due to malaria, the impact could still be large.

Because of the heat and poverty, many children in Africa sleep out in the open without protective nets covering them, making them highly vulnerable to mosquito bites.

Malaria is a major scourge and the world needs a much better malaria vaccine. Maybe the new vaccine-making techniques developed to deal with the coronaviruses can be adapted to find one for malaria.

Is going to the extreme a winning strategy?

I have been wondering whether taking ever more extreme stands on major issues was a winning strategy for Republicans. There is no doubt that it fires up the most passionate and Trump-supporting faction in the party and also seeks a petty goal of ‘triggering the libs’, as the kids say. But against that is the possibility that it alienates everyone else, including other Republicans. While such a strategy would likely be a plus in the primaries where more loyal party members tend to vote, it would succeed in a general election only if the electorate is so solidly Republican that there are enough people for whom just the identifier (R) after a candidate’s name is sufficient to make their voting decision.
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Sri Lankan power couple named in Pandora Papers

Among the kleptocrats revealed in the recent Pandora Papers leak is a Sri Lankan couple, the wife of whom is a cousin to the president and prime minister (who are brothers) who have managed to amass a huge amount of wealth and sent it overseas.

In early 2018, workers in a London warehouse carefully loaded an oil painting of Lakshmi, the Hindu deity of wealth, onto a van bound for Switzerland.

The painting, by 19th-century Indian master Raja Ravi Varma, depicts the four-armed goddess clad in a red sari with gold ornaments and standing atop a lotus flower. It was one of 31 works of art, altogether worth nearly $1 million, that were being shipped to the Geneva Freeport in Switzerland. That vast, ultra-secure warehouse complex, larger than 20 soccer fields, stores among its many treasures what the BBC once called “the greatest art collection no one can see.”

The owner of “Goddess Lakshmi,” and the artworks in transit with it, as recorded on the packing slip, was a Samoan-registered shell company with an unremarkable name, Pacific Commodities Ltd. But a cache of leaked documents from Asiaciti Trust, a Singapore-based financial services provider, indicates that a politically connected Sri Lankan, Thirukumar Nadesan, secretly controls the company and thus is the true owner of the 31 pieces of art. His wife, Nirupama Rajapaksa, is a former member of Sri Lanka’s Parliament and a scion of the powerful Rajapaksa clan, which has dominated the Indian Ocean island nation’s politics for decades.
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Torturers ‘R US

The Taliban gave a tour to reporters of an abandoned US base that they claim was used by the CIA to plan their attacks and torture prisoners.

The cars, minibuses and armoured vehicles that the CIA used to run its shadow war in Afghanistan had been lined up and incinerated beyond identification before the Americans left. Below their ashy grey remains, pools of molten metal had solidified into permanent shiny puddles as the blaze cooled.

The faux Afghan village where they trained paramilitary forces linked to some of the worst human rights abuses of the war had been brought down on itself.
…

All formed part of the CIA compound that for 20 years was the dark, secret heart of America’s “war on terror”, a place were some of the worst abuses to sour the mission in Afghanistan would fester.

The sprawling hillside compound, spread over two square miles north-east of the airport, became infamous early on in the conflict for torture and murder at its “Salt Pit” prison, codenamed Cobalt by the CIA. The men held there called it the “dark prison”, because there was no light in their cells, the only occasional illumination coming from the headlamps of their guards.

It was here that Gul Rahman died of hypothermia in 2002 after he was chained to a wall half-naked and left overnight in freezing temperatures. His death prompted the first formal CIA guidelines on interrogation under a new regime of torture, eviscerated in a 2014 report that found that the abuse did not provide useful intelligence.

The base has for two decades been a closely guarded secret, visible only in satellite photos, navigated by the testimony of survivors. Now the Taliban’s special forces have moved in and recently, briefly, opened up the secret compound to journalists.

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An obvious publicity ploy

When a major organization commits what seems like an obvious public relations blunder that makes you wonder how anyone in the organization could have possibly signed off on it, one has to always bear in mind that the ‘blunder’ was in fact a deliberate act, designed to get attention. The people behind the ‘blunder’ then apologize profusely and thus avoid the opprobrium. A win-win!

That was my suspicion with this report about a fashion accessory in the shape of a noose. There is no way that anyone could not see the noose as offensive. It seems like a rather obvious ploy to get attention and it worked.

Of course, by blogging about it, I too am feeding the monster …

My article The paradoxical reasons for science’s success has been published

The publication Big Think, that is dedicated to disseminating articles that deal with important ideas, asked me to submit an essay that explored the main ideas of my book The Great Paradox of Science. It was not easy to do so because the argument I developed had to be closely reasoned, which was why I felt it required a book-length treatment.

But I gave it a shot and came up with a 2,000 word essay that I think gets the gist of the book fairly well. You can read the essay here. As a bonus, they have also created an audio version of the essay that lasts for about 14 minutes.

The ‘Havana Syndrome’ was most likely due to crickets

One of the weirdest news stories in recent years has been the so-called ‘Havana Syndrome’ when US embassy personnel in various parts of world, starting in Havana, reported hearing buzzing, having headaches and nausea, and other medical complaints. Aided by US government sources and egged on by anti-Cuban forces, the media quickly assumed that this was caused by a new kind of weapon developed by Cuba or possibly Russia or China.

While this was always far-fetched, Branko Marcetic writes that a secret government study concluded back in 2018 supported one theory that it was psychosomatic and caused by crickets. The cricket theory was postulated by some scientists two years ago but dismissed as preposterous. The new government study was classified and only released this week.
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A transnational kleptocratic class

Thanks to whistleblowers who released a trove of documents, a team of journalists led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has released the first reports of what it calls the Pandora Papers. (Readers may recall an earlier expose called the Panama Papers.)

It reveals how vast sums of money are spirited away by politicians and wealthy people all over the world into tax-havens. Over 330 politicians from 90 countries are named. The US has become one of the biggest locations for tax dodging because of its laws involving the use of trusts. (This may be why the Panama Papers revealed few US names as using off-shore tax havens. It is not that they are more scrupulous but that they don’t have to. All the tax dodges they need are within the US.) News reports are careful to point out that these transactions may not be illegal but that is not the point. The global oligarchy makes the laws and we should not be surprised that they then use those laws to benefit themselves. But key questions that can and should be raised is how they amassed such wealth in the first place and why governments are allowed to connive in these schemes.
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That was quick

My jury service ended very quickly. We were asked to report to the jury room at 8:15 am. The room was full with about 70 people, with others seated on long benches in the hallway outside. We were given forms that we had to fill in saying that if we had been fully vaccinated, then masks were optional but if we were not or did not wish to disclose our vaccination status, we had to wear masks. But no one asked to see our vaccination cards. Almost all the people were masked. I could see only five people without one.

Compared to the jury waiting room in Cleveland, this was less well-appointed, perhaps because Salinas is a smaller city. The Cleveland room was very large, with comfortable chairs, tables, and racks of magazines and even jigsaw puzzles for people to pass the time while waiting. The best part of it was that inside that room there was a smaller room that was called the Quiet Room with no talking. I would usually sit in there. The building also had a cafeteria.

The room in Salinas was smaller with straight-backed chairs spaced apart, all facing forward.. They said that it used to have 200 such chairs close together but that covid precautions had reduced it to just one third the number.

At 8:30 am, the presiding judge came and gave us a little talk for about 10 minutes about how important we were to the legal system because everyone is entitled to have their case heard by a jury of their peers.

At 9:15 am, the administrator told us that the parties had settled their case and that therefor we were dismissed and our service completed. I was surprised that there was only one jury trial scheduled since there are many courtrooms in the building but perhaps most people prefer a bench trial to a jury.

I was home before 10:00 am.