Malta - reconstruction, recollections and reflections

 

St Julian’s in Malta is a picturesque spot.  Walking to the love statue along the coast from Sliema is a therapy for mind and body.  The scene of the colourful boats lying at anchor add to the colour and drama of the occasion.   

But if you could have only seen it a couple of centuries ago perhaps you would have been more impressed still.   Before the onslaught of modern hotels, businesses and contemporary apartment blocks there was a beauty that was unique.  However, when you think of the hammering Malta received during the war it is amazing how much still remains to be admired.  The extent of this bombing is difficult to get your head around but some old photos do speak volumes.

So I suspect we should be grateful for the beauty that remains. But some of the slightly older photos of St Julian's show us another side to this familiar spot that deserves remembering.

This aerial view of the approach to St Julian's from Balluta bay is still recognisable despite the age of the photograph.  But other photographs of St Julian's suddenly begin to show the changes that have occurred.

In particular, the lovely old buildings on the other side of the bay look stunning and I suddenly see what this area has lost with time.  There is a simplicity and loveliness in this shot that surprises and the two boys with their bicycle seem from another more innocent age.

Going back a few more years this close up of Spinola Palace shows that it is missing the crown on its facade that had been removed in 1798 during Napoleon's visit to signify the Knights Hospitaller of St John's expulsion from Malta. The palace itself was originally built in 1688 by a certain Fra Paolo Rafel Spinola, Grand Prior of Lombardy, on a piece of land he obtained from his brother Frangisku Nupuljan Spinola de Roccaforte, Marquise of the Holy Roman Empire.  

Fra Paolo Rafel Spinola's nephew was appointed Ambassador of the Order to the Court of King Philip V of Spain, to the King of Sicily and to the Court of Pope Innocent XII. In 1733 the Palace was passed on to him and he enlarged and embellished it. This later construction was designed by Romano Carapecchia, and is considered a masterpiece. We can see his original plans for its construction below.

This building also had at the time of its construction a number of ancillary buildings including two boathouses, a church, a belvedere and a building serving as stables. They still survive today belonging to different private owners, with the palace belonging to the Maltese government. Originally the building had also large extensive gardens, including baroque gardens and vineyards.  Over time these were reduced to an enclosed back garden and a small front public garden. Today the palace is barely visible from the bay, being obscured by apartments and other modern buildings.  Which is a shame as it is still an impressive building.

The original church, across the road, is also still there but has a new facade.

The stables are now inhabited by Pizza hut and have undergone considerable reconstruction.  However, the original belvedere still exists.  I had no clue as to what this was, but have since looked up its definition  "an architectural structure sited to take advantage of a fine or scenic view".  It looks a little neglected but still an impressive building.

Spinola palace's original wine cellar now houses the L-Għonnella Restaurant while the two boathouses, whose structures largely remain, host two other restaurants as well.  The original boathouses can be seen more clearly in the photograph below.

The Palace has had a colourful history passing to the church and then in the 1830s, it was used as a residence by the artist Charles Allingham (c.1778-1850).  The British military rented it for £20 a year as a hospital and during the 1860's it became known as Forrest Hospital.

It was after named Dr John Forrest who was the Inspector for Hospitals of the period and it served soldiers and was divided into nine wards on different floors. Following the cholera epidemic of 1865, when three patients there died, a sanitary report pointed out that the building was not suitable as a hospital as the building had serious issues related to a bad drainage system and poor ventilation. The following photograph shows the building with its extensive gardens still in existence.

In the 1940s, the Palace was used as a shelter for people whose homes had been destroyed by aerial bombardment in World War II.  Following its restoration between 1984 and 1986, it was used to host the Museum of Modern Art rather unsuccessfully and then by the Ministry for Tourism for a period. Spinola Palace was restored once again between 2006 and 2007 and this time the crown on the clock, which had been missing since 1798, and the expulsion of the Order was reconstructed in 2012.  The following photograph is not a very old one but shows the Palace still clearly visible in St Julians before it became largely hidden by new buildings.  The two boathouses can also be clearly seen here at the waterside along with the traditional buses in the foreground.

I find it a little sad that Spinola Palace is not really visible from this perspective today and it is perhaps reflective of much that has been knocked down, built on and obscured in the rush to commercialise. When Malta's heritage was demolished by bombs during World War 2 there was a need to rebuild and reclaim in a tangible way what had been lost.  But in modern Malta, the pace of change seems so very fast that there is almost no time to appreciate what we have before it is cemented over and lost.  The beauty and bravery of Malta and the Maltese deserves to be remembered and respected.  Sometimes it is by looking back we find the things we value and also the parts of ourselves that need preserving in order to create the future we truly deserve.  In these odd, unpredictable days of a pandemic perhaps we all need to dig deep and reflect on the individuals, communities and institutions that Malta needs now.

"Therefore strive that your actions day by day may be beautiful prayers."

Bahá’í Writings

The Trip of a lifetime by hot air balloon - London to Constantinople via Malta

It seems an excellent offer, a wonderful adventure which would start at Charing Cross in London and then you would travel by air balloon to Lisbon for a stopover, followed by a quick balloon trip to Gibraltar, then the balloon will continue its flight first to Malta to dine and finally, the last league of this entrancing balloon adventure would be to Constantinople.  Then, the whole journey will be repeated in reverse. Imagine being able to float above the countryside and over the sea exploring countries at your leisure, all spread out beneath you stopping to dine at such extraordinary venues.  

Even now it makes the mouth water and seems an exciting idea.  Unfortunately, this offer has expired. I hasten to explain before the online booking begins in earnest.  It is an offer from The Times dated April 6, 1785.  So, it actually expired well over two hundred years ago.  Seems incredible, doesn’t it?  I actually spend a large part of my free time combing through the archives of this newspaper as they have past editions from 1785 all available online.   I know it is an odd habit for which I can only apologize but the joy of it is that occasionally it turns up interesting little snippets that surprise and delight.

Here is the advertisement in case you doubt me.

 

The article is tricky to read so I will give a text version below.

INTELLIGENCE EXTRAORDINARY.

To Travellers

A new real Air Balloon Poft Chariot, to carry- four passengers in two days to Constantinople, is to set off, at six o’clock precisely, on Monday evening, from Charing-cross, and to breakfast next morning at Lisbon, dine at Gibraltar, and sup and lie at Malta; to set out from thence time enough on Wednesday morning, so-as-to arrive at four in the afternoon at Constantinople – from whence it-is-to return exactly at six on Thursday evening, breakfast on Friday morning at Malta,: dine at Gibraltar, and sleep at Lisbon; to depart next morning soon enough to arrive at the Hotel Dieu in Covent-Garden, at four in the afternoon. To be performed (if God permit) by Signor Zampango and Co. 

N. B Each passenger will be allowed to carry fourteen pounds weight as luggage. 

This seems an incredible journey considering air balloons were only discovered fairly early in the 1700s.  The earliest mention of a very small balloon lifting is on August 8, 1709, in Lisbon, Bartolomeu de Gusmão when a paper balloon full of hot air rose a mere four meters in front of King John V and the Portuguese court.

A more effective balloon was the world’s first hydrogen balloon launched by Jacques Charles and the Robert brothers on 23rd of August 1783, in the Place des Victoires, Paris. This balloon was still quite small, a 35-cubic-metre sphere of rubberised silk (about 13 feet in diameter), and could only lift around 9 kg.  So obviously no passengers allowed!

The exciting news of this startling attraction drew such a huge crowd that on the 26th the balloon was moved secretly by night to the Champ de Mars, now the site of the Eiffel Tower some four kilometres away. On August 27, 1783, the balloon was released; Interestingly Benjamin Franklin (Founding Father of the United States) was among the crowd of onlookers. 

The balloon flew northwards for 45 minutes, chased by excited spectators on horseback, and landed 21 kilometres away in the village of Gonesse.  Here the presence of the balloon created a huge amount of fear and the terrified local peasants attacked the ‘floating demon’ with pitchforks and knives, and destroyed it. A successful first flight with a rather deflated, disappointing ending.

On 5 June 1783, the Montgolfier brothers demonstrated an unmanned hot-air balloon 35 feet (11 m) in diameter. On 19 September 1783, their balloon ‘Aerostat Réveillon’ was flown with the first (non-human) living creatures in a basket attached to the balloon: a sheep, a duck and a rooster. This remarkable demonstration was performed before a considerable crowd at the royal palace in Versailles, in front of King Louis XVI of France and Queen Marie Antoinette. The flight only lasted around eight minutes and travelled only two miles (3 km), but reached an altitude of about 1,500 feet (460 m). Thankfully the craft plus its three reluctant animal passengers landed safely after flying. 

The first untethered flight with human passengers was on 21 November 1783. Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier, along with the Marquis François d'Arlandes, piloted the balloon. In 25 minutes the two men travelled just over five miles. Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier, would later also try to fly across the English Channel in June 1785 but died in the attempt the very first casualty in balloon flight.

The challenge to fly across the English Channel was accomplished on January 7, 1785 by Jean-Pierre Blanchard.  However, these early trips were full of challenges and the two balloonists who successfully crossed the English Channel ended up almost naked trying to keep their balloon aloft.  Here is an interesting account of their trip.

The technology of these early balloons, as you have seen, was not sophisticated, and many things did go wrong. Tullamore, Ireland was the scene of a balloon disaster on 10 May 1785 when a hot air balloon took off from the centre of the rural town and got snagged on a chimney. This collision brought the balloon down, which crashed and set a hundred homes alight.

By now like me you are probably wondering if these firsts were being achieved in terms of managing to cross the English Channel in 1785, how on earth does this advertised flight appear in The Times, from London to Lisbon to Gibraltar, Malta and finally Constantinople and back, seem possible in 1785?  Something doesn’t seem right about the timeline.  I am still scratching my head but am wondering if this article is an early scam by someone attempting to get money from naïve passengers excited by the thought of balloon flight.  If the flight occurred, then surely there would be more mention of it and secondly, in 1785 the direction of flight was still difficult to control.  In these early days, balloons generally went whatever direction the wind blew so how could the pilot achieve five cities in different countries in so short a time?  Perhaps the exciting experience mentioned was simply being swindled by Signor Zampango?  I would love to know the truth and if there is some detective out there willing to examine a 235-year-old case please feel free give it a go.

 

Lise Meitner, a physicist who never lost her humanity

 

In 1963, at the age of nearly 85, Lise Meitner gave a talk in Vienna entitled “Memories of Fifty Years in Physics”. She looked back on her memories of her experiences as a scientist. She started by expressing her gratitude to the field of physics and the many wonderful characters she had been able to work with and learn from. 

Her scientific work was key to the growth of atomic physics and so many famous names were part of that world and included her professor, the theoretical physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, Max Planck and Albert Einstein who referred to her as Germany’s Marie Curie.  It is frankly surprising that she is so little mentioned or known nowadays.  She was the first woman to become a professor of physics in Germany. Her research involved the early years of radioactivity the discovery of nuclear fission and beyond. Meitner spent most of her scientific career in Berlin, Germany, where she was a physics professor and a department head at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute.

Meitner achieved so much and was one of the few women to excel in this field.  It was unusual in those days for a woman to even attend lectures at university.  Max Planck when they first met did not favour higher education for women at all. He became so impressed by her that he would make her his assistant five years later.  Another colleague, Emil Fischer, did not allow women to even enter his chemistry institute as he feared they would set fire to their hair!  Fisher would eventually appoint Meitner as head of the Physics Department of his institute. 

Lise Meitner in her talk, in 1963, looking back on her life, was grateful for all those who gave her opportunities and did not mention her struggles or that for many of those early years she worked without position or pay.  During one period as a younger scientist, she was only allowed to work in the woodshop within the Institute, which had its own external entrance and was not permitted to set foot in the rest of the building or even the laboratory space upstairs. If she needed to go to the toilet, Meitner had to use a toilet in the restaurant down the street.  None of this was mentioned by Lise Meitner in her reflections of her life in physics. Neither did she mention the even worse treatment she had to endure as a professor of physics when she was forced out of all her academic positions in the 1930s because of the anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws of Nazi Germany.  Things reached such a pitch that in 1938 two Dutch friends, the physicists Dirk Coster and Adriaan Fokker helped her to flee to Sweden. 

The timing of this was unfortunate as in mid-1938, Meitner with chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute had discovered that bombarding thorium with neutrons produced different isotopes.   Meitner managed to continue her research in Stockham and in late December, Meitner and Frisch (her nephew) determined how this splitting of the atom occurred and were the first to name the process "fission" in their paper in the February issue of Nature in 1939. This principle would eventually lead to the development of the first atomic bomb during World War II, and ultimately other nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors.  However, when Meitner was asked to join Frisch on the British mission to the famous Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos Laboratory, she declared 

"I will have nothing to do with a bomb!" 

Meitner received many awards and honours late in her life but did not obtain the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for nuclear fission, which was awarded exclusively to her long-time collaborator Otto Hahn. Several scientists and journalists have called her exclusion "unjust". According to the Nobel Prize archive, she was nominated 19 times for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry between 1924 and 1948, and 29 times for Nobel Prize in Physics between 1937 and 1965. 

Max Perutz, the 1962 Nobel prizewinner in chemistry commented on Hahn’s being given the Noble prize without due recognition of Meitner’s contribution, "Having been locked up in the Nobel Committee's files these fifty years, the documents leading to this unjust award now reveal that the protracted deliberations by the Nobel jury were hampered by lack of appreciation both of the joint work that had preceded the discovery and of Meitner's written and verbal contributions after her flight from Berlin." 

It spoke volumes about how fellow scientists viewed Meitner in that they made a point of inviting her to attend the Lindau Nobel Laureate Physics Meeting in 1962.

To make amends for being overlooked for so long it was fitting that in September 1966 the United States Atomic Energy Commission jointly awarded the Enrico Fermi Prize to Hahn, Strassmann and Meitner for their discovery of fission. Unfortunately, Meitner was by that stage too ill to attend the ceremony.  She died on 27 October 1968 at the age of 89. Her nephew Frisch, with whom she had collaborated so well, composed the inscription on her headstone. It reads:

Lise Meitner: a physicist who never lost her humanity. 

“Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives - choice, not chance, determines your destiny.”     

Aristotle

Transmutation, reactors and reactions - amazing stuff

 

In 1956 Paul Kazuo, in a published academic paper, proposed that it was possible for the Earth itself to create a natural nuclear reactor and to sustain its reactions. Given that humans had only discovered nuclear fission was possible in 1939 and then managed to design the very first nuclear reactor in 1942 that claim must have seemed downright outrageous.  How could the earth manage the required conditions to make a running nuclear reactor?    Well, surprisingly it did.  A French physicist Francis Perrin in 1972 found 17 sites at the Oklo mines in Gabon, West Africa where the earth made its own nuclear reactor.  It happened 1.7 billion years ago and the reactor ran for 300,000 years.  Mind-blowing isn’t it?

In order to have the conditions for a nuclear reactor to take place you need a concentration of uranium U235 of more than 3%.  The average amount of this isotope found today in the environment is usually 0.72% so those conditions are very rare.  But 1.7 billion years ago, the perfect conditions were found in Oklo, West Africa to produce a concentration of 3.1%.  A moderator to slow down neutrons produced was required and fortunately there was a water source present.  If there had been boron or lithium they would have stopped the reaction but fortunately they were both absent from this particular geographical area.  It is thought that oxygen, which was required, was contributed by aerobic oxygen from bacteria. There needed to be a uranium layer 1 metre thick, which Oklo had and as the fission reaction took place it generated heat.  This heat gradually boiled away the available water which stopped the reaction.  Then after cooling, water would return and the reaction started again. In three hours, one whole cycle would be completed but imagine this cycle successfully repeating itself for 300,000 years!  Eventually with time the fissile material concentration was reduced so that it could no longer sustain a chain reaction.  

All of this is pretty amazing and Paul Kazuo’s predictions turned out to be completely verified.  It helps to understand a bit of the chemistry and physics behind this world we live in.  The periodic table contains all the elements or atoms that exist.  From the lightest Hydrogen which has just one proton and one electron to very heavy atoms like one of the heaviest uranium with 92 protons, 92 electrons and 143 neutrons.  As you go up the periodic table the atoms get fatter!  They gain neutrons and protons deep inside the nucleus. The neutrons have no charge but they do add weight. Radioactive decay comes from deep inside the nucleus and involves a change in the number of neutrons or protons due to instability in their neutron/proton ratio.  This instability means they will decay. All elements with atomic numbers greater than 83 have unstable nuclei and are radioactive. As a radioactive element tries to stabilize, it may transform into a new element in a process called transmutation. I just want to emphasis here that nuclear reactions involve changing the fundamental nature of the element you started with.  This transformation happens right at the heart of the atom and when you have nuclear fission you divide the atom nucleus creating two smaller lighter nuclei along with a lot of neutrons, alpha particles, gamma radiation and electrons from deep inside the nucleus.

The story could end there but this planet is more mysterious than we suspected.  It keeps surprising scientists regularly.  It has now been proposed that georeactors could (earth’s natural reactors) exist deep beneath us where the earth’s mantle meets its metalcore.  It is thought such reactors burn uranium and produce plutonium with other products such as helium and xenon.  This would explain the confusing ratios of such gases found in volcanic magma.  

Radioactive decay of unstable isotopes of heavy metals such as uranium contribute to the heat of the earth’s mantle and help to create convection currents in the mantle rock that power the drift of the tectonic plates at the surface of the earth causing mountain ranges and earthquakes.  Nuclear fission reactors deep below us could release an immense amount of heat and it is thought that radioactive decay provides over 50% of the earth's total heat.  It has long been known that the earth is radiating much more heat than it should (45TW, where a TW is unit of power equal to one million million (1012) watts).

But how do we find out if this proposed explanation is true?  Well, fortunately when nuclear reactions take place neutrinos and antineutrinos are released.  These particles pass right through the earth easily.  In Japan there is Kamioka Liquid Scintillator Antineutrino Detector (KamLAND).  It is an underground neutrino detection facility situated in a drift mine shaft in the Japanese Alps. Kamland is surrounded by Japanese commercial nuclear reactors and is, therefore, able to measure antineutrinos from these reactors.  When The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant, the largest single nuclear power station in the world, was completely shut down for 21 months following an earthquake in 2007 it allowed the KamLAND to monitor antineutrinos that might be coming from deep beneath the earth’s mantle.  It did find evidence of antineutrinos from deep in the earth’s mantle.  

The jury is still out on exactly what is going on but this earth is an amazing place that we need to have so much respect for.  It somehow strikes me as an important metaphor that transmutation (the change in the nucleus of the atom) powers the earth's tectonic plates producing earthquakes and volcanoes that shape our physical world.  Perhaps our inner spiritual transmutation should achieve changes in our world’s society of equally epic dimensions.

“..every atom in the universe possesses or reflects all the virtues of life”

Abdu’l Bahá

I fear I may become the dog that bites

Shall I tell it as it is? 

Shall I hold it close and be silent? 

Shall I brood and hug misery in the dark hours?

Hypocrisy to pretend the barbs did not land or that your intent to cause pain is an imaginary thing. 

I see you, I hear you. I understand the point as it passes between the ribs deep, low and unexpected.  

Using my trust and your closeness to draw blood. 

More than the pain I feel the loss of blood and innocence. 

Knowing that from this point I shall ever search for the hilt of future blades in the hands of strangers and friends. 

I will watch for the gleam of cruelness, the glint of coldness in the eye of a possible predator. 

Once, I looked at every face as if hunting for a trace of the friend. 

A puppy over eager to play with all. 

Now, I suspect your intent. 

I brace and make ready to block the expected blow. 

The sadness is, life can be full of kind friends but such blows change the landscape.  

Defences rise, trust drains away and I see this world through a dark hood placed by a hurtful hand.  

This puppy has learned to be wary 

and I fear may become 

the dog that bites in order to survive.

Life teaches many things

that I wish I could unlearn.

Keep your dirty feet out off my mind!

It began with a metallic watch strap. I noticed mine had begun to look tarnished. Even mottled in places. I had worn it every day, everywhere for years. The idea occurred to me to replace the strap as the watch itself works perfectly. Then, one night as I brushed my teeth I wondered if I used a little nailbrush and a bit of soap on the strap would it make a difference? I began cautiously as the watch itself was not waterproof after all. Within a few seconds, I was appalled at the black gunge in the hand basin. I had been wearing the watch for years and it had obviously accumulated all the dirt and grease from my arms and everything I had ever touched. It was disgusting and as I scrubbed and more dirt emerged the original metallic colour of the strap began to be restored. All that time, all that dirt carried by me unknowingly.

It made me think about all the other dirt we unwittingly carry from place to place and people to people without registering. That same evening, I took a long hard look at my sandals. The roads here are dirty. The pavements are even worse with dogs’ poo. I cheated and put them in a basin in hot water and a dishwashing tablet.  Not the way to go as I later discovered.  Apparently, proper cleaning involves baking soda and being placed in a plastic bag in the freezer overnight to kill bacteria. For those who want to know more check this link out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6-rbLF_F54

I decided I had a mission it was time I tackled dirty areas of my life. This is but the beginning of the journey!  However, I decided to focus on cleaning one’s own body as a proper place to begin this whole business. Perhaps it is the parts we all ignore that are the places we need to focus on.  

I suspected that the dirtiest part of the foot would be the ankle. But on second thoughts perhaps between the toes. These are damp places and without cleaning could really stink.  Another place that can be forgotten is the bellybutton. How often does that crevice see the light of day? How much fluff and gunge can hide in this tiny cave? A 2012 study found 2,368 species of bacteria nestled into the navel.  Disturbing right?

When I breastfed my first son I was unaware of milk running down behind the back of his ear and drying there. As he didn’t like getting his head wet, in his daily bath, I had taken to just mopping his face and neck quickly with a wet face cloth. Eventually, It was the stench of rotting milk that raised alarm bells. When I pulled back his ear there was a huge curdle of dried milk behind it like crusty old bird poo. I was horrified but it taught me something about cleanliness.  Just because you cannot see the dirt does not mean it is not there.

Another cavity requiring careful cleaning is the bottom. My attention was drawn to this by a tattoo artist. When asked what was his pet hate he responded that those who came in to get a tattoo without washing their asses.  He pointed out that hours of working on an upper thigh, lower back or stomach frequently had him gagging over the smell drifting from an unclean posterior. Obviously, one needs to get to the bottom of things.

Of course, cleaning the exterior is one thing but even interior cavities are sometimes targeted. This can sometimes feel a step too far. However, a mouthwash makes sense, right? In 1AD the Romans used human or animal urine as a mouth wash. Apparently, the urine when stored long enough turns into ammonia which helped freshen the breath and whiten the teeth. Just in case this freaks you out it is also true that one of the most popular mouthwashes Listerine was originally invented for surgical procedures and for cleaning floors.

But, apart from the mouth, messing about with a delicate balance of other inner functioning cavities seems invasive and unnecessary. Spraying chemicals into your orifices may not serve to help their functioning at all and may even disrupt the fauna necessary for good health.  But this business of cleanliness is important in so many other ways other than just the physical aspect.  I suspect our minds are impacted by cleanliness just as much.

Cleanliness and order are not matters of instinct; they are matters of education, and like most great things, you must cultivate a taste for them.

Benjamin Disraeli

I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.

Mahatma Gandhi

That last quote speaks of how important keeping cleanness of mind and spirit is.  I have long suspected that such cleanliness makes for a happy and contented life.  I unexpectedly loved this group of over one-hundred-year-olds because of their optimism and hope.

Zombie apocalyptic, villains and a good clap

In these odd days of a pandemic, it feels as if after watching scores of the zombie apocalyptic movies we all woke to find ourselves in one. There are no aliens scouring the landscape to find human victims to enslave, torture, inhabit or exterminate but there are hundreds of thousands of us dying due to an invader nonetheless.  Those who have never had it dread catching it. Those who survive feel as if they have the mark of Job upon them. Many thousands and thousands more are alone and isolated wondering what terrible deed they’ve done to justify this dreadful visitation.

The elderly, who have lived through a World war and brought up children to adulthood, perhaps lost a partner and already cope with deteriorating health now have a new foe to face. They must isolate from the remaining ones they love. Already outcast because of the lack of access to social media connections they must feel that the curtain has fallen on any resemblance of quality of life in their final days, months or years. Elderly relatives used to put into words the challenges by pointing out “this getting old is not for quitters!” But this present landscape was never dreamt of. The newspapers, radio and TV are like sirens of disaster breeding fear and anxiety. Everything and everyone is felt at fault. Even family out of love put the fear of God in their elderly relatives instructing them to see no one and stay indoors. Everyone knows the reasons; this virus kills the elderly in abundance but I wonder for some of those frail figures hiding behind curtains in their own home or in nursing home bedrooms this present condition must seem a fate worse than death. To be isolated, alone and safe but passing one’s last hours far from all you love feels like living an unspoken tragedy. However, there is the cruel possibility that the one you love and who has loved you deeply and consistently over decades could end up alone in a hospital dying with no loving hand to hold them and that quite freezes the heart. 

There are many lessons we are all learning as we endure this present situation. Perhaps the most foul is the extremes of wealth and poverty that blight mankind. Meaning that those with money can afford PPE, clean water, soap and are able to socially isolate and have shelter, food and resources. Those who don’t find suddenly that they are uniquely vulnerable to disease, hunger and worsening conditions. Wealthier nations buy up medicine and stockpile vaccines for their own population and can view others as inconvenient or even invaders. If it was a movie we would now have identified the villains of the piece. We would loathe their selfish agenda, “Me, Me, save me!” at all costs. The mean-spirited coward who throws others at the feet of the approaching alien to enable their own escape. But we are not watching a movie we are in it and part of the cast. As usual, there are very few heroes, many villains and a huge crew of extras standing around.

So today, when the news is full of how international businesses are suing governments around the world because they have lost income during the pandemic, I suspect that some of the biggest villains have now entered stage left. No matter what the loss of life, the economic collapse, the social instability these bloodsucking entities can focus only on their bottom-line, money. While many countries are facing debt burdens that will take decades or more to diminish these selfish corporations plan to line their pockets and those of their lawyers. Their agenda is clear. It has ever been so. But in these days of a pandemic, they may have overplayed their hand. 

Do you not feel, like me, sick to the stomach that while lives are ending, families are devastated, jobs lost and recession strikes these people care not one jot? Making money is their very reason for existence and every opportunity to do so whatever the cost to humanity is justified. In the 2008 economic crash, selfish reckless behaviour in terms of investment almost brought the world to its knees. Mostly, those responsible as usual strutted away with considerable financial gain and little consequence for their actions. The world is struggling, burying its dead, while fighting to maintain health care systems around the world besieged by the numbers needing assistance. Do these corporations really think they will again be allowed to milk this nightmare for their own greedy ends? There comes a point in every movie where suddenly you see clearly everyone’s intent. You’ve grasped the storyline.  You recognise the total lack of integrity or empathy in the darkness of the villain compared to the heroic brightness of the actions of those trying to save the day. For me, today’s news made that crystal clear. The despicable selfish actions of such entities are now blindingly evident and clear.

This week 600 civil society groups in over 90 countries have written an open letter calling attention to what is now happening. Oxfam, Friends of the Earth, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), SumOfUs and Global Justice Now and many others have warned, at a

 “time when government resources are stretched to the limit in responding to the crisis, public money should not be diverted from saving lives, jobs and livelihoods into paying ISDS awards or legal fees to fight a claim”.

Others have pointed out that

“Public money should go towards protecting public health and people’s livelihoods, not towards lining the pockets of greedy multinational corporations and their lawyers.”

“Use of investor-state lawsuits is an attack on democracy in any circumstance. But the fact that corporations are considering suing governments over measures taken to protect human health, in the midst of a pandemic, is truly appalling.”

In case you are wondering exactly what ISDS is, The Economist in 2014 put it in a nutshell,

“If you wanted to convince the public that international trade agreements are a way to let multinational companies get rich at the expense of ordinary people, this is what you would do: give foreign firms a special right to apply to a secretive tribunal of highly paid corporate lawyers for compensation whenever a government passes a law to, say, discourage smoking, protect the environment or prevent a nuclear catastrophe. Yet that is precisely what thousands of trade and investment treaties over the past half-century have done, through a process known as ‘investor-state dispute settlement,’ or ISDS.”

This is nothing new and here are a few past examples of this process in action. The Swedish energy giant Vattenfall sued Germany for €6.1 billion in damages when the country decided to phase out nuclear power following the Fukushima disaster, and tobacco company Philip Morris sued both Uruguay and Australia over government health warnings on cigarette packs and other measures to reduce smoking.  Yes, you read that right a cigarette company sued whole nations for attempting to reducing smoking! 

And who exactly benefits from these ISDS payouts? That would be large corporations and rich individuals: 94.5 per cent of these awards went to companies with annual revenue of at least US$1 billion or to individuals with over US$100 million in net wealth. No wonder then that the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz described ISDS as “litigation terrorism”.

There are other ways to handle injustice. If we look at the 2008 global financial crisis there was a nation that reacted differently to what happened.  Iceland was hit particularly hard its currency crashed, unemployment soared and the stock market was more or less wiped out.   However, unlike other Western economies, the Icelandic government let its three major banks - Kaupthing, Glitnir and Landsbankinn fail.  There was no buy out to support these banks. Instead, Iceland went after reckless bankers and many senior executives were jailed.