Corfu to Wuhan

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Such a tangled web we weave in the bizarre game of consequences that is human history. Pictured is the former home of Lawrence Durrell at Kalami on Corfu: known as 'The White House' - "...set like a dice on a rock already venerable with scars of wind and water." Today it's a renowned restaurant and small hotel, and where we've lunched on a number of occasions when over there. The Durrell's story is well-trodden, documented by TV dramas and books alike, the original source of their story being Lawrence's younger brother Gerald's book "My Family & Other Animals" which documented the family's brief four-year stay on the island and Gerald's burgeoning interest and nascent career in naturalism.

In 1963, he formed The Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust, later founding The Wildlife Preservation Trust International in 1971, which itself became The Wildlife Trust in 1999 (Durrell himself died in 1995). By 2010, the trust had reformed and remodelled itself as The EcoHealth Alliance, an American-based not-for-profit with one of its stated aims being research into emerging zoonotic pandemic diseases. The Alliance is mostly US defence and government-funded and has associations with the Wuhan University Center for Animal Experiment, suspected to be the source of the current global pandemic.

It's horribly ironic that the child with a deep love for and intense interest in nature and the environment should inadvertently, ultimately leave a legacy resulting in the opening of the Pandora's box that has led to the crisis we now face -  and getting the lid back on this one may yet prove impossible - but that seems to be the way of all things: get the suits and governments involved, and they will always manage to pervert anything and everything otherwise virtuous and useful to the rest of humanity to their own nefarious ends.








 

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