Go On Harry, Shoot 'Em Both
Jul. 17th, 2020 09:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloAt the end of the Ipcress File (which I watched the other day) Harry Palmer (who comes across as blessedly human with his taste for champignons and Mozart) is holding two dessicated Cold Warriors at the point of his gun. One is a traitor to his country, the other only a traitor to the human spirit. Which one should be shoot- and does it matter? Why not shoot them both?
The Cold War was a deeply gruesome period of human history when two Death Cults were doing their best to stare one another down. One of those cults is now gone for ever, but that doesn't stop representatives of the other (when feeling under pressure) from digging up the corpse and beating it vigorously. And so now- with the government trying to divert attention away from its woeful handling of the epidemic- we're being asked to get all het up about the Russians trying to steal our Corvid 19 research.
But what I want to know is why we aren't sharing it with them- and everybody else- as a matter of course.
Because what matters most:
A. Finding a cure for a virus that affects the entire planet?
Or
B. Securing a patent for the aforementioned cure and sticking a little Union Jack on every packet of it?
One of the PM's favourite words at the moment is "world-beating" He uses it to characterize anything British he feels like taking credit for. But why do we want to beat the world? Aren't we a part of it?
The Cold War was a deeply gruesome period of human history when two Death Cults were doing their best to stare one another down. One of those cults is now gone for ever, but that doesn't stop representatives of the other (when feeling under pressure) from digging up the corpse and beating it vigorously. And so now- with the government trying to divert attention away from its woeful handling of the epidemic- we're being asked to get all het up about the Russians trying to steal our Corvid 19 research.
But what I want to know is why we aren't sharing it with them- and everybody else- as a matter of course.
Because what matters most:
A. Finding a cure for a virus that affects the entire planet?
Or
B. Securing a patent for the aforementioned cure and sticking a little Union Jack on every packet of it?
One of the PM's favourite words at the moment is "world-beating" He uses it to characterize anything British he feels like taking credit for. But why do we want to beat the world? Aren't we a part of it?
