A Composition

http://www.myspace.com/howardbettany

Howard is far too modest to want to share this guitar composition he has put together, but it a beautiful piece and I really enjoyed it. Even tried to keep a beat with my newly purchased, second hand bongos; in the distant hope that one day, when Howard is a guitar hero, that he will let me be in his band...Needless to say I've got a long way to go. Good work Howard!

The Bettany Blog's 100th post is...

...about Burma again. However interest in the country doesn't stop at Shwekey, or a visit, an orphanage project or even a dissertation! Genuine concern for the people living there is a blessing and even today as news reaches us, Churches are being closed down by the Government. An email from a trusted friend, guide and translator reports that The Dai Church in Yangon has been closed by local officials. A church, that Dad and me visited during our trip in Feb/March(see picture).

I found this commentary by Neil Campbell, the EU Advocacy Manager of the International Crisis Group interesting in relation to the best ways to help Burma today. It is helpful in re-contextualising current international policy on Burma.

"Missing the Boat on Myanmar",
Neil Campbell in European Voice
By Neil Campbell
24 April 2009
European Voice

The EU should abandon a policy maintained by those with an eye on noble points rather than on new opportunities to promote change.

At next week's meeting of EU foreign minsters in Luxembourg, the EU will extend, for another year, policies on Myanmar that are widely recognised as ineffective.

There is no doubt that General Than Shwe and his repressive regime are the main culprits for the misery of the population. But in dealing with the country, the international community has to do more than simply rubber-stamp restrictive aid policies that are not showing results, neither promoting political change nor alleviating the impoverishment of the people.

The aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, which struck Myanmar last May, demonstrated that another option is available. The government - though initially an obstacle to relief efforts - eventually showed itself willing to address specific obstacles to aid delivery. Structures were put in place (mainly with ASEAN nations) to facilitate effective and transparent assistance.

This has not translated into improved behaviour by the regime in general, of course, but in the limited sphere of humanitarian operations, it shows that it is possible to effectively work alongside the government. The EU must recognise this precedent as an opportunity.

Driving with the rear-view mirror
While Europe has shown some flexibility in its approach - by allowing the possibility of humanitarian assistance since 2004, while making good use of targeted sanctions for naming and shaming the junta - its policy remains in the hands of those who would rather make a noble point than help improve socio-economic conditions on the ground.

EU policy is currently driven through rear-view mirrors, looking back to 1990. Yes, there have been good initiatives by the European Commission on the security of livelihoods and food supplies, education and health (such as the Three Diseases Fund to counter TB, Malaria and HIV/AIDS). But these remain negligible in scale. The indicative budget for Commission assistance to Myanmar for the period 2007-2013 was only €65 million. There is additional assistance in others projects and member-state initiatives, but assistance is barely making a dent on the extreme poverty.

An already disastrous economic crisis is being aggravated by the effects of the global economic crisis filter downwards. Poverty levels are extreme and the response inadequate: 90% of the population lives on less than $0.65 cents a day (€0.49). In neighbouring Laos the amount of external assistance per capita is around $30 (€23) a year; in Cambodia it is $50 (€38). The equivalent for Myanmar is $2.70 (€2.05) a year - a figure roughly comparable to what each European cow is worth per day in subsidies.

This is not just about getting assistance to those that need it. The EU has yet to take full advantage of the potential for de-politicising humanitarian and development assistance to the country. This presents the best opportunity to promote change in Myanmar.

The "Common Position" of the EU allows room for manoeuvre on assistance, but without a clear definition of how far that assistance can go, the Commission will be hobbled by a lurking political cloud over anything that could be deemed as "engagement".

Driving with a view of the long road ahead
Political restrictions on humanitarian and development aid should stop. The international financial institutions should be allowed to re-engage, focusing on policy dialogue, technical assistance and capacity building, since direct budgetary assistance and major project financing is not yet appropriate. Aid should be used in new ways: aiming at substantially raising income and educational levels, fostering civil society, improving economic policy and governance, promoting equality of ethnic minorities, and improving disaster preparation. The result will eventually be a loosening of the military's stranglehold on the economy, and could even result in improved governance and empowerment of non-state actors - exactly what the sanctions regime has been failing to achieve.

This may sound too good to be true, but once aid programmes gather momentum through interaction with local and international organisations on the ground, they also open the door for further efforts in wider humanitarian and development assistance. It is not a process that happens overnight, but it is the only option that will provide incremental improvements - significantly more than 20 years of failed isolation.

The aftermath of Cyclone Nargis revealed an opportunity to the international donor community. It would be a shame to squander it.

A 'hypercosmic God'

...The John Templeton Foundation announced the winner of the annual Templeton Prize of a colossal £1 million ($1.4 million), the largest annual prize in the world.

This year it goes to French physicist and philosopher of science Bernard d'Espagnat for his "studies into the concept of reality". D'Espagnat, 87, is a professor emeritus of theoretical physics at the University of Paris-Sud, and is known for his work on quantum mechanics. The award will be presented to him by the Duke of Edinburgh at Buckingham Palace on 5 May...

...

Unlike classical physics, d'Espagnat explained, quantum mechanics cannot describe the world as it really is, it can merely make predictions for the outcomes of our observations. If we want to believe, as Einstein did, that there is a reality independent of our observations, then this reality can either be knowable, unknowable or veiled. D'Espagnat subscribes to the third view. Through science, he says, we can glimpse some basic structures of the reality beneath the veil, but much of it remains an infinite, eternal mystery.

Looking back at d'Espagnat's work, I couldn't help but wonder what the Templeton Foundation – an organisation dedicated to reconciling science and religion – saw in it that they thought was worth a £1 million. Then, scanning the press release, I found it:

"There must exist, beyond mere appearances … a 'veiled reality' that science does not describe but only glimpses uncertainly. In turn, contrary to those who claim that matter is the only reality, the possibility that other means, including spirituality, may also provide a window on ultimate reality cannot be ruled out, even by cogent scientific arguments."...

More from New Scientist.

Encourage bees to make our economy buzz again

Found Boris Johnson on bee's and the economy quite amusing...

Long before the alarm clock goes, the buzzing begins, and I am afraid my irritation sometimes gets the better of me. As soon as the sunlight hits the window panes, the dunderheaded insects conceive their lust to be outdoors, sticking their noses into the sexual organs of the flowers, and bonk bonk bonk they start to bash their furry bonces against the glass and buzz buzz buzz they go in frustration until I can take it no more.

I bound naked from the bed, brandishing the 580-page biography (unread) of Marcus Aurelius; and just as I am about to give the brutes a drubbing they will not forget, I pause, and hold my hand, as an Inuit holds his club poised above the head of a baby seal when a Greenpeace activist shouts to him across the floes. I hear the voice of conscience, and Marcus Aurelius trembles in my grip.

Whoa there, says the voice of conscience. You cannot flatten the most popular insect in world history. You can't just squash a creature that was once beloved of Apollo and which mankind has associated, since the beginning, with poetry and rhetoric and the gift of speech itself. You shouldn't murder a poor defenceless critter to which we have traditionally ascribed every human virtue from patriotism to thriftiness; and above all, says the voice of conscience, you cannot slaughter a member of a species now thought to be as threatened as the panda. No, friend, says conscience, savouring a rare moment of victory as I lower Marcus Aurelius, you cannot kill a bee.

"Sorry, guv," say the pest control people when I mention the underfloor infestation. "We don't touch bees. They're protected." When I consult the Rentokil website, I find all sorts of advice about how to massacre wasps and ants, but not bees. If you are lucky enough to have bees in your house, says Rentokil, you must treat them as honoured guests. If you value the future of the planet, you will not touch a bristle of their buzzing little backs.

As all bee experts will testify, there are good grounds for such restraint. The global bee population has recently entered a catastrophic decline, in a syndrome despairingly but vaguely known as "Colony Collapse Disorder". Thriving bee farms are being turned overnight into ghost towns as workers mysteriously desert their queens; beeswax candles are in short supply; the stocks of honey are running low; and with too few bees to pollinate the plants that make up the very basis of our agriculture, everyone is quoting Albert Einstein to the effect that if the bees go, the human race will perish four years later.

In the great bee crisis, it is impossible not to see the metaphor. Since Homer compared the Greek troops to columns of bees issuing from a hollow rock, bees have stood for mankind's organisational ability. As Shakespeare puts it, they are creatures that by a rule in nature teach the act of order to a peopled kingdom. Hive of industry; busy as a bee – for centuries these have been the clichés of human economic success.

Well, look at the poor bees now, and look at the world economy. No one knows exactly what has gone wrong with the bees. Some blame the Varroa mite; some blame pesticides; some say they have been put off by all the genetically-modified crops; some say the bees are getting fed up of being carted around to fertilise the Californian fruit and nuts, and have gone on a kind of strike; and some say that their navigational technology is being jammed by humanity's increasing use of mobile phones.

No one can say why they go off to die on their own, and no one knows exactly where they go – except me, that is. I can tell you that a small but noisy minority has junked the hive and come to live in our house, at least until first light, when they like to rise early and make love to the spring flowers. I have one on my desk in front of me. I am afraid that he has knocked his little bee brains out trying to fly through the window, but you can tell by the fat yellow pollen sacs on his legs that his last day was highly enjoyable. He has been out there pollinating and fertilising in a thoroughly promiscuous way, and later this year, I expect, there will be some apple or cherry that ripens entirely thanks to his efforts.

And that is the point, my friends. The economic recovery is like the bee population, in that you never know exactly where it will turn up. Samson saw the bees swarm in the belly of the lion. Virgil described how you could restore a bee colony by beating a bullock to death and sticking it in a brick kiln. Unlikely though these may sound as places for bee generation, they are nothing like as inhospitable to nature as our house. If I were trying to breed bees myself, they would certainly go the way of our belly-up goldfish, or our hamsters, who all had shamelessly incestuous relationships before expiring of hamster Aids. Here is the most polluted, bee-hostile urban environment you could imagine, the air thick with hairspray and nit cream and the microwaves of umpteen mobiles and other electronic devices – and yet I am proud to say that it is also a refuge for some of the most vulnerable and vital animals in the ecosystem.

I don't want to make too much of this. I will not claim that I have seen a bee revival, any more than I will claim to have seen the bottom of the market. But when I read the wrist-slitters and the gloomadon-poppers in the Financial Times, and their snooty refusal to see any hope in the recent rallies in stocks or in house prices, then I cannot help thinking of the people who are buying houses, and opening shops, with a determination and confidence that will eventually lead us out of recession; and I think of the amazing animal optimism that urges the bees to try living in my bedroom, and I put Marcus Aurelius back on the shelf where he belongs.

And now for something completely different