The War on Terra

37
by Climate Change, Environment • Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

In these strange times we need, I think, a new paradigm, a new way of looking at the world, which can best come from new terminology, new phrases, new words. Change the language and you change the world, or, as George Lakoff famously almost put it “Think of an elephant” and as the other George famously put it “Mission almost accomplished”.

Let me point out the strangeness to you. Here we are, the year 2012. We are near the start of an unprecedented experiment – see how many people are left on the planet if you burn all the fossilised carbon under the earth and convert it into CO2. Or, if you prefer, just how hot can we make this mother? It is a brave endeavour, a courageous decision. I mean there probably are people in the universe who wouldn’t try this without a second equally livable planet nearby, just in case. But that’s never been the way of this particular branch of the ape family. “Live for today and let tomorrow take care of itself” has been the motto of the residents of this ancestral home.

So, here we are, planet in a pot on the stove, getting warmer, getting warmer, but is that enough for us? Hell NO! While the rest of us are busy burning as much carbon as we can in the shortest possible time (trying for a new record for “The Guiness Galactica Book of Records”) there are others hard at work in other directions. They have declared war on the planet and their mission is nearly accomplished.

But there is only so much whimsy a Polar can Bear. You get my drift. It has seemed, in the last fifty years, that the worse damage was done to the planet, the more people wanted to damage it. That instead of saying, “Oh, hang on, bit of a mess here, time we stopped the party, sent the guests home, and cleaned up the house before the Oldies get home” we have turned up the music, ordered more alcohol, and published the location of the party on the Australian Bikies Club Facebook Page.

Bulldozing and burning forests, polluting the seas, overfishing, coal fracking, oil drilling in Arctic, plastic waste, whaling, poisons, hunting, killing tigers and rhino for aphrodisiacs, killing elephants for ivory, chimps for meat, well the list is endless, feel free to add your own. And then the big one – climate change denial. We tend to see these actions as separate, each one to be fought by different groups of activists in different places. But just as the Global War on Terrorism brought together apparently disparate groups under one heading, so that authorities worldwide could more effectively cooperate and work together, so we need a new approach to planetary destruction by whatever means.

So I propose we call actions that damage the planet Terrarism, and that we declare a new Global War on Terrarism.

Any questions?

Mirror Mirror

4
by Uncategorized • Tags: , , ,

The other day there was one of those nice little stories about a group of American school friends who, on a camp as teenagers, decided to take a group photo of themselves. So far so trivial, millions of such photos have been taken over the years, billions perhaps. What made this one special was that they decided to take another one five years later in exactly the same place, positions and poses. And another five years later and so on. I forget how many they had taken but they are well into middle age now.

There was a similar story a few months ago. A young married couple posed for a photo. Again, same position 5 years later with couple of small children. Five years on, children grown plus another baby. And so on and so on until, the original couple getting middle-aged, their children appeared with partners, then their own children, and so on.

Both these sequences are the kind of thing that makes you ask yourself, plaintively, “Why didn’t I think of that?” The kind of thing that makes you want to pay a Ghost-of-Xmas-Future visit to your 14-year-old self and whisper in his ear, as he sleeps, “Write in your diary. Yes, it’s boring. Yes of course you will remember every detail of your life 50 years from now. But, just in case, by some mischance, you don’t, WRITE IN YOUR DIARY EVERY DAY NOW”. Not sure that Time Travel is going to be invented quite soon enough for me to do that and see my almost empty 1959 diary magically fill up with detailed daily records, but fingers crossed.

Perhaps a magic mirror might help. I have a very old bathroom mirror. Nothing special, just a plain but rather heavy wooden frame. Began life in my family at least 100 years ago in my newly wedded grandparent’s house in England. But may well have been earlier than that, passed down from one or two previous generations. People did in those days, hand on pieces of furniture to get a new young couple started in life. These days no one wants hand-me-down furniture, preferring cheap new rubbish from a chain store. But I digress.

The mirror is a little worse for wear, the frame bruised, scratched, stained, the silvering breaking up a little. But it has done a lot of work, covered a lot of ground – from a mining town in the north of England, to an outback shack in southern Western Australia, to several houses in Perth, then over other side of continent to several houses. Getting old and tired after all that travelling. As am I. But I digress, again.

Wherever it was the mirror was seeing an ever-changing passing parade of different faces. The coal stained faced of a miner home after a day underground, the same face later with a soldier’s cap on. A young woman holding her son up to see his face, her’s already careworn. Later another baby, chortling happy as he sees himself once but never again. Then a little girl, standing on tip toes to brush her hair. Then a big boy combing his hair, or not bothering, thinking, like The Fonz, it was already perfect, off to a dance.

Later the same faces but the mirror reflecting a different scene with a harsher light, hanging outside a shack in an alien landscape, faces tired and dirty from farming in the dust, or the smoke of bushfires. Then into somewhat more civilised surroundings, a bath reflected in it for the first time, also a small water heater, warmed by wood chips and old newspapers to produce sooty water. Same faces continue, all growing older, then a new one arrives. At first in work clothes, his face sunburnt, then in the slouch hat of the Australian Army in World War two Later another mother is holding up another baby to see his own reflection, and eventually he is big enough, standing on tip toes to comb his own hair in imitation of Elvis Presley. And so on.

The magic? Well, I’d have liked (I think!) a magic mirror that took a snapshot every time someone looked into it over the last 100 years. Then turned it into a movie that you could run to see your family story unfold before your eyes. Would provide the backbone, the spine, on which to hang all the other photos and letters and documents. Sand running through an hourglass, or a centuryglass, doesn’t just move fast, but ieaves little for you to get hold of, runs through the fingers like it did on an idle day at the beach, in, say, 1911, or 1931, or 1951, or 1971. The more you try to hold on to it the faster it disappears. A magic mirror could fix those days of our lives into a permanent record.

Oh and it would prevent, perhaps, days, as “The Zen of Genealogy” (Beth Uyhar) describes, of lying down, banging your head on the floor calling out, in a loud plaintive wail “Why didn’t I ask Grandma when I had the chance?!? Why? WHY?!?”

The sphere of private life

40
by Atheism, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

When theocracy comes back to western civilisation it might begin with three young women protesting in a church and being jailed for two years. Or it will ride in on a wagon outlawing same-sex marriage. Perhaps it will come from small fundamentalist religious schools keeping their students isolated from any other thoughts, including Darwin’s dangerous idea. Or maybe it will come from leaders who pray to an imaginary being for guidance before making decisions on war.

Maybe “witches” being burnt will provide a spark. Or the loud voices demanding that women cover up their bodies, and art work be destroyed which depicts nakedness. Could it be hiding under the cloak of those who called a young Olympic runner a “prostitute”? Or of those who are certain that women must never be allowed to preach to men?

Perhaps it’s coming in that mob of wild-eyed young men brandishing AK 47s in the air and screaming “god is great” in triumph at having slaughtered other young men. Or in the ones screaming abuse about homosexuality at people attending soldier’s funerals. Or in the hands of the ones screaming at young women attending family planning clinics, or blowing them up or shooting “abortion doctors”. Or maybe it’ll be riding in a plane being flown into a tall building, or a truckload of explosives smashing into a girl’s school.

Maybe theocracy will begin on old battlefield sites being labelled as “sacred ground”. Or on pieces of burnt toast with an imaginary face. Or in a row of fence posts imagined as a woman’s figure. Or in the ancient monuments blown up as impure. Or perhaps in those places where gullible sick people are prayed upon and preyed upon by those promising miracle cures in return for a little money.

Its arrival will be speeded up by those determined to smash science. By those who preach the dominion of man over nature. By the tax exemptions for religious institutions. By the prayers at the start of parliamentary sessions. By the growing role of religious cadres in schools, in hospitals, in military memorial ceremonies, in political lobby groups. By the politicians flaunting their religious beliefs as an incentive to vote for them. By the preachers blaming a drought or a tornado on people behaving “sinfully”.

It will come from the children indoctrinated, and sometimes mutilated, at ages far too young to give consent. It will come from cults shielded from scrutiny by threats of legal action, shielded from criticism by laws limiting free speech. Will come from the poor devils refusing medical treatment in favour of prayer. Will come from big businesses with religious fundamentalist owners using their power. Will come from fearful people, made afraid by shock jocks serving political masters. Will come from the deliberate conflating of religion and race by unscrupulous leaders. Will come from words written by deluded people hundreds, thousands of years ago, believed by deluded people now to have come from one imaginary being or another.

It is enabled every time the media calls it a “miracle” when someone is saved by the full application of five centuries of western science and medicine. Every time tv channels run “serious” programs about “psychics” or “near death experiences” or “ghosts”. Every time someone is said to have “passed” instead of died. Every time someone says they will “pray for you to get better” and you don’t say “how about donating to medical research instead?” Every time someone wears a “power band” or a “healing crystal”, or recommends homeopathy.

Brought nearer every time someone says “Oh, those New Atheists, so aggressive and rude, they really should respect the beliefs of religious people”.

The bible will arrive, everywhere, wrapped in the flag and carrying a gun. Theocracy is coming to a country near you, soon, and it will take you back to the Dark Ages. The only thing needed for religion to triumph is for good people to do nothing.

“Things have come to a pretty pass when religion is allowed to invade the sphere of private life” (William Lamb, on hearing an evangelical sermon)

Sitting in a tin can

6
by Environment • Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Mars Curiosity? Brilliant, superb. We were all NASA engineers for those last ten minutes or so. The discoveries it makes will challenge our minds, lighten our hearts, make us proud, a rare thing lately, to be human.

The photo from an orbiting satellite of that parachute descent was stunning, almost unbelievable that we can achieve such things. So was the panorama the next day – there was Curiosity sitting on a dusty pebbly plain with distant mountains, just like any Earth landscape, and yet, Mars.

Oh, once it gets going what a brave new world. It will be doing proper geology. Looking at rock sequences, writing Mars geological history. And the history of its water. And, as a consequence, the jackpot, checking to see if any of the layers shows signs of past life, as they probably would (depending) on Earth.

Worth thinking about the logic of what discovery of life (past and/or present) on Mars would mean. If life is found then we immediately know, as many of us suspect, that life is abundant in the universe, and is likely to be found on any roughly Earth-size planets in the “Goldilocks Zone” distance from their star. Wouldn’t mean every such planet would have developed life – plenty of accidents like meteor strikes, supernova eruptions, runaway greenhouse effects – but it means the numbers of planets with life must be in the billions of billions.

Conversely, no evidence of life on Mars tells us very little. Means the odds perhaps a little less, but also simply means that although Mars is roughly in zone for life something else wasn’t right. Bit disappointing, but leaves us where we were.

Worth adding that if future probes find life on likely moons such as Enceladus, Titan, Europa, then this would multiply the likely places with life many times. It would also mean, if nothing found on Mars, that Mars was odd for not having life, and its history was the explanation.

So exciting times ahead (not least because life on Mars, and the moons, would, perhaps [no scientist ever lost a dollar by underestimating the intelligence of the religious public] finally put an end to the madness of imaginary friends on this planet.

And yet, and yet…

Why oh why does this magnificent machine have to be powered by Plutonium? Why oh why did the delivery vehicle use highly toxic Hydrazine, the remains of which were dumped on the Mars surface after Curiosity detached? Why are the number of bits of space junk on the surface of Mars multiplying?

You all know the “broken window” theory right? This says that you should immediately repair damage, clean up litter, wash graffiti off walls, tow away old cars, because if you leave one small mess people will think its ok to make more, and in an ever-growing snowball effect the neighbourhood will rapidly disintegrate.

Some truth in it of course (though as always the Right turns a minor idea into a truism engraved in stone as if provided by St Ronald or St Ayn). And it should have given those rightly happy NASA scientists a little cause for pause in the High Fives.

The word pristine actually once had meaning on Mars. Now it doesn’t. If one bit of junk why not another? If one lot of noxious and/or radioactive materials why not another? And another. Until before you know where you are the Martian bikie gangs have moved in. Would have been nice if Mars exploration could have been like the old National Park idea – leave nothing behind, take nothing away.

And not just bad for Mars itself. If finding life on Mars would have a positive effect back on Earth by pulling the prayer rugs out from under the priests, then dumping garbage on Mars has a negative effect back here. If it’s ok to litter Mars presumably it’s ok to litter, say, Antarctica. If it’s ok to land Plutonium on Mars then who can say nay to the nuclear power salesmen when they want to put some in your backyard?

Pity, really.

Wearing uniform, wrapped in flag

1
by Media, politics • Tags: , , , , , ,

The recent move of Julian Assange to the Ecuadorian Embassy to try to avoid extradition to Sweden and then hypothetically to the US, has been treated by the world’s media like a diplomatic episode of Big Brother. With the announcement that Ecuador may have granted him diplomatic immunity the attention shifted to how he could be got to the airport, and the media drooled as they contemplated OJ Simpson-style car chases for evening news bulletins, or SAS raids on the Embassy. All in all, the attention paid to Julian Assange since his arrest in Britain nearly 2 years ago, and in particular these last few weeks, has vastly exceeded the interest by the media in the original extraordinary effort by Wikileaks in releasing information on the gross wrong-doing of governments around the world.

Why is it so?

Remember the Iraq War, where the Americans discovered you could avoid all of that Vietnam War media unpleasantness by “embedding” journalists with military units? The journalist saw what he/she was allowed to see, reported what the unit concerned allowed to be reported, and in general identified as closely with their unit as if they had been enlisted military personnel themselves bound in loyalty to their group. Journalists got terrific human interest warm and fuzzy entertaining stories about “our troops”, the military got to totally control the message and avoid bad stuff getting out. Win-Win, at least for the winners.

From that point on journalists have become more generally “embedded” in the government/corporate/military world everywhere. Same logic on both sides. Journalists get easy “press release” stories to meet voracious demands of their bosses, the military industrial complex, and government, gets to control what the public is allowed to know and see. Win-Win, except for the public.

With Wikileaks Julian Assange tried to smash that cosy model. “Here is what is really going on behind the curtain” he was saying. This is the stuff the media isn’t reporting, and the government doesn’t want you to know. Here it is, masses of it.

Did journalists welcome this astonishing achievement with open arms? Not on your Bernstein. They shuffled their feet in an embarrassed sort of way for a while and then pretended nothing had happened. It was, after all, as if it had been suggested they give away operational plans for their military unit, had betrayed their boys. That “their boys” in this case were people they should have been speaking truth to power to was completely forgotten, by these journalists embedded with their rulers.

I didn’t predict this reaction. I’m sure Julian Assange didn’t. I’m equally sure no one again will try to go against the embedded media culture.

Back to sex scandals Mr Bean car chases. Woo Hoo.

Twist and Shout

9
by Media, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The other day, stepping out of my car in a car park, I heard a male voice screaming loudly. Looking around I spotted him yelling into a mobile phone clutched in his left hand while his right hand waved around in the air. Occasionally he kicked the tree he was standing under, or a car nearby, as he twisted and turned.

The language was, as they used to say, purple, though in his case it had moved beyond that into the ultraviolet. It very quickly became obvious that I had inadvertently arrived in the middle of a, shall we say euphemistically, domestic disagreement being conducted by phone in public. So much in public that, if the partner lived anywhere within a 100km radius, the phone was superfluous – she could have stepped outside her house and heard him roar. He was broadcasting to the world.

And roar in the nastiest possible way. The gist of his side of the conversation, repeated, with variations, over and over was “Why are you doing this to me you f#cking bitch I’ll kill you you c#nt?” Had any of the curious listeners, variously situated, unobtrusively, at safe distances from him, attempted to approach him it was on the cards he would have tried to kill them. Conversely, if he had been physically with his wife/partner, in a shop or restaurant, or indeed at home, and had been behaving the way he was, domestic violence charges of some kind would have been on the cards. Merely broadcasting to listeners in a car park left him safe.

Anyway, I went into the shop, glad to get away from the virulent misogyny, and when I returned he had gone. The end of one of the eight million stories in the Naked City. Except that it had left me thinking.

It came in a week when our Opposition Leader, and probable future leader, had told delighted right wing think tank cadres that in government he would be repealing the Racial Discrimination Act so as to prevent any restriction of “Free Speech”. Didn’t those wide-eyed Libertarians applaud until their hands ached. Standing ovation? I’m thinking yes.

Always causes difficulty for the Left, this “free speech” meme exploited so ably by the Right. The mere whiff of a hint of a possibility of a reservation about some of the effects of hate speech and Libertarian Think tanks and their political and shock jock friends are pouring shit on you from a great height as a hater of freedom and liberty

So effective has this tactic been that the rise and rise of hate speech, mainly but not only in America, and mainly but not only supported by Rupert Murdoch, has been a major factor in the rise of neonazi groups (under various names) everywhere, and the success of right wing political parties.

This strident garbage provides, like the first blowfly maggot hatching in a sheep’s wool, the perfect environment for the Right to flourish. In nurturing racism and misogyny (like our friend in the carpark) and anti-science, it promotes the steady drift Rightward of public discourse. So effective has this been that it is noticeable, unremarkable, that social democratic parties like the US Democratic Party, Australian Labor and other Labour parties, have policies and attitudes that would have once upon a time placed them far to the Right of conservative parties of the past.

The Libertarian proponents of absolute freedom of speech might sometimes stop short, like a fist almost reaching a nose, at the point of considering whether shouting “Fire” in a crowded theatre (a metaphor taking on a new edge after the massacre at the Batman movie) should be allowed.

But the hate merchants (also applauding Abbott’s speech loudly) are not just shouting fire, they are providing matches and petrol, blocking exits, removing light fuses, cutting emergency phone lines. The classic case of the effect of this sort of thing was the terrible shooting and near killing of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and the killing of half a dozen people she was with, after the Palin camp produced a map with gunsights painted on a map showing offices of politicians who had dared to have a different political view to the appalling woman once a Diebold voting machine away from being a heartbeat away from the presidency.

In effect all shock jocks and populist politicians are painting targets on people who do not share their views. In Australia the people who said the Prime Minister was a “witch” or a “cheap prostitute whoring herself” who should be “drowned in a sack” or “kicked to death” were inviting violence in a way that should not be permitted in a civilised society whether applied to the prime minister or the unfortunate woman who was the partner of Car Park Man.

Bullying, in home, school, workplace is rightly taken very seriously these days. And it is clearly recognised that verbal bullying can cause as much distress and psychological damage as physical actions.

Yet we facilitate, protect, applaud, the bullying and incitement to bullying that takes place every day in out media. Target after target of helpless and/or vulnerable groups (Aborigines, gays, single mothers, unemployed, refugees, public housing tenants, environmentalists, unions) are chosen day after day by bully boy and bully girl shock jocks and politicians. And day after day there are attempts by the same people to denigrate, delegitimise, degrade, political and philosophical opponents. Day after day words are twisted, lies told, rage consequently incited.

This is not a political discourse that, say, Eisenhower, Menzies, or Churchill would have recognised, let alone accepted. It is however one that Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot would have felt very comfortable with.

We have laws to try to protect people from poisons in water, air, food. Time to try, however difficult it might be in practice, to reduce the amount of poison in our airwaves.

And in our car parks.

By special act

63
by Evolution • Tags: , , , , , ,

Questions for creationists:
1. Given anoxic conditions, water, variety of chemicals, electrical discharges, complex organic molecules arriving from space, how did/does “god” STOP life emerging on planets all over the universe?
2. Since all species are variable, how does “god” STOP evolution happening?
3. Since populations of species constantly become isolated geographically, how does “god” STOP speciation occurring?
4. Given two extreme genetic bottlenecks for humans – Adam and Eve (the latter being cloned from the former!), then “Noah’s family” – how do you imagine the human race became so diverse, and abundant,  in just a few hundred years?
5. If “all the animals” were each represented by a single pair on the Ark, how did they all become so abundant and diverse in a few hundred years
6. How did “Noah” collect animals from the then unknown continents of Australia, Americas, Asia, southern Africa, northern Europe?
7.  Why did Noah have an inordinate fondness for beetles?
8. If the whole earth was covered with water of sufficient depth to cover mountains, how did any plant species survive?
9. If any plant species did somehow survive, how did they reform complex ecosystems all over the world in a few hundred years?
10. Given that all the other people of the world had different ideas how they came to exist, and that none of them “remember” the Flood, what makes you think … oh, forget it, I know your answer to that one.

And here’s a bonus question, if you finish the others early:
11. Name any two of the hundreds of thousands of biological scientists who have worked on aspects of evolution since Charles Darwin. To make it easier you can include geologists and physicists. Struggling? OK, I’ll give you a start, Alfred Russell Wallace. Over to you.

Pastime with good company

16
by Economics, Education, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , ,

I recently, and somewhat belatedly, watched the Showtime tv series “The Tudors” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0758790/. Pretty good series, on the whole, and an excellent introduction to the reign of Henry VIII. It should, I reckon, be made compulsory viewing for the following people:
1 those who think religion should play a much bigger role in our society.
2 those who support monarchic/autocratic government
3 those who support laissez faire economics
4 those who think justice should be decided by public opinion not courts
5 those in favour of death penalty
6 those comfortable with huge wealth disparities
7 those against feminism
8 those against public education for all
9 those against science and medicine
10 those who believe in trickle down economics

There, I’m sure you guys can think of other lessons from history as we seemed doomed to repeat it.

Dick Tracy’s Watch

8
by Atheism, Climate Change, Environment, politics • Tags: , , , , , , ,

Things I never thought I’d see in 2012

America becoming a Theocracy
Russia become a mafia state
England voting in a Conservative govt
People allowing planet to be destroyed
Novel 1984 used as manual in west
Fundamentalism on rise everywhere
Arctic icecap disappearing
Marine fish species going extinct
Such detailed astronomy
Misogyny increasing again
Racism increasing again
Monarchy still viable
Increasing communication decreasing information
War as a first resort
Coal-fired power stations
Very concept of Human Rights attacked
World population increasing
Whaling
Creationism
Cigarettes

So, Dear Reader, what things do you see, when you look around, that you didn’t think you’d be seeing?

Inlaws and Outlaws

8
by Media, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

There are two kinds of people in the world, those who claim they are outside the law and those who are happy to be inside the law. The first kind include the Mafia, Bankers, Energy companies, Doctors, Priests, and Journalists; the second include, well, everybody else. Not much can be done about the first kind of course – the Mafia are too powerful to be tackled seriously by justice systems, bankers of course are even more powerful, and energy companies are the most powerful of all. But the other three, while also wielding considerable power are starting to face questions about their status.

Doctors are the easiest one. Some time ago, at least in Australia, and I guess in other jurisdictions, the absolute confidentiality of Doctor-Patient conversations was limited by a requirement that they (as well as nurses, teachers, police) report cases of suspected child abuse. No brainer, obvious need, no point in a doctor treating a child who is being constantly damaged without dealing with the causes of that damage. I’m not sure of the situation regarding spousal abuse, but I think increasingly doctors are being asked to pay attention to this area too. Fine, easy, all the rest of your discussions with doctors remain confidential.

Now priests. The public have been outraged, all round the world, to discover the level of paedophilia in the Catholic (mainly) and other churches. Finally people coming forward, bravely, to talk about what was done to them when they were, for example, altar boys, at the hands of trusted old priests. Lives destroyed, people psychologically scarred for life, finally, reluctantly (in many cases still part of the church), coming forward. Certainly many many more unwilling to speak out (for all kinds of reasons). Huge problem causing great individual and social damage in our community.

The public were even more outraged by the churches reaction to the dreadful crimes. Priests had been merely moved from parish to parish, not sacked, thus exposing fresh new children to these monsters. Each new parish in turn not even being told there might be a problem. Furthermore attempts were made to shut up the victims, settling out of court, insisting on confidentiality, applying pressure to hush things up.

Then on top of that, more recently, there has been discussion about the “confessional”. It quickly emerged that a paedophile priest who confessed to dreadful crimes to another priest in the confessional box would be merely given a “penance” and that would be that. There would be no reporting of the admitted crimes to the police. Furthermore, it emerged, something we had all thought a mere relic of mediaeval times, no crime confessed by anyone would ever be reported. You could go into a confession, admit to being a serial killer of young girls or old men, a paedophile, an arsonist, a child or wife abuser and killer, a terrorist, whatever, you would be merely again given a penance and sent on your way.

When this appalling situation was brought to light in the year 2012 in a civilised secular country, priests, even apparently relatively sane ones, instead of apologising and promising to implement change, defended the practice, promising to go to jail rather than ever divulge what a murderer had told them in a box representing a relic of ancient times. That is, their church doctrine outweighed any concern for public safety or well-being. Again, this is a no-brainer. It must change. The church is no longer running society and making its own laws and the laws for everyone else, as it once did, it is merely one part of a larger society. Hard to believe that this needs to be said.

So, priests a bit harder than doctors, but eventually will be brought kicking and screaming into social responsibility. Which brings us to the most recalcitrant of all, journalists.

Journalists have long seen themselves as priests or doctors who operate in the world of politics. Their role, as the “fifth estate” is to report frankly and fearlessly, speaking truth to power. In order to do that, to find the chinks in the almost impregnable walls government throws up to protect itself, they need insiders/informants/whistleblowers who can tell them the secrets the government is hiding. For that to happen the journalists, so they say, have to absolutely protect their Deep Throats, guarantee that they will hide, protect their identities, safe from fear of reprisal or prosecution. OK, so far so good, go forth our intrepid young Woodwards and Bernsteins, expose the wrong doers, the crooks and liars.

But just a moment, hold that front page, drop that dead donkey. Forty years ago Woodward and Bernstein made it clear they had no political connections. They knew, when they began, nothing about the workings and personnel of the Nixon White House, and, if I remember correctly, at some point Woodward says that he votes Republican and Bernstein has never voted. It is clear that as you read their account they simply set out to solve a puzzle, rather in the way one might solve a crossword puzzle, or the clues in a murder mystery. These days, while journalists protest loudly that they still seek the Light on the Capital Hill, there are few, very few, who follow the independent investigative journalist path. They see themselves not as objective recording angels but as political players, eyes on the main chance, playing in the main game. Once upon a time many journalists could be described as “progressive” or “liberal” I guess, though I suspect the proportion was always overstated, nowadays most undoubtedly have conservative beliefs and inclinations, matching, by pure coincidence, the beliefs and inclinations of their media proprietors (notably in US, UK and Australia of course, Mr Rupert Murdoch).

They confidently stride the corridors of power, doors of conservative party members always open, absorbing, through their pores the sound bites and slogans of their political friends. They see themselves not as impartial reporters but as the promotional arm of the conservative party concerned or, more accurately, the one favoured by their masters. (In Britain in 1987, famously, Murdoch papers switched allegiance from the Conservative Party which had outlived, it seemed, its usefulness, to Tony Blair’s New Labour, which showed signs of being useful in turn). When their friends are in Opposition they will work hard to get them into government, when in government the aim will be to keep them there forever. The politicians will feed them bits and pieces, there may well be public servants who do the same, but everything they get will have a political purpose – to bring down a government, to keep an opposition subjugated, to destroy an environmental or social movement.

In this culture the purpose of the journalist’s cone of silence is not to protect whistleblowers but to protect themselves and their political friends. To make it appear that they are getting their stories from dedicated insider, when in fact they are doing no more than legitimising, laundering, the political output of their friends. There is absolutely no justification in these cases for the journalist being able to claim the right to protect the identity of sources; every reason why journalists practicing real investigative journalism should be able to continue to do so.

The amount of secrecy in our society has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished. The priests of religion, and the high priests of journalism, would be good places to start.