Joe's Jottings

Category: Politics

  • Online Exhibitionists affect privacy for us all…

    bigbrotherI came up with the title for this piece after reading this article on the BBC Website about people who the authors of a paper called ‘online exhibitionists.  The idea is that much privacy legislation is based around the idea of what levels of privacy someone can reasonably expect to have when out and about in public.  So, if we live in a world where people are relatively circumspect, photography and publication in public places is rare, then we can expect to have some right to privacy based on a reasonable expectation that you won’t be photographed.  If you’re a celebrity, then your expectation can be less because you might reasonably expect to have people taking pictures and hassling you because the nature of your work has put you in the public eye.  Right or wrong, that’s the way it’s tended to run over recent years.

    Of course, with the rise of Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites, everyone has effectively become a ZZ List Celebrity within their own group of friends or the town in which they live in.  In fact, it might be said that by the very act of registering an account with something like Facebook, we’re actually turning our backs on our right to privacy – and that’s wrong.  I recently covered this sort of ground in my post ‘What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas’. 

    In my original plan for this piece, I was going to elaborate on this issue – but then a Tweet made me aware of a quote from Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook – “The Age of Privacy is Over”.  Here it is. He states that were Facebook being set up now he’d default all our privacy settings to Public.  Now, I quite like Facebook and have taken my privacy settings to a level with which I’m happy – but I can see Facebook losing users if they start regarding our lives as ‘entertainment feed’ for the real time Web.

    Well, given that Zukerberg’s company rely on us letting go of a bit of privacy to communicate with each other, I can see that, in the words of Christine Keeler, ‘He would say that, wouldn’t he?’

    But what has scared the bejabers out of me this morning is to see comments from some digital media folks along the lines that they feel it might be rewarding for us to ‘hide less’.  I’m sorry?  I can only imagine that those who say such things have never been on the receiving end of online stalking, have never been harassed for their sexuality expressed online, have never suffered a rock through their window from thugs because of their politics or race. 

    It may appear to be ‘hiding less’ for people in the business but it can be a matter of staying alive for some.  Even when these people do not have online profiles, their privacy can be breached accidentally or deliberately by others who do.

    Maybe the world of Big Brother has come 25 years late and is being self-inflicted.  Just how many people out there right now are echoing in their attitudes the final chilling words of ‘1984’:

    “But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”

  • Can we handle the ‘cold snap’ more effectively?

    coldcarAs the UK proves once again that it can’t handle bad weather, there was an infuriating ‘talking head’ on the TV news the other day reminding all workers, everywhere, that if they can’t get in to work, they will lose pay or have to work the time up later.  This fits in with this story, where the federation of Small Businesses was berating schools for closing and hence forcing parents to – gasp!! – take time off work to look after their kids.

    This sort of thing angers me for a number of reasons, my anger being directed at large education authorities, employers, employer organisations and central Government in reasonably equal proportions.  So, let me take today’s ‘Joe’s Jotting’ to vent my spleen at these organisations!

    Surely it should be possible for Education Authorities or Local Authorities to simply state that the schools in an area are closed or open, without leaving it to the individual schools to make the decisions and also communicate the fact to the parents of children at the school? This would at least remove the anomalous situation of a family with children attending two different schools in the same area being asked to send one to school and keep the other at home.

    Not having lots of folks trying to get their kids to school in bad conditions would at least reduce the load on the road system during the extended morning and afternoon peak traffic periods that result from bad weather.  Also, perhaps employers themselves should start planning for these occasions by looking at whether all jobs actually require the member of staff to be at their desk.  I’d argue that many higher clerical and administrative / management jobs don’t require this at all; it’s just tradition and distrust that means that an employer likes to have their staff present all the time.  Perhaps employers need to start looking at what aspects of the job CAN be done remotely, and then start utilising technology to facilitate this.  After all, most homes these days have a fast(ish) Internet connection which would allow them to access their office PC remotely, and it’s not beyond the ability of man to redirect office phones to the home number for a few days.  Of course, this requires planning, but as we’re likely to have more of this sort of weather then this planning should be done.  Of course, some jobs do require people there – retail, manufacturing and logistics, for example.

    We also have the ludicrous situation of employer’s organisations and large companies publicly announcing how staff will lose pay if they don’t turn in, when at the same time motoring organisations and the Police are saying ‘Only travel if absolutely necessary’.  I would argue that few jobs are necessary except in order to earn a wage or a profit, and whilst those are VERY important reasons to work or run a business ( 🙂 ) it is perhaps time for joined up thinking.  Why not have the Government in a position of announcing ‘Snow days’ based on advice from Police, etc. for particular areas.  Once announced, that’s it.  We actively encourage people to stay out of their cars, to NOT walk 10 miles to spend 2 hours pushing paper around a desk, to not send their kids to school (ahhh…they’d also be closed!) and generally encourage a state of affairs where people are at home or in their immediate communities, the roads are clearer for vital traffic, etc.

    Of course – this would involve either loss of wages to the worker or loss of profits to the company concerned – this would encourage companies to really look at what could be done ‘off site’, but would almost certainly need some degree of financial support from the Government.  However, if these costs were offset against savings made in the ‘on costs’ incurred when people are trying to get to work in these conditions, it might not be too excessive. 

     Certainly not more than bailing out the odd bank or two….

    And then we get to personal planning…how ridiculous it is that people buy 15 loaves of bread when it looks like being snowy for a day or two.  But that’s another story!

  • Incompetent or Dishonest – the new TV Game Show for 2010

    blackmail_smallGood Evening, and welcome to this week’s edition of ‘Incompetent or Dishonest’, the new game show where YOU get the chance to decide whether our elected representatives and civil servants are just a bunch of incompetent dorks or whether they’re actually criminally inclined thieving bastards!  We have our usual prizes – a box of pre-completed P45s held here by the delectable Suzanne from HR, and a box of pre-completed Arrest Warrants held by our own boy in blue, Chief Inspector Plod of the Yard!

    This week, our contestants are all Ministers and Civil Servants responsible for Immigration and Employment  Policies, who’ve been chosen from the many eligible Government Departments to argue for their liberty and careers!  The lucky winners get a P45 and freedom, the not so lucky losers get a stretch in Wandsworth Prison!

    Let’s go to our research department to find out a little more about this weeks contestants…. 

    There has been a depressing tendency in the last year or two for our dear Government (and their supporters across the nation) to find themselves in various embarrassing situations due to illegal immigrants being employed in various public sector jobs.   It’s not a good record for HMG – let’s just take a look:

    We don’t want to embarrass the Government too much, so let’s just look at the last couple of years… Starting off back in 2007 with illegal immigrants being able to get jobs in the Security industry.   In September 2009 Baroness Scotland is found to have employed an illegal immigrant as a housekeeper…. In November 2009 we have illegal immigrants as NHS cleaners.   And today we have stories of more illegal immigrants working for the Home Office and the NHS.

    Oh dear…not a good record is it?  Just how difficult can it be to check someone’s paperwork when they apply for jobs in the Public Sector?  After all, when many people apply for work these days one of the first things that is requested is a copy of your passport or other papers proving you are entitled to work in the UK.  Now…if you think that our brilliant civil servants aren’t checking the paperwork, or that the procedures are not being followed, you should text ‘Incompetent’ to our hotline.  On the other hand, if you think backhanders are being taken, or people are deliberately letting folks through the screening process for some reason even if they’re not entitled to work in the UK – text ‘Dishonest’.

    If some of our contestants look like winning an Arrest Warrant, they can choose to play their Joker, in which they can pass the blame on to some minimum wage minion and escape with their sorry necks.  And in a new feature for this series of Incompetent or Dishonest we give you viewers the chance to text ‘Treason’ to our hotline; if a contestant gets enough ‘Treason’ votes they’re off to The Tower!

    So…let’s play ‘Incompetent or Dishonest’ – and remember….ministerial P45s mean ‘New Government’!

     

  • The last freedom moped from nowhere city….

    2009_07_08_iran_01Back in the 1980s there was a sit com on British TV called ‘The Young Ones’, which was based in a student house and followed the surreal adventures of the students who lived there.  One of the characters was a rather pompous, arrogant, wannabe anarchist called ‘Rick’, who was constantly going on about revolution, and whose ratherfatuous comments about politics gave rise to the title of this piece…

    As my life unfolded and I became involved in left-wing politics in teh 1980s, I encountered a fair number of ‘Ricks’ – folks who were full of talk about how we should pass a resolution condemning some organisation or country or other for their actions but who were surprisingly absent when it came to the grunt work of winning elections to put ourselves in a position where we could at least effect change.

    And Ricks are still with us today, in the electronic world.  I came across this piece from the Telegraph – ‘The fatal folly of the online revolutionaries’ and was reminded of the posturing of Rick and the other Ricks I have known.  The bottom line is that the Iranian Security Services now carry out ‘deep packet inspection’ of a lot of Internet traffic, which allows them to see where traffic originates from and where it’s going, as well as content.  Which means that if someone in the West sends a supportive email message, a one to one Tweet, converses by MSN – it increases the chances of the Iranian authorities identifying the recipient and taking action.  Much of this sort of intelligence work relies on a lot of traffic between ‘targets’ that can be identified and analysed.

    So, being a slightly thoughtless, well-meaning, armchair revolutionary encouraging someone in  Iran to take action against the Government via personal message can get someone at the sharp end killed or imprisoned.  Real life, as they say, is a bitch.  A recent retaliation against Twitter probably got more news footage than many of the deaths that take place in these riots, which tells us something about the priorities of our own news services.  A further piece about ‘Twitterised Revolution’ is here.

    Now, this doesn’t mean that support cannot be offered – it means that we just have to redress the balance of risk.  And activity should not be mistaken for effective action.  My initial thoughts:

    • There are folks in Iran (and other more authoritarian and totalitarian regimes than our own) who are risking life and limb to get video footage and stories out of of their countries, and succeeding.  If you’re wanting to help the cause, when you come across this stuff promote it via your own Social Media sites, blogs, etc.  Take a look here.
    • Campaigns like the recent one to turn your avatar green for Iran are great for awareness raising.  And they don’t impact individuals ‘over there’ but offer visible support to users of the services.
    • Work within the laws of our own country, and via the political processes here (wherever here might be for you!) to raise awareness, find out what your own Government is doing and vote accordingly next time around if you don’t like it.  Engage with your elected representatives to put pressure on at a Governmental level.

    By engaging directly with people ‘on the ground’ in these regimes, encouraging illegal activity, you might get someone killed.  You will almost certainly do less good than if you work within your own country.  The folks out there can do with our moral support and the indirect support of our Government and media – they can probably do without armchair revolutionaries throwing virtual bombs and pissing off the local authorities who then retaliate with real bullets.

    Sitting back and engaging in the above suggested activities may not be sexy or cool, it may even be regarded by some as cowardly – but if you want to play at being Rick, just think about the consequences for those on the other end of the connection.  Don’t forget that the aim of the game is to effect change for those people, not provide Westerners with vicarious thrills. 

    (Image from From http://www.antiauthoritarian.net)

  • Blogging the Party Line?

    parliamentIncendiary political blogger Guido Fawkesmade an interesting observation the other day that the Left are once again saying that 2010 will be their year to dominate the Blogosphere in a run up to an election and beyond.    As he points out, they’ve also said this in 2007, and I remember similar thoughts being voiced when Labour first started playing with computers for campaigning back in the 1980s (as an ‘Old Labour’ member I was involved with Computing For Labour for a while, on and off up to my exit from the party in 1996).

    The article started me thinking about the whole business of political blogging.  Just to provide a quick view of where I personally come from politically…. I come from the left, but have found myself for the last decade inhabiting the territory of the Libertarian.  I’ll get the joke out of the way now ‘Being a Libertarian is like being a Liberal; you can come up with lots of ‘out there’ policies because you’ll never have to bear the responsibility of putting them in to action’ 🙂  My own take on Libertarianism is minimum Government, maximum possible empowerment of communities to provide services locally, with national Government providing only the necessary services and infrastructure that it would be inefficient for local communities to provide. On a personal basis I try to practice what I preach by involving myself in local organisations and efforts to develop local economies and local structures of service provision.

    Enough about me – back to the blogging.  When a party member blogs they almost by definition need to watch what they say if they intend to adhere to the Party Line.  Whilst this may not be important for the ‘rank and file’, if you’re anyone with influence or position in the Party, stating anything that is not doctrine will probably get you a slap on the wrist (or a boot up the bottom) from the powers that be, especially when it is viewed as being important for all to be singing from the same hymn sheet.  Which frequently makes a political blog by ‘well known’ politicians as interesting as reading excerpts from the Manifesto document of that party.  It’s highly unlikely you’ll find anything truly radical and rare that you’ll find anything that confronts the existing status quo within the Party. 

    My own attitude towards political blogging is to pay more attention to the more ‘independent thinkers’ outside the mainstream political parties, and also pay more attention to the ideas irrespective of who posts them.  Politics isn’t about politicians or political bloggers, spin-doctors, media pundits or journalists; they just practice the business that modern mainstream politics has become.  So, my advice would be to treat most blogs by ‘professional’ politicians as marketing efforts for the brand they’re working for.  As for the other political blogs – go for ’em!  Try them out, whether you agree or disagree with their viewpoint.  It’s ideas that are important, not which doctrine they come from.  There’s a good list of Political Blogs compiled by Iain Dale here.

    Real Politics is about our day to day lives, and how we are permitted to live them – whether that permission comes in terms of laws, resources, money, media influence.  The old labels are becoming just that – labels on political product that is less and less relevant.  Perhaps the real winners in the political blogosphere for 2010 will be ‘none of the above’ but the ‘Real Politics’ blog posts of the rest of us.

  • Thou shalt not steal…at least not from the corner shop.

    Father Tim Jones, a parish priest from a Church in York, raised a bit of a rumpus recently by suggesting that if you were desperately needy it was OK to shoplift – at least form the larger stores, where the impact would be passed on ‘en masse’ to the rest of us by increased prices, rather than theft from smaller stores where the impact is effectively borne by the shop owners.  Unsurprisingly, this has attracted some flack from senior Churchmen….

    This reminded me of the line in the classic Ealing Comedy ‘The Ladykillers’, where a bunch of crooks lying low in a boarding house run by a little old lady tell her that reporting the money that they claim to have found to the police would cause the poor policemen a lot of paperwork and, anyway, the loss of the money would only put a farthing on the price of each insurance policy.

    I have to say, though, I’ve a sneaking admiration for Father Tim’s rather forthright suggestion to the needy to shoplift, but it’s still theft and as such I can’t condone it.  So I thought when I first read the story, but then I started thinking about the actual impact of shoplifting in the UK.  In 2008, a total of 1.5 billion pounds worth of losses were reported as shoplifting losses.  It’s believed to be an underestimation, as some stores don’t bother reporting, but it includes the ‘high end’ good like electronic equipment, video games, etc. that are stolen that no one could ever accept as being needed for existence.  So, let’s say that 2 billion a year gets shoplifted – I think this is probably an overestimate, but let’s run with it.  This is about 0.7% or so of total turnover for the retail business.

    Sounds a lot of money, doesn’t it?  Well, in 2008/9 Tesco turned a 3 billion profit.  Asda managed around half a billion, Morrisons nearly a billion.  According to a recent report in the Independent, the cost of supporting the banks through their recent difficulties is around £850 billions.   Even this year, UK Bankers bonuses come in at £7.6 billions (OK…lower than the previous year when it was £13 billions).

    Does that £2 billions still feel like a lot? 

    Don’t get me wrong – theft from stores is wrong, but for those people who genuinely steal to survive – and they do exist – the alternatives such as prostitution and more direct street robberies must be worse.  Let’s not forget that the Supermarkets have made quite a bit of profit by screwing their suppliers in to the ground to get prices for things like milk, meat and vegetables as low as possible.  Bankers have acquired their bonuses after the taxpayer has bailed them out. 

    I regard the antics of these groups to be legalised theft of a magnitude that puts the amounts stolen by shoplifters into perspective.  But tell me,  who do you think we’re more likely to see in court for theft?  Someone who’s stolen a tenner’s worth of good from the local supermarket or a merchant banker who’s managed to walk off with a couple of hundred grand of tax-payer’s money?

  • Do No Evil – Ursula Le Guin, The Authors Guild and Google

    dr_evilDuring Google’s formative years, the company decided to come up withthe equivalent of a short mission / vision statement that summed up what it was to be Google.  After some serious thinking, the slogan emerged.  ‘Do No Evil’.  Nice…although as someone pointed out – it really is just civilised good manners to do no evil.  Why make such a fuss about it?

    Well, the years pass and Google just keep dipping a toe in the muddy waters of naughtiness, with occasional activities that, whilst usually not up there with breeding sharks with head mounted laser cannons, a la the handsome fellow top left, might be construed as being pretty darn close to very bad indeed. 

    Take a look at parts of John Batelle’s book ‘The Search’.

    Anyway….enough of the history lesson.  Recently Google have been scanning books.  Hundreds of thousands of books.  MILLIONS of books!Some old and out of copyright…other…not so old and definitely not out of copyright.  And they’re going to be scanning millions more.  Their aim is to create an online scanned library of books to equal the scope and reach of national libraries.  Now, various settlements have been agreed and Google take efforts to try and restrict copying of copyrighted materials, but there have been a number of legal blocks to Google based on their breach of copyright.

    The US Authors Guild – an organisation that supports the rights of authors in the united States – has recently entered in to an agreement with Google to support the project.  In many ways, this gives the project the apparent support of a large number of authors, but some individuals – like Ursual Le Guin – are quitting the AG in protest.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/dec/24/le-guin-authors-guild-deal

    I can see the point of the author’s protest – after all I’m a published author myself – but at the same time agree that Google seem to be taking steps to restrict the amount of the book that you can read online.  However, my fears are for the future.  This set of agreements seem to have given Googlean incredible’head start’ on what is effectively a large tranche of the world’s written knowledge.  What happens in a few years time when a library or a publisher hits hard times, and that nice friendly Googlecomes along and says ‘Hey, we can help.  Just let us have the rights to display all of each of your books online, and an e-book publishing right, and we’ll buy you out / licence your stuff.’  All of a sudden Google starts becoming the arbiter of what’s published across the board.

    At themoment,  Google can effectively make or break web sites the world over by the simple expedient of adjusting it’s search engines or, in some cases, excluding sites directly.  Google currently only takes the latter steps when they’re compelled to by law or someone like the Chinese Government tells them to do so, but the technology is there.  Again, see ‘The Search’.  Now, imagine 2015 when Googlehave the online rights to the book collections of a few major publishers.  And you happen to run ‘Bill’s Books’ – a little shop still selling books the old fashioned way – and you have old stock that might just conflict withthe publisher that Google have just bought up.  You might just find yourself falling off the search results… Conflict of interest, maybe?

    I’m afraid I don’t trust anyone withthe sort of control that Googleis getting over the world’s knowledge and information.  It’s an extreme idea, but could Google end therevolution of available knowledge started by Gutenberg.  If all knowledgeis increasingly online, and access is directly or indirectly arbitrated by one corporation, that is a Hell of an opportunity for censorship of the sort last practised in the Middle ages by the Catholic Church or by the Totalitarian Governments of the 20th Century.

    Like most of us – I use Google quite extensively.  I’m just not quite sure that the spoon I’m using to sup with is long enough anymore.

  • A sermon from Martin Luther King…still relevant today.

    Dr. King first delivered this sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he served as co-pastor.

    Peace on Earth…

    This Christmas season finds us a rather bewildered human race. We have neither peace within nor peace without. Everywhere paralyzing fears harrow people by day and haunt them by night. Our world is sick with war; everywhere we turn we see its ominous possibilities. And yet, my friends, the Christmas hope for peace and good will toward all men can no longer be dismissed as a kind of pious dream of some utopian. If we don’t have good will toward men in this world, we will destroy ourselves by the misuse of our own instruments and our own power. Wisdom born of experience should tell us that war is obsolete. There may have been a time when war served as a negative good by preventing the spread and growth of an evil force, but the very destructive power of modern weapons of warfare eliminates even the possibility that war may any longer serve as a negative good. And so, if we assume that life is worth living, if we assume that mankind has a right to survive, then we must find an alternative to war?and so let us this morning explore the conditions for peace. Let us this morning think anew on the meaning of that Christmas hope: “Peace on Earth, Good Will toward Men.” And as we explore these conditions, I would like to suggest that modern man really go all out to study the meaning of nonviolence, its philosophy and its strategy.

    We have experimented with the meaning of nonviolence in our struggle for racial justice in the United States, but now the time has come for man to experiment with nonviolence in all areas of human conflict, and that means nonviolence on an international scale.

    Now let me suggest first that if we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective. No individual can live alone; no nation can live alone, and as long as we try, the more we are going to have war in this world. Now the judgment of God is upon us, and we must either learn to live together as brothers or we are all going to perish together as fools.

    Yes, as nations and individuals, we are interdependent. I have spoken to you before of our visit to India some years ago. It was a marvelous experience; but I say to you this morning that there were those depressing moments. How can one avoid being depressed when one sees with one’s own eyes evidences of millions of people going to bed hungry at night? How can one avoid being depressed when one sees with ones own eyes thousands of people sleeping on the sidewalks at night? More than a million people sleep on the sidewalks of Bombay every night; more than half a million sleep on the sidewalks of Calcutta every night. They have no houses to go into. They have no beds to sleep in. As I beheld these conditions, something within me cried out: “Can we in America stand idly by and not be concerned?” And an answer came: “Oh, no!” And I started thinking about the fact that right here in our country we spend millions of dollars every day to store surplus food; and I said to myself: “I know where we can store that food free of charge? in the wrinkled stomachs of the millions of God’s children in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and even in our own nation, who go to bed hungry at night.”

    It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality. Did you ever stop to think that you can’t leave for your job in the morning without being dependent on most of the world? You get up in the morning and go to the bathroom and reach over for the sponge, and that’s handed to you by a Pacific islander. You reach for a bar of soap, and that’s given to you at the hands of a Frenchman. And then you go into the kitchen to drink your coffee for the morning, and that’s poured into your cup by a South American. And maybe you want tea: that’s poured into your cup by a Chinese. Or maybe you’re desirous of having cocoa for breakfast, and that’s poured into your cup by a West African. And then you reach over for your toast, and that’s given to you at the hands of an English-speaking farmer, not to mention the baker. And before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you’ve depended on more than half of the world. This is the way our universe is structured, this is its interrelated quality. We aren’t going to have peace on earth until we recognize this basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality.

    Now let me say, secondly, that if we are to have peace in the world, men and nations must embrace the nonviolent affirmation that ends and means must cohere. One of the great philosophical debates of history has been over the whole question of means and ends. And there have always been those who argued that the end justifies the means, that the means really aren’t important. The important thing is to get to the end, you see.

    So, if you’re seeking to develop a just society, they say, the important thing is to get there, and the means are really unimportant; any means will do so long as they get you there? they may be violent, they may be untruthful means; they may even be unjust means to a just end. There have been those who have argued this throughout history. But we will never have peace in the world until men everywhere recognize that ends are not cut off from means, because the means represent the ideal in the making, and the end in process, and ultimately you can’t reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree.

    It’s one of the strangest things that all the great military geniuses of the world have talked about peace. The conquerors of old who came killing in pursuit of peace, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, and Napoleon, were akin in seeking a peaceful world order. If you will read Mein Kampf closely enough, you will discover that Hitler contended that everything he did in Germany was for peace. And the leaders of the world today talk eloquently about peace. Every time we drop our bombs in North Vietnam, President Johnson talks eloquently about peace. What is the problem? They are talking about peace as a distant goal, as an end we seek, but one day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means. All of this is saying that, in the final analysis, means and ends must cohere because the end is preexistent in the means, and ultimately destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends.

    Now let me say that the next thing we must be concerned about if we are to have peace on earth and good will toward men is the nonviolent affirmation of the sacredness of all human life. Every man is somebody because he is a child of God. And so when we say “Thou shalt not kill,” we’re really saying that human life is too sacred to be taken on the battlefields of the world. Man is more than a tiny vagary of whirling electrons or a wisp of smoke from a limitless smoldering. Man is a child of God, made in His image, and therefore must be respected as such. Until men see this everywhere, until nations see this everywhere, we will be fighting wars. One day somebody should remind us that, even though there may be political and ideological differences between us, the Vietnamese are our brothers, the Russians are our brothers, the Chinese are our brothers; and one day we’ve got to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. But in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile. In Christ there is neither male nor female. In Christ there is neither Communist nor capitalist. In Christ, somehow, there is neither bound nor free. We are all one in Christ Jesus. And when we truly believe in the sacredness of human personality, we won’t exploit people, we won’t trample over people with the iron feet of oppression, we won’t kill anybody.

    There are three words for “love” in the Greek New Testament; one is the word “eros.” Eros is a sort of esthetic, romantic love. Plato used to talk about it a great deal in his dialogues, the yearning of the soul for the realm of the divine. And there is and can always be something beautiful about eros, even in its expressions of romance. Some of the most beautiful love in all of the world has been expressed this way.

    Then the Greek language talks about “philia,” which is another word for love, and philia is a kind of intimate love between personal friends. This is the kind of love you have for those people that you get along with well, and those whom you like on this level you love because you are loved.

    Then the Greek language has another word for love, and that is the word “agape.” Agape is more than romantic love, it is more than friendship. Agape is understanding, creative, redemptive good will toward all men. Agape is an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return. Theologians would say that it is the love of God operating in the human heart. When you rise to love on this level, you love all men not because you like them, not because their ways appeal to you, but you love them because God loves them. This is what Jesus meant when he said, “Love your enemies.” And I’m happy that he didn’t say, “Like your enemies,” because there are some people that I find it pretty difficult to like. Liking is an affectionate emotion, and I can’t like anybody who would bomb my home. I can’t like anybody who would exploit me. I can’t like anybody who would trample over me with injustices. I can’t like them. I can’t like anybody who threatens to kill me day in and day out. But Jesus reminds us that love is greater than liking. Love is understanding, creative, redemptive good will toward all men. And I think this is where we are, as a people, in our struggle for racial justice. We can’t ever give up. We must work passionately and unrelentingly for first-class citizenship. We must never let up in our determination to remove every vestige of segregation and discrimination from our nation, but we shall not in the process relinquish our privilege to love.

    I’ve seen too much hate to want to hate, myself, and I’ve seen hate on the faces of too many sheriffs, too many white citizens’ councilors, and too many Klansmen of the South to want to hate, myself; and every time I see it, I say to myself, hate is too great a burden to bear. Somehow we must be able to stand up before our most bitter opponents and say: “We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws and abide by the unjust system, because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good, and so throw us in jail and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hour and drag us out on some wayside road and leave us half-dead as you beat us, and we will still love you. Send your propaganda agents around the country, and make it appear that we are not fit, culturally and otherwise, for integration, and we’ll still love you. But be assured that we’ll wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom. We will not only win freedom for ourselves; we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.”

    If there is to be peace on earth and good will toward men, we must finally believe in the ultimate morality of the universe, and believe that all reality hinges on moral foundations. Something must remind us of this as we once again stand in the Christmas season and think of the Easter season simultaneously, for the two somehow go together. Christ came to show us the way. Men love darkness rather than the light, and they crucified him, and there on Good Friday on the cross it was still dark, but then Easter came, and Easter is an eternal reminder of the fact that the truth-crushed earth will rise again. Easter justifies Carlyle in saying, “No lie can live forever.” And so this is our faith, as we continue to hope for peace on earth and good will toward men: let us know that in the process we have cosmic companionship.

    In 1963, on a sweltering August afternoon, we stood in Washington, D.C., and talked to the nation about many things. Toward the end of that afternoon, I tried to talk to the nation about a dream that I had had, and I must confess to you today that not long after talking about that dream I started seeing it turn into a nightmare. I remember the first time I saw that dream turn into a nightmare, just a few weeks after I had talked about it. It was when four beautiful, unoffending, innocent Negro girls were murdered in a church in Birmingham, Alabama. I watched that dream turn into a nightmare as I moved through the ghettos of the nation and saw my black brothers and sisters perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity, and saw the nation doing nothing to grapple with the Negroes’ problem of poverty. I saw that dream turn into a nightmare as I watched my black brothers and sisters in the midst of anger and understandable outrage, in the midst of their hurt, in the midst of their disappointment, turn to misguided riots to try to solve that problem. I saw that dream turn into a nightmare as I watched the war in Vietnam escalating, and as I saw so-called military advisors, sixteen thousand strong, turn into fighting soldiers until today over five hundred thousand American boys are fighting on Asian soil. Yes, I am personally the victim of deferred dreams, of blasted hopes, but in spite of that I close today by saying I still have a dream, because, you know, you can’t give up in life. If you lose hope, somehow you lose that vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of all. And so today I still have a dream.

    I have a dream that one day men will rise up and come to see that they are made to live together as brothers. I still have a dream this morning that one day every Negro in this country, every colored person in the world, will be judged on the basis of the content of his character rather than the color of his skin, and every man will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. I still have a dream that one day the idle industries of Appalachia will be revitalized, and the empty stomachs of Mississippi will be filled, and brotherhood will be more than a few words at the end of a prayer, but rather the first order of business on every legislative agenda. I still have a dream today that one day justice will roll down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream. I still have a dream today that in all of our state houses and city halls men will be elected to go there who will do justly and love mercy and walk humbly with their God. I still have a dream today that one day war will come to an end, that men will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, that nations will no longer rise up against nations, neither will they study war any more. I still have a dream today that one day the lamb and the lion will lie down together and every man will sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid. I still have a dream today that one day every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill will be made low, the rough places will be made smooth and the crooked places straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. I still have a dream that with this faith we will be able to adjourn the councils of despair and bring new light into the dark chambers of pessimism. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when there will be peace on earth and good will toward men. It will be a glorious day, the morning stars will sing together, and the sons of God will shout for joy.

  • Is this really to the public good?

    911buildings A couple of weeks ago I came across this article in the Guardian (not my normal read, but their online media pages are useful) referring to the publication by the Wikileaks organisationof an archive of text and pager messages from 9th September, 2001, which effectively provides a narration to the terrorist attacks on New York city that day.

    The archive contains text and page messages generated by both human beings and computerised systems.  Many IT systems fall back on sending pager and text messages when something goes wrong, and unsurprisingly a lot of IT systems were going wrong that day.  There were also lots of ‘tactical’ messages betweenthe emergency services, requesting people come in to work, etc.  But what I find rather distressing – and maybe I’m over-sensitive here – is that amount of private messages between normal people involved in a very abnormal situation – folks in imminent danger of death reaching out to their loved ones in the only way possible to say ‘I love you’; worried watchers of unfolding events realising that their family was in the middle of it all and asking them to get in touch; basically, an awful lot of people in extremis reaching out to family and friends with concern and to say, in some cases, Goodbye.

    Now, who on Earth could consider the latter clutch of messages to be of any public interest whatsoever?  I’m honestly dismayed that Wikileaks did this.  There are soem things in this world that are just personal.  They may be of titillation value to the public, but to argue that there is any public interest value in publishing such personal messages in this way just beggars belief.  I have to say I’d be very annoyed if I found a loved one’s last message to me published for all and sundry to read without my say so.

    Wikileaksdoes a lot of good work, but they need to realise that there are categories of hidden information in the world.  For the sake of argument, let’s call them Sensibly Secret, Public Interest, Private and Personal.  Sensibly Secret is stuff that’s been officially labelled as ‘secret’ for purposes of national security, and validly so.  Public Interest is stuff that is generated by our governments, local and national, our leaders, businesses, etc. that some may wish to hide but that it is genuinely in the wider public interest to ‘out’ – a government department covering up mistakes, a business hiding poor safety reports, bad public budget management, public safety, military errors that have cost the lives of our troops, etc.  Then there’s Private – things that businesses and individuals MAY wish to keep secret – the day to day details of the running of a business, or Government, which may need to be publicised or made available to others in order to ensure that no wrongdoing is taking place.  And then there’s personal; the stuff of the red-top tabloids; who Tiger Woods is sleeping with/ has slept with, whether x,y or z is gay or has a fish fetish, and private texts and emails between people facing death.

    There….not perfect but not too difficult to get ones head around, is it?  Personal information may well get out in to the world but it isn’t the role of whistle blowing groups like Wikileaks to publicise it.  There are enough real, live, current Public Interest issues to chase up without becoming an electronic tabloid.

  • A Modest Proposal to focus Climate Negotiator’s Minds.

    globalwarmingIn the last few minutes of the final episode of the TV series ‘Blackadder Goes Forth’, Blackadder and his Company are poised to go ‘over the top’ from their trench to charge the German lines.  In the background, artillery guns are shelling the enemy trenches; it looks like the end for our boys.  Suddenly, the firing stops.  Silence.  Birdsong.  Private Baldrick dares to suggest that the war may be over, and for a moment we start to think that the series might just have a happy ending.

    George: Well, hurrah! The big knobs have gone round the table and yanked the
    iron out of the fire!

    Darling: Thank God! We lived through it! The Great War: 1914-1917. 

    And at that point you realise that it’s not to be, and our chaps charge forth in to TV comedy history.  

    Over the last few days I’ve been willing the ‘big knobs’ around the various tables at Copenhagen to bury their differences and come away with some sort of legally binding structure that  will at least help my God-daughter, niece and all other rug-rats known to me to grow up in a world that is not an ecological disaster area.  I guess that deep in my heart I knew it was likely to be a hard job – a few weeks ago I attended a ‘Climatewalk’ event and expressed the view in debate that Copenhagen was unlikely to deliver, and at the time of writing it looks like I was right.

    And so it goes on.  Politicians and non-Governmental representatives make statements about returning to discuss a binding deal in 2010, and then you know what it will be – 2011, 2012, and so on.  And all the time the global climate systems get closer to the ‘tipping point’ beyond which we cannot predict, let alone influence, what will happen.  Perhaps the task is too big for our elected representatives – maybe they’re holding out for some sort of miraculous intervention, or even hoping that something will happen in 2012 to remove the problem.  Some Governments are no doubt relying on being out of power in a year’s time, and thus leaving the problem for others.  And others do probably care more about keeping their own national interest sound than anything to do with the wider picture.

    And anyway, for most people involved, when the coastal plains flood, when there are wars over water, when we have vast tracts of forests burning every summer – never mind.  They’ll have their bolt holes and armies to protect them on a personal basis.

    So….a Modest Proposal. 

    We live in a world stitched together by incredibly effective communications.  There is no longer a need for, for example, the UN to be in New York, or negotiations like this to be held in nice cities like Copenhagen.  I propose that we find a suitably sized, low-lying island or atoll in the Pacific – one that will basically drown in the next decades if we don’t get things sorted.  One where the food supply is governed by the climate, and that would best be in an area that gets a few typhoons.  We then build a massive conference centre with living accommodation on this island, and choose by lot people of senior executive level from Government, Non-Governmental and Business organisations to go there and stay there until deals are sorted out. 

    And just to concentrate the minds of politicians, we send their families there as well.  Visting rights would be arranged – we’re civilised.  Put the beaurocrats there from places like the UN, and let ’em negotiate.  Because they’re not coming home until it’s fixed.  

    Perhaps the world’s leading polluters could send the families of their leaders to this paradise – no expense would be spared in making it a beautiful and safe place to live.  It’s just one that will drown in a few years, along with everyone on it, if we don’t sort things out.  Maybe generations of people will grow up there whilst the big knobs try and sort things out.

    I know, it’s a crackpot, harebrained scheme – mad.  And, as Edmund Blackadder might have commented were he around today, who’d notice another mad scheme in a world full of them.