Immunity from publicity

Clearly money buys privilege and lots of money buys lots of privilege, shed-loads full infact. What it should not buy is the right to live a life any other than upright, moral, considerate and caring. So when our super-rich buy immunity from press coverage of exposure over some alleged misdoing then natural justice is being perverted. Absolutely sure, the private family behind the public image needs protection from prurient press intrusion. Lead a blameless life and there is no press attention. The press have no interest in normality, only in scandal, cover-ups and attempts at secrecy whilst claiming upright decency.

One consequence of buying privilege is that the public have an interest in knowing how that privilege was obtained and what uses or abuses it gives access to. Even a shy retiring recluse is not immune from that concern. Naturally the interest reaches fever pitch for an attractive totty who puts themselves about, when it suits them, to attract media attention or whose money generation depends on them being noticed by the public. Privilege does not buy absolution from tainted sources of money nor the freedom to revel in the excesses that privilege can provide. Exceed the bounds of decency and the public have a legitimate right to know who is doing what and in which circumstances. It is the unwritten pact. You can access the privileges that are impossible for us to ever taste but in doing so you must exercise restraint and not abuse that freedom. Be honorable, upright, considerate and moderate in your take up of the privileges that you have unfettered access to and all is well.

The media in checking out possible abuses or blatant mis-representations are not going to be concerned in making any distinction between the private private life a totty would like to keep to themselves and the public private life the next moment they are seeking to draw attention to. You are in the public eye because you are the beneficiary of privilege. Step off the straight and narrow and media attention is a rightful and proper consequence. We need inquisitive media to draw attention to where that public goodwill is being openly abused. If anyone puts about false claims there are existing legal remedies of slander or libel. As a privilege person you get an advantaged start in the process and the money you have to buy your privilege gives you an edge over other contestants. That is where any false rumours should be founded.

Understandably the family members around a totty want and should have a life out of the frenzy of media attention. However they get to enjoy the consequences of access to privilege so cannot be totally immune. If the totty strays off the straight and narrow, whether a momentary lapse or a hidden secrets begins to unravel, the public arena is the rightful consequence. It is the only counter-check we, the public, have against the extremes that privilege can give access to. So an injunction is an insult and a super-injunction is an absurdity. Lead an upright life with nothing to fear, or get tempted and stray with the real risk of experiencing the right and proper finite limits of privilege. Exposure.

Requiem

One thing I missed off my profile is that I am a bird lover. Not active not skilled just enjoy watching birds in the wild, love their displays and I get excited by the challenge of trying to identify any, other than all those small anonymous small brown birds. Wished I was not so tone death that I cannot remember one call from another. The king of all birds, the birds of prey. Love them to bits, so skilled, so focused, so swift and agile.

Today I found a headless Hobby on my parking bay. A magnificent bird. It is only when you have it in your hands and spread out its wings to full extent do really appreciate the size and power of these birds. Wonderful. So so sad at the death of this bird in its prime.. Not just this male of course, but I imagine already in to breeding, so its mate and its chicks are now also vulnerable.

Unless anyone knows anything better, I imagine it can only be a cat kill. Much as I like cats they do cause carnage to the wild bird life. Not having a cat myself I do so wish the surrounding neighbors with cats would keep them in a night.

Osama Bin Laden

It was all very macho gungho stuff. Helicopters flying in, middle of night, marines abseiling, night sights, stun grenades and the taking down of public enemy number one. Taking down and claiming justice for all those that died as direct consequence of allegedly one of the most evil man on the planet. Except it is leaving a nasty taste in my mouth. With a force ratio of six to one in their favour, surprise on their side and definitely superior fire power what gun play was essential to kill one unarmed man, shoot two woman and a boy?

America just seems to be missing the point time and time again. You are judged by your actions. If you claim moral superiority you have to demonstrate it in each and very action. This was not a surgical efficient operation, it was not a display of minimum force to achieve an end, there was no show of compassion in victory, just cold blooded taking of lives.

Here was a man at the very centre, the hub of vibrant activity actively plotting to wreak havoc and destruction around the world. Kill or carnage would ensue. Not the picture I am getting. Just an isolated man, lost, burnt out, but too important to be abandoned. Yet no longer able to inspire and spark fire into the bellies of new fanatics, no longer a leader and no longer wanted by those that used to strain to hear every word. Just a collection of has been souvenirs and thoughts. Brought to justice most certainly to answer all the charges against him, but not just killed in cold blood because you can. Where can you draw a line between those terrorist whose actions you despise and your own actions if your methods are indistinguishable?

We expect our leaders to take the moral high ground and to be exemplars in all things. To authorise an armed raid inside a friendly allies territory without their consent or knowledge, what signal is this supposed to send to the world? To allow yourself to be seen to sit around with cohorts watching the ballgame play out and be a willing participant to the cold blooded killing of an unarmed man is not a good image. We don't do gladiator contests for good reasons. If we have to kill, we kill humanely, with dignity, with respect and not as a spectacle for selected viewers. A leader has to authorise, not participate, to be fully aware of the consequences but not a signed up witness.

So a series of miscalculations will almost certainly fuel a new wave of fanaticism that will lead to who knows what. In creating a martyr the US of A has missed an opportunity to use the one person that could be fronted in the inevitable talks the precede any settlement. He may have been a worn out old man but he still was a recognisable symbol that both sides could use to vocalise their differences. Because in the end it always comes down to talking. Bullets are never the end.

Head in the sands

Now I am not particularly concerned about diminishing oil reserves. As the scarcity increases so up go the prices, increasing the economics of finding a successor energy source. Whatever that may prove to be.

We must expect sea levels to rise by at least 2 metres and the seven metre total rise may well prove to be not so far wrong. What is of concern is the speed of rise. We are seeing every indication that it will not be a nice steady even rise but a series of catastrophic collapse of systems that then feed in to fuel the next collapse. So expect a huge storm and the sudden inundation that then goes on to re-occur with increasing frequency. All the worlds major cities are sited at seaports. If London is anything to go by, their essential umbilical cords linking and servicing the city, are buried underground. Not good news when major inundations are to be anticipated. So dreadful inconvenient consequences, huge infrastructure reorganising costs and some billion people moving further inland into already congested hard worked land. But survivable.

Lets not forget either about that very small percentage of the whole worlds population that take for themselves an enormous huge slice of all the worlds resources, whether food, consumer goods, energy or rare metals. The US of A takes more than the lions share and seems to be in dream trance that it can just carry on and only needs to make token gestures. The problem is of course, if the whole of those resource that they take for themselves, were taken away and redistributed evenly the poorest people would only see a very small improvement in access to water and food and little benefit in improved housing, health or education. Which is not a reason to not address an imbalance. US of A is now a weak spent nation and it is only a matter of time before they have to concede and give up what they have taken to be their birthright. It is just becomes a matter of how painful and disruptive is that process.

The most likely scenario looming around the corner is that, on past performance, we, the world populations and our governments, still have not learnt the lessons of peaceful negotiation and, under the duress of food crisis, rising seas, scarcity of essential minerals, someone somewhere will resort, as they always have in the past, to power tactics. Where, as the end result, the world, to all intents, is lost in a radioactive maelstrom. Lets hope, more on a wing and a pray than derived from any rational thought process, that we manage somehow to side step that particular insanity.

It is also just possible that we humans have now so tinkered with the gearing's that those world eco-systems that tend towards a stability are now put into question. So that not only might we be the cause of the gulf stream shut down, or least its moving off, but that we might have introduced an incipient instability into what were otherwise complex self-referential regulating systems, always veering towards some stability. Even if not a stability necessarily supportive of any current biological forms. Though the scale of our human activities do now have impact on our planets regulatory systems, the proportion of our inputs to the planet's mass are still, hopefully, so small that any time-scale of consequence will be long after any humans have any cause for concern. But we do now significantly impact on all those feedback loops that, in the past, use to enable a confident assurance for future environment trends. Not any longer.

This then is my real concern, our impact on climate change. But not only on the climate but the organic lifeforms we are interdependent on. As high-tier feeders and need healthy and vigorous lower forms to provide for the forms we get to eat and survive on. There is the rub. We now control and contain how almost all of the environmental issues that lifeforms depend on. There are only a few patches left on earth of raw natural lifeforms diversity where 'Nature' has any chance of responding to the climate changes we have induced. Elsewhere we rip up centuries of soil micro-organisms, dump loads of narrow range fertiliser's and dowse anything that survives with herbicide and pesticide. Left alone, my money is on 'Nature' to re-establish new lifeforms best suited to the conditions that will come to prevail. That of course might not serve our best interest. Worse than that of course we are not in a position to leave 'Nature' to do its own thing. We limit and control too much. Yet we do not have a blueprint for future lifeforms to suit our needs. Our grasp of how organisms are interdependent and self-supporting is paltry. We are not even at first base to having any clue as to how 'Nature' can respond and recover from the climate change disasters staring us in the face. If 'Nature' has time to adapt to a very likely swift series of changes on the horizon we have to give it a real chance. We have to rapidly reverse diversity decline as diversity is 'Nature's only real tool.

We are entirely at the end of the road for the Roman approach of dominate and control all natural forms as well as those rebellious tribes. We so urgently need to get back to something approaching an Iron Age relationship to the world around us. As an immediate stepping off point we must stop right now the relentless pillaging of our Earth's resources, see previous, Right to Plunder . We have to make a major commitment to living intune, support and in harmony with the organic forms around us. We have to vitalise a rich and diverse habitat where all organic forms can flourish. We have to give up eating when and what we want and desire to surviving on what 'Nature' can offer us without detriment. Then we might just have a hope of surviving the next tumultuous decades ahead.

The greener grass

Looking over the fence at the grass in the next field, it always has looked much more attractive and tastier than the grass in your own field. It was ever thus. A slight tinge of envy, even jealously, is an acceptable norm for how much better, enjoyable, less pressured, easier, more rewarding or more appreciated that boss, partner, home, housework, neighbour, colleagues life style is, compared to the drudgery, repetitiveness, pressured, under paid and definitely under appreciated of your own unique contributions. Until of course you cross the fence line only to discover that that other grass has it own special blend of demands, expectations, obligatory deadline that make your own patch, on reflection, so much more sweeter. Until we can parallel exist in multiple roles, all at the one and same time, we will never ever be in a position to fully appreciate the contra-demands and burdens of those seemingly so simple alternative roles.

So tolerance, understanding and a tight rein on the envy and jealousy are the order of the day. When it all flares up, then calm talking will sort it out, or, as a last resort, you make the determined effort to cross in to the next field. You have choices, sort out disagreements or refuse to accept and put in the extra effort to take on the coveted position for yourself. So long as the disparities are not too extreme and there is some chance, no matter how remote, that you or your child's child could cross the divide. When that becomes vanishing thin to totally improbable, then the bile of resentment diffuses. At the point when comparisons between your lot and the others lot become so extreme that manifestly, they, the other, is getting totally disproportionate return for clearly very dissimilar demands; when words can no longer bridge the gap between discrepancies and the obstacles to move across become insurmountable, then resentment is the order of the day, with dire consequences for us all.

For the last two decades the gap between the haves and the have-nots have become polarised to an extreme degree and worse still, the fence has become hugely un-scalable. Resentment abounds. In a manifestly unjust world there are no longer restraints. There is nothing to lose, so take what you want, when and how. Any consequence cannot not be worse than your face pushed up against blatant unjust inequality. Who can hold on to dreams when the odds are so stacked against you?

Those licking from the cream self-justify whichever way they choose as to why they should be special, why they should stand apart from those masses. There are no arguments which can overcome the divisive society that results from their self-centred greed and interest. If only you could bring up the drawbridge, create a ring fenced communities with only nice successfully people, like you, keeping all the unpleasant masses with their smelly poverty and problems out, there, at arm stretched length.

Society is not like, them that do the work and us that lap the cream. You need, we all need, each other. Need to coexist together, interdependent. It just cannot work when the divide becomes so extreme. How can anyone rationalise why this persons gets the cream and sets their children into the cream pot to start off their own lives but all those other persons gets all the pain, the grief, the unrelenting toil and the hopeless inability to escape the escalating debts with children doomed to follow and never lift a hope. Everyone needs luck, rightly so, our children should be in a position to benefit from the luck we have exploited. It just degrees. Playing from a clean deck. Not two disparate packs, one for the losers with no get out of jail cards and the other stacked with only court cards, chances and opportunities.

We are on a self-destruct path. The ever widening gap is immoral, beyond justification. Yet the keys to all our futures are only in the hands of these few enjoying the benefits. These same who show no desire to have any conscious let alone give up on their good life. Resentment boils. We have to get back to looking across to grass fields with a surmountable fence.