'Tankers' have the money , bloggers have the brains

Asymmetrical journalism : bloggers besting 'tankers'

A red broadband and three cords , located somewhere in a bedroom in the hinterland backwaters , may not seem equal to all the corporate firepower concentrated in the Think Tank phalanxes of  Washington, London, Canberra and Ottawa.

But didn't Mr Bono also evoke having "The Truth" in his definition of asymmetrical "punk" journalism ?

I am sure he did.

The battle ground is Climate Change, the stakes (a big cliche, but still true) "The Fate of the Earth" .

Libertarian Think Tanks

There are hundreds of wealthy libertarian Think Tanks world wide that deny that "Man"  has caused potentially irreversible Climate Change, indeed deny any limits on "Man's" ability to quickly get out any jam He or nature might have... temporarily ...created.

It will probably take tens of thousands of part-time bloggers, in tens of thousands of bedrooms,  to successfully combat this Life-killing philosophy -- but I am sure we can do it.

They have the money true ; but after all , we have the beauty and the brains....

Three cords and a (broad) band : PUNK journalism

Once upon a time, long ago and far away, there was an orphan feller from way out in the country ; a yokel with a Gibson J-200, a boom box dreadnought with only three frets ,way up at the cowboy end of the stick.

Real dumb I know (!!!!!!) , but this musically-challenged rustic claimed that was all he needed to be a real big songwriter.

 Just three chords and the truth.

I'd be right some glad to challenge his fantastic claim, but unfortunately I haven't written any hit songs ---- unlike him.

In fact, the truth be know, friend , the famous Harlan Howard has probably written more big hits than you've had bowel movements.

Even in hermetically-sealed North Korea, the kids and their mommies & daddies all perk up whenever his tunes come on the one-channel radio, even if set to somewhat different words than Harlan originally dreamed up.

You may better know his boast as adapted by the U-2's Bono or the Rolling Stones' Keith Richard, but you definitely know of his sentiments : call it  DIY / Punk / or Postmodernity, it defines our age from that of our parents.

I couldn't get three chords together, though God knows I tried many times , but now in 2012,  its "three cords and a (broad) band"  and that is something that I am definitely up for !

With just two fingers , I can't type as fast as as I talk, let alone as fast as I think ---- but then no John Henry in tandem with a steam shovel ever could   (-;

The Blog-o-sphere is just made for people like me.

What it isn't made for, is the Global Cities' elite press corps : they are now irrelevant . Gone, Done. Dead. Buried. Stiff. As a parrot.

Once upon a time, back about the time of the 1933 election and FDR , peoples' daily lives stopped being impacted hardest by stuff down at their local City Hall : the New Deal was truly a whole new thing.

In response, big media's best explainers (shout out to Walter Lippmann) moved right along with the biggest impactors into the big national capitals.

 And then, from 1940 onwards, they moved onto the world's big global cities like London, Washington and Tokyo.

They and they alone had the exclusives on all the earthquakes and the firestorms happening in political Washington and political Moscow - the stuff we all needed to know in a nuclear age.

But now they're totally irrelevant. No, not  real earthquakes and firestorms - those natural events are more relevant than ever.

But, fundamentally, that's also the crux of the problem for the Washington Press Corps and all their kinfolk worldwide.

When our biggest news stories are literally 'global' such as climate change or hemisphere-wide in impact (East Coast rising sea levels) who needs a press card or a permanent invite to the White House to 'do' the story ?

Just stick a wet finger up in the air and then blog away : as Stewart Alsop (or someone a lot like him) said a long, long time ago "you don't have to be a weatherman, to know which way the wind blows."

So my beat is the world and my audience is the world.

Everyone in the world is simultaneously both a reporter upon rising temperatures AND a consumer of those rising temperatures.

We renewers and denial-fighters , in every one of our globe's 24 time zones,  have frontline seats for the News Story of the Century.

 It is happening out here in the real world, in the real atmosphere, the real power plant, the real ocean and it being won or lost "out here" in the virtual world of the blog-o-sphere.

Sorry Facebook, LinkedIn ,Twitter : while you do an excellent distribution job, it is the bloggers (from Pros with Pimps to the greenest freelance amateur) that provide the content you distribute.

Yes the deniers (unlike us) are mostly (very well) paid to blog full time and yes Denial, like Greed itself, "Never Sleeps".

But be forewarned, neither do we.....

"Howard Florey stole the true story of wartime penicillin - we're here to steal it back !"

People ask what is the purpose of this blog/book "MO goes PO".

Here it is:

America - and Britain - and a whole lot of other countries made wartime penicillin.

No one stole penicillin (a natural product and hence already in the Public Domain) from anyone else - this was thanks to the pre-war legacy of Alexander Fleming freely spreading his unique strain of penicillium spores world wide.

It is true some  - in America - tried to control penicillin by sharing publicly-funded highly productive strains with only themselves and their pals - thankfully that scheme failed to do more than needlessly delay wartime penicillin's wide introduction.

On the other hand, Howard Florey and his post war supporters (many of whom are American) successfully and seemingly permanently 'stole' the true story of wartime penicillin away from America.

There was about nothing as petty as fighting over mere billions in dollars of profits.

This was the world's best known and best loved - and simply 'the best' - medical cure ever.

So it mattered muchly, which individuals, institutions and nations got the bulk of the glory for bringing it forth for All Humanity to enjoy.

This is was a battle over who controlled the Narrative and the Brand of the world's greatest Miracle.

Britain may have lost an Empire and its position as a World Power - but it clung onto penicillin-the-narrative.

All that America got was credit for the Manhattan Project and giving us the terror of Atomic Death to All Humanity.

Hardly a fair exchange.

I merely wish to suggest that the tiny "Manhattan Pilot" project had a very much bigger impact in the popular discovery of - and hence the immediate mass development of - wartime penicillin then it has been given credit for in the Florey-dominated story of wartime penicillin.

So  - and to recall Bono's memorable phrase in Rattle and Hum -
"we're here to steal it back !"