War and violence have always been with us, despite our experience of some decades of comparative peace, we have always been beset by the storms of life.

And sadly today, black clouds of intolerance, bitterness, greed and indifference to the suffering of others are gathering and deepening.

And an ominous warning sign, like the outbreak of bush fires all around us is the slow death of truth. No society – no civil society can hope to live without it, and yet daily it is under assault from those, who at least in the past ,paid some lip service to its defence – however tarnished the world of global politics has always been.

The tragedy of our present time, is that many leaders in our world, and their enablers, do not fear the truth of that statement, they are counting on it.

At a time when black is white, up is down heroes become villains and monsters lauded as heroes, when friends are treated as enemies and enemies as friends, when the victims are to blame and the aggressors, the abusers and the bullies are excused – what are we to do?

Too many of our more moral leaders, well intentioned, motivated by integrity no doubt, seem to feel that we must weather the storm, not be too combative, tolerate the nonsense, in the hope that sense will later prevail. But that is the way to merely slow the death of truth. It is the way of complicity.

Instead, truth must be fought for, upheld, reasserted time and again, by everyone, everywhere, all the time. We must call out every lie, from whoever, wherever and however they are shared.