We don't know what's going on. Seriously

One of the best things about New Year's Eve is the publication of papers hitherto considered not fit for public consumption for thirty years. By this means we get a glimpse of what really happened- though even then the information is strictly limited. Some more sensitive information is kept secret for fifty years, like the cracking of the ENIGMA code in World War II. Some are kept under wraps for 100 years, and we have to assume that some extremely embarrassing stuff has the word "NEVER" scrawled across the top.


Hence we may never know what is really going on at the highest levels of government. Occasionally, however, we get unexpected insights well before the thirty years papers emerge, like the Snowden revelations,or, just the other day, the leaked email trails from Sony. On that one, by the way, President Obama expressed his disquiet over Sony pulling their film The Interview, but I wonder if one day it could emerge that he actually insisted on it, not wishing to see a chain of cinemas bombed by the North Koreans. We don't know.


Also the other day it emerged that the Saudis are secretly backing the ISIS fighters in their struggle to convert Syria and Iraq into a unified Islamic Caliphate- not wholly unlike the system that currently operates in the KSA. So the story goes, the oil-rich sheiks are funding ISIS partly out of a guilty conscience over their own profligate activities: adultery, gambling, drinking and drug taking, all proscribed the Koran but widely practised behind closed doors in cities up and down the Arabian peninsula. I note there appears to be no guilt over their disgraceful treatment of women in many parts of the Islamic world- that's cool apparently.


I think what I'm saying is, by all means watch the news on TV and read your newspapers, but remember: it's not even half the picture. To get the other half is much more difficult, though not impossible.