More than 500 million people have watched Carl Sagan’s brilliant 1980 TV series Cosmos: a personal voyage and its repeats. The follow-up, Cosmos: a spacetime odyssey, hosted by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, draws on three decades of new discoveries and a slick new CGI spaceship.
Cosmos explores humanity’s history of imagining and investigating our place among the stars – from hunter-gatherer societies through Copernicus’ heliocentrism, Bruno’s first notion of a universe to the discoveries of today and the possibilities for the future.
The program dares us to wonder about the biological basis for life on other planets, or the possibility of future human societies on planets other than Earth. Viewing the universe from this perspective implicitly calls into question the pettiness that divides and holds back humanity – the wars, the national borders and the competition for profit that risks the future of our planet.
Cosmos traces the evolution of life from its earliest days in what Darwin called “warm pools” through 3.6 billion years of environmental and behavioural pressures that selected some random genetic mutations over others. The similarities in the genetic code between a tree and a human serve as a remarkable illustration of the connectedness of all life. But Cosmos extends our connection to the entire universe. In Sagan’s words, “We are all made of star stuff.”
In this way, Cosmos situates humans within nature, but also separated from it due to a mastery of our environment. The latter is not simply biological, but social. Social organisation allows us to rise above the tasks required for survival and look to the stars. As Sagan said, “We are a way for the universe to know itself.”
Cosmos moves seamlessly from astrophysics to evolution, from the beginning of time to the future. On its way, it dissolves the boundaries between scientific disciplines. This is a totality on the most magnificent scale. One is left with a profound sense of connection to all our fellow species and with the history and future of far distant galaxies.
That is no easy task, but Tyson and his scriptwriters stand on the shoulders of a giant of astrophysics. Carl Sagan (1934-1996) was professor of astronomy at Cornell University, a brilliant cosmologist who authored more than 600 academic papers and advised on NASA missions to Venus, Mars and Jupiter.
Sagan was not afraid to mix science and politics. He resigned from the scientific advisory body of the US air force in protest over the Vietnam War, publicly opposed the Star Wars program, and was arrested twice while protesting against US nuclear testing.
Sagan used science as activism to campaign against the nuclear arms race. He hypothesised the catastrophic consequences of nuclear war in which firestorms, smoke and dust suspended in the upper stratosphere would block the sun, radically dropping the earth’s surface temperature to Ice Age levels for years to come.
This dark vision led Sagan to moderate his expectation of encountering intelligent extraterrestrial life. He saw the destruction of civilisation through war as a real prospect, and not just on Earth. Sagan and other astronomers factored this limitation into predictions of the number of advanced extraterrestrial civilisations inhabiting our galaxy using the final term in the Drake equation.
This term accounts for the fraction of a habitable planet’s lifetime in which it is populated by a technological civilisation, before that society succumbs to “the trap set jointly by their technology and their passions”. Sagan expounded the tragedy of civilisations that might “take billions of years of tortuous evolution to arise and then snuff themselves out in an instant of unforgivable neglect”. Yet he had hope that advanced societies might survive their “technological adolescence” and avoid self-destruction.
Sagan was a materialist and a believer in human reason and progress. Although not a Marxist, he admired Leon Trotsky and confessed to routinely smuggling copies of his History of the Russian Revolution into the USSR.
Even the greatest minds are limited by the age in which they live. It can be easier to imagine space travel through worm holes or the stretching of space-time than to imagine the kind of human society necessary to give rise to a determined exploration of the universe.
Our economic and political system is holding back development through vested interests and destruction through war and economic crises. The competition between rival capitalists has held back the technological advancements that could aid humanity and our planet.
Sometimes it is done consciously – such as with renewable energy expansion, the delay of which profits the fossil fuel industry. Each time a beneficial yet unprofitable development is held back from greater use, it delays further technological advances that would have stood on its shoulders.
To mobilise the energy of humanity and the resources of our planet for the journey to the stars will take an effort unheard of in all of history. The preconditions for such a leap are not just technological, but social. If humanity cannot provide for its existence on this planet, how can we prepare for anything greater? It is unlikely that we will be able to reach for the stars without a collectively run society in which humans can truly master our own planet’s resources.

Sarah Jean

Our place in the cosmos

Jonathan Ogden, former member of the International Socialist Organisation and Socialist Alternative, died on 5 February of a stroke at the young age of 44.
Jono, as he was known to friends and comrades, had a long standing commitment to socialist politics and trade unionism.
That commitment stretched back to 1988 when, as a student at The University of Queensland, he joined the fight against the National Party, which was then running the student union under president Victoria Brazil. One of Jono’s first actions was to join the occupation of the UQ radio station, 4ZZZ, to save it from Brazil’s axe. In the end, the station was forced to move off campus but survives to this day as an independent community radio broadcaster.
With the Nationals’ defeat at the 1989 state elections, some of the sting went out of politics in Queensland. But that didn’t mean that there weren’t important causes. Jono, by now a member of the International Socialist Organisation, helped to mobilise street demonstrations against the 1991 Gulf War.
In 1993, Jono was again in the thick of tussles with the cops – one of his favourite occupations – when Brisbane socialists had to defend our right to hold peaceful assemblies in the Queen Street Mall. Labor Lord Mayor Jim Soorley, formerly an adversary of Joh, tried to drive dissident politics out of the city.
Every Friday night, as dozens of free speech supporters showed up to defy the Council, large numbers of cops wrestled them into the back of waiting police vans. Jono was arrested during one of these battles for calling a plain clothes cop an “undercover pig”. We won that fight due in no small part because of the courage of people like him.
In the years that followed Jono was involved as an activist in all the struggles of the Brisbane left, in particular the fight against Pauline Hanson and the 1998 waterfront dispute.
When Socialist Alternative got off the ground in Brisbane in the early 2000s, Jono joined and remained an active member for eight years. His contribution to building the Brisbane branch will always be remembered by his comrades – in particular when he stuck with the branch in 2004 when we lost a large number of members who walked out of the organisation. He played an important role in putting the branch back on its feet and rebuilding in the years that followed.
Jono always stood up for the underdog at work. Jaimie Byrne, a friend and one of his former ISO comrades, said at his funeral: “Everyone saw him as a big hearted comrade who would do anything for his fellow comrades”. During the 1990s he worked at the Yellow Cabs call centre and was always agitating for a better deal for the workers.
In the early 2000s he got a job as a car park attendant at the Mount Olivet Hospital in Kangaroo Point where again he fought for better conditions against the penny pinching hospital administration.
Jono’s last job, at Cochlear Implants, where he worked on the factory floor for nearly ten years, saw him fight tirelessly to build the union (AMWU) among his blue collar, overwhelmingly migrant workmates. As a result of their efforts, Cochlear management for the first time had to listen to the workers and were forced to raise pay and improve conditions. More than a dozen of Jono’s workmates showed their respect for his contribution when they attended his funeral.
Jono’s personal circumstances were difficult. He joined his mother in caring for his brother Kenneth, who had an intellectual disability. And when his mother Daphne also suffered poor health, Jono helped to look after her as well, spending every weekend at her home.
The challenge of combining work, family responsibilities and political activism became too much after several years and Jono left organised politics in 2009. But he still hated the Liberals with a passion and he wasn’t going to sit at home alone crying into his beer when Tony Abbott won last year’s election. The last time we saw Jono was at the branch’s election night party in September where Jono joined us in booing the bastard every time he came on screen.
Even though Jono has now left us, his life was well lived and the working class movement is that bit better for his personal contribution. Jaimie Byrne’s tribute is fitting: “No-one’s going to remember us in the history books. But it’s the little people that make change. Jono fought the good fight and stood up for his fellow workers. He believed that a better world was possible. And that’s what we should all take from him: that together we can build a better world”.

Tom Bramble

Vale Jonathan Ogden, 1970 – 2014

A lively and vocal rally of 150 people turned out in Logan, Brisbane, on Saturday to support Sheila Oakley, the local Murri woman who was tasered in the eye by Queensland Police on 6 February. The crowd gathered outside Sheila’s house to hear speeches from Sheila’s family, from community leaders and from Sheila herself.
Speakers demanded that police violence stop and the cops be held responsible for the assault. Joseph, Sheila’s brother, said that “this violence has just got to stop, that’s why we’re here today . . . it’s been going on too long”. Community leader Fred Coolwell told the crowd that the police are never punished. “They are above the law. The police are getting away with it and have been getting away with it for years. There’s no justice here in Queensland, no justice at all . . . There’s so much racism in this country; it comes from the top down”.
Pastor Lester, a local community pastor, spoke of how police harassment is an everyday occurrence. “This is the third time this [taser] incident has occurred in Logan City. But today is a new day for us, we’re going to stand up for our rights. What’s happening now has got to stop”. Wayne Saunders argued that “we have got to stop this mentality of thinking we can go to them [the police] for justice”.
As longtime Indigenous activist Sam Watson said, “It’s not going to be an easy struggle, it’s not going to be a short struggle, [but] it’s going to carry on.” Sheila, who will have more surgery on Monday, thanked people for their support.
Chanting “What do we want? Justice for Sheila Oakley!” and “Queensland is a police state!” we marched with banners of support and Indigenous flags to Logan police station. A massive police presence, kitted out with multiple tasers, was waiting. Sheila handed over pages of petitions to the acting superintendent, Noel Powers, demanding that the cop be publicly identified, be suspended from duty, be charged and be investigated by an independent inquiry. Typical of police arrogance, Powers refused to answer any questions.
The mood of the rally can be summed up in the words of Marlene Wharton, who said, “I am here today to support my friend, my sister, my people against the brutality of the police and what they did to Sheila. This has got to stop. My grandparents fought for the rights of our people back in the day, then my father fought, then my uncles, and now I’m the next generation and I’m not going to stop the struggle and I don’t want anyone else to stop either”.

Kaye Broadbent

'This has got to stop': rally demands justice for Sheila Oakley

Dozens of Brisbane Murri community leaders gathered on Tuesday night in the southern suburb of Logan to organise support for Sheila Oakley, who was viciously tasered by police on the doorstep of her home on 6 February.
This was no accident by a rookie cop. The man who tasered Sheila in the eye and shoulder is a highly experienced, taser-use trainer. Community leader and meeting organiser Paul Butterworth expressed his disgust at the police’s action: “You wouldn’t do this to your dog”.
With the taser barb still in her eye, Sheila was pushed, shoved, sat on by four cops, handcuffed and wrapped up in sheets as a restraint before being put on an ambulance trolley.
Despite media stories to the contrary, neighbours who witnessed the assault say that Sheila was calm and did not attack the cops.
Sheila has now had surgery to remove the taser barb but requires more operations. She may never regain use of her left eye.
Sheila’s family and many in the community now fear a cover up. The promise of an internal investigation does nothing to encourage their confidence that justice will be done.
Who can blame them given the Queensland Police’s record of “investigating” countless cases of cop brutality. The perpetrators routinely get off scot free.
Sheila, her family and the community have every right to be sceptical this time around.
Spend a few minutes talking to any Murri in any Queensland community and you will hear the same stories of police violence, of harassment of adults, teens and young children and of manufactured and trumped-up charges. “This is reality; we live with this every single day of our lives here in Logan,” said Butterworth.
The situation has only got worse since the election of the Newman government. The police feel that they can act with impunity.
Murri community leaders spoke of the climate of fear in which they now live.
They talk of their children being followed to the local shop and of being pulled over for no reason.
One woman told Red Flag she was afraid to let her children go outside or walk to the shops by themselves.
They are afraid to speak up because they might be targeted next.
They have reason to be worried. Sheila’s neighbours who witnessed the event and spoke on TV about it have described in interviews that the police now appear to be targeting them. Police cars drive by their house several times a day sounding their sirens. Sheila’s neighbour told the ABC’s Francis Tapim:
“They [the cops] are not pulling anybody over or anything. They are trying to intimidate me for going on the news. We are moving – me and the missus and the kids. My fear is that it is going to come back on my missus’ family who can’t move; they have got to stay put.”
Community leaders have decided to take a stand against this latest police outrage. As one said, “The days of talking are over – we’ve been doing it since 1966”.
They have three main demands: public identification of the cop responsible; suspension and laying of charges against him; and an independent investigation, not an internal investigation with cops covering up for their mates.
A rally has been called for Saturday 15 February at 11am, assembling at 26 Jacaranda Avenue, Kingston. 
Speeches will be followed by a march to the Logan police station. After the rally there will be a BBQ fundraiser to support Sheila and her family in their time of need. Everyone who wants to stand in solidarity with Brisbane’s Murri community needs to be there.

Our place in the cosmos

Vale Jonathan Ogden, 1970 – 2014

'This has got to stop': rally demands justice for Sheila Oakley

Racism and police brutality in Queensland

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