ABC Wednesday Z

Z is for Zoo. Do you remember Julie Felix singing this song?

Z is also for Zeus and Zion and Zoroaster.

The Prophet Zoroaster (also known as Zarathustra and in Persian as Zarathusti and Gujarati as Zaratosht) founded Zoroastrianism about 3500 years ago in ancient Iran, commonly called Persia. He was born into a Bronze Age polytheistic community which ritually used intoxicants and animal sacrifices in their religious practices. He rejected this religion in which the princes and priests controlled the ordinary people through a thorough-going and oppressive class structure.

When he was thirty years old Zoroaster had a vision of God which affected him deeply and led him to teach that there was only one God, the Creator, who was to be worshipped. He believed that mankind had Free Will and was engaged in a mental struggle between truth and untruth.

Today in Mumbai (Bombay) there is a large community of Parsis (Parsees) descended from a group of Iranian Zoroastrians who fled persecution by Muslims more than 1000 years ago. They are largely involved in business. The Tata Group, now in its fifth generation of family management is one of the largest private employers in India and recently acquired Corus Steel (2007) and Jaguar and Landrover (2008) Genetically Parsis are believed to have more in common with modern Iranians than with Indians.

Some of their traditional practices are under threat, particularly in the disposal of their dead. Parsees believe that earth, fire and water are sacred elements and should not be defiled by the dead. Thus burial and cremation have always been prohibited. Bodies were taken to the Towers of Silence to be consumed by vultures but the number of these birds has reduced dramatically through urbanisation. It is also thought that they have been poisoned by the presence of diclofenac in the corpses. Diclofenac is an anti-inflammatory and analgesic drug commonly prescribed for a number of ailments. Thus the bodies are taking longer to decompose which has led to complaints from nearby residents. Now Parsis in Mumbai are given the option of burial or decomposition for their dead. Naturally, Parsis living in other countries are buried. The cemetery at Brookwood in Surrey is the largest cemetery in Britain and probably Western Europe. It is a Grade I Historic Park and Garden and has a Zoroastrian burial ground.

In a declining population the tradition of passing the faith through the male line is being discussed. Thus the children of a Parsi father married to a non-Parsi mother are considered Parsi. The children of a Parsi mother in a similar marriage are not considered so and there is an expectation that this situation will be adjusted in order to enhance numbers.

Prominent Parsis include rock star Freddie Mercury, conductor Zubin Mehta and cricketer Farokh Engineer.

Thanks go to the ABC Wednesday team for their hard work in organising and hosting this meme.

To see more Zs (goodness, that makes me feel tired . . . zzzzzz) please click here.

The Jackson Factor

The late unfortunate Michael Jackson is in the news again – and again – and again. It would appear that UK news stations are determined to continue to exploit him. We think there is a phenomenon at work which we call 'The Jackson Factor'. It works thus – the amount of news coverage is in inverse proportion to the importance of any event. The highest Jackson Factor score would be 10 where news items of no global impact are given excessive/continuous exhaustive air time. The lowest score of 1 would be awarded to events of global significance that receive little or no media attention.

To illustrate the point take the example of serious life-threatening water shortage for millions of people. For many years the UN has warned that water shortages will become one of the most urgent problems worldwide in coming years. One estimate is that four billion people will be affected by 2050. India, with a growing population and increasing agricultural and manufacturing output, is facing huge problems of water supply in rural and urban areas. Climate change may mean there will be less rainfall in future. Northern India has experienced the driest season for more than eighty years; the monsoon is late and the people are praying for rain as they struggle to live through a widespread drought. Fights have broken out and murders have been committed as desperate people rush to fill vessels with water during the limited periods that water flows through the pipes. For example, in Bhopal, known as the 'City of Lakes', the thousand-year-old largest man-made lake has shrunk from 38 sq km to 5 sq km. The population, some 1.8 million, has had water rationed to 30 minutes' supply every other day since last October. That ration is now reduced to one day in three. Indore, not far from Bhopal, is rationed to 30 minutes' supply every seven days.

In the south Mumbai has had heavy rainfall and flooding but even so levels in the lakes have dropped, forcing the water supply to be cut by 30%.

This startling, appalling chain of events scores extremely low on the Jackson Factor scale. It fails to grab reporting honours for the following reasons: it lacks 'celebrities', it is happening in an impoverished continent not inhabited by Westerners, it has no spectator participation with the attendant thrill of feeling that 'your vote counts'.

Recent Michael Jackson UK media coverage scores 10. Calamitous events in Bhopal score 1. Casualties in Afghanistan, while not global, affect many nations whose military forces are engaged and receive very little coverage. Deaths are reported while large numbers of maimed survivors are barely mentioned. Civilian casualties in Afghanistan are rarely mentioned. Low Jackson Factor of ??

Can we expect or predict that this over-reporting of 'non-news' will continue in a downward spiral to banality? Are we seeing the end of serious reporting of dramatic global events that will affect us all? Has sensationalist celebrity reporting overtaken the serious business of presenting information on matters of international and global importance?

It would be interesting to know if this phenomenon is being seen in other countries around the world.