What is that those with power wish to reveal, and what is it that they wish to cover up or tidy away? This question often arises in the contentions over the global issues which are very much in the headlines at the moment - from climate change, to health reform in the USA, to the stalling of peace talks in Israel-Palestine.
 
The Middle East is the focus of one of our two highlighted feature articles this week, as Timothy Seidel explores an understanding of peace which is distinctly inconvenient for those who would rule primarily by might.
 
The 'Reading Allowed' book choice complements his piece, by examining ways in which the Bible has been used to justify violence and dispossession and ways in which it can be received as a life-giving resource for both Palestinians and Israelis wishing to live securely under their own vines and fig trees.
 
Our research focus is also on the peace issue, but this time in connection with the media and the 'dominant narratives' that shape our perception of the world and key events going on within it. Here we reproduce for the first time extended material from a chapter in the recent book '118 Days', looking at Ekklesia's experience of, and role in, the Iraq hostage crisis of 2005-6. The aim is to look at the pitfalls and possibilities for raising awareness of practical non-violent interventions in situations of conflict.
 
Women, too are often written out of the script, as Fran Porter observes in our other feature article - which makes a thought-provoking connection between the struggle for equal pay and Anglican arguments about women priests and bishops, where the language of rights and dignity gives way to a religiously shaped one that refracts biblical understandings through the notion of 'taint'.
 
Our other topics this time are religion, justice and wellbeing (in relation to a University of Central Lancashire conference on public policy in this realm, to which Ekklesia is contributing), and microfinance for development - drawing on the groundbreaking social audit carried out by our friends at Oikocredit.
 
The quotations we have chosen illustrate the thin line that exists between virtue and vice when it comes to seeking wisdom. A much thinner line, many would say, than oil company Trafigura sought to draw in taking out an injunction to prevent a national newspaper reporting a parliamentary question about their dubious actions in the Ivory Coast.  The gagging order failed, largely because the digital media were able to subvert it.
 
One small further blow for freedom of speech against corporate power - and what those who have it want on or off the record.