The Spike:

The world is in for a hard landing in 15 or 20 years time
if not before

We are huddled around the sailing ship wharves, eating oil.

What that means: Cities formed where modes of transport changed.
eg Ports & junctions.
Where goods were unloaded, warehouses were built.
Nearby insurance & finance houses grew.
hence cities.

Western wooden sailing ships conquered the world
call it neo-Colonialism, Imperialism, best called Pirates.
(see Bucky Fuller & blackcommentator)

Now there are no warehouses, just 40 foot containers
there is no need to be near the wharf
Insurance clerks can be in Calcutta call centres.
yet we huddle near those wooden ship wharfs,
outbidding each other for old brick houses,
believing that's wealth.
There will be no jobs after the Spike, but
we have no other way to exist.
The West guards its borders with ferocious savagery
while growing aged, senile and demented,
At the Spike, borders will collapse,

we eat oil, actually Ammonium Nitrate fertiliser, made from oil
Occasionally miscreants blow up buildings with the stuff.

We think we have "high yield" crops
Actually our techno-crops have a large Negative yield.
They take many more Joules to make & truck than they produce.
After the Spike, no cheap oil, no fertiliser, no food

The true high yields are from "primitive" farmers with
20 different plants & 10 animals.
But that takes labour & learning,
we have no chance of getting back to that before the spike.
the PRC has a 25E6 tons deficit in rice, and growing fast.

Global warming co-incidentally will radically kick in
disturbing crops just as the Spike hits.

A billion angry poor teenagers will be out of work
listening to radical clerics, as the Spike hits

tiny cheap lethal robotic weaponry will be widely available
as the Spike hits

Easy gene splicing kits will be widely available,
Think 1918 influenza at the speed of sound.

universal global cell phones will be in the hands billions
of poor.

We might have a small chance of a soft landing
If we put a massive effort into
low-Joule, intensive crops, global justice
now.

Instead we watch a cabal of insane Texans
try to prolong the oil age with vicious savagery
against poor and fervent multitudes.

You think you have seen massacres?
just wait.
You think something will turn up?
without that cheap black stuff
we wont be able to truck it.
Our 100 kWatt cars will be merely
firestarters.

___________________________________________________
By chance I saw the ANZAC parade on Sydney, a long line of Battalion banners
Many of the white haired marchers looked fit for WWII vets.
no Korea or Vietnam mentioned while I watched, many banners mentioned Wewak.
I dont understand the big young crowd,
nor the reported 13,000 who turned up in Turkey.
I am getting tired of war, I may cease blogging Iraq incidents.
I am weary in general,

Fighting the Ranky.W Trojan on our company server
(so new it only googles in Dutch & Italian)

Living with 2.7 metre ceilings is SMELLY
the old 3.2 metre ceilings ... that half metre made all the difference

Cant speak to my sweetheart, no sound on the line, dont know why.
maybe Condi Rice is jamming my phone...

Paycheck didnt make it into the bank,

Not a great week.
_______________________________

New York Review of Books
has a somewhat sympathetic account of Hezbollah in NRB, which will probably
draw irate letters.

"..Hezbollah has denounced attacks on Western civilians
Nawaf al-Musawi, the party's foreign minister, told me in no uncertain terms
that he viewed September 11 as an act of terrorism"