Conflicts of Interests

Military think-tanks are considering the likely consequences of peak oil and climate change, and adjusting their projections, as issues like water and land begin to take up ever more of the centre stage.

Having just noticed the date, I should add - although it should go without saying - that it is violence, the habit of violence, and the rush to violence for gain, that concerns us. I include economic violence here. It makes no odds whether it comes from individuals, governments or would-be governments. It is madness to suppose that an idea can be beaten into a human head, or liberty or divinity imposed at the point of a gun, so we must assume that those who put the innocent in harm's way have darker and more utilitarian motives. Blair, Bush and Bin Laden all piss in the same Machiavellian pot, and conceal themselves behind the same veils of religious exceptionalism. In the critical times ahead those habits would be suicidal.