A B C

I spent most of yesterday keeping up with Jon Snow's tweets about what was happening in Brussels.  The things I talked about in the last blog Greece defaulting, Italy beginning to shake are happening;  soon Greece will default on the entire loan because they won't be able to repay even 40% of the debt and I wouldn't be at all surprised if Italy's government doesn't fall and Berlusconi leaves office.  Then I lay awake most of the night thinking about what I can do.  Doesn't that sound arrogant, I am not an economist, when I was young I could hardly add up and now I am trying to untangle the mess we are in and make suggestions that are practical.
In the last blog I wrote a little bit about the "people of the abyss".  The Victorians loathed, feared and shunned them.  I started thinking again about our "people of the abyss" they are not the poor they are the ultra rich, the power brokers, the food and commodities speculators, the bankers - they are the feral criminal class and we need to try and break their hold on our society.  I am not advocating revolution or violence.  I am saying A B C.      A is for Allotments.  Very few of us have small holdings or allotments which would let us be self sufficient but as I said in "Days of Thrift" most of us have yards or little gardens and all of us have window sills where we can grow vegetables in pots or grow bags or perma tunnels if we have enough room in the garden.  A grow bag will support tomatoes, herbs, potatoes (look at all the different sites on the internet where you can get information).
This leads onto B.  B is for Barter, you can barter the excess produce for other goods and services.  Because no money is involved you don't have to declare anything to the dole office if you are on any benefits.  I would love someone to hoover my floors, I find this the hardest of the cleaning jobs because I find it difficult to stand for any length of time.  I may not have grown any fruit or veg to trade but I can offer to help someone with their reading or writing, help write a CV, edit a story or piece of writing you may have done and I can swap an hour of help with a child's homework (unless it is maths or foreign languages) for an hours hoovering.  I am going to send a flyer to every house in my street explaining what I think we can do together and see if anyone wants to join me, I am just going to cover my street, this is a small scale operation; each street can organise their own Barter and support their own neighbours.  I will let you know what happens.
C is for Credit Unions.  Take the money and its manipulation away from the bankers and their offshore tax havens. Credit unions are financial co-operatives owned and managed by the members who use them. They offer a convenient way to save and the opportunity to access low cost loans and a range of other benefits including stopping desperate people using loan sharks or those dishonest companies with the friendly names that advertise on television giving a helpful loan with an APR of 2,000%.

Members of a credit union save in a common fund. This fund can be then used to make low interest loans to the credit union's members. All interest on loan repayments is reinvested in the credit union and nothing leaves the community. Many credit unions now offer a range of services including Individual Savings Accounts (ISAs), insurance products, budgeting and debt management advice.  I know not everyone can save anything at the moment because "moneys too tight to mention" but this a way for the community to take control away from the City of London.
I can hear people saying what you are talking about is so little, a tiny bandage on gangrene what about job losses and pensions being degraded, high university fees and now they want to be able to dismiss someone from a job if the boss "doesn't like you".  We can only start from where we are.  Although its not fashionable to quote Mao he said "a journey of a thousand miles starts with one step" and that was a man who knew about walking a long way.

food share, whose share?

"Food Share" is a national, volunteer driven charity which links food growers with local charities. It started in Cambridge where £1,000.
00 worth of fruit and vegetables were donated to a local children's hospice over a 3 months period.  This is a wonderful idea.  The need for food banks is growing, more people than ever, often people in full time employment, are having to resort to soup kitchens and food banks.  I never thought I would write a sentence like this talking about soup kitchens  and charity in one of the richest countries in the world in 2011.
We are continually told the worst is over, the economy will grow and the private sector will create jobs.  I totally disagree, we haven't even seen the beginning of the "bad times" most people still have some resources;  they still have a job although it's hanging by a thread and the hours have been cut, there is a little bit of spare money either on a card, in the bank or post office or a piggy bank sat on a shelf in the kitchen.  The winter hasn't started yet so most of us haven't put the heating on yet or budgetted for Christmas yet, "yet" being the operative word.
"People of the Abyss" used to be the term the Victorians used about the poor, I started thinking about what pushes you over the cliff so that you can't meet the bills and how easy it is to find yourself in that situation.  One of my cats is ill, she will have to go to the vets and I am looking at a bill of probably a hundred pounds or more.  Of course she will go to the vets and I will make a deal with them to pay the fees off over the coming months, I've done it before I don't feel any embarressment explaining that I can't meet the whole bill in one payment.  Lots of people are facing those sorts of situations everyday and I joke about mine saying I wrote a book called "Days of Thrift" which I published on Amazon as an ebook looking at being unemployed, broke and facing hard times in our modern society and now as an unemployed single woman with an incurable disease I am living in my book.
The question is what can be done?  I think this is a wonderful charity and they are doing great work but a lot more needs be done in a more regulated way.  I think supermarkets should give the food they would throw away at the end of the day or when the sell by date is reached to the local food banks, charities like "Food Share" or soup kitchens.  A law should be passed requiring them to do this.  The reason given by the supermarkets for not voluntarily doing this, which is very clever, is that it is a health and safety issue - they don't want to give food which is not safe to eat to the hungry. In my book I looked at "skip diving"  and discussed sorting through the bins full of perfectly edible food and how you can gain access to these food mountains .
I hope this charity goes from strength to strength and I am going to set up a petition on line asking for a law to be passed to require supermarkets to donate their left over food to charity, when I have that set up I will blog the details.
Sometimes I feel like Cassandra, everything I have talked about for years in some cases (my neice has borne the brunt of my rantettes), written about, shouted at the television about and worried about is starting to manifest itself and this last round of "quantative easing" or "credit easing" which is just another bank bail out under a different name shows how badly things are developing.  The economy flat lining and unemployment rising are the actual and visible proof of government policies which are not working and shows us all what an ignorant, clueless government we have - the coalition has no clear idea of what to do next about the problems our country faces, no compassion towards its people just the catch phrase "we are all in it together" nor wisdom to guide the EU as it faces problems such as the crisis about to explode when Greece defaults on its repayments and Italy begins to slide too, Germany won't keep picking up the pieces forever.
We the people are going to have to look to ourselves by organising, demonstrating, lobbying, signing petitions, joining UK Uncut and let's use the few decent MPs in Parliament to protect us and change the direction the ideology of the ConDems is taking us in so that we can re-construct a fairer society where "to each according to their needs and from each according to their abilities" really means something.  Until then food banks, food share and soup kitchens are going to be a life line for millions of people.  See you on the bread line.
 

 

it's enough to make you swear

A definition of madness is to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different outcome each time.
This morning I signed the petition to protect our countryside, protect the badgers from a cull and stop the government plans for building on green belt land.
I signed the petitions after I watched David Cameron speak to Andrew Marr explaining his ideas for selling off council houses and building one new house for each one sold off.  Oh, please give me strength and find the will to live, I shall end up raiding my secret stache of choccie bars and over dosing on flake bars in despair. 
I banged on and on about regenerating our housing stock in my book "Days of Thrift" (sold as an ebook on Amazon) and in previous blogs.  We do not need to be building houses on green belt land, we can renovate the boarded up shops on the High Street, provide social housing and re-invigorate the local communities, there are thousands of empty houses which could be taken into the housing stock providing thousands of hours of work for builders and all the surrounding trades as the empty houses are made good for habitation and there is plenty of "brown site" land to use.  The green belt does not need to be used nor should the regulations and laws protecting the countryside be weakened or removed.
The bland self satisfied voice of David Cameron explaining in his earnest "head boy" manner (he always uses the same cliches and hand movements when talking to the "Great Unwashed" who don't understand how intelligent he is and how enlightened his proposals are) his ridiculous idea to allow bill boards to be erected anywhere in the countryside made me shout four letter words at the television (why is it that every time there is a conservative government in power I end up swearing like a trooper, I never swore half as much at Tony Blair and he did a lot of things I vehemently opposed and I consider him a war criminal as well so I definitely did not support Labour in a lot of their decisions).
I ask that everyone sign the petition to protect our countryside, we have such a beautiful land and we have to fight to protect it, again.

If I ruled the world

The first thing I would do if I ruled the world would be to bring into international law the equivalent of the "Glass Steagall Act" which would prohibit a bank holding company from owning other financial companies.  This would create a seperation between investment banks which issue securities and commercial banks. This would also prevent investment bankers acting as CEOs etc. of commercial banks.  Any bank that broke this law would see its board, CEOs and top officers being treated as criminals with a long jail term (as this is my world I think I will include hard labour as well into the sentence), the bank would be nationalised so that the customers would not suffer and the workers would keep their jobs. 
All tax havens would be dismantled and every person or company which used those facilities would be forced to pay back the last 10 years of taxes in full as if they were ordinary citizens.  The money brought in from doing this would be billions and that money would be used to clear slums, build houses for the homeless, provide fully equipped hospitals, put every child into school, clean water and invent new irrigation techniques and invest in new green technologies, all these projects would create jobs for the people and inject growth into the world economy as well as the local economies.
I would outlaw speculating of the kind companies like "Glencore" specialise in especially in basic food stuffs and basic commodities.
I would insist that the EU create a monetary fund to support the EU countries. Failing economies such as Greece and Ireland for example who will probably default on their payments and bring about even more confusion in the markets would have their debts waived and start again with a "clean sheet" the only proviso being that the country involved start to invest in creating jobs for their populations, reform their tax laws (which will be much easier to implement with the huge burden of debt no longer hanging over their heads) and if they haven't already done so sign up to Human Rights Agreements. Any country that has populations of gypsies,  ethnic minorities, gay, lesbian and transgender communities in their country must give all of them full equality and protection under the law and I would make sure the laws were used to protect these communities.
Capital punishment would be no more.  Prisoners on "Death Row" in any country but especially America must have their cases reviewed and children under the age of 18 should not be held in prisons instead they should be in custody which provides a high standard of education and care.
I am enjoying this but finally I would make prostitution and all drugs legal.  This would immediately remove the income pimps, gangs, slavers and drug dealers make at the moment from the most vulnerable parts of society.  Prostitutes could form co-operatives and work in the same system that they use in Hamburg or Amsterdam.  Drugs and clean drug paraphenalia would be issued at 24/7 clinics that would be found in every town and city the clinics would also offer counselling and rehab facilities.
As I said at the start of this little "rantette" this is my world but everything I have talked about is possible and we have to start thinking about new ways forward.  We are at the start of the twenty first century we have to start thinking like citizens of this new century and - oh yes, I want every one in the whole world to go to an amusement park of their choosing for a free long weekend once a year! (people who don't enjoy going to places like "Disneyland" or "Alton Towers" can have free tickets to the opera).

And saved the sum of things for pay

"a war begun for no wise purpose, carried on with a strange mixture of rashness and timidity, brought to a close after suffering and disaster, without much glory attached either to the government which directed, or the great body of troops which waged it. Not one benefit, political or military, was acquired with this war. Our eventual evacuation of the country resembled the retreat of an army defeated”.

Sounds a bit familiar, it could be so many wars, this is a quote from a survivor of the First Afghan War (1839-1842).  That war was fought to prevent Russia establishing influence over India.  Again the Second Afghan War (1878-1880) was fought to prevent Russian influence, this time Britain w0n "the Great Game" and blocked Russian expansion.  Third Afghan War (1919), even I am getting bored, this is a very simplistic explanation for the timeframe and reasons of war and I have had to remind myself that thousands of soldiers and civilians died in these terrible wars, was fought to prevent a tribal uprising.  This third Afghan war, the last one fought in a "Victorian" fashion, started and ended in 1919 with the Afghans achieveing full control of their country.

Then we have the "modern wars".  The outbreak of civil war in 1978 led to an invasion by the USSR in 1979, what followed was 10 years of vicious fighting using conscripts as the Soviets propped up the communist government and fought against a loose coalition of Islamic insurgents.  The Mujahideen toppled that government in 1992. Then the Taliban fought a civil war against the Mujahideen and took over the country in 1996.  The Taliban were tolerated by the world community even though they demonstrated time and again that they supported the most extreme teachings of  something which definitely was not Islam and then distorted those teachings to a further level that included murdering women and desecrating ancient world heritage treasures when they blew up Buddhist statues because they were evil idols. 

In 2001 America overthrew the Taliban because they supported international terrorism and established a corrupt regime in Kabul; the war has continued until today, there is talk of withdrawal in 2014 now that Osama bin Laden is dead.

Now, that is the history, here is the reality. The cost of the war for America  EACH MONTH is $10 billion and another $300 million each month for what are called "civilian led projects".  This is untenable, no country can spend this on a neverending basis and I haven't mentioned all the soldiers and civilians who have been killed and maimed or the terrible cost their families pay. Since Osama's death both sides of American politics have called for troop withdrawals and they are going to begin in a modest way this year and next. 

But the big problem is the pipeline.  What pipeline, you ask?  It's the crux of the whole problem and another version of the "Great Game".
The roots of the pipeline begin in the involvement of international oil companies in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan in the 1990s. Russia controlled all the export pipelines of these countries and refused to allow use of its pipeline network, so these companies needed an independent export route avoiding both Iran and Russia.

The original project started on 15 March 1995 when an inaugural memorandum of understanding between the governments of Turkmenistan and Pakistan for a pipeline project was signed. This project was promoted by an Argentinian company Bridas Corporation. The U.S. company Unocal, in conjunction with the Saudi oil company Delta, promoted an alternative project without Bridas' involvement.

On 21 October 1995, these two companies signed a separate agreement with Turkmenistan. In August 1996, the Central Asia Gas Pipeline, Ltd. (CentGas) consortium for construction of a pipeline, led by Unocal, guess who worked for Unocal, only Hamid Karzai, funny old world isn't it, was formed. On 27 October 1997, CentGas was incorporated in formal signing ceremonies in Turkmenistan, by several international oil companies along with the Government of Turkmenistan.

Since the pipeline would go through Afghanistan, it was necessary to work with the Taliban. The U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Robert Oakley, moved into CentGas in 1997. In January 1998, the Taliban, selected CentGas over the Argentinian competitor Bridas Corporation and signed an agreement that allowed the proposed project to proceed.  In June 1998, the Russian company Gazprom relinquished its 10% stake in the project.

On 7 August 1998, American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam were bombed under the direction of Osama bin Laden, and all pipeline negotiations stopped, as the Taliban announced that Osama bin Laden had their support.  Unocal withdrew from the consortium on 8 December 1998, and soon after closed its offices in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

America invaded Afghanistan and a new deal for the pipeline was signed on 27 December 2002 by the leaders of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan.  That's why you often see TAP or TAPI as the way its reported (Turkmenistan, Afghan, Pakistan and India). In 2005, Forbes magazine reported that"the project has been revived and drawn strong US support" as it would allow the Central Asian republics to export energy to Western markets "without relying on Russian routes" and Iran would be out of the loop as well.

The 1,680 kilometres (1,040 mi) pipeline will run from the Dauletabad gas field to Afghanistan. From there it will run alongside the highway  from Herat to Kandahar, and then via Quetta and Multan in Pakistan. The final destination of the pipeline will be the Indian town of Fazilka, near the border between Pakistan and India.  I'm sorry to go into so much detail about business but this is part of the world's real politick.

We have been fightng a "resources war" for years under the guise of fighting terrorism which is also a fantasy.  You can't fight an idea only a country. 

Now being unable to continue to pay for the war or justify the war to the American public now that Osama is dead and the elections are coming up for Obama and that is an event which always focusses the minds of American politicians;  yet needing to protect the pipeline and all the other resources to be mined and gouged out of Afghanistan and at the same time control Russia and Iran's presence in the region America has found an answer.  Mercenaries, soldiers of fortune, condottieri or as they are called now civilian led projects, private security and risk management companies like "Blackwater" now called "Xe" and "Aegis" the new company built on the ruins of "Sandline" and where America leads Britain will follow.  Of course there are "Oliver's Armies" fighting hidden private wars right now but we are going to see war privatised, unaccountable, very brutal and beyond the budgetary control of Parliament or Congress on a scale that has not been seen probably since the days of Renaissance Europe.  What are all the newly redundant soldiers affected by the newest round of cuts going to do?  Even if they did not want to continue soldiering there are no jobs in "civvie street" and unemployment will only get worse next year.  Soldiering will at least mean your are using your skills and feeding your family.

It's terrible to see what playing the "Great Game" has brought us to - so much waste and corruption for so little gain:  "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed". that quote is from Doug Eisenhower and I will leave it there but I will probably come back to the problem again.






















 years of  Russia fighting and having to admit defeat and withdraw, since 2001 America

Let's face the music and dance

I am in the middle of writing the last chapter of "Days of Thrift" with the last part of the editing to do;  on the 14th July 2011 it will go onto Amazon to be sold as an e book for £6.00.  I have been writing it since January 2011 and it covers subjects such as being unemployed, eating well on a tight budget, getting free food, barter, finding a new job and squatting, the six blogs I have written are also included.

I don't know if what I have written is any good or will do any good, I had a panic the other evening when I thought, what if everyone hates it and then I thought, well it's been written now and there is no going back, which made me feel more cheerful.

To keep myself sane I have been writing childrens stories at the same time, out of nowhere four characters emerged and became 6 stories centred around a cafe in Bristol called "The Artistic Yetis Cafe" run, of course, by 4 Yetis. I want to write 12 stories in all and again publish as e books.

Some days I have been getting up at 5am working until 9am, then watching "The Wright Stuff" after that back to writing until 7pm when Channel 4 News starts.  In the middle of all that I have been looking for work as my savings have run out and I have signed on, so I am living my work.

The title for this blog is "Lets face the Music and Dance" and that is how I feel, tired yet hyper which is always the way I used to feel when I finished work on a script and raring to go.

"Let's face the Music and Dance" could be the title for the upheavals the country is going through as well, the News of the World scandal is going to open up a huge window on how the "Great and Good" have used and abused their positions, not just in News International and the Murdoch empire but in a lot of other areas too, why would you need to hack the phones of relatives of dead soldiers? 

Well, they always say if you wait long enough by the river the bodies of all your enemies will float by and I really hope the enquiries will not be whitewashes but show what so many of us have said for a long time that a corrupt and greedy plutocracy is destroying our rights, our economy and our country and then rein in their power with legal curbs that work.

With huge price jumps for gas, high food prices and every week new job losses I can see we are all going to dance to a different tune.  I hope the tune brings a clarity  which will allow us to connect the dots between the bankers casino banking practices, the hedge funds price manipulation, and all the other issues I have banged on about over the months and the tune show us all a way forward that is ethical, inclusive and brings prosperity for all of us

How funny,I have just got an e-mail saying that I am now a VIP with one of the survey companies because I have filled in my surveys promptly and fully and so I have been entered into a new prize draw and would I like to fill in a new survey?  Okay, what is it this time - milk shakes, carpet cleaners or motorbikes.  No, its cat food.  See you soon.

moving the deckchairs on the lifeboat

At the start of the year I woke up at 4:15am and knew I had to get up and turn on the BBC news, don't ask me why, the cats thought I was crazy, I usually get up around 7am.  The item I watched I have never seen since and no one has talked about it. 

Southern Uganda is in the grips of a terrible drought and the report dealt with a family whose children were eating goat hide cut from their tent because food aid had been stopped - not cut down- but stopped dead last November 2010 and they had nothing left to eat. 

The top UN food aid official, a fat man dressed in a suit complete with waistcoat and tie (apologises to chubby people who wear suits) had come from Rome to oversee the end of the food aid policy. The reason given for the policy change and the presence of this apparatchik sweating in the middle of a desert;  it was the fault of the people who had not used the food they had been given responsibly.  I was stunned, no mention of corrupt government creaming off the majority of the aid given their countries, no mention of binding receiving food into buying arms, or any of the other filthy deals done over the years - no folks- this drought and food aid maladministration since the 60s, was all the fault of this tiny shrivelled up woman and her sickly, malnourished children chewing goat hide. She hadn't used the food she had been allocated properly. I mean they had eaten it! (well thank heavens we had cleared that up and know who to blame, it's the ordinary people, especially this woman sitting in the dirt, not corrupt officials, warlords, IMF deals or greedy bankers).

As I watched this huge policy change at 4:30am I felt I understood something really profound, it wasn't just this destitute family in Uganda being destroyed it was all of us, the huge majority of ordinary people, the ones who are not part of the plutocracy and we are coming to a gigantic turning point in world history.

In the dictionary "plutocracy" is defined as government by the wealthy. The plutocracy exercises the preponderance of political power, whether directly or indirectly, (look at our Parliament, especially the Cabinet, how many millionaires sit in the House of Commons?). 

Plutocracy also has a cultural and social aspect that benefits the rich.  If you start to think about society and what it is made up of - universities and colleges, publishing houses, mass circulation magazines, newspapers, television and radio stations, professional sports teams, foundations, churches, private museums, charity organizations are organized as corporations, ruled by boards of trustees (or directors or regents) composed overwhelmingly of very wealthy people often called in Britain "The Great and Good" as compared to the rest of us "The Great Unwashed". 

Considering America and as the only super power you do have to consider America very carefully, I found this quote in "Who Rules America", by sociologist G. William Domhoff.  "The idea that a relatively fixed group of privileged people might shape the economy and government for their own benefit goes against the American grain. Nevertheless . . . the owners and top-level managers in large income-producing properties are far and away the dominant power figures in the United States. Their corporations, banks, and agribusinesses come together as a corporate community that dominates the federal government in Washington. Their real estate, construction, and land development companies form growth coalitions that dominate most local governments. In the US, plutocratic governance is abetted by mass media owned by the hyperwealthy and operated in their own economic self-interest".

If you ally plutocracy with a very destructive but powerful theory called "The Lifeboat Theory" and link that to a world which we all know is running out of conventional resources - well I'll try to explain my thinking.

A man called Garrett Hardin developed a theory and wrote "Lifeboat Ethics: the Case Against Helping the Poor".  He wrote "Environmentalists use the metaphor of the earth as a "spaceship" in trying to persuade countries, industries and people to stop wasting and polluting our natural resources. Since we all share life on this planet, they argue, no single person or institution has the right to destroy, waste, or use more than a fair share of its resources". 

Hardin  disagreed profoundly with the idea of sharing  and mutual responsibility and argued that all the rich countries and rich people are in a lifeboat, not a spaceship, and all the poor countries and poor people are in the water trying to get into the lifeboat to escape drowning.   His question was "does everyone on earth have an equal right to an equal share of its resources?".  It's a fair question but when it's premise is put into action you end up with the BBC showing real, poor people chewing goat hide.

There are lots of reports showing how earth's resources are dwindling and the alternatives offered by "green technology" aren't being taken up fast enough or promoted widely enough to make a difference.  I'm sure that if I have read some of those reports and I'm not an economist, scientist or politician then the people in power, our plutocracy, have read them too and been briefed by the best minds available.  

What are these plutocrats to do? 

 The resources like oil and gas which make their corporations multi-billions and enable them to have the power to speculate in commodities and food unchecked (remember "Glencore") are dwindling, even if at the moment it doesn't seem like that. 

Money and power, the only important things in life ( that is what families like the Bush clan believe) must be preserved and because they cannot face the fact that it is their morally bereft beliefs and actions;  their capitalism red in tooth and claw which has created the situation of pollution and dwindling resources they are looking for a scapegoat which at the same time will make money.  So the IMF impose even more draconian measures on countries whch have taken loans and  then bailouts to cover the loans and then further bailouts (Greece anyone?) to cover the bailouts.

We, the people must be made to work longer, have smaller or no pensions at all, have our rights whittled away and be brainwashed by the mainstream media into accepting this because acording to the favourite lie our country has huge debts which we, the "Great Unwashed" not the "Great and Good" must be made to pay off.

But a problem has arisen for the plutocracy that it did not foresee:  us ordinary people, and it seems to me, people all around the world (praises be to the internet, twitter, social networking, mobiles with cameras and the brave individuals who use the technology, write the blogs and post the pictures) aren't buying into having no rights or their rights taken away, we don't want to lose our pensions, work until we die with no relief or have the NHS privatised or pay more for food or be banned from driving a car, or denied a free education just so that incredibly rich people can make even more money. 

The "Arab Spring" is saying what more and more of us want to say;  we are going to try and base our societies on social justice, a fairer distribution of resources which Huey Long dreamed of giving everyone the rights enshrined in the American Bill of Rights (how ironic seeing how America has turned out) ratified in 1781 protecting the natural rights of liberty and property including freedom of religion, freedom of speech, a free press, free assembly, and free association. 

What I have written is only a tiny part of the real politik we all face, the turmoil of the secret wars for resources being fought in the Arctic and Antarctic, the economic war between the USA, Russia and China, the cyber wars, the still unresolved Middle East, the problems the EU face, the wars in Africa these are partly the plutocracy fighting for supremacy and sometimes it seems there are only terrible things to think about but I truly believe at the end of the day we will all be in the lifeboat and there will be deckchairs for everyone.