The World Survived The Fall Of The

My Belief, For What It Is Worth, Is That City Dwellers Cannot Understand The World. Insulated From Reality By Complex And Expert Systems Of Provision And Police, Baffled By Fashion And Spectacle, City Dwellers Can Distinguish Neither The Sources Of Their Existence Nor The Consequences.

Financial Crises Are Like Fireworks: They Illuminate The Sky Even As They Go Pop.

For All Their Current Prestige, Osama Bin Laden And The Suicide Bombers Are Still Regarded In All But The Most Desperate Districts Of Gaza Or Peshawar As Romantics With Little Chance Of More Than Symbolic Victories, However Bloody And Brutal. That Gives Both The Middle East And The West A Small And Distant Hope Of Security.

At The Heart Of Banking Is A Suicidal Strategy. Banks Take Money From The Public Or Each Other On Call, Skim It For Their Own Reward And Then Lock The Rest Up In Volatile, Insecure And Illiquid Loans That At Times They Cannot Redeem Without Public Aid.

For 50 Years, Nuclear Power Stations Have Produced Three Products Which Only A Lunatic Could Want: Bomb-explosive Plutonium, Lethal Radioactive Waste And Electricity So Dear It Has To Be Heavily Subsidised. They Leave To Future Generations The Task, And Most Of The Cost, Of Making Safe Sites That Have Been Polluted Half-way To Eternity.