Three new poems over at Rubedo (perhaps I should have saved a couple for here?). I seem stuck on war metaphors right now - I wonder why that would be? It's all too easy to see all these rumblings in the Middle East (or South West Asia) as the beginnings of World War III, or an escalation in the long war for oil.

President Ahmadinejad in Iran warns of "a brewing and dangerous storm". King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia warns that "if the option of peace fails as a result of Israeli arrogance, then the only option remaining will be war, and God alone knows what the region would witness in a conflict that would spare no one". Oh and its not like things have eased up in Iraq or Afghanistan while all this has been going on.

It's getting Hot in Here

So take off all you knows.

I don't have to search for oil and energy stories these days - you can't move for them. Israel's actions in Lebanon have provided the latest ostensible reason why oil prices have increased, which even if true - only reflects how tight supply is.

Europe's super heated days not only seem to tell a global warming story but have sent wholseale electricity prices spiralling - and given further indication of how tight the global energy system may be. Fridges and fans and air-con have sent demand right up and the power companies are struggling to maintain supply - France (the great avatar of energy independence, based on its nuclear stations) imported electricty from Italy. The severe heat apparently compelled France's energy company, EDF, to lessen electricity generation at some of its nuclear power stations, as the coolant water it draws on was too hot.

At the ASPO conference currently running in Pisa , Chris Skrebowski, the editor of Petroleum Review gave his latest prediction as to the date of oil peaking. He said: “We have 1,500 days until peak and tomorrow we’ll have one day less.” (that was said on the 18th July, so as of today its 1,498 days by his reckoning). On a further cheery note, at the same conference, Dennis Meadows (one of the authors of Limits to Growth) told the audience: “We have already overshot. Collapse is not inevitable but it will very tough to avoid.”

I've got a new poem over at Rubedo:
Rubedo: Post War Dividend

RIP SYD

I'm sure it will all be said elsewhere, but in any case -

Shine on you Crazy Diamond.

Read Mark Jones take on it all over at Rubedo.

Then Kill Caeser

“It’s a corrupting thought, you know, she said when the laughter faded, the idea that they deserve the worst of what they do. It’s so easy to become everything we hate. Their phallocracy toppled by our machismo.”
Bill Ayers in Fugitive Days

Well it’s “7/7” today, and working in central London I’ve seen the police on foot and I’ve seen the police on horseback and there’s been a helicopter in the air circling threateningly – It didn’t make me feel safe. Not that I was scared of terrorists, its guys with guns in uniforms that scare me.

Anyway, here’s an extract, pretty much straight, from yesterday’s diary entry written out of a whole other chain of thought and following on from recent Rubedo meditations:

“Bought three new books yesterday – The Game of War, a bio of Guy Debord, Risen – an occult novel by Peter Whitehead the 60s film-maker and Fugitive Days by Bill Ayers – the memoir of a guy who was in the Weather Underground, the US terrorist (?) group – I guess they were terrorists… Political violence is interesting, elusive – not violence – direct action? Very direct action? At what point does one take up arms against an oppressor? How pacifist are you? To the point of your own death? Go ahead and kill me I will not fight you? Kill my friends and family I will not fight you? Kill the planet and cause megadeath I will not fight you? This is all more complicated than “just wars” and acceptable forms of defence. But once you take up the sword – where does it end? Every moral conscience must be tuned to what is “right” - impossible.

Blowing up dams, tearing down adverts, breaking into arms factories and smashing up the machines, ceramic nails in trees, blowing up banks…

I don’t like the whiff of machismo inherent in these kinds of revolutionary action – but I do stare at my own passivity and wonder if the peaceful path leads anywhere at all. Looking back from the otherside of WW2 – almost any “terror” action against Hitler, the Nazis, fascists in the 1930s seems right and just – nobody would demonise the “terrorist” who threatened Hitler’s Germany. So after which rubicon will we look back see any actions made to halt the destruction of biodiversity, corruption of the biosphere, pollution of the atmosphere as holy justifiable acts – up to, and including, the assassination of the President of the United States?

As I write this I feel like its one of those diaries that security services produce to demonstrate the state of mind and evil intent of the defendant. The kind of police state nonsense that implies guilt through the publication of a select bibliography of your bookshelf. If I want to read and possess the Koran, Mein Kampf, Ted Kaczynski,Valerie Solanas, Trotsky, Ayn Rand, Collected Speeches of Usama bin Laden, Ho Chi Minh, Qaddafi, whoever – then I will – fuck you and don’t make out I’ve got an evil mind ‘cause I read evil books and… Not that I’m in this position of course, but whenever I read about the police arresting someone and somehow, “somebody” leaks to the tabloids the arrested person’s select reading list as part of an exercise in swinging public consciousness into a mode of pointy finger, knowledge of guilt a priori of the facts – then I worry about these things.

It’s too easy to overlook or forget situations like the police raid on Genesis P Orridge and not consider it important because Gen is weird, some gooky transvestite into piercings and weird shit I don’t want to know about etc. Hell, I don’t like a lot of what Gen does – but so fucking what? That’s up to him, and say what you like, he is not another unit of Western slave mind – weirdness is not guilt.

Every day the apparatus for the construction of a police state seems to silently be increasing its presence. The general hope is that British fair play and common sense will restrain it. Let’s hope so.”

I wrote this, thought about putting it up here, and then thought – could this get me into trouble? I have never thought that before in my life and it is pretty fucking scary that I should think it now.

Coughs and Sneezes

If like me you do a lot of travelling on public transport, you too may have recently be affected if not infected by some snivelling, sneezing fellow passenger.

Obviously you can't help it when you don't feel great, I'm not annoyed with people being ill - but do they have to sneeze and snivel all over you? There just doesn't seem to be an accepted form of behavour for all this now days - whatever happened to the hankie?

In Japan they go round wearing surgical masks when they've got an infection - now there's civilization for you - a bit strange I grant you, but civilization nevertheless.

In case anybody out there is confused about how to deal with sneezing in polite society, I heartily recommend Richard Massingham's 1945 public information film Coughs and Sneezes, which is now available online courtesy of the UK's National Archives.