Since profit/growth/usury-based global capitalism has not changed one iota since then, and the money-lenders in the temples of power show no sign of relinquishing self-interest in favour of any more equitable or sustainable means of production and distribution, tensions are ripe to explode again.
Fear sells equally well now too. Lately it has sold an unprecedented level of surveillance, suspicion, paranoia and alleged security and safety measures. To wit, our current Government's recent attempt to relieve tax-besieged motorists - with a less frequent (and therefore less costly) vehicle warrant-of-fitness regime - was rejected by worried citizens fretting about safety. Go figure.
Countless international wild-fires have the potential to flare into infernos.
The over-pumped Chinese economy has reached stalemate as debt-ridden international markets dry up and the Chinese elderly population begins to outnumber workers whose Third World pay rates depend on an inexhaustible supply of desperate young slave labour. War with Japan over disputed islands could be just the ticket for galvanising the handy mutual distraction of nationalistic fervour.
The so-called Arab Spring is hardly the naive picture of nascent democracy it has been painted as. More likely it's a briefly convenient coalition - of disaffected local extremists abetted by unscrupulous foreign forces with vested agendas - which is a sure-fire recipe for chaos.
And racism is alive and well.
As Frank Zappa said, "Religion is the virus that made America stupid." True to form, US Christian fundamentalists remain hell-bent on provoking their equally one-eyed Islamic counterparts, thereby igniting violent confrontations across the globe in places where brainwashing masquerades as education.
Here the Government - having systematically dismantled the post-World War II cradle-to-grave security that gave lucky New Zealanders the privileged platform upon which to stand up internationally for anti-nuclear ideals - has sold out to the US military machine.
US Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta, recently in the motu supping clean green local produce with his good buddy PM John Key, proposed basing US troops here because, reportedly, he is "keen to help us improve our defence capabilities".
Defence against what threat; radiation, agrichemicals, genetic engineering, climate change, big pharma, financial ruin, bee extinction, propaganda, mortality? This is pure neo-con rhetoric. Just as compassionate welfare has recently morphed into "the benefit trap" (in spite of the alternative, destitution, being far more socially corrosive), and "support" for beneficiaries has become code for making the poor jump through flaming hoops, likewise, clearly the "us" to which Panetta refers is the US. And for "defence", read "offence".
With friends like that, who needs enemies?
Grrrrr, back to the jasmine.
