Odds & ends 3

Over the past thirty years the access to major oil and gas reserves has been disrupted. It began with Iran, after the 1979 revolution and the Western backed attack by Saddam Hussein. Then in pure Orwellian style friends became enemies, and Iraq was ruined by its former allies. More recently Libya was bombed into chaos, and Venezuela is suffering from chronic underinvestment. It is no surprise, therefore, that the price of fossil fuels is so high, or that fracking and shale-extraction are booming. These occurrences may not be the result of a plan (the “Cartel” vs. OPEC), but they are manifestly an abusive use of power, and a manipulation of market forces at the expense of consumers and tax-payers.

The few oppose the many. But the few are necessarily conservative, whereas the many must be inventive in their struggle, constantly trying new approaches without success. The few, notwithstanding their conservatism, always manage – sometimes with ultra-violence and new faces – to appropriate the novelty and turn it against the many. Past examples are abundant, iron against bronze, the musket, printing and successive electronic media culminating with the internet connections. It may be a lesson of history that the boundless creative power of the many is always stolen. Unless, at some point, they manage to join hands around the globe.

Nobody is borrowing, so nobody is spending more than they earn. And there will be no growth in demand until everybody (the 98%) earns more to spend. The borrowing spree is over and the recession will last until there is a redistribution of wealth, hopefully before it is all destroyed by bubbles and strife.

Boredom used to lead to creative activity of some sort. Nowadays, it leads to the most opportune consumer reflex. Austerity might turn the clock back.

Two hundred years after Waterloo, a hundred years after Verdun, seventy years after Dresden, Auschwitz and Hiroshima, and we are still at it, killing, maiming, and leaving bereaved families, orphans and psychopaths. Alice Miller remarked that children are trained like animals, do this, don’t do that. The trouble is that children become adults and do not remain in the obedience phase, as do dogs and horses. That is when it all goes wrong.

It is not the immigrant’s appearance and culture that seem threatening. It is his social inferiority that feels menacing. Dominion goes in constant fear of a reversal.

Military tactics have always had to combine fast moving cavalry and slow moving infantry. This was first done with horse-drawn chariots carrying archers and lancers. Then came the Greek phalanx and the Roman legion that used cavalry mainly to protect their flanks. The Middle Ages bred bigger horses and invented the stirrup, so that heavy cavalry predominated. They were trumped by gunpowder and canons. At the outbreak of war in 1914, mounted units were still active. They quickly disappeared, only to come back in 1917 in mechanised armoured vehicles. Tanks were decisive in several WW2 battles, but they needed infantry support and, by then, air-craft had joined the equation. For the asymmetric fighting in Vietnam and Afghanistan during the 60s, 70s and 80s, mobility was insured by helicopters, air-born chariots with fire power and foot-soldiers. It was the best solution in a wide expanse of difficult terrain, but it was never very effective. The latest avatar is to hold the towns with infantry and patrol the rest with unmanned powerfully armed drones, a return to the unassailable armoured knight roaming the countryside on behalf of his liege. Is it the sign of a fallen empire?