Thoughts from a train

The trains on the Pelopennesse are the perfect places to think. Unlike the trains elswhere in Europe, they are old, slow, and dilapitated. You bounce and sway your way down the tracks, windows open to the breeze, and just watch the countryside roll by.
The first thing that I really focussed on is the European women. They radiate this effortless sexuality. At home, there are a lot of good looking women, no question, but they do not have that same appeal that ladies do here, It is difficult to explain. European women are always dressed to the nines, as are women at home, so their sense of fashion is not the difference. I think it has more to do with attitude. They know they are sexy, and just ooze their appeal as a result of that mentality. They are not obsessed with their appearance in a negative sense. No matter what they look like, there is no feeling from them of poor self regard.They are confident in their appearnce, no matter what, and that confidence transforms them. A girl who would be considered good looking at home is suddenly gorgeous; a girl who would be considered not very attractive is still capable of looking sexy, instead of looking like a kicked dog who feels nothing but self loathing. It is a very curios thing...they are not nearly as self critical and self conscious (even though they are clearly VERY aware of their looks in a fashion sense), and that confidence makes almost everyone instantly sexual. Its a good thing. Now, if they weren't all on the arms of some gino douchebag, the world would be in perfect working order!!

Capitalism is an economic system that is doomed ultimately to eventual collapse. It is the economic system of democracy, and is based on the simple principle that a man should be able to improve his economic situation and rise up as far as possible. That certainly sounds wonderful, on the surface, but that other side of capitalism is less golden; for one person to "have", the system needs to have many "have nots" - that is the basic premise. It is like a pyramid, where we all aspire to be at the pinnacle. Like a pyramid, however, the support of that pinnacle requires a huge base, a base that is far larger than the peak. That base, of course, is constructed of the world's poor.
We all want the fast car, the big house, the plasma tv, the swimming pool, whatever, and in order to get them, the vast majority of the world's population lives in squalor and filth. There is no sharing of wealth, or more importantly, resources, because the very notion of sharing acts as the opposite of capitalism.
Capitalism nurtures the individual at the cost of the whole. The natural divide that the capitalist market creates between the haves abd have nots is never far away. In the 1st world it is easy to ignore the masses of people in the 3rd world - they exist on the periphery of our understanding, somewhere "out there", in the global hinterland, far from our suburban paradise; it is harder to ignore the subject masses in our own backyards, and yet somehow, we manage that as well.
The gap between rich and poor is widening rapidly, even at home. In the USA, the gov't just admitted a few days ago that the divide was widening, but also said that there was nothing to be done about it. It is interesting that in the world's greatest "democracy", the working classes have seen actual earnings go down by 1% between 1980-present, while the wealthiest 1% of the population has seen earning increase by 135% during that same time. Whole communities are now on the verge of collapse, as their traditional industries that once nurtured them have pulled stakes and left (a very capitalist necessity, to seek a cheaper deal elsewhere). You see it in the industrial towns in Michigan, Penn., New York, and so on. Cities with noone but the urban poor.
When lookied at in that way, capitalism hardly looks sustainable - eventually the hoarding of resources and wealth must reach a point where so few people hold the powerthat they will be overwhelmed by the masses of poor. 2 decades ago, in 1982, Paul Theroux painted a grim picture of the future, stating "Someday all cities would look like this, I had thought in Belfast...The centre of these places was a 'control zone' with an entrance and exit. All cars and people were examined for weapons or bombs, and that tight securtiy meant that inside the control zone life was fairly peaceful and the buildings generally undamaged. It was possible to control the flow of traffic and even to prevent too many people from entering." Now, he was talking about a city state type system - enlarge that idea to nation states, and that is the exact wolrd we live in today, where all the 1st world nations are security zones, where the dangerous riffraff are kept away (and in effect, keeping the control of resources to the small, select populations in those countries).
Theroux expands on this description, saying "[the world will become] a wilderness in which most people live hand to mouth, and the rich would live like princes - better than the rich had ever lived, excep that their lives would constantly be in danger from the hungry, predatory poor. All the technology would serve the rich, but they would need it for their own protection and to ensure their continued prosperity. The poor would live like dogs". Sound at all familiar? Even though it was written in 1982, it describes the current state of the globe to a tee.
Take the current Israeli - Lebanon conflict. You have a 1st world power seeking to harness all of the local resources, to wrest them away from the "predatory poor" who exist alongside them. In a desert nation, one would think that the most important resource is water. Israel gets most of its from the Jordan River, a river whose headwaters begin in Southern Lebanon, the very area that they have seized under the pretext of "security". To drive their message of dominance home, they have employed all their militry might to perform an economically driven genocide against the poor of Lebanon, literally eliminating whole neighbourhoods, communities that held the poorest citizens (South Beirut, Tyre, Sidon, all areas of huge poor populations; they did not hit the financial area of Beirut once...) Everytime a Lebanese person dies in that conflict, you can go to bed satisfied, knowing that capitalism is working perfectly, and all is in order.
The rich will take what they need in order to ensure their wealth, while the poorwill grow in number, and suffer, until, finally, despite the security zones and the technology, the poor (under the guises of religion, politics, etc.) will begin to break through and start the process of rebellion. Has that already started?
The prime example of that rebellion would have to be the attacks on the WTT on 9/11, and yet, was that attack orchesrtated by the poor? The second key component to capitalism, after resource hoarding, is consumption, and as Micheal Moore pointed out, after 9/11, America consumed an amazing amount of goods. Corporations (read here, the true political powers of the West) need people to consume products, in order to provide wealth to reward its resource monopoly. That is the capitalist cycle: 1) gain access to resource, 2) harvest it into marketable product, 3) sell product on the open market, 4) use wealth to gain even more resources - a very constricting cycle, that will eventually result in a select group holding all the world's wealth.
Back to 9/11, however. Jet fuel burns to a temp. of 1400 degrees. The steel girders that made up the core of the towers melts at a temp between 2200-3000 degrees. How then did the core give way and collapse?
Also, certain American institutions are protected by an automated air defence system (the White house, the CIA headquarters, the Pentagon), and yet the Pentagon was suppossedly struck by an aeroplane as well. On 9/11 itself the press asked a distraught DC firechief what size the aircraft was. He replied "We don't know, there is no remains of a fuselage." That is too say, a plane just crashed, but left behind no remains. Added to that addmission, is the fact that all the debris was blown outwards, as if the explosionjs had been internal.
Of course, the crime scene evidence was studied in great detail...oh, no, thats right, it was immediatley shipped to China to be melted down into scrap. How odd. Usually crime scenes are studied at depth, and this surely cnstituted the greatest crime of the new millenia.
But of course, the attack on America gave the corporations the moral authority to conduct illegal, shadow wars all across the globe. increasing the size of their security zones by ensuring that the fighting would be "out there" and not at home (see Iraq and Afganistan, and coming soon to a war theatre near you, Iran and Syria!). Huge populations of poor have been illiminated under the pretext of "national security".
Lets not forget the poor at home, though. They are just as dangerous, if not more so. That is why, when a hurricane devastates the poorest American urban centre, nothing is done for over a week, also ensuring that the poor population at home is dealt a viscious blow.
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; the pessimist fears this is true"

To all who have emailed, thanks, I love it, just do not have time to reply! I will try soon, I swear! Tomorrow, trip updates instead of a rambling tirade!