Twitter has just delivered a message from tyhe BBC that Benazir Bhutto has been murdered.
When the Arch Duke was murdered in 1914, 40 years of growing tension was unleashed into a cataclysmic conflict that reordered the world.
I think that many of us have been hoping that somehow the collision between Islam and the west could be avoided. I had those hopes. Many don't even want to see the conflict but will now.
In my own mind its not simply Islam as a religion but what Islam as a religion implies in its current form for societies. In many so called states where Islam is the religion, there is no hope for the people. There is no hope because thinking and women are oppressed. Societies where you are not allowed to think and where women are oppressed cannot thrive. Islam has become such a negative force.
It has been easy for us to label all of this "Terror".
I call it the Messy World.
Where there is a belt of so called states where the system shuts down all hope of social progress and produces millions of angry young men as a result. Where in the west, our huge bureaucracies impede any movement and our new belief system of Political Correctness precludes the development of an appreciation for the threat that is before us.
So here we are on the brink.
The West's financial system is under water because of the effects of the subprime mess, the west's military is at full stretch and is equipped largely for the wrong type of conflict, peak oil is upon us, the weather is changing and we have such a guilt from our colonial past that we cannot even talk intelligently about what is going on.
I don't know what will happen but I do know that there is no resilience left in our system.
Edward Grey, who had tried his best to prevent war in 1914 said this: "The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime"
With some dread, I feel the same way this morning
