A Dystopia to fold Laundry by
Spent much of today catching up on chores/email/life after week at GTS show
Had a new dystopia running around my head
Here goes
Saturday, March 20:
Riots in Taiwan over disputed election:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3554015.stm
Pakistan standoff continues:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3552209.stm
Kosovo still cooking off:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3553837.stm
Venezuela continues to ferment:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3548749.stm
Venezuela’s link to Nigeria and oil:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3512064.stm
Al Q:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3516318.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3525198.stm
Haiti still a mess:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3554037.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3518392.stm
Gaza implosion continues:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3518980.stm
Just a basic smattering of the smoldering woes of the world. In the normal scheme of things they erupt for a few days and then go back to slow burn. Everyone talks big but never quite pulls final triggers. But IF…
Sunday March 21st:
· Al J broadcasts a supposed Al Q message that Bin Lauden is dead in the siege in Pakistan. Riots erupt across the Muslim world. Bombs go off in Pakistan, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Paris, Kosovo, Bosnia, Iraq, Saudi, Nigeria, Egypt, Algeria and Morocco. Maybe it was spontaneous. Maybe the man’s been dead for a while. Maybe it’s a hoax. Who knows. Thousands are dead, many of them First World businessmen and tourists. Property damage is in the billions. Major cities in Pakistan, Egypt and Morocco are under martial law with districts out of government control and widespread looting. There are widespread videos from Al J and the Arab media showing what in Western countries would be called police over reaction. Bin Lauden is a widely revered figure of Arab and Muslim pride in a world where they feel grossly put upon [fairly, unfairly…does it matter?]. There are all sorts of crazy rumors on the net, including one that a Paki nuke has gone missing. Rumor sparks overnight movements – many top Indian business leaders and politicians are seen sending family out of the country on special charter flights. Families of lesser Suits and military brass are seen in auto convoys heading for countryside. Indian units are trying to quietly recall men from leave. All night web pix show aircraft being dispersed to civilian fields and ships being franticly readied for sea. [between cell phone cameras, web, etc it is quite hard to do ANYTHING secretly these days unless you have no web links and a real police state neither of which describes India].
China has offered to mediate the electoral dispute in Taiwan. The street protests continue at a low pace but again some of the highest and richest are seen sending family abroad [Vancouver, LA, Singapore, Australia]. It is better hidden here but enough leaks.
In Iraq a giant bomb attack at Karbala kills Grand Ayatollah Sistani. Shiia militia have gone into pogrom mode basically stringing up and gutting every Sunni they catch. US military have sealed off the Shiia cities of the central Iraqi plains but are awaiting orders from DC which is in campaign mode and is moreover totally distracted by a rumor from moveon.org that Bush has Bin Lauden hidden for an October election surprise and the Paki nuke rumor which CIA is waffling BADLY on. CIA says it looks like Musharef may fall but refuses to go further than 50-50 on whether the result will be a jihadistan, Mad Max, or just a change in the name of the general in charge [partially bureaucratic CYA, partially payback for accumulated Bush slights and a good deal of not having a clue beyond what BBC and Fox are reporting]. Bush is on the road campaigning. Cheney is also. Powell and Rumsfeld cannot agree on anything. Gridlock until a conference call can be arranged and Rice keeps arguing that pulling the POTUS and VP off speech/dinner platforms will cause a media feeding frenzy beyond the one they already have.
In Nigeria the death of Bin Lauden and the scenes on the TV [mostly inflammatory stuff from Al J plus sensationalist stuff from Sky/Fox] have led to anti-Christian pogroms in Kano and much of the north. A fair number of rankers and junior officers have joined the Muslim mobs. Deaths are in the tens of thousands. The government is pulling troops out of the oilfields trying to keep this from getting out of hand. This is leading Shell and the other oil companies to pull staff in from the outlying installations which in turn are being looted and torched by gangs from the River States. Rumor has exaggerated this and the oil markets are spiking badly.
In Kosovo the Albanians riots have led to Serb irregulars being motored in to defend their people. NATO has kept the regulars out but simply lacks the numbers to block every back road. The pogroms are by dozens instead of tens of thousands in Nigeria but this being Europe the mess and flights of refugees in BOTH directions are getting MUCH more EU airplay than a bunch of wogs killing each other. Italy has appealed to NATO, the EU and the WEU for help in sealing their coast before a tidal wave of Albanians floods them. There are shooting incidents in Bosnia but things are still under control.
In Gaza the crowds are whipped up by Hamaas that essentially sends them against the Jewish settlements in human waves Somalia style with gunmen mixed with hordes of kids. The resultant pictures show very few dead but the dead and bleeding are all Al J is showing on a continuous feed loop. This is helping keep the pot in Egypt, Morocco and Saudi at a boil.
On the Venezuelan-Columbian border a small AUC-FARC skirmish gets out of hand. Both are being pressed hard by the Columbian government. There have been raids and counterraids by the paramilitaries before. This time regulars on both sides get involved. Small units [scratch companies] but Chavez chooses to use the ‘war’ as an excuse to crack down on his domestic opponents. That night there are ‘tax raids’ on leading opposition media owners and arrests of military and police officers deemed ‘suspect’. The civilian part goes well and a few hundred top opposition figures get tossed into various makeshift prisons. The military/police arrests lead to on base fighting in some places. By dawn Chavez has all installations but less than all the men and far less than all the equipment. There has also been oil installation sabotage with each side blaming the other [it is actually Cubans and Al Q sleepers]. Oil is spiking towards $50/barrel as this leaks out.
Monday the 22nd: the oil market chaos hits the Far East like a brick. As a region they are the most dependant on oil imports and thus the most at risk. They start liquidating their vast dollar reserves to bid in enough oil to ride out the crisis. The markets quickly go disorderly. As the price spikes past $60 heading towards $70 the OECD governments essentially shut them down. Everyone involved is suddenly focused on not being the nation left out. Elites in every 3rd and 4th world nation start sending their families to safety in the First World ‘just in case’ as it is quite obvious that if there isn’t going to be enough oil the First World will grab theirs first.
As dawn breaks in South Asia Musharef holds scattered garrisons while the mob holds the squatter sections of Pakistan’s cities. Many military units are out of communication. India is rapidly moving units to their war stations. The news is spreading through India’s cities producing massive panic flights of tens of millions of people fleeing the Indian cities and the Punjab. The Indian rail and road net implode. The First World governments and Russians are trying to get their nationals out but the airports are besieged by worse mobs than the Viet ones were in the days before the fall of Saigon. The two governments are hurling threats and warnings at each other. The troops on the border are all jumpy. One guys shoots at shadows and there are battalion and regimental firefights. It may not be war but it is clearly no longer peace. The siege of the jihadis in Waziristan is over as the troops have either made common cause with the rebels or pulled back to await developments. In Afghanistan there is a flight of anyone who cooperated with the Americans or fears the Taliban. They are running for the US lines or the Stans.
In Iraq the US units are laggering, essentially leaving the Shia pogrom to burn itself out. The ROE in Baghdad and the Sunni triangle has gone to force protection and collateral damage be damned.
In Saudi the panic flight of the princes and their hangers on has cleared the decks for what amounts to a shootout between the modernizers and the trads. The modernizers have seized the main oil facilities but suspend shipping after an Al Q suicide speedboat takes out a supertanker [French for giggles] in the main channel of the Straits of Hormuz.
In Iran the clerics are seeing anti-Shia pogroms in Pakistan and the beginnings of the same in Saudi. They are rushing to get a few nukes ready and making sure they have loyal officers in the major urban garrisons. With the world oil markets shut they are demanding $150/ barrel for spot delivery and getting it.
In Egypt enough of the army is still loyal but they are leaking men to the growing mobs. The Canal is closed [RPG and suicide boat attacks from leaderless jihadis inflamed by Al J and the internet].
In Gaza and the West Bank the Israelis are at the stage of using air strikes on mobs that no longer bother to hide being armed – the million martyrs are on the march. Their attacks again accomplish virtually nothing but the pictures of the battles are enflaming the world.
Kosovo is rapidly heading towards mutual ethnic cleansing but the low level fighting is spreading to Macedonia and across the Serb and Montenegran frontiers. Large numbers of volunteers are pouring into the region. KFOR lacks both orders and reinforcements. The contingents are retreating into their cantonments and focusing on force protection. The governments of the force contributing nations simply lack the time to deal with this. Austria and Italy have sent troops and paramilitaries to help Slovenia and Croatia set up roadblocks to keep refugees from reaching them. They inform Brussels that are refusing to allow former Yugoslav and non-EU foreigners through for ‘duration of the emergency’.
Nigeria’s oil industry is shut. The nation is imploding into a Congolese level of civil war. In every city and state local mobs stiffened by criminal gangs and dissolved military units are killing everybody not of their religion and ethnicity with scenes out of the Mongol hordes. Nigeria’s neighbors are trying to seal the contagion but are failing.
In Equatorial Guinea a small bomb at the oil transfer port leads to massacres by government security forces who are essentially machine gunning random street crowds. Several jets with key officials have departed for Paris. Oil company security officials are meeting with the army offering to assume the payroll for ‘the emergency period’ as long as the oil keeps flowing.
Morocco has restored order but at a giant blood price. Again Al J and the Euro networks filter for the bloodiest episodes and string run them out of context. The effect here is greatest in the North African ghettos in the EU where ‘sympathy riots’ are rapidly spinning out of control in France and the Benelux nations. Madrid’s socialist government has essentially put the key neighborhoods on dusk to dawn lockdowns to the predictable howls of their more left and civil libertarian elements. Bombs have taken out gas pipelines in dozens of cities. Most are crude and cause limited damage. All are causing political and social chaos. EU ministers council will meet in a late afternoon session to impose gasoline rationing and allow for transnational loans of troops, police, paramilitaries at need. When the Rhine Axis barks, the EU jumps. Currency market gyrations force noontime suspensions of trading in dollar, euro, pound, yen and most majors such that trading is suspended essentially after lunch. The spillover to the stock and bond markets close them a few hours later. Travelers without credit cards to buy local currency are essentially stranded. Even then the companies are putting severe limits on this courtesy.
In Venezuela, Chavez announces a 24 hour curfew to ‘allow security forces to do their work’. Bolivarian militia leads mobs looting the wealthier districts amid scattered street battles with scratch rightwing militias. Aristide lands at the airport, fleeing Jamaica where the looming gasoline shortages have triggered street disturbances. Masses of terrified people force their way into foreign embassies seeking asylum [many of the middle and upper classes are dual passport or can claim such status by parental birth, documentation, real estate holdings, family ties…]. Mobs seeking to block the entrances to the US and Italian embassies clash with embassy guards. Italians use very restrictive ROE and the embassy is essentially stormed by the riot with many dead on all three sides. USMC opens fire. Even more die, but they are overwhelmingly Bolivarians. Chavez flips at hearing this, takes hostage the US diplomats sent to reason with him and declares war over the national TV on the US, Columbia and the EU. He reverses himself on the EU within the hour. He appeals to Iran, Libya and Cuba for fraternal assistance. He suspends all oil shipments and threatens to burn the oil infrastructure to the ground if ‘invaded’.
DC is in media frenzy/political meltdown. It simply cannot cope with more than one media circus at once as the same top players must make all the decisions and must consult their media and political advisers first. State governors and mayors have been responding to soaring gasoline prices, massive shortages by imposing odd/even; putting limits on number of gallons per fillup, keeping ‘extra’ people off blocks long gas lines, imposing local price controls based on undefined ‘emergency powers’. Biggest problem is county executives claiming authority to refuse gasoline sales to anyone not local residents. There are riots on the gas lines, shootings of station owners, attacks on fuel trucks. Many incidents of ‘hate crimes’ against Muslims, Arabs, Sikhs or anyone who vaguely looks Arab. Gangbangers in LA are leading mobs against Korean gas stations. Airlines are requesting Federal intervention as fuel prices soar and suppliers are insisting on prepayments. Our fuel supply system is a perfect storm waiting to happen. Just in time delivery plus NIMBY responses to refineries plus endless regulation/boutique fuel requirements have produced a system that barely functions without major crackup. Prices at the well head have at least tripled before the markets were closed. Major producers aren’t shipping or are shipping at vastly reduced levels. EU and East Asian nations are using cash reserves to sop up what supply there is at any price. Naval ships are being diverted to escort tankers to national ports. The so-called First World coordinating system for sharing a shortage collapses before it can be invoked. The media are screaming for the President to ‘do something’. Kerry and his campaign minions are blaming it all on Iraq and Bush and Halliburton. The FBI cannot distinguish opportunistic crime from sabotage [there are scattered jihadi and Cuban infrastructure strikes but the blame is lost in a rash of violent anger]. Rice and Powell finally persuade the Shrub that the Western hemisphere comes first. What military isn’t in Iraq and Afghanistan is needed to keep Venezuela from breaking the US and the loss of fuel from triggering internal disorder. President announces that he will ask Congress for emergency powers as if wartime…zero attention is being paid to East and South Asia. Functional overload. EU and US have essentially stopped talking. 3rd and 4th level people are keeping each other advised but cannot get their boss’s attention. It is all happening too fast. Overnight an oil terminal goes up in Miami and two carloads of gangbangers are caught trying to torch a tank farm at LAX. The gang boys had been part of a mob doing a replay of the Rodeny King shopping expedition [itself triggered by an inflammatory speech by Congresswoman Maxine Waters calling for a Peoples’ Insurrection in support of Chavez and Aristide and against the big corps ripping off the People] when some guy offered them a sports bag full of Benjamins with the promise of more to plant some C4 out by the airport. The guys aren’t the brightest lights in the sky and cannot give a clear account beyond excitement and promises of riches. Guy sort of looking Spanish or maybe Middle Eastern or maybe Armenian or…on hearing a garbled account of this and word that Fox will be running the story in 12 minutes Bush is awakened to read a Cheney inspired speech over the air calling out all Guard and Reserve units and asking anyone with prior military experience to report to the nearest base with their old ID. The speech isn’t heard by many [it is 2AM on the East coast but phone calls across the nation create monster panic before the phone lines essentially start crashing from traffic overload].
Taiwanese election crisis has been replaced by a Straits crisis. Chinese navy is ordering tankers on route to Taiwan to proceed to Canton instead claiming territorial waters and ‘unsettled conditions in the Taiwan special zone’. Could be overreaction by someone in the South Seas Fleet HQ or a bit of kleptocracy. However Taiwanese government mobilizes. Sky News and CNN report this before their bureaus close. Peking seems to announce [3rd level Foreign Ministry official that no one higher will confirm or deny] a blockade of Taiwan and mobilization. Warns shipping not to come into Chinese territorial waters which are defined as halfway to Guam and Okinawa. Higher government has other problems. The Taiwan Crisis has finished off the world financial system. Chinese banks trying to move funds are discovering that financial globalization is gone. As with the South Seas after the Plaza Accords banks are refusing to move electronic funds by disconnecting from the system. Before the day is out banks are rationing cash withdrawals to favored customers only worldwide as no one knows who will honor what in the current financial meltdown. Factories close all over the mainland as Taiwanese and other foreign buyers and technicians are taken into custody/being held for ransom. Factory owners are trying to flee to major cities ahead of enraged mobs of laid off workers.
In Indonesia pirate attacks [local thieves, jihadis, who knows – after the world meltdown it will be impossible to tell] on shipping in the two main straits have led to a worldwide advisory from Lloyds taking Indonesian territorial waters. This adds a week to oil deliveries to the Far East as the advisory detours tankers south of Timor. Australia announces that it will police the seas between Australia and Timor for ‘safety reasons’ – collective East Asia screams that it is a plot to steal their oil. China threatens ‘retaliation’. Australia tries to call DC to invoke ANZUS. DC too distracted so US embassy in Canberra invokes on its own. Panic flight from Australian cities, some anti-Islamic and anti-Asian street incidents.
In South Asia, both nations are melting down with Pakistan melting down faster. By now there are multiple supposed government on the air with Musharef ‘controlling’ a perimeter in Islamabad. After multiple explosions are heard within his perimeter Al J announces he is dead [later investigation will seem to indicate that as usual Al J had multiple reports and chose a less creditable but more sensationalist one from a jihadi linked source out of London who had zero way of actually knowing if the explosions were a successful jihadi assassination or a very loud fart]. As the world media race to report this as fact, New Delhi decides they can wait no longer and orders a take out strike. The orders leak and are reported on BBC, Reuters, Fox/Sky…tens of millions die in both nations from nuke attacks and the riots as everyone flees the cities. The Indian army pushes across the frontier at Pakistan’s waist towards Islamibad. Pakistani resistance is broken backed [no chain of command, etc] but fanatic [Iwo Jima style die in your tracks]. Indian commando strikes at the jihadi camps in Pakistan are more successful. They kill tens of thousands of jihadi mooks but the main cadre make their escape. In Gujerat the local BJP uses the chaos for a full anti-Muslim pogrom. Scenes out of the fall of Baghdad to the Mongols. Border fighting leads to an unordered Indian invasion of Bangladesh amid widespread mutual massacre of Hindu and Muslim on both sides of the illmarked border