Love and bondage in the new economy came out two years ago. It was the last piece I wrote for Telepolis and, of the writing I have done for reasons of economic return (i.e. getting paid), it is the article that most remains in my heart, both for its stylistic 'contamination' and the subject it treats:

"As spring reboots across the western hemisphere - nature's algorithms muting to codes of renewal and transformation - all around the winter of military operations, of business cannibalisation, of economic migration grows harsher each day. The brilliant colours of summer once promised by the New Economy now lay buried under the snowdrifts of mass layoffs and redundancies in G8 countries. Neo-liberalism driving the blizzards of pauperisation across vast territories of the global ghetto. The war that some quarters want made eternal freezes our vision on barren horizons."

Two years on, this could have been written yesterday. The chilling wind of pauperisation keeps blowing against ever increasing percentages of the global population. After the dismantling of welfare systems, it is now the turn of the middle-class. The 'New' these days belongs no longer to the economy, but to the poor. While the war eternal, well, in Iraq we seem to have found our very own Vietnam (we are after all a culture that thrives on revivals), and there are plenty more fronts waiting to be bombed open.

But perhaps "fronts" is no longer correct. Perhaps military "hot-spots" is a more precise definition for those regions of the new world disorder where full conflict is researched and developed and implemented full spec. Otherwise the "front" can erupt anywhere.

We have entered the first global low-intensity civil war. 'Civil' because in our intricately interconnected times the notion that what happens to others elsewhere is not our business can no longer apply. This is the century of the discovery that the other contains me.

Do not be confused by the current "hot spot" wars. This is not just another sequel of a centuries-old crusade. The first global civil war is a conflict of perception. It is a clash between fundamentalist, mono-culture thought (be it the Muslim suicide bomber, the Christian fundamentalist in the Oval Office, the hyper-liberal businesswoman, the professional protester) and hyperlinked, multifaceted vision. Between those that drive the desertification of resources and soul through the pursuit of short-term ROI (return on investment) and those that seek their KPIs (key performance indicators) in the design and development of abundant layers of reality that have long been gleaned only in dream.