With all this talk of collapsing currencies and impending apocalyptic chaos, I thought it was time to revisit 'The Winter of Burning Cars', a nice little post-apocalyptic piece I wrote for this colyoom back in September 2002, when the supposed threat came from Saddam rather than the Euro.
As that
Autumn of 2002 came around, we had no idea what lay ahead.
No idea
that the war would be over without a shot fired. No idea that we would lose.
September
came and went in a blaze of sunshine. The October gales plucked leaves from the
trees, scattering them over the earth.
Talk of war
seemed almost safe, remote. Everything was going to be alright, I told myself.
We’d heard it all before. Same old macho politicians posturing and pratting
around the planet, desperate to try out some strategic nuclear weapons in the
field of battle. Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleeza Rice droned on and on, just
like Daddy Bush back in ‘92.
“Blah blah
U.N. resolutions, blah blah weapons inspectors, blah blah Saddam must go.”
Same-old
same-old.
With the
coming of a cold November, the first coal fire of the season was built More talk on the news about the
protection of freedoms, limited strikes, and somehow, there’d been so many
far-off wars I’d grown immune. Of course it was a terrible thing and all that,
but rain was still going to fall on Ireland’s fields.
Still does.
Now I know
how complacent I was.
This is the
Winter of Burning Cars.
It happened
so quickly. That was what shocked everyone. We all felt so deep-down secure in
our western civilisation. Whatever atrocities were visited upon distant
villagers in crumbling stone desert huts, it wouldn’t really stop us living our
day-to-day lives.
How could
it?
One
interview, that was what did it in the end.
The US and
UK forces were building up on the Iraqi borders, trying their best to provoke
Saddam into attacking first. They desperately wanted war, but all they got was
entrenched defiance, and then Condoleeza Rice gave ‘that’ interview to CNN.
“So Condie,
can I call you Condie? So, Condie, how is this war on Iraq going to help the
USA’s war on terrorism?”
“Well, I
see this chapter as part of a greater book. George Bush is a great man, a good
man, and his policies will make the world a safer place. After the Taliban and
Saddam’s regime have been replaced by democracies, the US can turn its
attention to Iran, and then Saudi Arabia.”
“But the
Saudis are our allies. Does this mean a shift in policy toward the Saudis?”
“Well, it
has to be said that it’s not a very attractive society.”
“So is it
now US policy to gradually replace all Middle-Eastern societies with the
American-Israeli democratic model?”
“If you put
it like that, yes, that’s a dream I hold dear. What’s so bad about a world
where elections give everyone the leaders they want?”
“But what
if they elect leaders who are anti-American?”
I missed
Condie’s answer. My spuds had to come to the boil.
As I ate my
dinner, reports were coming in about the beginning of the end. Condoleeza’s
interview had provoked an immediate and massive response from a belt of
countries from Libya to Pakistan. There was, for the first time, a consensus of
outrage and direction.
No more
oil. That’s what they decided. Rather than sit and watch their own
civilisations fall foul of the infidel predator, the western war machine was
going to be starved of oil.
Middle-Eastern
populations were already living with the threat of a costly deadly war with the
US, which would leave their countries destroyed, the survivors condemned to
slow deaths from depleted uranium.
The
prospect of abject poverty was not too hard a sacrifice.
The US had
stockpiled their Texan oil, and started to intercept (pirate) any tankers that
sailed the Atlantic from the Venezuelan oil-fields. The Russians managed to
secure supplies from Azerbaijan, but for Western Europe, the brakes came on
unbelievably quickly.
By the time
European governments realised what was going on, it was too late.
The
Americans had shut up shop, becoming instantly uncooperative. They were plain
doolally terrified that their combustion-engined world was going to dry up, and
when your back’s up against the wall, you don’t look out for your mates.
Well, they
didn’t, anyway.
Petrol
stations and civil liberties were, naturally, the first to go. All Ireland’s
manufacturing industries were shut down in the first two weeks, but it didn’t
matter. People couldn’t get to work even if their jobs still existed, because
their cars couldn’t run.
They turned
our electricity off at 22:00 each night, while the military convoys escorted
road tankers from the docks to oil depots.
Riots
swarmed over Europe’s old capitals as mould on a loaf.
After a
month, income as we knew it was a thing of the past. We cycled, walked, begged,
borrowed and stole to get through that fierce cold winter.
And
finally, as an expression of our pain, we people pushed our cars out into the
city streets. We built huge towers of our wrecked, impotent, pointless cars.
All those angry, now orphaned Celtic Tiger Cubs who loved all their thousands
of brand new ‘99’ and ‘00’ reg cars, shiny proud memberships to the club of
new-found affluence and a high-flying economy, now nothing more than pathetic
lumps of metal, as cheap as the world on which they were built.
We piled
them high, and they burned beautifully, massive bonfires all over the land.
Drifting
into the freedom of anarchy, the people of Europe finally grasp our chance to
stand as one. We stand together as we watch the flames of our burning cars.
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