The time has come for everybody -capitalists, communists, socialists- to ask themselves what 'civilization' really means. If not, whether a country calls itself capitalist or communists, in the pursuit of 'progress' , it will visit genocide either on its own people or on another people whose country must be plundered for resources to feed the Progress industry.

Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Suddenly, they become the bleached bones of a story.

The genocide will not necessarily take the form of war, or death camps. Most likely it will take the form of ecocide, in which landscapes are devastated and the populations that live there slowly starve or turn upon each other savagely because there isn't enough food or water to go around.

Flat muscled and honey coloured. Sea secrets in his eyes. A silver raindrop in his ear.

Novels are such mysterious and amorphous and tender things. And here we are with our crash helmets on, with concertina wire all around us.

Thousands are losing their jobs and homes, while corporations are being bailed out with billions of dollars.

What came for them? Not death. Just the end of living.