Maybe it’s simply because I’ve been reading a book about complexity theory over the weekend, or maybe it’s because I just have a weird way of looking at things, but following the recent turn of events in Iraq (and especially of course Najaf), I can’t help noticing how something which in the grand scheme of things is apparently so small and relatively insignificant can be having such a huge global impact.
Indeed at one point it did really seem to be the case that the whole future of the world economy might have turned on the posession of a set of keys (obviously the Clavis Universalis, or could it be that all the delay is due to someone having a spare-set cut on the quiet: meantime the price of Brent crude spikes up and down).
Continue reading