THE 21st C UNHOLY COALITIONS

American director Woody Allen has this advice: "The Pentagon could use my wife's hormones for a whole new generation of biological warfare!" French poet Paul Valery has this advice: "The only way to let your dreams come true is to wake up!"

Woody is funnier, but Paul is wiser. Currently our world insists on living in its favorite dreams of movie magic and political pipe-dreams. Inside those felicitous domains, the world still looks as if it is somehow, some way, going to make it. I mean, it always has, right...? Even the grim-est of grim reapers have to grant this. Still, a few un-dreamy facts here:

* Currently 1.02 billion people (15% of the world population) go to bed hungry
* Currently about 1 billion people have a disability including missing limbs, paralysis, blindness, mental retardation, and major disease such as cancer
* Currently there are over 55 wars of some kind going on somewhere in the world
* Currently there are more than 22,000 nuclear warheads hidden somewhere in the world
* Currently the US leads the world in concentration of wealth: its top 0.1 % of earners take home more than 10% of the nation's personal income, with business executives leading the way with a 400% increase in salaries since 1970
* Currently in the US farmers in states like Georgia reflect a new trend: there they are still looking for 11,000 workers to harvest this year's crops, but they can't find any because of its new immigration laws; and even though the state unemployment rate is 10%, local residents are not applying
* Currently in the US 64% of workers are white collar jobs, while only 36% are blue collar jobs which make anything tangible

Now if random statistics like these read like omens, they don't even touch the most impending one: natural disasters. Today's dream-less experts like Al Gore stay up at night and see the 20th C as the century of ideologies, wars, and genocide, but adding the 21st C will be the century of natural disasters and technological crises. Especially unholy coalitions of the two (see Fukushima, Japan for frightening details).

To the dreamers -- well, have a nice day!