Palestine: It seems that the time has come for a formal designation of a state for the Palestinians. If the US is smart it would just keep its mouth shout when this comes up for a vote at the UN in September. They don't have to vote for it, just don't vote against it. Abstain. Of course that is unlikely to happen, for all the domestic political reasons we've come to understand. Without clear leadership from those who hold sway over both sides, the Palestinians-Israelis dysfunctional relationship will continue its role as the gas-soaked rags of the region; you just never know when they will spontaneously erupt into flames.
Somalia: If this sandbox of a nation were anywhere else on the planet no one would give a fig about what's afoot there. But it sits right there on the gulf where the world's lifeblood flows by on ships. So there it is, an ungoverned hunk of the planet, not ungoverned for lack of will, but because it is inherently ungovernable. The reasons are many, but the bottom line is that, even before climate change, Somalia did not have the resources to provide even the most basic food and services to its people. Now they're starving - again. Their "feral underclass" has either fled, died or are in the process of dying. Those left are the alfa-male minority, who are now busy killing each other. Pay attention to Somalia because, as the world's climate changes there will be others.
Yemen: Ditto. Sending food to arid countries like Somalia and Yemen and the others sure to emerge in the decades ahead, without also imposing the strictest of population control (birth control) regimes is a path to hell paved with good intentions.
Mexico: If you think the gap between the rich and everyone else is large here, just look south. A growing number of average Mexicans seem to have given up on trying to legislate a narrowing of that gap. Instead they are increasingly turning to crime as a shorter and surer path to personal solvency. The Mexican government's so-called "war on drugs," is too little and decades too late. Drugs don't kill large numbers of people..failed governance kill large numbers of people. Now it's too late. A new Pentagon study "concludes that Mexico is at risk of becoming a failed state,,thanks to its ongoing vicious drug war. The violence and corruption are so bad that Mexico, like Pakistan, could see a "wholesale collapse of civil government." Also, as the one-time buffer of cross-border jobs in the US disappears, due to a combination of American xenophobia, pandering right wing politicians and our incredibly shrinking economy, even fewer income-generating options will present themselves to average working class Mexicans. Armed Mexican gangs are becoming, not only the only alternative to poverty but a substitute for failed central government, at least on their ever-shifting "turf."
See, those are some of the trees I'm talking about. There are more, but that's enough for my purposes. Now stand back and see the forest the produce when viewed together.
I have been saying for four years now that this one is different... that this time there are way too many "disturbances in the Force," all at once. That viewed all together they paint a very, VERY, disturbing picture. Add to that the inevitable rise of a clearly neo-fascist right across the globe, in response to all this, and you don't have to wonder any longer why the world's financial markets are in growing turmoil.
But, because our leaders and media insist on treating these as individual trees, they are not seeing, or dealing with, the forest of troubles where the roots of this crisis feed.
Something's happening here. Something the world hasn't seen since the Dark Ages - the collapse of almost everything our cultures have taken for granted as "just the way it is." While we are not about to enter anything like the 700-years-long Dark Ages of old, we are almost surely headed for something future historians may dub, "The Dim Ages."_______
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