Send down the Terminator!

The Gaza situation sounds like a genuine screw-up on Israel's part. The talk of "well trained mercenaries" or "terrorists" doesn't make sense to me unless they had the kind of weapons any self-respecting "well trained mercenary" would have. You know, like automatic weapons and fragmentation grenades? There are a couple of readers of this blog with specific knowledge of these areas: you know who you are. Would you please contact me persnally and tell me if I'm off base? It sounds very much like these guys attacked the Israelis because they were pissed and thought THEY were being attacked. A mob armed with pipes and bats simply doesn't smack of "well trained."

Of course, one could take the position that they were martyrs trying to elicit a violent response...but doing that requires the assumption of guilt on the side of the Arabs, and the assumption of innocence on the side of the Israelis. My assumption is that the Israelis have the right to their home, that they have, overall, done very well to remain mostly humane considering that they are surrounded by people who do not accept their legitimacy, and have vowed to "push them into the sea." But that, being human, they make mistakes...and this feels like one of them, an overreaction based on that automatic human tendency to deny the "other" full humanity, especially when you are afraid that there are genuine, no-b.s. threats to your survival.

This simply sounds too much like a well-established pattern of police explanations, found all over the world, ALWAYS trotted out when there is a major class, ethnicity or racial difference between the police/army forces and the citizens--where the police storm into an area, are met with sticks and thrown bottles, retaliate with bullets, and claim that the citizens were "well armed terrorists." They're missing a basic fact: when you violate what people consider to be their home, community, or property, they will attack. Forgetting this leads to the belief that anyone who resists our own troops when the U.S. invades must be a "terrorist." Now I could be wrong here, of course. I just think that any group, no matter how well intended, will make mistakes...and this feels like cover-your-ass time.
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When looking at the chaos in the world that, arguably, can be attributed to our hunger for energy: terrorism, a misbegotten war, financial stress, the gulf disaster...it is easy to blame specific companies or political structures. But we have to remember that we, the people, were willing to pay six dollars a gallon for gas. WE drive this wave. And changing that will be harder than most people want to believe. There is an entire definition of "human being" that suggests our species is notable chiefly because, over our evolutionary history, we have steadily used higher and higher amounts of energy per capita. As opposed, say, to chimps and dolphins which (in the wild) on average probably consume the same amount they did a million years ago. Human consumption has probably increased a thousand fold during the same time.

What does this mean? Well, a recipe for disaster without very serious conscious consideration. Growing population plus growing energy demand plus shrinking petroleum resources is an invitation to violence, shortage, poverty, pollution, terrorism and economic chaos on multiple fronts. And if the tendency to make babies, try to live longer, and increase energy consumption is pretty much hard-wired into us as a species...well, I certainly think there are going to be answers, but I doubt any of them are going to be easy. And it won't be helped by partisans on either side of the political spectrum who act as if the extremes of either Right or Left are not suicidal.
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I loved the rumor that James Cameron was going to be consulted about the Gulf leak, BTW. Science Fiction writers have often been consulted by governments for out-of-the-box thinking. Cameron has unique knowledge of deep-sea exploration and photography, and is said (by people I trust completely) to be a legitimate genius. It would have been fascinating to see what he came up with. How about some speculation?