Thought provoking items from the news

Here we are, just days away from the holiday celebration in which we try to honor the best things about humanity, and I find myself thinking about the world of the future we are headed toward. The threads of that future are already around us we just can't see which threads will be woven into the center of our tomorrows and which will be snipped short. Recent news illuminated several events which I think may deserve more of our attention. Examples follow. The Gulf of Mexico has a large 'dead zone' which has long been associated, at least in part, with fertilizer from the Mississippi River drainage. This year the increased planting of corn for ethanol may be vastly increasing the runoff since corn is fertilizer intensive. In Mexico, just south of us the biggest threat may not be undocumented aliens but the drug cartels which are so powerful they are killing high government officials and, this past month, popular musicians. Where do these people get their money? Largely from drug sales in the US. How long before civic breakdown in Mexico begins to spill over the border? Our military has just recently begun to use "battlefield robots" which are essentially remotely operated, armored, weapons platforms able to move around the battlefield nimbly. Apparently three have been field tested and 150 more are on order. Primarily at the moment, these systems are armed with machine guns, but other weapons could be used as well. Perhaps one future weapon will be the "heat ray" which already exists but has not been used in combat because (I've read) there are concerns that it will be perceived as "inhumane". The heat ray is apparently non-lethal but makes the targeted human feel that they are on fire. Concerns have been expressed by some folks that robot weapons systems change the character of battle in ways that encourage risk-taking. For example, it's easier to envision sending in the robots and risking them if no friendly personnel are on the line. I have vague snippets of the battle scenes from The Terminator in my head. While our president spends much time worrying about Iran and its intentions (not totally unwarranted) I worry about Russia and its intentions. The recent musical chairs exchange which put Mr. Putin in the Prime Minister's seat and his protege as President is just the tip of a more problematic question. How will Russian nationalism's revival be shaped? While we continue to applaud the end of the communist era and the fall of the Iron Curtain, those events are in the rear view mirror and have less meaning as time passes. Democratic institutions have not sprung up in Russia, or where they have, they've been stomped and starved. Russia is not the military behemoth of the Soviet years but is perhaps more dangerous because the world view driving Russia's leadership is less clear as is the certainty that Russian leadership has full control of the reins. Criminal elements in Russia, large numbers of nuclear and other weapons not completely secured, and a deep rooted feeling among many Russians that the country is not respected create possibilities for grave dangers. I have been reading the very interesting book, 1491, in the past couple of weeks. This historical and anthropological piece takes new information about life in the Americas pre-Columbus and paints a picture of the cultures and populations which existed here. One interesting surmise is about the effects of Euro diseases on the American populations. The diseases were apparently even more deadly than they had been in attacking European populations (ala the Black Death) because the native peoples had not evolved diverse enough genetic resistors to fight them. The idea that this might be so gives greater weight to concerns about diseases such as influenza or ebola which might evolve in a form that few people could survive. Modern medicine isn't really geared up to address this. We are not taking the possible threats here seriously enough. Not that this broadbrush picking of topics is exhaustive or even sensible, but I'd be missing an obvious possible flashpoint if the Palestinian-Israeli conflict weren't included. As long as governments in the region insist that Israel should be obliterated or that no settlement can take place unless Palestinians displaced in 1948 and later periods are repatriated, Israel will take a defensively belligerent stand. As long as Israel allows settlers to build in territories that are part of Palestine, tears down Palestinian houses and villages to create security zones or build walls, and treats its own Arab and Palestinian populations as second class citizens, these will continue to be used as justification for rocketing Israel's towns and for terrorism in the region.

None of this is very cheerful to think about. However, I think it's important to think about, as best we can, in the hope that we can nudge the world, even from our tiny individual framework, in a better direction.