Twenty odd years ago now, it was claimed that caring people had began to suffer the guilt that often accompanies "compassion fatigue", and the post-Live Aid inability to mobilise against the continued want in the Third World. However much it mattered, it was deemed impossible to maintain public empathy as donors began to refocus once again, upon concerns in their own lives.

I think the same is true with what is currently happening in the Middle East, where the Third World Bully Boy Israel over-reacts and pounds its poorer neighbours in a tedious spat between cultures that will ultimately destroy thousands of innocent lives needlessly. It's not as though western liberals don't care anymore, or that there isn't the will to do something about it: I just think that people have sussed that there is no natural end to this conflict as none of the protagonists seem to want it to end. The conclusion reached therefore, is to change focus and concentrate on what CAN be achieved in the world.

When I hear Israeli ministers (the elected representatives of a democracy?) shouting at television interviewers because they've been asked to account for themselves, or listening to Palestinian mothers saying how proud they would be if their son became a suicide bomber, then I cannot imagine how such a fucked up region could ever reach an equilibrium. And I suspect that this notion is beginning to influence otherwise positive, radical thinkers into creating a blind spot regarding the sensory over-load coming from the Middle-East. And this will continue tomorrow, and so on.

So what can we actually do? A plague on both their houses?

Maybe we should stop to draw breath and consider the folly of concentrating on what's happening in the here and now, and begin to properly consider the ridiculous possibility that there's a 0.1% chance that, in time, SOMETHING, (possibly even something totally unimaginable to our generation) may shift in the history of the region that will make the current options untenable to the protagonists. It is therefore everyone's responsibility to ensure that that 0.1% chance is not obstructed, because it's the only one on the table.

Personally, I feel that the whole world's fate has now fallen into the hands of those that never matured beyond the mindset of 14 yr old boys, who "ain't gonna be dissed, init!" as the work of centuries of western enlightenment is about to disappear down the toilet because it has too many shades of grey for their polarised dream world. And the only superpowers available are in the hands of certifiable idiots.

So for the benefit of the school kids trying to run the show, here are the answers you need...