A while ago I received a 12.9ā iPad Pro. I got a nice bedside stand for it, thinking to read and watch movies. Amazon has wrecked their streaming service so mostly itās been an āInoreader till I fall asleepā sort of thing. About ten days ago I installed the Substack app and Iāve taken to skimming, liking all the things, occasionally reading, and leaving comments.
It was probably unwise of me, but I laid out some realpolitik in Notes on what can/can not happen regarding Bibiās butchery in Gaza. This earned me a screechy response from someone ā¦ or some thing. If I were sure it were a person, Iād listen, but cartoon avatars and RAEG remind me way too much of Twitter, and there was an OBVIOUS influence op trying to use this wedge issue to turn DNC 2024 into a repeat of DNC 1968.
There are many for whom Gaza is a legitimate, heartfelt concern, the top of their stack. I would end it if I could, but the only path forward that isnāt a disaster is Harris/Walz winning in November, and Gaza in that context is a polarizing distraction. Like the Ukrainians paying in blood every day because we donāt want them to lose, but we also donāt want to deal with a post-Putin Russia, itās a terrible situation with terrible people making it worse.
I wrote Why Gaza Is Screwed twelve years ago. I didnāt have a mental picture of precisely how it would end, but I knew that too many people and not enough fresh water was a recipe for disaster. Yes, Hamas are just as beastly as Bibi & Co., but this is an āabove ground issueā. If not that event in 2023, it would be a pandemic in 2026, or a global crop failure in 2028 ā¦ or something.
Yemenās Food & Water Crisis was written a year after the Gaza piece. I wrote a LOT about Syria back when their civil war was still fresh. I was paying attention to the Fragile States Index 2016. Being a white male nearing retirement, people jump to a lot of conclusions just by looking at my avatar. Iām always mindful of this and I try to not do the same to others.
The amateur photographer in me loves this picture of al-YarmÅ«k, which was once the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Syria. I think this was taken during the civil war, but before the time that it was being overrun by ISIS. The clarity in the foreground, the washed out dusty background. The linear lines of a city swamped by the organic curve of the crowd. If it werenāt ten years old with an AFP watermark in the corner you might think it was AI generated.
What can I do, right here, right now, to reduce the suffering of these sentient beings?
Not very much.
Landing a hit on the current Iranian regime, which was covered in MIOS: Iranās PressTV, was a good thing. The Iranians have been trying to free themselves since 2009, but like Hamas propping up Bibi, or Putinās claim to be fighting NATO, pushing against an external force is what keeps the current regime in place. Giving the regime a black eye is a win, and I think we got one of their influence agents arrested in the U.K.
Every day I wake up, I log in, I look for what I can do to make a living and/or how I can change the world for the better. I donāt really expect to be able to do that.
If you look at the now retired Neal Rauhauser Wordpress, you can see a LOT of time and energy was spent on food and water security. There were some possibilities, but we were politically incapable of executing.
Engaging someone for whom Gaza is a deeply personal issue was unwise. Lesson learned, Iāll stay on my own calm, cool analytical patch for the future.