Ethan and Ehlana:
Let’s start with the family travel news of the day. Mom is home from Crystal Springs, and had fun, but we don’t want to know what she and Dad were doing for most of the time she was there beyond the shopping and dinner with the Malloys that we did get told about! Cassie and Michael are well into their Thursday in Tonga; and their biggest challenge is the travel time needed to hop between islands. They are not actually working with a lot of people, but what they are doing is important – including for the partnerships involving the islands and ocean ecosystems that are all about studying and conservation efforts led by locals who understand what really needs to happen to protect their own habitats! Let’s also mention that some of our favorite grandparents are having fun in Arizona, and while we love those stories; we also don’t need all of the details about everything they do there! ;^)
Here at home, we’ve had a busy, quieter day by comparison. Tai Chi was in Naomi’s back yard; we – the teens – took care of breakfast for everyone; and then our school day was good but uneventful. The weather was cooler but still sunny with a high of sixty-eight this afternoon, so the football and cheer squad practices were good and then Aaron hosted our group dinner and study session with a couple of extra friends that are working on a project with Aaron and Naomi in their class. We all had fun, but wrapped up early without bonus music practices or other fun because Ehlana and I needed to spend some time with Mom. She gave us the travel update; did a Magi lesson with us; and then there was some time-phased family business and charity work in the office before the girls in the house decided that quality time with their Jacuzzis was needed.
While Ehlana did that, I took care of most of the computer checks and shared the info with her as I went along – telepathically; not in the bathroom with her! If you went there; cut it out! The world news of the day was bad for most of the important stories. The peace talks from the end of last week have already been stopped; the European Union announced a nineteenth sanctions package against Russia; and our country is adding new sanctions against them too after also canceling the next peace summit that was supposed to happen in Hungary between Presidents Trump and Putin. That is insane, but wait – there’s more! Two refineries appear to have been hit by sabotage – not in Ukraine or Russia, but in Romania and Hungary and within hours of each other! Since those countries are two of the holdouts still buying Russian oil and gas in Europe, that is more than a little suspicious; and should worry every other country that believes that they are allies of the United States and the European Union! It appears that political and economic pressure aren’t enough so the powers that be wanting never-ending war are moving on to attacking their own allies to try and get what they want. Oh wait – this isn’t really any different than when the Nord Stream pipelines were blown up – though we’ll find out whether Hungary and Romania will just take the hits or get mad and retaliate! The front line battles in Ukraine continue to be horrific for the Ukrainian soldiers; and that is only going to get worse now that peace talks seem to be over and both sides are choosing to fight until somebody wins.
News flash – both sides lose even when one side declares victory! Hundreds of billions of dollars have been wasted – along with millions of lives; and we have no way of knowing how much it will cost to rebuild Ukraine sometime after the war – though we can be sure that it will take decades.
Speaking of decades, a report from Sweden about a new deal for Ukraine to buy fighter jets made in Sweden made me laugh – not because of the jets or the proposed deal, but because Ukraine apparently wants to buy between one-hundred and one-hundred and sixty of these jets when the company that makes them has only built around three-hundred of them over the past thirty-eight years! They also, currently, have other orders waiting to be built; and we’re fairly-sure that Ukraine won’t actually be able to have those jets or afford them after the war ends anyway – even if they could get them delivered over the next thirty years or so! Let’s add this story to the pile with others that we have seen recently – like the Ukrainian order for twenty-five Patriot missile systems. That story was a bit vague, but if they meant full missile batteries, that is a lot of launchers and missiles – as in one-hundred to one-hundred and fifty launchers for twenty-five batteries and then up to sixteen missiles per launcher – and that’s only enough missiles for one round of launches and no reloads! To shorten this little part of the update – that would add up to somewhere between two and four years worth of current production with nothing left over for anyone else! Yes, that is crazy, but then we feel the same way about actually using a missile defense system that costs upwards of ten times more to use than the cost of the missiles they can shoot down – and that’s an even-worse number because not every missile actually gets shot down even if you have enough patriot missiles to stop incoming missiles! I’ll add in just one more bit of math and then move on – those patriot missiles currently cost between four and eight million dollars each depending on the bells and whistles – and that does not include the costs of the launchers, radar systems, and everything else that goes into a Patriot battery and training experts to use them!
Ehlana is glad that I’ve done the computing tonight, since we’re moving on to Israel and Gaza where the supposed peace deal to solve thousands of years of conflict is quickly falling apart with the Israeli Defense Forces doing all of the blaming and pretty much all of the bombing and killing too while the Palestinian people continue to suffer without even a true hint of actual relief. We really didn’t want to be proved right, but all of the signs were there that this was just another round of talk with no action behind it to actually start solving all of the problems and protecting the Palestinians. There are more uprisings happening in a lot of places around the world right now to the point where we can’t write about all of them; and there are more tensions growing in the Asian region – especially as China continues to stand their ground instead of caving to all of the demands from the United States and Europe that could only lead to imploding their own economy if they started to do as ordered! We really don’t like this, but seem to be a bit closer to wider wars as tensions rise and positions harden.
That’s enough for tonight, but check out our next update; since we should cover the newest and dumbest-yet ‘peace’ proposal from Europe for ending the Ukraine war – a plan that has zero chance of happening – just as there is no chance that Ukraine is going to be allowed to buy all of the Patriot missiles and systems that are built over the next four years or the fighter jets from Sweden for the next quarter-century! We are ready to move on and get some sleep soon; so that’s all for tonight.
Until next time, live with love, fellow Magi of the Light!
