Ehlana and Ethan:
Let’s begin this update with a Cassie and Michael travel report. As we’re writing this, they have moved from Cambodia to Vietnam; they are now in Hanoi; and already busy with first meetings with business partners. They are going to be very busy as they split their week in the country between the Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City regions; and they won’t have time to travel far beyond the two cities on this trip. While they won’t get to any other parts of the country, those cities are the political and economic hubs of the country; and the projects and partnerships they are working on this week will affect people throughout the country. We’ll have more on that work as we go along this week, but Ethan and I are also counting down to Cassie and Michael’s return; since they are going to be here by the first Saturday of our March Break!
The ‘new’ war with Iran remains the top world news story of the day; and it is tough for us to write about many of the stories in the media – especially when it comes to anyone cheering on the death and destruction that is happening throughout the Middle East. Western leaders certainly don’t seem concerned about the precedent that has been set now that killing the leaders of other countries is now acceptable despite international laws and agreements that were, for the most part, created by those same western countries in the aftermath of World War Two. We should add that it is now confirmed that the Supreme Leader of Iran was ‘successfully’ assassinated during the first waves of attacks on Iran; and we now have no idea what the long-term consequences will be – though we will add that this would be the equivalent of assassinating the Pope for Christians; and there are somewhere between two and three-hundred million Shia Muslims that have just lost one of their most-revered clerics. It only takes a tiny fraction of that number of people to be radicalized for that to become a major future problem; and that dynamic has now been put in motion with no way to know what will happen. What we think is as-bad is the apparent plan to simply replace the current Iranian government; leading to another outcome like we’ve already seen in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and too many other countries. That is not a ‘best-case’ from our perspective; and we do not want to see millions of people killed and injured as we’ve been seeing happen over the past four years in Ukraine. This is a story that will not end even if we get a near-term end to the attacks on both sides; and we are sure that a western ‘victory’ might be worse for the world than a loss; since our leaders would just move on to their next target of neo-colonialism.
Speaking of next targets, Russia is not happy with what is happening in the Middle East; and they should definitely take that into consideration with their own ‘peace talks’ with the United States and Ukraine! They could definitely be next for regime change operations; and ‘our’ leaders seem to be sure that they can do whatever they want with impunity. They are not waiting for that to happen; and the war in Ukraine is definitely not going well for Ukraine as the bombings continue; the front lines are a disaster for Ukraine; and the attack on Iran gives Russia a lot of incentive to keep fighting in Ukraine until they achieve their objectives. That said, we can’t discount the possibility of NATO and the United States opting to escalate the war in Ukraine too; and we’ll hope for better while expecting the worst because that’s all we’ve been getting from our world leaders for far-longer than we’ve been alive.
Let’s take a tiny break from the rant, since we haven’t offered our own news of the day. The top local news is that it got cold again today; we’ve had some rain and a bit of wet snow; and that’s why we stayed indoors most of the day. We had a good morning at church and Sunday school with more work on getting ready for the Easter weekend services instead of a Sunday school lesson. Ethan and I went to the lab or archives after lunch; had a couple of meals with just Mom and Dad at lunch and dinner; and we worked in the office for a couple of hours after dinner and before Mom sent us upstairs for bath or Jacuzzi time. Now we’ve been at the twin chat and computing fun part of our day – though fun isn’t the right word when so much of the news is awful this weekend.
Instead of resuming the rant; let’s just stop here and we’ll go and get some sleep soon. There are literally hundreds of stories out there related to the Iran attacks and retaliations, but the fog of war is making it tough to sort through the truth and lies; so we’ll have better information in the future that we can wait for – whether that takes days or weeks or longer. We do want to repeat that these attacks on Iran are doing at least as much political damage as real, physical harm; and the last thing our leaders should have wanted was to have even more people hate them for personal reasons. While there are sure to be economic impacts too; we’ll save up that commentary for later too – after this first round of volatility settles down and we get a better handle on what will be the costs beyond the destruction and short-term reactions to the war.
Stay tuned; since we are sure that this is going to be another challenging week and beyond for the world. We’ll keep up with all of the news – after we go and get some sleep starting right now.
Until next time, live with love, fellow Magi of the Light!
