Ehlana and Ethan:
Our last day of August has been very busy; we’ve had fun; and don’t really have much personal news to offer for your entertainment! We seem to be on the way to wrapping up our summer with hot and sunny weather, and today the high flirted with triple-digits – and did that without much humidity to add to the heat. That was tougher for Ethan and his teammates because they practiced all day while our cheer squad workout wrapped up before noon, but despite his future librarian reputation, Ethan is very competitive on the field; encouraging to the other players; and continues to prove he’s the best player on the team too. Our cheer squad workout included coming up with new routine ideas for the rest of the season and songs to set them to, and while we don’t plan on writing special lyrics for every song we choose; that is going to be an option for some special routines that could include the one we are considering for Halloween. We have time to work on them; and mostly concentrated on what we want to do this Friday for our first away game of the season. We’re playing at Maple Valley, so we want to do something fun for one of our closest rivalry teams and their fans; so stay tuned and we hope that we’ll have another fun story to share for that by sometime this weekend.
While Ethan was busy with the team all day, I had lunch with Mom, Naomi, and Sophia; moved on to work at the lab for the afternoon; and ended up staying into the evening because Ethan came over after his practice to work-play in the archives and wanted to do that for a least a few hours. Mom saved our dinners for us while having that meal with Dad and without us; we got home at seven-thirty; multi-tasked the food fun with a chat with Mom; and then it was time for an early bath or Jacuzzi break for the teens in the house because Mom ordered an early night for us. Ethan and I were okay with that, since we are tired; and now we’re going to wrap this up with a quick world news report and then get to the nap time that we really need tonight.
While the top two wars continue to get most of the political and media attention, and there has been another ‘hot’ flare-up between Iran and the United States with missile and drone exchanges; we want to cover some other stories that we know are important too. The flash floods in Tibet and Nepal have been horrific; the confirmed death toll is now over nine-hundred; and there are still thousands of people missing from the villages and towns that have been devastated or even completely wiped out by the floods. Mom and Cassie are doing what they can, but getting aid there is a challenge; and the recovery is going to be slow and might take years – especially when there will be time constraints heading into winter in the region.
On the rising world tensions front, there are reports now getting out about a military uprising or coup attempt in Niger that has apparently been put down after a group of soldiers attacked fellow soldiers at a key military air base near the Capital. We won’t make more of this than it might turn out to be for the scale of the operation, but we will again point out that as people get desperate; the fights for resources will escalate – and that can happen in unanticipated places.
Our third story is on the economic front. The Shanghai Cooperative Organization summit is being held this week, and while President Trump and our leaders spend all of their time threatening the rest of the world; the SCO members are busy making deals and developing partnerships that will lead to minimizing the impact of American politics and policies on the rest of the world. The leaders of China, India, and Russia are the most-influential members of the SCO, but Iran is a member too; and they are definitely making choices this week about how to handle the American threats over doing any business with Iran at all. The SCO members also represent more than forty percent of the world population; so pushing them away – and possibly out of using the U.S. dollar at all – is truly insane; since our country will be in a lot of trouble if we no longer have the privilege of having the world’s reserve currency anymore.
While Asian countries are meeting and making their deals; President Trump continues to threaten Canada; and is now adding demands that Canadian companies that want to do business in America need to leave Canada and move their businesses to the United States! He has also stated that Canada has absolutely nothing that ‘we’ need, and while maybe that is technically-true; our businesses and consumers would really hate all of the price increases that would come with cutting off all of those less-expensive resources ranging from oil, mining, and forestry products to electricity and manufactured goods. For the record, Canada does have a trade surplus with our country, but we can also point out that the difference is entirely due to our purchases of oil and energy products while the rest of the manufacturing exchanges are fairly-even. Blowing up that trade relationship is also insane, but that seems to be the norm for our leaders now for decades!
Finally, for tonight, in addition to the new attacks on Iran, President Trump posted an A.I. video of the total destruction of one of Iran’s primary oil export hubs; and there is no indication that there is any interest in an actual peace deal as Israel is allowed to continue the genocides of everyone they choose to hate and our own leaders only want more war – whether that’s with Iran, Russia, Cuba, or anywhere else in the world. China is also, obviously, a top target, but we can only hope that at least a few sane people in our government can explain to the idiots that if we can’t beat Iran; we are not going to defeat China.
Okay, that’s more than enough bad news for the last day of August – or any other day. Our week is only going to get busier for us as we speed along toward the holiday weekend, so stay tuned; and we’ll have the next of those stories for you next month – and tomorrow!
Until next time, live with love, fellow Magi of the Light!
