The above image was made with stable diffusion using the prompt 'the ruins of a city being bombed.'
Yesterday I sent out a Substack newsletter titled Media Lies and Garbage Beliefs. The piece puts ideas from this blog together with original material. Its main point is that the control regime is mishandling society's information space and we should reclaim our share of this space. The writing is idea-dense and meandering. My hope with this one was to make the reading experience leisurely.
Meanwhile, progress on my next novel is slow. I still don't have a good first chapter, largely because I can't figure out what the first big event in the story should be. I know what kind of book I want to write, but haven't really settled on what tone I'd like to set. Most of my other novels are matter-of-fact with some funny parts.
The big news lately has been the Hamas attack on Israel, which has sparked a war. I have family over there, in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, but the fighting hasn't really reached those areas yet. On Twitter, RFK Jr has called for increased military aid to Israel, which sounds insane to me. I think we should reduce military aid to zero and try again to broker a diplomatic solution.
Elsewhere on Twitter, comfortable westerners are claiming that the attacks are justified because Israel oppresses Palestine, which also sounds insane to me. Hamas is running death squads. They're kidnapping and raping people with impunity. Every one of these fighters should be summarily executed by the Israelis, and they might well be.
This is not to suggest that Israel is blameless. Their treatment of Palestinians is indeed atrocious. But responding to this by perpetrating new atrocities definitely won't bring peace any closer. All it will do is bring the wrath of Israel down on more poor Palestinians.
From my perspective, much like the war in Ukraine, this new war is a regional issue that we should stay out of. The scale of it is small, yet media coverage of the conflict is extensive. Hundreds have died and thousands have been injured. That's tragic, but violence on this scale in the US is barely even newsworthy.
Every year in the US, over 26,000 people are murdered and 1.4 million people go to the hospital after being assaulted. Our treatment of poor people isn't better than Israel's treatment of Palestinians. We starve and incarcerate them, systematically subjecting them to unspeakable indignities on an ongoing basis. Until this changes, the US has no moral ground to stand on with regard to Israel and Palestine.
In the background of course is the proxy factor. Hamas has the support of the Muslim Brotherhood and other popular international hate groups. Iran backs Hezbollah in the north and may be involved in arming Hamas, either directly or indirectly. American weapons, sent to Ukraine or abandoned in Afghanistan, may be equipping Hamas. In a worst case scenario, this could turn into a war between Israel and Iran, which would set the region on fire.
Read my novels:
See my NFTs:
