Saving our sources of inspiration

Spirituality is an important human impetus. It provides meaning to our lives and helps us to see beyond the horizon of our known world. Without it, existence would be flat and two-dimensional. With spirituality, we regain a sense of wonder at a universe that seems to transcend our finite understanding and diminished view.

Unfortunately, everywhere we look, religion, which often serves as the vehicle for spirituality, appears to be polluted. Churches with dangerous, predatory bishops. Corrupt or violent ayatollas. Murderous hindutwa extremists. Rabbis with hands soaked in blood. Buddhist monks urging genocide; avaricious gurus, vile gun-toting adherents of every creed. Whereever you look, among established faiths and new ones, our sources of inspiration are sullied by these associations. Even putting aside all the extremists, most of our religions are infected with a patriarchal world-view, homophobia and archaic values that need to be left in the trash can of history.

The urge is to shrug off all religion, to throw the baby out with the bath water. If we wish to take the time and the energy, we can do so. We can work through the core material with which religion and spirituality deal and chalk out a way for ourselves. We can ask the right questions, and maybe find solutions that we can live by – perhaps drawing these from an eclectic mix of the world’s spiritual teachings or divining new ones.

However, if we don’t have the time, the wisdom, the capacity or the inclination to follow that lonely route, we may need to adopt a religion or a spiritual guide, and not allow the the obvious and super-abundant pollution to touch the sources of our inspiration: to protect the weak candle of our belief from the foul wind; to let the beauty of a faintly heard bhajan wash our soul; or let the adhan wake us, for “prayer is better than sleep”.

Software, blogging, estrangement

Befuddled by FOSS

The new woman who is set to replace me when I retire in a couple of months seemed a little surprised today. First of all there was a screaming match going on in the next room over the submission of a fundraising proposal. I wasn’t paying much attention to it as I was busy trying to explain some things about the job (maybe that surprised her too). Then, when I got into explaining about Piwigo (the photo gallery software we use), and kept praising the recent changes introduced by the “developer”, she asked me what I meant by “a developer.” She is used to big companies with hundreds of developers, not free open source software. She said she didn’t feel safe otherwise because “What would happen if the developer goes away?”

So I pointed out that Google (whose software we also use) is guilty of dropping so many applications – just yesterday, I had mentioned another one (Currents) that they are dropping. And I pointed out that if Gmail one day becomes unprofitable, Google could drop that too. “And look at Twitter…” And then, I said, it isn’t so strange to be using something that doesn’t have a powerful company behind it, because the same is true of many essential parts on which the whole structure of the internet is built! Finally, I showed her the Piwigo website, which says that the application has been around for 20 years and is used by numerous universities, etc.

This is really insignificant

I think that most people with the audacity to publish what they write probably think that they have some essential contribution to make, or something important to tell or sell humanity, and usually this is true. So I feel a heavy responsibility to explain that none of this is true here.

Hardly anybody reads this stuff and they have no good reason to do so. This is, rather, a compendium of unoriginal reflections on the life and times of a forgetable nobody. Whatever ideas are expressed here will certainly have been stated more cogently by people with greater intelligence. If you haven’t come across the ideas already elsewhere, you are welcome to restate them in a better way, without credit or, instead, to use them as a prime example of flawed understanding, with or without credit. flags

Those flags…

With the above thoughts in mind, I listened this evening to a podcast on the Haaretz site by journalist and TV anchor woman Ilana Dayan. She felt that the judicial reform that is going forward is so significant that she had to step out of her usual role as a presenter of content and to analyze its deep negative impact on Israeli democracy. She made me aware both of my extreme ignorance, and of how much of an outsider I am to Israeli society and culture. Her presentation was erudite and informed. But it also had the essential quality of issuing from an insider. Her gut feelings and trust in Israeli society are based on her familiarity with the way things work and the way Israelis think.

I lack all of that. I can’t and don’t feel like an Israeli. I’m not even sure that I know what other Israelis, especially those who are involved in politics, are really feeling. I simply know that I’ve emotionally rejected the reality in which they feel at home. I cannot sympathize with a national group that, on the one hand, is proud of its democratic institutions while, on the other hand, it denies basic rights to Palestinians. Somehow Ilana Dayan, who, as an investigative journalist, has a much keener understanding of how the system works, and how it is skewed against Palestinians, can juggle that, and still come out thinking that she is blessed to live in this country.

There was another Israeli journalist, Yossi Gurwitz, whose early death was discovered on Monday. In his later years, he became an anti-zionist, called for BDS, castigated religion and the state. Yet I somehow feel that even he was speaking out of the Israeli experience; existentially linked to the Israel he rejected.

The rejection of an insider is different from the rejection of an outsider. I’m an outsider to Israel as I’m an outsider to the other countries I have lived. I’m a stranger to the national life of those countries as well as to their institutions, such as their academic life, culture, news media and other facets of civilization. Wherever I go, I live on the outskirts, and without the least regret.

My experience is not unique – it’s surely commonplace. Perhaps even the majority of people, or a growing number of them, are rootless in a similar way. If I’m more aware of my position, or am more self-reflective about it, it is probably because I have lived so long in a country that is like Israel, which places a high value on the nurturing of its national identity.

No democracy under apartheid

We went up to the demonstration in Jerusalem yesterday. There were said to be 80 – 100,000 which made some people feel hopeful. “The young are beginning to wake up” was something I heard there. But it’s not clear that even the large show of people had any real influence. The first stage of the legislation went ahead, after all. Politicians have the quality of being able to convince themselves that they are loved by the people even when everybody’s against them.

Of course, of the 100k people only a small faction carried signs against the occupation – MK Ayman Odeh borrowed one of these from my granddaughter to have his picture taken with it. The sign said “No Democracy with Occupation”.

I think a better sign would have been “No democracy under apartheid”, though I only thought about this later.

Because that’s the situation we are currently in, according to most of the human rights organizations. And the majority of Israelis still have an inability to internalize or admit this. No government is saying it. They are all promoting a two state solution” which is never going to happen. Israel is living under the pretense that it is merely administering the Palestinian territories, despite the obvious fact that it is never going to give them up. In the case of the Oslo Accords “Area A” (the Palestinian cities), it does not even admit to administering them, but those waters are muddy.

In fact, this is a terrible limbo to be in. The Geneva Conventions have a key flaw: there should be a maximum time period for what can be considered military occupation, after which the occupation should be considered de facto annexation. And if the occupying country continues to exert differential laws towards the population, then this has to be called what it is: apartheid.

The fact of apartheid is crystal-clear in areas that Israel has formally annexed, such as East Jerusalem. Those areas are, in every way, under Israeli law. But if a terrorist (or a mentally handicapped person) kills people, his family’s home can be demolished with out a shrug. Unless, of course, he’s a Jew. A Palestinian living in Jerusalem can only obtain citizenship with great difficulty. A Palestinian who moves from Jerusalem to the West Bank for a period can be denied the right to return. A Palestinian Jerusalemite who goes to live in another country forfeits their right to return to Israel or the Palestinian territories.

Through protracted military occupation, the granting of limited autonomy and continued settlement, Israel has created a chaotic reality from which it continues to reap both rewards and turmoil. But it is willing to put up with the turmoil forever, or for as long as this is viable and expedient. The focus has to be put on making the status quo inviable, by dropping the pretense of a two state solution and demanding that Israel guarantee full equal rights and citizenship for Palestinians living in Israel and the occupied territories. If it fails to do so, it needs to be held to account.

Photos from the demonstration

NATO and Russia

It’s frustrating to see that people calling for peace in Ukraine can be dismissed so easily as Putin sympathizers. This is a classic move to silence critics and peaceniks, in almost every conflict. Accuse them of working for, or playing into the hands of the enemy. So that’s how we should relate to these statements also today. There are some, like Donald Trump, who aren’t afraid to speak bluntly. Quoting Jonathan Cook’s article of today, Trump apparently said: “FIRST COME THE TANKS, THEN COME THE NUKES. Get this crazy war ended, NOW.” Easier said than done. A stitch in time would have saved nine. But for people with vision and courage, there could also be an opportunity here: to rethink and remake the security arrangements between NATO and Russia in such a way that neither side feels threatened, and ensure peace into the 22nd century. This was something that needed to be done quite some time ago. How much further do we have to go down the road towards annihilation before we realize that this is what was needed? I think the war was, all along, never really about Ukraine.

Practice day / book launch, a film

This morning I took part in a practice day / book launch for the translation of Zen and the Art of Climate Change (the same theme as the book launch that I previously described in Tel Aviv. Here there was maybe a greater effort to describe the common ground between the spiritual approach and the phenomenon of climate change, which Avner Gross managed to describe very well. the event was much smaller (about 40 people) so there was a chance for the audience to express themselves – their remarks were interesting.

In the evening I watched the film The Banshees of Inisherin. I wasn’t expecting to like it, so I wasn’t disappointed. The story seemed weak and phony, as well as being full of overused stereotypes about Irish people and island people. The locations themselves are amazingly beautiful. I recognised some of them from a couple of stays on Inishmor, and it seems that others were filmed on Achill Island in County Mayo – which I haven’t seen.

National self-harm

I watched the 2nd part of the BBC’s The Modi Question, heard a discussion with a historian of modern India, on The Wire, and watched the Israeli TV news.

Israel’s turn to the right has many of the same characteristics as India’s. In both cases, rightwing politics are causing ongoing national self-harm. This is not unlike the self-harm caused by Brexit in the UK.

The item in the Israeli TV news spoke about how the uncertainties created about Israeli “democracy” and the independence of its judicial system is likely to damage its economy by discouraging investment in its all-important high-tech industry.

The articles about India showed how the policies of Modi and the BJP have destabilized the delicate structure that keeps the (soon to be) world’s largest nation together and undermined its democracy while failing to address core issues of concern to every Indian no matter what caste or community they belong to, such as the dead rivers and poisoned air, disease and poverty.

The articles about Britain speak of the reversal in public opinion regarding Brexit, as people gradually realise that they were mislead: the broken promises regarding the public health system that is now in crisis; the so-called economic opportunities that have come to naught, and the prospect of a shrinking economy.

It seems to be an almost universal paradox that right-wing political parties, while championing nationalism, only harm the nations where they come to power. It should be obvious really that the only way to advance a country is to bring benefit to all citizens, rather than promoting some and leaving others behind. Otherwise, the structure you are building is a house of cards.

In Israel, this means creating a nation where Jews and Palestinians from every ethnic, religious, geographical and economic sector can live as equal citizens.

In Britain, the Brexit referendum was determined by the country’s longstanding inequalities; huge parts of the population that felt left behind, and a large segment of older people who were willing to betray the hopes and dreams of the young.

In India, the BJP came to power for a host of reasons, including the lingering after-effects of colonial rule, but the result has been to deepen the country’s divisions and to damage, perhaps irreparably, the secular democratic framework that made India so unique among South Asian nations.

India’s Taken a Dangerous, Divisive And Self-Destructive Direction Under Modi: Ramchandra Guha https://yewtu.be/3SjZNXIDibQ

Indian students watch banned BBC documentary critical of PM Modi https://www.france24.com/en/video/20230126-india

Truss and Brexit have sunk Britain’s economy – and the right is in deep denial about both

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/01/liz-truss-brexit-sunk-britain-economy-right-in-denial-imf

Hundreds of economists warn on gov’t judicial system reform https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-hundreds-of-economists-warn-on-govt-judicial-system-reform-1001436443

Bank of Israel governor says judicial reform could hurt economy – reports https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/25/bank-of-israel-governor-warns-netanyahu-that-judicial-overhaul-could-hurt-economy-reports

Misguided by the stars

I recently read the novel, “Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead” (and then saw the 2017 film adaptation, “Spoor”). This is the first I’ve read by the Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk. The novel kept my attention, though I did not feel any great endearment towards the story or its themes. The novel could be said to revolve around a couple of main motifs: the question of freewill vs. determinism, and the question of how much importance to give to non-human lives. Because I had already made up my mind with regard to these themes, it was not so meaningful for me to revisit them.

With regard to determinism, this has been thrashed out extensively by eastern thinkers. The “law of karma” is informed by greater intelligence than anything in astrology, because it assigns a significant role to free will; so it neatly wraps both determinism and free will into it. But even so, sages advise to put it aside. The “I Ching” too is a bit more than an “oracle” because in casting the yarrow sticks, the idea is to allow the universe to intervene at the time of consultation; and the interpretation itself is a dialogue that takes place with the subconscious. It is less about interpreting a pattern that has been hard coded at the time of birth, than about learning and interpreting signs, understanding natural cycles and our relation to them – there’s a whole practical philosophy behind the book, so working with the I Ching is more about getting into the spirit of correct and timely action than about being told what to expect by an oracle. The I Ching is perhaps just a tool for acquiring intimacy with the book’s philosophical underpinnings.

With regard to the novel’s other major theme – the relative importance of nature – it is increasingly clear that we place ourselves above nature only to our peril. We exist with all of nature in a state of interbeing. There is no way to separate or disentangle ourselves from nature or the universe. But interbeing is based on something deeper and more integral than the character’s emotional bondage. Placing oneself in the position of guardian angel or ambassador for the natural world is just as misguided as believing one is either its master or steward. To place oneself in any of these roles is to adopt just another form of separation. In doing so, the character additionally separates herself from her community.

Interoperability

I am not so worried about a few big tech companies embracing fediverse, because if a couple of them do, it may draw the even bigger fish in too, meaning that for the first time we will have interoperability between major social media companies.

If we like the unique feel of Tumblr, the rapidity of Twitter, the artistic community of deviantart or the targeted boosts offered by Facebook, etc. we could choose one of those services knowing that we can still them to stay in touch with our friends on other networks.

That will still not be enough to persuade many of us to join those commercial networks, but we will finally be able to read posts sent by our friends, and they will be able to read ours. If that happens, it will be great, because it will no longer matter what service people decide to join.

Even the big companies may eventually see that interoperability is to their advantage – they will simply need to shift their attention away from all kinds of devious behaviour that aims to lock in users by force, and towards offering the best experience possible. When people are no longer held captive, they will be able to demand more.

If I already enjoy being on Facebook, but can also see there all the posts of my friends on Twitter, I will end up spending more of my time on Facebook, which is eventually better for Facebook.

The only real danger, as far as I understand it, is that as with email, it could become a playing field mainly of a few big operators. Because in order for it to work properly, there is quite a high bar to reach. It has to be done with a slew of protocols and security standards. But new email companies and services, even non-profits run by a few volunteers, do manage to break in, and even manage to be innovative in what they offer.

I think this will be the same with the fediverse. What will eventually persuade the big companies to open up and be interoperable will be government regulations or other necessities, rather than “competition” from Mastodon. But the availability of common free opensource protocols like ActivityPub is showing the way forward.

Diary

Shifting as I do between Markdown, BBCode, Orgmode, SPIP PHP tags and plain HTML there’s a tendency to get a bit mixed up sometimes. Bill Gates would say that the wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many of them.

Lately I haven’t found the inspiration to write in my blog, but, on the other hand, I’ve written lots of little things in various other places, so I’ll collect a couple of them here.

In sickness and in health

A person who has to be laid up for several months due to a couple of unexpected spinal operations wrote that:

“I’m feeling ok now – a little mentally traumatised still from the urgency and unexpectedness of the surgery. The randomness of life really hit me.”

I wrote back that I wasn’t sure that “life is random” because I’ve been conditioned to think of it as prarabhda karma – which Jiddu Krishnamurti would have laughed at, because we create theories to explain away life’s mysteries. I also wrote that I try to relate to the “random” things that happen to us as gifts from the universe, as a bhakti would do. Baruch ha shem be tov ve ba ra as they say in Judaism.

But then she asked me to explain all these words, so follows my explanation:

‘Prarabhda karma’ is one of three types of karma according to brahmanist texts: it’s the kind that you have already been landed with, as against the karma you are now creating, or the karma that you have already perpetrated, but which has not yet resulted in anything. Actually, there’s nothing mystical about the word karma itself – it simply means action – the Indo-European root is cognate with our word “create”, but there’s a whole philosophy built around it (in both Hinduism and Buddhism): the result of “bad” actions, good “actions”, and doing action without seeking reward, etc. – the Bhagavad Gita, a poem of 700 verses, spends a lot of time on it.

‘bhakti’ means someone of a devotional bent, who might find himself in opposition to, say, a “raja yogi” or a dhyani. The analogy they usually give in India is that a bhakti is like a kitten, who his mother picks up by the scruff of his neck, and allows himself to be carried along, surrendering personal will to divine providence, whereas other kinds of yogis are more like the monkey baby, tenaciously clinging to their stated objective.

‘ blessed is God who brings goodness and ba ra’ I suppose “praise G-d whether he brings us good things or bad things” is the spirit of it. Bhakta, or devotion, is pretty much the same in all religions, I think. In one of Paul Bowles books, set in Morocco, there’s a scene where the narrator accidentally slams the taxi door on the hand of an elderly fellow passenger. Wordlessly, the old guy wraps his bloodied fingers in his shawl, mutters “alhamdulillah” (praise be to Allah!) and goes on his way.

I find I don’t have a problem reconciling between the attitudes of these different religions, while not believing in a conceptualization of God as some of them do. “God” is just a shorthand term used for convenience; a personalisation similar to the way some people assign personal names to inanimate objects. If they find it helpful, let them do so. Just don’t try to persuade me that divinity is the way that you imagine it, based on what has been drummed into you in churches and temples. Or that the god you yourself have set up on a pedestal needs to be pulled down, because either way, it is of no consequence to me. Agnosticism and atheism are nonsense terms and only imply that we haven’t understood, while “belief” will always be extremely fragile.

Progressive web applications

On my phone, using Epicyon, I noticed that there are interesting differences between Firefox (and Mull) and Chrome, in the way they handle progressive web apps. The launcher I use does not directly support pwas. But I found that if I create a Chrome pwa in Samsung’s default launcher, I can then go back and use it in my launcher. But the same is not true for Firefox pwas. They can be added to Samsung’s home screen, but do not show up among the applications, as do Chrome pwas. I don’t normally use Chrome and when it began to pester me about syncing between devices, I decided not to use it for Epicyon either. So, since I can’t use Firefox web apps under my launcher, I simply open Epicyon from a Mull tab. I might eventually put Vivaldi back on my phone, so then I’ll see what happens with the web apps that it creates, but for Epicyon I can manage like that. My launcher, by the way, is Baldphone – it’s supposed to be a simple launcher for old people. Maybe I’m getting old, because although I’ve experimented with every launcher in F-Droid, I like it best.

Unfediverse

Someone said the other day that it isn’t entirely true to say that “the Fediverse is bigger than Mastodon” because, as it stands, Mastodon by itself has many more people on it than any of the other non-Mastodon instances. (And what happens if all of Tumblr joins the Fediverse?) Anyway, for now, the effect of Mastodon’s “market dominance” is that all the other instances need to conform to Mastodon first, and then worry about being interoperable with each other only later. As a result, although almost everything I do in Epicyon and Hubzilla will work in Mastodon, and everything I receive from Mastodon is likely to come through fine, this is not true if I try to follow someone on Hubzilla from Epicyon, and, as I just discovered, posting an image in Hubzilla will come through blank to Akkoma (a Pleroma fork). Even with Mastodon, Epicyon and maybe Hubzilla have compatibility problems. From Epicyon, I discovered that I cannot respond to surveys, for example. Images can be given alt tags in Hubzilla (through a non-intuitive and undocumented syntax), but these do not seem to work in exactly the same way as in Mastodon. It’s all a bit wild. So, for interoperability it’s best to keep posts as simple as possible.

Palestine

When political realities change for the worse, we tend to adapt to them by hardening our positions. When Russia invades Ukraine, this has an inhibiting factor on all discourse that tries to be even-handed. Suddenly we are all against Russia, siding with the warmongers of NATO. That’s too bad, because the necessary nuances are lost – with the darkness of night comes our inabilities to perceive differences in colors.

It’s the same now with what’s happening in Israel/Palestine. Israel’s new regime is so harsh, anti-Arab and Fascist, the world cannot do other than to side with Palestinians and to unite against Israel. This usually results in sending Israeli Jews into defensive mode. A people so traumatized by historical antisemitism have a strong defensive reflex. This too is dangerous.

But what can one do? What can one do when a conflict seems to require that we take sides? To sign up anyway but just not to be happy about it?

Lao Tsu has the following to say about war:

Tao Te Ching – Lao Tzu – chapter 31

Good weapons are instruments of fear; all creatures hate them.
Therefore followers of the Tao never used them.
The wise man prefers the left.
The man of war prefers the right.

Weapons are instruments of fear; they are not a wise man’s tools.
He uses them only when he has no choice.
Peace and quiet are dear to his heart.
And victory no cause for rejoicing.
If you rejoice in victory, then you delight in killing;
If you delight in killing, you cannot fulfill yourself.

On happy occasions precedence is given to the left,
On sad occasions to the right.
In the army the general stands on the left,
The commander-in-chief on the right.
This means that war is conducted like a funeral.
When many people are being killed,
They should be mourned in heartfelt sorrow.
That is why a victory must be observed like a funeral.

I’m told that there’s a parallel Talmudic passage.

War and peace may be governed by firm principles, or be in the domain of realpolitik. But they are also matters of the heart. When it comes down to it, I am not going to listen to Lao Tsu, Marx, Jesus, my elders, the Prime Minister or the laws of the nation. I’m going to do what my heart tells me to do.

Links

Palestine: Unite or die | Israel-Palestine conflict | Al Jazeera This article by an al-Jazeera senior journalist suggests that it’s imperative for Palestinians to put aside their differences if they want to struggle against the new political realities in the region.

2022’s Best Investigative Stories in India – GIJN

There are amazing stories here.

Diary

For Christmas, one of my sons gave me a new set of in-ear noise cancelling bluetooth earphones, which are very nice; great in fact – they remain comfortable after hours of use and I’m not bothered by things like the TV.

I also bought myself another set of headphones, though fortunately with a different purpose – they come as part of a sleep mask and are comfortable for nights when I want to fall asleep to music or hear it through the night. Lately I’ve been doing ok without them – I always sleep better in winter: the womby effect of thick blankets, probably.

Most of my music continues to be long mixes that SoundCloud chooses for me: right now it’s “May Peace be Everywhere in the World” – an almost 3 hour track by Andi Rietchel. No need for mainstream first-tier musicians with me. My mainstray is Cafe de Anatolia, especially the stuff mixed by Billy Esteban.

It may be a sign of the times that we spend a lot of time piping music to our ears. I have at least 7 functioning sets of headphones by now. Perhaps it’s to drown out all the negativity around us. The toxic politicians and cruel, divisive politics. There are no doubt stronger drugs that people are resorting to.

I have three social media streams now; having set up Hubzilla and Epicyon on my VPS while continuing to use Akkoma on Disroot’s server. I’m making sure to follow different people on each. However, I’m not so much enjoying the experience; maybe I’ve just fallen in with the wrong crowd. As for my own contribution, I haven’t felt much like sharing anything of late, so I don’t. I think I’m more interested in social media from a technical point of view; when it comes to actually using it, I find that I don’t have a great deal to do there.

I have a greater interest in creating my own corner on the web, “a digital garden”, so I keep thinking about that.

VPN service and internet connections

I made a trial subscription to njalla’s VPN service. This came after I followed a link to a world library site recommended, which asked if I’m in “Neve Shalom”. Usually, the sites that I encounter have suggested that I’m somewhere in the general region – where my ISP server is located, for example. I didn’t understand how it came to know I’m in this tiny village. I don’t have location services enabled in my browser and Google Maps always has to ask whether I wish to enable them. Anyway, I thought that’s just a step too far. It’s not that it’s hard to know where I live, for anyone who makes a bit of effort: I mention it in my blog and my fediverse accounts, but how does some random site knows where my computer is? That I didn’t get. Anyway now the library site believes I’m in Finland, which is fine with me. Njalla’s service seems OK, but was a bit hard to set up, and I still didn’t manage to incorporate the VPN into my computer startup sequence.

The whole business of connecting to the internet never seems to settle down. New protocols and standards to learn, and deliberate obfuscation on the part of telecoms and companies that don’t want us to know. I just bought a new mesh router but apparently it’s the wrong one for the proprietary fiber modem-router of my carrier. There’s some other mesh router that’s supposed to go with that. Bummer.

And I hate all this proprietary stuff. This new mesh component does not come with the traditional website interface but a stupid simplified phone app that claims to be super-easy but is much less configurable. The approach of telecoms and companies is “Don’t bother trying to understand: we’ll take care of everything for you.” And instead of explaining how everything’s supposed to work, they try to keep us in the dark, which limits our freedom.

We need to counter such attempts through hacker-groups and websites that tirelessly explain whatever information is being kept from us. Locally I’m at a disadvantage, because I am less aware of Hebrew-speaking groups that specifically address the obfuscation and fud of the local telecom and its competitors. For sure there are people out there that understand the field much better than I do.

Israel’s new government

It’s all dark stuff. There’s still a disconnect in my brain; I didn’t completely internalize what it means, though rationally I know how bad it is, and how much worse it can become. I don’t know what to do with this information. Of course, we should leave this country and go to some other, slightly better, place. But, as an individual: should one do that, when the rest of one’s family remains behind? This must have been the same question that Jews and left-wing intellectuals would ask themselves during the 1930s in Germany and central Europe. With the difference that they were directly endangered themselves. So maybe it’s more like the circumstances in which ordinary white Christian Germans without overt political affiliation found themselves during the same era. They would not be hunted down by the SS or the Gestapo, but they might suffer the effects of the war. And they might feel sympathy for the direct victims of the Nazi regime.

The situation may yet arise that we will all simply need to flee; I would not be too surprised, but I can’t be sure, and I’m old after all, with family responsibilities of my own.