Interesting morning out there, you know? The clouds lightened with a hint of seasonal chill obeyed by the species that migrate in North America to get further south. There may have been a million of them in the night sky, we couldn’t tell. The Israelis were awake though, since their morning is done by te time ours starts to sweep over.
The IDF said it hit more than 1,600 Hezbollah-terrorist-group targets in Lebanon on Monday. The strikes killed nearly 500 people and wounded more than three times that number. We could substitute the words from the Cornell Ornithology Lab, who say that that “some nights there are really enormous numbers. That’s the nature of migration.”
They were not talking about human migrations, though the flight of Israelis from their northern district and that of Lebanese from Sidon toward Beirut to avoid rockets and bombs is at least similar, though not weather dependent.
On one side of the line, Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, calls the barrage a “genocide in every sense of the word.” You can imagine there is a contrary opinion from the nation founded due to actualgenocide. So, that is one of the reasons for the Summit of the Future which we understand is happening this week in New York. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres sounded a global alarm about the survival of humanity and the planet last year. It is happening now as the birds obey their instincts with the changing amount of light in our days. Global leaders have come to New York to start fixing the aging global architecture that Guterres says must accommodate a rapidly changing world.
If you thought this was solved by the massive bi-partisan Inflation Reduction Act passed in the early days of this Administration, you can see the dimension of the problem which can’t be accommodated in “millions.” The bill has uncapped incentives that could triple initial estimates of cost, pushing it to $1.2 trillion, but that amounts to twelve hundred million, which is denser than the folk of birds we saw just before nightfall.
World leaders adopted a ‘Pact for the Future’ yesterday that includes a Compact and a Declaration. The agreement is about Global Digital standards and the Declaration will apply to Future Generations, so we are not particularly concerned about this morning. They might.
Issues resolved to everyone’s satisfaction include peace and security, sustainable development, climate change, digital cooperation, human rights, gender, youth and future generations, and the transformation of global governance. There is a bit more, but those may be more pressing in time but lower in billing.
So we wish we could say everything was pretty well wrapped up and the dozen or so pressing issues have been resolved in Mid-Town Manhattan.
Since the world problems have been solved, there is the matter of general war in the Middle East and continuing bitter struggle along the line of contract between the Russians and the former Russians on the western bank of the Donets River. Ukraine’s beleaguered President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will use his visit for the future to show his version. It will include presentation of a ‘Victory Plan’ to President Biden, who is making his final appearance as a principle on the world stage.
The plan is expected to contain a request for an invitation for Ukraine to join NATO and the EU as well as a guaranteed supply of advanced weapons for his nation. That would change the nature of the conflict from an internal matter involving two former Soviet Block entities to one involving potential general war between the former opponents in a larger conflict we thought was over.
Maybe that was in the last migratory system. The plan will be shown to whoever is running US Foreign policy before it can be presented to other Ukraine backers, and then in five weeks or so it will be presented to the people expected to pay for it.
We’ll see how that goes. We expect most of the birds will be somewhere warmer by then, though of course that has a series of discussion points we have not yet resolved.
Zelenskyy is supposed to discuss the plan with President Biden here in DC on Thursday, if they can collect the folding chairs, umbrellas and beach stuff properly for the change of season. People familiar with the matter asked not to be identified, since information about the fate of the West and possible general war involving the entire world is considered “private.”
It is supposed to be a plan that is a “blueprint for how to force Russian President Vladimir Putin to seek peace.”
Forcing him to do anything has had problems in the past. We assume that change will happen as the seasons always do. Like a big flock of flapping avians headed down south where they can relax with a little more comfort.
We understood that had already been pre-rejected at the Kremlin, but we will wait until the daylight gets a little stronger in New York and the beach gear is all loaded up for the annual trip to govern from someplace reliably warm. Kiev is apparently worried that a cease-fire without guarantees would leave Russia able to strike again whenever it wants to. Like the war it started three years ago.
Local stuff? There is similar emotion over where to put our automobiles. We had to figure out the candidates for the County Supervisors. Arlington is a solid Blue jurisdiction, virtuously so, and the choices don’t include “Good Government” platforms but rather a differing selection of the size of various programs designed to implement the bold new future we have heard so much about. Though without detail on how all the good will be done by those who pass the money around they will collect from the taxpayers.
The one we liked featured a man from Sterling who drive the 45-minutes down here to pull a gun on a tow truck driver down on Columbia Pike. That reflects the sentiment round here. There isn’t enough parking. Never has been, not new, but things have gotten stranger with the zealous expansion of bike lanes narrowing roads, adding colors and signs.
The Sterling man was irritated by the behavior of trespass enforcement company Advanced Towing who was engaged in aggressive hooking-up behavior on Columbia Pike. Some before thr cars actually stopped. Arlington County police were also concerned by the scanner traffic and took decisive action.
More stringent towing ordinances could be coming to Arlington as two bills targeting “predatory” practices are set to become law. We naturally are excited though we do not intend to brandish anything about it except a voting pen.
The Police are also looking for a pair of teens who pulled a gun on a victim in the Arlington Ridge Shopping Center parking lot on South Glebe Road Saturday Evening. A red SUV with three occupants was cruising slowly in the parking lot with one brandished a firearm from the window before disembarking and fleeing on foot. No resolution of the matter or connection to tow trucks was revealed.
We are taking Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s advice to heart. He told his nation they face “complicated days” ahead and called for citizens to stay united. Now that our leaders have the Future covered, we will consider taking personal action on how to fix The Now.
Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com