Yesterday evening, quite early, even though it felt later as the sun goes down so early these days, the cloud cover disappeared. There was a big, bright moon, not full but still rather a lot of it. And we saw stars for the first time in weeks. It’s bright and cold today, lots of blue sky and sunshine. The weathermen kept their promise. Suddenly the horizons have extended again.
The smallest grandchild decided at teatime yesterday that he wanted to paint. His slightly bigger sister backed him up and so he organised things, got the box of paints from the shelf, slotted paper into the easel, even dragged a stool over to the sink so that he could try to fill water pots. Soon I won’t need to entertain him at all; he’ll just organise himself! And for once he chose to paint in other colours than black - his go-to favourite since he uses up all the block of red. So now I have a new set of artwork on the kitchen wall.
I read yesterday that they have decided to stop lighting up the great Wembley Arch for humanitarian causes. It’s been lit up in red, white and blue in sympathy with the French after Bataclan, rainbow colours for LBGQT+ and blue and yellow for Ukraine. After October 7th it was decided not to light it up in Israeli colours but to have 2 minutes silence out of respect for the dead on both sides of the conflict. Wembley has been criticised for that and for the time being has decided to do any more virtue signalling lighting up for the time being. Everyone is being so careful not to tread on any sensitive toes.
Then there is this:
“European security officials are seeing a growing risk of attacks by Islamists radicalised by the war, with the biggest threat likely to come from “lone wolf” assailants who are hard to track.
More than 10 intelligence and police officials in five European countries including Britain, Germany and France have told Reuters they are increasing surveillance of Islamist militants.
This will put a further burden on resources already stretched by dealing with perceived threats from Russia, China and Iran, in what London’s Met police chief, Mark Rowley, calls “one of the most challenging convergence of threats I have ever seen”.”
While I can understand the fear of terrorist attacks (they’ve had riots in Dublin after a possibly immigrant related incident) I’m a little sceptical about the “perceived threats from Russian, China and Iran”. It smacks a little of keeping us all frightened so we won’t criticise the government too much.
Over in the Middle East, a ceasefire of sorts seems to be taking place, although hostilities will be resumed after that. But there are still reports like this one:
“In the crowded corridors of the European hospital in Khan Younis, exhausted doctors decide who among the huge influx of patients arriving from the north of Gaza should live or die.
Hundreds of casualties have moved south in recent days after the evacuation of hospitals in Gaza City, overwhelming medical staff already struggling with an acute lack of medicine, diminishing food rations and intermittent power and communications.
Injured people have joined thousands of displaced people seeking shelter and safety in medical facilities.
Paul Ley, an orthopaedic surgeon at the European hospital, said the hardest thing for doctors was to make triage decisions. “We do our triage … [asking] are we going to take this patient because they will have a good chance of surviving rather than doing desperate measures on a patient who will die in two or three days? That sounds nice on paper, but when you have to make the decision it is different. There’s a 12-year-old with 90% burns so we won’t treat him except for pain control that is not enough,” he said.”
Imagine having trained as a doctor and having to play god and decide who lives and who dies. Fingers crossed that that ceasefire/pause/whatever improves matters.
Life goes. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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