I heard the huge weekend edition of Haaretz land at my front door at 5:15, like an assignment in the ongoing course called "Current Events," in which I have been enrolled since I was in junior high school, way back in the 1950s, when I was made to believe (as I still do) that it was a citizen's duty to be well informed about his or her locality, country, and world.
A great deal has gone wrong since the end of World War II, when I was born, but the main thing, which everyone was afraid would go wrong, didn't happen. The US and the USSR didn't destroy each other and the whole world with nuclear weapons. Instead, humanity is rapidly destroying the world by increasing in population beyond the ability of the earth to sustain us: despoiling natural resources, causing animals to go extinct, filling the atmosphere with CO2 and other gases, fouling the oceans, over-fishing, and throwing off the balance of nature. And we are still threatened by nuclear war, which will just hasten what seems to be an inevitable end.
I still skim through the paper, and I wouldn't dream of cancelling my subscription to the printed Hebrew edition of Haaretz, because I still do believe that responsible, objective, investigative journalism is one of the few remaining protections that citizens have against abuses of power. But I can't say that I get any pleasure from knowing about endless corruption, mismanagement, violence, crime, obstinate stupidity, and boundless cupidity. The press hasn't proven to be the powerful bulwark against wrongdoing that we perennially hope it will be.
Now we citizens of Israel are learning that our Prime Minister wants to spend billions of euros on three more submarines, which he believes that Israel needs in order to deter Iran from sending nuclear missiles against us, and, incidentally, some of his close friends stand to make fortunes from the deal. We're back in the 1950s. The United States, Russia, and China still have nuclear arsenals and still, apparently, are prepared to use them to hasten the destruction of human life on the earth. And now the huge and powerful nations have been joined be less powerful countries like North Korea, India, Pakistan, and, of course, little Israel -- soon to be joined by others.
Why are people willing to spend so much money on "defense" -- I have to put the word in quotation marks -- and so little on ending poverty, ignorance, disease, and making the world habitable again? The question is a boring cliche by now, but if no one answers it, and no one figures out how to change direction, it will be less fun to read the newspaper every day, until we're all dead, and the newspapers are extinct, too.
I was awake when the paper came, and it was boring to lie in bed, so at 5:30 I got up and took the paper in. But instead of beginning to read that heavy bundle of paper, I turned on my computer at 5:30 and wrote this blog entry. Now it's past six, and I might as well make the coffee, unwrap the paper, and see what new misdeeds have been done in the past 24 hours.
I am not hopeful.
A great deal has gone wrong since the end of World War II, when I was born, but the main thing, which everyone was afraid would go wrong, didn't happen. The US and the USSR didn't destroy each other and the whole world with nuclear weapons. Instead, humanity is rapidly destroying the world by increasing in population beyond the ability of the earth to sustain us: despoiling natural resources, causing animals to go extinct, filling the atmosphere with CO2 and other gases, fouling the oceans, over-fishing, and throwing off the balance of nature. And we are still threatened by nuclear war, which will just hasten what seems to be an inevitable end.
I still skim through the paper, and I wouldn't dream of cancelling my subscription to the printed Hebrew edition of Haaretz, because I still do believe that responsible, objective, investigative journalism is one of the few remaining protections that citizens have against abuses of power. But I can't say that I get any pleasure from knowing about endless corruption, mismanagement, violence, crime, obstinate stupidity, and boundless cupidity. The press hasn't proven to be the powerful bulwark against wrongdoing that we perennially hope it will be.
Now we citizens of Israel are learning that our Prime Minister wants to spend billions of euros on three more submarines, which he believes that Israel needs in order to deter Iran from sending nuclear missiles against us, and, incidentally, some of his close friends stand to make fortunes from the deal. We're back in the 1950s. The United States, Russia, and China still have nuclear arsenals and still, apparently, are prepared to use them to hasten the destruction of human life on the earth. And now the huge and powerful nations have been joined be less powerful countries like North Korea, India, Pakistan, and, of course, little Israel -- soon to be joined by others.
Why are people willing to spend so much money on "defense" -- I have to put the word in quotation marks -- and so little on ending poverty, ignorance, disease, and making the world habitable again? The question is a boring cliche by now, but if no one answers it, and no one figures out how to change direction, it will be less fun to read the newspaper every day, until we're all dead, and the newspapers are extinct, too.
I was awake when the paper came, and it was boring to lie in bed, so at 5:30 I got up and took the paper in. But instead of beginning to read that heavy bundle of paper, I turned on my computer at 5:30 and wrote this blog entry. Now it's past six, and I might as well make the coffee, unwrap the paper, and see what new misdeeds have been done in the past 24 hours.
I am not hopeful.
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