As if by magic, one of the most heavily militarised borders in the entire world was breached, seemingly blindsiding one of the most professional spy-networks in the entire world. Apparently, the latter hadn't counted on some dudes in hang-gliders flying over the walls of Gaza; a Mossad spokesman is alleged to have said, “that was the one thing we didn't think of.”1 Nobody is entirely sure who is really responsible for this, but rumours persist that it might be the same production team that brought you such geopolitical hits as Damn, This Jet Fuel Is Hot and Oops, Who Left These Tanks Lying Around A Desert Patrolled by Islamist Militants?
Whatever really happened here, the implications of this cluster-frack will spill out over our already-overdone dish of full-spectrum collapse like a salt-shaker with a broken top. The sabres are already rattling among the senile idiots in Washington D.C., who are threatening to use it as an excuse to attack Iran. We've already passed the they're-killing-babies stage of propagandising, because everyone knows it's morally acceptable to kill even more babies in indiscriminate bombing campaigns when you hear rumours of infanticide. You gotta kill babies to save babies, them's the rules, bucko. If other countries get involved (which they probably will), then the whole region will once again be at war, and a new wave of migration could emerge that would dwarf the crisis of the mid 2010's.
That crisis is still going on, in case you hadn't noticed, and is arguably worse than ever, due to eerily similar mismanagement of national borders across Europe and the USA. It's almost as if someone, somewhere, is benefiting from international human-trafficking, but I'm sure it couldn't possibly be anyone involved in the numerous migrant-focused NGOs that are luring gullible young female volunteers into unhygienic camps populated by military-aged men who may or may not be armed.
“Nooooo!!! But they're poor helpless childlike victims that need to be nurtured back to health like wounded puppies!!!”, the young women protest, unconsciously denying these men their human agency. Indeed, so poor and helpless and childlike was the group of migrants recently taken aboard a Dutch ship off the coast of Morocco that they actually pulled knives on their rescuers and attempted to hijack the ship. They were apparently upset at being brought back to the peaceful and stable nation of Morocco, which triggered their PTSD as they didn't think it was quite as peaceful and stable as a 3-star hotel in Torquay, which is what they were evidently expecting.
Omens of the end-times abound. I guessed that something big was coming when the Sycamore Gap was felled, an act of wanton destruction taking place on the ruins of the Roman Empire's northernmost border-wall. I was reminded of that when Christopher Knowles of the Secret Sun pointed out the synchronistic links between the felling of the sycamore (the Egyptian tree of life) and the eruption of violence in the Middle East.
It would have been mind-bogglingly weird if something disastrous had happened in, say, East Palestine, Ohio earlier this year. Almost makes you want to become a synchro-mystic, doesn’t it?
Now on to more prosaic matters. Substack’s subscriber stats (try saying that after a few Jamesons) have been wonky lately, but I am fairly sure I’ve lost at least one paid subscriber over the past week. If that’s the case, they may have their own reasons, but I’m keen to do my best to ensure that everyone who is kind enough to pay me to do what I do is getting what they consider to be a good deal out of it. As such, I do urge all of my paid subscribers to let me know what kind of content they’d like to see more of, and all of my free subscribers to let me know what might help persuade them to join the Exalted Order of Stone Heads.
I made that up, and anyway, it already happened in the year I was born.
Oh, Luke - you quoted one of my favorite WaPo reporters! /s actually I have been following Israeli Efrat Fenigson & the like on these events; Mike Benz on geopolitics and mostly just watching all the what we of the Whisky Bar (blog that a dude who called himself Billmon wrote) during the Iraq War began calling The 101st Keyboard Division here on Substack hold forth on their of course expert (to them) opinions on the conflict. Glad to see YOU still have a sense of humour.
I noted in a Northumberland paper report that the land upon which the Sycamore was standing is owned by the Jesuits.