Shopping for avocados, I systematically avoid those from Israel. Not because they are not good, but since Gaza, and the systematic violence I see Israel carrying out in the region, I have chosen not to support, in my small way, that government.
I know. Where do you stop? Amazon, Tesla, the phone in your hand, your bank ... everything is compromised, so why this? I don't have a systematic answer and I'm not going to pretend that there is one. I don't claim this is consistent. It's what I can carry. We can't do everything, and we can't do nothing ... I can do one thing.
In front of my computer, I decided to apply the same logic. I have been a user of Waves plugins since the mid 90s at Ircam. Since then, the company has always been in my bag of production tools. Until now.
Some months ago, I stopped buying, updating, and using Waves plugins. Cold turkey.
True, today it's not hard to do. There are plenty of alternatives. But the simplicity, range, and ubiquity of Waves products meant I had to retrain and relearn certain habits.
I've written about how military technology can end up in your front room. It can also end up on the radio and the Billboard Top 40. The most obvious example is the vocoder, built at Bell Labs to squeeze speech down a telephone line, then handed to the military in WW II to encrypt Roosevelt's calls to Churchill. Technology that then found its way into hit songs by Neil Young, Kraftwerk, or Daft Punk.
Bad? I don't think so. But interesting.
This is not that. While it is probable that the Israeli company Waves was founded by, or employs, ex-military personnel, that is understandable, because this is part of the culture and requirements of the country's citizens.
It's not the proximity to the military for me, nor is it that the people who work there are Israeli.
Using Waves is a problem for me because it is an Israeli company, based in Israel, and every time I buy something from them my money goes to fund the actions of the military in Gaza and the West Bank.
Using Waves is a problem for me because I can't rationalize doing what I do with tools that have been tainted with what I see on TV and read in the papers.
Using Waves is a problem for me because as hard as I have looked, I've never seen a statement from them denouncing what they see on TV and read in the papers. Silence is a position.
I'm not asking for a miracle. I'm not asking for angels. I'm asking for some humanity.
Until that changes, no Waves.