Since we’re still intact, it’s safe to pre­sume that despite con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists, the object from out­er space that just passed Earth real­ly is a comet and not an alien bat­tle­ship. Assum­ing those who real­ly can wreck the world have a firm grasp on real­i­ty, per­haps less so.

Venezuela, or at least Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s view of  it, is a fine exam­ple. The puta­tive “Leader of the Free World”  wrote on his social media plat­form that Venezuela is “com­plete­ly sur­round­ed by the largest Arma­da ever assem­bled in the His­to­ry of South Amer­i­ca,” and added that it will “only get big­ger, and the shock to them will be like noth­ing they have ever seen before.”
One would have though that dis­cov­er­ing their coun­try is actu­al­ly an island would be an even greater shock for Venezuelans.
Trump also wrote that the U.S. oper­a­tion would con­tin­ue until Venezuela returned to the Unit­ed States “all of the Oil, Land, and oth­er Assets that they pre­vi­ous­ly stole from us.”
If that sounds famil­iar… “In Feb­ru­ary 1962, Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy pro­claimed an embar­go on trade between the Unit­ed States and Cuba, in response to cer­tain actions tak­en by the Cuban Government,”
In spite of  CIA covert actions (which Trump has also announced for Venezuela) that have includ­ed at least one abortive inva­sion, coup attempts, end­less pro­pa­gan­da and alleged­ly more than 600 attempts to assas­si­nate Fidel Csrtro over the fit­ty years he ruled the island, Cuba’s com­mu­nist sys­tem of gov­ern­ment and the embar­go are still in place.
The key word in Trump’s bom­bast is, of course oil. So it’s worth not­ing that he used it in the same time frame as he announced plans to dis­man­tle the Nation­al Cen­ter for Atmos­pher­ic Research, con­sid­ered one of the lead­ing Earth sci­ence research insti­tu­tions in the world on things like cli­mate change.
Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, melt­ing per­mafrost, caused by record-set­ting tem­per­a­tures and rain­fall in the Arc­tic, washed tox­ic min­er­als into more than 200 rivers across north­ern Alas­ka, turn­ing the water rust-coloured and endan­ger­ing  eco-systems.

       NARROW VIEWPOINTS

Mem­bers of the US. con­gress leapt on the Bon­di Beach killings as a rea­son to deport any and all Moslems., whether they com­mit­ted crimes or saved lives.
When a coun­try is led by peo­ple with that lev­el of venal stu­pid­i­ty, overt racism and lit­tle sense of moral­i­ty, nev­er mind per­spec­tive, is it any won­der the U.S. is on a steady slide into being a mock­ery of not only its own self-image, but in the eyes of the world in general?
Amer­i­can leg­is­la­tors offer “thoughts and prayers”  and refuse to alter gun laws after every mass shoot­ing. The Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment response the Bon­di atroc­i­ty was to imme­di­ate­ly strength­en gun pos­ses­sion laws.
Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Binyamin Netanyahu blamed the Hanuk­ka mas­sacre on the Aus­tralian government’s recog­ni­tion of a  Pales­tin­ian state which “pours fuel on the anti­se­mit­ic fire, rewards Hamas ter­ror, embold­ens those who men­ace Aus­tralian Jews and encour­ages the Jew hatred now stalk­ing your streets.”
Real­ly?
All of the coun­tries that have recog­nised a Pales­tin­ian state, round­ly con­demned the killings, and quite right­ly con­sid­er anti-Semi­tism abhor­rent and in many cas­es a crime.
In the wake of the killings,  Aus­tralian Prime Min­is­ter Antho­ny Albanese announced new mea­sures to com­bat anti-Semi­tism, includ­ing leg­is­la­tion to “crack down on those who spread hate, divi­sion and radicalization.”
Israeli accep­tance of the two state solu­tion and con­demn­ing and cur­tail­ing vio­lence by racist West Bank set­tlers, would do a lot more to alle­vi­ate anti-Semi­tism than recog­ni­tion does to exac­er­bate it.
Netanyahu has repeat­ed­ly said that if Hamas did not agree to dis­arm, it would be done “the hard way.”
I thought that was what Israel had been doing in Gaza for the last two and a bit years.
The appalling extent of dev­as­ta­tion caused by the war is slow­ly but sure­ly seep­ing into the pub­lic eye, which it is safe to say goes some way towards fuel­ing anti-Semi­tism and if not sym­pa­thy, then at least less antipa­thy towards Hamas, which doesn’t  deserve that any more than Jews deserve the hatred and vio­lence direct­ed at them.
What the end result might be for Israel was summed up in an opin­ion piece in of all out­lets, Al-Jazeera, by Israeli inde­pen­dent ana­lyst Ori Gold­berg: “The Israeli state is quick­ly becom­ing a hol­lowed-out shell. Insti­tu­tions are fail­ing, pub­lic ser­vants are leav­ing and polit­i­cal appointees serv­ing their patrons are the only ones left to step in and fill the gaps. The Israel that emerges is bound for insti­tu­tion­al, finan­cial and cul­tur­al pover­ty – or implosion.”
What­ev­er your posi­tion on the Mid­dle  East and the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian face-off, it seems to me that assess­ment should bode ill on all counts, even for con­spir­a­cy theorists.

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