leicsmac

It won't be nuclear weapons. It could well be a withering conventional strike that devastates the infrastructure that 90 million people require to survive. Both are unacceptable and the latter could, in the long run, exact as much death and suffering as the former. Terrestrial perspective is something far too many people with power lack. Unfortunately, it's rather difficult to teach such people that lesson in a way that really works.

"That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

They did talk to him not long either before or after loss of signal going round the Moon (can't remember which), though.

I don't think that he'll go that far either, but there's more than enough conventional firepower available can destroy enough civilian infrastructure to make an entirely unacceptable humanitarian crisis. Either pathway is reprehensible.

I wonder if all those contributors on here so willing to say that folks were overreacting when he won reelection back in 2024 think the same way now?

... any sane person familiar with the situation anywhere in the world must just be wondering how this has all come to this.

That's true, though having the VP himself visiting at the present time does send its own message and we'll see how Trump reacts should his buddy lose.

Not just Russia, it would seem. Vance is over there as we speak.

Read something interesting today. The Laperouse Expedition was a French voyage of scientific discovery in the late 18th century that was sadly wrecked in the Pacific. The survivors managed to live on an uncharted island for at least three years, but were never rescued. There are two fascinating historical points about this expedition. One was that the voyage of a Royal Navy ship looking for the Bounty mutineers passed by the island where the Laperouse survivors were marooned, but did not stop to render aid, believing it would distract from their mission. The second is that a young aspirant naval officer from Corsica applied to join the expedition, but despite passing preliminary tests, did not make the final crew. That officers name is rather well known these days - Napoleon Bonaparte. Imagine how different history might have been if either of those two events had turned out differently.

Funny, but also extremely obvious in terms of motivating ideology.

One thing I will add to this is while Russia and North Korea are reprehensible, they don't pretend to be paragons of virtue to the entire world through the most sophisticated media onslaught ever devised. The lie of it, the faux-righteousness so betrayed by a closer look at actual actions, is pretty disgusting. China are much more complex than the above two IMO - no ones doubts the degree of state control that the government has there, but also they are clearly focused on the long game in a way that practically no other big player is, and that's important in of itself.

Agreed. Those checks and balances worked with Nixon. They clearly are not here (or at least not nearly as effectively as they should be).

Not exactly. He's pitting Vance against Newsom directly and provoking the latter, because it's the most likely contest for the top job in 2028 at the moment. He needs to make Vance look good and Newsom look bad domestically, especially with approval ratings nosediving.

Yep. Gotta love the right to choose destruction of the "other" and of everyone's future, right?

And there you see the beauty of a democratic system in the American style. It allows for people not like those well-rounded people to assign absolute power to a man like Trump.

How very sects maniacs.

Likely impacting with the Moon, because the current course of the Artemis II is a free return trajectory and reducing the relative velocity of an object on that trajectory tends to most often put them in the gravitational pull of whatever object they are visiting next.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/crl10127elgo I wish more people could have this terrestrial perspective.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cevk0e4ykwko Macron being the adult in the room here, then.

Like most Trump policy decisions, the absurdity would be humorous if it wasn't for the appalling toll of death and suffering of people who apparently "don't matter".

... it's almost as if the whole spiel about "liberation of the Iranian people" was a lie from the start. How about that.

Yeah, totally needless from Littler. Can understand the want to win everything but mate, you win enough to not get petulant when it's not going your way.

TLI nominal.

He's implying that he and others have at least been co-opted by Muslims, I think. And the problem with the internet in a democracy is that such batshit tinfoil hat bollocks only needs to spread so far for it to have a lasting effect on everyone. So many examples of that about right now.

It's getting to tap into the idiot American fundiefascist market. Organised religion has (thankfully) very little direct part to play in political policymaking in the UK and people like Tice know it, they're just working the grift. Thankfully, it appears that more people are seeing through it now, seeing as their own "God" (read Moloch) figure is being so obviously, insanely off the chain that it's become almost impossible not to notice.