Imperialism By Any Other Name...

I was hoping to get down the studio and start assembling the shelving I bought on Sunday, in a bid to clear the well of my workbench of jars of screws, pots of small tools and random accumulated shit. But although the sun came out and the skies turned a lovely shade of blue, the temperature plummeted and I thought the better of it. A recipe for frostbite, methinks. So, instead, I was trawling my feeds this morning and staying warm. The first thing I watched, of course, was Trump's barely coherent stream of consciousness[?] ramble on Gaza. They only people who seem to give his crazed ideas on the matter any credence are his own apologists and the Israelis. But unpick this mad idea, and you find the logical conclusion to the wholly disproportionate response of Israel to the attack that initiated this war: the dispossession of their homeland from the Palestinians, and their relocation 'elsewhere' in the Arab world. To be replaced by a Riviera of the Middle East wholly owned by the United States. Whether this is just typical Trump bullshit: 'say the first thing that enters the fog of your mind and recant later, having stirred things up', or a serious threat to annexe the third country he's made in little over a week, I wouldn't hazard a guess. I just think he's certifiable, a bad businessman, and an even worse politician than Boris Johnson, which is going some. We are now seeing the fruits of what happens when lucky, entitled and inheritance-endowed people of slender talent and intelligence worm their way into the rather more serious business of politics and international affairs. The knock-on effects of this week's machinations are going to be serious for the less well off of America, the poorest outside of the First World, and for the economies of much of the developed world as well. Depressing doesn't come close...