So, the US bomb­ing of Iran stopped, but Is­rael’s war in Lebanon against Iran-spon­sored Hezbol­lah ter­ror­ists con­tin­ued with re­lent­less in­ten­si­ty, even as Is­rael sig­nalled that they would en­gage the Lebanese gov­ern­ment di­rect­ly - an­oth­er gov­ern­ment in the world that has lost con­trol of its sov­er­eign space and can­not main­tain peace and sta­bil­i­ty in their own coun­try. We have reached a stage in the world now where you can ex­ist as a coun­try and a gov­ern­ment in name but can­not gov­ern ef­fec­tive­ly, nor look af­ter and pro­tect your peo­ple.

The ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween the US and Iran in Pak­istan col­lapsed in a day. Ac­cord­ing to the US Vice Pres­i­dent, their team drew red lines on what was non-ne­go­tiable and Iran found them too stark and rigid to en­gage in any fur­ther dis­cus­sions.

So, here we are now with a block­ade of Iran and their ports. Who knows what this will mean for the 12-day peace? I sus­pect Is­rael’s bomb­ings of Hezbol­lah-oc­cu­pied ter­ri­to­ries, as­sets and sup­port­ing com­mu­ni­ties will con­tin­ue in Lebanon. Iran seems to have no in­ter­est in pulling back their prox­ies, in spite of the US bat­ter­ing.

The proxy pres­ence is a ne­go­ti­a­tion hand for them it would seem. And the en­list­ed ter­ror­ists in these proxy out­fits seem to have a deep death wish and a long reach.

Trinidad and To­ba­go has tak­en a hard line and iden­ti­fied these Iran-spon­sored en­ti­ties as ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tions. On the oth­er hand, how­ev­er, Is­rael’s ap­petite for bomb­ings, de­struc­tion and killings seem to have no lim­its in the ser­vice of their ex­pan­sion­ist strat­e­gy as a counter to what they per­ceive as an ex­is­ten­tial threat.

The lines be­tween the state of Is­rael, Is­rael the Jew­ish State, Jews as a peo­ple, Zion­ism as an ide­ol­o­gy, po­lit­i­cal sur­vival of Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu, eco­nom­ic in­ter­est, and geopo­lit­i­cal am­bi­tions have be­come im­pos­si­bly blurred, as the In­ter­na­tion­al Court has iden­ti­fied Is­raeli Pres­i­dent Ne­tanyahu as a war crim­i­nal.

While all of this con­fu­sion rages in the Mid­dle East, with hu­man life mat­ter­ing less, there is a seem­ing un­aware­ness of the in­con­gru­ence be­tween what the Artemis II as­tro­nauts go­ing to the dark side of the moon and back have ex­pe­ri­enced. The man­ner in which they ar­tic­u­late their thoughts and feel­ings on the mis­sion are is in stark con­trast with US Pres­i­dent Trump’s threat to an­ni­hi­late Iran­ian civil­i­sa­tion.

The as­tro­nauts talked about a deep bond­ing that came with the team­work re­quired to achieve a first in the world com­mon pur­pose and the sense of the unique­ness of be­ing hu­man when you are many miles away from earth and those you love.

Con­cur­rent­ly, Pres­i­dent Trump got Iran to the ne­go­ti­at­ing ta­ble af­ter his dire threat of wip­ing out Iran­ian civil­i­sa­tion. And even i,f af­ter this ne­go­ti­a­tion dis­en­gage­ment and US block­ade of Iran, some­thing does come out of the peace talks, the con­cep­tu­al hor­ror of wip­ing out a civil­i­sa­tion will re­main as a graph­ic psy­cho­log­i­cal bar­ri­er crossed in hu­man af­fairs that has tak­en us to a new fron­tier of dis­tur­bance.

It has tak­en some time, but the con­cept of eth­nic cleans­ing, as ter­ror-in­duc­ing as it was in the case of the Hutus and Tut­sis in Rwan­da, and in the case of the mur­der­ous ri­val­ry in Eu­rope be­tween Bosni­aks (Mus­lims), Serbs and Croats, is no longer hor­ri­fy­ing.

These things have just be­come part of the his­to­ry of hu­man con­flict in a coun­try or re­gion. And the rep­e­ti­tion of such acts of bar­bar­i­ty, hu­man degra­da­tion and dis­grace has nor­malised sac­ri­lege as a par­don­able hu­man flaw - part of con­flict, war and an as­pect of war be­hav­iour and prac­tice.

The re­mem­brance of hu­man unique­ness so point­ed in the con­scious­ness of the team of as­tro­nauts, as they lived out pur­pose­ful iso­la­tion con­nect­ed on­ly by tech­nol­o­gy and hu­man com­pe­tence back on earth, pro­vides the stark­est of con­trasts to the Trump threat of civil­i­sa­tion­al era­sure, be­cause it was is­sued by the leader of a coun­try that can ac­tu­al­ly achieve such oblit­er­a­tion with mil­i­tary pre­ci­sion.

The irony of hu­man civil­i­sa­tion ris­ing to com­mand space trav­el, as well as cre­at­ing the mil­i­tary and tech­no­log­i­cal ca­pac­i­ty to en­gi­neer civil­i­sa­tion­al era­sure, along­side the pos­si­bil­i­ty of self-an­ni­hi­la­tion of hu­man­i­ty, is as dis­so­nant and dis­cor­dant as a chain­saw mas­sacre of in­no­cent vic­tims by a lu­natic in a sub­ur­ban com­mu­ni­ty peace­ful­ly asleep.

Ex­cept that the pow­er of such a mas­sacre, im­mi­nent­ly pos­si­ble, will be dri­ven by the pre­ci­sion of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence as the earth spins so re­li­ably around the sun.