The end of the world may well be nigh.

Astrologers and assorted cult leaders, mainly Christians, have been predicting the end of the world for thousands of years. The latest prediction was for the 7th of this month when the moon appeared red, a natural phenomenon known as 'blood moon'. Normally all these prophets of doom are ignored with an amused shrug as harmless loonies unless one tries to create an apocalypse, as Aum Shinrikyo did when it used Sarin gas on the Tokyo metro in 1995. In 1993, 76 people belonging to a doomsday cult called Branch Davidians died in a fire at a ranch in Waco, Texas. These incidents, although shocking, are rare and insignificant. But now it seems that an apocalypse could actually take place. Not because of any celestial or religious event but because western powers seem to be engineering it. In World War I there were over 38 million casualties, 17 million dead and 20 million wounded. In World War II over 60 million were killed, about 3% of the total world population in 1940. This time casualties will be in hundreds of millions, maybe in excess of a billion. The difference is that there were no nuclear weapons during those wars and WWII ended abruptly when the US dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those bombs, with yields of 13-18 kilotons of TNT were mere toys compared to today's bombs which can deliver energy equivalent to 48-50,000 kilotons of TNT. Nine countries are known to possess nuclear arsenals, of which the US, Russia and China have the deadliest, along with delivery systems capable of reaching the farthest corners of the globe. Iran is getting there. What has all this got to do with doomsday cults? The US has dropped 50 tons of grenades and ammunition, and possibly anti-tank weapons, on northern Syria, apparently to 'good terrorists' fighting Bashar al-Assad. An earlier air drop of weapons, meant for Kurds, ended up in the hands of ISIS. Clearly the US does not care who gets the weapons because their aim is not to fight ISIS but to fight a proxy war with Russia. This is precisely the same stupidity that governed the supply of arms to the Mujahiddeen, who were invited to the White House by Ronald Reagan. That led to the formation of the Taliban, the civil war followed, killing thousands and displacing even more, leading to 9/11, and the rest is history. Supplying weapons to terrorists is only going to prolong the war and the agony of the Syrian people. Syrian refugees in Jordan are in such poverty that they are returning back to their homes with their children despite the carnage. After the suicide bomb attacks in Ankara, blamed on the ISIS by the government, Turkey bombed Kurds in northern Iraq. Make sense? It does in the middle east. If the US weapons fall in the hands of the Peshmerga they could use them against Turkey, a NATO ally. Obama has been looking for a legacy. The death of one billion would be a nice one.