Making the Connections.

There have been a number of news stories which have been sort of coming together in my head in the last week or so.  The first was about Elon Musk's car going into space using reusable rockets.  The second was the story in The Times magazine which saw an undercover reporter working at an Amazon warehouse.  Thirdly, I saw a report about the treatment of women in 'Silicon Valley'.  And finally, apparently a great many billionaires - especially from Silicon Valley - have decided to prepare for the coming apocalypse by buying huge tracts of land in New Zealand.

Can you see the link?  Abuse of wealth and power by the mega-wealthy?  I had been musing about how I really have problem with private space exploration after I saw the SpaceX flight.  I don't think we, the human race, have done anywhere near enough to further our exploration of space.  I don't think governments spend properly on it either alone or with others.  But to see a private company able to achieve so much in such a short amount of time and for lower outlay?  Frankly it is frightening.  It smacks of the trade beginnings of colonialism and look where that got us.  It also made me think that only billionaires and their friends will have the power to escape if something terrible happens on Earth.

And then I read the story about the way many of these geeky entrepreneur billionaires behave towards women and I got more angry.  The general gist of the article was that, prior to their financial achievements, these Silicon Valley men had had little or no success with women.  Therefore sex parties, coercion and harassment are now the accepted norm if you want to be part of their  scene - both social and business.  Women are damned if they go to the parties as an attempt at networking - women have a tiny percentage of start-up capital there - but damned if they refuse.  For example, a women seen at a party is then subjected to slanderous gossip and harassment from colleagues.

When you add this to the stories about billionaires buying citizenships and land in New Zealand, investing in 'seasteading' (artificial ocean islands), having private jets on standby in case of nuclear war, etc etc and a whole lot of even creepier stuff about how they regard themselves as a race apart because of their 'superior intelligence', it gets really worrying.

But to finally add that many of them - of whatever nationality - are running companies with appalling conditions like those in the Amazon distribution centres, you can see a picture of people who think they are above the current governance of our planet.  Who believe they will be leading - or their descendants via supermodels will be leading - some kind of evacuation eventually.  Whilst blinding the rest of us 'inferior' humans with fake news about what is actually happening.

I'm sounding all David Icke, I know, but these are stories which have been in the mainstream press.  Not Facebook or Buzzfeed.  Actual reporters for once.  We need to start making the connections.

Weather He Exists

As the rolling news coverage is showing, our planet is undergoing, once again, extreme weather to say the least.  And as ever, Donald Trump's commentary language is about as simplistic as it gets.  The use of the words 'bad', 'good', 'very' are his go-to descriptives for everything though, aren't they?

However, even a greater intellect than Trump (no comment on how difficult it would be to find a person of more intellect - other than 'try the nursery') would struggle to describe something so extreme which they completely deny should be happening.

What puzzles me about the American Right is how you align extreme Christian religion with the denial of global warming.  If you are Creationist, what do you think is happening to the planet?  If you believe wholeheartedly - word for word - in the Bible, you must, for example, believe that Noah was told by God to build the Ark to save the animals 'two by two' (hey, there's a song there) while He flooded the place.

If it is not global warming, what is happening to our weather, our temperatures, our sea levels?  Is 'God' doing this?  And if so, why?  What are we being punished for?

Personally, I think the writers of the story of Noah were telling - a long time after the event - of a situation caused by a some kind of planetary issue.  And in another example, the plagues described as descending on Egypt were to do with extreme weather.  More likely explanations surely?

As a teenager, I was very involved in the Methodist Church.  Many of those who I went to youth events with subsequently entered the ministry or worked for the church in other capacities.  For me, I did greatly enjoy my time and I hope I took a moral compass from it.  I did believe in religion to an extent.  But it was not unquestioning.  And I have never thought that God created the world in seven days, etc etc.  To me, these tales are clearly a way of making sense of history passed down to the writers, of the world around the writers, of the unknown.

Or is there something we, the little people, are missing here?  There is film called 2012.  It is a disaster movie based on the idea that extreme sea level rises cause catastrophic flooding on the Earth. The only humans to survive are those who have places on giant space-ship-like vessels which have been secretly built.  And the places on those ships go mainly to the wealthy and those in government.

I am sorry if this is all getting a bit David Icke for you.  But having now watched fires, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes in the space of a week, I am even more terrified by Trump and co's refusal to believe in the need to mend out ways.  By their actual reversal of the measures which have so far been taken - and which never went far enough in the first place.  We, and not God, are most definitely killing our beautiful and bountiful planet.