Author: R J Adams

It’s been a long time since I’ve written a post on Sparrow Chat. The last time was back in March and that was only a rehash of a short story for the anniversary of the disappearance of Flight MH370.

There have been many reasons for my lethargy, not least of all the loss of my dear wife due to cancer in 2021. I moved house this year and as I’m growing older the stress of doing it alone was difficult to handle. Many folks were telling me I needed to start a new life and move to a different area of France, so I relocated to Normandy, a small bungalow set in woodland that I hoped would bring me some peace of mind.

I’m not sure it has, though it’s early days and I must give it time. The summer has been difficult with temperatures often into the low thirties at times (that’s the nineties in old money!)

Another reason for not writing is the possibly cataclysmic rise to power in America of Donald Trump, coupled with the horror that has engulfed the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank ,and of course the ongoing slaughter of Ukrainians by the madman, Putin.

In my own country, the UK, I’ve watched the decline of morality with sadness and shame. The treatment of poor immigrants and the false rhetoric by the likes of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known to most as Tommy Robinson, is disgusting; far-right lies spread virulently through social media. The recent far-right demonstration in London that attracted 110,000 people displayed how easy it is to warp the minds of ordinary folk into a mob mentality.

There is something evil spreading around the world fanned by rich tech tycoons whose lust for power has robbed them of any sense of decency and humanity.

Meanwhile climate change moves ever onward. The amount of greenhouse gases discharged yearly continues to rise while governments sit on their asses; their masters the fossil fuel companies, plastics consortiums, mining corporations and others who keep them in power, and their wallets well filled.

There is much written about it all online and I do not feel the need for Sparrow Chat to join the chaos they call debate.

I am as yet undecided whether to close this site permanently, or perhaps seek some way to bend it into something I can live wîth and keep writing about.

Time will tell.

 

On March 8th 2014 at 12.41am Malaysia Airways flight MH370 left Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing, China with 239 passengers and crew on board. Forty minutes later the pilot, Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah,  transmitted his last message to Malaysia trafiic control as the aircraft left their area and was due to enter Vietnamese air space, “Good night Malaysian three seven zero.”

Then the plane disappeared. It never entered Vietnamese air space. No further word was heard from any of the crew and all communcation systems were shut down.

Based on modern satellite technology, theory says that the aircraft then headed back over Malaysia before turning south, out over the Southern Indian Ocean, where it is assumed it eventually ran out of fuel and crashed into the sea.

Despite many long searches, it has never been found.

It is now eleven years since the aircraft went missing and a new search of the Southern Indian Ocean is about to get underway. There are lots of clues to suggest it is somewhere deep down in that turbulent ocean….

…but suppose…just suppose…. it isn’t there at all….?

MH370 – Flight To Armageddon

 

“2025 Doomsday Clock Announcement
January 28, 2025
In setting the Clock one second closer to midnight, the Science and Security Board sends a stark signal: Because the world is already perilously close to the precipice, a move of even a single second should be taken as an indication of extreme danger and an unmistakable warning that every second of delay in reversing course increases the probability of global disaster.”

Week 3 ofTrump 2 has just ended. Just another 205 to go, assuming he doesn’t wangle a second term. He’s already put an end to any hope of keeping global temperatures within the Paris Agreement of 1.5 degrees.

It’s truly hard to assess potential future scenarios after the chaos of this week. At best, it’s all hot air and ego; at worst, chaos and the possible end of humanity.

The biggest question to be answered right now, is how democratic leaders will react to his intentions. Will they cower and let him walk all over them, scattering Palestinians to the winds, ass-crawling to that latest addition to the gang of dictatorial psychopaths who control so many nations these days?

Vladimir Putin, Aleksandr Lukashenko, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-un, Mohammed bin Salman, Nicolas Maduras, Viktor Orban, and now Trump and Musk to name just a few of the fifty or so dictatorial leaders scattered around the globe.

While Trump plays his silly tariff games with other nations, it will hurt Americans just as much as the Chinese or Canadians. So what if we have to pay a bit more for certain items? Hell, we’ve survived a couple of World Wars, haven’t we? Trump, like all other dictators is a narcissist and a sociopath. He enjoys saying no to people and watching them squirm.

The real danger to the world right now is Elon Musk. His lust for power is evident and Donald Trump is his path to achieve it. He has a warped, evil view of how the world should be and wants it remodelled as he sees it in his head. The idea of one man being able to change the world to suit their individual  ideology has been at the forefront  of many dictators’ minds since the dawn of time. None has yet succeeded, though many have enforced it in their own countries, to the detriment of its citizens.

Musk’s view that “free speech” leads to freedom, is so unbelievably biased as to be obvious. One only has to look at social media, and Twitter (X) in particular, to realise that free speech, spread like viruses via social media,  distorts truth until it is destroyed, replaced by lies and propaganda that produce an unrecognisable form of reality.

I doubt there’s one person alive today who can predict the future with surety. So many lies and deceits have been perpetrated by political influencers. Most of them are via social media and headed by the ultimate influencer, Elon Musk. Musk has over 200 million followers on Twitter(X). Truth is no longer a virtue to seek. Truth has become merely what someone chooses to believe, based on the influencer’s words and the number of followers who hang onto them. It’s important to be part of the crowd, the followers.  Human beings need to belong to a community, especially online. If there’s a “woke” crowd to be jeered at and taunted, so much the better. Tribes, whether online or at football matches, need someone to disagree with, enemies from the opposing tribe to make fun of, or in real life to pull faces at, to kick and punch in the pursuit of their own misshapen truths.

With the election of Donald Trump as the latest President of the United States the Doomsday Clock moved one second nearer to midnight . The closest it’s ever been to Doomsday, since it’s inception in 1947.

Perhaps it is time to welcome the cleansing effects of climate breakdown. Neither Trump nor Musk will lift a hand to stop it. Maybe, when it’s too late and the White House is burning, they may be forced to reconsider? One way or another, climate change has seen off many of evolution’s unwanted species, whose continued existence would eventually damage the planet. Surely, there is no more prime candidate for extinction than the ravaging, greed-driven brutality of Homo sapiens.

“A move of even a single second should be taken as an indication of extreme danger and an unmistakable warning that every second of delay in reversing course increases the probability of global disaster.”

Are we even listening?