Author: R J Adams

In case you hadn’t noticed there’s a major world event taking place.  It’s all about football. I’ve never hidden my feelings towards football, or every other competitive event that goes under the misnomer of ‘sport’.

I’ve nothing against two people who like to kick a ball around a field, or hit a smaller ball over a net, or an even tinier ball into a hole in the middle of a field. I do object when what are recreational activities, take over the media and plunge important news stories into a brief sentence or two at the end of a broadcast, or the last line of a website, or back pages of a newspaper. Meanwhile, the emblazoned headlines announce that so-and-so scored the winner in some football match on the other side of the world, organized by probably the most corrupt organization on the planet, namely FIFA.

More than 10,000 bodies, possibly as  many as 14,000, are buried  under the rubble in Gaza and Israel has refused to allow earth moving equipment into the Strip to help with  the excavation of 61 million tons of debris . Rescuers are forced to use shovels, pickaxes and other rudimentary tools, including their bare hands. Meanwhile, relatives and loved ones wait, and hope. Maybe they’d like to console themselves by watching the football, if only they had a television, or the internet, or the electricity to run either. Perhaps after years of living in fear, despair, grief and malnutrition, football doesn’t have much appeal anymore.

It’s a tiny little commune in the Calvados region of Upper Normandy, France. It has a population of only 1,900. When the US Secretary for War, Pete Hegseth was due to visit there during the commemoration of the D-Day landings on June 6th, the local resident’s association of Langrune-sur-Mer made their feelings clear. Hegseth was not welcome.

Immediately prior to the visit  Hegseth spoke at the US military cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer:

“…Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different, dangerous ideologies, he said, “Beaches in Spain, in Italy, in Greece, and Bulgaria, boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion? Or is it too late? I pray not…. “ Remarks that prompted a prominent historian to accuse him of “grotesque stupidity.” (Guardian)

(The earlier link reveals the full speech by Hegseth.  You are advised to keep a sick bag at the ready).

The denunciation  of this US politician by little Langrune-sur-Mer rapidly went viral causing Hegseth to run, tail between his legs, back from whence he came.

I was immediately reminded of William Schwenk Gilbert’s cowardly Duke of Plaza Toro who led his regiment from behind so he could be in the front when they ran away:

“In enterprise of martial kind, When there was any fighting,
He led his regiment from behind (He found it less exciting).
But when away his regiment ran, His place was at the fore, O-
That celebrated, Cultivated, Underrated Nobleman,
The Duke of Plaza-Toro!”

Why is it that a tiny village in France could stand firm and achieve what our lily-livered European political leaders are too cowardly to do? Perhaps we just suffer too many ‘Dukes of Plaza Toro’?

No-one mentions Ukraine anymore. Surely that’s a match deserving of full media attention. David, the underdog, bringing the mighty Goliath to its knees despite taking a pounding in the process. There’ll be nothing to match it in the coming weeks of soccer for action, glory, but oh so many innocent dead Ukrainians.

One final thought before the football occupies every braincell of the 40 billion Homo sapiens who it’s said will be glued to their screens for the next…well, the gods only know how long.

Today is the 80th birthday of the President of the United States of America. Let us celebrate this day by echoing the words of the environmental campaigner, Greta Thunberg:

“My initial thought was to give you a one-way ticket to The Hague as a birthday gift, but that comment would probably go above your head. I will instead give you a can of alphabet soup; the sentences you poop out will be more coherent than anything you have ever said. Now you can finally take part in meaningful public discourse.”

And now we’re taking you back to the World Cup where a player somewhere has just kicked a ball into a net…

 

As if it’s not bad enough to have authoritarian governments rising to power all around us, there’s a new problem beginning to rear it’s very ugly head: corporate authoritarianism.

Nowhere was this to be seen more clearly than at the recent, and very much respected, annual Hay Literary Festival at Hay-on-Wye, Powys, Wales.

One of those invited to speak, and be interviewed by the renowned ex-Guardian, investigative journalist Carol Cadwallader, was Sarah Wynn-Williams, an ex-employee of Facebook. She worked at the company from 2011 as their global public policy director. In 2017 her employment was terminated after she reported her boss, Joel Kaplan, for alleged sexual harassment.

Kaplan worked in the US government under George W Bush before eventually taking employment with Facebook in 2014 as vice-president of US public policy. He had Zuckerberg’s ear and by 2014 had risen to become vice-president of Facebook’s global policy, making him Sarah Wynn-Williams immediate boss.

Forced to leave Facebook, Sarah Wynn-Williams wrote a scathing condemnation of the company, “Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism.” The book is highly critical of Facebook and the poisonous internal culture that pervades the organization.

In retaliation, Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, took out a legal order preventing the author from promoting her book in any way, at risk of a $50,000 fine for any and every breach. The order specifically mentioned the Hay Festival.

To combat this problem there were three people on stage for the hour long interview, Sarah Wynn-Williams, Carole Cadwallader and Professor Tim Wu. Tim Wu is Professor of Law at Columbia University and an expert on matters relating to the internet. Throughout the interview Professor Wu answered the questions Carole Cadwallader might have put to Sarah Wynn-Williams, who sat in total silence throughout.

Professor Wu told the audience:

“For a long time now, people have been saying that the tech platforms have come to have the power and the size and the might of nation states. This is the living example, because this is censorship.

“Any authoritarian regime naturally gravitates towards silencing its critics.

“We need to call this what it is. This is the age of private censorship. This is the assertion of power. This is a demonstration that some of the worst abuses in our time are not confined to kings, emperors and governments.”

Sparrow Chat’s author no longer adheres to any social media platforms. There are no icons linking to them in Sparrow Chat’s sidebar. It didn’t take Sarah Wynn-William’s book to inform us that Facebook has a poisonous work culture.  There’s a plethora of information from ex-employees online and it goes back a long way.

The platform’s management hierarchy have moved about as far right-wing as it’s possible to get. Joel Kaplan, the guy Sarah Wynn-Williams accused of sexual harassment, has led the move in that direction, as the French journal, “L’Express,” explains:

“Having joined the Meta group in the early 2010s, [Joel Kaplan] this broad-shouldered former advisor to George W. Bush has Mark Zuckerberg’s ear “like no one else,” a close associate of Joel Kaplan told our colleagues at the Financial Times . It was he who reportedly encouraged Zuckerberg, when he was still Vice President of International Affairs at Meta, to initiate a “full-on Trump” shift. The underlying message: goodbye to moderation and fact-checking, hello to total freedom of expression, modeled on X….” L’Express 23/03/25.

(*it may be necessary to translate from the French).

(Read Carole Cadwallader’s article on the interview HERE.)

Yes, I know I’ve not posted for a long time.  I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve sat down to WordPress determined to write something, only to remember I had something important I must attend to instead.

In just one week I become an Octogenarian. I find it hard to believe, or accept. Mentally, I still don’t feel a day over forty. Physically, there are days I could barely pass for ninety.

There are few advantages to old age, but there is one: the ability to look back down the decades at eighty years of history. Things become a lot clearer once time allows one to back away and analyze the big picture of one’s life, one’s place in the world.

If there’s one thing that stands out for me as I look back down the years it’s how my relationship with religion and the religious has slowly but steadily eroded to the point of utter disbelief, if not a smattering of contempt.

I know I may well offend a lot of people with what I’m about to write, but at the milestone of eighty years on this planet, I believe I have a right to speak my mind. I learned a lot about the various world religions at different stages in my life.  Suffice to say, I realised  over time there was no ‘God’, no ‘Allah’ nor any deity that human beings could relate to.

At this moment we are witnessing more proof of the non-existence of the gods possibly than ever before. According to the Washington Post:

“The Trump administration is hosting an all-day prayer festival on the National Mall on Sunday that organizers say will reflect the country’s Christian origins and, they hope, spark “a movement of renewal” in America.“

Will they be taking a day off from dragging innocent people into concentration camps simply because of the colour of their skin? Will they stop shredding families, leaving children helpless, mothers without means of support?

The National Mall on Sunday will be a gathering of egos, led by a political motivation to improve the poll ratings of the one person who will be leading it. He’s lost quite a few of his MAGA religious right after a series of egotistical blunders that only proved how deranged the mind can become when besotted with power.

The “Christian” hard right are the ones who own the most weaponry in the country and will be happy to use it, if necessary, in the belief their ‘god’ is on their side. Such is the human race’s ability to transform the combination of power and ego to justify any horror in the name of their imaginary deity.

Look to the state of Israel, a nation so egotistical, “the chosen of Jehovah,” it can commit genocide and justify it, at least to themselves. Oh, and don’t bother to cry, “Antisemitism.” That’s the excuse of Israeli politicians for any criticism of their bad deeds. There are millions of Jews around the world equally abhorrent of the ghastly situation in Gaza. Are they too, antisemitic? No, they are anti their corrupt government.

The origin of species is no longer a theory expounded by Charles Darwin. Evolution is a proven fact. We are animals and our nearest relatives are the apes. Chimpanzees share 98%-99% of their DNA with humans. It’s not hard to understand. Human beings share much of their characteristics with chimpanzees, including their aggressive tendencies. The only difference; we have honed our aggressiveness to the level of murder, torture, rape, mass killing and genocide.  Chimpanzees do kill their fellows, but have not attained the human level of sheer mass brutality. Perhaps when they evolve to the point of inventing a god they may have their excuse to do so.

None of us know how long we have on this planet. My father died at the ripe old age of 107. I don’t expect to rival him, but when the time comes I’ll not be seeking any Heavenly paradise to spend eternity. Frankly, the very idea of being part of a large group of egocentric, moralistic religiots would be enough to send me scurrying downstairs to join the irreligious in the fiery hell the churches invented for people like me who dare to criticise them.

No, I am happy to know I will simply cease to exist. It’s said that  human beings generally love their beds and their sleep time. I certainly do, and always have.  When I go I’ll look forward to an eternal sleep, a non-being, no more stressing about my future, the state of the world, or if I’ve been good enough to get a favoured tick from Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates.

Rest in Peace? That’ll do me.