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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.

As the likes of Polymarket and Kalshi have recently discovered, the idea of betting on nuclear Armageddon hasn’t gone down well with the populace. After all, how would you collect your winnings?

Nevertheless, the idea that human beings find such things distasteful does not detract from the possibility of an all-consuming nuclear, or other form, of human annihilation.

Given the present state of malevolence that abounds in the world today the idea that, ‘it could never happen,’ is overdue to be consigned to the garbage disposal.

One hundred and sixty-five primary school children and their teachers annihilated, murdered, as an opening salvo of US/Israeli aggression against another country. Do the leaders of that aggression care? No. of course not. They’re both sociopathic narcissists who will happily file it under ‘collateral damage’. It’s a trite little phrase that converts the mass murder of innocent people into something  that’s ‘okay’.

Netanyahu needs to wage war. It’s the only way he can stay in power and out of jail. As for the President of the United States, he’s so annoyed at the Nobel Committee for not awarding him the Peace Prize for ending eight imaginary wars, that now his attitude is, “I’ll show ’em.”

Netanyahu was quick to notice and took no time to talk the US President into joining him in a jolly power jaunt to assassinate Khamenei and most of his Iranian government, before beginning a slaughter of any Iranian citizen who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  This, after said citizens were recently told  by America to rise up and take control of their government.

Retaliations by Iran were hardly surprising. In response they seem happy to initiate another Middle Eastern war, attacking any and all Sunni regimes in the area – which is most of them.

What else could they do? Sit back and allow themselves to be slaughtered on the whims of two power-crazed psychopaths?  Don’t misunderstand me, the regime in Tehran is horrific but so are the antics of those presently killing, maiming and terrorizing innocent Iranian citizens.

Netanyahu has not yet completed his ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank. The United States is hellbent on depleting its population by grabbing off the streets anyone the secret police consider could be the wrong colour, or ethnically ‘unclean’. Speak out against such actions and you risk being murdered in a hail of bullets.

Meanwhile, the great and politically good of Europe sit on their arses, nervously chewing their fingernails and hoping it’s all a bad dream from which they’ll soon awake.

Netanyahu is taking the opportunity to blitz Lebanon, ostensibly to annihilate Hezbollah, but to hell with any Lebanese citizens who get in the way of an Israeli missile, or whose homes are pulverized in the process.

As if there was any doubt that humanity is in it’s last throes of self-destruction on this planet, a report highlighted today shows the planet warming at it’s fastest rate since records began in 1880. The research, “…excludes the effect of natural factors behind the latest scorching temperatures.”

An essay by David Krueger, assistant professor in Robust, Reasoning and Responsible AI at the University of Montreal, warns of the dangers of AI and how AI machines (agents) are communicating with each other through a social media platform ( Moltbook) without any human intervention.

Human beings have no need of AI agents to carry out their own destruction. The present state of the world is evidence of that. A  lack of any regulation in the digital industry, coupled with the greed and power of those in charge of it, will likely only result in a speeding up of the process.

I remember when the internet was free; free the way Tim Berners-Lee envisaged it. The service provider had to be paid, of course, but all the content on the net was free. It’s only with the ability to look back and remember it that it’s possible to recognise just how much the World Wide Web has been pirated by big business, money, criminality, and all the negative impacts those have had on our capability to own and run it in the way Berners-Lee wanted.

“I gave the world wide web away for free because I thought that it would only work if it worked for everyone…” Tim Berners-Lee 28th September 2025

What could have been a wondrous opportunity for humankind has been squandered and distorted into a monster fed by the avarice of those who would seek to personally benefit,  to the deprivation of the rest of us. So powerful have these few become that society’s rules and regulations are ignored, flouted in their obsessive desires to control and increase their power.

When I was a young man in the UK it was assumed the government ran everything and made the decisions that affected, and hopefully improved our lives. Lobbying was not a word I was even aware of at that time. The government passed regulations that seemed to keep corporations in check and ensure most things were done in keeping with those regulations.

Keynesian economics and the use of regulation and government regulatory bodies helped keep businesses in line. Some were controlled and owned by the government themselves: railways, water companies and a host of others.

Of course, everyone complained they were paying too much tax, but it was a much fairer system than today, with both businesses and private individuals paying a fair share. For example, by the mid 1960’s the Beatles were all multi-millionaires. They complained that 95% of their income was taken as tax, but even after tax they were still millionaires.

Then along came three powerful people who were to change the whole course of history. Thatcher, Reagan and Friedman.

Margaret Thatcher was Britain’s first woman prime minister and an ardent Conservative, the party of business.

Ronald Reagan was then President of the United States, little qualified for the job, but with an ego equivalent to any other Hollywood film star.

Milton Friedman had made a name for himself as a hard-bitten economist who spent much of his career downplaying Keynesian economics in favour of his own economic interpretations that eventually became known as ‘Monetarism’, or, ‘Trickle Down Economics’.

Thatcher and Reagan seized on Friedman’s ideas and sold off most of the state-owned industries, often at knock-down prices. Thatcher, in particular, became obsessed with Friedman’s theories and a mass privatization began with her and was continued by John Major, her successor as prime minister after Thatcher was eventually ousted by her own party.

Was Friedman right in his opinions and calculations? He was well lauded by his peers, but the idea that privatization and the cutting of taxes to business would encourage the  increase in profits to trickle down to the man in the street was never forthcoming.

Instead, the so-called captains of industry grew immensely wealthy and more powerful. Living standards for the vast majority of the population, both in the UK and the USA, gradually declined. Private investors in the new privatized companies grew richer, while a lack of investment in infrastructure by the companies themselves, no longer subject to strong government regulation, meant services became rapidly poorer while household bills for essentials like energy and water rose rapidly.

It was the perfect example of the rich getting richer and the poor becoming even poorer.

As companies benefited from the increased profits they began to expand. Takeovers of smaller businesses became the norm, until for many the move from national to international was inevitable. Huge conglomerates were formed. Immensely powerful, they no longer saw governments as a restraining influence, but only there to serve their needs. They began to control government ministers by a process of lobbying and corrupt incentives. A regulation that was inhibiting a company’s ability to profit could be changed or overlooked, environmental laws flouted or altered to no longer be an inhibiter to profit. Corruption was no longer seen as a crime, but merely a way to do business.

And so along came Google, Microsoft, Meta, Apple and the rest of the Silicon Valley fast rising companies who had seen the internet as the pot of gold that never stops giving.  Thanks to Reagan, Thatcher and Friedman no company was paying 95% of their profits in tax anymore. Let the tax burden fall on the working man.

The meteoric rise of Silicon Valley companies not only brought wealth galore to those in control, but also immense power. Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web but never pretended to own it. He saw it as a means to connect people, bring them together. Silicon Valley stole the World Wide Web from under his nose, and under ours.

The internet is now a worldwide money-machine. An endless advertising hoarding; huge algorithmic platforms spewing out authoritarian propaganda while continuing to manufacture vast fortunes for those  in control.

Enough to purchase their very own President.