Our children and grandchildren face even greater perils than we do not only with human-accelerated climate change but the constant threat of nuclear Armageddon, annihilation, is forever present.
In the Ukraine Russian President, Vladimir Putin, constantly hints at the use of nuclear weapons against an enemy his armies should, quite frankly, have defeated years back! US President, Donald Trump, who claimed he would have stopped the war in Ukraine in “24 hours” as an election pledge and has clearly failed to do so, is reportedly embarking on yet another attempt at peace. Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, a former stand-up comedian, has vowed Ukraine will not “give up any Ukrainian territory” as part of any peace negotiations. Talks between Putin and Trump are due to be held but without Zelensky being present. This sounds, at the moment, a little like the talks over the future of Czechoslovakia 1938 when Adolf Hitler met Nevile Chamberlain, Prime Minister of the UK, along with French Prime Minister, Edouard Daladier, and Italian fascist leader, Benito Mussolini but not the Czech President, Edvard Benes, to discuss the future of the Czechoslovakian state and, in particular, the Sudeten Germans. Hitler demanded and was granted, without the knowledge of Benes, the Sudetenland where German speaking people made up the majority of the three million people who occupied the area.
Elections in Crimea voted overwhelmingly to come under the rule of Moscow, which is doubted by the western governments and media. Why should we believe Putin any less than Trump and Starmer or their predecessors? We shouldn’t because we have no proof these elections in Ukraine were false and neither do the less than clean governments of the United States, United Kingdom, France and Germany to name a few. Volodymyr Zelensky himself is, in my view, no more reliable than other world leaders, they are all as corrupt as fuck with each having their own hidden agenda. Oust the fucking lot, but I am deviating.
Recently the world’s richest man, Elon Musk - the man who did a Nazi salute on the stage after Trumps Presidential victory of 2024 - and Trump himself, arguably the world's politically most powerful man fell out, a ‘lovers tiff’! The question is, who holds the most power over all our futures, Trump or Musk? In September 2022 Musk’s Starlink Satellite, part of his Space X’s internet service, was ordered by Musk to be turned off. What’s the significance? Ordinarily there is none but this satellite was aiding the Ukrainian Army gain vital ground and counter Russian advances in the war. This is despite Trump, at the time not yet elected, being on very friendly terms with Putin and, supposedly, a confidant of Musk’s!
Recently the world’s richest man, Elon Musk - the man who did a Nazi salute on the stage after Trumps Presidential victory of 2024 - and Trump himself, arguably the world's politically most powerful man fell out, a ‘lovers tiff’! The question is, who holds the most power over all our futures, Trump or Musk? In September 2022 Musk’s Starlink Satellite, part of his Space X’s internet service, was ordered by Musk to be turned off. What’s the significance? Ordinarily there is none but this satellite was aiding the Ukrainian Army gain vital ground and counter Russian advances in the war. This is despite Trump, at the time not yet elected, being on very friendly terms with Putin and, supposedly, a confidant of Musk’s!
During a pivotal push by Ukraine to retake territory from Russia in late September 2022, Elon Musk gave an order that disrupted the counteroffensive and dented Kyiv’s trust in Starlink, the satellite internet service the billionaire provided early in the war to help Ukraine’s military maintain connectivity.
Three people familiar with the command reportedly claimed:
Musk told a senior engineer at the California offices of Space X, the Musk venture that controls Starlink, to cut coverage in areas including Kherson, a strategic region north of the Black Sea that Ukraine was trying to reclaim. Because of this order issued by Musk Ukrainian forces suddenly faced a complete communications blackout. Soldiers panicked, drones surveying Russian forces went dark, and long-range artillery units, reliant on Starlink to aim their fire, struggled to hit their targets.
Such concentrated power over conflicts, which could one day include a Third World War and nuclear weapons, in the hands of one man, an unelected businessman, tells us where real power lies in todays fucked up capitalist world, despite Musk claiming he needed “approval” from President Biden. Musk claimed “US sanctions on Russia prevented Starlink from being turned on near Crimea” which makes no sense whatsoever? Surely if this satellite was aiding Ukrainian forces, it would assist the aggravation sanctions were supposed to cause Russia?
Elon Musk and, no doubt several other so-called ‘entrepreneurs’ which capitalism hails as “great men of vision,” seriously suggests to us the dangers we live in every day. Dangers we do not need to live in! Dangers none of our making but which are created by those who profit out of manufacturing such potentially lethal contraptions our lives and, more importantly, those of our children and grandchildren are in constant peril. The money spent on creating these hazardous pieces of so-called technology could be spent on projects to preserve life, such as cancer cures and medicines for other life-threatening illnesses. In Sub-Saharan Africa children are needlessly going blind when, but for the want of money, a cure is available, easily manufactured if these countries could afford the extortionate prices, which they cannot, while the likes of Musk, Richard Branson, a rival of Elon Musk’s, and many others, spend billions on projects of destruction and planetary damaging space exploration. If your child was going blind and a cure being available but for the want of money and you witnessed money spent on such projects as Starlink by people, not even elected, how would you feel? The fact is plenty of money exists but under capitalism such monies are distributed wrongly and, in my view, criminally.
Every time one of these space-craft in space exploration lift off they spit out emissions the equivalent of twenty-eight Jumbo Jets taking off simultaneously. They then blast through the five delicately balanced layers of the earth’s atmosphere causing untold, irreparable, and irreversible damage to these finely tuned layers. The layer which affects us most immediate is the Troposphere which controls the weather and therefore temperatures. Damage to this layer is no doubt having an effect on the melting of the icecaps causing the seas to rise rapidly. It affects our rainfall and, as can be seen around the globe, rainfall is increasing along with flooding. Temperatures are rising causing uncontrollable fires around the planet and much of these changes are, in my view, down to the damage caused to the Troposphere by these ‘space cowboys’. After these rockets have blasted their way through the Troposphere, they continue their journey through the other four equally vital layers of our atmosphere causing untold damage and all to increase profits for the owners of these crafts. The most aggravating aspect of all this is the way many people, all of whom will suffer, applaud the ‘greatness’ of these men’s achievements! It is pure lunacy of the highest magnitude, applauding somebody who is burning your house down! All these men from Musk down are unelected yet hold more power over our destinies than those who are!
Real power does not exist in the elected chambers but moreover in the bank accounts of the international bourgeoisie. This has just been proved in the USA and at an earlier encounter between Elon Musk and then British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak. The meeting between Musk and Sunak would show how elected politicians are ridiculously impressed by rich people. This trend was started in Britain by Tony Blair who was “pathetically impressed by rich people – almost any rich person would do – and Sunak’s analogous vulnerability would be his starry-eyed tech fandom. From long before he became Prime Minister, Rishi has seemed not so much unperturbed by a future where tech firms run the world, but actively encouraging of it, despite the vast and blatant encroachment on his own power and those of his political successors that would mean” (Source: The Guardian). As Mark Zuckerberg once commented, not untruthfully, “companies over countries”. Roughly translated what the ultra-rich entrepreneur was stating; it does not matter who you people elect, it matters not a fuck. The high-tech companies of the world and our ownership of Artificial Intelligence will rule and, for the record if you wish, don’t you mugs forget it!
How much power does Elon Musk and the likes of hold over the world's militaries and conflicts they are involved in? Could they decide the outcome of a nuclear war or, more to the point, could they deliberately start one? Musk and many others are involved in trying to find another planet for them and their rich friends to inhabit, one which can sustain human life, hence the investment in space exploration. For this reason a nuclear conflict on earth would not be of such concern to these people as for the rest of us! Musk is joined in the ‘space cowboy club’ involved in spaceflight by to name but a few; ‘Richard Branson: Virgin Galactic Unity 22, Jeff Bezos: Blue Origin NS-16; Guy Laliberte: Space Adventures Soyuz TMA-13/ TM A-12’ and many others. How many of these ‘entrepreneurs’ have their hands on such satellites for military use, as is Musk’s in the Ukraine, which could one day purposely start a nuclear war? These are dangerous times and will, unless things change, get worse, much worse. All these so-called ‘entrepreneurs’ many of whom have never invented a thing in their lives, Elon Musk for example, a good marketing man who uses other people’s ideas and inventions for marketing, could between them bring about the destruction of us all and our children. It is they who will decide if we ‘live or die’.
Elon Musk and, no doubt several other so-called ‘entrepreneurs’ which capitalism hails as “great men of vision,” seriously suggests to us the dangers we live in every day. Dangers we do not need to live in! Dangers none of our making but which are created by those who profit out of manufacturing such potentially lethal contraptions our lives and, more importantly, those of our children and grandchildren are in constant peril. The money spent on creating these hazardous pieces of so-called technology could be spent on projects to preserve life, such as cancer cures and medicines for other life-threatening illnesses. In Sub-Saharan Africa children are needlessly going blind when, but for the want of money, a cure is available, easily manufactured if these countries could afford the extortionate prices, which they cannot, while the likes of Musk, Richard Branson, a rival of Elon Musk’s, and many others, spend billions on projects of destruction and planetary damaging space exploration. If your child was going blind and a cure being available but for the want of money and you witnessed money spent on such projects as Starlink by people, not even elected, how would you feel? The fact is plenty of money exists but under capitalism such monies are distributed wrongly and, in my view, criminally.
Every time one of these space-craft in space exploration lift off they spit out emissions the equivalent of twenty-eight Jumbo Jets taking off simultaneously. They then blast through the five delicately balanced layers of the earth’s atmosphere causing untold, irreparable, and irreversible damage to these finely tuned layers. The layer which affects us most immediate is the Troposphere which controls the weather and therefore temperatures. Damage to this layer is no doubt having an effect on the melting of the icecaps causing the seas to rise rapidly. It affects our rainfall and, as can be seen around the globe, rainfall is increasing along with flooding. Temperatures are rising causing uncontrollable fires around the planet and much of these changes are, in my view, down to the damage caused to the Troposphere by these ‘space cowboys’. After these rockets have blasted their way through the Troposphere, they continue their journey through the other four equally vital layers of our atmosphere causing untold damage and all to increase profits for the owners of these crafts. The most aggravating aspect of all this is the way many people, all of whom will suffer, applaud the ‘greatness’ of these men’s achievements! It is pure lunacy of the highest magnitude, applauding somebody who is burning your house down! All these men from Musk down are unelected yet hold more power over our destinies than those who are!
Real power does not exist in the elected chambers but moreover in the bank accounts of the international bourgeoisie. This has just been proved in the USA and at an earlier encounter between Elon Musk and then British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak. The meeting between Musk and Sunak would show how elected politicians are ridiculously impressed by rich people. This trend was started in Britain by Tony Blair who was “pathetically impressed by rich people – almost any rich person would do – and Sunak’s analogous vulnerability would be his starry-eyed tech fandom. From long before he became Prime Minister, Rishi has seemed not so much unperturbed by a future where tech firms run the world, but actively encouraging of it, despite the vast and blatant encroachment on his own power and those of his political successors that would mean” (Source: The Guardian). As Mark Zuckerberg once commented, not untruthfully, “companies over countries”. Roughly translated what the ultra-rich entrepreneur was stating; it does not matter who you people elect, it matters not a fuck. The high-tech companies of the world and our ownership of Artificial Intelligence will rule and, for the record if you wish, don’t you mugs forget it!
How much power does Elon Musk and the likes of hold over the world's militaries and conflicts they are involved in? Could they decide the outcome of a nuclear war or, more to the point, could they deliberately start one? Musk and many others are involved in trying to find another planet for them and their rich friends to inhabit, one which can sustain human life, hence the investment in space exploration. For this reason a nuclear conflict on earth would not be of such concern to these people as for the rest of us! Musk is joined in the ‘space cowboy club’ involved in spaceflight by to name but a few; ‘Richard Branson: Virgin Galactic Unity 22, Jeff Bezos: Blue Origin NS-16; Guy Laliberte: Space Adventures Soyuz TMA-13/ TM A-12’ and many others. How many of these ‘entrepreneurs’ have their hands on such satellites for military use, as is Musk’s in the Ukraine, which could one day purposely start a nuclear war? These are dangerous times and will, unless things change, get worse, much worse. All these so-called ‘entrepreneurs’ many of whom have never invented a thing in their lives, Elon Musk for example, a good marketing man who uses other people’s ideas and inventions for marketing, could between them bring about the destruction of us all and our children. It is they who will decide if we ‘live or die’.
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| Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist. |
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