sparrow chat

Only nine people died in Iraq from insurgent violence yesterday^[1].

^{[1] “Iraq Today” September 2nd 2010}

Filed under: Bread basket of the Middle East

Richard Engel, NBC’s Chief Foreign Correspondent, airs his views on the state of Iraq today, with reference to President Obama’s speech last night. He says nothing that those who have taken the trouble to access the truth on the Iraq War don’t already know.

What’s surprising, perhaps, is that he said it at all, given his position. But then, first and foremost, Engel is a good journalist.

For readers without access to broadband, the full transcript follows:

“RICHARD ENGEL, NBC NEWS CHIEF FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT: This is a city that’s bracing itself for a war that could come at any moment. I’m the last person standing right now at the Ministry of Information. A lot of people think that this building could be destroyed, and as soon as I finish with you, I’m going to get away from this place. I could see some anti-aircraft fire and here some explosions off in the distance. This opulent room is inside what was once Saddam’s main palace here in the city of Tikrit, a stark contrast to the hole in the ground where Saddam was discovered just 10 miles from here. I am right now on top of a Stryker vehicle. it’s a fighting vehicle. And we are with the last American combat troops in Iraq. But as soon as all 440 of these soldiers are into Kuwait, the combat mission in Iraq, Operation Iraqi Freedom, will be over.

MADDOW: Joining us now is NBC’s chief foreign correspondent, Richard Engel, who spent more time in Iraq than any other American I know. Hi, Richard.

ENGEL: How are you?

MADDOW: I’m all right, I think. The president’s speech tonight, I guess I just want your overall reaction to him marking the end of the war this way.

ENGEL: No mention of democracy. You talked about all the reasons that the U.S. went to war. The one that was — that we heard all the time when we were in Baghdad was democracy. That this was going to bring a new flourishing society. Nothing. Instead, it was thank you to the troops, but didn’t exactly say thank you for what they did. Just thank you for achieving what was asked.

MADDOW: Well, there was –

ENGEL: Thank you for doing what we asked you to do.

MADDOW: There was — I’ll just interrupt for just for one second. “A war to disarm a state,” he said, “became a fight against an insurgency, a war to put the future of Iraq in the hands of its people, a belief that out of the ashes of war, a new beginning could be born.” A very –

ENGEL: What is that?

MADDOW: Yes.

ENGEL: Thank for sort of something.

MADDOW: Yes.

ENGEL: There was no real sense of, thank you for what you have done. Have you made the world safer? Have you made America safer?

MADDOW: Yes.

ENGEL: He talked about thanking the Iraqis for creating an opportunity for the Iraqis to find their own destiny, emerge from the ashes and start their own society. And that’s a tough lesson, a tough message to hear. Thank you for the — for fighting. Thank you for doing what we asked. But I can’t really pin down what I’m thanking you for.

MADDOW: Yes. Let me ask you about one specific thing he said about essentially what’s going to happen in Iraq next. He said, “Of course, violence will not end with our combat mission. Extremists will continue to set off bombs, attack Iraqi civilians and try to spark sectarian strife.” “But,” he said, “ultimately, these terrorists will fail to achieve their goals, Iraqis are a proud people. They have rejected sectarian war and they have no interest in endless destruction.” What’s your reaction to that?

ENGEL: I hope he’s right. And Iraqis themselves don’t want civil war. And they didn’t want civil war when it happened. And a lot of times, people don’t get what they want. I’m a firm believer that no people want war, yet wars happen. And they happen quite often. And Iraq right now, even if the Kurds and the Sunnis and the Shiites don’t want to fight each other, there are groups pushing them in that direction. And if there is a major catastrophe, a big bomb in Najaf, I don’t think the country is strong enough to prevent another round of civil war, especially if they don’t have a government. They have security forces that have been created by the United States and are pretty good, but if you don’t have anyone leading them and you have fewer American troops, then you don’t have effective security forces.

MADDOW: Right. President Maliki in — Prime Minister Maliki in Iraq today gave his own televised speech in Iraq, marking the same transition, just as Obama did.

ENGEL: Yes. He shouldn’t even be prime minister. He was not elected. He didn’t win the elections. He’s hanging on to power. We could be — we’re backing him right now. I’ve spoken with a lot of people who are involved in these negotiations. The deal is, we’ll try and reduce Maliki’s influence and weaken his post a little bit and we’ll bring in Ayad Allawi, the person who actually won the elections, and we’ll try to create some kind of power-sharing agreement. One, I think it will be a tremendously weak government that cannot handle the real problems, the people who are trying to push Iraq back into a civil war. And it’s not anything that Iraqis are used to. They had a centrally-controlled government. Now, they have no government. And if the American plan going forward is to give them some sort of weak consensus government, I don’t see how they’re going to get out of this.

MADDOW: Richard, we all know the list of justifications for the Iraq invasion, the predicted effects of the Iraq war that turned out to be bull. I went through all of those in my initial segment.

ENGEL: Yes, I heard. The blossoming of democracy across the Middle East.

MADDOW: Yes. Democracy has not broken out across in the Middle East.

ENGEL: No, it hasn’t. Actually, if the idea is to stop weapons of mass destruction, Iran has been unleashed, and Iran, by all accounts, is trying to find and create a weapon of mass destruction. So –

MADDOW: And you think Iran has been strengthened? They’re the big winner from the Iraq war?

ENGEL: Of course, they are. Of course, they are. Most Iraqis, if you ask them what they’re afraid of, they’re afraid of Americans leaving because they are concerned that Iran will be the biggest player. There are people who fought against the United States in Ramadi and Fallujah and the Sunni areas who now — and they didn’t join — not the people who join the awakening, people who were with the resistance, and who now saying, you know, maybe it’s not a good idea for Americans to leave, because we really don’t want Iran to come in and take over.

MADDOW: Wow. I mean, it is — it is amazing to think that even without a new government being formed, even without us not knowing exactly where things are going, even with, as you’re describing, the prospect of another civil war, the probably most accurate generalization we can make about what the effect on Iraq has been of this war is that we turned it from a Sunni dictatorship into the world’s only Shiite/ Arab state.

ENGEL: Shiite, failed, sectarian, corrupt oil patronage state. It has been — it is a basket case in the Middle East that is now being influenced by Turkey, by Kurdish nationalists, by Iranian religious parties, by Lebanese religious parties. It has become the world’s playground and a place where you can make a lot of money, if you’re an Iranian contractor, if you’re an American contractor. It has not been a stable state that can — that can contain itself or certainly contain Iran.

MADDOW: If people who are — who care enough about this story, not only about the war, but about the world, to know how bad things are in Iraq, how bad things are on the occasion of American combat troops leaving — do you believe that if combat troops weren’t leaving, that any of those things wouldn’t be true?

ENGEL: No. It’s the — for the last year or so, the combat troops really haven’t been doing anything.

MADDOW: Yes.

ENGEL: So, what’s on the ground in Iraq today or two weeks ago or three weeks from now doesn’t change very much. The combat troops there were just kind of waiting to leave. A lot of them were in Iraq still to give the Iraqis a little bit more time to try and create a government, which they never were able to do. The real challenge is, if there isn’t a government, American troops are truly now confined to their — confined to their bases and the militant groups are somewhat energized by this moment.

MADDOW: Yes.

ENGEL: They say, this is our time to try and bring this whole project down. That’s the danger going forward on the ground.

MADDOW: It is one thing to recognize that things aren’t good. It is another thing to recognize our — the limits of our ability to make them any better, essentially.

ENGEL: Well, it’s been — a lot — the troops have achieved a lot. And they’ve achieved, the speech tonight was they have achieved everything they asked for. And they were there — and we were talking about it — they’ve been going through Iraq, tour after tour, a tremendous sacrifice to their families, but they didn’t have that much contact with the Iraqi government. They weren’t asked to set up an Iraqi government.

MADDOW: Right.

ENGEL: But Americans were. So this idea of — well, you know, it’s up to the Iraqis now, maybe America will accept that narrative, but Iraqis won’t. And I don’t think anyone else in the world will accept that narrative.

MADDOW: Richard, let me ask you one last question, and I will — I will not hold it against you if you demure and do not want to answer this, because this is much more my bailiwick than yours, but you probably, you heard my initial statement.

ENGEL: No, I’m not answering. Sorry. That was me, actually — I stopped your audio earlier.

MADDOW: You actually cut my mike. That was great. Boy, did I not think of you.

ENGEL: I was preempting what you’re about to ask me. Now, this drama.

MADDOW: What do you have to do to be discredited as an authority on foreign policy and worse? Like, today, the headlines are full of, honestly, Paul Wolfowitz. Paul Wolfowitz who said the war would pay for itself. A trillion dollars later, he wants to give more advice about what America ought to do in Iraq. In the foreign policy world, has any American ever been kicked out for being so stupid about the Muslim world that people can tell?

ENGEL: They don’t seem to be. Because I read a lot of op-eds, I watch a lot of news channels, and people who have really very little credibility often end up being the ones quoted on television. I don’t know exactly why that is. Yes, there should be a disqualification or a blacklist for people who are consistently wrong, but I’ve never noticed one.

MADDOW: I hereby vote you, Paul Wolfowitz, off the island. That doesn’t count.

ENGEL: That was the tough question?

MADDOW: That was the tough question.

ENGEL: I thought it would be more personal. Something, you know, that would really embarrass me.

MADDOW: Well, you can come back tomorrow and do that. NBC’s chief foreign correspondent, my friend, Richard Engel– Richard, thank you. Really appreciate it.”^[1]

^{[1] The Rachel Maddow Show (excerpt) October 31st 2010}

Filed under: Bush’s war

It was a quiet weekend. I found myself browsing the archives of British newspapers for interesting items missed first time around. The Daily Telegraph supplied one from November 2009. An article about this man.

His name is Jonathan Henry Sacks, or Lord Sacks, since his buddies upped him to the British House of Lords. He just happens to be Britain’s Chief Rabbi – headman of the Jewish religion in the UK.

Apparently, Jonathon Henry believes European secularism is to blame for the population decline in Europe of late. In fact, to quote the Telegraph:

He blamed atheist “neo-Darwinians” for Europe’s low birth rate and said religious people of all denominations are more likely to have large families.^[1]

Presumably, by ‘atheist neo-Darwinians’ he means those who prefer to accept the evidence of independent scientific research, rather than trust their lives to a load of heavily-altered and oft-retranslated balderdash spewed forth from musty old pages by egocentric Lords and bishops in fancy robes and silly hats?

It may have escaped Jonathon Henry’s notice, but the sharply escalating population increase in the world today is one very good reason for the acceleration of climate change.

It’s just possible the ‘atheist neo-Darwinian’ Europeans have shifted the responsibility for their existence away from a mythical father-figure in the clouds and placed it firmly on their own shoulders. History has proved over and over that responsibility for our future cannot be left to a god who takes an extended vacation whenever the human race is in dire need of his assistance.

The shallowness and ignorance of those who choose the easy road of religious belief is typified so well by Jonathon Henry and his ilk. The speech from which these quotes were taken is just the sort of religious hypocrisy spouted by older churchmen of high rank.

After all, at 62 Jonathon Henry is well down the great conveyor belt of life. Already it’s speeding up, and he must be realizing it won’t be too much longer before he drops off the end altogether. It’s around his time of life that mortality – not immortality – insidiously beckons.

Reading from Jonathon Henry’s speech, it’s easy to realize his words and thoughts are just concrete poured into gaping holes of doubt in his belief system; plaster desperately troweled into ever-widening cracks in his faith. Attacking others for daring to be what you are not, is a frequent human failing.

The Telegraph again –

Discussing the popular secular idea that there are no absolute moral values, he said: “You cannot defend a civilisation on the basis of moral relativism.

“In a head-to-head contest between a moral relativist and a fundamentalist, who wins? The fundamentalist must win because he is sure he’s right, and you are not sure he’s wrong.”

Presumably, that statement makes Jonathon Henry a fundamentalist?

In just two sentences the whole egocentric view of the religious is laid bare.

To have religious faith requires a false surety. It demands no doubt. The belief system must be watertight. This is true whether fundamentalist, or Church of England, or Jew. Yet that so-called ‘faith’ is based on not one shred of evidence.

Can there be any greater catalyst of egocentricity than the belief one is the pinnacle of Creation, destined to live forever in some glorious afterlife with one’s ‘God’?

Jonathon Henry’s ‘atheist neo-Darwinian’, however, has a whole load of scientific evidence to prove the falsehood of religious dogma, and can be absolutely certain the religious, whether fundamentalist, Jew, or Church of England, are wrong.

Of course, that evidence won’t help convince the religious of their error. Religious faith denies that happening. So Jonathon Henry is partly right. In a head-to-head contest between a moral relativist and a fundamentalist, no-one wins, even if the fundamentalist triggers his explosive belt.

It would seem this is Jonathon Henry’s main fear: the rise of secularism in Europe opening the door to Islamic terrorists gaining a foothold. We must presume he believes a strong Christian/Jewish population would prevent that?

He said that although the war on terror had been portrayed by Western politicians as a “battle of ideas”, there is little hope that Islamists who believe they owe allegiance to God would be swayed by talk of freedom or democracy.

“The place for religion is in civil society, where it achieves many things essential to liberal democratic freedom. It sanctifies marriage and the family and the obligations of parenthood, and it safeguards the non-relativist moral principles on which Western freedom is based.

“It may not be religion that is dying, it may be liberal democratic Europe that is in danger, demographically and in its ability to defend its own values.”

Yet again we hear the oft-repeated argument, the mistaken idea it is religion that sets our moral values, and without it we will decline into slobbering debauchery.

I would question why marriage, the family, and obligations of parenthood need be sanctified? The very word is drawn from the latin: sanctus, from which ‘saint’ is derived. One has only to research some of the rapscallions recently beatified by Rome to realize the truth behind yet another religious myth.

If Jonathon Henry requires proof that religion has little to do with sanctifying any of these things, he should visit America, a land heavy with the hypocrisy of religion, and see how the lower classes treat marriage and parental obligation. Many families have three or four children, all with different surnames, frequently living with grandparents or other relatives because Mom or Pops has taken off with someone else. Yet they all attend their churches every Sunday.

European ‘atheistic neo-Darwinians’ are no more selfish than their religious counterparts in America, or Pakistan, or Israel. They simply prefer to shoulder their own responsibilities, rather than wander through life, heads in the clouds, hoping for a glimpse of some non-existent deity.

^{[1] “Europeans too selfish to have children, says Chief Rabbi” Daily telegraph, November 5th 2009}

Filed under: Myths of religion

It seems we are once again walking into the same trap, the same nonsensical assumptions of wars won, missions accomplished, troops withdrawn, and jolly soldiers carrying cardboard signs of heart-warming messages like “Lindsay & Austin … Dad’s coming home.” . . . So what if the US army downgrades its military presence in Iraq and re-labels over 50,000 remaining soldiers? Will the US military now stop chasing after perceived terrorist threats? Will it concede an inch of its unchallenged control over Iraqi skies? Will it relinquish power over the country’s self-serving political elite? Will it give up its influence over every relevant aspect of life in the country, from the now autonomous Kurdish region in the north all the way to the border with Kuwait in the south, which the jubilant soldiers crossed while hollering the shrieks of victory?^[1] ~ Ramzy Baroud.

(Ramzy Baroud is editor-in-chief of PalestineChronicle.com and head of the Research Studies Department at Aljazeera.net English.)

^{[1] “The Fakest Military Withdrawal Imaginable in Iraq” Alternet.com, August 26th 2010}

Filed under: Iraq – it just won’t go away

I’ve often written that, as an expat Brit in America, arrival here was like stepping back through a half century of time warp. The start of the new school year reminded me yet again when, on driving the school bus towards the next stop I had to brake sharply and pull over, to avoid a pick-up truck traveling in the opposite direction at around thirty miles an hour.

Not all pick-up truck drivers are reckless. Indeed, some are downright frustrating when they insist on trundling along two miles an hour below the speed limit, mile after mile, after mile.

Technically, drivers like that hold the moral high ground. After all, the term ‘speed limit’ means exactly that. Once the needle rises past those well known numbers on the dashboard, you’re fair game to any traffic cop who got out the wrong side of the bed that morning.

To those of us constantly in a hurry, prepared to risk the ire of the odd policeman but expecting most to turn a blind eye to our being ’5-over’, the trundler is just as much a nuisance as being stuck behind Great-Grandma, off to the shops in her Lincoln Town Car.

Playing Russian roulette with the traffic cops is not specific to the USA. The old saying, “Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men,” is a good one to live by, though you have to hope the guy behind you, with the big siren and flashing lights, is in agreement.

There are some rules, however, that should never be broken. The consequences are so horrendous, it doesn’t bear thinking about for too long. The woman driving the pick-up truck that caused me to brake and pull over was guilty of just such an act of blatant irresponsibility.

As I yanked the bus towards the sidewalk and the pick-up sped past, I glimpsed three children in the back. They weren’t even sat in the bed of the vehicle, but balanced on the sides, hanging on for all they were worth. The eldest, a girl, could be no more than six. The other two were barely kindergarten age.

It’s not the first time I’ve experienced such an act of criminal stupidity in this part of the world. It certainly won’t be the last. It seems the police turn a blind eye.

You won’t see such a sight in Europe, or anywhere outside of, perhaps, India, or Pakistan. In Europe, it would be classed as endangering the life of a child, and would almost certainly mean a prison stretch.

You’ll see it frequently in America, though, just as you might possibly have done in Britain – perhaps, fifty years ago.

Filed under: Why are people so stupid?

I wouldn’t necessarily recommend becoming a hermit, but after spending over a week in an empty house on forty acres of very private Michigan woodland, the craziness of so-called ‘normal’ life can hit you between the eyes, when you eventually return to it.

Redecorating the main living room of our eventual retirement home was akin to a monastic retreat, in more ways than the obvious (my wife remained in Illinois). The house is all but shut up, and though it has a working telephone there’s no television or broadband services available.

Consequently, apart from the NPR news over breakfast, provided by the local PBS station via an aging boom-box once my wife’s pride and joy long before we were married, and enough dial-up internet to send the occasional email, I was well out of the civilization loop, and thoroughly enjoying it.

All good things come to an end. Last week I returned to Illinois and the dubious advantages of cable news and broadband internet. Suddenly, the world was mad once more. Or, at least, the bit of it that calls itself, “America”. Impossible to avoid, a swift infusion of the madcap political insanity rolling across this nation like some filthy re-run of the dust storms that destroyed so many lives back in the 1930s, hit me as a bolt of lightning right between the eyes.

Only a few days before it had all seemed so far away; so unreal.

A Muslim community center used for political gain simply because it was only a few blocks away from the site of the World Trade Center; a jury unable to decide the guilt of ex-Illinois governor, Rod Blagojevich, even though the whole world heard the tapes. Today, the symbol of American troops leaving Iraq: an unshaven lout of a soldier hanging out the back of a truck shouting to the world:

“We won! We’re going home.”

Tell me what you won, soldier. Please give me some idea what it is you believe was worth the million or so dead you’re leaving beneath that Iraqi dirt? What was your great conquest, soldier?

And, if it was so good, why are fifty thousands of your comrades staying behind?

I notice the oil’s all gone. When I left for Michigan the Gulf of Mexico was an environmental disaster. Millions of barrels of oil poisoned the sea. Where’s it gone? Obama broadcast a plea for tourists to return and enjoy the pristine beaches, gorge themselves on fresh-caught lobster and shrimp. Special government agents sniff the catch for any whiff of contaminant.^[1]

Did it all obligingly melt away? Or, has the “Ground Zero Mosque” just become a better story?

Pakistan is suffering its worst flooding ever. Of course, it’s not climate change. That was just a ruse of the scientists to get more money. And, it’s nothing to do with man’s pollution of the planet. After all, the fact there’s a plastic rubbish dump twice the size of the continental United States floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean is nothing to do with us, is it?

It’s important we eat more healthily, though. There are far too many Americans obese from eating the wrong food. That’s why dear sweet Marie Callender – you know, that motherly figure who’s been making good wholesome food for Americans since 1948 – has just brought out a new line of health-giving ‘steamer meals’ like this Chicken Stir-Fry with Vegetables.

Only, here’s the rub: Marie Callender doesn’t really exist. She’s a figment of someone’s imagination, rather like Santa Claus and Jesus Christ. This product is made by the giant multinational food corporation, Conagra, known for a number of ethical and environmental issues.

It was a Conagra plant that caused the recall of nineteen million pounds of beef in 2002, because of E. Coli contamination; in 2007, Conagra was forced to recall Peanut Butter products after 628 people across 47 states were stricken down with salmonella poisoning; until 2007, Conagra used diacetyl in the manufacture of its popcorn butter products, despite known health issues with this chemical since 2000; also in 2007, Conagra was forced to pull thousands of its pot pies from stores after they were found to be contaminated with salmonella. 217 individuals across thirty-five states became ill from eating them.

Conagra uses large quantities of genetically-modified ingredients in its products and was once described in Multinational Monitor as one of the “‘Top 100 Corporate Criminals of the 1990s”.^[2]

Still, perhaps Conagra is redressing the balance a little with its latest batch of new ‘steamer’ health foods?

Except, every meal comes complete with, not one, but two rigid plastic containers that are perfectly designed to float happily around on the Pacific Ocean until time immemorial.

Suddenly, a hermit’s life has become very, very, appealing.

^{[1] “Gulf Seafood: Trained Experts Use Smell To Test For Contamination”Huffington Post, August 19th 2010}

^{[2] “The Top 100 Corporate Criminals of the 1990s” Multinational Monitor, July/August, 1999}

Filed under: Madness

I’m sorry for the lack of posting, but I’m totally out of the loop right now. The 550 miles between primary home and secondary home have been covered so often I’ve long ago thrown the maps away.

I try to keep up with other blogs as and when, but I’ll be back up north next week for an indeterminate period while I redecorate the living room and do a few other of the myriad odd jobs outstanding.

School begins again on August 18th in central Illinois, so I have to be back by then.

Filed under: Overworked

There’s an old Aesop fable about a little shepherd boy who cried, “Wolf!” He grew bored out on the hillside watching his sheep, so to amuse himself he cried, “Wolf, wolf!” and the villagers ran out of their houses to chase the wolf away, only to discover there was no wolf and the little shepherd boy was lying. After a while, the wolf really did come and attack the sheep, but when the boy shouted, “Wolf, wolf!” the villagers assumed he was lying again, and took no notice.

So, what really happened to Shahram Amiri?

According to the American government, the CIA persuaded him to defect. They handed him a large sum of money, whereupon he willingly gave up the secrets of Iran’s nuclear program, but then had a ‘breakdown’ and decided to return to Iran.

Mister Amiri says he was kidnapped by the CIA, held under guard and tortured, until finally he escaped into the shelter of the Pakistani embassy in Washington.

There was a time when the American version would have been accepted by most Westerners as the more plausible explanation. After all, ‘Home of the Brave, Land of the Free’, actually meant something once.

9/11 changed all that. Or, to be more precise, the barbaric and dictatorial response of successive American Administrations to the 9/11 attacks blew away any of their remaining credibility.

We now know that the American government routinely kidnaps, holds people without charge, tortures and humiliates them, frequently murders without compunction, and all the time denies vehemently it is doing so.

Why, then, should we believe what they tell us about Shahram Amiri?

Frankly, his version of events is considerably more plausible.

The American government has cried, “Wolf!” too often.

Filed under: Shahram Amiri