sparrow chat

“Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator. You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated.” ~ Lee C Bollinger, President of Columbia University addressing the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Sept 24th, 2007.

Thus began the opening remarks of the man who invited Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran, to speak at his university. In many ways it sums up the attitude of a nation buried in hypocrisy and media/corporate indoctrination that a man is assessed, condemned, and insulted by his host even before he has begun to speak.

Whatever one’s personal viewpoint of the Iranian president he undoubtedly displays a quality sadly lacking in his American counterpart. That attribute is personal courage. George W Bush has not even the backbone to stand up and face his own American critics. Every speech, every engagement, every opportunity for George W Bush to speak before his countrymen, is screened and ticketed, with invited guests scrutinized by secret service police before ushered into his hallowed presence. Wear the wrong T-shirt, and you’re out on your ear. If you’re not a member of “the Party”, you’re barred.

Freedom of speech, the great right this country hollers from the rooftops, is not available in the presence of the United States’ president.

The greatest sadness, the depths to which this nation has plummeted, is in the mis-information filling the heads of so many US citizens. Read any of the forums relating to Ahmadinejad’s visit, and you’ll find them filled with hatred and violent response. Most, are from people repulsed by his being allowed to set foot on American soil. They are completely unaware of their country’s obligations as permanent host of the United Nations. This is the level of their ignorance, yet they choose to vent hatred and hypocrisy against a man and a nation of whom they lack any knowledge, except for the putrid claptrap emanating from a moribund “free press” long degenerated into a platform for the biased, the petty (Time magazine managed to describe him as both ‘naive’ and a ‘dark genius’ in one sentence), and egocentric. (Today, J. Scott Carpenter’s article in the New York Daily News was entitled, “How Can We Bring Him Down?”)

Why should anyone in the West wish to bring him down, Mister Carpenter? What would it achieve? A greater sense of American pride and patriotism?

It is sad this nation has once again taken to its breast the act of warmongering as a talent and asset to be lauded. From the event now known as 9/11, an occurrence perpetrated by a small group of deluded fanatics mostly of Saudi Arabian origin, and allowed to happen by a US political system long grown fat, idle, and corrupt, has been born a monster that ravages the world like some international King Kong, or Creature from the Black Lagoon. That monster is America, and those presently ravaging the world are Americans.

Blindness is not normally contagious, except in the United States, where millions are unable to see anything but the propaganda spewing forth from Washington:

“Iran is building a nuclear bomb and must be stopped at all costs. Such actions endanger the whole world.”

What has endangered the whole world more than the occupation of a Middle Eastern nation by a foreign power; more than the support of the most powerful nation on earth for a country that has steadily eroded the rights of its Arab neighbors for the past sixty years?

Is a nuclear armed Iran more dangerous than that?

Iran states it has no interest in building a nuclear weapon, but challenges its right to do so, should it wish. After all, it argues, Israel, Pakistan, India, and most Western nations have oodles of nuclear weapons. The UK alone has enough plutonium, around 100 tonnes, to build fourteen thousand bombs. If a small island like the UK has that amount, how much is stockpiled by the US?

Would an Iran with a couple of nuclear devices really be the threat US politicians are so fanatical about posturing? Or, does the truth have more to do with corporate-American interests in the Middle East, its furtherance of empire?

As for the hysteria self-righteously whipped up over Iran’s alleged involvement in the bombings of US forces in Iraq, would not Canada come to America’s aid if it was being militarily occupied by foreign forces? Americans still have this totally stupid idea that somehow the US is doing something good in Iraq; that the Iraqi people want them there, cling to a desire to be ‘Americanized’. Imbibe anything other than the American press or Fox News and realization engenders a situation vastly different from that promulgated by the US media.

Wake up, America!

No-one in the Middle East wants you there. You are the enemy. You are occupying someone else’s country by force of arms. Those who tell Americans anything else are liars.

The leader, or mouthpiece, of these lies, the one from whom most of the falsehoods and iniquities issue, is presently residing in the White House. No-one is allowed to question his ideals. Only the ‘faithful’ are invited to his soirees. He lacks both moral fiber and basic courage. He sends his own countrymen to die for a cause few, but he, believe in.

This week, Ahmadinejad has been likened by Americans, to Adolf Hitler. No-one is suggesting he is a virtuous man, or anything other than a power-mongering politician, but he believes his country has a right to that which others have, but deny him. The regime he represents may not be democratic, it may be loathed by some, but it is Iran’s sovereign government and only Iranians have the right to change it, as only Iraqis had the right to topple Saddam Hussein.

For all his faults, Ahmadinejad displayed certain qualities just by being at Columbia University yesterday. As stated earlier, they were virtues lacking in the United States ‘Commander-in-Chief’.

No-one will ever get the opportunity to stand before Mister George W Bush and say:

“Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator. You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated.”

Filed under: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Posted under Sparrow Chat

THIS POST HAS BEEN DELETED BY THE AUTHOR FOLLOWING ABSURD COMPLAINTS FROM A SMALL, PETTY-MINDED, INDIVIDUAL WHO MIGHT DO BETTER TO GET A LIFE, OR PERHAPS VISIT A PSYCHIATRIST.

IT IS NOT THE INTENTION OF SPARROW CHAT TO CAUSE DISTRESS TO ANY, OTHER THAN THOSE WHO DESERVE IT, BUT OCCASIONALLY ONE COMES ACROSS SOMEONE WHO IS SO SMALL-MINDED AND BIGOTED THAT THEY ARE TOTALLY UNABLE TO SEE BEYOND THEIR OWN SELF-CENTERED INADEQUACIES.

IN SUCH CIRCUMSTANCES, AND GIVEN THE POST WAS OF NO GREAT CONSEQUENCE TO ANYONE, DELETION IS THE SIMPLE SOLUTION.

I TRUST THE PERSON IN QUESTION WILL NOW FIND SOME OTHER POOR SUCKER TO HARASS.

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The US military’s Camp Cropper in Iraq houses over 2,000 detainees, many juveniles no more than twelve or fourteen years old. There is no indoor plumbing. According to the Guardian newspaper, the US now has around 60,000 detainees in Iraq, compared to only 27,000 a year ago – though the Washington Post offers a lower figure of “more than 25,000″ compared to 10,000 a year ago.

Camp Cropper – Baghdad. A wounded detainee sits in a wheelchair.

What is happening to detainees kept under US control without trial or release date is shocking to any decent human being. Frankly, I’m so sick of writing this stuff, while America sits comfortably in front of its TV screens and watches “the heroic acts of our beloved military” as churned out twenty-four hours a day by an overly-compliant media, that I’m just going to publish the links and leave you to make up your own minds about the US military’s, “House of Wisdom”.

Guardian photo gallery.

Washington Post.

Anyone who finds what is portrayed in these articles acceptable, needs to question their own concepts of basic humanity.

Filed under: Brain washing

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Recently, the physicist and sufferer from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or Motor Neuron Disease, Stephen Hawkings, suggested that man’s priority might be the colonization of other planets outside our solar system, so that the evolutionary gift of the human brain should not be lost forever. He appreciated the challenges of living on Planet Earth; a hit by an errant asteroid, global nuclear annihilation, but insisted the human brain, with its billions of years of evolutionary history, is too precious to be thrown away at the whim of apocalyptic politicians or a deviant lump of solar rock.

Not so the case of Joel Jacobs, as characterized on NBC Nightly News tonight. Joel is a retired soldier who plants redbud trees in place of fallen soldiers in Iraq.

Joel Jacobs is a man worthy of respect. His dedication to fallen comrades, planting a tree in memory of each, could never be considered anything but admirable.

NBC Nightly News, and in particular Brian Williams’ gag-inducing commentary on this man’s lone quest to dignify his fallen comrades, not only was disrespectful, but reeked of the corporate-induced, smarmy, indoctrinal hog-wash designed to stultify an American public into believing dead soldiers somehow lived on as common-or-garden redbud trees.

If the philosophy of NBC and Brian Williams were to be considered credible, then Stephen Hawking’s philosophy might reach culmination more cheaply and easily by sending redbud seeds to colonize other planets, while leaving the human brain to rot where it lies – on the hot and foetid roadsides of Baghdad.

Judge for yourself – this NBC Nightly segment is videoed by scrolling down this page to the link: “A soldier’s duty: tending to the fallen.”

Filed under: Choices

Posted under Sparrow Chat

I really hate to be a party pooper (I know you’ve noticed) but there is going to be a war with Iran.

Have you ever seen a snowball begin to roll down a hill, gradually gathering speed and growing ever bigger until it becomes unstoppable? That’s what happened back in 2002-2003, when the idea of war with Iraq began to roll, imperceptibly at first, but with just enough impetus to keep it going until it became unstoppable.

A similar snowball is rolling ever more rapidly today. It’s just about to reach the point of no return. It has Iran’s name on it.

The BBC was last night reporting a huge buildup of Israeli weaponry and troops close to Syria’s eastern border (though there’s been no mention of it on their website). Only last week Israeli warplanes attacked Syria in a mission no-one inside Israel is talking about. Whatever that mission achieved is so hush-hush even the usual moles aren’t chattering.

There will be some outside the Israeli cabinet who know the score. You can be sure of that. They live and work at the Pentagon, and at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C..

You can be sure they know; have known, for quite some time.

While the talk is of the British pulling out of Basra, 350 UK troops have been deployed to the Iranian border, ostensibly to dissuade Iranian weapons’ smugglers from entering Iraq. According to the Independent newspaper:

“……The operation is regarded as a high-risk strategy which could lead to clashes with Iranian-backed Shia militias or even Iranian forces…….”

The US is, meanwhile, busy constructing a base four miles from the Iraq-Iran border.

It is likely the attack, when it comes, will take one of two possible courses: a US airstrike on Iran’s nuclear facilities and surrounding areas, with a simultaneous assault by the Israelis on Syrian military establishments. Or, the Israelis may well carry out the air assault on Iran, with their military buildup on the Syrian border a defense against repercussions from, or through, Syria.

Either way, it will be viewed in the Middle East as an Israeli/US/EU venture and is likely to fire up a bonfire of sectarian violence and terrorism that will undoubtedly have dreadful repercussions all around the world.

George Bush knows he can now count on French president Sarkozy’s support, which in turn will bring in some measure of European political acquiescence.

Once more, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei is desperately attempting to cool the political hotheads, just as he did back in 2003. America and Britain turned deaf ears back then, preferring to utilize their own suspect and fabricated evidence for Saddam’s WMD’s, than listen to the world’s leading authority.

Yet again, there are no WMD’s. Iran is using nuclear technology for, it says, purely peaceful purposes. Western and Israeli politicians aren’t happy with that because Iran might renege on its promise. Of course, as the old saying goes: it takes one political broken promise to know another, so we must assume the West and Israel are experts on the subject.

Timing for a war with Iran is all important. There’s an American presidential election due in just over a year and for the Republicans to hold onto power means being in a war that’s going well just at that moment. Obviously, public focus has to be switched well away from Iraq, which with the possible exception of Vietnam, must rank in US history as the war that’s continually gone least well.

The snowball has started rolling. Is there still time to stop it in its tracks? Or, has its momentum and mass gone past the critical?

I believe it has.

But then, I may just turn out to be a party pooper.

Filed under: Inevitable consequences

Posted under Sparrow Chat

Ooops! Here we go again. Condoleeza Rice suddenly leaps up like a jack-in-the-box and jets off to Israel for the sixth time this year.

Does she perhaps have a Jewish lover, one must ask; for what other purpose could wrest this woman from her boxed political hibernation of the last few months?

Yet another Israeli/Palestinian “summit” is in the offing and Rice has gone out to ‘prepare the groundwork’. She spends so much time in the Middle East ‘preparing the groundwork’, she should get a job repairing the roads. It might prove more fruitful than her efforts as Secretary of State. Surely Ms Rice must go down in history as the only US Secretary of State never to conclude a deal – anywhere.

Envisage her holding one of those nice orange poles with the circular top – the ones with “STOP” on one side and “SLOW” on the other.

She would surely be perfect for the job. One look would wither most drivers.

“Yer fender wus THAT FAR from ma pole, dick-ead!”

No, I was wrong. It doesn’t bear thinking of. American drivers don’t deserve that.

News of another Arab/Israeli summit is becoming something of a bore. How many have there been since…………1948?

This one is obviously a ploy by the American administration to attempt and draw focus away from the ever-mounting problems in Iraq. It’s a shame, both for ordinary Israelis and Palestinians, to have their hopes raised and then dashed as two nations play at politics with their lives.

Of course, much will be made of it; declarations will be forthcoming, and then the whole thing will break up with the cry that “……progress has been made!” – and matters will return to an exactly similar turbulence as existed before.

When the dust of a hundred departing SUV’s has finally settled over Palestine, the warring and fighting will begin anew, and Condoleeza Rice will return to her box, wriggle herself inside and pull the lid down tight.

Let us hope that this time, something very heavy can be placed on the top.

Filed under: Scary child’s toy

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