sparrow chat

Just how much do you know about Iran? You’re probably aware its capital is called Tehrain, the religion is mainly Muslim, and its president has a funny-sounding and almost unpronounceable name. But do you know anything about everyday life in Iran; what its small towns are like, the illnesses suffered by its people, or how life expectancy compares with, say, Port Arthur in Texas?

Port Arthur, Texas, is in the news. Like many small towns grown up around heavy industry, it suffers from the profit mentality of corporate America. It’s a petrochemical town. The bigwigs of the petrochemical industry don’t live in Port Arthur. Their houses are far, far away from the fumes, the pollution, the squalor that exists in Port Arthur, Texas.

You can read all about it on this Yahoo News page.

Of course, if you have an interest in finding out just what Iran is really like, rather than leaving it to George W Bush or Condoleeza Rice to fill your mind with their twisted ideas, you could try reading the Tehrain Times.

Not only will it help illuminate you to life in Iran, but it will also reveal what it’s like to live in Port Arthur, Texas.

Filed under: Ignorance is rarely bliss

Posted under Sparrow Chat

This week, yet again, the media is dominated by raging fires ravaging the California landscape. Whole towns are evacuated; hundreds of homes are going up in flames. Yet still everyone holds back, hesitates, as though afraid to make the final declaration.

Yesterday, on NBC Nightly News a veteran weather forecaster was asked to explain the cause of these intense infernos. His response: La Niña – the sort of opposite of El Niño.

He’s probably right, but it’s unlikely anyone living in California would argue against the frequency and intensity of these devastating fires having increased dramatically over the past decade.

While it’s comforting to blame El Niño and La Niña for the problems in California, these atmospheric genies that act like an enormous weather pendulum swinging ocean currents and temperatures backwards and forwards across the globe, have been around for eons. It’s easy to sit back and listen to ‘experts’ postulate their theory that the increase in El Niño/La Niña intensity documented over the last twenty years is nothing more than a temporary aberration – a mere quirk of the weather patterns – and the explanation might be acceptable, were it not for all the other evidence piling up to discount it.

This year has seen environmentally devastating weather conditions throughout much of the planet. Records are not yet available, but it is likely to prove, yet again, another of the warmest years on record. In parts of the world heatwaves have killed many. In other areas devastating floods have been responsible for catastrophic disasters. Only a few months ago, Greece was consumed by fires equally as intense, if not worse than those presently experienced by California.

Still the ‘experts’ will not commit themselves. Like the proverbial ostriches, they bury their heads in the sand and mumble incoherently about El Niño or La Niña being the only culprits of this wayward weather.

Scientists from the Global Carbon Project, the University of East Anglia, UK, and the British Antarctic Survey, have just published a report stating that carbon dioxide levels in the earth’s atmosphere have risen 35% faster than expected since 2000. 17% of that figure is due to industrial nations taking no action to curb their carbon emissions. The cause of the other 18% is even more concerning.

Oceans around the world have always been a vast filter of CO2 from the atmosphere, absorbing much of the carbon that would otherwise turn this planet into another greenhouse-gas-run-riot environment like our sister planet, Venus. Scientists have now realized the oceans are no longer able to store more carbon dioxide. They are reaching saturation point. Uptake of CO2 in the North Atlantic has halved in the last fifteen years. A similar situation exists in the Southern Oceans. The 18% CO2 increase, additional to the 17% caused by wayward politicians, is due to this factor.

Earth’s filters are clogged.

Landmass also acts as an absorber of CO2. Trees and plants do their share, but it is mainly the great forests of the Amazon basin that are the main ‘lungs’ of the planet. Prior to our ‘conversion’ from hunter-gatherers to agrarians there was much more forestation on the planet, but even today the landmass will normally absorb a similar amount of carbon dioxide to that of the oceans.

But, the very nature of the rainforest is changing. A twenty year study in Amazonia has revealed that, even in areas still untouched and pristine, the vegetation has altered. Increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is causing a shift in tree growth that will almost certainly have an increasingly negative effect on the forest’s ability to absorb CO2.

It would seem Planet Earth is reaching saturation point. The implications are enormous.

Meanwhile, our leaders mouth platitudes designed to placate our fears, while continuing to grant free reign to the greatest polluters on the planet – industry. Much is presently being made of an individual’s responsibility to decrease his ‘carbon footprint’, but industry still churns millions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere each year with no restraint whatever.

It is right to applaud the ‘green’ communities that have sprung up all over the planet, doing their little bit to help reduce emissions, but their effectiveness is negligible set against the criminal complacency of the corporates.

Once the Earth’s natural filters become blocked and cease functioning, this planet will no longer be able to support life. It will happen quickly; snowballing. Temperature will rise ever more rapidly as the ‘greenhouse effect’ escalates. A 6 – 7 degree increase will mark the inevitability of human extinction.

As that happens, will the weather forecasters still be insisting its just La Niña?

Read More of El Niño/La Niña HERE.

Read about ocean CO2 absorption HERE.

Read more on the rainforest changes HERE, and HERE.

Read more on the disastrous 2007 weather HERE.

Filed under: Weather or not

Posted under Sparrow Chat

Flimsy Sanity for this one………

Filed under: Love song

Posted under Sparrow Chat

America has one of the worst public health records in the Western world. In the state of Illinois, thousands live below the poverty line, kids go without health insurance, the crime rate is appalling.

This week, after violent discussions in the state legislature, lawmakers overrode a veto by the governor and declared it mandatory that all Illinois public schools introduce a ‘moment of silence’ at the beginning of morning classes.

The exact definition of a ‘moment’, has yet to be been explained, but most schools are settling on a time frame of 15 – 20 seconds, ” ….to pray, reflect or meditate while attendance is taken during the 8 a.m. classes,” Superintendent Kathie Pierce of Fenton High School District 100 in Bensenville, Chicago, said on Monday.

Well, I guess it gives those corpulent, over-wealthy retardees, with nothing better to do than interfere in other people’s lives, a feeling of usefulness to waste everyone’s time with such utter garbage, while the kids they insist carry out their spurious decrees suffer sickness and deprivation due to the inability of these bloated nincompoops to provide a reasonable standard of healthcare, housing, and education.

To quote one Illinois teacher:

““I just can’t see the sense of replacing a moment of teaching with a moment of silence,” said Mary Erickson, board president of Evanston/Skokie School District 65.“You want to have every moment you can to teach.”

For some time, Illinois schoolkids have been forced to recite the Pledge of Alliance each day, reminiscent of those evil Pakistani Madrassa’s where the young are brainwashed into Islamo-fascist suicide bombers.

Are American public schools now simply “Madrassas for the Good Kids”?

This cranial degeneration isn’t solely attributable to Illinois politicians. For instance, did you know that many states have their own Pledge of Allegiance? The following is reproduced from the Chicago Tribune of 16th October:

Texas: Honor the Texas flag; I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible.

Kentucky: I pledge allegiance to the Kentucky flag, and to the Sovereign State for which it stands, one Commonwealth, blessed with diversity, natural wealth, beauty, and grace from on High.

Michigan: I pledge allegiance to the flag of Michigan, and to the state for which it stands, 2 beautiful peninsulas united by a bridge of steel, where equal opportunity and justice to all is our ideal.

Alabama: Flag of Alabama I salute thee. To thee I pledge my allegiance, my service, and my life.

Louisiana: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the state of Louisiana and to the motto for which it stands: A state, under God, united in purpose and ideals, confident that justice shall prevail for all of those abiding here.

Ohio: I salute the flag of the state of Ohio and pledge to the Buckeye State respect and loyalty.

Arkansas: I Salute the Arkansas Flag With Its Diamond and Stars. We Pledge Our Loyalty to Thee.

South Dakota: I pledge loyalty and support to the flag and state of South Dakota, land of sunshine, land of infinite variety.

Mississippi: I salute the flag of Mississippi and the sovereign state for which it stands with pride in her history and achievements and with confidence in her future under the guidance of Almighty God.

America, have you any idea how totally ludicrous all this appears to anyone outside your country? Where are your priorities? Why do you vote into office the morons who make up this rubbish? What has happened to your common humanity, if you allow this to be the priority of your lawmakers?

Thankfully, some Americans agree.

From the same page of the Chicago Tribune comes this more accurate offering of a Pledge of Allegiance for the state Illinois:

“`I pledge allegiance to the flag of Illinois and the incompetence and corruption for which it stands….”

Good for you, Chicago Tribune! Long may you reign!

In conclusion, Illinois lawmakers have yet to decide suitable punishment for those kids who break this ‘law of silence’. Presumably, as with any other crime in the United States, the police will be summoned and those kids in contravention will be summarily tasered into obedience?

Filed under: Defying belief

Posted under Sparrow Chat

The world’s political elite continue to stuff their faces with the finest cuisine money can buy, attire themselves in frills and fancies, and prance to the discordant tunes of their own overworked, self-applauding, vocal chords.

Yesterday, ex-British prime minister and Bush poodle, Tony Blair, wooed a bevy of American money-bags at the annual Alfred Emanuel Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, a “charity” event organized by the Roman Catholic Church in New York. No other British national has spoken at this function since Winston Churchill deigned to address them by telephone in 1947. The event is staged by New York’s Roman Catholic diocese, ostensibly to raise money for local health charities.

Blair took the opportunity to rattle his own personal saber to the full by condemning Iran, praising the Iraq war, and ratcheting up the threat of terrorism to the World War III levels recently vociferated by his belligerent comrade in the US White House.

All of which went down extremely well with his audience of fat-bellied, alcohol-hazed associates, representing the epitome of American wealth, and Christian – or Jewish – religion.

During his introduction, the master of ceremonies – presumably half-joking – suggested the US Constitution be amended to allow Blair a run at the 2008 presidential election. Why not? After all, the US Constitution is in such tatters another few pages of crossings-out and red inked addenda would surely go by unnoticed?

The suggestion went down well with the audience. After all, Blair may be British by nationality, but in every other way he’s one of them. His priorities are their priorities; their only aim the defense and protection of their lifestyles.

Blair’s speech noticeably lacked any reference to the starving millions in Africa, the genocide in Darfur, the massacre of innocents in Burma, the snowballing effects of global warming. No, for Mister Blair and his ‘friends’, the overriding priority is to combat “Islamofascism”, for in the process they can consolidate their power, increase their wealth, and frequently utilize that phrase to spread their own very real brand of fear.

What a glorious excuse to further repress ordinary people and exercise increasing public control.

Tony Blair is a quisling. Depite roots in the British Labour Party he has, even during his term in office as British prime minister, emanated a right-wing bias that has now fully-fledged, placing him firmly inside the cauldron of US Republican conservatism.

Not only has he betrayed his own ideals, but he has proved himself a traitor to the British people he purported to represent, and the party to which he pledged loyalty.

The three standing ovations received from his opulent, right-wing, audience must surely represent undeniable proof of that.

Filed under: Turncoat

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It’s hard to understand how the Dalai Lama was willing to partake in the political machinations of US politicians, and the greatest warmonger on the planet, that have been ongoing over the last few days. His Holiness, a man of peace for whom respect runs deep among many who otherwise spurn religious leaders, may well have performed his duties more effectively by denouncing the policies of his host and refusing to accept the Congressional Gold Medal foisted on him today.

George W Bush presented the medal, describing the Dalai Lama as “a universal symbol of peace and tolerance”.

Later, the American president went on to discuss his latest venture – World War III – as a possibility if Iran failed to toe the US line over nuclear power.

The use of this phrase is something George W Bush appears to enjoy bandying. Immediately following 9/11 he declared his ‘war on terror’, World War III.

As Professor Brian Leiter wrote in his blog, “Leiter Reports”, back in early 2005:

“For his inauguration, George W. Bush essentially declared war on much of the world. He did so, of course, without using that word; today’s sociopathic heads of state are well-tutored in the art of rhetoric…….”

Read the rest of it and understand more precisely what he meant.

Indeed, so imbued has this presidency and administration been with warfare and saber-rattling, it is difficult not to consider George W Bush obsessed with the idea of controlling the world through military power.

But then, probably he is.

All the more reason for His Holiness, Tenzin Gyatso, the fourteenth Dalai Lama, to have given this warmonger and his hangers-on a very wide berth.

Filed under: Good and bad

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