sparrow chat

Sometimes officialdom can be just too official. For the last few weeks police and rescuers have been combing a local wooded area searching for a missing 18 year-old youth last seen alive while camping with some friends. There’s no suggestion of foul play, but a river heavily swollen from months of rains, flows through the site, so its assumed the poor lad drowned.

Finally, yesterday, they discovered a body in the river.

Interviewed this morning on a local news channel, the sheriff stiffly refused to announce the corpse’s identity on air, saying only that it was a male around 18 – 20 years old.

Beyond doubt, it was the person they were searching for, but officialdom stubbornly insisted nothing could be confirmed “until after the autopsy.”

Meanwhile, we’re winging our way across the pond to visit the relatives, then on for a couple of weeks of leisurely boating, followed by a swift visit to Will Shakespeare country (to keep my dear American wife happy) before jetting home again around June 18th.

Until then, good readers, browse the archives or visit some of those excellent blogs in Sparrow Chat’s “Blog Nest”, in the sidebar.

Following my recent health scare, ’she-who-must-be-obeyed’ insists our vacation be totally computer-free. I must walk, sail, breathe the good English air, and stay well away from anything more technical than an electric shaver.

With fiendish cunning, I’ve persuaded her the laptop is vital for storing our holiday photographs, so she’s relented. I may find a wi-fi hotspot, possibly even manage a swift blog or two.

Broadband is scarce where we’re going, though, so if you hear nothing of me for a while, don’t necessarily assume I’m dead.

At least, “not until after the autopsy.”

Filed under: I’ll be back

Posted under Sparrow Chat

Earlier today, at the Hay festival in Britain, journalist and environmental campaigner George Monbiot made an unsuccessful attempt to arrest the ex-Bush administration official, John Bolton, who was speaking at the event.^[1]

Monbiot is a terrific journalist and thorough researcher. His work is often linked by Sparrow Chat. On his website, he explains the reason why he chose to attempt a citizen’s arrest of John Bolton for war crimes.

The link is available HERE.

I’m sure George was aware beforehand he had no chance of circumventing the tight security around Bolton. The episode was obviously a publicity stunt to keep those responsible for the Iraq carnage in the public eye. How sad, though, that a common journalist has to take such action, when the great and powerful who control our nations sit with their fat, gold-infested, fingers jammed under their ample buttocks, and do nothing.

When is the international ass-crawling to this warped and twisted administration finally going to stop?

^{[1] “Bolton dodges attempted ‘war crimes’ arrest”, Guardian, May 29th 2008}

Filed under: One man’s commitment

Posted under Sparrow Chat

While driving home from a shopping expedition this Memorial Day we passed a stone church displaying a huge banner, demanding:

“Come to Vacation Bible School”

I said to my wife, “The poor kids wait all year for summer vacation, and are no sooner let out than they’re whisked off to bloody Bible school. What are they trying to do to them?”

My wife responded by telling me she was aware of it, because I’d made the same comment when driving past that same banner, every summer vacation-time since arriving from England six years ago.

Yes, but hang it all, what are they doing to the kids?

Are they teaching them that Jesus loved everybody and taught that we should do the same? Do they emphasise “our neighbor” is not just weird Mister Huckleberry from the house next door, but Africans, Asians, Muslims, and Atheists living in other lands all around the globe? Do they teach violence against others is wrong, even if the ‘other’ is not an American citizen?

If the answer to all these questions, and a few dozen others, is ‘Yes’, then fine – send the kids to Bible school. Unfortunately, the answers all tend towards a resounding, “No!”

They’re taught that God is an American God who looks down with benevolence on the United States as His chosen nation (hang the Jews) and anyone who dares say otherwise can be rapidly exterminated and will spend the rest of eternity burning in Hell. It may not be spouted in so many words, but this is what the kids eventually learn from it all.

Bible schools everywhere don’t teach anything, because ‘faith’ is blind belief with no basis in substantiated truth. What they are amazingly successful at achieving is the indoctrination of fertile minds ready and willing to believe anything told them by those they accept as all-knowing adults.

The marketing of Christianity in America is controlled by vast organizations, just like most other commodities. The creation of wealth and power is at its root just as surely as at the heart of any banking organization or insurance group. If banks and finance houses targeted young kids with the cold, calculating, vigor of the churches, there’d be an outcry. Yet no-one objects when their pride-and-joys are whisked into the care of the local pastor and his minions for a lesson in superstitious nonsense.

It doesn’t stop there, of course. One vital function of the Bible school is manipulating young minds into ‘correct social behavior’. Part of that behavior is learning the requirement to rush off and get killed, or maimed, in some foreign land at the whim of a crazed politician. Never mind that the guy you’re sent to fight is ‘your neighbor’, as well-defined in the Bible by the son of your god.

The churches have always considered themselves the bastions of morality and social harmony. It’s a façade behind which has long lurked the sins and corrupt practices of the clergy. During the Middle Ages of European history they did little to hide the fact. Popes and bishops cavorted with prostitutes and rent-boys a-plenty, causing the populace no more than an occasional smirk. Today, skulduggery is deeply hidden, often only surfacing after many years, as in the recent cases of rape, buggery, and general child abuse committed by numerous priests of the Roman Catholic church.

Vacation Bible School goes a step further than the standard Sunday school. It offers five day week indoctrinations of kids while Mom and Pop can continue earning their ‘daily bread’ without the responsibility of bringing up the offspring. It’s a nice get-out, in line with American society generally; the idea of giving birth, then after a couple of years handing the child over to a state or church authority, allowing parents to continue their social and economic life free of the binds of full-time parenthood. When similar schemes are highlighted in communist countries like China, the full scorn of American church, government, state, and populace is poured forth in a flood of outrageous self-righteousness.

One of the most noticeable aspects of child education, at least here in the ‘Heartlands’, is the plethora of church-run schools. They probably outnumber public schools. Even those kids who manage to escape the ‘church education’ and attend a public school may find themselves collected in the afternoon by the local church bus and whisked away for an hour or two of good religious indoctrination, before Mom or Pop finally makes a re-appearance in their lives.

Perhaps the most hypocritical of all falsehoods in America is the alleged separation of church and state. The churches are so heavily involved in politics, at every level from federal government to local town council, that one has to question whether this nation is a secular democracy, or a democratic theocracy.

No politician will make good without the backing of the church. No US president will ever be elected without first displaying prominently his Christian credentials. More than one ordained Christian pastor has stood for the presidency, though to date none – thank God! – has achieved it. It’s probably just a matter of time before one does.

When it happens, there’ll be little doubt he or she will be a socially acceptable, clean-cut, clean-living, all American boy or girl, who spent all their summer vacation studying superstition and socially acceptable behavior at their local Vacation Bible School.

Filed under: Biblical bullshit

Posted under Sparrow Chat

On April 16th 2008 I wrote an article in Sparrow Chat entitled, “Self-Righteousness Only Creates Wrongness”.

It concerned the seizing of over four hundred children by Texas officials from the Yearn for Zion ranch, a sect whose members had broken away from the traditional Mormon church.

The children were seized following an anonymous tip-off purported to come from a young female sect member, who to this day has never been identified.

Accusations of sexual abuse and under-age marriages were leveled against the sect by the anonymous caller, and foolishly the Texas authorities over-reacted and raided the ranch, confiscating the children and dispersing them in foster homes around the state.

Thankfully, the Texas court of appeal yesterday upheld the families’ case that there was no evidence to warrant the raids and subsequent removal of the children. The Texas authorities had failed to provide evidence of child abuse, and the court ruled the raid and impounding of the children unlawful.^[1]

Sanity has finally prevailed and the children are slowly being returned to their parents, though the state of Texas is looking to appeal the appeal as a face-saving exercise, despite the additional harm such delay might provoke among the children kept incarcerated while a torpid legal process churns forward with agonizing slowness.

Despite the acidic comments of local Child Protective Services officials, who were at pains to point out “this was all about the children”, it would seem to be more about narrow-minded, Texan morality than the welfare of four hundred unhappy kids.

Frankly, such people make me sick. They are driven not by a love for children and a wish for their overall happiness, but by a pseudo-religious, blinkered morality that blinds them to the truth and causes untold suffering and a lifetime of psychological scarring for the victims of these harpie-like individuals.

Well done, Texas. Your inhumanity to your fellows shines like a beacon of darkness in the light.

^{[1] “Seizure of Texas sect kids unlawful”, Arizona Republic, May 23rd 2008}

Filed under: America’s shame

Posted under Sparrow Chat

Speaking to the BBC recently about the situation in Burma after the typhoon, Condoleeza Rice, the US Secretary of State said:

“”It’s a quite unusual situation actually that you have a country in these desperate straits with its population in the circumstances that this population is in – and you get a kind of stone cold face about people who just want help.”

She’s absolutely right. It is an unusual situation. Now, let me see, when was the last time such a circumstance existed………

……oh, yes, I remember, it was in 2005……when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans.

Filed under: Forget-me-not

Posted under Sparrow Chat

Only yesterday I wrote a long article on the political circus that was the US presidential election. Today, we hear a sound-bite of Hillary Clinton talking to some provincial newspaper, making vague reference to the assassination of Robert Kennedy, and immediately whipping up a frenzy guaranteed to keep the cable networks humming for infinity, or at least until some juicier fillip grabs their short-term attention span, which will likely be within the next forty-eight hours.^[1]

It’s not good enough, America. Is this the level to which you are prepared to sink in defining the qualities of the next US president?

You don’t deserve to be a superpower with so much influence in the world. Such a position demands a sense of responsibility. It’s time you gave up your introvert, spoiled-child, attitude and started to develop some sense of maturity.

Either that, or get out the game and let some serious nation have a go at running the world. To put it bluntly, you’re letting the side down with your puerile behavior.

I don’t happen to think Hillary Clinton is the best choice to be the next president, but she certainly doesn’t deserve the sort of inane reaction coming from the American media right now, anymore than Obama merited crucifixion for the beliefs of a Chicago pastor.

Get serious, America. Stop being ruled by your media, and start telling it what you want to hear. Or is that too difficult for your infantile brains to grasp?

Frankly, the rest of the world is sick to the back teeth of your childish games. You’d rather play at being cowboys, with your silly guns and talk of ‘freedoms’ you never had, than grow up and act like mature adults, with all the responsibilities that demands.

Electing a president is a serious business. Why are you so incapable of treating it as such?


^{[1] “HILLARY RAISES ASSASSINATION ISSUE”, New York Post, May 23rd 2008}

Filed under: Infantile behavior

Posted under Sparrow Chat

Is there, I wonder, a sadder individual in the whole world than Mister Mark Muller of Butler, Missouri? Mister Muller owns Max Motors, a car dealership presently offering a handgun with every vehicle sold.^[1]

It’s possible Mark Muller’s customers are even sadder individuals than he is. According to this automobile dealer, sales have quadrupled since he made the offer and he’s sold thirty motors in the last three days. All buyers, bar two, chose the gun over Mister Muller’s alternative, a $250 gas card.

According to Muller, he’s……

“……just damn glad to live in a free country where you can have a gun if you want to.”

Apparently, the idea for the gun giveaway came from Barack Obama’s comment that small town Americans cling to their guns and their Bibles.

Mister Muller says he was offended by the presidential nominee’s statement:

“We all go to church on Sunday and we all carry guns.”

Presumably, in case the pastor delivers a lousy sermon?

^{[1] “US car dealer in free gun offer”, BBC, May 23rd 2008}

Filed under: Jesus loves firearms

Posted under Sparrow Chat

It’s hard following an election campaign when all three candidates are openly dishonest and hypocritical. The recent spat between McCain and Obama over ‘talking to Hamas’ proves the point, though Clinton deliberately walks a similar path.

Yet again, America’s political system is degenerating into a circus.

All three have, at some point in their careers, intimated they would talk with Hamas. When in appropriate company i.e. addressing Jewish audiences, all three are quick to demand Hamas recognizes Israel’s right to exist, rejects violence, and accepts a two state solution, before any talking could even be considered.

This latter is just a “do as you’re told or face the consequences” approach guaranteed to produce a backlash, whether from Hamas, or the Iranian government – another troublesome administration America is trying hard to bully into line.

It is this blatant hypocrisy by each candidate that is seized on in turn by their opponents, converted into ammunition, and fed to the blind and stupid via the party’s favorite media outlets.

It’s short-sighted, dishonest, and does no-one any good; not the American people, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, or the people of the Middle East generally. In fact, it highlights quite sharply the deficits of the American political system, the ignorance of most Americans towards foreign affairs, and the inadequacies of all three candidates standing for the job of President of the United States.

The American people don’t just accept lies from their politicians, they demand them. They require their favorite political hero (or heroine) tell them exactly what they want to hear. Given they have little or no knowledge of the true state of affairs in the outside world, generally their demand is for a substantiation of last night’s ‘political commentary’ on CNN, Fox, or MSNBC, something all three candidates happily supply, to the elated cheers of a satiated gathering.

Nowhere else in the Western world are leaders elected entirely on their ability to put down an opponent, except perhaps, in Italy.

It is often quoted that ‘we get the leaders we deserve’. Interestingly, the US president frequently turns out to be as lacking in knowledge, and the ability to deal diplomatically with the outside world, as those who elected him to office.

It’s true that America will never elect an honest politician, even if it could find one. That’s a pity, for it is only honesty that will solve the problems of the world, many created in the first place by the dishonesty of those who’ve held high US office in the past.

Blind allegiance to Israel, against an Arab world for a century frustrated and embittered by Western control, will never bring peace to the Middle East. Taking sides is a puerile concept when it is obvious both parties are in the wrong. What’s needed is honest diplomacy without threat or coercion.

America’s high-handed attitude towards both Iran and Hamas is that of a righteous nation determined to bring both parties to repentance and a final, supplicatory, acceptance of the political dogma of Western democracy and capitalism. Given the religious self-righteousness prevalent in the United States, that attitude is hardly surprising, though profoundly erroneous. At best, success in this aim will ultimately result in the death of cultures and a world reduced to pseudo-Americanism; great for the corporates, but Hell on earth for everybody else.

Hamas refuses to accept Israel’s right to exist because the Jewish state represents pseudo-Americanism imposed on the Arab culture. Israel is viewed, both by Hamas and Ahmadinajad, as America’s proxy in the region.

Resolution of the conflict between Israel and Palestine is only difficult because the Palestinians feel impotent against the might of the West, always dictating terms favorable to their Jewish ally. Hamas recognizes this to be the case and has sworn to rectify this disparity by the only means open to it – violence.

Demanding an end to bloodshed is not inappropriate, provided both sides agree to comply. So far, Israel and the West have not been party to any such agreement.

It will take an honest US president, one who realizes military might is diplomacy’s subordinate, to overcome the problems in the Middle East. Judging by the recent track records of the three contenders up for the post, optimism is truly not an option.

Once one stops rooting for one’s hero and instead observes the circus, it becomes clear any prospective ringmaster will likely end up as just another clown.

Filed under: Political games

Posted under Sparrow Chat