Month: May 2008

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

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

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