sparrow chat

I have long championed the BBC as a bastion of balanced news broadcasting. Since arriving on these shores six years ago, and discovering the bias inherent in every news media outlet in America, with the possible exception of PBS, the BBC has been my one source for fair and balanced news coverage, albeit with limited availability, in the United States.

Sadly, those days are now at an end. Since its American news programming began a few months ago, the corporation has shown itself to be in allegiance with the false, capitalist, demagogues who control the rest of America’s news channels.

The emergence of ‘BBC World News America’ heralded this decline in standards. Within weeks of the program airing, it became obvious Matt Frei and the team were willing pawns of Rupert Murdoch and his corporate colleagues. ‘BBC World News America’ rapidly announced itself as a mouthpiece for corporate America.

It didn’t stop with ‘BBC World News America’. Today, on the main BBC website, is published a long article by Peter Wehner, a former Deputy Assistant to George Bush, entitled: “Viewpoint: The case against Obama .”^[1]

Here are a few titbits:

“…….he [Obama] would be a very bad choice for president.

“………if Obama had had his way, all American combat troops would have been withdrawn from Iraq by March 2008, which would have led to civil war and genocide; an unprecedented victory for al-Qaeda and Islamic jihadists; and a boon to Iran. This fact is, by itself, a shattering indictment to Obama’s judgement, and in the area that is the most important responsibility of a president: his duties as commander-in-chief. ”

“Senator Obama’s intimate 20-year relationship with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright – an anti-American extremist – is troubling. It reinforces the sense that much of what Obama has presented about himself is a mirage – an impressive one for sure, but a mirage nonetheless.”

“Speaker Pelosi and majority leader Reid and their committee chairmen – many of them partisan, ideological, and ruthless – will exert enormous pressure on Obama to move left. From all we know about him, Senator Obama will not resist it or defy them. And that, in turn, will lead to overreach. Which is why even though next Tuesday will be a difficult day for Republicans and conservatives, the wise ones will understand that our moment will come again, and perhaps sooner than we think.

Our task is to be ready.”

I have to say, in all my life I would never have dreamed of reading such partisan claptrap on any media controlled by the BBC. This is an organization subscribed by public license fee and, supposedly, non-partisan in all aspects of its news dispersion.

To refute the crap churned out by Wehner is easy, but that is not the object of this article.

Only recently, a top man at the BBC spoke out about the state of the organization. John Simpson, for years a respected reporter, and presently BBC World Affairs Editor, said:

“I think the BBC we have known, for good or worse, is now in its last stages.”^[2]

He was, undoubtedly, correct.

When a British media corporation can bow its knee to a government itself subservient to the US corporate machine, and relinquish its independence in return for political favors, the signs bode ill for democracy and the rights of individuals.

John Simpson has always been something of a personal hero. His knowledge of Iraq, and his reporting from that nation at a time when the only news coming out the war zone was from censored, embedded, US journalists eager to curry favor from their media bosses, was precise and exacting. He lost his hearing in one ear, and his Iraqi translator, to a US A-10 missile in a ‘friendly fire’ incident in northern Iraq, but still kept reporting.

Speaking at a British literary festival recently, he admitted he ‘expected to be sacked in horrible circumstances’ from the BBC, for speaking out against the corruption in that organization.

The demise of the BBC as an independent broadcaster is yet another victory for those in power, both in the UK and the US (though, personally, I believe they’re one and the same). Both nations are controlled by their governments, who in turn are controlled by the corporations.

The outcome of the imminent US election is still in doubt. If Barack Obama wins the presidency it will be one small step in the right direction, by an electorate that proves itself capable of saying: enough is enough. Where America leads, Britain will surely follow.

An endorsement of John McCain will undoubtedly prove an endorsement of corporate control. The result of that is too dire to contemplate. It will further empower the Peter Wehner’s of this world and cause organizations like the BBC to move further into the realm of nothing more useful than yet another corporate mouthpiece.

And for those American readers thinking, “What’s this to do with me,” let me remind you that what’s happening to the BBC is only a precursor to a similar takeover of PBS.

^{[1] “Viewpoint: The case against Obama “, BBC, October 31st 2008}

^{[2] “Simpson ‘expects sack from BBC’”, BBC, October 14th 2008}

Filed under: Death of democracy

Posted under Sparrow Chat

In my native Wales, it’s long been government policy for all roadsigns to be written in English and Welsh. Usually, that’s not a problem, until the sign maker cuts back on Welsh-speaking employees in an effort to reduce costs.

The above sign is fine in English, but the Welsh translation actually reads:

“I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated”

Ah, the wonders of email!

^{Thanks to the BBC for the laugh.}

Filed under: Bilingual gaffs

Posted under Sparrow Chat

While all effort is made to substantiate facts before writing anything on Sparrow Chat, the occasional evil thought can creep in, which, though totally unsubstantiated, is truly devilish enough to warrant inclusion on these pages.

During an interview last week on NBC Nightly News, Sarah Palin, while previously reluctant to release her medical records, promised Brian Williams they would be made public “within the week”.

Tonight, Williams made a point of noting the promise had not been kept. When McCain’s campaign was contacted to find out why, NBC was told the records would be released “when they were ready to release them”.

Palin is quite obviously in excellent health. Why, then, are her minders so reticent to release her records?

It leaves Sparrow Chat considering an evil thought: is there, perhaps, an abortion somewhere in her murky past they don’t want us to know about before the election?

Filed under: Just another hunch

Posted under Sparrow Chat

I was recently directed, by a post on “Vineyard Views”, to an article in the New York Times by David Brooks. I’m not a fan of David Brooks, his views tend to congregate at the opposite end of the pole to mine, and this particular piece, entitled, “The Behavioral Revolution”, went all round the houses to state what, in my opinion, was already fairly obvious.^[1]

Much of Brooks’s article, which was vaguely about the economic crisis facing the United States, consisted of quotes from Nassim Taleb, currently a Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at New York University’s Polytechnic Institute. Taleb wrote the popular book, “The Black Swan”, or, “The Impact of the Highly Improbable,” which received mixed reviews but basically spent four hundred pages stating that the highly improbable is actually quite likely, if you’re just prepared to wait around long enough.

Brooks categorized Talib’s writing as “idiosyncratic”, which would be difficult to debate, except for the comment that eccentricity is markedly preferable to Brooks’s own shortfall of inevitably stating the obvious.

It was not a quote of Talib that caught my attention, however, but Brooks’s final paragraph – or, at least, part of it:

“This meltdown is……a big, whopping reminder that the human mind is continually trying to perceive things that aren’t true, and not perceiving them takes enormous effort.”

The sentence itself is hardly worthy of a place on Quotes.Com, but there is a comparison to be made between the apparent inability of those in government and on Wall Street to forecast the present financial crisis – by virtue of them persuading themselves all was really hunky-dory and there was absolutely nothing could go wrong because they were far too brilliant and intelligent to allow it – and the impending catastrophe waiting in the wings to wipe us all off the face of the earth rather quickly, in the form of global warming.

Do we really need Brooks to remind us of this most obvious quirk of human nature? After all, our whole existence is based around perceptions of things that aren’t there. I well remember my old science teacher, a man of stentorian tones, teaching the class that everything was made of particles in a constant vibratory state, “If you magnified my desk sufficiently, boy,” he boomed, “you could drive a double-decker bus though the gaps between the atoms!”

While physics has moved on a bit since those days – they’ve added a few quarks and leptons to the mix – the basic premise remains the same. Our eyes, hands, ears, nose, and mouth respond to electromagnetic stimuli that our brain translates into the solid world discerned by our senses.

In other words, we spend our whole lives perceiving things that aren’t true. Add to that another perceived fiction, that because we’ve invented computers and sent a man to the moon we’re somehow capable of solving all the problems in the universe without recourse to recreational drugs, and you have the perfect recipe for pandemonium.

The well-documented problem with the human species is its inability to grasp simple inevitabilities. The Wall Street crash was one of them. Global warming is another. It doesn’t matter how obvious are the signs, or how loudly the experts scream of impending doom, as a species we bear a remarkable resemblance to the proverbial ostrich. We bury our heads in the sand and hope it will go away. When it doesn’t, we react with great alacrity to rectify the problem, then scratch our heads in astonishment when we inevitably fail.

The current crisis that has set the world rocking on its financial heels will continue to cause misery and poverty for years to come. It is as nothing compared to the major catastrophe presently bearing down upon us; a crisis, once again, that many are refusing to believe exists, and those that do are banally writing articles like this one while still driving their fossil-powered cars every day and waiting in vain for “someone” to sort out the problem.

Every day, catastrophic events occur around this planet that are forecast long in advance. In the last few years: the Asian tsunami, a catastrophic hurricane striking New Orleans, and now the financial meltdown. With the possible exception of Hurricane Katrina, our response to these is always magnificent. We are great responders. Unfortunately, our species is rubbish at taking preventative actions.

Global warming is the big one. Compared to it, every other catastrophe ever to strike human beings on this planet will be insignificant.

We know it’s going to happen. We are aware of it already occurring, but what are we doing as a result of this knowledge?

Arguing over who has the rights to mine fossil fuels lying under the newly exposed Arctic ocean.

David Brooks and I will always be at opposite ends of the pole. His view of life is as different from mine as a coal-fired power station is to a wind-farm. Out of all he’s written, we have managed to agree on one sentence: the human mind is continually trying to perceive things that aren’t true, and not perceiving them takes enormous effort.

Or, to put it more succinctly, we’re more like the proverbial ostrich, than………the ostrich.

^{[1] “The Behavioral Revolution”, NYT, October 27th 2008}

Filed under: What global warming?

Posted under Sparrow Chat

There was a time when the world observed the United States from a great distance. Fathers and grandfathers remembered old soldiers from the New World they had once fought with against the Germans and the Japanese in two world wars; sons and daughters watched great Hollywood epics, or imported US sitcoms and variety shows, that shaped their view of that continent far away across the sea.

Ask anyone about America, and they’d respond with phrases like, “Statue of Liberty”, “John Wayne”, “Rogers and Hammerstein”, “Maxwell House coffee”, or maybe the occasional, much loved, president such as, “John F Kennedy”, “Eisenhower”, or “Trueman”.

In those days America was known as the home of the brave, the land of the free. It was far away across a wide ocean, yet everyone knew it had a Dream, even though their only knowledge of its people came from those films and TV programs, or the occasional article in a newspaper.

Times have changed; those days are no more. Now, thanks to technological inventions like computers and the internet, America is no longer distant. No more is it separated by a vast expanse of water. The United States and its people are as close – as this:

How degrading; how vile; how utterly embarrassing. Is this how Americans behave towards each other? If this is how they feel about themselves, it’s little wonder they’ve been so cruel and heartless to the Iraqis and Afghans. Those images from Abu Ghraib suddenly begin to make sense.

America is on display, in a way it’s never been before. No more can it hide behind screens of Hollywood celluloid, the “Dick Van Dyke Show”, or the warm fuzziness of, “Little House on the Prairie.” The world is learning what America is really like. Or, at least, the part of it that seems to matter most: the ignorant, the rude, the obscene, the disgustingly arrogant.

I wonder how many old US soldiers are turning in their graves at the behavior of their sons and daughters, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, as they file into their various political rallies today?

Filed under: What happened?

Posted under Sparrow Chat

Here we have a fly. Its name is Drosophila melanogaster. It’s only a little fly; the female is about 2.5mm long, the male even smaller.

Drosophila melanogaster has one great asset for us human beings: around 75% of known human disease genes have a recognizable match in Drosophila’s genetic code, and scientists managed to sequence the fly’s genome almost a decade ago, making it possibly the most perfect living creature for research into the causes and treatments of numerous human diseases.

Among them are: Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease, Alzheimer’s, spinocerebellar ataxia, autism, diabetes, cancer, auto-immune diseases, and even the process of aging.

Probably more medical research is carried out on Drosophila melanogaster, than on any other laboratory creature, even mice.

At the foot of this article is a link to an (incomplete) listing of the universities and research stations around the world using Drosophila melanogaster. It’s a very, very long list.^[1]

Few of us would recognize this creature by its Latin appellation. Most, however, would know it by its more recognizable title – the common fruit fly:

That was the Republican vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, telling a group of parents with special needs children, (IDEA^[2]) how their tax dollars are being wasted on research utilizing Drosophila melanogaster.

She kids us not?

It’s likely, if you vote for John McCain, this woman could become the leader of the free world.

I kid you not.

Is there any more frightening prospect?

^{[1] “Drosophila Research Labs on the Web”}

^{[2] “Building the Legacy: IDEA 2004}

Filed under: No flies on Palin

Posted under Sparrow Chat

“The [UK] Food Standards Agency has today issued a food alert about novelty food products from China, including chocolate-flavoured ‘willy spread’, containing melamine.

Melamine is an industrial chemical that should not be present in food. Milk products containing melamine have been at the centre of a major food incident in China.

An Agency spokesperson said: ‘This is a first. We’ve never had to put out an alert before on “willy spread” – chocolate-flavoured or otherwise…….”

Read more HERE.

Filed under Organ pollution

NOTE: For those innocent North American ladies who read this blog, “willy” is British for a male sex organ. (From the comments, that innocence is more widespread than anticipated).

Posted under Sparrow Chat

Sarah Palin recently told a rally of Republican supporters Obama would “bring socialism to America”. She gave graphic, if inaccurate, descriptions of the effect of ‘big’ government on people’s lives. She said that there were countries with governments like that, and the populace were to be pitied, because they were “not free”.

Over the last few weeks, since the credit and economic crises began to bite, much has been made in the media of its effects on ordinary Americans. Many have been interviewed. By far the most common emotion expressed by American citizens has been fear. Fear of the future; fear of what will happen to them.

In the UK, the crisis is even worse than in America. The British pound is losing value rapidly; the nation’s economy is now officially in recession; property values are falling; unemployment is rising.

As in the US, the British media is given to interviewing ordinary citizens for their reaction to the crisis. The most common emotion expressed is anger. Anger that the rich are once again fleecing ordinary people; anger at the government for using tax-payer’s money to bail out banks.

Fear is not a factor noticeable in the UK.

Why is this? Are the British more stalwart than Americans? Is the famed British “stiff upper lip” simply covering up the real, quivering, terror inside?

Certainly, there’s trepidation. No-one relishes the prospect of unemployment. Thankfully, for the British, they suffer from ‘big’ government. It interferes in their lives, forces social security and unemployment benefits on them in times of crisis. It ensures families are not left to the mercy of volunteers manning soup kitchens, or Christian missions seeking converts. The jobless receive the same free medical treatment as the well paid. ‘Big’ government insists on a safety net to protect those falling on hard times. Rarely will you see beggars on British streets, with boards proclaiming, “Need food, will work” .

Sarah Palin knows as much about ‘big’ government as I know about the workings of a Mars orbiter. She says she’s for the ordinary people of America, yet from the shelter of her own personal financial bastion, works to propagate even more fear.

The British are free; they’re free to be angry at what’s happening.

Americans can only fear for their future.

Filed under: Politics and freedoms

Posted under Sparrow Chat