When I was a young boy, many years ago, the lamps in our street were run on gas. I would enjoy staring out the front window of our house at dusk, watching as the old lamplighter arrived on his bicycle at the street lamp outside our front gate.

I don’t know how old he was, but to me he seemed as ancient as the pyramids. He certainly wasn’t paid very much, for his jacket was dirty and torn and his trousers were held up with string.

He always carried a very long pole, with a hook on the end. At each lamp he’d dismount from his bike, lean it against the lamppost, and with the long pole reach up and pull on a hook just under the lamp glass.

A faint orange glow appeared from the mantle. Then, after a minute or two, it would slowly grow brighter until it shone hot with a yellowy-white light. Once he was satisfied the lamp was properly alight, the old man would climb onto his bike once more and cycle off down the street to the next lamppost.

Technology has advanced enormously since those days, of course. No longer are lamplighters employed to keep our streets illuminated at night. But, for many years after the last lamplighter had retired, it remained common practice to use gas lamps in caravans and mobile homes (trailers or recreational vehicles, in America). There was something very soothing about the soft plop of the gas igniting, the warm orange mantle slowly changing color to a brighter yellow, accompanied by the gentle hissing of the gas. Somehow, it created a sense of wellbeing; a feeling of warm security.

Today, the warm, incandescent electric light bulbs we use in our homes are being replaced. No-one with any sense of responsibility could object to the loss of these energy-guzzling items, but we are utterly complacent in our acceptance of the harsh, ice-cold, deathly blue-white replacements that are being forced upon us.

LCDs, LEDs, curly-wurly monstrosities that resemble the guts of long-dead reptiles glowing with malfluorescence – all designed, it appears, with the intention of turning our once warm and welcoming homes into little better than furnished mortuaries.

Isn’t it time we all made a stand for a better light bulb?

We needed new bulbs in the bathroom. The light fitting is a lovely china antique and housed three ‘candelabra-type’, energy-guzzling, bulbs. While in Lowes Hardware Store recently we saw the ‘latest’ candelabra-type low-energy bulbs. They were quite expensive, but would look good in our bathroom light fitting, so we bought three.

They did look great, but when we flipped the lightswitch they just glowed like anemic fireflies.

At first we thought there must be something wrong with them, but as we stared at these three faint stars in our bathroom heavens they very slowly gained in brightness. Within three minutes the smallest room in our house was ablaze with light.

Unfortunately, unless I’m showering, I rarely spend more than three minutes in the bathroom, and I’d like to see where I’m aiming during that time. The Philips 6TY6s had to go.

But where could they be utilized? No amount of brain-racking could produce a suitable venue for these disparate illuminants…

…unless…a brainwave! We can use them in the bedroom of the trailer, perhaps accompanied by a recorded ‘hiss’ for effect? It may just help to recapture that old gas-light nostalgia of bygone days…

Maybe technology hasn’t advanced so far, after all?

Recently I wrote of the media indignation when images came to light of US marines urinating on Taliban corpses. US television news channels were aghast at the very idea that this nation’s ‘heroes’ could be capable of such behavior.

Back in 2005, when the horrors of the massacre in the Iraqi town of Haditha finally surfaced, and after official US army sources had tried to save face by blatantly lying, the media appeared less keen to broadcast their disgust and indignation.

The army’s initial report stated:

“A US marine and 15 civilians were killed yesterday from the blast of a roadside bomb in Haditha. Immediately following the bombing, gunmen attacked the convoy with small arms fire. Iraqi army soldiers and marines returned fire, killing eight insurgents and wounding another.”

But then a video was discovered that revealed the truth about Haditha.

It showed:

…the bodies of women and children, still in their nightclothes, apparently shot in their own homes; interior walls and ceilings peppered with bullet holes; bloodstains on the floor…

…Twelve-year-old Safa Younis appears on video saying she was in one of three houses where troops came in and indiscriminately killed family members.

“They knocked at our front door and my father went to open it. They shot him dead from behind the door and then they shot him again,” she says in the video.
“Then one American soldier came in and shot at us all. I pretended to be dead and he didn’t notice me.”

There were eight bodies in the house, including Safa’s five siblings, aged between two and 14.

In another house seven people including a child and his 70-year-old grandfather were killed. Four brothers aged 41 to 24 died in a third house. Eyewitnesses said they were forced into a wardrobe and shot.

In the street, US troops gunned down four students and a taxi driver they had stopped at a roadblock set up after the bombing.
According to a witness, they were shot by the side of the road, as they stood with their hands on their heads…”^[1]

This is Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich.

He led the marines that day in Haditha. There was no commissioned officer present.

Wuterich and others were charged with murder. But that was years ago. One by one the charges against the other six soldiers were quietly dropped or dismissed. One was acquitted.

Today, Wuterich walked away free after pleading guilty to, not murder, but ‘dereliction of duty’ in a plea deal.

The outcome of this case has caused uproar in Iraq.

Survivor Awis Fahmi Hussein, who had been shot in the back, said: “I was expecting that the American judiciary would sentence this person to life in prison and that he would appear and confess in front of the whole world that he committed this crime, so that America could show itself as democratic and fair.”^[2]

Was Awis Fahmi Hussein right to have faith in American justice?

You decide.

^{[1] “What happened at Haditha?” BBC, March 10th 2008}

^{[2] “US marine in Haditha case ‘should serve no time’” BBC, January 24th 2012}

^{And further reading on this incident with links to press reports of the time:}

^{“Just Obeying The Rules” Sparrow Chat, October 5th 2007}

You’d not know it from watching the US media, but there’s a presidential election later this year.

Excuse the sarcasm. The US media is, of course, obsessed by the process. It has been for the last six months. To watch any of the news channels one could be forgiven for assuming US politics has only one party.

It’s the Republican primaries – a series of mini-elections to decide who’ll go against Barack Obama in the ‘big one’ next November. Frankly, Obama must be sleeping well at night despite a dismal presidential record during his first term.

Not to put too fine a point on it, all the Republican candidates stink. There’s isn’t one of them fit to govern Robinson Crusoe’s island, let alone the United States of America.

Some of the craziest have fallen at the first fence: the mad woman from Minnesota, Michelle Bachmann, who would turn this country into a Christian Theocracy, failed to achieve support from Republican voters.

Rick Perry succeeded George W Bush as governor of Texas and now hundreds of schools in that state are patrolled by armed police officers.

According to a report in ‘The Guardian” recently:

Each day, hundreds of schoolchildren appear before courts in Texas charged with offences such as swearing, misbehaving on the school bus or getting in to a punch-up in the playground. Children have been arrested for possessing cigarettes, wearing “inappropriate” clothes and being late for school.

In 2010, the police gave close to 300,000 “Class C misdemeanour” tickets to children as young as six in Texas for offences in and out of school, which result in fines, community service and even prison time. What was once handled with a telling-off by the teacher or a call to parents can now result in arrest and a record that may cost a young person a place in college or a job years later.^[1]

Thankfully, Perry has now joined Bachmann in the loser’s enclosure.

Those remaining are a sorry bunch, by any standard short of a gathering of rat-arsed skunks each competing to emit the worst odor. There’s not one redeeming feature between them. The front-runner, Romney, grew stinkingly wealthy by buying up ailing companies and throwing people out of work; Gingrich, who’s chasing Romney’s tail, was forced to resign as House Speaker by his Republican colleagues after eighty-four ethics charges were filed against him. Gingrich later referred to his fellow Republicans as ‘cannibals’.

Third place is presently held by Rick Santorum, another Christian Dominionist, whose best claim to fame was taking his stillborn baby home from hospital so he and his wife could spend the night cuddling the corpse in their bed. It takes a special kind of sickness…

Given the opposition, one can only hope Ron Paul will somehow win the day and become the Republican’s nominee for president, for no other reason than it would set the whole Republican machine into self-destruct. An outspoken Libertarian, much of Paul’s doctrine is in direct conflict with true Republican ideals.

Of course, Americans aren’t so stupid as to vote Paul into the White House, but the resultant furor would at least add some entertainment to what is otherwise likely to prove the greatest media bore of 2012.

^{[1] “The US schools with their own police” Guardian, January 9th 2012}

The horror and indignation spouted by media, politicians, and those who consider themselves of higher-than-average moral caliber, at the sight of US soldiers urinating on their dead Taliban enemies^[1], is yet another smokescreen cast to hide the real truth of life and death on the battleground.

Politicians and others, who require we lesser mortals carry out their dirty work, have long perpetuated the myths of honor on the battlefield, respect for one’s enemies, and the jolly old ‘derring-do’ so prevalent in 20th century boys’ comics.

The reason is all too obvious. War has to be marketed as glamorous and glorious or no-one would do it. No soldier joins up because he wants to be killed, or even accepts he will be – until, of course, he’s suddenly thrown into a war-zone and the realization dawns that it may become a distinct possibility.

Over the last decade, the internet has revolutionized how the public receives information from a warfront, and the American military has had numerous opportunities to exhibit for us the true horror of war. They’ve succeeded splendidly. The atrocities at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and Falluja, are just a smattering of the many horrific acts they’ve displayed for our attention.

This latest act of inhumanity – urinating on those they’ve killed – seems decidedly trivial when compared to the slaughter of innocents regularly perpetrated on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border by those US officials of much higher authority, who sit comfortably in their air-conditioned offices, sipping pina coladas, while guiding pilotless drones to blow up tiny children, young couples about to marry, or women shopping peaceably at a market. But it’s okay to do that. After all, the innocent victims don’t matter. They’re not Americans, are they?

Let’s not lay all the blame at the door of America, though. It’s unfortunate a century that’ll be remembered for its technological advances in communication occurred just as this nation was reaching its most barbarous. Other nations have had their day, and there has never been any war free of atrocities on either side.

In days gone by, many war crimes passed unnoticed, undocumented, the truth only materializing years later. But those that were publicized never failed to draw forth the self-righteous bluster and hypocrisy of the political elite.

Some may consider it strange that war breeds such inhumanity, expecting the human species capable of rising above base, animalistic, tendencies, and none seem so shocked and outraged as those responsible for perpetuating wars.

Perhaps, instead of focusing our distaste on the soldiers who urinated on their dead enemies, we might do better to turn our disgust towards those in power, they who so quickly utilize the media to publicly display their mock outrage, for it is they, indeed, who are the true perpetrators of all war’s inhumanities.

^{[1] US Marines identify Afghanistan ‘urination’ troops” BBC, January 13th 2012}

The US ‘War on Christmas’ is rumbling on for yet another year. As in bygone Christmases it’s fueled largely by the media, as though they haven’t enough bad news to bring us in this so-called ‘festive season’, without resorting to the defamation of a great human festival.

Perhaps if everyone accepted that Christmas, despite its name, is not a uniquely religious festival, there’d be less enthusiasm for ditching it in favor of ‘Happy Holidays’.

Ugh! Happy Holidays. How dreadfully ‘American’.

Christmas (December 25th) was a date purloined by early Christians to celebrate the unknown birthdate of Jesus. Prior to that it was a pagan festival.

As a consequence, in nations with large Christian populations, the date has gradually become regarded as an entirely Christian festival. That’s fine, but it’s still perfectly in order for non-Christians, pagans, and atheists to celebrate Christmas in their own way, and for their own reasons.

For the writer, Christmas is the most special time of year. It has nothing whatever to do with a divinity I choose not to believe in. The magic of Christmas stems from childhood, when Christmas ‘Peace and Goodwill’ abounded throughout the world. Even in the Great War, we were told, Christmas Day was respected as a truce, and enemies put up their weapons and played football together.^[1] Whether more than a grain of truth existed within that story is debatable, but it gave hope that what might be achieved on one day of the year could eventually become the norm on the other three hundred and sixty-four.

It has yet to happen, of course. Indeed, we seem to have moved rapidly in the opposite direction. Materialism abounds, ‘Love thy neighbor’ relates only to wife swapping with the couple next door, and in America, at least, there’ll be more shops open on Christmas Day than are closed.

This year will celebrate my sixty-fifth Christmas. I haven’t enjoyed them all equally, but they have all been special to me. No matter where I am, or who I am with, the magic of Christmas refuses to go away. Why? Because the true meaning of Christmas can’t be found at the office party or in the shopping mall. It’s carried in the heart. I discovered many years ago that magic doesn’t emanate from a god, or from a wizard. It comes from within.

We manufacture our own magic. The magic of Christmas is no exception. If we have it in our hearts, then it matters not whether we are Christian, Muslim, Jew, or atheist. The magic of Christmas can be just as wonderful for all.

I hope all Sparrow Chat readers will enjoy that magic this Christmas.

A Very Magical Christmas To You.

^{[1] “The Christmas Truce” FirstWorldWar.com}

Filed under: Merry Christmas

Pay a visit to the ’100-Acre Wood House’ and savor some more titbits of rural life on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It’s only a ‘click’ away.

Winter comes early on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. This year, ‘early’ meant November 9th! The snow started on Wednesday morning and continued all day. In the space of three hours nature transformed the landscape…

Read more…

For the bureaucrat, the world is a mere object to be manipulated by him. ~ Karl Marx

The US media really loves to hype up a non-story and milk it for all it’s worth. Take the latest sordid little escapade to hit the headlines this week – some guy working as a college football coach is caught touching up little boys in the showers and NBC Nightly News runs with it for five nights in a row as its main story.

Not content with over-reporting the story, NBC arranged a lengthy interview with Jerry Sandusky (the accused coach), asked him leading questions, then broadcast it to the nation.

In the once-Socialist country of my birth, such an act would be considered sub judice and any person or organization attempting NBC’s little stunt would be held in contempt of court, and heavily fined or imprisoned.

Not so in America, where the “First Amendment” takes precedence over justice.

Proving Sandusky guilty or innocent should never be the responsibility of the media. Today, the big corporations who own the TV companies use them as instruments of propaganda; a means to sway the populace to their view. Focusing on stories like this one allows Americans the opportunity to ‘tut-tut’ and express their righteous indignation (which they possess in abundance), while more vital and disturbing news issues are swept under the corporate media carpet.

Many of us have lived our lives in awe of the great naturalist and wildlife presenter, Sir David Attenborough. In his native Britain he is almost an institution.

Now eighty-five years of age, his latest epic series, “Frozen Planet”, is presently being screened on British television. It runs for seven episodes, and records the seasonal changes for animals and fish in both the Arctic and the Antarctic continent.

Despite his advanced years, Sir David was keen to make the series. He saw it as a historic record of an area of the planet that was rapidly changing. He knows, like many scientists, that the ice sheets and the life they support may well be gone in another fifty to one hundred years.

The last episode, “On Thin Ice”, deals extensively with the effects of global climate change. The Discovery Channel is screening the series in the US, but it will be exercising censorship and not broadcasting the last episode. It’s excuse: “scheduling issues”.

How can the Discovery Channel possibly have “scheduling issues” when ninety percent of its programs are repeats, and repeats of repeats?

Britain’s newspaper, the Daily Mail, suggests another reason:

An episode of the BBC’s Frozen Planet documentary series that looks at climate change has been scrapped in the U.S., where many are hostile to the idea of global warming.

British viewers will see all seven episodes of the multi-million-pound nature series throughout the Autumn.

But U.S. audiences will not be shown the last episode, which looks at the threat posed by man to the natural world.

It is feared a show that preaches global warming could upset viewers in the U.S., where around half of people do not believe in climate change…In the U.S., Frozen Planet is being aired by Discovery. They were involved in the joint-production of the series. Yet they are still refusing to accommodate Frozen Planet in its entirety…The timing of a one-sided global warming programme could be particularly sensitive in the U.S., where climate change is an issue in the presidential race.

GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry accuses climate scientists of lying for money.

A poll earlier this year found that the majority of Americans believe that if climate change does exist, it is not caused by humans.

Fifty-three per cent of Republicans say there is no evidence of climate change, while the number is far higher among Tea Party supporters, with 70 per cent saying the theory is ‘junk science’ pushed by groups with a vested interest.”^[1]

The Daily Mail has got it partly right.

The truth is that corporations have spent millions of dollars convincing the US public that climate change is not happening. They’ve used their media outlets, like NBC, to great effect. They’re not going to have all their hard work undermined by some trumped-up British knight who just happens to know what he’s talking about, and can voice it very persuasively.

Consequently, US viewers will be allowed to view images of cute creatures doing their thing, for six episodes. They will be deliberately prevented from hearing and seeing what will happen to those same creatures, and many others elsewhere on the planet before the end of this century, as climate changes destroys their habitat, because those who own and manipulate the Discovery Channel don’t wish them to know.

Apparently, the First Amendment doesn’t cover, ‘Freedom to See and Hear’.

^{[1] “Climate change episode of Frozen Planet won’t be shown in the U.S. as viewers don’t believe in global warming” Daily Mail, November 15th 2011}

Filed under: Brainwashing

Take a tour round the NBC Nightly News website, or suffer thirty minutes of their evening program, and you’ll be left with more questions than answers. For twenty minutes of the show Brian Williams will display to you all the nasty things currently occurring in or around America. But the last short segment always praises some lone US individual doing something ‘good’ or unselfish, even if usually irrelevant, for some other lone US individual, or small group of US individuals. It’s all designed to make you feel it’s ‘Making A Difference’, even if, in the great scheme of things, it’s making absolutely no difference at all.^[1]

Have you noticed how, whenever the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protestors come up in the media, (or, are deigned to be noticed by right-wing politicians) one of the key questions raised is: “What do they want?”

Recently, NBC Nightly News drew on the services of an ‘expert’ in the field to assess the potential impact of this large group camping out in a New York park, and elsewhere around the country. His assessment was that, ‘they needed to identify what it is they want’. They all seem, he said, to want different things.

What the f**k! No, they all want the same thing. They all want a fair and just society. They all want to stop being shafted by greedy wankers whose sole purpose in life is to rob the ordinary people of their hard-earned cash, so said greedy wankers don’t have to do a day’s honest labor in their lives.

They all want back their tax money that was given away, first by George W Bush and then Barack Obama, as so-called ‘bail-outs’ to a load of stinkingly-wealthy bankers whose immediate reaction was to pay themselves and their buddies obscene amounts of said tax money as ‘bonuses’ for doing sweet F.A., while congratulating themselves on how bloody clever they’ve been at swindling the government into giving them so much of other people’s cash.

They all want an end to the blatantly immoral practices of price-hiking and profiteering that puts profits before people.

Tonight, NBC Nightly News ran a segment explaining how a congressional investigation had revealed shortages in vital cancer drugs, caused by certain companies buying up these drugs at cut-price ($12 per phial), pushing up the price by creating a shortage, then selling them to cancer centers and hospitals at highly inflated prices ($950 a phial).

It doesn’t just happen with cancer drugs, such practices are prevalent throughout America and condoned by politicians, many of whom are happy to assist in pocketing the profits. It’s become ‘clever’ to make a buck (or, maybe, a million) at someone else’s misfortune.

“Fuck you, Jack, I’m alright.” I think I’ve written about that before.

One piece of ‘cheering’ news tonight, according to NBC, was recent action by the government to force cell phone companies to ‘inform’ their customers when they’re about to go over their monthly ‘limit’. Now, they’ll have to let you know if you’ve texted your boy/girl friend too many times, before charging you horrendously for daring to use their product too frequently. Anchor Williams was fairly brimming with public bonhomie as he cheerily passed on this news. Nowhere was there any suggestion the cell phone companies might, perhaps, simply lower their grossly inflated charges. Oh, no, that wouldn’t be American.

The good people occupying a New York park have had enough. They want an end to it. They all want an end to it. They want to live in a decent, fair, society. They want back their houses that the crooked bankers stole from them with worthless mortgages; they want some of the debt repaid that greedy finance houses imposed on them with credit card rates in excess of twenty-five percent, when the bank rate was 2% or less; they want to visit a doctor or a hospital without having to bankrupt themselves; they want to go to college and university without a lifetime of debt hanging over their heads; they want back the income stolen from them by racketeers and pension fund managers who bought out their workplaces for a quick profit then closed them down, or the corporates who sacked them and moved their factories to cheap-skate China.

Most of all, they want back the America, and its values, their fathers and grandfathers fought and died for in World War II.

What part of that does NBC and its ilk not understand?

^{[1] NBC Nightly News (No need for any date – it’s the same every night!)}

Filed under: Hear no sense, see no sense, speak no sense

Pay a visit to the ’100-Acre Wood House’ and savor some more titbits of rural life on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It’s only a ‘click’ away.

I’d love to meet the Chinese gentleman whose only identity, to those of us in the West, is ‘L22′. I’d love to kick his sorry butt all around the Oriental workplace where he’s employed as a quality control inspector.

‘L22′ works in a Chinese generator factory. He must have been taking a nap when ours came along. Though, he woke up just long enough to slap his sticker, “Inspected by: ‘L22′,” on it as it passed him by…

Read more…

The protesters who make up “Occupy Wall Street” are ‘scum’, a ‘mob’, ‘the great unwashed’ …and similar, according to many right-wing politicians and media companies.

The ‘Tea Party’ has called comparisons between itself and ‘Occupy Wall Street’, “…insulting”.

Perhaps, it’s just a question of perspective?

New York’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, was quoted recently in the Wall Street Journal, as saying:

The bottom line is – people want to express themselves. And as long as they obey the laws, we’ll allow them to. If they break the laws, then, we’re going to do what we’re supposed to do: enforce the laws.”

Note: “…as long as they obey the laws, we’ll allow them to.”

How nobly arrogant of you, Mayor Bloomberg. So long as people are law abiding, you’ll allow them to go about their business.

Isn’t that their right?

The First Amendment states: “Congress shall make no law…prohibiting…the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

It makes no mention of any time factor. It does not state that they should all go home within one hour, or after three days, or, whenever.

Therefore, Mayor Bloomberg, for you to state you will allow them to express themselves is to suggest you, personally, are above the US Bill of Rights, that you have the power – should you choose to exercise it – of negating the Bill of Rights.

The truth, of course, is that you are one of the ’1%’.

You, Mayor Bloomberg, are as much a part of the ‘Wall Street’ these people seek to occupy, as any of these goons:

In case any readers are unfamiliar with these fine, upstanding, individuals, they are Brian Moynihan (CEO Bank Of America), Lloyd Blankfein (CEO Goldman Sachs), and Jamie Diman (CEO JPMorgan Chase).

Mayor Bloomberg’s fortune (now estimated at $18.1 billion dollars) was initially accrued when he was sacked from the Wall Street investment bank, Salomon Brothers (later, part of Citigroup) in 1981, with a $10 million dollar pay-off. He used the money to start a new company, Bloomberg L.P..

Merrill Lynch was his first customer.

So the ’1%’ are graciously “allowing” the other 99% to continue their peaceful protests in New York, provided, of course, no law is broken in the process.

One is left wondering when Diana Taylor, Mayor Bloomberg’s domestic partner, and herself the former New York State Superintendent of Banks, will turn to him and suggest that, “they can all eat cake.”

Filed under: Goontown Rats