sparrow chat

Coming from another country, as I did in 2002, it’s easy to discern certain factors that most Americans never stop to consider. They’re just too close to them – can’t see the wood for the trees, you might say.

I’ve had occasion to visit the local hospital recently. Nothing serious, you understand. My wife needed a minor procedure, and as one matures, general servicing has to become a little more frequent to keep everything running normally.

I was struck by the large number of elderly ladies acting as volunteers in the hospital. At first, it wasn’t something I questioned. The British NHS uses voluntary labor to assist with patient management. It helps keep the costs down.

Then it struck me. This is not an NHS hospital, it’s a private company. Admittedly, it designates itself a ‘not-for-profit’ concern, but according to figures gleaned from the internet (the only ones I could find), this particular company:

…..budgeted a total net profit of $7.4 million [in 2004], and expects to build its cash position beginning in fiscal 2005.”

Now that’s not bad for a private enterprise desperately attempting to make no profit.

The hospital has expanded enormously since 2004, opening ‘branches’ throughout the town and surrounding areas. No doubt, they would point this out as resulting from the $7.4 million, but it’s unlikely these branch clinics lose them money. Few companies in healthcare go bust from expansion.

So, while the army of elderly volunteers marching around the hospital corridors with bemused patients in tow, or registering family members waiting for news of their sick relatives welfare, are keeping themselves busy and possibly preventing the onset of senile dementia, they’re also responsible for swelling the queues of unemployed citizens waiting for benefits, or hanging round street corners all day with nothing to do.

Perhaps, these elderly volunteers should accept retirement gracefully, spend their time knitting socks for the grandkids, or assisting local charities, and force the hospital authorities to pay working people to fill those jobs that, to date, they’ve been getting done for nothing?

Filed under: No-cost labor

It must have taken a lot of beer to compose and record this song.

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Filed under: Greatest hits

There’s a problem in Israel right now. It’s been getting worse for some time. The Israeli government is desperate to do something about it.

The problem: not enough Jews and too many Gentiles.

The influx of Jewish immigrants into Israel has been declining year on year. Non-Jewish foreign workers have increased, particularly since the last Intifada, following which Palestinians were less welcome on Israeli streets, and in their factories.

Compounding the decline of Jewish immigration, has been an upsurge in the practice of non-Israeli Jews marrying Gentiles – upwards of 50%, according to some sources. ‘Mixed’ marriages are not welcomed in Israel.

Last year, the Israeli government launched an ad campaign to coerce Israelis with Jewish friends and relatives overseas to inform on them, if they were in danger of marrying outside their religion.

According to one Israeli journalist:

The advertising campaign is directed particularly at Jews in the United States and Canada, whose combined 5.7 million Jews constitute the world’s largest Jewish population. Most belong to the liberal Reform stream of Judaism that, unlike Orthodoxy, does not oppose intermarriage.

One-third of Jews in the diaspora are believed to have relatives in Israel.

According to the campaign’s organisers, more than 200 Israelis rang a hotline to report names of Jews living abroad after the first TV advertisement was run on Wednesday. Callers left details of email addresses and Facebook and Twitter accounts.

The 30-second clip featured a series of missing-person posters on street corners, in subways and on telephone boxes showing images of Jewish youths above the word “Lost” in different languages. A voiceover asks anyone who “knows a young Jew living abroad” to call the hotline. “Together, we will strengthen their connection to Israel, so that we don’t lose them.”^[1]

So keen is the Israeli government to persuade new Jewish blood into the country, it funds a Jewish charity, ‘Birthright Israel’, to promote free, ten-day, visits for young Jews – principally from North America – in the hope some will settle permanently.

No expense is spared to persuade these kids. Birthright Israel has flooded YouTube with videos designed to attract young Jews to the country.^[2]

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And, you may ask, what’s wrong with that? Let the kids have a good time, and if some decide to make Israel their home in the future, so what?

The reason Israel is so keen to attract more Jews to the country is because the government is scared stiff the Arab populace will increase faster than the Jewish population.

It already is; in 2008, Arabs accounted for 20% of the Israeli population. It’s estimated that by 2030 that figure will have risen to 24%. The median age of the Jewish population is 31; that of Arabs, 20.^[3]

But there’s another, more sinister, aspect of this impending population crisis.

These are four little Israeli girls. They are all about eight years old and they were all born in Israel. They think, speak, and dream in Hebrew. After the intifada, foreign workers poured into Israel from Thailand, the Philippines, and north-east Africa. No-one tried to stop them; Israel needed foreign workers desperately.

Now, the government of Netanyahu intends to deport all illegal immigrants by 2013, and drastically cut the number of legal, non-Jewish, foreign workers in the country. It’s another way of ensuring Israel remains Jewish.

These four little girls and their parents face deportation at the end of the 2010 school year, along with over 1,000 other children, all born in Israel.^[4]

According to Israel’s Interior Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, Eli Yishai, these foreign workers………

…..threaten the Zionist project of the State of Israel.”

Isn’t it all mildly reminiscent of Germany in the 1930’s? Only there, it was the glorious Aryan race that was promoted.

There were no gas chambers, then, either.

^{[1] “Israeli Ads Warn Against Marrying Non-Jews” Countercurrents.org, September 8th 2009}

^{[2] “The Arab Population in Israel 2008″}

^{[3] “Birthright Israel”}

^{[4] “Israel’s immigrant children fight deportation” BBC, February 22nd 2010}

Filed under: The face of tyranny

A nation state can assassinate a human being with impunity, and on a whim, yet when a man chooses to end the unbearable suffering of one he loves, he is arrested for murder.

The brutal killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a Hamas leader, in Dubai last month was undoubtedly carried out by Mossad, the Israeli ’secret service’. No recriminations will result. Britain, and a few other nations whose passports were forged by the Israelis, will mumble and moan and demand inquiries that get nowhere, but Israel will shrug its shoulders, commend its agents for a job well done, while raising an index finger to the rest of the world.^[1]

I remember Ray Gosling as a young, regional TV reporter for our local British news service. I was only a lad at the time and he was beginning a career that never made him an international star, or even a great national personality, but he did present hundreds of documentaries on UK television and radio, many championing the causes of common people.

Ray was homosexual and much of his life was spent campaigning for gay rights. When his partner was diagnosed with AIDs, he made Ray swear a pact that he would not allow him to suffer. Later, in the hospital and in terrible pain, and when the doctors could do no more for him, Ray took a pillow and smothered his partner. It was his last act of love for the person who, in his own words, ‘he loved to bits’.

Ray Gosling is now seventy years old. Following his admission on the BBC’s Inside Out program on Monday, of his act of euthanasia, he was today arrested and charged with murder.^[2]

We are, at best, a strange species.

^{[1] “Israel says no proof it carried out Hamas Dubai killing” BBC, February 17th 2010}

^{[2] “Murder arrest over Ray Gosling’s BBC confession” BBC, February 17th 2010}

Filed under: Thou shalt not kill?

There’s a saying somewhere in the Bible, “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.” I’m sure there’s plenty of holy bods out there who could quote me chapter and verse. I was reminded of it yesterday when I read two articles, one by a professional journalist whom I have no compunction about naming and shaming, and another by a UK blogger, who generally writes quite sane stuff, so must be allowed the occasional aberration, and will remain anonymous.

Bruce Anderson is not the sort of writer with views one would expect to find expressed in ‘The Independent’. However, it is one of the better journals and as such must remain open to all points of view. Anderson’s first sentence expresses his disgust for torture. “Torture,” he writes, “is revolting.”

He continues in similar vein:

Torturers set out to break their victim: to take a human being and reduce him to a whimpering wreck. In so doing, they defile themselves and their society.”^[1]

There is nothing I would disagree with in his first paragraph, but sadly the next twelve hundred or so words set out exactly why Anderson believes modern day societies should use torture to elicit information from their enemies.

“Men,” he proclaims, “cannot live like angels.”

Presumably, in Bruce Anderson’s world, that frees them to behave as barbarians?

Or, is he perhaps merely more astute than the rest of us? Have we, as a species, already reached our limit of respectability, and begun the inevitable descent back into animalistic barbarism?

Only this morning the BBC News announced a major Taliban chief had been captured in a joint Pakistani/American venture on the Afghanistan border. According to the BBC, the gentleman concerned was “providing valuable intelligence”.

Presumably, he wasn’t sitting down taking tea with Asif Ali Zardari and Stanley A. McChrystal, sharing a joint, and happily spilling the beans over Taliban positions, so we can safely assume he was “being reduced to a whimpering wreck,” to coin Anderson’s own phraseology.

The author himself unknowingly stifles his own argument. Torture is not a ‘one-off-for-a-unique-set-of-circumstances’ option. It isn’t being held in abeyance pending the remote possibility a terrorist, having planted an atomic weapon in New York, will fall conveniently into the hands of the CIA.

Anderson is quite specific: those who use torture defile themselves and their society. That fact alone is reason never to use torture under any circumstance. As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are proving, a ‘one-off’ gravitates to ‘routine’, and ultimately torture techniques are rewritten into the codes of war.

“As ye sow, so shall ye reap.”

Yesterday, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament reared its head in Britain by blockading a nuclear weapons site where warheads for Trident submarines are made. This prompted the author of one of my regular blog-reads to comment on the matter:

In an age where the boundaries between the goodies and the baddies are no longer clear-cut or identifiable, when countries filled with people who have not only made it pretty clear that they hate anything Western and will happily die in the process of taking a few Westerners down with them are slowly acquiring the technology that will enable them to build their own nuclear weapons and when there’s never been a time when nuclear material has been less clearly accounted for, then it might be argued that it’s probably sensible to ensure we’re at least on something of a level playing field…………….the countries that have their own weapons at least have the capacity to make the aggressors stop and think. And that may be all we can hope for.”

The writer is entitled to the opinion he expresses, and puts forth sane and sensible arguments, though in his reference to terrorist organizations, I doubt they would ’stop and think’, and even if they did it’s unlikely to deter them from any action, martyrdom being such a valuable asset to these religious cranks.

My reason for quoting from his article is simply to make the point that we wouldn’t have this nuclear dilemma if power-hungry governments hadn’t rushed to develop the atomic bomb in the first place.

A strong movement arose after WW2 demanding the end to nuclear weapons. It resulted in various agreements, not least the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968, that opened the road to eventual nuclear disarmament, if only nations had cared to venture down it.

None have; instead, a free-for-all has developed and everyone now wants to be nuclear armed. The NPT is dead in the water.

America developed the bomb for short-term gain at the end of WW2. The world is now reaping what it sowed sixty years ago.

Similarly so, with less obvious weapons of destruction such as the internal combustion engine, rampant industrialization, the short-term wealth advantages of deforestation, chemicalized food production, and the myriad of other planet harming projects with which we’ve contaminated ourselves and this planet over the last one hundred years.

“As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” is not just a religious quotation, it ranks with some of the greatest laws of physics.

I see an increase in the use of torture as the inevitable result of escalating war. Shortages of food and water due to climate change, produced by our own ineptitude, will create further conflicts throughout the globe. That is inevitable.

There was a time man at least aspired to be as the angels; it was inherent in all religious creeds. But, like the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Geneva Conventions, and the words of US presidents – “We do not torture!” – that, too, is now dead in the water.

^{[1] “Bruce Anderson: We not only have a right to use torture. We have a duty” The Independent, February 15th 2010}

Filed under: Declining standards

“Ladies and gentlemen……announcing the boxing match of the decade……the fight of the century……a bout to not be missed. Our two contenders for the heavyweight boxing title of the U-nited States are Joe ‘Basher’ Bandylegs and Dick ‘the Dynamo’ Dunderhead. Joe Bangylegs will fight in the St Louis Stadium, Missouri, at 9.00pm, and simultaneously Dick Dunderhead will seek to bring down his opponent at the Long Island Athletics Center in New York. This momentous boxing event will be judged by a plethora of half-baked media pundits who think they know a thing or two about the sport of kings, but who’ll be hampered by that most dreaded of diseases – raging verbal diarrhea……”

What the F***! What is all this rubbish?

Two boxers attempting to fight each other in different stadiums nearly a thousand miles apart? It’s hardly likely to attract a record crowd, now is it? No doubt a few hard-bitten fans of their particular hero would turn up on the night, but most sane individuals must realize you can’t have a proper boxing match when the opponents are in different parts of the country.

Yet this is exactly how the US media set out to portray Sunday’s political programming: one cute little pit-bull terrier, otherwise known as former US vice president Dick Cheney, snapping at the heels of his political opponents on one network, while the resident VP, Joe Biden, chomped away at his opposition on another.

It was always going to be a non-event. But then, American politics is invariably a non-event. On the only occasion both sides actually meet in verbal combat – the later stages of a presidential election – the resulting debate is so tightly scripted and controlled by the corporate media that sparring continues for twelve rounds with hardly a punch being thrown.

In other parts of the world, opposing politicians frequently meet on the TV screen, slugging it out to the finish in a match usually easy to score and occasionally resulting in a knock-out.

Why is this not the case in America?

Could the reality be simply that in this country politicians are, by and large, on the same side? After all, it’s easy to pretend to slag off one’s opponent when he’s not there to defend himself, and no-one’s the wiser when both parties meet up for a friendly drink in the Congressional bar afterward.

It’s all staged for the entertainment of the masses, and to reassure the great unwashed there are still political differences between parties, even though the real truth is, there are not.

Both sides serve the same masters. Only the modus operandi differs.

Still, it was something for Americans to watch, and argue about, after the gloom and depression that inevitably follows on from the Super Bowl.

And, after all, we can always look forward to next week’s exciting non-event.

Filed under: Political indifferences

If you’ve ever stood in the queue at a Walgreens’ pharmacy, waiting to pick up a prescription, you’ll inevitably have noticed the anguish, frustration, or sheer bad temper of some in front of you as they are told their drugs are not covered by a particular insurance company, and the amount they have to find before they receive their medicines is almost enough to fund the purchase of a cheap, second-hand, car.

Yet, these same folks are often the ones attending, and shouting the loudest against healthcare reform, at the local ‘tea-party’ meetings organized by far-right political groups.

In part one of a recent mini-series on BBC Radio Four, Dr David Runciman, a teacher of political theory at Cambridge University, asks why it is the very people Obama’s reforms are most likely to help are often those most vehemently opposed to it.

“Turkeys Voting For Christmas” draws on the theories of various psychologists before Runciman reaches this somewhat vague conclusion:

This is a culture war but it is not simply being driven by differences over abortion, or religion, or patriotism. And it is not simply Red states vs. Blue states any more. It is a war on the entire political culture, on the arrogance of politicians, on their slipperiness and lack of principle, on their endless deal making and compromises.

And when the politicians say to the people protesting: ‘But we’re doing this for you’, that just makes it worse. In fact, that seems to be what makes them angriest of all.”^[1]

Runciman tosses aside the old hot chestnuts of abortion, religion, patriotism, and Red v. Blue, in favor of a ‘less simple’ argument, as though everything is more complex these days than it used to be.

But, is he right to do so?

One aspect of life that has changed in the modern world is our reluctance to still call ‘a spade a spade’. Political correctness, once rightly hailed as a set of rules to safeguard minorities, has escalated to ludicrous proportions. Runciman’s article is most notable for its total lack of the word ‘education’. To suggest the ‘Turkeys’ are voting for ‘Christmas’ because the American education system has for decades been woefully lacking for a majority of its poorer citizens, and that (to put it bluntly) most of them haven’t a clue about politics or its motivations, and have fallen victim to a system of indoctrination designed to control the masses and bend them to the far-right political will, using a combination of US-distorted religion and misplaced patriotism, would perhaps be too politically incorrect for either Dr Runciman, or the BBC.

Nevertheless, to this writer at least, that explanation holds water better than this leaky bucket from Dr Runciman:

If people vote against their own interests, it is not because they do not understand what is in their interest or have not yet had it properly explained to them.

They do it because they resent having their interests decided for them by politicians who think they know best.”

So, the good people of the American ‘Tea Party’ meetings accept the righteousness of a national healthcare system, but don’t want it because they don’t trust the politicians who are prepared to give it to them?

Yet, they support and trust those politicians who blatantly refuse to give it to them. Politicians who number among the wealthiest and most powerful individuals in the country because they’re in the pockets of the corporate elite.

Everyone hates to admit they’ve been brainwashed, so it’s hardly surprising the good people of the USA pooh-pooh the idea that their much vaunted political ideals are anything less than perfect. In the America of the 21st century, and particularly those parts known colloquially as the ‘Red States’, American patriotism is king, and God’s Chosen People are all US citizens.

Once the masses are indoctrinated to believe those two simple lies, manipulation by the wealthy and powerful is simplicity itself; all that’s needed is the merest suggestion that something as benign and beneficial as universal healthcare strikes at the very fabric of American ‘freedom’, that it’s no more than a clever ruse to take power from God Himself and transfer it to a renegade government.

That achievement has taken the efforts of only two Americans: Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck – with a little help from the Fox News Channel.

Reason has flown out the window. Perhaps, it was never in the room at all.

Much criticism is being levelled at the Obama administration for not striking back at the Republican propaganda machine over this issue, but reason is all Obama has to offer. If he stoops to the level of the other side he is no better than they are and risks losing the credibility of those many Democrat voters who long ago cast aside propaganda in favor of individual thought.

In the minds of right-wing Republican supporters, reason is replaced by emotion. One has only to listen for a few minutes to the rantings of Beck or Limbaugh to realize reason has no place in their minds. The emotion they stir is that of fear. Fear of change; fear of the death of ‘old orders’; above all, fear of truth.

Dr David Runciman is wrong to believe the people vote against their best interests from distrust of politicians. It is fear of change that ousts reason; a fear constantly hammered into their skulls by the US media, controlled by those for whom change can only mean the relinquishment of power.

Yesterday afternoon I followed a beat-up old pick-up truck covered in stickers into the local Walgreens’ car park. I needed to collect a prescription.

I breathed a sigh of relief on arriving at the pharmacy counter, as only one person waited to be served. Given the bitterly cold winter weather, bringing the usual crop of colds and coughs, I’d expected a long queue.

The man was probably in his mid-thirties, roughly dressed, cap on back-to-front, and with a good three day growth of stubble.

I heard the pharmacist say to him, “The insurance company won’t cover this antibiotic. If you want it you’ll have to pay $486.00.”

The man’s face darkened with anger and frustration. “Na,” he drawled, “Ah don’t think so……”

It was a brief response. The tone expressed more than the words. The pharmacist stood, silent.

The man repeated himself, “Na, ah don’t think so…….”

Then without another word he turned and stormed out of the building.

I collected my prescription, paid the $12.50 owing, and returned to my car.

I noticed the beat-up old pick-up truck pulling off the car park, and recognized the man behind the wheel, back-to-front cap and three day stubble clearly illuminated by the headlamps of an approaching vehicle.

As the truck pulled away my own headlights shone on the truck’s tailgate, reflecting off one out of half a dozen worn and torn bumper stickers.

It was newer than the rest, and read:

REAL MEN DON’T VOTE DEMOCRAT”

“Na,” I mimicked to myself, “Ya don’t think………do ya?”

^{[1] “Why do people vote against their own interests?” BBC, January 30th 2010}

Filed under: Keep it simple

There is nothing wrong with the Sparrow Chat rss feeds. The problem lies with Bloglines. I’ve used Bloglines as my rss reader for years, ever since it became available. In all that time it has never been updated, changed format, or added extra facilities.

I’ve been waiting a week for Bloglines to respond to my emails for technical assistance. Researching the web reveals many others with similar predicaments.

My patience is exhausted. I’ve transferred to the Google reader.^[1] It allows for the importing of all the feeds in Bloglines, has a host of facilities unheard of in Bloglines, and once its simple functions have been understood, it’s a joy to use.

Those readers of Sparrow Chat, suffering from the cursed red exclamation mark alongside its feeds, may wish to consider making the switch to Google, or another reader. Google has no cursed red exclamation marks. Sparrow Chat’s feeds work fine in all the other readers I’ve checked out.

Sorry, Bloglines, but so far as I’m concerned, you’re deader than Sparrow Chat’s feeds on your site.

^{[1] “Google Reader”}

Filed under: Not keeping up with the Jones’s