Author: R J Adams

The demise of Margaret Thatcher, as mentioned in the last post, was not a subject to be pursued further by this author. There is, however, another matter far more serious that’s arisen as a result of her recent death.

Since the 1960s, the BBC has broadcast a weekly “Top of the Pops” program, featuring bands and recording artists whose records have either reached the “Top Twenty” in Britain, or are so successful as to make it just a matter of time before they do so.

Following the death of Margaret Thatcher, one record – a very old one – catapulted its way into these charts at number ten and has now reached the number three position, just twelve thousand copies behind the number one single, P!nk’s “Just Give Me A Reason”. It’s predicted to make the top slot.

Following pressure from high-falluting, right-wing, Tory pressure groups, the BBC has decided not to feature this record, in its entirety, on this week’s program. Instead, they’ll play a five second clip of, “Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead”, from the 1939 movie, “The Wizard Of Oz”, followed by “…a news item during the Radio 1 Chart Show on Sunday.”

The Guardian explains further:

The BBC has taken the unprecedented step of deciding to insert a news story into the show to explain to younger viewers why a track from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz has suddenly leapt into the top 10. Radio 1 has a target audience of 16- to 24-year-olds, none of whom will recall Thatcher’s premiership first hand…Hall [The new BBC director general] went into firefighting mode as soon as the row intensified on Friday with three Tory-supporting papers – the Daily Mail, the Telegraph and the Sun – rounding on the corporation for a plan to play the track. Gerald Howarth, a Tory MP, said it would be a “serious dereliction of duty”.

Hall spoke with the BBC1 controller, Ben Cooper, and the acting BBC director of radio, Graham Ellis, before making the decision not to play the Wizard of Oz song in full…The BBC also took the politically astute step of tipping off John Whittingdale, about their decision. The Tory MP, who chairs the Commons culture, media and sport select committee, was among those calling for the BBC not to play the song.

If it was to get his approval, it worked, as Whittingdale told the Guardian that he thought the BBC had made the “right decision” in difficult circumstances.

“I would have been very unhappy if the chart show was used to make a political point, not to mention the issue of taste. On the other hand, it would have been odd if it didn’t mention it. But putting it into context, I think, on balance, it is a sensible way of dealing with it,” he said…^[1]

A sensible way of dealing with it, or political censorship? Quite obviously, if the song is about to become the top selling record in Britain, it’s because a majority of the British people want to hear it – for whatever reasons. What right do a bunch of Tory MP’s have to block it? And, more importantly, what right has the BBC – an independent broadcasting company paid for by the British public via a licence fee – to demur to their demands?

The BBC may be controlled by a bevy of pseudo-aristocratic layabouts who spend all their time swilling brandy in the posh, Moroccon-bound, armchairs of their Mayfair clubs, but Sparrow Chat isn’t.

Below is the complete version of, “Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead,” and it’s dedicated to all those poor wretches tortured and murdered in Chile under the foul regime of Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte, whose vile death squads tortured and slaughtered thousands of innocents during the military junta’s reign of terror from 1973 to 1990.

Why? Because General Augusto Pinochet was a ‘dear and close friend’ of the late British ex-prime minister, Margaret Thatcher.

Which, perhaps, says more about her as a human being than any of her political machinations ever could.

^{[1] “Ding dong, the … BBC to cut Thatcher protest song short” Guardian, April 12th 2013}

There’s still a strong taboo about speaking ill of the dead. Quite why we should refrain from expressing our opinions when the person involved has had a detrimental effect, not only on our own lives but those of possibly millions of people, is not too clear. But, it’s not considered the ‘done thing’.

As a consequence, Sparrow Chat has passed no comment on the death of ex-British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, though thousands have tweeted, twittered, and generally sounded their displeasure over her policies, since the announcement of her death last Monday.

Perhaps the most galling aspect of her passing is that the present right-wing government of David Cameron is sparing no expense of British taxpayers’ money to lay on a lavish state funeral for the woman. He was quoted in one BBC report as stating, “Margaret Thatcher saved this country…”, though from what it’s hard to imagine.

No doubt the great British public will turn out in their thousands to line the pavements as the cortege wends its way through London’s streets. And why shouldn’t they – after all they are paying for it. Sadly, for many, it’ll not be because they adored Thatcher, but simply that such an event is a novelty not to missed in their otherwise humdrum lives, reminiscent of the knitters at la guillotine.

It will be a moment for the nation to remember Margaret Thatcher, and then forget her again – as we’ve happily done for the last twenty-three years.

Hang on to yer hats. We’re off to war with North Korea. Kim Jong-un is yet another lunatic leader threatening the peace-loving United States, and likely to invade our dear allies in the South at any moment.

America’s Seventh Cavalry, in line with the best traditions of the ‘Old West’, will come riding out of the sunset to rescue South Korean maidens from a fate worse than death at the hands of those filthy, North Korean, commies.

It’s just a pity Slim Pickens isn’t still around to see it.

While Dr Strangelove was intended to satirize the nuclear arms race, the ideal of the “all-American-hero” is just the sort of crazy propaganda the US government is feeding – via mass media – to audiences daily, most of whom are happy to lap up such drivel while reclining in their armchairs after a hard day in front of the college football game.

Warmongers invariably have two weaknesses: arrogance and amnesia. It’s not the done thing to tell the peasants the truth. It’s not considered cricket, among the ruling classes, to contemplate the “other fellah’s” point of view. After all, it may have the effect of illuminating our government’s ideals in a slightly less than perfect light.

Not that this is in anyway to condone the craziness and brutality of the North Korean regime. It isn’t. But when Kim Jong-un came to power his country was under serious western sanctions. They successfully launched a rocket that placed a satellite into orbit, (joining the 70,000 or so already up there, belonging to other nations). Western governments publicly denounced the action as a cover-up for testing a long range missile and increased the severity of the sanctions.

Perhaps understandably, this peeved the North Koreans who retaliated by setting off a large underground explosion at one of their (possibly) nuclear test sites. Western governments denounced this as unacceptable behavior, proclaimed it an illegal nuclear test, and turned the thumbscrews on North Korea a little tighter.

The truth is that no-one, apart from the North Koreans, knows for sure whether it was a nuclear test or not. No radiation was detected, and according to William J Broad of the New York Times (among numerous others):

…As is usual with tests by the secretive North, it was not even clear if the underground test was nuclear, rather than conventional bomb blasts meant to mimic an underground nuclear test.”^[1]

Western media, and in particular the US corporate-controlled channels, have no doubt whatever it was nuclear and happily inform their viewers to that effect, making no mention of any possibility of doubt.

The next event to further upset the North Koreans was the sudden arrival of US Stealth bombers over their airspace. Now, forgive any apparent cynicism, but were the bully in the other schoolyard…so to speak, it’s not hard to imagine the political consternation if North Korean bombers were suddenly spotted over Florida, or, Hawaii, Paris, or London. Yet it’s perfectly okay, in the eyes of the arrogant, to not only employ Stealth bombers to give North Koreans the jitters, but a whole army, navy, and airforce right in their backyard.

And, they make it a yearly event.

Which all begs the question as to whether provoking a war with North Korea is someone’s idea of a good idea.

US Imperialism didn’t die after the Iraq war, anymore than the PNAC gave up and went home to grow potatoes. Those guys, Rumsfeld, Kristol, Kagan, and their multifarious hangers-on, are still around and active behind the political scenery.

World domination was not the exclusive obsession of Adolf Hitler or Alexander the Great. Neither is it today confined to a game played on computer screens.

In the next twelve months thousands of the US military will be returning home to the United States from Afghanistan. Soldiers are only productive when they’re fighting wars. To have them sitting around in their bases costs the nation, and Halliburton, Lockheed Martin, Northrop, and others, lots of money.

Such companies had a lot riding on George Bush’s venture to dominate the Middle East. For them it was a bonanza, even though it didn’t quite turn out as expected.

Messrs Kagan, Rumsfeld, Kristol, and Co no doubt hoped that by now a large portion of the US military would be camped on Iran’s border, on the verge of vanquishing the Iranian regime once and for all. It’s not going to happen. Which is why President Obama is in no hurry to further assist the Israelis with their Iran nuclear problem.

Perhaps North Korea will prove more obliging than Iraq?

It won’t. They said Iraq would be a pushover. It wasn’t. They said Iraqis would welcome them with open arms. They didn’t. Do they think North Koreans will throw flowers under the feet of a US military invasion? They certainly will not.

That’s the trouble with arrogance. It blinds to the “other fellah’s” point of view. Throughout North Korea, from peasant to president, America is considered “the enemy”. If necessary, they will fight to the last man. Though, they probably won’t have to. Those huge, televised, military parades aren’t populated with cardboard cutouts, and the terrain in North Korea makes Afghanistan look like a walk in Central Park.

The United States lost 40,000 men the last time it took on North Korea. And it didn’t win. But that was sixty years ago. Politicians and empire builders are arrogant, and arrogance spawns amnesia. Especially when it’s convenient to do so.

^{[1] “A Secretive Country Gives Experts Few Clues to Judge Its Nuclear Program” New York Times, February 12th 2013}