Author: R J Adams

For 12-year-old Yasmin, 10-year-old Elizabeth, and 8-year-old Vicente Herrara, US President Barack Obama’s latest attempt to secure the Latino vote will make no difference whatever.^[1]

Along with approximately two thousand other children – all US citizens – the president’s latest ‘executive order’, allowing illegal immigrants between the age of 16 and 30 to remain in the United States, provided they’ve been here at least five years, does not apply to them. Not only are they too young to be affected by the order, but they’ve already been deported to Mexico.

Sparrow Chat recently highlighted the plight of children like Yasmin, Elizabeth, and Vicente, following a somewhat unsympathetic report by the CBS Evening News.^[2]

This latest executive order is Obama’s 129th of his presidency. We haven’t heard very much about the others, but a perfunctory glance at the list clarifies why. The vast majority don’t appear worthy of the paper they were written on.^[3]

This one is different. There’s an election in the offing. ‘Executive Order number one hundred and twenty-nine’ is nothing more or less than a piece of blatant electioneering. The incumbent needs the Latino vote if he has any hope of holding onto the White House. This little piece of bribery may well secure those votes.

It’s a pity he’s not prepared to allow the return of two thousand US kids exiled to Mexico. Of course, that would mean allowing their parents to return also, and that could lose him votes from states bordering on Mexico. So, no chance. Yasmin, Elizabeth, and Vicente remain stuck in a strange land where they don’t belong, with a language they don’t understand, trying to get an education in schools where the only language they do understand is not spoken.

President Barack Obama could have signed an executive order giving the parents of US citizens the right to live in the United States. Is that asking too much? He could have signed an executive order closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, as he promised to do. Was that asking too much? He could have signed an executive order mandating a public option for healthcare, as he promised to provide. Was that asking too much?

In fact, he could have signed executive orders for lots of things the Republican leadership have blocked in the House, but he didn’t. Instead, he cow-towed to McConnell and Boehner, gave in to their demands and got nothing back in return.

Instead of honoring his promises to the people who voted him into office, he turned himself into a George W Bush on steroids, even to the extent of taking a personal decision as to who would live and who would die in the next drone strike.

It would seem his greatest asset is his ability to sing and dance. He would have made a great entertainer. It’s not too late. A second career, perhaps, if the present one drifts down the tubes after November?

No doubt, Yasmin, Elizabeth, Vicente, and one thousand nine hundred and ninety-seven other young, exiled, US citizens would be happy to sit in the audience and applaud an ex-president who can tell a joke and sing a song – in the unlikely event there is ever a future US president with sufficient compassion to place their happiness and welfare above a selfish desire to secure a few more votes.

^{[1] “Obama ends young migrant deportations” BBC, June 15th 2012}

^{[2] “America – Something Is Sadly Lacking’ Sparrow Chat, May 8th 2012}

^{[3] “Current List of President Obama’s Executive Orders” 1461days.blogspot.com}

I’m tired of reading the same old drivel from left-leaning websites. Take “Common Dreams’, for instance, or ‘FAIR’. Every week a synopsis of their latest articles appears in my email inbox. I open them up, and what do I find?

The exact same stuff I got last week, and the week before, and the week before that…

Oh, sure, the titles change, and even the writers, but the content never varies. Anti-right wing rhetoric reigns, okay!

Why do they bother? Do they think they’re actually informing us? Their only readers are people the right-wing media define as ‘leftists’. ‘Common Dreams’ and ‘FAIR’ are preaching to the already converted.

Do they truly believe the rampant right of the Tea Party faithful are slavering at the mouth every week in eager anticipation of the latest offerings from CD or FAIR?

Similar stuff is churned out by the left-wing media channels every night. Does anyone manage to sit through a whole evening of MSNBC, without turning to drink?

But, I hear you cry, what about the stuff peddled by Fox News and others of its right-wing ilk? Isn’t that just as bad?

Of course it is. Only someone three nuts short of a spanner would argue it wasn’t. Just as many Americans tune in diligently to the words of O’Reilly, Cavuto, or Wallace, as are mesmerized by Lawrence, Maddow, or Schultz.

The problem is that supporters never have any interest in what the ‘other’ side is saying. They’re faithful only to their own team. The consequence, at least where political issues are concerned, is that neither side gets any useful education, only more and more indoctrination.

The competitiveness bred into Americans, and fostered throughout their school years, has been cleverly manipulated to develop a ‘team syndrome’ that firmly establishes two distinct political camps.

Like a ball game, supporters of each side occupy separate areas of the ground and taunt each other, cheering on their own side while booing the opposition.

The end result is ignorance of the true political scene and, in particular, how the country is run. Nowhere is this ‘team syndrome’ more obvious than on the issue of healthcare. Supporters of the political right, even those in the most dire need, are prepared to give up any chance of affordable healthcare rather than be unfaithful to the political party they’ve always supported.

Alexander Pope told us ‘a little learning is a dangerous thing’, but his poem failed to point out that no learning at all is way more foolhardy.

Until Americans stop slouching on their sofas all evening absorbing the doctrines of Fox or MSNBC, and began to properly educate themselves on just what their elected leaders are doing to their country, the only winners will be the media bosses, wealthy politicians, and those well-rewarded for spending their time ‘educating’ us as to how awful the other ‘team’ is.

The last post on Sparrow Chat dealt with the present unhappy situation in Syria. Western news media – particularly in the United States, and to a lesser extent the UK – seems hellbent on presenting a black-white image of the conflict: yet another uprising of the people against a brutal dictator.

“Bashar al-Assad must go,” were the recent words of Hilary Clinton, the US secretary of state.

The question we should be asking is, why is she so keen for regime change, when the result would undoubtedly be another failed Islamic state?

To answer that question, first, we must ask, “Who are al-Nusra?”

Al-Nusra has risen to prominence in Syria since the beginning of this year. They admit responsibility for many of the bombings since the start of the uprising in March 2011. They are a Muslim jihadist group almost certainly with links to al Qaeda.

According to a BBC report:

The bombings and al-Nusra’s statements have also caused many to believe the group is linked to al-Qaeda.

Evidence to support this include the fact that al-Nusra claimed in its first video that its members included Syrian jihadists who had returned from fighting on other battlefronts.

This might have been a reference to Iraq, given suspicions by Western officials during the height of the insurgency there that militants were being armed by Syria and allowed to pass through its territory.

The Iraqi interior minister said in February that he believed militants were now travelling from Iraq to Syria.

That same month, the leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, encouraged Syrians and militants based in neighbouring countries to take up arms for the Syrian cause.

Additionally, al-Nusra’s media output has been distributed via online media outlets used by al-Qaeda.

However, neither al-Qaeda nor al-Nusra have mentioned one another in their propaganda, suggesting that if there are any links they are deliberately being played down.

Regardless of whether or not there is an al-Qaeda connection, al-Nusra’s ideology is clearly jihadist.

Although its primary target remains Syrian security forces and pro-government militia, it has referred to the US and Israel as enemies of Islam, and has attacked the beliefs of other religious groups in Syria, including the Alawites.

In a recent video that was filmed in a mosque, a cleric brandished an assault rifle and told his audience that jihad was a “house built upon blood, body parts and skulls”.”^[1]

Apart from a brief mention in the Huffington Post in May, to date there has been no mention of al-Nusra from any of the major US news media outlets. Is this because the US government prefers the American public remain unaware of jihadist groups operating in Syria? It might be embarrassing for the US Administration were it to become general knowledge that, at least with regard to Syria, the American government had the same aim as al-Qaeda – the overthrow of the regime.

Jon Williams is World News Editor for the BBC. Today, he posted a report from Damascus on the situation in Syria (the bold is mine):

…In the aftermath of the massacre at Houla last month, initial reports said some of the 49 children and 34 women killed had their throats cut. In Damascus, Western officials told me the subsequent investigation revealed none of those found dead had been killed in such a brutal manner. Moreover, while Syrian forces had shelled the area shortly before the massacre, the details of exactly who carried out the attacks, how and why were still unclear. Whatever the cause, officials fear the attack marks the beginning of the sectarian aspect of the conflict.

In such circumstances, it’s more important than ever that we report what we don’t know, not merely what we do. In Houla, and now in Qubair, the finger has been pointed at the shabiha, pro-government militia. But tragic death toll aside, the facts are few: it’s not clear who ordered the killings – or why.

Given the difficulties of reporting inside Syria, video filed by the opposition on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube may provide some insight into the story on the ground. But stories are never black and white – often shades of grey. Those opposed to President Assad have an agenda. One senior Western official went as far as to describe their YouTube communications strategy as “brilliant”.

But he also likened it to so-called “psy-ops”, brainwashing techniques used by the US and other military to convince people of things that may not necessarily be true…”^[2]

The massacres and assassinations being bandied about by Western news media as the acts of ‘a brutal dictator’, bear all the hallmarks of al-Qaeda operations. Indeed, if Assad were responsible, he must be a complete fool, rather than the intelligent, well-educated, individual he is known to be.

If al-Qaeda has moved its center of operations to Syria, then it means the US drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen have been far less successful than the US Administration has suggested. It would also provide an answer to the question asked earlier: why is Hilary Clinton so stridently demanding that Assad must go?

If al-Nusra/al-Qaeda succeed in toppling the regime, the resultant chaos in the country would provide an ideal excuse for intervention by the West. The US has pledged to strike al Qaeda wherever it operates. To do so now, with Assad still in office, would be politically unacceptable, given the stance of Russia and China. With him and his regime overthrown, Arab states like Saudi Arabia would probably beg for Western assistance.

Meanwhile, the Western media paints a vivid, though somewhat less than accurate, scenario of the ‘brutal dictatorship’, to soothe the American public into acceptance of military intervention at a later date.

As Jon Williams states in his conclusion:

A healthy scepticism is one of the essential qualities of any journalist – never more so than in reporting conflict. The stakes are high – all may not always be as it seems.”

And, let’s not forget, the present regime in Syria is one of the few true allies left in the Middle East of America’s number one enemy, Iran.

^{[1] “Syria’s al-Nusra Front” BBC, May 15th 2012}

^{“Reporting conflict in Syria” BBC, June 7th 2012}