In these days of economic gloom and dark political intrigue, Sparrow Chat would like to take this opportunity to wish Barack Obama, the President of the United States of America, a very happy Christmas.

The White House

Pennsylvania Avenue

Washington, D.C.

Sir,

On behalf of me and mine, I would like to wish you and yours a very happy Christmas. I will refrain from including the part about ‘a prosperous New Year’ as, in your case, that is already a forgone conclusion.

Unfortunately, for many of the citizens you represent it will not be the case. Millions have no work, many have lost their homes to foreclosures, those who are sick and cannot afford health insurance are unable to seek treatment.

No doubt, this Christmastide you’ll raise a glass and laud your victory in extending unemployment benefit, but at what cost? You signed your Healthcare Bill into law, but at what cost? You brought out measures to help families resist foreclosures, but at what cost?

I will remind you of the cost: you continued the policy of George W Bush and further bailed out the banks and finance houses, with our money, to the tune of billions of dollars. In return, those same establishments ran a ‘robosigning scandal’ that evicted thousands of home-owners who never deserved to lose their homes. The measures you implemented have had little effect on the foreclosure figures – they were down a mere 4.00% in October, and in no part due to your measures. Those measures may have had better teeth had you not caved to the demands of the ultra-right.^[1]

The healthcare bill you appear so proud of is little more than a Christmas gift to the insurance industry. The ‘public option’ – its glorious centerpiece – slid unceremoniously into a deep muddy hole in the cemetery of Republican indifference, even before those who might mourn it were aware of its passing.

Still, you did achieve a thirteen month extension of unemployment benefit, so those you are supposed to oppose don’t have to hold freshly picked posies to their noses and walk passed emaciated carcasses of the long-term unemployed, as they wend their way down Pennsylvania Avenue to their posh clubs and Washington dining establishments.

It really wasn’t such a great deal, was it? In return for thirteen months of unemployment benefit you bartered sixty-eight billion dollars in tax relief for the wealthy. Surely, more than sufficient to purchase a plethora of freshly-picked posies, even at Washington prices.

Sir, I have supported you throughout your presidency. For me, like most sane individuals in this nation, it was a breath of fresh air when George W Bush and his entourage of demonic psychopaths vacated the White House, and you moved in.

Let me be fair, you have had some successes, but frankly, those minor victories count for nothing against your latest, and perhaps greatest, political capitulation over the Bush tax breaks. Even your own party has turned against you.

This country needs that the rich and powerful pay their rightful share. In the manner of a true quisling, you denied your nation’s need. Neville Chamberlain, himself, would have been ashamed to know you. The fresh air you brought to the presidency has turned fetid and stagnant.

How easy would it have been to allow the Bush tax breaks to expire at the end of the year, then introduce a bill reinstating tax cuts for the middle class and extending unemployment benefit? Of course, the ultra-right could vote it down, but doing so would show their true colors to the American people.

Sometimes, Mister President, it’s necessary to fight, even when the end result may not be to your liking. It’s called adherence to principle. You, sir, have betrayed the very principles you were elected to uphold.

On behalf of all the homeless, the untreated sick, and the poverty-stricken of this country, I wish you and yours a very happy Christmas.

As you, and Mitch McConnell, and John Boehner, raise your rare cut glasses of fine Cognac and toast each other over the White House turkey, I trust you’ll spare a moment’s thought for those poor, underprivileged, folk who trusted you with their livelihoods. The ones you have betrayed.

Happy Christmas, Mister President.

^{[1] “Foreclosure Activity Falls ‘Artificially’ Due to Moratorium” CNBC, November 11th 2010}

Filed under: Goodwill to all men

“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

I support the whistleblower website, Wikileaks, and I believe Abraham Lincoln would have done so, too.

In any democratic process, the government is elected by the people. Its purpose is to serve the people, to work for the people. All of the people. As soon as government fails to truthfully inform the people, when it begins to lie and hoodwink the people, it is no longer a democratic government. It devolves into a police state, dictatorship, oligarchy, or, as is the case with the government of the USA, a corporate plutocracy controlled by, and for, big business.^[1]

In his novel, 1984, George Orwell describes a totalitarian state constantly creating perpetual war^[2] as an excuse to subject people to mass surveillance and invasive police searches, under the guise of ‘protecting the citizen’.^[3]

It sounds horribly familiar in America 2010. And it’s nothing new. In his 2004 interview with the writer, political commentator, and former strategist for the Republican Party, Kevin Phillips, Bill Moyers laments the passing of the word, ‘equality’ from politics^[1]:

BILL MOYERS: What has happened to the word equality? When you and I were young men in politics it was a common reference in our political discourse. Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, a lot of others too, but you don’t hear it in the political lexicon anymore.

KEVIN PHILLIPS: You hear it in twisted ways. There is a view in some conservative circles that it doesn’t matter much what concentrations of wealth you have or disparities of income. It’s equality of consumption. It’s the right to have Nike shoes, to listen to a boom box, to take a plane ride. And …

BILL MOYERS: Nothing wrong with that.

KEVIN PHILLIPS: Well, no, but on the other hand, that didn’t solve problems in a depression when you had the right to watch a plane fly over Kansas. Or turn on the radio. So you’ve got these different ledgers that are kept. And people that try to say “consumption is the yardstick” usually have it in mind that democracy is not … that income differentials are not, they stand for a different philosophy.”

No more is democracy, or income differential, the yardstick for many of those holding the reins of power in modern-day America.

When those in control of a nation’s media also control its government, any ability to truthfully inform the people of events is lost. The people are fed disinformation designed to control, and suppress dissent. The use of ’embedded journalists’ in Iraq and Afghanistan were, and still are, good examples of media control. The journalist reports what he’s told to report, usually a watered-down, or completely biased, version of events happening on the ground.

To comprehend this, one had only to read the copy of independent journalists in Iraq during the 2003 invasion, and compare them to the Disney-like fantasies of CNN, FOX, and other corporate-controlled media outlets.

Abraham Lincoln had faith in the American people, but he realized they could only act coherently if told the truth, not palmed off with lies and half-truths. In this modern age, mass communication is via television, newspaper, and the internet. Both the former are owned and controlled by corporate plutocracy.

Bill Moyers again:

BILL MOYERS: So what do we do?

KEVIN PHILLIPS: Keep fighting. I think there are signs that it’s turning now. To me one of the most important milestones will be if people, and I include the media here, have the courage to document and put on the front page what they won’t really touch now, which is …

BILL MOYERS: Which is?

KEVIN PHILLIPS: All the examples of the Bush family’s role in the rise of Enron. Here, we’re running around, we’re blaming these accountants, these tricksters that were in Enron, but George W. and George H.W., his father, were very much involved in the whole rise of Enron’s influence and power in this country. But you … you don’t see that. People in the press have a lot of trouble touching these issues right where the rubber hits the road.

BILL MOYERS: Well, when you’ve got anchors making eight, nine, ten million dollars a year, when you’ve got a handful of huge media corporations owning over half of the outlets in this country, do you expect much populism from those people?

KEVIN PHILLIPS: No. And that’s the fundamental problem. How do you get dynasties to talk about other dynasties? I think it’s a real difficulty. Unfortunately, that means that some of us have to start talking about stuff we’d rather not do all the time because if you don’t make a lot of friends by doing it … it’s tough, but a dynasty is a dynasty is a dynasty and these problems are there, and this incredible amount of money is … is just staring this country’s historical role in the face.”

When Wikileaks began publishing secret US government documents, the outcry from the powerful was to brand it ‘traitorous’. American lives would be put at risk, people would die because of the revelations.

To date, no one has died. Wikileaks deletes the names of any individual likely to be harmed by information in the cables.

The internet is the only medium where truth cannot yet be suppressed. If it ever can, those in control will ensure it is. Wikileaks serves as a front page, an uncensored TV screen, where whistleblowers with information the people have a right to know about, but which is deliberately suppressed by governments, can publish it.

Because of Wikileaks, we now know the American atrocities believed to be committed during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars occurred. Before, many were only rumors. The video of a US Apache helicopter gunship slaughtering two Reuters journalists is available for all to see.^[4]

As Kevin Phillips said to Bill Moyers, “To me one of the most important milestones will be if people……have the courage to document and put on the front page what they (the media) won’t really touch now…”.

Some of the people are prepared to do that. Wikileaks gives them the opportunity.

That’s why I support the whistleblower website, Wikileaks, and why I believe Abraham Lincoln would have done so, too.

^{[1] “Transcript: Bill Moyers Interviews Kevin Phillips” NOW, PBS, April 9th 2004}

^{[2] “Locked in an Orwellian eternal war” The Independent (Robert Fisk), February 18th 2001}

^{[3] “Hands-on Airport Searches” Boston Herald, October 26th 2010}

^{[4] “Collateral Murder” Wikileaks}

Filed under: Wikileaks

(From the Paypal Blog)

PayPal statement regarding WikiLeaks

December 3, 2010

PayPal has permanently restricted the account used by WikiLeaks due to a violation of the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity. We’ve notified the account holder of this action.^[1]

‘I wish to state my dissatisfaction with your decision to suspend payments to the Wikileaks website. The loyalty of any business should be to its customers, not the government. If Wikileaks is breaking any law, which is very doubtful, it is for the government to take action against it, not private business.

Wikileaks is merely publishing documents it received. Are you prepared to suspend payments to the Guardian newspaper, or the New York Times, who are equally guilty by your reasoning.

I am one of your customers and I’m disgusted with the PayPal/eBay
management. I will not be using your service again until this matter is resolved.^[2]

PayPal today stated it stopped payments to the Wikileaks website because of pressure from the US Government. The firm’s vice-president Osama Bedier said the company received a letter from a ‘senior official’ at the US State Department saying the website’s activities were illegal in the US.

US Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Philip Crowley has accused Mister Bedier of lying.

According to the BBC:

US Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Philip Crowley tweeted: “The US government did not write to PayPal requesting any action regarding #WikiLeaks. Not true.”^[3]

Who is telling the truth?

^{[1] “PayPal statement regarding WikiLeaks” PayPal Blog, December 3rd 2010}

^{[2] Email from R J Adams (Sparrow Chat) to PayPal, December 8th 2010}

^{[3] “PayPal says US advised it to stop Wikileaks payments” BBC, December 8th 2010}

Filed under: Wikileaks