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Yet again America displays a total disregard for the rest of the world. For the third time in less than six months US forces have led failed rescue missions to liberate hostages held by al Qaeda. Yesterday (Saturday) was the latest attempt, aimed at freeing American journalist Luke Somers. It failed when the US Special Forces were discovered, and Somers was shot by his captors.

There was another hostage in the compound who also lost his life that night. He was a South African, Pierre Korkie. He and his wife, Yolande, were kidnapped by terrorists in May 2013, in Yemen’s second city, Taiz.^[1]

Pierre Korkie received barely a mention in tonight’s US news bulletin. Most of the reporting was focused on political damage control – how dangerous these missions were; how they could so easily go wrong, etc, etc,.

Yolande Korkie was released unconditionally last January. She’s been campaigning for her husband’s release ever since. He’d worked for a charity, Gift of the Givers, teaching underprivileged Yemeni children. The charity had been negotiating his release for some time and had finalized arrangements with his captors, for a ransom payment of $200,000. Pierre Korkie was to be freed today (Sunday).

Mrs Korkie had hoped to have her husband back with her for Christmas. Instead, all she’ll get is his dead body. An American spokesman said today they knew there was a second hostage in the compound, but had no idea who it was.

Apparently, no-one bothered to ask, despite worldwide news coverage of the negotiations between the charity and Korkie’s captors.

This is yet another example of the US acting unilaterally, unconcerned about treading on anyone else’s toes in the process. On this occasion it caused the needless death of an individual who might otherwise have been at home now in the bosom of his family.

A US administration spokesperson stated they had to move swiftly as they had intelligence Luke Somers was about to be executed. That hardly makes any sense when ISIS has been executing American and British hostages with impunity over recent weeks while both governments have sat back and done absolutely nothing to prevent them.

Perhaps this raid was primarily an attempt to bolster flagging Democrat poll numbers?

If so, it failed in more ways than one.

^{[1] “SABC News: Pierre Korkie” December 8th 2014}

The events in Ferguson, Missouri over the last three months have gripped the media by the throat. The shooting to death of Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson is one of the best known news stories of the period, not just in America, but throughout the world.

Wilson’s account is now common knowledge. Asked by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos if he had any reservations, any sense of guilt or remorse for killing an unarmed man, Wilson was emphatic in his denial. He feared for his own safety, so he shot the man.

Apparently, Wilson was within his rights as a police officer to do just that. Most of the gun nuts in America would agree with him. Wilson said he had no alternative, yet the alternative was obvious. Brown took off and Wilson gave chase on foot. The alternative was to stay in his police car and call for back up. Brown had committed an offense – assaulting a police officer – and could have been picked up at a later time. Instead, Wilson chose to aggravate an already dangerous situation by provoking another one-on-one confrontation with a guy he described as, “a demon”.

Had Wilson not been armed he may well have taken the wiser course, stayed in his car and called for assistance. Brown would later have been arrested, jailed, and the riots, violence, and human suffering of the last three months avoided.

It begs the question: is an individual human life of any consequence in this modern age, or is the once-sacred ‘right to live’ now relinquished at parturition? However much a ‘demon’, when Officer Wilson stopped him, Michael Brown’s only obvious ‘crime’ was walking in the middle of the road. For that, and refusing to kowtow to an officious police officer, he received a swift death sentence.

The sacredness of every individual human life, a once moral bastion of civilized society, is again challenged in an article by two doctors, published in the New York Times this week.

Pamela Hartzband and Jerome Groopman are physicians on the faculty of Harvard Medical School. They’re also somewhat courageous. They’re standing up to corporate health care: insurance companies, drug corporations, and financial institutions rapidly buying up the nation’s health services for the sake of a quick profit.

Their ‘opinion piece’ is worthy of note:

When we are patients, we want our doctors to make recommendations that are in our best interests as individuals. As physicians, we strive to do the same for our patients.

But financial forces largely hidden from the public are beginning to corrupt care and undermine the bond of trust between doctors and patients. Insurers, hospital networks and regulatory groups have put in place both rewards and punishments that can powerfully influence your doctor’s decisions.

Contracts for medical care that incorporate “pay for performance” direct physicians to meet strict metrics for testing and treatment. These metrics are population-based and generic, and do not take into account the individual characteristics and preferences of the patient or differing expert opinions on optimal practice…^[1]

Sparrow Chat has written at some length of the ever-diminishing medical services being offered in many parts of the US as hedge funds and other financial institutions vacuum up family doctor practices, community-run hospitals, and other local health services under the guise of ‘improving conditions’. These improvements seldom materialize, unless classed as credit card readers in hospitals and doctor’s offices, belligerent demands for cash prior to seeing a physician, or the implanting of cheap, badly qualified, doctor-alternatives in the consulting rooms.

Now, it seems, the doctors themselves are under threat:

… doctors are rewarded for keeping their patients’ cholesterol and blood pressure below certain target levels. For some patients, this is good medicine, but for others the benefits may not outweigh the risks. Treatment with drugs such as statins can cause significant side effects, including muscle pain and increased risk of diabetes. Blood-pressure therapy to meet an imposed target may lead to increased falls and fractures in older patients.

Physicians who meet their designated targets are not only rewarded with a bonus from the insurer but are also given high ratings on insurer websites. Physicians who deviate from such metrics are financially penalized through lower payments and are publicly shamed, listed on insurer websites in a lower tier. Further, their patients may be required to pay higher co-payments…

Alarming? Certainly. The article argues that doctors are being placed under a moral dilemma. Should they prescribe the treatment of the insurance or drug company, or take a different course knowing it will prove best for their patient?

However, if you find that alarming, there’s one sentence in a later paragraph that stands out from the rest:

When a patient asks “Is this treatment right for me?” the doctor faces a potential moral dilemma. How should he answer if the response is to his personal detriment? Some health policy experts suggest that there is no moral dilemma. They argue that it is obsolete for the doctor to approach each patient strictly as an individual; medical decisions should be made on the basis of what is best for the population as a whole. [my bold]

No longer are we, the patient, to be considered individual. We are merely a minutiae in the larger herd. Our treatment should not be based on a doctor’s expertise, but, like laboratory mice, we are individually expendable in the great statistical analysis that will eventually determine what may be the best drug to treat a particular condition – ten, twenty, or fifty years down the road.

Is it not our duty, as citizens, to sacrifice ourselves now on the altar of corporate medicine, so others may benefit in years to come? And, even if they don’t, the medical services corporations will have become a lot wealthier in the process.

It seems we are all Michael Browns, after all.

^{[1] “How Medical Care Is Being Corrupted” PAMELA HARTZBAND and JEROME GROOPMAN, NY Times, November 18th 2014}

I was proud to be British. When I was a mere gossoon of five years or so, I remember my father telling me that to be British was to be safe. Wherever I was in the world, if I was in trouble the British government would ensure I was not harmed. If necessary, he said, they’d send a gunboat to rescue me.

As I grew older I learned of the great land across the ocean, America, where citizens could rely on their government to ensure they were safe, wherever in the world they were at the time. I felt proud that my country was allied to the great power of America. To hold either a British or American passport meant security from harm. No foreign power would dare to meddle with an American, or British, citizen.

It may have been something of a fanciful notion, even in the 1950s, but there’s no doubt both governments held more power in the world then than they do today.

That young lad of five years or so, is now a man of sixty-eight. Given the appalling events in the Middle East over the last few months, and the foul slaughter of British and American citizens by the abomination that passes by the name, ISIS, or IS, or ISIL, I can only ask myself, “What happened?”

Following the latest beheading of a US aid worker, British leader David Cameron, told Parliament, “The UK won’t be cowed…”, before retiring to 10 Downing Street for his nightly supper of caviar and chips.

America’s leader, Barack Obama, called this latest cold-bloodied murder, “Evil.” He then collected his clubs and headed back out to the golf course.

Why are we sitting back and letting this group of thugs torture and behead our citizens while we do absolutely nothing about it? Well, not quite nothing. The British Ministry of Defence released a video of a missile strike on an ISIS communications vehicle. If that doesn’t get them on the run…

There can be no doubt that the dire situation in Iraq today is a direct result of the US/UK 2003 invasion of that country. The political vacuum left after the demise of Saddam Hussein allowed ISIS easy entry, and their barbaric actions have fueled both fear, and a misplaced loyalty, among those who purport to support the organization.

Sparrow Chat has never been an advocate of warmongering, but when evil – not satanic, but man-made – threatens to destabilize the world it must be quashed, quickly and efficiently.

The world gradually became aware of that in 1939, when the evil of the Nazi regime erupted over Europe like a poisonous, pyroclastic, cloud. Its eventual defeat resulted in the formation of NATO, a joint military task force designed to prevent such evil beings from gaining power again.

Where is NATO today? America halfheartedly bombs the occasional ISIS convoy; Britain, even more reluctantly, takes out the odd ISIS pick-up truck. Why does no-one mention NATO anymore? Surely, this situation is right for a joint strike force, so Islamic militants can’t point a finger at any one Western power as being the enemy?

Virtually every US political commentator given airtime on the media is quick to state that, “It’s not our fight. We should leave them to sort out their own problems.” Just two weeks ago, Bill Maher’s panel, along with the man himself, was 100% in favor of ‘washing our hands’, like a concert of little Pontius Pilate’s happy to delegate the responsibility to some other authority.

The mess in the Middle East is entirely down to the irresponsible antics of Western powers over the last one hundred years, culminating in the criminal invasion of Iraq in 2003. It is solely our responsibility. We broke it. We must mend it. If we don’t, we may well continue to pay for it for a long, long, time to come.

I’m no longer proud to be British, or American. I’m no longer that gossoon of five years or so. I’ve grown up, and now I see things as they truly are.