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Joe Lieberman is the Flying Dutchman of American politics. Having upset his original party, the Democrats, poor Joe is cursed – forced to wander the corridors of power for eternity, unless he can find the true love of a good woman -or man – to release him from his political damnation.

He began his career as Joe the Democrat:

Then fell out of favor with his party and became Joe the Independent. But that was just a cover for Joe the Republican:

Sadly for Joe, his love affair with Republican presidential candidate John McCain turned sour after McCain fell flat on his face at the election, so our political Dutchman desperately sought other suitors.

Seizing a recent opportunity, he fled to Israel and the arms of his namesake, Avigdor Lieberman, where he became Joe the Yisrael Beiteinu:

Here, Joe is seeking new-found happiness, basking in the power recently bestowed on his Jewish paramour by an Israeli populace unable to make up their minds who to vote for.

Can Avigdor redeem Joe and release him from the curse? Will true love finally awaken our hero’s soul toangelic bliss?

Maybe, just maybe………unless, of course, the evil Joe the Plumber can prevent it.

Well, who do think cursed Lieberman in the first place?

He’s not really a plumber, you know.

Filed under: Bedtime stories

There are so many idiots in the society we live in that it’s difficult to take anything seriously anymore.

I’m not talking about the average thick-head shouting his mouth off down the boozer after a few drinks, or even the religious nutters demanding we all beg forgiveness and wait for Armageddon.

I’m talking about the so-called intellectual elite: the politicians, scientists, and researchers who vainly attempt to tell us how to live our lives, based on some piece of psychological, psychiatric, or social psychobabble, from which they manage to deduce a totally inept conclusion.

Take the latest load of expensive nonsense to emanate from the University of Pittsburgh. According to a report in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine, Dr Brian Primack and his ‘team’ are suggesting that teenagers are twice as likely to have sex if they listen to too many songs with an aggressive sexual content.

Apparently, songs with lyrics like, “”I’m gonna beat that pussy up”, fall into the category.

Frankly, to me it sounds more like a case for the animal welfare inspectors.

According to a BBC website story today:

[The researchers] quizzed 711 teenagers about their sex lives and music listening habits.

They found those who regularly listened to music with explicit and aggressive sexual phrases were twice as likely to be having sex.^[1]

Maybe I’m wrong, or horribly out of touch with modern youth, but it suggests to me that those teens with the strongest sex drives are the ones most likely to be listening to sexual lyrics. In which case, they’ll have sex anyway, lyrics or no lyrics.

Of course, there was a time when society protected its young from such predatory artforms, whether in music, the cinema, or on television. It was done by someone called a censor, paid by the taxpayer to weed out and BAN material likely to be perverting to impressionable young minds.

He has long since joined the realms of the unemployed. Researchers and social workers and people with ‘degrees’ decreed it was much better to allow our children freedom of expression, as they were perfectly capable of deciding for themselves what was good or bad for them, without the interference of society or parents.

We now are reaping the rewards of those who decry experience in favor of ‘degrees’.

Doctor Primack told the BBC:

Parents should be talking to their children about sex and putting these sorts of lyrics in context.”

IN CONTEXT! My teenage daughter’s listening to a singer telling her he’s going to fuck her till her genitalia fall off, and I’m supposed to “put it in context”?

Hey, Doc! There’s a real world outside your university lecture hall. Why don’t you visit it sometime?

Dr Primack and Co may well have saved themselves some effort, and the taxpayer’s money, by simply reading a report published two years ago by UNICEF. It set out those rich nations with the most well-balanced youngsters, and offered some indications as to why certain countries achieved vastly higher standards than others.

Here is the table, with those faring best at the top:

1. Netherlands
2. Sweden
3. Denmark
4. Finland
5. Spain
6. Switzerland
7. Norway
8. Italy
9. Republic of Ireland
10. Belgium
11. Germany
12. Canada
13. Greece
14. Poland
15. Czech Republic
16. France
17. Portugal
18. Austria
19. Hungary
20. United States
21. United Kingdom ^[2]

It’s patriotically heartrending to spot those two countries at the very bottom. Or is it? Isn’t that really where we expected to find them?

Both the UK and the US politically make much of democracy and freedoms, but neither comes as close to true freedom and democracy as those countries heading the list.

Holland has one of the most free societies on Earth. As one 16 year old Dutch schoolgirl told the BBC:

“In this country, it’s very free, you can do anything you want. You can smoke at 16, you can buy pot in the store next to the school. You can do what you like and because it’s not illegal, it’s not that interesting for us to provoke our parents with it.”

Or, another:

I think in England, for example, there is a lot of pressure on teenagers. There is something on MTV called Virgin Diaries. Girls of 16 and 17 worry because they are still virgins. It’s like they have to have sex to be cool.

In Holland, it isn’t that important – it doesn’t matter to anyone.”

“It doesn’t matter to anyone.” – and that, Doctor Primack and Co is the real secret you should be researching. Why does it all matter so much in Britain and America, but not in Holland, or Denmark?

The answer has nothing to do with teenagers, or bawdy song lyrics. It’s all about how UK and US society is shaped by those with the power to manipulate and distort it.

It’s by political manipulation and corporate distortion that marketing is honed, and in the US and its 51st state, Britain, marketing is the tool that shapes society.

Sex has been America’s biggest marketing tool ever since George Washington became president. Sex is the best thing for us after sliced bread. And all’s fine, provided that at the same time the religious nutters and the idiots aren’t trying to turn it into some kind of evil voodoo.

But they are, all the time. Sex is horrible; it gives you diseases; it’s morally wrong outside marriage; you’ll get pregnant – but don’t use a condom it’s a sin; look at that naked man and woman advertising anti-dysfunctional pills; you’ll fry in Hades if you have those thoughts; God will HATE you! Wanna watch a dirty film on cable with me?

Our kids are so bewildered by the society created for them that they no longer have any concepts of what’s truly right, or truly wrong. Society sends them constantly conflicting messages.

Meanwhile, their parents are too busy working to pay off the big house and this year’s model SUV, to even care. “Sheesh! What the Hell are they teaching them in school these days, anyway?”

Meanwhile, Doctor Primack and Co continue to produce loads of meaningless research data, just to further add to the general confusion.

In fact, I think I may have said it before, but there are so many idiots in the society we live in, that it’s difficult to take anything seriously anymore.

^{[1] “Music linked to teen sex habits” BBC, February 24th 2009}

^{[2] “Why are Dutch children so happy?” BBC, February 14th 2007}

Filed under: A degree of stupidity

It’s doubtful if any sane individual could successfully argue Hamas’s rocket attacks on Israeli civilians are legitimate warfare. Amnesty International describes them, rightly, as a war crime.

Any deliberate targeting of civilians by a military force is illegal under International Law. Hamas can argue its case indefinitely without convincing anyone, least of all an International Criminal Court prosecutor at The Hague.

Israel has again today defended its attacks on Gaza in December 2008. It, too, denies war crimes. Despite the hundreds of dead children pulled from the rubble before the eyes of Amnesty International’s observers, the female corpses and dead male civilians who had nothing whatever to do with Hamas, Israel’s mendacious spokesman, Mark Regev (of whom we’ve written before on Sparrow Chat)^[1] still insisted:

We tried to be as surgical as humanly possible in a difficult combat situation.”

A difficult combat situation? Because of the tight-packed communities living in refugee camp conditions? Yes, that would be a “difficult combat situation”.

The use of white phosphorus is similarly outlawed by International Law. It may only legally be used as a means to lay smoke-screens, and then only on “open ground”.

Mark Regev admitted to the BBC that the Israelis had used white phosphorus – but, “not as an anti-personnel weapon”.^[2]

The question still waiting to be asked of Mark Regev is:

if the Israeli military were trying “to be as surgical as humanly possible in a difficult combat situation”, how could they possibly be using white phosphorus in a legal manner?

According to AI’s report:

In Gaza, as the fighting ended, Amnesty International researchers found fragments and components from munitions used by the Israeli Army – including many that are US-made – littering school playgrounds, in hospitals and in people’s homes. They included artillery and tank shells, mortar fins and remnants from Hellfire and other airborne missiles and large F-16 delivered bombs, as well as still smouldering highly incendiary white phosphorus remains.

They also found remnants of a new type of missile, seemingly launched from unmanned drones, which explodes large numbers of tiny sharp-edged metal cubes, each between 2mm and 4mm square in size. These lethal purpose-made shrapnel had penetrated thick metal doors and were embedded deep in concrete walls, and are clearly designed to maximize injury.^[3]

So much for “as surgical as humanly possible in a difficult combat situation.”

It seems unlikely that Mark Regev would fare well before the probing questions of an ICC prosecutor.

According to Amnesty International, virtually all the armaments used against the Palestinians in Gaza last December were made in the United States. America is not only supplying weaponry to Israel, but under a ten year agreement not due to end till 2017, is paying for them using US taxpayer’s money – $30billion in total.

To sum up: The USA is providing vast quantities of advanced weaponry, free-of-charge, to another country that is using these weapons to slaughter Palestinian Muslims on a massive scale, and all paid for by the taxes of US citizens.

Is the US government seriously attempting to provoke another attack on American soil on par with the events of 9/11/2001? Does the administration not consider how its actions place its own citizens in deadly peril? Is the US government utterly irresponsible?

It will be interesting to note whether, in the present economic climate, President Obama continues to honor this contract agreed by his Republican predecessor.

Both Hamas and Israel are guilty of war crimes. The United States of America, and possibly some European nations, are complicit in those war crimes. These are facts that cannot be successfully argued against in a court of law. The evidence is undeniable, despite any utterances from Mister Mark Regev.

Hamas is far from innocent. There is much Israeli civilian blood on its hands. Yet its actions, and the extent of its crimes, are puny compared to the massive acts of violence and retribution unleashed by its enemies.

David and Goliath – only this time Goliath has the complete arsenal of US weaponry at his disposal, and David is armed with little better than a few homemade fireworks.

Amnesty International has called for an arms boycott of both Israel and Hamas. By so doing, it has provided US President Barack Obama with the perfect excuse to break George W Bush’s arms contract with Israel.

Will he have the balls to do that, and show the Arab world the American people will not stand by and aid the committing of war crimes against them?

If he chooses not to, the next “9/11” may be closer than we think.

^{[1] “A Role Model For The Chosen People” Sparrow Chat, January 15th 2009}

^{[2] “Israel-Hamas arms embargo urged” BBC, February 23rd 2009}

^{[3] “Foreign-supplied weapons used against civilians by Israel and Hamas” Amnesty International, February 20th 2009}

Filed under: Only one sane option