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Thank you George Walker Bush. Thank you, Anthony Charles Lynton Blair.

For making your sins our sins, thank you.

Below is the narrative that accompanies this short video:

“The women of Iraq have disappeared. Five years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, women’s secular freedoms – once the envy of women across the Middle East – have been snatched away because militant Islam is rising across the country. Across Iraq, a bloody and relentless oppression of women has taken hold. Many women had their heads shaved for refusing to wear a scarf or have been stoned in the street for wearing make-up. Others have been kidnapped and murdered for crimes that are being labelled simply as “inappropriate behaviour”. The insurrection against the fragile and barely functioning state has left the country prey to extremists whose notion of freedom does not extend to women. In Basra, where Mehdi Army retains a stranglehold, women insist the situation is at its worst. Here they are forced to live behind closed doors only to emerge, concealed behind scarves, hidden behind husbands and fathers. Even wearing a pair of trousers is considered an act of defiance, punishable by death. One Basra woman, known only as Dr Kefaya, was working in the women and children’s hospital unit at the city university when she started receiving threats from extremists. She defied them. Then, one day a man walked into the building and murdered her.

Behind the wave of insurgent attacks, the violence against women who dare to challenge the Islamic orthodoxy is growing. Fatwas banning women from driving or being seen out alone are regularly issued. Infiltrated by militia, the police are unwilling or unable to crack down on the fundamentalists. Ms Alebadi said: “After the fall of the regime, the religious extremist parties came out on to the streets and threatened women. Although the extremists are in the minority, they control powerful positions, so they control Basra.” To venture on the streets today without a male relative is to risk attack, humiliation or kidnap. A journalist, Shatta Kareem, said: “I was driving my car one day when someone just crashed into me and drove me off the road. If a woman is seen driving these days it is considered a violation of men’s rights.””

Filed under: Bush’s war

One of the primary causes of rising food prices throughout the world is the cost of crude oil. Neo-con World Bank president Robert Zoellick – hastily transplanted to the position by George W Bush when Wolfowitz crept away in shame – says it’s all down to Third World countries suddenly eating too much. But he’s wrong, of course. This is a crisis in the making five years, not the decades necessary for emerging economies to make a serious difference.

In fact, food shortages have come about so rapidly in Asia that no-one heard about them in the West until a few months ago.

So who, or what, is to blame?

Look at any graph of oil prices from 2003 to present day and you’d need an Abrams tank to negotiate the curve. In 2002, gas price at the pump was $1.35. Today, it’s $3.55….and rising. The Iraq war (Bush’s War) began in March 2003, as did the rise in oil prices. Today, the Iraq war (Bush’s War) continues to create mayhem in the Middle East, and the price of oil goes ever higher.

In 2002, George W Bush set in motion a crazy, unregulated system supposedly to create “……5.5 million more [minority] homeowners by 2010……”.^[1] To achieve this goal, he let loose the financial institutions on what we now know as the “Great Sub-Prime Mortgage Fiasco”. The resulting crisis was enough to tip America into a full-scale recession, and send banks and finance houses around the world into meltdown.

As a result, investors moved their money, large-scale, into the safer commodities markets, causing more pressure on food prices already under siege from crude oil hikes.

In January 2007, George W Bush mandated a seven-fold rise in the use of ethanol from corn and other vegetable matter by 2017^[2]. Such criminal irresponsibility in the face of surging oil prices, and knowing full well the state of the economy (which, at the time he was declaring as ‘good and healthy’) indicates Bush’s true interest in the world outside the United States.

Put simply, he has none, and is prepared to sacrifice thousands of non-American lives to starvation, in the pursuit of corporate wealth.

Bush’s reasoning behind increasing ethanol production was, by his own admission, to do away with US reliance on Middle Eastern oil (after all, Iraq’s oilfields weren’t exactly fulfilling the neo-con dream) but his doing so made it painfully obvious where the markets would end up. Farmers in the Mid-West moved over to ethanol-corn production en masse, creating the equivalent of yet another world recession, only this time in food.

When the American Mid-West can’t provide enough corn to feed its people and its animals, the whole world suffers.

The American vulture media has once again found something to feast upon. A few quick shots of Haitians rioting over food shortages switch rapidly to the appalling news that from today, Sam’s Club and other major retailers are limiting customers to only four 50lb bags of Basmati rice at one time. How long can this nation’s populace endure such horrendous hardship?

The media consumes every spare moment of late with ghastly tales of rocketing fuel prices, a sinking economy, Americans made homeless by bad mortgage deals, and the possibility of much worse to come. Yet, it never, ever, asks the question: who is to blame for it all?

Can there be anywhere else that the buck stops – other than at the desk of the one man responsible for the predicament faced by the world today? The leader of the nation that has created and maintains this crisis.

When asked about these present catastrophes, George W Bush and his minions repeatedly make vague reference to a ‘downturn in world markets’. They’re not lying. What they forget to mention is the ‘downturn’ results directly from their own failed policies; policies designed to make them extremely wealthy, America even more of a dictator state ruling the world, and greed the driving force that is leading this earth to the brink of disaster.

Today, the price of oil rose another three dollars. Analysts announced it was due directly to an incident in the Persian Gulf when an American vessel fired towards small boats in the area.^[3]

Clear evidence, then, of the cause of spiraling oil prices. One minor incident is all it takes to up the price – at three dollars a shot.

The only other question left unanswered by the American media is – who gets those three dollars per barrel?

^{[1] “One Heckuva Job”, Sparrow Chat, March 13th, 2008}

^{[2] “Ethanol Industry Gets a Boost From Bush”, Washington Post, January 25th, 2007}

^{[3] “Oil near $119 after report of Iranian boat firing”, MSNBC, April 25th, 2008}

Filed under: Oil, food, and Ethanol

It’s always been a policy at Sparrow Chat to answer individual comments, where time allows. With regard to the comments relating to the post below, I would like to take this opportunity, on the main page, to whole-heartedly (no pun intended) thank all of you who have left comments, and those who have emailed, sympathizing with our recent troubles and wishing me well for the future.

I am now fully recovered and feel in the best of health, indeed ten years younger than the old bugger who had begun to puff and blow each time he got out of his chair, less than one week ago. Such crises are a warning, however, and while I lived an active life until 2002, when I moved to America, I have slowly drifted into a more sedentary lifestyle, spending far too much time in front of the computer, and too little outside in the real world.

For me, it’s not easy living in Illinois, with its hot, humid summers and man-eating mosquitoes, quickly followed by the searing cold of mid-western winters. I once kept fit by climbing Welsh mountains and hiking trails, but there are no mountains in Illinois, and the only trails are through miles of cornfields and traveled by farm machinery.

In three years, we will move to either Maine or Upper Michigan, where the winters may be hard but the scenery wonderful, and the summers gentle. Until then, I must do whatever I can to stay fit and healthy.

This means there must be some minor changes at Sparrow Chat. Much as I enjoy commenting on your comments, I have decided that in future I will only do so when the content warrants it. After all, my greatest pleasure is reading them. Similarly, I endeavor to comment on many of the posts you write, even if only to add my own support for a view or observation. In future I will only comment when I feel I have something pertinent to add.

All writers appreciate feedback, and comments help provide that, but one of the best blogs on the internet, in my opinion, receives hardly any comments at all and yet must be read widely. I’m referring, of course, to the excellent “Vineyard Views” of one of my earliest blogging pals, Al DeVito.

Hopefully, by denying myself these simple pleasures I will leave time to keep fit and still write Sparrow Chat fairly regularly. One thing I can promise all my blogging friends out there, I’ll still be reading. So if you don’t hear from me quite so regularly, don’t assume I’m no longer perusing your pages.

Remember, you can’t escape me, I have your site feeds!

Once again, thank you all.

Filed under: Good friends