A STARK CHOICE IN SYRIA: FOR ONCE THE ETHICAL BALANCE FAVORS A LOCAL UN-ELECTED LEADER – AMERICA AND ISRAEL EMPLOYING LARGE-SCALE TERROR

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

EXPANSION OF A POSTED RESPONSE TO AN INTERVIEW WITH SYRIA’S PRESIDENT ASSAD IN INTIFADA PALESTINE

I am no great defender of unelected leaders like Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, but in the case of Syria’s current troubles I support him and wish him success against the forces responsible for murder and destruction on a large scale in his country.

The great writer, Graham Greene, said:
“…the writer should always be ready to change sides at the drop of a hat. He stands for the victims, and the victims change.”

Syria is the victim in this case, and the bloody bullies attacking Syria are the United States and Israel, both too cowardly to attack directly and both dishonestly claiming that the Free Syrian Army represents a genuine popular revolt.

The aim of the United States and Israel in all this violence is to wipe Syria off the Middle East chessboard, leaving it a divided society with no central direction.

Their efforts are designed to serve Israel’s drive to dominate the Middle East, just as America’s invasion of Iraq served the same drive. Israel aspires to be a miniature replica in the Middle East of what the United States has become globally, and the United States’ government, compromised by its corrupt election financing system and the central role of special interests in that system, is more than willing to grant Israel the role.

The brutality and hypocrisy involved in creating a pseudo-popular uprising and putting millions of innocent people at risk are breathtaking. The United States and Israel have gathered, armed, and supported a gang of thugs and injected them (through Syria’s border with Turkey, Turkey also offering refuge and re-supply) into what was a peaceful country, the very kind of cut-throats neither the U.S. nor Israel would allow to cross their own borders.

The recent death of an American ambassador in Libya at Benghazi, an event which no American official will discuss honestly, was part of the same dark scheme and involved the ambassador working with the CIA to gather killers and arms for export to Syria. The operation badly backfired when some of the thugs being dealt with turned on the Americans, something American officials will not acknowledge out of embarrassment and the desire to hide the dirty business in which they are engaged.

The world is not the simple place of angels and devils as America’s propaganda efforts ceaselessly proclaim it – great camps of goodness and evil ready to do battle for the soul of humanity. No matter whether a government is democratic in origin or not – and given the utter corruption of America’s politics, its claims to authentic democracy are tenuous – powerful insiders are fully capable of bloody, ruthless behavior in secret, destroying the lives of others.

While the United States loves hearing itself talk about being a bastion of freedom and rights, the fact is that over the last 40 or so years, it has been, quite simply, the most murderous nation on earth, killing 3 million in Vietnam plus a host of victims in Cambodia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and in many, many other places either invaded or toppled in bloody coups. It still runs an international torture gulag, of which Guantanamo is only a part.

The world can support a bloody global dictator even less than an individual country can support a local one. So, in Syria we see a stark choice, and the ethical balance favors for once a local dictator.

If you want the rule of law, you must abide by the rule of law, a principle which neither the United States nor Israel makes even a pretense of embracing although they sure like talking about it between bombing runs and terrorist activities.

UNITED NATIONS’ OFFICIAL SAYS IT APPEARS LIKELY REBELS IN SYRIA USED SARIN NERVE GAS – AND FROM WHERE DID THAT RABBLE GET SARIN? BEST BET: ISRAEL

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

This confirms what many believed: that it was the rebels, not the government, using chemical weapons.

Now, where does one obtain this nerve gas, sarin, a deadly and sophisticated one which comes in two compounds only assembled at the time of use?

There are only a limited number of countries who make and store it, including both the United States and Israel.

We know about Israel’s chemical arms because there was a crash of an El Al cargo plane in 1992 in the Amsterdam area, killing dozens of people and releasing toxic substances Israel refused to accurately identify.

It was later determined that at least part of the cargo was one of the components of sarin, a cargo which was not declared and which is illegal to ship in most countries.

One has the well-founded suspicion that Israel supplied some of the sarin material recently to that rabble called the Free Syrian Army.

Its purpose in doing so would be typical of Israel’s nasty security forces practices – of which we have a long history including the 1967 War and Israel’s attempt to sink an American intelligence ship – and that is to create a casus belli with the claim that Assad had crossed one of Israel’s many arbitrary “red lines.”

Only in recent days we read a lot of nonsense about the government of Syria having used poison gas, including from America’s pathetic Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, who managed to reverse himself in less than a day after asserting – rightly – that American intelligence did not believe Assad had used chemicals.

His reversal undoubtedly reflected the immense pressure of the Israel Lobby, incensed that he had effectively contradicted Mr Netanyahu’s earlier public claim about Syria’s use.

We see the outlines here of a very shabby story: the desperate efforts of Israel and the United States to support the phony rebellion they created in Syria because it is beginning to look like that rebellion will fail.

What Israel wants in these matters is for Syria to be removed as a power in the region, left as a weak and divided state whose elements will fight with each other for years to come.

Never mind those elements include the same kind of scum that neither Israel nor the United States would even allow to cross their borders. Who cares about the poor Syrians, just so long as once more Israel gets what it wants.

The whole series of events in Syria will prove a textbook example of arrogance, brutality, and cynicism in foreign affairs.

But then that description pretty well sums up the entire brief history of modern Israel.

THE OPENING OF THE MARIINSKY THEATRE IN ST PETERSBURG RUSSIA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN RUSSIA TODAY

It is simply gorgeous.

There are too few examples in the world of really fine contemporary public-space architecture, modern architecture which works well with older buildings.

Jack Diamond was an excellent choice as architect. He did the opera house in Toronto, and there he established some of the design principles used in the Mariinsky, although on a much smaller scale, given a much smaller budget.

Diamond is not one of those “looks only” architects who design sculptures with little consideration for the use to which they are put.

The Mariinsky benefits from his approach and great experience.

Congratulations.

WHITE HOUSE CLAIMS OF SYRIA’S USING CHEMICAL WEAPONS – A DAY AFTER DEFENSE SECRETARY CONTRADICTED ISRAEL’S CLAIMS – THE FALSE MARCH TO WAR

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

This is an absurd development.

Yesterday, in the morning, I read Mr Hagel saying that United States’ intelligence did not believe Syria had used chemical weapons.

Because Israel had already just claimed in public that Syria had used such weapons, Mr Hagel was careful to state that the United States used its own intelligence sources.

By that afternoon, we had this new story that indeed the United States thought it likely (but had no hard evidence) that Syria had used chemical weapons.

I know of no example from real life events more deserving of the descriptive term “Orwellian.”

We know from the inadvertently-overheard words of two presidents not terribly long ago, the presidents of France and the United States, talking in private that Mr Netanyahu is regarded by both of them as an inveterate liar.

Mr Hagel, owing to his independence of mind regarding the Mideast, fought quite a battle after the election to be confirmed for his cabinet post.

Of course, his first words about chemical weapons contradicted Mr Netanyahu.

Something happened in the course of one day to turn him around.

Was it the same group which so opposed his nomination and confirmation?

And that group is the special interest of American apologists for Israel’s excesses.

Actually, if anything, virtually the opposite is true. There was a documented incident of the so-called rebels using some form of chemical.

From where did they get the material?

From Israel, in an effort to create a casus belli?

GUANTANAMO: THE UNITED STATES OF TORTURE SAYS AN ARTICLE – BUT IT’S WORSE THAN THAT – WORLD’S GREATEST ORGANIZED BARBARISM AND HYPOCRISY ABOUT IT

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN RUSSIA TODAY

Civilized is not the point.

The United States mouths stuff about human rights and democracy while assassinating, stealing, and abusing people.

Monumental hypocrisy is the point.

The fact must be thrown into America’s face when it makes spurious claims.

The CIA Torture Gulag – of which Guantanamo is only part – is gross hypocrisy, all of it carefully kept offshore, as though that fact kept the spirit of the Constitution.

The U.S. has in truth been a bloody monster for half a century: 3 million killed in its Vietnam Holocaust; a million in Cambodia owing to its destabilizing; a million in Iraq; and more.

PROPAGANDA PIECE ATTEMPTS TO COVER THE IDIOTIC ANTICS OF CANADA’S JOHN BAIRD IN EAST JERUSALEM – WHAT PEACE MEANS – ISRAEL’S COMPLETE LACK OF INTEREST IN WHAT MOST CALL PEACE – BUYING POLICY

JOHN CHUCKMAN

EXPANDED FROM A POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY EINAT WILF AND NOAH SLEPKOV IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

This piece is a set of words strung together almost without meaning and certainly without logic. Its only intention is to plant certain suggestions in readers’ minds, one of the key purposes of any propaganda. According to the authors, John Baird, Canada’s current foreign minister, was not guilty of provocation in blundering into East Jerusalem as a guest of Israeli politicians, rather he was being “brave” in the cause of peace.

Brave? John Baird?

Baird has always been a coward because only a coward acts aggressively towards the weak, as he does regularly in both domestic politics and in trips abroad, and certainly the Palestinians are weak, living at the mercy of Israel’s brutal and dishonest behavior.

The leaders of Israel do not want what any normal person calls peace. Their behaviors over decades make that abundantly clear to all but biased observers.

Israel has always followed the policy advocated by early Zionists called “the iron wall” in its attitude towards the Palestinians.

How much better would have been a policy of generosity towards its neighbors, but no, generosity in Israel’s attitude has never received the slightest consideration. The one prime minister who came just a little closer to altering the county’s brutal policies was assassinated, as it happened by an Israeli.

Israel holds all the cards – armaments, economic power, American influence, and absolute rule over millions of people – but it has never made a truly honest effort for genuine peace. Words, words, and more words combined with arrogant and impossible preconditions set even for discussions.

What we see is a garrison state, armed to the teeth, threatening its neighbors constantly, ready at the smallest provocation to kill thousands, and we see that state rule over 4.5 million conquered people with a heavy-handed system of apartheid, a system recognized as apartheid by every sensible and decent observer in the world from Nelson Mandela and Bishop Tutu to Jimmy Carter.

And, week by week, Israel slowly steals the land on which those 4.5 million people live, stealing it through all kinds of cynical and dishonest laws – an ongoing, slow-motion practice of ethnic-cleansing in every sense of the term.

What other state could accurately claim as its national symbol a D-9 armored bulldozer used to destroy the homes of others and sometimes simply to crush opponents?

Canada’s arrogant and ill-informed foreign minister, John Baird – and Canadians all know that he is arrogant and ill-informed owing to his everyday behavior at home – steps in to validate Israel’s ghastly behavior in East Jerusalem, never once saying anything about human or democratic rights.

And why does John Baird choose to behave in this obtuse fashion?

Because he is a creature of the Harper government which has as its goal, by its leader’s own admission, the elimination of the Liberal Party in Canada, a party which was always been even-handed in the Middle East, reflecting the attitude of a majority of Canadians.

Harper’s strategy includes having ended state support for political parties, using every disagreeable parliamentary dodge he can think of, being an enemy of transparency in government, suppressing the voices of experts in the civil service, and actively seeking a new and substantial flow of private financing, as it happens, from apologists for Israel eager to fund a turn in Canada’s historic and fair-minded policies.

In the United States, this pattern of funding is now an integral part of its foreign affairs. In just one example – and there are countless examples – the unpleasant Newt Gingrich received the best part of $20 million from just one wealthy American heavily involved in Israel’s affairs to run his presidential bid.

The price for that money? Newt’s peppering his speeches with ignorant assertions like “There’s no such thing as a Palestinian.” In another notorious example, Dick Armey, former House Majority Leader, once openly suggested that Israel just go ahead and run all the Palestinians out of the occupied territories – surely the kind of assertion that does not come naturally from an ultra-conservative economics major for whom property rights are virtually religious dogma.

And just so, John Baird’s bull-in-a-china-shop behavior in East Jerusalem and at the UN or Peter Kent’s sudden outbursts, almost like someone given to speaking in tongues, about Canada defending Israel or Harper’s regular speeches claiming credit as a warrior against (virtually non-existent) anti-Semitism and deliberately conflating legitimate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.

In the normal world, we know peace in any violent disagreement is often only obtained by outside intervention and patient talks and mutual respect, but somehow when it comes to Israel, this common understanding just disappears. Israel is never pressured to treat its neighbors with respect, and it is never pressured to talk to them without arrogant preconditions. Never.

No one dares say a word about the decades of abusing 4.5 million people, of Israel’s endless torture and assassinations. Nor do the “brave” John Bairds of this world raise their voices when Israel kills 400 children as it did in its invasion of Gaza or when it commits piracy on the high seas or when it murders a Canadian officer serving as a UN observer or when it drops a million hideous cluster bombs on civilians as it did in Lebanon. No condemnation over the theft of farms and homes is ever heard. Not a word about endless illegal arrests and the imprisonment of thousands. Nor a word about the seizure of taxes and foreign aid moneys from their rightful owners.

Of course, there is never a word about the Six Day War so many decades ago, the very event which put all those people at Israel’s mercy, a war which Israel cynically started knowing it could win, aiming ultimately to create what is known as Greater Israel. Nor was a word said about Israel’s attacking a well-marked American intelligence ship, of which they had been advised in advance, during that war to silence signals informing Washington that Israel was turning around its armor to seize all of what it controls today. And there was not a word about the mass murder of hundreds of Egyptian prisoners in the Sinai to expedite that turnaround.

Does anyone in his right mind believe peace is obtained the way Israel has claimed to pursue it? Only if your definition of peace is Israel’s taking all the additional land it covets without any of the people who own it and live there, which is pretty much what the concept of Greater Israel involves. I suppose that is a kind of peace, the kind of peace brutal American soldiers achieved in My Lai, Vietnam, or in Fallujah, Iraq.

JOHN BAIRD MAKES EFFORT TO STOP PALESTINIAN PRIME MINISTER SALAM FAYYAD FROM RESIGNING AND FAILS – NO LOSS TO PALESTINIANS ONLY TO ISRAELI INTERESTS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad quit on Saturday after months of tension with President Mahmoud Abbas

We may safely assume that when the likes of John Baird care about a political figure such as the Palestinian prime minister staying in office, the resignation means absolutely nothing to the Palestinian people.

Apart from the fact that John Baird has no stature whatever in world affairs and no credibility as a statesman, the simple fact is that he is an ignoramus on affairs in the Middle East.

Baird is also a man – perhaps a reflection of his argumentative and destructive life as a domestic politician – who has proven he has no concern for the terrible situation of the Palestinians.

He is in addition a pathetic figure whose only objective in the region is to loyally serve American-Israeli positions – resembling in the act a wagging dog waiting for his master to hand out a treat.

Palestinian politicians like Abbas and those associated with him are pleasing to Israel because they maintain a totally submissive demeanor. There is almost something in them of the nature of the old minor Hollywood black actor known as Stepin Fetchit.

ATTACK ADS AGAINST JUSTIN TRUDEAU JUST ELECTED AS LEADER OF CANADA’ S LIBERAL PARTY – WHY THEY WON’T WORK AND THE NATURE OF PROPAGANDA

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Propaganda – and this kind of attack-advertising is just a form of propaganda – generally is effective when there is an accepted truth incorporated in the muck.

Thus, America blubbered about the plight of women while attacking Afghanistan (killing thousands of them along the way, too). Thus, past attacks on Ignatieff only said something we all believed already about that ineffective and disingenuous man.

These new ads cannot work against Trudeau because most Canadians rightly perceive him as a decent, earnest young man. And Trudeau is doing exactly the right thing in quietly explaining the ads’ dishonesty.

The ads will serve to confirm Harper as the most hateful person ever to have been prime minister.

WHO IS TAKING JOBS? COMPUTERS MARGARET WENTE BLUBBERS – A SUGGESTION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY MARGARET WENTE IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

One thing is clear, a computer could certainly replace Ms. Wente, and do so handily.

Computers are really good at things like searching around on the Internet for what others have said and then regurgitating it.

NETANYAHU’S APOLOGY TO TURKEY

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

What possibly is the value of an apology from an inveterate liar?

We do have, after all, the public words of the presidents of two major countries that Netanyahu is exactly that, an inveterate liar.

It only took a couple of years plus immense outside pressure to have him even offer this poor excuse for an apology.

And I’ll bet a great many pirates, killers, and thieves wish they could get off by muttering a few cheap words.

THE NEW POPE FRANCIS AND HIS HISTORY WITH ARGENTINA’S MURDEROUS MILITARY JUNTA – A BRIEF HISTORY OF PAPAL SHAME

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Austere lifestyle tells us very little about the character of a man as leader.

Stalin wore modest uniforms most of the time and worked about 16 hours a day.

Hitler too was a man of fairly modest tastes, wearing a modest uniform, being a vegetarian, and often having a polite tea with his secretaries.

Pope Francis’s behavior around the junta was the ethical question which immediately sprang to mind.

While not definitive, this article makes it clear enough he was not an admirable figure during those horrors.

The issue of his behavior over two arrested members of his Jesuit order seems almost a sideshow.

Many thousands were killed by being illegally arrested, drugged, and thrown out of aircraft over the ocean.

Obama has extra-judicially killed 4700 people with drones without a word of disapproval from Rome.

Any man claiming moral authority who does not speak against that is worthy of neither respect or nor admiration.

But then that has always been the behavior of the Catholic Church.

The popes blubber about peace but never speak to those starting wars or those committing great evils.

George Bush happily killed a million people with no disapproval from the pope.

Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon killed some 3 million in Vietnam without any opposition from the pope.

Hitler had a concordat with the pope.

Fascist Italy did too.

As did Napoleon.

When Catherine de’ Medici began an orgy of murder of Huguenots (protestants) in France – an event called the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre – the pope honored her “achievement” with the striking of a gold medal.

It is a long and quite shameful history, without even touching on Rome’s behavior over countless years of sexual abuse of children.

Anyone who sees the pope as a moral force in the world is just reciting meaningless words.

THE REDOUBTABLE JEAN CHRETIEN CONFIRMS THE VIEW THAT CANADA HAS LOST STATURE IN THE WORLD DURING THE HARPER YEARS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

While Chretien’s observation is already shared by most citizens genuinely concerned with international affairs, his testimony still is welcome.

Chretien is one of our most respected former prime ministers, a man who is admired by a number of world statesmen as an ethical statesman and a remarkable politician.

The grotesque and clownish stunts of Peter Kent, Maxime Bernier, John Baird, Helena Guergis, Peter MacKay, Rahim Jaffer, and the bloodless, narrow ideology of their leader do not go unnoticed in the world.

There is an inherent lack of commitment by this government to openness, honest communication, genuine democratic principles, and balanced human rights.

Everything from cheap stunts like pernicious robo-calls, ceaseless negative advertising, ugly outbursts, and blatant catering to special interests reduces our stature.

There is also – and quite in conflict with the historic role of Conservative Parties in Canada – a marked spirit of following America’s lead in almost all matters of international consequence – almost a visibly servile posture.

Informed people in countries around the world – politicians, members of international organizations, and private citizens – note these things and their goodwill towards our country must inevitably be reduced.

And this has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with core traditional conservative principles.

It is strictly a reflection of the ugly ideological bent of this government.

A bent demonstrated in everything from contempt for Parliament, contempt for important international forums and organizations, unbalanced and almost viciously partisan statements on the Middle East, and its cheap way of expressing itself on many solemn occasions, such as the recent death of the widely-liked President of Venezuela.
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“Talking to other leftists and anti-american socialists is obviously going to get the desired result of Canada being disliked. I fully expect nothing being done by our current governemnt to be gain acceptance with the worldwide pro terrorist socialist alliance. Nothing to read here….and to think a criminal thug like Chretien should be given any further respectability is beyond me.”

You are too uninformed to comment with any meaning.

A number of prominent world leaders have in the past made public statements of admiration for Chretien.

No one but Mr. Netanyahu – a genuine thug who has committed murder, piracy, and theft – expresses admiration for Harper.

SECRET RECORDINGS OF PRIVATE MANNING ARE LEAKED: HIS REASONS FOR REVEALING ARMY SECRETS ARE THE MOST HONORABLE POSSIBLE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN RUSSIA TODAY

Private Manning deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, and as few recipients have deserved it in recent years.

He represents a genuine hero for our time, having risked so very much to reveal truth, a most ugly set of truths too.

His words about being most affected by seeing helicopter pilots enjoying their devilish work of slaughtering what were obviously civilians reminded me painfully of the recordings of American pilots during the first Gulf War.

Poor Iraqi troops – just poor conscripts for the most part – were evacuating Kuwait City and trying to retreat.

A huge traffic jam allowed American pilots to swoop down, again and again, to strafe and bomb their vehicles.

Hundreds of the retreating troops were killed in the most horrible fashion in acts no different to shooting a fleeing man in the back.

We heard voices of American pilots yelling out things like, “Hey, this is jus’ like shootin’ fish in a barrel! Whoopee!”

It was a horrifying moment for any person of conscience.

MICHAEL IGNATIEFF’S PATHETIC PLEA OVER WESTERN INACTION IN SYRIA: THE OLD CRYPTO-NEOCON TRIES NEW WAYS TO PROMOTE IMPERIALISM WHILE PRETENDING CONCERN FOR PEOPLE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY MICHAEL IGNATIEFF IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Ignatieff yet again proves what a remarkably thoughtless person he is for someone who enjoyed the status of an intellectual concerned with human rights.

But then, even in his old sinecure at Harvard, Ignatieff frequently defended American imperial interests and displayed no concern for America’s increasing violence and authoritarianism in the world.

The horrors in Syria exist for one reason only, and that is America’s effort to determine the future of most of the countries of the Middle East for the benefit of its imperial satrapy in the region, Israel, itself a country which regularly kills, tortures, kidnaps, imprisons, and steals.

Turkey’s behavior in offering the “rebels” refuge and border access and its threats against Syria are all at the behind-the scenes behest of the U.S.

The American Ambassador recently killed in Libya – another American disaster – was involved in smuggling weapons and Islamic fighters into Syria. That’s why no one in Obama’s government can give an honest accounting of the event.

Some of the thugs fighting in Syria are the kind of people the U.S. wouldn’t even admit through its own border, yet it seems perfectly okay for them to go to Syria and murder and destroy.

The hypocrisy and lack of ethics are stunning.

Israel’s murderous thug of a prime minister of course just chuckles at Syria being tied down in such a bloody mess.

The aim here is to destabilize Syria, perhaps dividing it into parts, and removing the Syrian army as a piece on the Middle East chessboard.

The fact is that Assad, like Hussein, provides a secular government in a region torn with religious hostilities. That’s why Islamists hate him. Treatment of women too is better than in many parts of the Middle East.

But none of that counts when the U.S. decides in private that it is time for change in your region of the world.

The country which has killed millions over recent decades now feels entitled to control events anywhere its fancy takes it.

And flacks like Ignatieff – for that is what he is – help form the chorus of support for evil.

He’s trying desperately, I think, to reclaim his sinecure at Harvard.

SUPPORT FOR TEACHERS WALKING OUT IN PROTEST? – I DON’T THINK SO – TEACHERS ACTING CHILDISHLY – NEED FOR EDUCATION REFORM

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Support the teachers in their childish behavior?

I think it a bit shameful that the question can be asked.

All they were asked is to give a tiny slice back, and that after years of receiving inordinate new returns as measured by the general standards of our society today.

Instead of accepting their responsibility as very well-paid citizens of Ontario, they squabble like unthinking and privileged teenagers about rights being abused.

Many parents are afraid of not saying they support the teachers because they are concerned about the treatment of their children afterwards.

And that implicit intimidation is an important part of why strikes have absolutely no place in education.

Our teachers are subject to no scrutiny in their work, are not measured in any way by results or performance, receive quite extraordinary benefits, and are paid at what can only be called an extraordinary level considering their educations and expertise.

Most have only bachelor’s degrees, many just general (close to meaningless) general degrees, and many, many are expert in absolutely no subject.

On top of that they have a genuinely useless certificate from a teachers’ college, reflecting about 8 months spent in a completely non-academic environment, one where people like the disgraceful Director of TDSB earn “graduate degrees” with second-rate thought, much of it plagiarized, from “professors” who can’t tell the difference.

Take just those credentials and see what other work you can obtain today.

The effort will result in an honest “not much.”

People with such qualifications work, by the tens of thousands, as store clerks, restaurant staff, salespeople, and low to medium grade office clerks.

Overwhelmingly, they do not, nor will they ever, earn $80-90,000 with the most generous benefits on the planet short of senior government officials. All for a short work day and a very short work year.

Yet, we’ve heard over and over nonsense like, “Well, if you want university-educated teachers, you have to pay for them.”

We do pay for them, in many cases at nearly double the going rate for their levels of education.

What is so distressing about this matter is the genuinely childish and insanely melodramatic behavior displayed by a great many teachers and their leaders.

Show some civic-minded leadership, show some concern for kids, show some concern for the communities in which you live.

But, no, all we get is the equivalent of a pack of petty beasts fighting over a bone or two in an alley.

By the way, the Minister of Education, Laurel Broten, has done an outstanding job in difficult circumstances. Always calm, always in command of the facts, always available to CBC for interviews, and clearly sharply intelligent.

If we had more people of that quality in government, our society could only benefit.
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“I thought this government wanted to stop bullying. This latest tactic is bullying pure and simple!”

Bullying?

Yours is a complete misuse of language.

The government is the employer.

The teachers are the employees, extremely well paid ones.

The employer today has financial problems, and it has asked a very modest sacrifice of its employees.

Do they pitch in to help?

No, they whine about rights and other irrelevant nonsense at a time when many would just like decent job.

It is the teachers who are bullying, bullying the kids.

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“So many people who comment on these stories have no idea of how hard teachers work.”

Oh yes they do know how hard (some) teachers work.

In fact, teachers are the ones who seem oblivious about how hard others work.

Your comment is just the kind which irritates so many decent and thoughtful people.

It is special pleading, and it reflects genuine ignorance about the work of others.

PLAGIARISM AT THE TOP OF TORONTO’S EDUCATION ESTABLISHMENT – THE SAD CASE OF DIRECTOR CHRIS SPENCE – INEPT SCHOOL BOARDS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Chris Spence has always been pretty much an empty public relations machine.

His record in his previous job showed no worthy academic achievement.

He actually established a reputation for running around the city, with a photographer constantly in tow, doing photo-ops with big grins and arms around groups of boys.

Those were his only grins because he also had a reputation of avoiding eye contact with staff, displaying a contact-avoidance type of personality.

There was also talk about his quiet spending of rather large amounts for projects which appeared of little educational value.

So it was surprising at first when Toronto hired him.

But then the Toronto Board has a national reputation for being dysfunctional, so, on second thought, the appointment seemed somehow fitting.

Of course, he was appointed as a symbol for black children failing in the school system, but symbols do not change serious situations like that.

Hard work and intelligence and management skills are what is called for, but the School Board deals only in appearances and slogans and politics, never in the roll-up-your-sleeves kind of work for change of any kind.

Now we have the clearest possible case of plagiarism screaming at us.

The plagiarism is especially embarrassing because it was so completely avoidable.

I’m confident there are staff at the Board who can write, or at least research and sketch out, speeches and pop essays, a common practice in all large organizations.

But Mr. Spence insisted on doing things himself for a forum almost guaranteed to reveal his plagiarism.

What can you say?

And a campaign against plagiarism, rightly, has become a major one in our schools.

I cannot see how the TDSB, if it has any integrity remaining, can fail to ask for his resignation.

After all, if being a football-player director is about symbolism for some students, what are we to say of a public-plagiarist director as a symbol for all students?

And, as I write this, I hear on CBC Radio that researchers now scouring his past writings have said there are indications of other plagiarism.

In the end, the most important lesson in this is how totally inept our school boards are in having charge of children’s education. They are a force only for mediocrity and should be abolished.

[Note: Chris Spence resigned later the same day.]

EDITORIAL SAYS CHEF SPENCE’S ABORIGINAL RIGHTS CAUSE IS HURT BY LACK OF TRANSPARENCY – IF EVER THERE WERE A CASE OF CONCERN WITH THE MOTE WHILE IGNORING THE BEAM THIS IS IT

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO AN EDITORIAL IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

“Lack of transparency is harming Chief Spence’s cause”

And lack of transparency is not harming Stephen Harper’s cause?

Please, this is the most secretive, most manipulative, and least democratic prime minister we have experienced.

Only in his case, hundreds of billions in dollars are at stake and tens of millions of lives.

And he has no excuses such as poor infrastructure, lack of expert advice, and a generally poor environment.

Indeed, he has the best of everything at his disposal, but he only uses the facilities to hide, dissemble, and play nasty political games.

The Globe’s cheap editorial pomposity and selective attention find yet another easy target.

STEPHEN HARPER DECLARES THE SUGGESTION ABOUT INTERVENTION IN MALI IS NOT ON

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Amazing, our robot-ideologue gets something for once.

We have no interests in Mali and no interest in Mali.

But those facts didn’t stop Harper’s most brainless minister from floating the idea that we should get involved in America’s next foreign adventure in mass murder.

I guess Harper received enough feedback to convince him that the public could not stomach his Minister of Rescue Helicopters for Fishing Trips’ brainless proposal.

Concern over Mali, apart from normal humanitarian concerns, is solely the territory of America’s giant blundering military-intelligence establishment.

But that is the case in so many other matters too, and was the case in Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, and Libya.

We did waste a good many lives and a great deal of treasure in some of those places just in order to gain “creds” with America’s military Frankenstein.

And this is, after call, a government whose ministers’ surest route to a big appointment is to suddenly blurt something out, almost like a devotee at a Pentecostal Church’s speaking in tongues while writhing on the carpet, about fighting for another place in which Canadians in general have no interest, Israel.

That certainly was the case for Peter Kent and is an ongoing obsession for John Baird, aka the junk yard dog of vicious attacks and gushes of seemingly pointless enthusiasms.

I suppose we should be grateful for small things: we will not be winging our way over to Mali, dribbling away billions of dollars we don’t have, just to interfere in matters about which we have zero understanding.

 

[Note: Shortly later, Canada offered limited use of a C-17 transport plane to France, whose military had agreed to do America's dirty work in Mali. Fittingly, given the clownish nature of  our Minister of Defense, after some fanfare in sending it off, the plane had a problem and was stuck on the runway for some time.] 

CANADA’S PATHETIC PETER MACKAY AND WORDS ABOUT POSSIBLY SENDING FORCES TO MALI – CANADA’S NEW ROLE IN AMERICA’S INSANE WARS – ISRAEL’S NASTY ROLE

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Peter MacKay, as always, talks as the fool he is, a fool who doesn’t understand the extent of his own foolishness.

Among the Harper government’s clearest achievements in international affairs is reducing the country to a length of soiled toilet paper trailing from the Pentagon’s rear end.

We have zero interests in Mali and zero interest in Mali.

There is nothing there for a rational state to fight over.

But the Pentagon is on a holy crusade, stretching over the face of the earth, for anything that might be in any way associated with what it perceives in its dim lights to be Islamic fundamentalism and terror.

It very much resembles an obsessed, insane Captain Ahab sailing the world’s seas to kill the white whale.

It is egged by the domestic lobby of America’s nasty little sidekick, Israel, a country whose mad leaders speak of nothing but war and assault and enemies and hatreds while they continue stealing the property of others and suppress 4.5 million people into utter hopelessness.

We are heading into a long period of senseless, pointless, and destructive conflicts inspired by the military-industrial complex and its Ahab-like search for the white whale.

Traditionally, Canada, a rational people with progressive views, would not even think of joining in such destructive stupidity.

But now this rational people are ruled by a 39% “majority” government of extreme ideology whose major goal is to play a role in international affairs as defined by the seething Captain Ahab.

We literally threw away billions of dollars and about a hundred and fifty lives to achieve absolutely nothing in Afghanistan.

And we wasted millions more in killing civilians and destroying property in Libya to help create a chaotic state whose leader the United States hated.

In state after state the United States is busy killing people, all innocent people by the standards of justice – in Yemen, in Bahrain, in Pakistan, in Afghanistan, in Somalia, and in Syria (through its paid and supplied proxies).

In Egypt, it encourages the government to impose an unjust constitution just to secure the cooperation of that government.

In Iran, it threatens and blusters daily over nothing.

Its achievement in Iraq – besides a million killed, thousands crippled, two million refugees, and an advanced society reduced to poverty – is a nation effectively divided into pieces and endless internal conflict.

Fortunately, Canada played no role in the filthy business.

Repeating what it achieved in Iraq is, of course, America’s aim in Syria.

Israel’s mad leaders are gleeful for such murderous assistance, but no person of democratic and humane principles can possibly agree.

But we do not have a government today dedicated to such principles, and the whole world knows it and treats us with shame in international forums.

Happy New Year, Canada.

COLUMNIST SAYS NEWTOWN MASSACRE NOT A TRAGEDY BUT EVIL – WHAT EVIL IS – AMERICA’S KILLING KIDS IN A DOZEN PLACES – ISRAEL’S KILLING KIDS IN GAZA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE GLOBE AND MAIL BY JOHN MOSCOWITZ

Evil is an out-dated, mumbo-jumbo word.

Indeed, it explains nothing, serving only to consign something to a dark corner of extreme disapproval with zero understanding.

The author in using it makes himself slightly ridiculous.

The truth is that this terrible event is one more brutal proof of how unbalanced the human mind can be.

That most complex of organs can suffer from countless faults and errors in its construction, just as simpler organs – hearts, kidneys, and livers – so often suffer from faults in their make-up.

And just as people sometimes have parts of their bodies missing – a hand or a leg – a portion of humanity have key bits of their brains either missing or mangled.

Such an event has no more “meaning” than does a stroke of lightning or a tidal wave killing innocent people.

It is terrible, but life goes on.

But, yes, a society which actually cares for its children would have effective gun laws, knowing such things are going to happen at intervals.

But where is the concern for children in America?

What of the children slaughtered in Gaza? No chest-beating over them. Indeed, Israel gets resupplied with all the bombs and munitions expended to kill Palestinian children.

What of the thousands of Iraqi children killed and mangled by America’s pointless invasion? Thousands more made refugees?

And what of the tens of thousands more murdered by a decade of horrible American sanctions against Hussein?

How many children have Americans killed in Afghanistan?

In Pakistan?

And now in Syria through the weapons and fighters imported into that country to undo its government?

The countless killed in Vietnam and Cambodia in a war to no point?

Indeed, today, the seas of Agent Orange America left behind go right on killing and crippling babies and children. What of them?

If America, that brutal imperial force, cared one whit about children, none of these questions could be raised.

HEADLINES SHOUT OF MAJOR ESCALATION WITH GAZA’S PUNY UNGUILDED ROCKETS NEARING JERUSALEM – ISRAEL’S SAVAGERY IN GAZA – BIAS IN MAINLINE WESTERN PRESS – TRUTHS OF THE SITUATION

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO AN ASSOCIATED PRESS STORY

“Major escalation“?

Talk about bias in reporting!

This is it, big time.

Israel has pounded Gaza for three days, and it has killed 28 people at last count.

It also ruthlessly assassinated a leader of the government, and did so right as he was negotiating a long-term ceasefire with them.

Netanyahu is simply a madman for whom the lives of Palestinians mean nothing.

All of this savagery by Israel is really for two purposes, neither of which is ethical or honorable.

One, Netanyahu faces election, and he uses the blood of the people of Gaza to fire up support.

Two, Netanyahu clearly is getting ready to steal more land from the Palestinians by annexation. This kind of activity acts a screen and preparation.

Israel’s behavior is completely unacceptable to all fair-minded people.

Please understand, those who know no history, Gaza is essentially a giant refugee camp dating to the 1948 days when Israel’s army and terror squads – the Irgun and Stern and Lehi – fanned out through Palestine to murder many people, hoping to frighten them away.

It is densely populated, and its population is about half children. Every Israeli Prime Minister has hoped to put end to its existence one way or another.

No one but a madman or psychopath would bomb such a place.

Remember too, the last time Israel invaded, it killed 400 children plus about 1400 others.

Ever since that atrocity it has kept a blockade to prevent normal life, and it has murdered unarmed people on the high seas to enforce its bully behavior.

At first, it even calculated what starvation calories would be and only allowed enough food to enter to just barely prevent starvation, not even chocolate bars were let in, nor were the building materials needed to repair the damage from Israel’s ruthless bombing.

After quiet diplomacy from outside, there has been a slight let-up in calories.

Just ask yourself what you would do if treated in this way? I know what most gun-owning Americans would feel like doing against repression, savagery, and abuse.

What are the poor people of Gaza to do? Just all leave? If so, for where? Or are they to lie down and just accept virtual slavery from Israel?

Meanwhile, Israel steals the homes and farms of others week after week in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

American politicians, cowards all, say nothing for fear of being smeared and losing valuable campaign contributions from the Israel Lobby.

TORONTO’S MAYOR FORD DENIES RESPONSIBILITY FOR TTC BUS FIASCO WHERE PASSENGERS WERE DUMPED SO THAT THE MAYOR’S HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL TEAM COULD BE PICKED UP – MY PARADE BALLOON SUGGESTION

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN IN TOTONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

He’s a character right out of fiction – a lowlife in Dickens, or perhaps more suitably, Damon Runyon.

A personality absolutely without color but colorful in the limited sense of doing so many bumbling, stupid things.

A buffoon who cannot frame an articulate sentence, a man whose views on almost anything are close to one hundred-percent predictable before you’ve even heard them, a man who does what he does because he’s got to do it, and yet a man who somehow is never responsible for anything, including his own bad manners and stupid acts.

He’s an odd conflation between the sheriff in High Noon and Bozo the Clown.

And he’s running our city.
_______________________________

Perhaps some civic-minded group of citizens could put together enough money to construct a balloon – like the ones they use in New York’s Thanksgiving Day Parade – resembling His Worship.

As it bounced and tumbled along – tethered by a dozen or so lines held by attendants who were gaily costumed to resemble figures such as Chief Blair, the TTC’s Andy Byford, Giorgio (George) Mammoliti, Doug Ford – a recording would play, in a squeaky, high-pitched voice, “I didn’t do it! I’m as clean as the days are long! I’m not a crook!”

The tableau would be a deadly accurate representation of government today in Toronto.

Perhaps the organizers of Gay Pride could take up the idea if those running the Christmas Parade aren’t enthusiastic?

AN EDITORIAL PRAISES SOME WORDS ABOUT GOVERNMENT IN CANADA BY MICHAEL IGNATIEFF AS WISE – WISE? IGNATIEFF? – AND PRAISE FROM THE GLOBE THESE DAYS IS DAMNING INDEED

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSES TO AN EDITORIAL IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

When a Globe and Mail editorial of the Stackhouse Era bestows the word “wise’” upon anything or anyone, it must be taken as prima facie evidence of nonsense being praised.

Of course, in the case of Ignatieff, the more thoughtful and critical have long known him as a rather foolish man.

His record of supporting America’s war and torture made nonsense of his supposed position as a defender of human rights.

But that kind of thing is common enough: great wealthy American institutions often bestow titles and awards and positions – dressed up to sound meaningful in terms of human rights and democratic values – to those who really serve the imperial interest, as Ignatieff very much did.

And Ignatieff’s “political career” is one long painful episode of arrogance and poor judgment, an effort which left the country far worse off than it had been when he returned.

It truly is ridiculous to attribute wisdom to a man like this.

But then so is it to call Tony Blair a man of honor or peace, as the huge stream of awards and sinecures flowing to him all claim.

Ignatieff were best not heard from again and left forgotten, but the man’s bulging ego will not let that be so.

And it is the job of Globe editorials in almost all things these days to make a silk purse of a sow’s ear.
______________________________________________

As to the decline in democracy in the country, what can you say of a man who accepted being parachuted into a riding and refused even to live there?

And a man who was parachuted into the leadership itself by the efforts of a group of party insiders?

Of a man who didn’t face the democratic test in either case?

But I’m not arguing that Ignatieff is worse than Harper.

Harper is an instinctive petty tyrant with no genuine respect for democratic values, as he has demonstrated time and time again.

He is, simply, the nastiest piece of work we’ve had as prime minister.

And he sits there as “majority” prime minister owing to Ignatieff’s inept leadership and Ignatieff’s elevated idea of himself and his abilities.

ISRAEL AGAIN COMMITS PIRACY ON THE HIGH SEAS – THIS TIME NETANYAHU ONLY ABUSED AND IMPRISONED THE HUMANITARIANS WITHOUT REPEATING MASS MURDER – NAZI-LIKE CALORIE COUNT FOR GAZA VICTIMS

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Well, we should be grateful for small blessings.

This time we only had piracy on the high seas instead of piracy with slaughter of innocents.

I have no idea how Israel’s defenders and apologists think they are defending something worthwhile.

Israel is a savage state, and almost all of our troubles in the Middle East trace back to its savagery.
___________________________________

A writer below has pointed out a Salon article on Israel’s detailed planning of just enough calories to prevent those in Gaza from dying, and he wonders if it’s true.

Yes, indeed, Salon actually is rather late in pointing out what was known a long time ago.

Remember, in the early stages of the illegal blockade of a million and a half people how even chocolate bars were seized and not allowed in?

People scratched their heads about why that should be so.

The reason was simply the nazi-like calorie count.

It is not widely understood – you must read many news sources and interpolate – but after Israel’s bloody attack on the convoy of Turkish-origin ships, killing about ten unarmed people in cold blood and seizing everyone’s personal effects, the United States quietly pressured Israel to allow a higher amount of calories in.

That’s just one of the reasons Netanyahu so hates Obama that he’s interfering in an American election with personal ads in places like Florida. He’s committing an illegal act in doing so, but what American politician dare call him on it?

These facts are just the bare suggestion of the dirty stuff that goes on in Israel’s brutal campaign to rid itself of remaining Palestinians and take their land.

No person who loves freedom and human rights can do anything but condemn Israel’s ghastly behavior.

But at the national level in the United States, no one dares say a word, the political campaign-fund and media-treatment consequences being too great for America’s cowardly politicians.

And, by the way, Harper is carefully moving Canada, with each passing day, towards the same ugly destination: a place where Israel’s interests appear equal or even superior to our national interests because of campaign funding and its power to make elections.

JEFFERY SIMPSON WRITES OF OBAMA’S MIX OF MUSCULARITY AND RESTRAINT IN FOREIGN POLICY MAKING IT DIFFICULT FOR ROMNEY TO ATTACK – MUSCULARITY? MUSSOLINI LIKED THAT IMAGE

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JEFFERY SIMPSON IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Muscularity?

Is that what you call the killing of thousands of innocent people – often women and children – by buzz-cut thugs at the controls of computer games with real missiles?

Is that what you call having “kill lists” of American citizens?

Is that what you call the horrors secretly initiated in Syria?

Or the fact that the CIA’s torture gulag was never dealt with?

Well, muscularity has definitely been the image sought by some governments. Posters of Mussolini typically featured that quality.

For Canadians and most of the rest of the world, it really does not matter which of these sociopaths is elected.

Romney has always been an unattractive, nasty-minded figure, and Obama has thrown off virtually every quality that made him once attractive and a source of hope.

The only issue that makes any difference for the future of world affairs between these two is their degree of subservience to Israel.

Romney literally grovels to the madmen now running Israel.

Obama, while not setting the standards of toughness towards Israel required for genuine peace, has at least not quite grovelled.

And he has so earned the hatred of Netanyahu that that lunatic is busy interfering in an American election with ads made for Florida, a criminal act by the way under American law.