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

Quits?

Big deal.

Threatening the President’s life is a crime in the United States.

The man belongs in prison.

This whole matter shows how sick and twisted the support for Israel has become.

Bad enough calling every critic of Israel’s ugly policies an anti-Semite, a favorite practice of frustrated supporters who do not get what they want.

But now this?

It is not to be taken lightly that a prominent man feels he can do this.
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“The Israelites are given over to murdering people that they don’t like ………

“Shamir and his Stern Gang murdered Count Bernadotte, the Swedish Peace Envoy ………”

Yes, indeed, along with literally hundreds of other murders and acts of terror in the 1940s.

Israel was born in terror, and instead of growing into a respectable member of the world community, it has only gone on to become something very unpleasant, violating all fair-minded people’s sense of fairness and decency.

And it comes as no surprise that its fervent supporters behave in the same fashion.

It was not that long ago that a prominent American lawyer advocated in writing the execution of all family members of any Palestinian caught in an act of terror.

And what single act in our day is more terrifying than Israel’s assault on Gaza, which is basically a refugee camp, killing 400 children, a thousand others, and lying about every detail of that savagery since?

Then still imposing 4 years of illegal and inhumane embargo on the same people and using murderous acts of piracy to enforce it?

Israel, sadly, has become little more than a mafia state: it murders, it steals, it oppresses, and it breaks all international law with impunity, lying and shamelessly claiming the right to do things no one has the right to do.

And the public is supposed to say fine because poor Israel feels threatened.

Israel is threatened seriously by absolutely no one or nothing but its own insanity.

The threat Obama represents, if it can even be called that, is that Israel must eventually abide by rules and treaties, assuming its previous borders, but Israel wants everything and it wants the non-Jews gone.

Hardly a stance any person of ethics can be expected to agree with.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Sorry, the premiss of this piece is shabby.

There’s nothing special about “the Muslim world” which makes the path to modernity neither safe nor easy. Indeed, saying so, demonstrates not a good grasp of history and provides one more sad bit of evidence of the Islamophobia with which we are inundated.

Just a few hundred years ago, Christians were hacking each other into pieces and burning alive those who varied in some minute detail, such as the nature of the bread and wine at mass, in their faith.

Yet Europe today is generally regarded as the world’s most civilized and tolerant set of societies in the world, although the social impacts of heavy immigration are beginning to erode that view.

The path to modernity is never, never safe or easy, for anyone, and, truth be told, it is never finished. We are always playing catch-up in our laws with the social changes engendered by technical and economic change.

The idiot-savants at the Pentagon and the CIA would have us believe that you can just change an ancient society in a matter of years, but that belief is the equivalent of thinking you can remove an ancient, ailing oak tree from your yard with a hand scoop.

It took virtually all Western societies centuries to evolve even to the state of civilization we see now. The beginnings of the modern era go back about five centuries, a time span which reflects the emergence of a new standard in economic growth. Still, even those five centuries are filled with riots, revolutions, wars, and countless horrors.

Even in “the New World,” the United States took more than two centuries to become the approximation of a democracy we see today. In the wake of its Revolution, almost no one could vote, it being estimated that maybe one percent of Virginians could vote, blacks and women being excluded but also, often not appreciated, most white males. You had to have a certain amount of wealth to cast a ballot.

Even then, the Senate was appointed until 1913, the President was elected only by the Electoral College (a small group of the moneyed elites), the popular vote did not determine anything, and the Supreme Court dared not dream of enforcing the Bill of Rights across states so it remained an empty set of high-sounding words. It took decades of change and strife to get what we see today, including what was the bloodiest war ever experienced by Americans, the Civil War, in which it lost roughly twice the people it lost in WWII.

The immense turmoil and mass murders in getting votes and rights for blacks went on for most of the country’s history. In the 1920s, several black towns in Oklahoma and Florida were virtually wiped out by white mobs, the bodies of hundreds buried in mass graves.

Women only gained the vote in 1921 after a long and difficult struggle.

The truth is that democracy in some form and respect for human rights are virtually inevitable when an old society experiences consistent economic growth. Economic growth and the rise of a strong middle class act almost like a solvent on the customs and beliefs of old societies. It is a long process, and it is never without a good deal of pain.

Even in North America we are not through with the process of economic development affecting old ways: look at all the turmoil over matters like rising divorce rates, abortion rights, and gay marriage – all things which are necessary and, in a sense, inevitable for a free society which continues to grow and change.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Breakthrough? Isn’t that a rather delusional word to use in this context?

How do you get a breakthrough from a nasty bully who for some years has had everything going his way? Continued assassination, torture, abuse of millions, illegal blockade, and no one dares say a word.

What incentive can you possibly think of to push Israel towards fairness and decency? How else do you make a bully behave himself if you don’t apply pressure?

Only the United States pushing hard to get results – as Obama started 3 years ago doing – would get even minimal results, but of course Obama was literally reviled and called hateful names in Israel so now he has joined the crowd of bought-and-paid for American politicians who dare not say one tough word about Israel.

We heard the quiet truth from Sarkozy and Obama at the press meeting a while back when a couple of honest exchanges were heard by reporters in error. It was almost the only truth we have had reported in years on this appalling situation.

Israel and its Lobby in the United States have created a virtual machine to stall all meaningful efforts and to create an endless, almost sickening round of absurd statements in the mouths of American politicians hoping to get elected.

Gingrich, Santorum, and Romney – to say nothing of the truly ignorant Bachmann – have all made ridiculous statements on Israel’s behalf just for some campaign funds in Iowa. Where’s Israel’s incentive to compromise?

After the last Congressional elections in the United States, about 80 new Congressman were given deluxe trips to Israel where they are typically feted and fed the right words to use in future. To refuse such a “gift” is almost like signing your own political death warrant, so virtually all of them go.

What have the poor Palestinians to counter that kind of unbelievable influence peddling? Nothing but a just cause, and in the power structure in Washington, that counts little more than spit.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

“Reading is like oxygen…”

Not really, and by making that exaggerated claim the Globe places itself on the side of all the phony politicians and teachers and school administrators who day in and day out make false and even ridiculous claims about reading and literacy.

The Globe editorial writer would perhaps be surprised at the number of parents who do, or even cannot, read. After all, it wasn’t just yesterday we began graduating people who are functionally illiterate.

And preaching to such parents is both foolish and effectively just another way of shirking the responsibilities of our teachers and schools to do the job parents do not.

Even more surprising would be the number of elementary school teachers who do not read, and haven’t the least interest in it.

We have too many teachers – and this is especially important in the primary grades – who report to work each day with much the same attitude as the proverbial post office worker: I want my pay, my days off, and my pension, and “I’m outta here.”

Such people should never have been hired for so important a job, yet I guarantee we have platoons of them today in our schools.

Typically at times when in the past we experience teacher shortages, any warm body that walks through the day was hired. Trouble is, once hired, they remain in place for a lifetime of inadequate and unsupervised (we have absolutely no systematic check on teachers’ work ability and habits today) lethargy.

And all up the line we have teachers who wanted to get out of the classroom as principals, superintendents, directors, and “professors” at teachers’ colleges. There’s no escaping their influence.

It would be an interesting assignment for a Globe reporter to interview a number of school officials and teachers on their reading. I think the results would be eye-opening. Does anyone really believe that the ex-football player heading up Toronto schools is a serious reader?

And it’s the same for the politicians setting the poor rules. Ontario’s “literacy” test is a bad joke. I say that having first-hand experience with Asian students attending Ontario schools. It is a foolishly conceived test, set and marked by teachers. Those who “fail” it just take a bird course the next term to be deemed as having passed.

Now with politicians handing out the raises and benefits, what do you think is the motivation of those marking this test every year?

If we want to see help in reading for all students – as in any other subject you care to name, as well as the use of computers – we will demand of our rather handsomely rewarded teachers that they do the job for which they were hired.

We will put some of the best teachers in the early grades. It was Roger Ascham, Elizabeth the Great’s tutor, who argued for the ablest teachers at an early age. We frequently do the opposite, I’m afraid.

We will test the kids with a genuinely objective, machine-readable test periodically, one not set by teachers and ex-teachers seeking extra income.

So, please, dear Globe, do not spout meaningless figures of speech unless you are prepared to support the fundamental changes required. Nothing’s easier and more useless than mouthing platitudes while the big ugly machine chugs on. Reform is what we need.
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“There are certainly a lot of drivel books out there.”

Yes, indeed.

And the education establishment has brought some of the worst of it into the schools.

I refer to the dull books stuffed into “literacy closets,” bought from publishers trying to make a quick buck on parents’ concerns and the education establishment’s mouthings about literacy.

At the same time that considerable resources have been wasted on these over-priced and uninteresting books, we have let libraries in schools decline into a shameful state.

A school library should have the best of children’s literature on the shelves and a friendly person in charge to introduce them to the books and teach them about using our great public libraries.

On the whole, we simply do not do this.

So-called “teacher-librarians” – a recent historical creation which is neither fish nor fowl – preside over the pathetically supplied and poorly maintained libraries on a part-time basis, and many of them show no interest in library content or children’s reading skills and interests, nor are they themselves lovers of books often.

They are there to fill in the holes in the principle’s schedule for teachers briefly away for some temporary reason – a ghastly anti-educational concept altogether.

We need lovers of books in the libraries, people dedicated to promoting the use and value of libraries. Library technicians, selected for their skills with books and children, would provide a superior human resource.

Just go see the lovely people working at many branches of our public libraries. No one comes away feeling they are there to fill holes.

Young children need a loving and informed introduction to books, especially the large numbers of them with no hope of receiving that at home.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY PAUL KORING IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

America’s establishment is working hard to repeat the scenario of WWII in the Pacific.

Japan was never going to attack the U.S. but after a long period of harassment, trade restrictions, and threats, Japan decided it had no choice.

This is going to become the most dangerous and fearful effort facing Canada’s current younger generation’s time.

And it is completely unnecessary, just as was America’s holocaust in Vietnam where about 3 million people were slaughtered to maintain America’s presence in Asia.

Obama is just as much a creature of America’s military-industrial complex as George Bush or Ronald Reagan.
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“Our US friends should understand that military outreach costs money, and today the US has little of it.”

Yes, but you forget that the United States, having the privilege of the world’s reserve currency, is in a unique position financially.

It has abused, and will continue to abuse, the nations around the world holding its currency.

It will continue inflating gradually or it may at some point devalue.

In either case, America will leave dollar holders around the world “holding the bag,” no different in any respect than a conscienceless fraudster like Bernard Madoff.

So not only does it promote war and violence, it cheats everyone to pay for its stupidity.

That is precisely how the immensely costly and pointless war in Vietnam was paid for.

I am only sorry that most people do not have a grasp of this reality which allows America to behave as an unlimited fool in world affairs.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

A brave man indeed, and a devilishly clever one.

I much regretted his views on Iraq, but I admire still his ability to criticize with a sharp tongue the many absurdities of the human condition.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

A READER WRITES:

“We are a secular Nation, church and state must always be separate. Ban the veil. A citizenship ceremony is a State function…”

That’s actually quite inaccurate.

The writer thinks he lives in the United States apparently.

This province spends countless millions each year on Catholic education, an unthinkable arrangement in the United States.

Until quite recently, the Lord’s Prayer was a regular part of public schools and many formal gatherings.

Being a secular humanist, I do not favor such practices, but I also recognize the past political compromises they represent in a country which does not have founding documents so uncompromising as America’s.

I ask whether Sikhs must remove their turbans and other symbols for this ceremony?

And Jews their yarmulke, or in the case of ultra-orthodox, their huge hats and beards which effectively cover faces and even lips?

Are nuns required not to wear habits if they belong to an order still using one?

Are Protestants required to remove the cross on a chain often worn around their necks? Helena Guergis used to march around with a rather large one. I don’t recall any objections.

The writer simply does not know what he is talking about.

But then neither does the minister, Jason Kenney.

The proudest garb any of us can wear is tolerance, but it seems to be in short supply these days.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Gingrich reaches new levels of the ridiculous here, reminding me a bit of the time some years ago when apologists for Israel insisted no one should use the accepted term, suicide-bomber, inducing George Bush to give a speech in which he used the non-existent term, homicide-bombers. Of course, it sounded ridiculous, but no more so than much of what George Bush said.

Gingrich has always, always been a two-faced politician, a slimy manipulator, and a man who has served various special interests for a large enough wad of money.

Here he claims what is, is not.

Even the Bible speaks of the Philistines, albeit with a negative perspective.

And why does he do this?

To attract large campaign donations from The Lobby.

There is no other explanation, because Gingrich has always been a man of shallow and rather easily altered convictions.

What an absurd business to inject into the political debate in America, especially considering here is a nation with scores of serious problems, but that’s what a politician without ethics is willing to do.

And one has to believe The Lobby is desperate to the point of insanity to invite this kind of garbage.

The world is becoming totally disillusioned with Israel: its behavior is consistently aggressive, unethical, and malevolent, and no ignorant, shallow words from Newt Gingrich or anyone else is going to convince them that what they see daily is not the truth.

Israel’s credibility with people all over the world keeps falling, and indeed has not much further down to go.

All that rather than just make peace and treat its neighbors with respect. It does say something very unpleasant about Israel that no blind insistence by manipulated American politicians can overcome
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“. . . despite what some folks say, it turns out that Christians are VERY open-minded. Doing whatever you want is perfectly OK with them … as long as once in awhile you say that you’ve sinned but have now — SHAZAM ! like MAGIC ! — been forgiven by God.”

It’s an aspect of one of America’s favorite continuing themes: eternal youth and being born again.

Redemption is a concept repeated in America to the point of being sickening, day after day.

You can do anything – and Newt has done some disgusting stuff – and have redemption.

The popular culture is replete with stories of drunken or drugged hillbilly singers who find redemption, along with endless tedious stories of sports figures and politicians.

There’s always a new prospect for everyone so long as they just believe.

Believe in what?

Essentially believe that you are special, going to live forever, and truly cannot do anything wrong.

By the way, Newt is not just a serial adulterer, one of his egregious stupidities was announcing to his past wife, dying in a bed of cancer, that he was divorcing her.

Doesn’t that just say something profound about this man’s character? I do believe we are dealing with a psychopath here, a relatively mild one but a psychopath.

That being understood, how easy for him to deeply cut and hurt millions of people already suffering decades of abuse from his campaign-fund paymaster.
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“…Palestine Liberation Organization executive committee member Zahir Muhsein. Here’s what he said:

“The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity.”

What an abysmal comment.

First, how in God’s name can you honestly quote one man as representing the truth on so profound a matter and speaking for millions of people? You cannot.

You might as well quote Mordechai Vanunu on the nature of Israel.

You are just repeating an immensely tiresome and deeply dishonest idea that Jordan is where Palestinians belong.

Jordan does not want millions of Palestinians.

Millions of Palestinians do not want Jordan.

No, the Palestinians just want the homes and farms they have resided in for centuries and centuries.

And they don’t want the migrants from Europe and America who pretty well define the establishment of Israel stealing any more of their homes and farms.

And what does Israel and apologists for Israel’s abuse, like yourself, want?

To ethnically-cleanse millions of people, stealing all their homes and farms.

In a futile effort to make that palatable, you spew nonsense like this about there being no Palestinians.

The existing apartheid situation in Israel and occupied Palestine is only intended by Israel’s establishment as a temporary one, intended to make these poor people get up and go from endless abuse and deprivation.

Go where? Go anywhere so long as it is not in the territory of what has now become that malevolent fantasy of Greater Israel.

As all apologists for Israel’s abuse, you conveniently forget that all the countries of the Middle East, including Jordan, have no long history, but that does not render any of them invalid.

The shape of the modern Middle East arose out of matters like the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the imperial adventures of Britain and France.

And the bottom-line truth is that all nationalism is pretty much a child of the 19th century. National states, as we know them today, virtually did not exist before then.

Europe and other parts of the world were divided into princedoms and empires everywhere, entities which included a polyglot of languages, religions, and ethnic identities – the Austro-Hungarian Empire being perhaps the most obvious example with its Germans, Tyroleans, Italians, Hungarians, and many others.

Nationalism is almost a virus that infected Europe in the 19th century with the idea that Germany should be for German-speakers and Italy for Italian-speakers, etc.

We saw where that virus led: in the limit, Hitler’s Reich with its absurd racial theories is where blind nationalism goes.

The early Zionists were infected with exactly the virus of nationalism sweeping Europe, and today in few places of the world is there a more backward-looking sense of identity than in Israel.

Israel for Jews. No room for others.

That sounds terrifyingly familiar.
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“It seems that the Jews of modern Israel are the invented people; not the Palestinians.”

Indeed.

A fine Israeli academic has written a serious and scholarly book on the Jewish people and Israel’s identity.

Everyone concerned about the Middle East should read it.

You’ll find my book review here:

http://chuckmanmiscellanea.blogspot.com/2011/10/review-of-shlomo-sands-invention-of.html

But even were the findings of this research to prove inaccurate, there still would be no excuse for Israel’s abuse and oppression.
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“ Clearly, the anti-Israel posters here have no real notion of the history of the region and are simply parroting Palestinian talking points.”

I would be willing to match my knowledge of the region’s background with you or any other apologist here for Israel’s interests.

There is nothing more intellectually dishonest than repeating endlessly the same technically true but trite observation, an observation which is meaningless.

Again, no country in the Middle East has less historical basis than Israel, a place largely founded and governed by Europeans and Americans.

And modern scholarship seriously questions whether these founders and rulers even have any legitimate connection with the place called Israel because they are likely not descendants of the ancient Hebrews.

The Palestinian people most likely include most of the direct descendants of the ancient Hebrews.

The Romans were known not to throw all the population out of their conquests, and there is no record of them doing so despite the modern notion that the Jews have been wanderers since being thrown out.

Both the Biblical stories and some Jewish notions of ancient history we know to be incorrect.

There is for instance no record – and this among some of the world’s great past record-keepers, the Egyptians – of Israelis being enslaved or even living in Egypt.

Moses is an Egyptian-origin name, not Hebrew.

And somehow or other I have doubts about Jonah living in the whale.

You don’t base boundaries and world affairs on myths and superstitions, but if you do you get just the kind of mess we see today in Israel.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

I support the idea.

However, the main problem with bullying has always been teachers and administrators who do not pay attention to what’s happening under their noses and are reluctant to step in when they do see something.

Schools are communities, and the authorities of the communities are the adults. Children look to them for safety, but in so many cases today they look in vain.

The anti-bully programs with slogans and videos and t-shirts we have today are little more than a way for administrators to cover their behinds. Window dressing.

Maybe the legislation will change the situation somewhat.

Of course, there are more than a few teachers who themselves are bullies, but you just try getting anything done about them. Impossible.

I do hope the generally spineless McGuinty sticks to this, but in view of past efforts, I’m not hopeful.

We had zero-tolerance on violence – a good thing for the safety of the entire school community – but as soon as one ethnic group found its students in trouble more than others, the policy was dropped like a hot potato.

Yelling prejudice about stats is a pretty sad way to destroy a good policy.
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“Bullies learn from their closest role models – their parents.”

I don’t think that is accurate.

First, every serious study ever done shows clearly children’s closest role models are their playmates and peers.

Parents, despite their many hopes and pretensions, have remarkably little influence outside of supplying the necessities of life and a relatively safe place.

I’m sure the parents play a role, but I’m convinced that role is largely through genetic endowment.

Time after time, we find the parents, or at least one parent, of bullies are themselves bullies.

That fact has a lot to do with the school authorities being so reluctant and irresponsible in taking a bully child on: the results will be a confrontation with bully parents, and in our education system today, parents who make lots of noise are paid attention to.

We must remember that all the principals and superintendents and others administering public education are themselves teachers – many of them teachers who just wanted to get out of the classroom and all of them people who never rocked the boat.

It is a perfectly closed system, guaranteed to produce the results we see.

So while expectations of parents are important, expectations of the very teachers who are in the schoolyards, halls, gyms, and classrooms have to become a whole lot higher with regard to tolerating abuse.

Holding parents legally responsible is just passing the buck, and almost certainly leads to further abuse at home by bully parents – not a solution helpful to society.

We must provide mechanisms to support, and indeed demand, the removal of genuine bullies from the regular schools. I say genuine bullies because just about all children sometimes tease or call names, something which must be corrected by authorities but equally something that does not identify a genuine bully.

A real bully is someone who enjoys inflicting discomfort on others – doing so is a basic part of his or her personality. It likely is a mild form of sadism or psychopathy, or, in some cases, not so mild.

When such people are identified, they really need to be removed from the general school population, and we must provide special, tougher disciplined schools suitable for them.

None of this removes the basic responsibility from teachers and administrators. They must correct all the children just indulging in the taunts and teasing most children engage in at some stage, and they must identify the genuine hard cases which need to be removed from the general population.

Anything less solves nothing. McGuinty’s ridiculous 1-800 number to report bullying is a costly administrative nightmare, useful to no one. It is just a way to cover his behind. If the authorities inside a school are already ignoring their responsibilities, what is the use of a report form from an anonymous telephone call center in Bangalore India, or indeed anywhere else?

Absolutely nothing. It’s just busy-work to defuse a problem.

So unless you are prepared to support genuine reform, holding school authorities responsible for what happens under their noses and giving them the authority to act, this problem will continue forever, only becoming larger with a growing population.
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“I am a teacher and unfortunately, many of the teachers that I have worked with throughout my career have been bullies. We need to address bullying from the very top down–including administration, as many of them are bullies, too…”

Indeed.

We’ve all known them, bully teachers, but what is anyone to do about them?

A teacher pretty well has to be caught stealing or committing sexual abuse to be dismissed.

I can still remember the names of a couple of genuine bully teachers more than fifty years after experiencing them – a good measure of their bad effect.

Virtually all other inappropriate behavior, as well as downright incompetence, is tolerated and protected in our public schools much as pedophile priests have been protected by the Catholic Church for ages.

The teachers’ union protects the day-to-day creeps who do not reach such excesses as theft and sexual abuse, but still make many children miserable through their careers and teach them little worth teaching.

This issue of bullying is very interesting, opening as it does, the whole set of issues confronting public education.

Serious reform is one of our greatest needs in society.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY ANDREW COHEN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

The Kennedys were simply America’s Borgias.

The Borgias had grace and beauty and wealth, but they also were ruthless and murderous and had ambition beyond bounds.

The full story of the Kennedys’ greed and manipulation has not been – and likely never be – told. Despite many revelations coming to light, the family has succeeded time and again in suppressing much evidence.

This film may or may not be what the author of this article claims, but it does seem strange to me a man who wants to be taken seriously would spend time criticizing a television show.

We know, absolutely, that such a show will be vapid, whether it dwells on the sleaze or not.

Here are some reflections on Kennedy, the president, people may enjoy:

http://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2010/11/19/the-dark-aspects-of-kennedys-road-to-the-white-house-were-far-darker-than-described-by-british-journalist-andrew-marr/
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Joe Kennedy wasn’t just a crook as a reader has commented.

He was a ruthless and highly immoral man whose behavior included acts like bringing home young women he picked up or paid for sex right in front of his family gathered in the living room.

He was also brutally anti-British in his views, and correspondingly somewhat of a Hitler admirer.

He was so stupidly outspoken in these unpleasant views that the British government asked the United States to withdraw him as ambassador to Britain, not a common occurrence in diplomacy, a request with which Roosevelt complied.

Joe made his fortune in illegal alcohol, working with some very unpleasant and murderous gangsters, a connection which was exploited later in getting funds and support for his son’s drive to be president.

Jack himself, while a far classier guy on the surface with his tailored suits and quotes and manners, shared a number of his father’s characteristics, albeit in varied forms.

John’s womanizing we all know about, although not everyone is aware that at least one of the women – Judith Exner, a woman who paid him calls right in the White House – was tied to high levels of the Mob.

And not everyone knows that one of his early relationships, while in the military, was with a woman German spy. J Edgar Hoover was on to it, and had it not been for the Kennedy wealth and influence, his career would have died right there.

The abuse of privilege, in avoiding responsibility for your actions, was just as big a part of the Kennedys as it was that dishonest mediocrity and ignorant frat boy, George W Bush.

Much was made of John’s PT-109 exploits at the time of his running, and he did help save a man’s life, but the entire incident – the loss of his craft and the misery of his crew – was owing to his incompetence and lack of appropriate caution as a commander.

The same behavior from anyone else, without the connections, might well have resulted in a court martial.

Kennedy’s good taste included taking on people like Theodore Sorensen as writer/advisor – his family wealth allowed them to hire what essentially became a platoon of smart flaks, people who helped very much in smoothing over the bumps in the road of family history and who gave an aura of intelligence and worth.

But it is certain that more dishonesty came into play here too. Sorensen almost certainly wrote Kennedy’s Pulitzer prize-winning book, although he was such a loyal follower he denied it always. Sorensen also, to a certainty, was author of speech phrases like “Ask not what….” If you read Sorensen’s book about Kennedy, the cadence and style of the writing are so recognizable.

John also played a very two-faced game in the White House with regard to Cuba. After the Missile Crisis blew up in his face – and the CIA, as well as attempting to assassinate Castro many times, had been very much in the business of planning another invasion of Cuba as Khrushchev feared when he considered sending missiles to Cuba – the agreement that ended the crisis was Kennedy’s agreeing to not invade Cuba as well as withdrawing certain missiles from Turkey.

Word of the agreement made the anti-Castro thugs the CIA had sponsored for years – Osama’s boys in the mountains made a peanut-sized operation compared to the multi-million dollar terror operation the CIA ran in the early 1960s (just one of countless examples of U.S. hypocrisy around the use of terror) – bitterly, fiercely angry, making them one of the prime suspects in Kennedy’s assassination.

Kennedy had his brother, as Attorney General and stand-in voice of the President, make a big show of raiding camps in the South where these thugs carried on with their CIA-provided weapons and training. Robert also secretly was in charge of more attempts to murder Castro.

The Kennedy brothers were always getting involved in heated battles. For reasons that still are not clear, Robert conducted a vendetta against a number of big mobsters, despite the fact that the Mob had financed his brother’s presidential campaign and kept such connections as Judith Exner. That behavior made the Mob another chief suspect for Kennedy’s assassination.

Both of the Kennedys actually, for whatever well-organized group killed Jack knew they also had to kill Robert if he was going to become President. Robert’s ruthless use of power meant that the full powers of the office of the president would go after his brother’s assassins, as the pathetic Warren Commission never made any attempt to do.

Sleaze in fancy suits, ruthless people with a veneer of class – that’s the Kennedys.

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

This is utterly paranoid nonsense from the CSIS official.

There is, and always has been, the risk of twisted individuals doing harm to the public.

It happens every day, but we do not call it terror unless the perpetrator happens to be a Muslim.

Just what do you think Clifford Olson or Robert Picton or Paul Bernardo were?

What do you think the creepy guys who shoot people in the Jane and Finch area are?

If we let our officials act the way the government of the United States has, we simply will no longer have the Canada we love.

The truth is no terrorist can take Canada away from us: we can only do that to ourselves.

The United States today is virtually a police state. Passengers are frisked and x-rayed even on local flights.

People are submitted to intense questioning on the least suspicion of a second-rate police-mind. The TSA now patrols some American internal highways and pulls people over arbitrarily.

The very books you borrow from the library are recorded by the FBI, an agency with its own past history of genuine terror tactics. The mails are invaded. Internet use is recorded. All phone conversations are recorded.

People convicted of nothing are secretly detained in prisons. The CIA continues to run an international torture gulag. The CIA murders people proved guilty of nothing every week by drones and missiles.

Is that the kind of environment the CSIS official desires?

I suspect it is the environment which is dear to the heart of a control-freak like our prime minister, a man who is also such an American wannabe he readily swallows whatever the American government dishes out.

God save Canada from the sick thinking of the CSIS official.
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“You have a better chance of falling off a ladder and dying or slipping and falling in the bath tub and dying than in a terrorist attack. Largely it’s a tactic to scare the population into allowing for infringement on rights and freedoms and herd the electorate more readily.”

Absolutely.

There are more deaths on bicycles every year even in the US than from any conceivable form of terror.

Americans murder their fellow citizens to the order of 20,000 each year.

Americans kill their fellow citizens on the highways to the order of 40,000 every year.

Half a million American children are seriously abused by a member of their own family every year.

Doctors making mistakes kill tens of thousands of Americans every year.

Thousands of young people are permanently injured every year in America playing violent sports like football.

Four hundred thousand Americans are taken by cancer every year – much of it preventable as in the case of smoking and exposure to other hazards.

Every society at all times has a substantial group of people who are subject to vague fears more than others and people who would like to closely control others for their own comfort: there is a natural distribution of them in any population.

But when you give such people – who tend always to be drawn to security or police or military work – too much leeway and resources in the name of paranoid fears, you begin to open yourself to the debilitating reality of a police state, whose ultimate limit is nothing less than  the horrors of Stalin’s Soviet Union or Hitler’s Reich.

The vigilance required to keep a genuinely free society is not the vigilance of outfits like the FBI or CIA or CSIS or the military: it is the vigilance of each of us against those who would abuse us in the name of terror or dark fears.
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“Can CSIS and the Harper regime tell us how many Afghans and Libyans have been killed in their own country by Canadians.”

Thank you.

The number of Afghans killed, mainly by the U.S., is in the tens of thousands.

The number of Libyans is in the thousands, again mainly by the U.S.

And we’ve assisted in bombing Libyan infrastructure back to the Stone Age.

That is no exaggeration, and no press in Canada will tell us the dark truth, not even CBC, these days quaking in its boots over its fate under the dark hulk we call prime minister.

Nothing to be proud of, any of it.

And if you really think about it, these were acts which only created legions of young men with grievances for the future.

Oh, but we do  have the buzz-cut thugs at the CIA playing computer games with drones and Hellfire missiles destroying the lives of thousands of others to protect us, don’t we?

That thought sure makes me feel safe. How about you?

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

A message for Israel?

Yes, but far more importantly, the incident provides a message for the rest of the world.
When have we ever had such stunning first-hand evidence of Israel’s inappropriate access to the President of the United States?

Obama, leader of the free world and a man with the immense burdens of a country of more than 300 million people, has to give time, “every day,” to the the querulous leader of a country of 7 million people, about one-third of the population of Madagascar or one-half the population of Ecuador?

I’d bet Obama hears far less frequently from the governor of California, a vitally important part of his own country and a state with nearly five times the population of Israel.

This is the mouse that roared indeed.

And there can be only one reason why the president must give this huge portion of his precious time to the leader of almost exactly 1/1000th of the world’s people: the Lobby for Israel and the political need to keep them happy, that is if you expect the campaign contributions and favorable press it can deliver going into an election.

Any informed and critical-minded person knows there will only be peace in Israel’s region when the United States stops extending unheard-of privileges to this belligerent and demanding state puts genuine pressure on it to settle fairly.

You will never see peace if you must pick up the phone every day to speak politely and attentively to the likes of Netanyahu.

Netanyahu and most of his predecessors – killers and terrorists like Begin or Olmert or Sharon – do not want peace as almost anyone on earth understands the word. They have always wanted more land – that’s what the 1967 War was really about – and they want the land without its people. How on earth do you ever get peace out of that? You don’t.

So American pressure becomes essential, but America’s debased system of campaign financing – which sees people in high office scrabbling for money throughout their terms of office – makes it impossible to apply that pressure without serious political damage.

But when more people understand how bizarre the relationship between Israel and the United States truly is perhaps there will be a re-balancing of political forces.

Either that or we all must wait the two decades the CIA estimates have given the current state of Israel, enduring all the brutality and misery entailed, before all the dual-passport holders from America and Europe tire of the mess they’ve made and go home, leaving the true residents, both Jewish and Palestinian, to work out the details of single state, the only long-term settlement which can possibly succeed.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

“Imagine a country invading the hypothetical countries of Greenland and Alaska and then saying they wanted to attack Canada because it has nuclear capability. What would you expect our leadership to do? Obey the aggressors and accept their demands we lay down on our backs?”

Indeed.

And further, Iran is surrounded by nuclear powers.

Where did the notion come from that only certain countries are entitled to nuclear weapons in perpetuity? Countries who are somehow appointed gods on earth?

Why was Israel ever allowed to develop nuclear weapons, breaking every rule in the book? And why is it allowed to keep them, always lying and dissembling but always ready to threaten?

Israel has certainly created enough division and destruction in the world just using its conventional weapons, which, by the way, it has used illegally numberless times, American supplied weapons supposedly being under strict contract for use only in genuine defense?

Israel’s record in the matter of nuclear arms is ghastly: it cynically helped apartheid South Africa develop nuclear weapons in exchange for strategic materials, offering the worst example of proliferation in the nuclear age.
I’m sure the various governments of the world all knew about it. Only the people were kept in the dark.

Further, Iran has never started a war in its modern history, unlike Israel who has attacked just about everyone within reach, twice-over, and screams every day about the need to attack Iran.

So far as any thoughtful and informed person can tell, Iran is not developing nuclear weapons, but if indeed it is, so what?

The balance of terror kept the peace in Europe for half a century, and an Iran with such weapons would provide exactly the same needed balance against an aggressive and always-demanding Israel.

Perhaps that is the only route to peace, not Israel’s bizarre idea of peace, but genuine peace.