John Chuckman

COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT

 

I’m sorry, but to this moment, we do not know bin Laden plotted anything.

There’s never been a shred of proof.

The U.S. has always begged the question. When the Taleban government refused to extradite bin Laden, it was over completely correct procedure. The U.S. supplied not a jot of evidence with their demand, as is required for legal extraditions.

I thought you were in the news business, Independent, and disliked “conspiracy theories”?

And diesel fuel – jet fuel being a form of it – simply cannot burn hot enough to melt structural steel.

Moreover the designers of the twin towers over-built the buildings: they were designed to be able to take being hit by an airliner.

These are facts.

I’m not saying, and I don’t know, where they lead us, but I’ll always stick with facts as a foundation for thought.

The only certainty here is that the official story cannot be true.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

It’s always the same with these meaningless imperial wars of America’s.

After chewing up people and resources for years, leaders are fearful of the notion that it was all to no purpose.

You cannot, no matter how much you bomb and kill, reshape an ancient society to your liking.

Only long-term economic growth does that, and war represents the very opposite, destruction.

The Afghanistan invasion was a pointless exercise in vengeance and American arm-pumping.

The UN and NATO only have their names slapped on the pathetic effort because the United States pressured and threatened and cajoled its way into getting them involved.

To this day, no greater physical evidence of the truth is to be found than in the pitifully token commitments of troops by all the American allies, a thousand or two here and there in specially limited roles – not what you would ever see were America’s extreme and hysterical words on the nature of the effort believed by anyone.

Canadians and others died for absolutely nothing here, but no leader would ever have the courage to say so.

But worse, tens of thousands of Afghans were killed by invaders who never understood what they were doing.
_____________________________________________

“Steve, when he made that speech in his fishing vest in Kandahar, said ‘We [Canadians] don’t cut and run’. You mean that now, 158 casualties and ten years later, we should cut and run?”

Very revealing when people use loaded terms like “cut and run.”

Who would ever describe it in that fashion were Canadian troops or police killing innocents in our streets and roads, and people’s revulsion caused them to yell “stop!”

But that is exactly what “NATO” – America’s human shields against world opinion – has done for years in Afghanistan.

If people at home with the opportunity to inform themselves don’t understand what has happened in Afghanistan – and many do not – how are a bunch of soldiers dumped into a hot, confusing, almost totally alien place supposed to know anything about what they are doing?

In the end, Canadian soldiers died because in government it was said “we owe one to the Pentagon.”

And a man like Harper, the most dishonest and manipulative prime minister in our history, can only appeal to the most unthinking, from-the gut responses in our people with his “cut and run” to cover up the waste and shame of the whole sordid business.

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

“Omar Khadr is a lucky young man. He is lucky to be entitled to Western justice…”

Even for Margaret Wente, this is perhaps a new low.

Lucky young man?

Ideologue parents push him into war at fifteen?

Shot twice, in the back, by Americans?

Taken to Guantanamo against all international conventions?

His first years in isolation without any contact or representation?

Tortured many times?

Part of his torture consisted of making him sit in uncomfortable positions with raw wounds?

Being forced to appear before a kangaroo court, which has no proper jurisdiction?

Being forced into confessing to something he did not do?

More than one-third of his life in that hellhole?

A bright boy deprived of education?

His country’s government too afraid of Washington to insist on his rights?

Ms Wente has a very odd idea of lucky.

I should remind readers of how bizarre Ms Wente’s thoughts about children have been in the past, just so long as they were Islamic children:

http://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/05/28/the-iraq-wars-trashiest-piece-of-propaganda/