JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Ridiculous.

How can any Arabic-speaking person have named his organization “the toilet,” which is what Al Qaeda translates?

This name was created by U. S. intelligence some years ago as a collective term for the various “bad guys” roaming around out there. There is no such organization.

We have the testimony of several very prominent people on that fact, including Britain’s Jack Straw.

Remember the supposed picture of Osama watching television released soon after his murder, a picture which still makes the rounds? That picture was positively identified as a neighboring man, as it should have been since it showed “Osama” using the wrong hand.

These “leaks” are, after all coming from the very people who assassinated bin Laden in cold blood with his family in the house, never mind taking him to The Hague for a fair trial.

The same people who never provided the public or other authorities with one shred of authentic evidence for bin Laden’s guilt of anything but disliking the United States.

The same people who invaded Afghanistan and still occupy it on flimsy excuses.

The same people who invaded Iraq, falsely making assertions about Hussein’s complicity, destroying a prosperous country and starting a terror that would see a million die.

They are the same people sending scores of drones into Pakistan killing hundreds of innocent people with their missiles.

They are the same people who have totally distorted a UN Resolution for a no-fly zone in Libya into an all-out effort to kill Qaddafi and his chief assistants.

This rubbish is just stuff to reinforce public acceptance of the moral filth of war without end, assassinations, and death squads.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Not much satisfaction in this.

He was killed by a far greater butcher, the one responsible for a million deaths in Iraq, three million in Vietnam, and who knows how many in Afghanistan, Somalia, Cambodia, Pakistan, Chile, and a dozen other places.

Only the pathetic Peace Prize President – who regularly has his drones killing people in Pakistan – takes any real satisfaction because he is looking forward to a difficult election.

Obama’s re-election is hardly something to celebrate, but that is what this unbelievably costly deed concerns.

By the way, there has never been one shred of proof offered of Bin Laden’s guilt of anything except not liking the United States.

The FBI never even put him on its Most Wanted List.

Justice has been done?

I truly believe the predatory United States has no concept of what justice is.

_____________________________

The excesses reflected in many comments simply prove the impact of propaganda and public gullibility.

Even if he was guilty as charged – and we have never, never been offered proof – his crime is smaller than many crimes of the same American military who killed him.

His crimes, if so they be, also are absolutely no greater than those of Israel, and just in recent years.

Here is a state which killed 400 children in Gaza and another 1,000 adults, about the same number in Southern Lebanon, who knows how many week-in-week-out in raids of various towns, and of course murdered about ten people on the high seas in an act of savage piracy.

There is no justice in any of this. Only more proof, if any were needed, that might makes right.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE INDEPENDENT

Doctor Kelly was almost certainly assassinated.

And who benefited?

The Iraq invasion served Israeli purposes hugely.

Its most implacable opponent was eliminated, his country reduced to ruins.

And the doctor was a threat to the lies that helped create that vast war crime.

Israel has bragged of its many assassinations – scores of them – in the past. It has been shameless on this utterly unethical behavior.

A truly disgusting record for those who care about human rights or justice.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JUSTIN WEBB IN THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

America is a very conservative country. That is why the great journalist William Shirer, covering events in NAZI Germany, asked whether America would not itself become a fascist country by election.

‘Right-wing’ has characterized its entire history, except for a brief period of the Franklin Roosevelt era.

The nation’s history is characterized by conquest – although its victims were weak compared to those taken on by, say, Germany, including native people, Spanish settlers, and Mexicans – and extreme acquisitiveness. Those are facts largely glossed over in general histories, and few abroad truly appreciate them. They are facts also glossed over in all Fourth of July speeches by local Congressmen and Senators looking for campaign funds.

The higher-sounding words of America’s main founding documents have always been treated the same way most Christians treat the Gospels – that is, they are recited, praised, engraved on monuments, and immediately ignored in day-to-day matters.

And, after all, it is the most superstitiously religious advanced nation on earth, and nothing good comes out of superstition, except fear and killing of every description, killing of devils, killing of communists, killing of Muslims, killing of native people, and killing of any threat perceived by religious paranoia.

And further, the U.S. establishment – really a government within a government, including the CIA, the FBI, the NIA, the Pentagon, and at least a dozen other intelligence agencies not generally known – is not going to permit drastic change. It has things the way it wants them and works daily to keep them so.

The Pentagon alone spends the entire GDP of some countries each year, and it has on many past occasions obstructed presidential policies. The CIA spends a fortune and makes a significant part of its occupation the overthrowing of governments, the interfering in elections abroad (as its doing in places like Iran today), and the getting rid of unwanted foreign leaders. And these powerful institutions are supported by America’s immensely rich Borgia-like families. Does anyone seriously believe such forces will tolerate any real shift in American goals and budgets?

Obama cannot possibly change those circumstances, and without changing those circumstances there is no way he can take significant measures towards creating a more humane and decent America. Kennedy was probably the last president hoping to achieve such huge changes.

Obama has put a pleasant and intelligent face on a government that for eight years was guided by thugs and ignoramuses, and he established a precedent for people of color that gives the U.S. further bragging rights about principles.

Going beyond those modest achievements brings an American leader into highly dangerous territory.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

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

Sorry, Mr. Gibson, there is no moral debate here.

I find it stunning that anyone living in a free country could even pose this question seriously.

The example of Israel is perfect. Israel has secretly, as well as in public, murdered those it calls enemies for decades.

And where has this taken Israel? Israel has no peace. Israel today has the worst reputation in the advanced world as a place of fairness and decency. And Israel gradually sinks lower and lower into a murky abyss of ghastly ethics and democratic values.

We have the witness of Israeli soldiers as to the horrible Nazi-like words with which they were prodded in advance of the Gaza invasion.

Indeed, it is a legitimate question whether Israel as we know it can long continue. The CIA only recently predicted that it would change in 20 years into something else, with many of American and European dual-nationals returning to the lands of their birth.

There is simply no question about these results. That’s why Israel’s defenders constantly today lash out at what they call anti-Semitism, calling the critics of human abuse haters.

You cannot have a society of laws and justice when you are unwilling to live by such laws yourself. The US has fallen into this same moral pit with its international torture gulags and its assassinations.

This kind of murder is absolutely no different to some rogue cops secretly executing the people they regard as criminals. It is no different to the ghastly work of death squads in Brazil going through poor areas of cities murdering children at night. And it is no different to the past several juntas in South America who made thousands “disappear” by kidnapping them and dumping them out of planes over the ocean.

God, the most precious thing we have achieved over countless centuries of ghastly murder and conflict is a society of laws and defined rights. How damnable that anyone would even toy with the idea of destroying that.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

And if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.

We know perfectly well that America has been using drones and Hellfire missiles to kill many people, without charge or trial or conviction of anything.

Remember, too, Rumsfeld’s bloody Nazi-like words about killing or walling away America’s al Qaeda prisoners in Afghanistan.

It wasn’t long after that that 3,000 prisoners disappeared.

They are said to have been loaded into trucks and driven out into the desert to suffocate, then being buried in mass graves. This was done by one of the warlord’s men while American soldiers watched and picked their noses.

And let’s not forget the war crime of the Iraq invasion. A million killed, a couple of million refugees created, a modern society set back for decades. Results no different to having used a few nuclear weapons against a people who did absolutely nothing against America.

So why would there be any hesitation over this? The American establishment has demonstrated a lawless disregard for international law for eight years.

Of course, there wasn’t, and I’d bet it was that ghastly Dick Cheney who headed the operation and perhaps the new commander in Afghanistan who managed it.

America has no claim to any kind of ethics or democratic values in light of recent years.

The election of Obama has not changed this position at all, other than offering a friendly smile and a good mind in place of a pathetic lump.

A great deal of effort will be required to restore America’s tattered reputation, and I see no efforts indicating that effort is underway.