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 COLUMNS IN THE INDEPENDENT AND THE GLOBE AND MAIL

The Munk Debates are a set of silly, costly farces, contributing nothing to advancing knowledge.

This one is particularly ridiculous both for the characters of the individuals involved and the intellectually throwback nature of the topic.

You cannot debate or rationally argue religious matters. You can try, of course, but then you might just as well debate about ghosts or boogeymen or garden nymphs and their impact on society.

This Munk Debate was literally that silly.

The scholastic philosophers tried for ages to apply logic to religion, trying to prove the existence of God and other religious matters countless times. It was all for nothing, and gradually philosophers recognized the pointlessness of the exercise.

The word science means knowledge, while religion proudly claims the world of faith or beliefs as its subject. You simply cannot apply the methods of science to the substance of religion.

Now, of course, you can argue, endlessly, about particular beliefs or faith, and many people do, but it is all a complete waste of effort. We have centuries of Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, and others telling each other where they have matters wrong. It all leads absolutely nowhere in advancing knowledge or even tolerance. Indeed, it has provided the substance and motive for endless wars, tortures, and miseries.

This Munk Debate is also extremely cynical, by several measures. Any organization, attempting to establish a reputation for contributing to enlightenment, which puts on this kind of circus is unworthy of respect.

Moreover, the motivations are so clearly money-making – all those involved being handsomely paid for their trouble – and the grabbing of cheap publicity, for we know the general populace is always ready to get excited on aspects of the topic of religion. The publicity this silly event has generated should be embarrassing for any organization with pretensions to enlightenment.

Putting two big names on a stage to carry out this money-making frivolity is worthy of impresario/convicted fraudster Garth Drabinsky, but again, what utter cynicism to use a genuine war criminal like Tony Blair, a man with the blood of tens of thousands on his hands, giving him a stage to blubber about beliefs while collecting yet another paycheck. He is a man with no shame, no conscience, but an ego resembling a cancer out of control.

Hitchens is a very clever, eloquent man, but everyone knows his views on the subject. He too was just there for a quick paycheck. Moreover, he too is a man of highly questionable ethics, one who worked hard to make Bush’s criminal invasion of Iraq acceptable.

We speak today of such things as infomercials and product placement in news broadcasts. Well, thank you to the Munk people for offering up a glutinous helping of both.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE INDEPENDENT

This isn’t an attack.

Gore Vidal is a crackpot, a rather delightful and entertaining one.

Christopher Hitchens, however, has become something much more unpleasant, and far more dangerous, than a crackpot.

Hitchens is now a relentless defender of the establishment, eloquent and wordy certainly, but serving interests a genuine writer should never serve.

Graham Greene said it so superbly:

“You remember Thomas Paine’s great apothegm, ‘we must take care to guard even our enemies against injustice,’ and it is there – in the establishment of justice – that the writer has greater opportunities and therefore greater obligations than, say, the chemist or the estate agent.”

No matter what you believe about 9/11, it is simply a fact that there are many unanswered questions.

I do not think that that fact means the government was involved, but it could not be clearer that the government is hiding things.

Just the simple facts that structural steel used there required twice the temperature that aviation fuel burns at (3000 versus 1500 degrees), that most of the force of the impact and explosion was depleted by blowing out the other side, and that we have pictures of survivors standing by the entrance hole tell us clearly there was not enough energy to cause those collapses.

The recorded images of the collapse are, almost to a certainty, images of a controlled demolition, not a “pancaking” down of floors. Indeed, the central core was so immensely strong – overbuilt from an engineering point of view – that even if the floors could have “pancaked” down, the core would have been left standing.

And there are so many other questions.

Most of the perpetrators were Saudis, and, crucially important, had legitimate visas for the US. Who issued those? The Israelis knew about them and were curious, following them around with a large gang of agents who were arrested and deported afterward.

What was going on? A CIA training operation gone sour? A much larger plot than the men in the planes, including others who planted explosives at the building bases? Who knows, but we do know we have not been told the truth.

And as for the fourth airliner, there is absolutely no question but it was shot down by an American fighter plane. The debris field was vast and could not possibly have resulted from the official fantasy story of “let’s roll,” a story concocted to save the government from a monstrous set of lawsuits.

Yes, Christopher Hitchens is not a writer in the truest sense of the word, he is the kind of talented scribbler who has always served those with power.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS IN THE TELEGRAPH

I don’t know what Christopher Hitchens is going on about, and I strongly suspect neither does he.

Americans are just generally ignorant of the nature and workings of Parliament.

Honestly, having grown up and lived half my life in America, I feel it fair to say that outside of some academics and devoted followers of world affairs, few Americans have the least idea about Parliament.

And over time, I suspect this becomes more and more true since Americans know one thing if they know anything, America is the greatest.

This should not surprise because amazingly few have any idea how their own Congress works.

Hitchens in this only confirms what I believe is a truth about his writing: the man is an obsessive writer even when he has nothing to say. I grant him saying it eloquently though.