John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN

An organization, such as ISIS, can only rise out of nothing and literally change a region with a great deal of help.

It cannot be otherwise.

ISIS has been assisted, supplied, and, in some cases, trained by Western interests. We have had countless little revelations of these activities, although we never read about them in the corporate press.

ISIS was even supplied some while back by some of these interests with terrible things like small amounts of nerve gas to use on people so that the United States could blame Syrian forces. Acts just do not come any more cynical and evil than that.

ISIS serves the interest of assisting to bring down a legitimate state, Syria, a state, by the way, which attacks no one and which has never threatened legitimate American interests. They already served to eliminate a leader in Iraq, sending him running off in fear, whom the United States and Israel greatly disliked.

ISIS also serves to solidify the planned smashing of Iraq into mini-states. This was particularly clear in the case of the Kurds, who received great assistance in fighting ISIS, effectively defending their own part of the (former) country against those who now run other parts.

The public does not recognize what is happening because news coverage in our major corporate press is selective and always supports government policy, even black operations policy.

If the United States were serious about fighting ISIS, they could eliminate them in very short order, but they are not serious. They display only token efforts, and increasingly, the reality of these efforts is the destruction of Syrian lives and property – in effect, acting as air support for the terrorists.

Also, the United States appears gradually to be working its way towards direct intervention against the Syrian government, blubbering all along the way about the horrors of ISIS.

When ISIS has served its filthy purpose, maybe it will be seriously attacked. Who knows? But, for now, America’s attacks on ISIS are little more than show and perhaps curbing those who’ve exceeded their brief. After all, these terrorist groups – and there are several doing lots of killing in Syria – do contain some genuinely horrible people, even if they were assembled and assisted through American efforts. The American attacks really assist the terrorists in Syria by attacking Syrian infrastructure.

Turkey, with the blessings of the United States and Saudi Arabia, has given them shelter and border access to Syria, as well as arms shipments. Israel too is involved in surreptitious support, including hospital treatment for wounded fighters in the North and secret arms exports, as is the absolute monarchy of Qatar. And now that proud and fearless defender of American values, David Cameron, has joined the fray in the name of “fighting terror.” My, what a brave fellow he is.

The actual terror that is going on is the destruction of legitimate state, a beautiful and historic land. It is being carved into smaller entities, just as Iraq has been. This comes at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives and the creation of millions of refugees, but the states secretly working on this dirty project only cry crocodile tears over all the deliberately-induced horror.

It’s just one part of a savage scheme to “give birth to a new Middle East,” as former Secretary of State Condi Rice expressed it. So far we have seen a million die in Iraq, aerial bombardment of Yemen, Libya torn apart and reduced to chaos, and Egypt’s fledgling democracy destroyed with a return of dictatorship.

Now, all of this destruction does make people like Mr. Netanyahu very happy, but for countless millions, and for a generation to come, human misery is the chief product of the effort.

Of course, it is this very scheme producing the flood of refugees to Europe, refugees the United States refuses even to help and David Cameron treats as rabble and scum.

The whole business is a psychopathic politician’s dream: inflict all the killing and destruction you wish while condemning the hired help and posing as someone horrified at what they have done. Compared to this, the stunts of Hitler’s Germany to cover its bloody trail – as when it dressed prisoners in Polish uniforms and shot them at the border, claiming they were Polish soldiers attacking Germany – seem amateurish.

The face of evil is no longer merely banal, it is slick and sophisticated and leering at all we hold as values.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

“The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 is a classic case of doing bad by trying to do good. We can’t rescue people from themselves.”

Another thoughtless piece, packed with frightful ethical concepts, from Ms Wente, the Globe’s reigning champion in churning out such stuff.

“Liberal interventionism” is a created term to make America’s unacceptable behavior seem more appropriate.

There can never be anything “liberal” – in the truest historic meaning of the word – about dropping cluster bombs on people or using white phosphorus on people or torturing prisoners.

You cannot bomb people into democracy. Just steady economic growth and a growing middle class are the requirements for democracy as centuries of history clearly demonstrate, and Iraq was on that path with one of the most prosperous and advanced economies in the Arab world. Now, instead, it is a shambles.

America’s intention never was to “rescue” Iraqis.

Iraq was invaded to eliminate Israel’s most implacable foe, hardly the business of the United States. The invasion decision was unquestionably influenced too by Bush Junior’s psychological need to top what Bush pere had done – a lifelong theme for the pathetic Bush and the kind of motivation that all serious readers of history know plays a role in events.

There was the matchless opportunity of the cover provided by the invasion of Afghanistan too, offering an opportunity to blur facts and operate in public confusion. After all, Hitler used the chaos of the invasion of Russia to begin the Holocaust.

The invasion was covered also by the Nazi-like ideas of Condi Rice with her “We’re hearing the birth pangs of a new Middle East,” amidst the screams of hundreds of thousands dying and their country and culture being destroyed.

An entire generation of Iraqis are doomed to live with no jobs, little electricity, and poor water plus a million pounds of depleted uranium dust.

All thoughtful people knew they were being lied to at the time.

Ms. Wente herself was very much a booster for the bloody effort, a big booster, and you’d be hard put to find any columnist who like her is a regular apologist for Israel’s excesses who didn’t sing hymns to America’s blood bath.

All as pointless as the three million murdered in Vietnam.

Again, for readers who’ve nor seen it, here is the reality of Ms. Wente at the time of the mass murder in Iraq:

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

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

My, those are inspiring examples.

Condi Rice? Compulsive Fifth Avenue shoe-buyer and mass-murderer?

Hillary Clinton? A woman who swallowed Bill’s crap for decades and lied for him in public, over and over?

And who now defends the indefensible, over and over, forgetting every decent spark she may have had forty years ago?

Oh, the list of outstanding American women in politics is breathtaking.

Sarah Palin, flop as governor of a tiny state and someone who took six years at five institutions to get a BA in a bird subject?

Elizabeth Dole whose biggest achievement in running for the Republican nomination seems to have been the way she stepped down from the platform at meetings, walking amongst the audience much like a salvation-tent preacher?

Oh, let’s not forget Madeleine Albright, that horrible windbag who defended America’s killing of tens of thousands of Iraqi children, over and over.

I do think, in view of the record, Madame Tussaud’s has a role here. Surely, this is a wax-works gallery of female political horrors America offers the world.

I’d love to see women take their rightful place in politics, as I’m sure they will, but America’s recent example is an inspiration to no one but those with a taste for the grotesque.