John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY OWEN JONES IN THE GUARDIAN

“Antisemitism is a poison – the left must take leadership against it”

Owen Jones, I don’t quite know what to say about such an idiotic assertion.

To whom do you think you are preaching? Those who genuinely are anti-Semitic – just as those with other special hates – are certainly not going to heed or even read your prattle.

And why in God’s name does “the left” have a special, or any, responsibility here?

I’ll tell you where this fraudulent notion of yours comes from: Israel has always castigated the Left in Western countries.

And why?

Because liberals and progressives have long criticized Israel’s brutal behavior towards the Palestinians, as they very much should do.

A person who embraces liberty and democratic values can never approve of what Israel has done to the people of Palestine for more than half a century.

Israel’s leaders know that, so they play the ugly game of throwing around the epithet “anti-Semitism.”

We even get books written about imagined contemporary huge increases in “anti-Semitism,” when an honest author would call it what is, an increase in the abhorrence of the government of Israel.

The government of Israel has so overplayed its hand for years in this – always, mind you, supported by the press, as here with Owen Jones – that the epithet literally is losing not only its force, it is losing its meaning.

So, despite the historical fact that real anti-Semitism has always been associated with the Right, especially the brutally ignorant Right, we have the Left being charged with anti-Semitism, or in the case of this column, charged with a special responsibility for anti-Semitism.

Simply outrageous.

You cannot defend what you have written here, just as Israel’s government – a truly Right-wing, fascist-oriented government which makes Donald Trump seem open-minded by comparison – cannot sustain its name-calling nonsense.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

“There is a good chance the Canadian Iranian Embassy was being used for more than public relations. Espionage, spying whatever, it should have been closed years ago.”

Israel is well known in intelligence circles for its relentless espionage on Canada and the U.S.

American counter-intelligence has a special, large assignment in working against the efforts of their so-called ally.

The ally who produced the most destructive spy in American history, Jonathon Pollard.

The ally who sold some of Pollard’s “product” to the Soviet Union.

The ally who, during its 1967 war, deliberately attacked, for two solid hours, the American intelligence ship Liberty in order to blind the American government to what they were doing in that war.

The ally whose spies were caught during 9/11 watching and photographing the disaster from a phony moving truck, an event never explained.

From Canada’s point of view, it is the ally which time and again has abused Canada’s passports by using phony ones on assassination assignments.
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“Yes, Ahmadinejad is an idiot, but then again so are you and people still speak to you. “

Ahmadinejad has said a few foolish things, mainly under his irrepressible tendency to poke fun at the pretensions of theirs.

But a highly successful politician in a country with a greater population than that of France or Britain and who holds a PhD in Civil Engineering is anything but an idiot.

It is foolishness to say so.

He is likely more intelligent than most of the recent presidents of the United States.

And the foolish things he has said should be compared to the collected words of a Bush or a Reagan or a Romney.

Assuming a bright, capable man is wild-eyed plays right into the hands of Israel’s around-the-clock propagandists, and it certainly does not contribute to understanding.
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“Why is Mulcair a lobbyist for Iran?”

Why are you a lobbyist for stupidity?
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“I see now, we need those absurdly expensive F35’s to combat the enemies Harper is making on behalf of Canada, how American!!”

Well said.

And just watch, if we do buy these absurd machines, and if they do fly as advertised finally after billions more spent, when Netanyahu yells, we’ll be flying the dozen or so operational at any one time (they require horrific maintenance) to wherever Israel has decided once again to bomb someone it doesn’t like.

On a per capita basis, there is one country whose armed forces, including every weapon imaginable, is obscenely out of proportion to its size in population or wealth, and that country is Israel.

It sits by the Mediterranean like a Crusader enclave, a virtual garrison state, a country with the population of Ecuador and the arms and army of France.

And it is currently run by a madman.
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‘And how exactly do they think to “retaliate”? After we nuke the crap out of them, there won’t be a bacteria left to live in that stinky country.’

“Bacteria’ is the plural form of the noun, requiring a plural modifier, not “a.”

But then that covers the intelligent part of your words.

How can anyone but a complete madman lightly speak about exterminating 70 million people?

But I do believe we’ve had such talk in the past.

In Germany during the 1930s.
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“Look at the lefty socialist twisting in the wind trying to defend Iran, an exporter of terrorists.”

Well, I don’t know about Iran exporting terrorists.

Seems an absurd thing to say since there isn’t one genuine news story about Iranian terrorists anywhere.

Iran also remains at peace with all its neighbors.

Can we say the same for Israel? I don’t think so.

Of course, we do have stories of what Israel exports.

At least half a dozen people were killed by Israeli soldiers in Gaza – that giant refugee camp – this week alone.

And Israeli’s Barak just made threats – his favorite hobby, making threats – about how the IDF could easily conquer and run Gaza.

Of course, there’s all that wonderful human-rights stuff about Israeli terrorists assassinating totally innocent Iranian scientists with car bombs.

And your words are a perfect example of the kind of dishonest rubbish-thinking exported by Israel.

Day after day after day.
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“I’m guessing principled decisions such as this, totally escape the left.”

No, you have it the wrong way round.

Decisions such as this totally escape the principled.

And we should add that language such as your “the left,” intended to characterize large numbers of people you don’t like, would have been perfectly comfortable on the tongue of a Dr. Goebbels.

Indeed, all your fellow name-callers entirely miss or ignore that damning fact.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

“Just as fascism and communism were the great struggles of previous generations, terrorism is the great struggle of ours.”

And what about state terrorism, the largest and most lethal form of terrorism?

State terrorism is an everyday practice today by the United States, and it has been a building block of Israel since the foundation.

The early Zionists called it “the iron wall,” and that phrase encapsulates Israel’s every policy since 1948.

A significant part of Israel’s 1940s effort to carve out a state included the work of terror gangs like Stern, Lehi, and Irgun – all of whom assassinated, planted bombs, and generally terrorized Arabs.

Israel today sits back and claims terror is such a threat, but Israel itself is a garrison state, grotesquely over-armed and ready constantly to assault any neighbor it disapproves of, and it disapproves of virtually all of them.

It is a lawless state, possessing atomic weapons against all international rules and desires, and a state moreover that was willing to proliferate atomic weapons technology with South Africa, something it has never even received censure for.

Israel also stands in contempt of a list of UN Resolutions, the very kind of thing the United States has used as an excuse to bomb some government it doesn’t like.

It also stands in violation of dozens on international agreements and protocols.

Israel does not hesitate to kill children – having slaughtered 400 of them in its vicious attack on Gaza, and according to the UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine, Israel has killed more than 1,200 children since the year 2000.

Israel does not hesitate to kill peace workers, such as those aboard the Gaza humanitarian fleet attacked on the high seas, pictures and eyewitness reports from which clearly show Israeli soldiers shooting unarmed crew members in cold blood.

And don’t forget, while Israel was bombing Southern Lebanon a few years ago, dropping about a million cluster bombs (the world’s most ghastly, inhumane weapon) to maim and kill women and children and farmers for years to come, it also killed 4 UN observers, including a brave Canadian who died at his post.

John Baird’s boss, our glorious prime minister, after that cold-blooded murder said only he couldn’t understand why the UN had observers there: that is the fetid pool of thought from which John Baird’s words come.

On a per capita basis – the only fair way to compare – Israel is pretty much the world leader in brutality and abuse.

It keeps about ten thousand – the number is always changing – Palestinians illegally in prison.

Nearing half a century, it keeps more than 4 million Palestinians under occupation, totally illegal occupation, and it abuses them constantly with checkpoints and endless red-tape.

It helps itself each week or so to any parcel of someone else’s land that it chooses, indeed it has cobbled together a set of laws and regulations designed specifically to allow it to do this to Palestinians who cannot possibly meet the vicious laws’ requirements – anywhere else this would be called theft by a state.

It decides whether it will assassinate leaders that it does not like, and it does so regularly, with complete impunity – that’s the purest form of police-state terror you can come up with.

To carry out these dozens of assassinations, it breaks laws in many countries and it regularly abuses national passports by stealing and altering them or forging them, and Canada’s passport has been a frequent victim of this criminal behavior.

It does all these criminal acts with the complete support and approval of the United States, without whose influence and twisting of arms and rules, Israel might well collapse of its own gross excesses.

You do not and cannot get peace from a state which behaves as Israel does. It’s like saying the blacks in apartheid South Africa could have had peace by talking to the apartheid government – it literally is that absurd.

Only influence from outside can remedy what Israel has inflicted for decades.

But that influence will certainly not come from the dark bulk who represents less than forty percent of Canadians.

He’s too busy trying to please the United States in every nicety and detail, and he is too busy trying to appeal to the minority of intense Israel apologists, hoping to secure his party’s long-term financing, hoping to establish the same kind of arrangement which now absolutely determines the ongoing injustice of American foreign policy for the Middle East.

The dark bulk is ruining our international reputation, in every area of endeavor, making of us a sort of unofficial 51st state in the world’s eyes.

This is a nightmare world John Baird defends, a world where war is peace and hatred is love, but he does it unblinkingly and aggressively like a Joseph Goebbels defending his master’s bloody deeds.
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FROM A READER:
“Recognizing the Zionist Stab in the back as the cause of their hardship, was the only reason that Germany democratically elected the Nazi party, to keep the Jews from repeating history.”

Absolutely wrong in every detail.

I’m no friend of Israel’s bloody work, but I deal in facts and logic, not ignorance and distortion.

Hitler was never elected.

The highest vote the Nazi Party ever got in free elections was about 37%, and that was after years of furious effort.

He was appointed Chancellor by the aging President, von Hindenburg, who wanted to stop the turmoil and fighting in the streets, part of which was of course Hitler’s own efforts through his private army of Brownshirts, the SA.

The Nazis conducted an elaborate coup with the burning of the Reichstag, and the aged and much admire war-hero president died. Hitler rammed through legislation giving him the presidential powers and more.

Once firmly in power, the Nazis conducted a number of plebiscites, and they got the kinds of votes you always saw in the Soviet Union’s elections, figures like 98%, but if you accept those as valid you really are a sad, uncritical soul.

As for “the stab in the back” there was no such thing. It was a figure of Hitler’s vivid and fetid imagination.

Hitler considered the Weimar Republic itself a stab in the back. He always hated any form of liberalism or popular government.
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“Being surrounded by Muslim-only states does that. 4 million Jews live in a tiny state surrounded by a billion Muslims in 57 states, and it is apparently racist for Israel to be a Jewish state. Wow. But I can understand why the Jew haters want this “right to return”; flood Israel with enough Muslims and then you have 58 Muslim states!”

Simply appallingly ignorant.

What does the make-up of other states have to with Israel?

Nothing, and indeed when you make this appalling argument, your words closely resemble those of Hitler in his demands for lebensraum for the German people and his claims that Germans deserved a special space in which to flourish for the future, that too many other European states held more land than they needed.

In case you don’t know it, Israel has about 1 million non-Jewish citizens – I don’t mean the more than 4 million of the occupied territories but people who carry Israeli passports.

These are the descendants of the Palestinians who refused to run from Israeli terror in 1948.

Israel didn’t want them, but it was pretty much stuck with them.

However, Israel has found many ways of treating them through contrived laws as second-class citizens.

More than one prominent Israeli has advocated running them off the land.

The current ethically-obtuse Foreign Minister is definitely sympathetic to that kind of filthy thinking.

So if Israel is formally recognized as “the Jewish state,” what happens to those poor citizens?

I think we can all guess, and it won’t be pleasant.

And do you not recognize the irrational nature of the demand for a single ethic/religious state? It is no different at all to fundamentalist Islamist demands for Islamic states.

The truth is that Israel in concept was an outdated 19th century concept. It has proved divisive and destructive its entire brief history. It ranks among the world’s most unjust states.

But nevertheless, mistake or not, the world accepts its existence so long as it stops violating every law and moral concept we know to maintain its ethnic purity.

Is it too much to ask that it retreat to its borders and to finally start treating its neighbors as human beings?

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

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

There is no defense for this woman who abused her responsibilities.

You cannot call yourself a manager if you don’t question some of the ridiculous expenses she did not question.

Also, her excuse for the exorbitantly-paid consultants ($3000/day in a number of cases) was the idea of getting up to speed rapidly.

But that approach – throwing money at something – is the McGuinty approach to education, a guaranteed failure.

We have the testimony of one honest consultant who told us it was all so badly organized, he was sitting on his hands while being paid. He quit, but clearly most did not.

Of course, she was not alone.

McGuinty’s Minister in this portfolio is a pathetic man. When he opens his mouth, you understand why things went so badly wrong.

He should be dismissed too.

In general, there are open applications on the Internet for this purpose which may be used free.

There are also other provinces already with systems. We could easily borrow or adapt.

The whole enterprise is a scandal, much like our public education system’s failure to get the basics done.