JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Good God, here is a column delivered directly from Cloudcuckooland.

Indeed, George Bush is a war criminal.

He also was ready to sign off on any repressive measure at home that came along.

His vice-president, another war criminal and on whom he depended heavily, is surely one of blackest characters in modern American history- a man we easily imagine as a henchman for Hitler or Stalin.

Iraq was not about democracy, and truly only a badly uninformed person or a propagandist would say that it was.

I very much suspect Mr Reynolds of being the latter.

Iraq was about dumping Israel’s most implacable enemy, about dumping a former American friend who no longer followed the imperial line and had become quite an inconvenience, and, way down there on the level of the mysteries of human psychology, Iraq was about pathetic George Bush trying to outdo his always more intelligent and successful father.

What Bush did in Iraq was the equivalent of having used a nuclear weapon on civilians.

Please see my piece, Hiroshima, Mon Amour:

http://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/hiroshima-mon-amour/

Neil Reynolds, it actually is rather disgusting that someone living in the freedom and comfort of Canada could write this intellectual filth.
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From another reader:

“Canada…peopled by intellectual midgets…”

My, that certainly is testimony of high intellectual achievement on the writer’s part.

I do believe, when you call names to an entire group of people, it is called prejudice.

It certainly reflects ignorance.

And we may add further, using a pseudonym, adds cowardice to the writer’s list of illustrious qualities.
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From another reader:

“Much is made of Israeli democracy.

“But Israel is only a democracy because its democracy hasn’t been challenged.

“Israelis would not contemplate submitting to an Arab majority, so Israel isn’t really a democracy at all. Its constitution is increasingly interpreted to exclude the possibility.”

Yes, but there’s even more on the issue of democracy.

One likes to believe that a genuine democracy also applies democratic principles abroad.

Yet nothing could be further from that concept than Israel’s practices.

It behaves like a muscle-bound bully towards all its neighbors and is friendly only to tyrants like Mubarak who assist its narrowly-defined interests.

We have countless examples of this anti-democratic behavior, but its ghastly behavior towards Gaza over the last four years is a breathtaking example.

Yes, Israel resembles apartheid South Africa in its “Bantustan” policies. People with sterling credentials on the subject have called Israel’s practices apartheid – Bishop Tutu, Nelson Mandela, and Jimmy Carter.

And while we’re speaking of South Africa, let no one forget Israel’s secret deals with that state concerning atomic weapons. Simply ghastly.

Israel’s apologists are addicted to name-calling when anyone points out these egregious abuses of human rights, decades and decades of them.

But is one to give up all principles, all concern for justice and fair-play for fear of being called names?

I think not. It is precisely in such matters where we can define those who love freedom and those who only mouth empty words.
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The bottom line regarding Israel and democratic values is easily stated, without name-calling and citing only facts.

What kind of democracy kills 1400 people in a giant, fenced-in refugee camp, which is what Gaza is?

What kind of democracy kills between 300 and 400 hundred children as part of that horror?

What kind of democracy carefully calculates the just above-starvation level of calories and then enforces a blockade – illegal to be sure – to keep only that level of sustenance going across the border?

What kind of a democracy attacks an unarmed flotilla of humanitarians on the high seas, killing a number of them and terrifying the rest?

What kind of democracy drops countless cluster bombs in civilian areas of Southern Lebanon?

What kind of a democracy targets UN observers bravely doing their jobs and kills them?

What kind of democracy weekly steals more of the property of others in the West Bank and Jerusalem, using the contrived laws to do so?

What kind of democracy assassinates, assassinates, and assassinates – instead of talking to people?

As I’ve written before, we can only be grateful there are not more such democracies in the Middle East.

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

FURTHER POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JEFFERY SIMPSON IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

I do think in Harper’s late and reluctant statement, following the great events which riveted the world’s attention, say something profound, and not very pleasant, about the man.

He eloquently quoted the platitude about not being able to put the toothpaste back in the tube.

Toothpaste?

Great God, how did those words fit this historic and rather magnificent moment?

Eighty million people toppling a dictator after thirty years of abuse, and our prime minister expresses regrets about not being able to put toothpaste back into a tube, not being able to return to the status quo ante?

What in God’s name do his mean and cringing words have to do with Canada’s historic reputation for love of freedom and justice?

Absolutely nothing.

The sense of these words only highlights what I wrote earlier.

Harper’s only focus has been on Israel’s paranoid and anti-democratic views of the matter, its desperate desire to keep a neighboring tyranny going, a tyranny that has served its narrowly-defined interests and convenience in the exercise of brutality for three decades.

Never mind what such a giant step forward in human freedom and decency means for Egypt and the world.

Harper’s statement also documents, in an excruciatingly public way, something of his rather bleak and ethically-ambiguous character.

There really is no other way to look at it.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

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

‘“Can I trust this guy?” And he hasn’t given us the answer.’

I disagree with that point in your otherwise excellent article, Denis Smith: he very much has given us the answer.

The truth is Ignatieff has always been a politician, and a rather shallow one. Anyone who listened to him carefully years ago knows that.

Most importantly, Ignatieff’s stuff on human rights has always seemed more of a cocktail-party view than a bred-in-the-bone characteristic: it is precisely the kind of stage persona shallow politicians assume.

He reminds me of a rich blue-haired Boston matron attending a dazzling gala to benefit some cause somewhere out there in the third world. She doesn’t much care in about the nitty-gritty of the cause, and perhaps even knows little about it, but she is concerned with her reputation among a certain social set.

Ignatieff has always given us words with little or no substance, and different words to different audiences, nicely calculated to appeal to each with half truths.

I believe there is no center, no “there,” to Michael Ignatieff, and that has always been the case. His writing and lectures betray that. They are characterized by mannered ambiguity and not particularly insightful or exhibiting the thirst for justice.

The Liberal Party has made a terrible choice in Ignatieff, and it was not even a democratic choice.

The fact that he accepted the leadership in this fashion speaks volumes.

God, we desperately need a genuine leader, a person of eloquence and driving concern for justice. It is regrettable to have to say that Gilles Duceppe displays these characteristics immensely more than Harper or Ignatieff.

That great thumping political cretin, Harper, is shaming our country in a dozen ways, from handing out orders in Foreign Affairs to have the term “child soldier” not used to condemning the UN for deaths of observers in Lebanon murdered while bravely doing their jobs.