John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER

“JFK Took a Bullet When He Tried to Make Peace With Russia, Trump Bent the Knee Instead”
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Response to another comment which said, “I still believe that the assassination was Israel’s response to Kennedy’s pressure exerted on Ben-Gurion, to shed light on Dimona’s nuclear reactor in Israel”:

This is a possibility. Israel sure had motive. And Israel acts with no conscience or ethics regularly.

Jack Ruby who featured as a central figure in the plot was more than a small-time Mafia figure. He identified very strongly with his Jewish heritage.

Of course, the CIA, on Cuba, was already in bed with the Mafia, too. And a big Mafia figure, Meyer Lansky, was an intense Israel loyalist.

So, a mix of actors is quite possible.

There is even a theory that CIA had set up a phony assassination attempt to scare Kennedy into doing something about Cuba.

This phony set-up included the Oswald imposter going to Mexico City to associate Oswald’s name with Cuba and Russia.

This theory says that other covert actors became aware of this effort and used the opportunity in Dallas to really kill Kennedy from the grassy knoll.

No matter what the details, CIA had to be involved in some fashion if only for the reason they have done nothing but lie and hide stuff ever since.

LBJ and J Edgar Hoover both hated the Kennedys and were glad for the chance to go along with anyone getting rid of him.

LBJ removed the investigation from Dallas and put it into the hands of the phony Warren Commission.

Hoover did all the investigation for the phony Commission. They did none of their own. And Hoover was fixated for no known reason on Oswald almost from the very start.

Of course, CIA itself had lots of reasons to kill Kennedy.

He fired the three top men after the Bay of Pigs, including the legendary Allen Dulles.

He threatened more action against CIA.

He ignored their advice during the Missile Crisis, and formed an extensive backchannel communication with Premier Khrushchev.

He promised never to invade Cuba again.

And he had as his closest girlfriend, Mary Pinchot, a well-off and well-connected woman who talked extensively of peace in private with Kennedy and is known to have introduced him to some drugs.

Mary was herself murdered, in professional assassin-style, less than a year after Kennedy at a time when her own investigation into his death may have been having some success. She was extremely well-connected, knowing everyone who was anyone in Washington, and her ex-husband was a very high CIA official.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE NATIONAL POST

This article by Kelly McParland is rubbish propaganda.

Bob Rae introduces his statement about why he supports the Iran agreement with words “conceding that Iran is a repressive regime that can’t be trusted, hates Jews, represents a threat to the very existence of Israel, encourages terrorism, destabilizes the region….”

That is not so much a statement of conviction, I believe, as it is what it is absolutely necessary to say if you don’t want to be pilloried in the press and by many politicians for a view on an important issue which happens to be at odds with the one prevailing in Israel.

His “necessary” statement contains almost nothing but echoes of myths and propaganda repeated a thousand times in our corporate, and very biased, press.

Iran can’t be trusted? Where’s one scrap of evidence for that? So far as I am aware they keep all their agreements and obligations.

Iran hates Jews? There is nothing to support that. Tens of thousands of Jews live good lives in Iran. I guarantee that the Jews of Iran live far, far better lives than do the occupied Palestinians.

Iran encourages terrorism? I’m not aware of any such events. Iran lives at peace with its neighbors and has not started a single war in its modern history. Yes, it supports allies in the region, as do the United States and Israel, but I can’t accept they qualify as terrorists in quite the same fashion as America’s thuggish recruits now working to destroy Syria.

Contrast that with Israel whose brief modern history is one of continuous attacks on every neighbor it has, many more than once.

Indeed, the Six Day War was deliberately started by Israel to seize lands it still holds half a century later against the will of all those living on them.

It seized part of Lebanon too and occupied it for many years, until Hezbollah drove them out, Hezbollah receiving Iran’s assistance. But that was not terror, it was self-defence by any reasonable reckoning. Hezbollah, in contrast to Israel, never invaded and occupied any part of Israel.

If you want an example of genuine terror, look to the two recent invasions of that refugee camp called Gaza in which about a thousand children were killed, apart from thousands of adults. And look to an endless blockade of the same unfortunate people, a blockade which in its earlier days, before international intervention, actually included a calorie count for allowed imports just sufficient to keep the population alive. Even Gaza’s humble fishermen can only go a short distance into the sea before being shot at.

How about the Israeli bombings of Southern Lebanon in which a million horrible cluster bomblets were dropped where farmers and children could step on them?

Iran is a theocratic state, but it is not quite the miserable place so often glibly described in our corporate press. You may easily finds sites with lots of photos of these lovely people smiling huge smiles and doing a great variety of things you might expect to see in a free society.

Meanwhile Israel has not an imaginary but a genuine nuclear arsenal, something about which it daily lies. It is not a member of the nuclear proliferation treaty, as Iran is, and it allows no inspections around Dimona. And, speaking of proliferation, it is an historical fact that Israel conspired with apartheid South Africa to assist them in gaining nuclear weapons.

We are far, far freer of danger originating from Iran than we are from Israel.

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

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

The real question for the world is: when is Israel going to allow inspection of its Dimona nuclear facility?

The answer is, of course, never.

Dimona is a working factory for the production of nuclear weapons components.

Israel doesn’t just have a vague possibility of making nuclear weapons – the charge against Iran – Israel makes and deploys them.

And – unlike Iran which has attacked no one in its entire modern history – Israel has proved to the world, over and over, it is ready to use brutal force whenever it chooses.

It did so twice in Lebanon. It has done so many times in Gaza. It has done so in the West Bank. And it engineered the Six Day War so that it could seize the land of the people it still holds in subjugation more than forty years later.

It deliberately attacked the USS Liberty, an American intelligence ship, in an effort to pull the U.S. into its war. It was a bloody business lasting two hours against a well-marked ship.

Or was that attack – never explained properly – to cover up the war crimes Israel was carrying out in the Sinai, where it is known to have executed hundreds of Egyptian prisoners who had surrendered?

Please, just who is the greater threat to world peace?

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“I have heard no credible argument that a Japanese surrender would have resulted from anything other than a full-scale, D-Day style invasion against the Islands.”

Sorry, this is just ignorant.

The evidence is there for anyone who reads.

The Japanese made a number of backchannel offers of surrender. They had only one proviso of importance, that they be allowed to keep their emperor.

The U.S. just ignored them. It insisted on absolute, unconditional surrender.

So, the U.S. obliterated two non-military target cities, than took the Japanese surrender and allowed the Japanese to keep their emperor.

And, in doing that, it set a terrible example for all time.

All that horror and destruction was for nothing.

It represented the same poor judgment and ugly Puritan attitudes we saw in Vietnam, Iraq, and still see in Afghanistan. We want it our way, or we will obliterate you.

The use of the atomic bombs on Japan also deliberately considered, in the highest councils of the American government, the strategic value of setting a terrible marker against Stalin.

The story of the losses owing to land invasion was just that, a story, planted in a deliberate propaganda effort to white-wash one of the 20th century’s most criminal acts.

Of course, soldiers would have died, but the story leaves out the fact that an invasion was completely unnecessary to get a surrender.

It was all an inexcusable horror, and the United States has no business telling anyone what it may or may not do. It is simply playing God.

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“Our gratitude goes out to John Chuckman for the unrequested, off-topic history lesson on the Japanese surrender and yet another expected anti-Israel rant – neither of which has anything to do with the subject.”

Sorry, Mr Foonman, that too is just ignorant. You have only to scroll through the posts to see reference to America’s use of atomic weapons.

It used them twice, both times on civilians.

So how in God’s name do they have the moral authority to demand Iran behave in this or that way?

Plus, of course, they’ve just killed a million people in Iraq – a next-door neighbor to Iran – in a completely illegal invasion.

Where is their moral authority on such issues?

They have none.

And as far as “rants” about Israel and “anti-Israel” statements, perhaps those are the words you like to use to demonize those with whom you disagree.

It is, after all, a favorite tactic of Israel’s apologists to call everyone who doesn’t agree with them names.

All I’ve done is set out some raw facts.

How can anyone who is rational and not a pathetic propagandist claim that Israel’s illegal nuclear weapons have nothing to do with this issue?

Iran is virtually surrounded by nuclear powers, two of which have very belligerent records of behavior.

Doe it not have the right to look after its defense?