JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Peter MacKay is simply an embarrassment.

He doesn’t know what he is talking about, yet he insists on talking in public.

And he does so as part of his ridiculous trip to accept an award, an award from, of all institutions on the planet, the Pentagon.

His “award” represents the kind of plaque given to aluminum siding salespeople for exceeding an annual quota.

Had he any effective intelligence and pride, he would have quietly turned down this “award.”

After all, his only merit in getting it is committing our poor country to spend tens-of-billions dollars on a useless plane which cannot even do what it was designed to do.

But the Pentagon is happy because Canada is helping subsidize their long efforts to rejig this high-tech albatross.

Boy, if I ran a aluminum siding company, I’d sure award a salesman who dumped a carload of unsalable merchandise like that.

But as a citizen of Canada, it is degrading to see this mediocrity – supposedly a senior minister of Canada – go grovel in front of powerful Americans in exchange for a crummy plaque and a moment of press exposure.

What does MacKay know about Iran? Nothing.

What does MacKay know about nuclear technology? Nothing.

What does MacKay know about the use of Israeli propaganda like the phrase “red lines”? Nothing.

And what does MacKay know about telling the truth?

Nothing, as he has amply proved through his entire national political career from the way he tore up an agreement that gave him a leadership position to the way he insulted a woman in public and just laughed and to the way he abused the authority of his position with men and equipment intended for serious purposes dedicated to his fishing-trip travel.

A moral and ethical nullity.

That is the value of the words coming from this man.
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“Wow, the HARPER Government keeps sweeping up these international awards, don’t they?”

There’s an award out there somewhere for anything you care to name.

The indescribably repulsive Tony Blair has received a number of them for his efforts as mass murderer.

Harper is called a “statesman,” after blowing every single opportunity to achieve anything meaningful in the world and lowering his country’s reputation.

He was given his award by a smiling and charming elder host in a yarmulke whose idea of statesmanship undoubtedly focuses on Harper’s self-declared crusade for Israel and Israeli values, having nothing to do with Canada or with the welfare of the world in general.

MacKay is given his award by the world’s largest institution dedicated to killing people, as a sign of gratitude for a fat contract.

Awards are nothing more than presents from wealthy people used to promote their purposes. Rarely do they represent genuine merit or achievement.

It is a form of marketing.

 

 

 

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 RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

I love the accompanying photo of Peter MacKay at the controls.

You can imagine the photographer or a public relations flak telling Pete to place his head at a certain angle so that his eyes, which are too close together, don’t disturb viewers.

The posture, too, was suggested to demonstrate a man in control.

And the subtle lighting on the face to make him stand out from the background.

But despite all their efforts, and likely a $100,000 invoice for the session, in the end all I see is a fool trying to pretend he’s serious.

Or a twelve-year old playing grown-up.

Yes, with a guy of this caliber in charge, changes are definitely called for in DND’s authority over costly acquisitions.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY HARRY SWAIN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

“The parallels to the F-35 are eerie…”

I am not sure that Mr. Swain has told the whole story here.

I don’t agree with him that both planes were obsolete the day they first flew.

The F-35, if it could do what it was supposed to do, would not be obsolete, but it cannot perform as intended: it represents a set of blunders.

The Arrow certainly was not obsolete in its day.

The project was stopped and existing planes were chopped up without any meaningful explanation by Diefenbaker owing to American Defense Department pressure.

The Americans did not welcome Canada’s entry into the world of high-performance military aircraft – it is an area where competition is not welcome with all the internal subsidies going to the Pentagon – and it very much made its feelings known secretly and strongly, as it always does in such matters.

In the case of the F-35, Harper’s government bought the (unproved) thing because of Pentagon pressure.

All of America’s allies have had significant pressures to buy some of these hi-tech lemons: the reason is to subsidize the immense costs of correcting its design errors.

The only common threads are Pentagon pressure and governments of Canada giving in – in the first case to stop and in the second place to buy.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSES TO AN EDITORIAL IN TORNTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

“F-35 fighters are the price of sovereignty”

Surely this ranks as the most block-headed caption I can recall reading on a Globe editorial. It reads like a quote from some Pentagon-supplied crib book for the press.

What on earth does subsidizing the Pentagon’s purchase of these costly planes – which is effectively is just what our purchase represents – have to do with our sovereignty? The Pentagon will be putting them to good use in its endless chain of colonial wars all over the world.

We could not hold off the United States – the only genuine future threat to Canada’s sovereignty in both the North and the Great Lakes – for twenty minutes.

The United States has become a military Frankenstein monster, spending – quite literally – more than the entire rest of the planet on the military.

Our purchase of this plane – for which we have almost no use – is a subsidy to the Pentagon’s acquisition of them. The small fleet we can afford represents little genuine military capability.

And readers should be aware that the capital cost of acquiring these planes, high as it is, is only the beginning.

Modern high-tech, high-performance military planes require immense and costly maintenance efforts.

They are almost like Japanese Kobe cattle being hand-rubbed and fed beer every day.

America’s “stealth” fighter and bomber, for example, must each have special climate-control hangers, and they take the kind of attention to detail of the space shuttle after a flight in orbit. The costs are staggering.

This purchase is about the stupidest waste of money a person could come up with, only excepting a continuation of our dismal mission in Afghanistan, something which also does no more than support the Pentagon’s hormone-driven insanity.
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“Protection, undefined, as in this editorial, is little more than a racket.”

Good line, that.

How very true, much resembling the undefined use of words like security or sovereignty.

Dumb and meaningless, but appealing to the herd instincts of many.

The chest-thumping knuckle-draggers are out in force on this one – mainly, I suspect, aggressive little boys who like expensive, bright toys (so long as others pay for them).
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“MacKay’s announcement is another indication of a serious minister putting serious tools into the hands of the people who protect us.”

Peter MacKay’s entire history in cabinet is marked by poor performance in his various roles, childish insults mumbled in Parliament, and a rather feeble effort to appear a forceful figure.

Strong is the last adjective any thinking person would apply to him.

Protect us? From what? The boogey man?

Well, he finally found his niche, the military, where money is thrown around like confetti and everything is justified with totems like “protect” or “security” or “sovereignty.”

Carried to its limit, that kind of thinking gives you the Pentagon, the most wasteful, destructive, and anti-democratic force on earth, and a major contributor to the decline in the United States now clearly underway.