JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

There are no choices here at all.

Obama, once so promising, has proven a man of little backbone and no principles, unable to change anything worth changing.

He is responsible for at least 3,000 deaths by killer-drones.

The incipient American police state has continued to grow rapidly with TSA agents and drones everywhere.

There are even new portable backscatter x-rays, the ones used at airports, mounted on vans to travel up and down cities.

TSA agents are beginning to patrol the nation’s highways, and they are riding on inter-city buses.

The hideous Patriot Act has not been attacked, only re-inforced.

The CIA torture international gulag remains in place, its ghastly reality not even called into question.

Obama is almost indistinguishable from George Bush, judged by his acts.

We already know that a man with Romney’s background – a man who travels hundreds of miles with a dog tied to the roof of his car, a man whose hobby as a young man was to pretend he was a policeman with a blinking light on his car, and a man who made his fortune throwing people out of work and keeping his money offshore – is almost certainly psychopathic.

No matter who wins this silly election – after billions are spent on a big show and tons of advertising – the military-intelligence-security complex will go right on running things.

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JANET DALEY IN THE TELEGRAPH

“David Cameron’s repudiation of George Bush’s policy on waterboarding is logically flawed, argues Janet Daley. “

Pure logic does not apply to such matters, rather they intimately involve democratic and human values and just plain human decency.

Western society has struggled for centuries to reach the point where we even question such acts. We endured inquisitions and terrors and the rack and countless other ingenious and malevolent engines of human cruelty to reach our enlightened state. Overcoming our nasty chimpanzee origins and creating societies of just laws have been no small feats and represent our greatest achievements.

Crude people like George Bush or sophists like Janet Daley willingly cast aside this advance of immense importance for no good reason.

I remind readers of just a few details Bush’s background. He happily sent scores of prisoners to their deaths by execution in Texas, including a woman whom he mocked in public over her plea for mercy. He said in Chicago, shortly after 9/11, that he had “won the trifecta,” knowing how polls soared for his administration which had been quite unpopular. A boyhood friend told us of one of young George’s great pleasures in life: stuffing lighted firecrackers into frogs and watching them blow up.

George Bush demonstrated in countless ways his lack of genuine regard for ethics, from his drunken abuse of family to his disappearing from his obligations in the Air National Guard, the institution which was his ticket in avoiding Vietnam, a ticket paid for through family influence.

Bush was in the driver’s seat for Abu Ghraib, and readers may not know that the worst excesses there have been suppressed. One of the world’s foremost investigative reporters, Seymour Hersh, told us that events included the raping of children and killing. Bush also gave us Guantanamo and the entire CIA international torture gulag which includes God-knows–what to this day in places like the secret facilities at Bagram Air Base and the unapproachable Diego Garcia.

Bush thought nothing of the Northern Alliance’s General Dostum taking 3,000 Taleban prisoners in the early days of the conflict in batches out to the dessert in sealed trucks to suffocate while American soldiers stood around picking their noses. He thought nothing of a child soldier of fifteen, who had been shot twice in the back by Americans, being sent to Guantanamo, contrary to all international agreements, to be tortured and kept out of contact with family or lawyers for years.

I remind readers too that George Bush gained office by vote fraud in Florida. He is a man of about as poor a set of ethics as you will find on the planet outside of some police states or prisons.

No, Janet Daley, you support what no decent person can support, an example of almost unparalleled creepiness in the leader of a modern democratic state.

Shame on you: there can never be a defense for torture.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

 

Gee, I wonder what an “action-oriented think tank” is?

Would it be anything like the Bush appointments in federal agencies which gave us his heroic achievements in New Orleans?

Would it be anything like the efforts leading up to the war crime of invading Iraq?

Would it be anything like people that gave America torture and assassination as part of its day-in-day-out policy?

Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure I know.

It’s an outfit that works overtime to blur and bury the truth in all these matters.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY REX MURPHY IN THE TORONTO GLOBE AND MAIL

I’ve always enjoyed you as host of Cross Country Check-up. You treat almost all callers with courtesy and decency.But in writing columns – I never read them before they were “unlocked” – I realize you truly are something of a Jekyll and Hyde character. This piece is silly blather: wordy, pointless, and stained with envy.Obama is not responsible for the immense response he generates in people, nor does he display the least indication of hubris in his reactions. The man is genuinely gifted: intelligent, graceful, thoughtful.

He achieved the remarkable feat of defeating a woman who had name-recognition and connections second only to George Bush, an accomplishment still not fully appreciated.

After 8 years of the most incompetent man ever to hold the office of President, a man whose every utterance causes millions to scrunch-up their toes in intellectual pain, the world is eager for a man of this quality to assume power.

When I compare Obama to McCain, the first adjectives that come to mind are “fresh” versus “tired.” After that, there’s “bright” versus “mediocre.” “Polished” versus “beat up.” “Informed” versus “uninformed.”

I’m sure he will win by a surprisingly large margin.

My God, he strode across Europe like statesman, impressing all who saw him. All McCain’s sad bunch could do was put out garbage about photo-ops and shows.

Clearly, you belong to their whining, unimpressive gang.

_________________

“I don’t recall JFK or FDR, the most popular presidents since Washington, being aw shucks shrinking violets.”

Yes, indeed.

Read Harry Truman on Roosevelt. The man, likely the most gifted leader the U.S. ever had, was an ego-maniac.

Putting oneself forward to lead a great state, or any state, is always in part a matter of strong ego.

Indeed, in some cases, it goes beyond inflated ego into narcissism and even to a low-grade psychopathy.

Some of Kennedy’s behavior, and Lyndon Johnson’s, suggests the last condition. So, definitely, does our charming Harper’s, for that matter.

The job of voters is not to be distracted by small issues like ego – so long as it remains in the range of the sane – but to judge the quality and character of a candidate.

He or she will act as the nation’s representative. In America, this involves the unfortunate double role of head of government and head of state.

Even many issues are not that important. Politicians often ignore their promises or fail in efforts to implement them.

Look at McGuinty’s shabby record of promises in Ontario. Look at Clinton’s failure to implement almost anything worthwhile.