John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY PATRICK COCKBURN

 

“The US Has Faced Decline Before – But Nothing Like What’s to Come”

 

I regard this as one of Mr. Cockburn’s more perceptive columns.

He has definitely captured some important truths here.

They are hard ones for Americans to accept.

I find it remarkable how well China is handling matters like information and assistance to the world.

It comes at a time of tireless misinformation and blundering from American leadership.

And the whole world can plainly see that.

Also, despite all the pain and suffering now and in the coming months, the US busies itself still with pointless, unnecessary hostilities in Venezuela, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, and many other locations, making yet more people more miserable.

By contrast, there’s China offering cooperation, partnership, and help.

Xi’s intelligence and mild manner couldn’t be in more contrast to the grimaces and stream of noisy errors from Trump.

Putin very much also is making an effort abroad but Russia’s resources are considerably less than China’s.

We are fortunate to have two such gifted leaders to help offset some of the chaotic rumblings of Washington.

John Chuckman

COMMENT TO A RE-PUBLISHED ARTICLE BY THE LATE ROBERT PARRY IN CONSORTIUM NEWS

 

“More Second Amendment Madness”

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/08/10/more-second-amendment-madness/

 

“… false notion that the Framers of the U.S. Constitution incorporated the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights so an armed population could fight the government that the Framers had just created.”

 

The historical truth in a nutshell.

However, when you are dealing with fanatics and ideologues – literally, adherents of a secular religious cult such as American Patriotism – truth has about the same impact as pointing out the absurdity of Lot’s wife or Noah’s Ark or Jonah and the whale or the loaves and the fishes.

There is a fundamental divide in human beings when it comes to matters of belief, and especially intensely-held and fear-forged beliefs. Rational argument, evidence, and logic all get tossed, rejected vehemently because they conflict with what the adherent wants to believe, the adherent perhaps not even fully conscious about why it is he or she so desperately wants to believe.

It is just a fact that an awful lot of Americans want guns. They have paranoid fears, and guns make them feel more secure. They are conditioned by a national history and mythology literally built around the importance of guns, in everything from the frontier and cowboys and cavalry and Rough Riders to Prohibition and threats of communism and terror. And today’s vast American military and empire only provide a constant reinforcing sense of how important guns are in the affairs of state.

This issue is one of those which mark the limits of human rationality.

Considering that we are descendants of animals related to chimpanzees, it perhaps really should not surprise anyone.

Just think of how charming and appealing a chimpanzee can be with its big eyes and smile and stunts and remarkably human child-like intelligence.

And yet we now know from long and careful studies in the wild that part of the chimps’ basic behavior includes clans marching out for surprise attacks on neighboring chimp clans, fracturing skulls and driving the living from their homes and food supply. Sound familiar?

The problem around guns and violence in America is the country’s existing form of government. What the early government, so admirable in high school civics textbooks, began morphing into not many years after its creation.

You have an aristocratic, imperial form of government, itself hostile and belligerent to so many things in the world. It governs an empire built on violence, both inside the continental United States and outside in its possessions abroad.

It is truly incapable of dealing with many domestic matters. It is not really interested or concerned, except for a brief show of mollifying speeches to constituents and meetings after some terrible mass killing. Then it’s back to business as usual.

America’s government responds to money and power, and not to ideas or ideals or human appeals. It pretty much lets “the people” continue in whatever unpleasant social situations they find themselves – violence, injustice, lack of medical care, poor public schools, immense poverty – while it wheels and deals in the lives of still other people living abroad.

Just think about it. What could you actually expect at home from the kind of politicians who created Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and dozens of coups and blockades and interventions, killing and maiming millions? Hurling millions from their homes as desperate refugees? Refugees then often despised and ridiculed by the very same politicians? That, sadly, characterizes the very fabric of American government.

The kind of politicians who tolerate, and even praise as “restrained,” the behavior of Israel at Gaza where it literally ambushes unarmed crowds, week after week after week, demonstrating for rights? And the kind of politicians who continue arming Israel, heavily, even in violation of their own “showcase” laws concerning the use of exported American weapons?

No, you cannot expect much at home from a government displaying that kind of behavior abroad.

And, no, you cannot possibly have rational gun laws in the domestic chaos of jurisdictions that is American society. Where any one local jurisdiction even tries – as in some cities responding to their desperate residents – it is surrounded by a sea of gun-running and legal sales from neighboring jurisdictions. It can achieve nothing, except providing the true Patriot fanatics with yet another example of how gun control fails, something for them to smirk at.

Gun control must be national, but what are the chances of that in America?

_______________________

Response to another comment who used the term ‘snowflake’ to describe the concerns of Consortium News with guns:

 

Truly, for those aware of the realities of history, few expressions are more devoid of meaning than “rights.”

It remains a favorite American refrain, but it is about as meaningful as “privacy” is today with the NSA and intrusive corporate internet monopolies.

Such words resemble those of a child about Santa Claus.

Talk about “snowflake.”

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2019/04/12/john-chuckman-comment-a-few-observations-on-the-idea-of-rights/

 

https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2016/04/22/john-chuckman-essay-the-illusion-of-rights/

 

John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY ALEX KRAINER IN RUSSIA INSIDER

 

“I Wrote a Book Exposing Bill Browder’s Deceptions Because He Could Trigger a Major War With Russia

“Having experienced, first-hand, a vicious war in Yugoslavia, caused by the same kind lying Browder engages in, this author felt he had to speak up.”

 

https://russia-insider.com/en/i-wrote-book-exposing-bill-browders-deceptions-because-he-could-trigger-major-war-russia/ri24782

 

This is a well-written piece. I hope it stimulates people to read the book.

“Today most westerners seem ready to believe that Putin is a tyrant, that he routinely has critics and political rivals assassinated, that he amassed a vast personal fortune and that he runs Russia as his own personal fiefdom.”

Yes, and why is that? Our newspapers and broadcasts are larded with negative stuff about Russia all the time. I can’t recall a time recently seeing a good story about Russia, a huge country with all kinds of diverse and interesting things going on. Some of the stories reach frightening levels of paranoia, as this, following, not long ago in The Guardian (I could cite many more from that truly threadbare excuse for a newspaper, but this one marks a peak in their relentless efforts):

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/05/21/john-chuckman-comment-absurd-lengths-to-which-our-press-goes-to-attack-russia-britains-guardian-holds-hate-russia-day-today-some-of-its-stuff-is-so-ham-fisted-it-reads-like-1959-pravda-atta/

When it isn’t actual accusations of some unproved event, such as Theresa May’s weird Skripal Affair, it is just a clear assumption and tone that our press – always following our dishonest politicians as closely as baby ducks imprinted to waddle behind their mothers – is speaking about a country that is somehow “other,” a country that doesn’t operate by the same rules good old America does.

But it really shouldn’t surprise anyone who has a little history and who observes and thinks about things.

First, we must always remember that America waged a 24 hour-a-day internal propaganda war for decades on the subjects of Russia and communism. The FBI worked tirelessly on the subject, as did the CIA, and the press simply was constantly putting attitudes and perspectives “out there” instead of news or facts.

I still remember, as a young man in my home town of Chicago, when Lyndon Johnson first started committing men towards what would literally become an American-created holocaust in Vietnam, seeing a disturbing editorial in one of the more “liberal” papers in the city, the Chicago Sun-Times – liberal, that is, only by comparison with something like the Chicago Tribune, an unrelenting advocate for all things on the extreme Right. The editorial was headlined, I still remember, “The Reds Are at the Gates!”

Well, decades of that kind of stuff does leave some toxic residue, even after the world has changed. That’s why Germany carried on a long and intense campaign against Nazism after the Hitler years. But voraciously anti-Russia, anti-communist America never has made any effort to expunge the memories and results of the likes of J. Edgar Hoover and Allen Dulles and James Jesus Angleton.

And, today, America’s establishment has new reasons for not doing so and indeed for re-igniting the old fires. It is determined to dominate the globe and force advantages from other nations as a means of avoiding its inevitable relative economic decline and the future change in political influence that that entails. The Neocon Wars in the Middle East have been only one part of an effort in many directions and through many means, including threats and sanctions and coups and attacking international organizations of every description.

Russia and China, naturally enough, are seen as barriers against this intense new effort, but Russia’s geography, touching, as it does, America’s unofficial satrapy of Europe and with proximity to the Middle East containing America’s much-privileged colony of Israel, plus its capacity to literally obliterate the United States, make it the greatest target of establishment hate. Russia today and a number of other states welcome a coming multi-polar world. America’s establishment regards it only with fear and loathing.

America has done nothing now abroad but bomb and kill people for over a decade and a half. I don’t know the actual number of deaths – American sources are very coy about how many people they kill, as we learned in the First Gulf War where the number of Iraqis killed was never offered, although we know it was huge with B-52s dropping full loads on sand forts in the desert – but I’m sure the total comes in at no less than two million.

They’ve destroyed, or attempted to destroy, a number of societies – Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and others. And they work away at threatening and manipulating still others, everywhere from Iran to Venezuela or Nicaragua. They also tolerate atrocities by Saudi Arabia and Israel, and, to somewhat a lesser extent, by Egypt, because those governments serve and support their overall purpose. Browbeaten governments like Britain and France work as willing helpers while constantly misrepresenting to their own people what it is they actually are doing, as with the cutthroats of ISIS or al Nusra in Syria, whom they have supported and assisted.

And then there are the millions of desperate refugees created by all that destruction, so many they nearly destabilized Europe, and discussion of refugees in the United States, in its politics and in some popular culture, has turned into a national festival of hate, as though refugees did nothing but rob and rape and kill. And I am not exaggerating in the least.

Trump has been a keen promoter of these views and attitudes, but his words do not go out to an unreceptive audience. There are large portions of American society very receptive to such stuff, just as they are receptive to crude stuff about Russia.

And, of course, we have a hi-tech state-operated extrajudicial killing machinery that carries on day and night murdering people no one even knows anything about. The victims are selected by the very folks doing the killing, the thugs and psychopaths at the CIA. And when I say “victims” I’m not even referring to the many innocents killed in the explosions of Hellfire missiles, deemed as “collateral damage,” I’m referring to the targets themselves, victims in every sense of the word, people condemned to be burned alive with no charges or lawyer or trial or rights of any kind.

Now, while all that inhumanity and brutality from their own government goes on, you would be hard put to find large numbers of Americans who know much about it. Their press and politicians never directly speak in such terms. Everything reported is couched in euphemism or they just recite downright lies. And there is the fact that Americans often take very little interest in what is going on abroad – in part because America is itself such a large and noisy and dynamic and time-consuming society. But it is an attitude which very much assists the government in its great volume of dirty work. Surprisingly few people abroad I think appreciate this important fact.

When George Bush was running for president, he once bragged and laughed over telling people he never read the international section of his newspaper. It was the kind of stupid joke you expect from a very stupid man, but the anecdote is notable in that Bush felt very comfortable in making it while appealing for votes. The irony of the presidency now being an office having more to do with events abroad (in the imperial wars and manipulations of others around the world) than events at home is lost on many Americans. Their attitudes are extremely naïve.

There is also the tendency in people – especially people with strong ideological beliefs as many Americans have, which work to insulate the mind against outside influence, exactly the way strong religious beliefs do – to not really see what they are looking at. The best example of many I could cite, is Israel’s current relentless slaughter of unarmed marchers in Gaza. Organized gangs of snipers behind fences, week after week, shoot into crowds of people demonstrating for some rights. Something like 18,000 have been injured and something like 180 killed in cold blood, including women and children and even well-marked medics. Yet, Americans see this atrocity and cling to the narrative that Israel is only defending itself from terror, even showing “restraint,” and their press and politicians faithfully work hard to reassure them of that.

Of course, all of this stresses the importance of the press abroad, Russia’s being extremely important today because the press in American-dominated places like Britain and France reads and sounds a great deal like the press in America, mostly making the same assumptions and promoting the same narratives. It is actually quite a distressing phenomenon to anyone seeking decent information or even a little different perspective on events.

No critically-minded person automatically accepts the truth of everything in the Russian press either. Russia has its own efforts at persuasion and motives for evasion at times, but on many international issues it is clear that some valid information is supplied by Russia. That can be confirmed in many ways, from the voices of truly independent, respectable journalists to the rare authoritative voice speaking out from within a country such as Britain or the United States.

And even where it cannot be confirmed, the time-honored analytical technique of comparing what two very different sources, like the United States and Russia, claim about a story can be quite helpful in revealing roughly where the truth is. After all, that’s precisely what judges and juries in our courts do all the time. It is a valid technique, but you must have that other side of the story to use it.

If you are someone in the United States or Britain, say, who relies, day-in, day-out, on some single news source such as CBS or The Washington Post or the BBC or The Guardian, I can absolutely assure you, at least on the matters discussed here, that you are misinformed.

That’s a sad reflection on our Western society, with its claims to Enlightenment and humanitarian principles, but I can’t think of another broad statement that is any truer. The motives for deception and the size of the stakes for doing so rise tremendously with the dirty work of empire and aggression, the very work in which the American government is now engaged full-time.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO A VIDEO ARTICLE BY JONATAN FREEDLAND IN THE GUARDIAN

 

More propaganda from Jonathan Freedland – there really is no other word to adequately describe this verbal output short of an unfortunate bout of severe verbal diarrhea.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, Trump has said or advocated is not being done already in other places.

Immigrants? Look to your own Prime Minister for inspiration. He plainly just does not want them. Then look to Israel which takes only one kind of immigrant and no other. Walls? Israel has them going up in a number of places, and various states of Europe are building strong fences.

And speaking of immigrants, we have a flood of refugees today which is why fences are going up in Europe.

Why is that? Because America, Israel, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia five years ago make a decision they had no right to make: to seek to destroy the government of Syria and hurtle that beautiful, historic land into chaos, sending millions running for their lives.

There is no other explanation for the horrors we see than geopolitics over humanity and human rights and, yes, even democracy, because Assad has popular support in Syria and is a defender of religious rights.

And America, in consultation with Israel, has made what can only be termed Hitlerian decisions more than once, destroying a well-run society in Libya and utterly devastating Iraq.

And poor Egypt, finally free of a hideous dictatorship after thirty years, was quickly turned around, its young democracy destroyed, and is back saddled with dictatorship. Why? Bottom line is that Israel detested the democratic government of Egypt.

All of this was to create a cordon sanitaire for Israel and to eliminate rulers who looked to their own countries’ interests rather than toe the line of America’s authoritarian policies.

And what can we say of the country for whose benefit so much of this horror was launched? It builds walls everywhere, and on other people’s land. It destroys houses that have stood for centuries. It regularly just helps itself to parcels of other people’s land. It holds thousands as prisoners. It holds five million or so effectively in bondage with no rights, no votes, and no future.

This is what Mr Freedland effectively is defending.

It is simply a fact that Israel’s government intensely dislikes Donald Trump because it sees him as an independent decision-maker, and it is simply a fact that apologists for Israel now all work hard to bad mouth Trump. You can see it in American publications and in British publications like The Guardian, ranging from subtle to vitriolic attacks.

I actually dislike being put in the position of being a defender for Trump because he does not represent most of my views, but I do believe he could bring a desperately-needed fresh approach to foreign affairs. Sometimes it takes a bastard to get a vital job done.

As for Hillary, she is nothing less than a blood-soaked goddess of war, and Ted Cruz is a dishonest, insincere, and intensely unlikable man who frequently sounds like a salesman for Israel Bonds. You want more stupid war and destruction and refugees, you vote for either of them.

Trump may well prove an important agent of change, ushering the world into a new, more promising era, but of course the unspoken agenda for so many attacking him is that they like things just as they are. It is very much at least worth a try.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO A COLUMN IN THE GUARDIAN BY PAUL MASON

 

Paul, if you are aware of even one week in human history when the world was not awash with hatred, please let me know.

We are nothing but chimpanzees with larger brains, and, as we know, modern studies of those cute and appealing creatures have demonstrated them as being quite vicious and murderous.

I don’t know what Mein Kampf returning to Germany has to do with anything serious or dangerous, but just bringing it up and associating it with some other larger events demonstrates bias.

This is a tedious, antiquated book which would not even be understood by many today. There is no magical mumbo-jumbo in this book to capture people’s minds.

It is a threat to no one except in some imaginations.

But ignorance very much is a threat to all of us.

The book is of interest to scholars and historians, so why shouldn’t it be available?

Indeed, in Hitler’s day, the book became a kind of social token, much like the Bible, with nice editions being presented as gifts on marriages or birthdays.

Virtually no one ever read it then, just as few read the Bible today.

And, if you want a written record of bloodshed, injustice and hatred, you would have a mighty hard time doing better than the Old Testament.

It was Hitler’s strange brooding personality and gift for fiery live speech that gave him any appeal, but we should always remember he never got more than 37% of the vote in free elections.

He was appointed Chancellor by the ancient President von Hindenburg trying to save his county from chaos in the streets.

After that, Hitler seized power through a series of dark operations, such as the Reichstag Fire, which together amounted to a coup.

Why had the streets of Germany become such a mess that Hindenburg, an old school German officer, appointed someone he genuinely didn’t like?

Because the fine, liberal-spirited government, known as the Weimar Republic, which arose in Germany after WWI was allowed to fall to pieces by Western interests. It wasn’t helped in its many serious problems.

We see such patterns today, but not in the places you may think. We see it in Syria where a tolerant and reasonably fair government is under savage attack by foreigner-subsidized lunatics.

We see it in Libya where America and others decided to destroy a man who once ran his state reasonably well.

We see it in Egypt where absolute government has returned.

We see it in Iraq, a once prosperous country with a growing middle class which undoubtedly would have become democratic eventually, left to its own devices.

None of these events were normal and a result of internal forces.

They all involve external interference and manipulation, the chief players being the United States and its associates in the region.

Now, there’s the real concern for thoughtful people who want peace and justice.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT

 

“… ISIS ideology stretches ‘deep into Muslim society…”

What a complete ass Tony Blair is.

First, he knows nothing about Muslim society, but that fact doesn’t stop him from making sweeping observations.

Second and most important, ISIS itself is an artificial construct, as the duplicitous Blair well knows. It includes many Westerners, even special forces under cover from several nations. It is supported and armed by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and America. It is led by people associated with Western powers. It cannot be therefore an accurate representation of anything about Muslims.

Third, it is really important to remember that the Muslim world has been treated horribly in recent years, country after country having been attacked or destabilized by America and smarmy allies like Tony Blair. There is a wealth of abuse and grievances behind the decision of any young man who does join such an organization.

Drones are killing people in half a dozen countries.

Syria is under terrible attack from outside.

Yemen is under attack by the absolute monarch of Saudi Arabia.

Libya is in a shambles.

Iraq is a broken rump state.

Egypt is back to a dictatorship.

Israel, as usual, abuses millions with no one even taking serious notice.

And the religion of more than a billion people is almost daily maligned in our press, as you have done in publishing Tony Blair’s malign musings.

John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT

Mark Steel is just a second-rate propagandist.

Of course, China has its flaws, and some serious ones.

But perspective is everything.

After all, let’s not forget that Britain did help mightily in killing about a million people in Iraq, the creation of a couple of million miserable refugees, and the destruction of large parts of an advanced society for generations.

And Britain happily supports America’s horror in Syria, the letting-loose of tens of thousands of well-equipped cutthroats in an effort to destroy a beautiful land.

I haven’t heard any public cries from Downing Street over the Saudi terror campaign in Yemen, including the use of cluster bombs on civilians. Perhaps I missed something?

No, I don’t think I did. There was nothing either about all the Saudi beheadings and a sentence of crucifixion either. But there was a huge secret arms sale and a project for building prisons in one of the world’s great tyrannies.

Please, stuff like this of Mr. Steel’s is just clap-trap. I doubt very much he raised his voice on such other atrocities as Israel’s murderous abuse of several million Palestinians for half a century. This remains the world’s single greatest example of a complete squashing of human rights and decency: the Palestinians have no votes, no rights, no future, and they can’t even enjoy their homes and farms with any security. Again, that is a matter about which we never hear from good old David or Mr. Steel for that matter.

After all, for David to do so, even slightly, would seriously harm relations with Rupert Murdoch, a man, by the way, whose British publishing empire was built in part on hacking the intimate telephone conversations of hundreds of unfortunate people, including victims of violent crime. To say nothing of casting a pall over those delightful country weekends with Rupert’s designated creature in Britain, red-haired bombshell Rebekah Brooks

Interesting, despite China’s shortcomings in human rights, it has pretty well lived in peace with its neighbors for its entire modern existence.

That certainly cannot be said of the United States or its colony in the Middle East, the two most dangerous states in the modern world, both of whom get David’s unlimited support and affection.

______________________

America has given us nothing but wars and coups and “interventions” since the end of the Second World War. The toll of their attempts to control the planet, including such glorious episodes as the Vietnam War, has been literally as many people killed – mostly civilian, as is the case in all modern war – as were killed in the Holocaust.

Three million victims just in Vietnam, another million in Iraq, a million in Cambodia, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Chile, Guatemala, and on and on.

Israel, America’s colony in the Middle East, has behaved as a miniature replica of the mother country. It has done nothing but kill and suppress people for 65 years, having invaded every neighbor that it has, many of them two or three times.

I don’t see how anyone can write what Mark Steel writes without being entirely ignorant of modern history or deliberately ignoring it. In either case, the result is not worth publishing.

John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT

Sorry, David, but I do think Jeremy Corbyn likely understands exactly what ISIS represents.

It really is you, David, who pretends not to understand.

After all, you support American policy in the region, don’t you, David, even though, if I may be permitted to say, you do so with just a trifle too much groveling?

American policy is about using filth like ISIS and al Qaeda to destroy the beautiful land of Syria. America helped round up this collection of human trash from many places, including Benghazi, and along with Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, it armed, trained, and supported them in their murderous rampage.

Of course, the Americans do not say that openly, David, but anyone who does just a little thinking can see the pattern. Those who do not see it, choose not to see it.

The U.S. drops bombs in the desert and on Syrian infrastructure, pretending to attack ISIS. The bombing of so-called terrorists you want to do, David, is clearly of the “Me too, Mr. Obama, Sir!” kind.

You really are so transparent, David, quite an ineffective puff-ball of a Prime Minister trying to sound stern and heroic. But then you have no one to answer to, do you, with a “majority” government representing 35% of British voters? Not your fault, is it, that Britain’s election system has such a built-in democratic deficit?

By all accounts, that horrible tyrant Assad is somehow strangely supported by a substantial majority of Syrians owing to his policies of secularism and protection of religious minorities. Then there’s the fact that he accepted at least a million refugees fleeing the American-British invasion of Iraq which killed about a million people, but he’s not fooling you, is he, David? He’s a heartless tyrant who must go. After all, he didn’t listen to you about getting out of town.

I’m just waiting to see how you’ll wiggle your little trotters and oink (sorry for the reference, David, but I couldn’t resist) after Putin’s air force has sent the American-organized cutthroats running for home. There are already reports of some fleeing. Maybe you’ll take them in, David? But I understand you’re not that fond of refugees.

Putin just proves what amazing things can happen when you actually aim for the enemy you claim you are aiming at. In their first 60 sorties, Putin’s boys did more damage to ISIS than America’s claimed 6,000 or so. But then that could be because Americans spend so much effort bombing things like hospitals, or don’t you agree, David?

David, there is one thing I wish you’d clear up for all us lowly, ordinary citizens. What do Rebekah and Rupert think about ISIS? Surely, you discuss the subject on your country weekends?

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Austere lifestyle tells us very little about the character of a man as leader.

Stalin wore modest uniforms most of the time and worked about 16 hours a day.

Hitler too was a man of fairly modest tastes, wearing a modest uniform, being a vegetarian, and often having a polite tea with his secretaries.

Pope Francis’s behavior around the junta was the ethical question which immediately sprang to mind.

While not definitive, this article makes it clear enough he was not an admirable figure during those horrors.

The issue of his behavior over two arrested members of his Jesuit order seems almost a sideshow.

Many thousands were killed by being illegally arrested, drugged, and thrown out of aircraft over the ocean.

Obama has extra-judicially killed 4700 people with drones without a word of disapproval from Rome.

Any man claiming moral authority who does not speak against that is worthy of neither respect or nor admiration.

But then that has always been the behavior of the Catholic Church.

The popes blubber about peace but never speak to those starting wars or those committing great evils.

George Bush happily killed a million people with no disapproval from the pope.

Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon killed some 3 million in Vietnam without any opposition from the pope.

Hitler had a concordat with the pope.

Fascist Italy did too.

As did Napoleon.

When Catherine de’ Medici began an orgy of murder of Huguenots (protestants) in France – an event called the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre – the pope honored her “achievement” with the striking of a gold medal.

It is a long and quite shameful history, without even touching on Rome’s behavior over countless years of sexual abuse of children.

Anyone who sees the pope as a moral force in the world is just reciting meaningless words.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Peter MacKay, as always, talks as the fool he is, a fool who doesn’t understand the extent of his own foolishness.

Among the Harper government’s clearest achievements in international affairs is reducing the country to a length of soiled toilet paper trailing from the Pentagon’s rear end.

We have zero interests in Mali and zero interest in Mali.

There is nothing there for a rational state to fight over.

But the Pentagon is on a holy crusade, stretching over the face of the earth, for anything that might be in any way associated with what it perceives in its dim lights to be Islamic fundamentalism and terror.

It very much resembles an obsessed, insane Captain Ahab sailing the world’s seas to kill the white whale.

It is egged by the domestic lobby of America’s nasty little sidekick, Israel, a country whose mad leaders speak of nothing but war and assault and enemies and hatreds while they continue stealing the property of others and suppress 4.5 million people into utter hopelessness.

We are heading into a long period of senseless, pointless, and destructive conflicts inspired by the military-industrial complex and its Ahab-like search for the white whale.

Traditionally, Canada, a rational people with progressive views, would not even think of joining in such destructive stupidity.

But now this rational people are ruled by a 39% “majority” government of extreme ideology whose major goal is to play a role in international affairs as defined by the seething Captain Ahab.

We literally threw away billions of dollars and about a hundred and fifty lives to achieve absolutely nothing in Afghanistan.

And we wasted millions more in killing civilians and destroying property in Libya to help create a chaotic state whose leader the United States hated.

In state after state the United States is busy killing people, all innocent people by the standards of justice – in Yemen, in Bahrain, in Pakistan, in Afghanistan, in Somalia, and in Syria (through its paid and supplied proxies).

In Egypt, it encourages the government to impose an unjust constitution just to secure the cooperation of that government.

In Iran, it threatens and blusters daily over nothing.

Its achievement in Iraq – besides a million killed, thousands crippled, two million refugees, and an advanced society reduced to poverty – is a nation effectively divided into pieces and endless internal conflict.

Fortunately, Canada played no role in the filthy business.

Repeating what it achieved in Iraq is, of course, America’s aim in Syria.

Israel’s mad leaders are gleeful for such murderous assistance, but no person of democratic and humane principles can possibly agree.

But we do not have a government today dedicated to such principles, and the whole world knows it and treats us with shame in international forums.

Happy New Year, Canada.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE GLOBE AND MAIL BY JOHN MOSCOWITZ

Evil is an out-dated, mumbo-jumbo word.

Indeed, it explains nothing, serving only to consign something to a dark corner of extreme disapproval with zero understanding.

The author in using it makes himself slightly ridiculous.

The truth is that this terrible event is one more brutal proof of how unbalanced the human mind can be.

That most complex of organs can suffer from countless faults and errors in its construction, just as simpler organs – hearts, kidneys, and livers – so often suffer from faults in their make-up.

And just as people sometimes have parts of their bodies missing – a hand or a leg – a portion of humanity have key bits of their brains either missing or mangled.

Such an event has no more “meaning” than does a stroke of lightning or a tidal wave killing innocent people.

It is terrible, but life goes on.

But, yes, a society which actually cares for its children would have effective gun laws, knowing such things are going to happen at intervals.

But where is the concern for children in America?

What of the children slaughtered in Gaza? No chest-beating over them. Indeed, Israel gets resupplied with all the bombs and munitions expended to kill Palestinian children.

What of the thousands of Iraqi children killed and mangled by America’s pointless invasion? Thousands more made refugees?

And what of the tens of thousands more murdered by a decade of horrible American sanctions against Hussein?

How many children have Americans killed in Afghanistan?

In Pakistan?

And now in Syria through the weapons and fighters imported into that country to undo its government?

The countless killed in Vietnam and Cambodia in a war to no point?

Indeed, today, the seas of Agent Orange America left behind go right on killing and crippling babies and children. What of them?

If America, that brutal imperial force, cared one whit about children, none of these questions could be raised.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

There simply is no doubt that this terrible set of events was “engineered” by the United States, and blame for the bloodshed belongs ultimately to Americans.

Much of what the press blithely calls “Arab Spring” started with Dick Cheney and the Neocons and the CIA, with Israel cheering while looking on, laying out an ambitious long-term program to disturb all the balance in the Middle East.

There was a huge budget appropriation created, hundreds of millions of dollars, at the time, and likely more secret funds provided.

Naturally, the aim was to disturb things in Israel’s favor, although, in many details as things have played through, it has not always gone that way.

The Syrian situation is especially flagrant with Israel and the U.S. having supplied arms to discontented groups – what country does not have these to one degree or another? – and Turkey agreeing to provide the same kind of safe refuge for rebels that parts of Pakistan supply to Afghan fighters.

The Russians are right to oppose this kind of massive covert effort to overturn the governments with which they are friendly.

The U.S. and Israel are total hypocrites here, yapping about democracy when they couldn’t care less about democracy so long as the next government is without Assad.

What kind of democracy do you see in Iraq? In Afghanistan? In Bahrain? In Yemen” In Saudi Arabia? Or in Libya, where American forces killed hundreds of people directly?

The United States itself is so full of dissidents, unhappy minorities, and far-out kooks, you could find hundreds of thousands, including Aryan Nation folks, Militia types, Millenialists, Separatists, down-at-the-heel minorities, and general discontents.

And if you were so inclined, you could secretly heavily arm these extremists and minorities and unbalanced types with guns and explosives and intelligence and fill them with propaganda.

I’m sure it wouldn’t be that difficult to get riots and revolts going in many places.

But all you have to do is look back to the black urban revolts of the 1960s and later to see what would happen. That’s when the National Guard shot hundreds in the streets, and no one said a word about democracy.

All such killing by governments is unacceptable, but it is even more unacceptable that far-away governments would cynically set such violence in motion and sit smiling contentedly, occasional interrupting their perverse pleasure with histrionic speeches about democracy and human rights.

Recall, please, the United States cynically killed maybe a million people in Iraq, and it had nothing to do with democracy. It gave the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan in the 1980s several billion dollars’ worth of arms to kill Russians. It killed tens of thousands itself in Afghanistan without a sign of democracy. It cynically caused some of the Kurds to revolt in Kissinger’s day, resulting in their mass slaughter. It kills in Pakistan, Yemen, Bahrain, and other places, and democracy has nothing to do with it. And it carried out a holocaust in Vietnam, with 3 million horribly killed, and democracy had nothing to do with it.

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

A brave man indeed, and a devilishly clever one.

I much regretted his views on Iraq, but I admire still his ability to criticize with a sharp tongue the many absurdities of the human condition.

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

“…its members’ penny-pinching and lack of political will…”

Oh we sure know the United States isn’t “penny-pinching” when it comes to war.

It is fighting more wars than you can count, all on borrowed money, surely providing the example of the most mindless spend-thrift of all time.

What a ridiculous statement Gates makes, considering the mess – sorry, that is, messes – into which the United States has put itself.

 As for “political will,” of course, what Gates really means is the will to do what the United States wants done.

 No one else thinks it makes any sense to stay in Afghanistan.

 No one else – except the great idiot Tony Blair – thought it made any sense to invade Iraq.

 Already, the mandate for a no-fly zone in Libya has been distorted beyond recognition into a get-Gaddafi campaign.

 America’s drones in Pakistan are criminal hi-tech mass murder.

 And there are reportedly secret air operations in Yemen.

 Not only does all of this murderous activity reflect no ethics or human values, it all costs unbelievable amounts of money – money the United States simply does not have.

_________________________

NATO’s prime function, from America’s point of view, is that it serves as a way to maintain its hegemony in Europe under the pretense of cooperation and alliance.

NATO also is used by America as a convenient fig leaf for some of its ghastly behavior, as in “NATO planes bombed targets…” when we know they were American planes exclusively or overwhelmingly.

Eisenhower wisely warned us of the military-industrial complex more than half a century ago.

But things over that time have gone from bad to worse, worse than anything he could have imagined.

America has become a world-scale bully, a rather nightmarish quasi-police state, armed to the teeth, and, with no money, it is always sour when others neglect picking up the bill for its self-declared necessary tasks.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Did Ottawa drag its feet on Mubarak?

Of course it did.

Why?

Well, hasn’t our thirty-percent prime minister declared himself one of the world’s chief defenders of Israeli interests and entered the lists as a crusader against anti-Semitism, regardless of how chimerical it may be?

And never mind all the other nasty forms of prejudice and oppression in this world: that one is special and requires his personal attention.

One only has to read the articles coming from Israel and from the Israeli apologists elsewhere during the brave demonstrations in Cairo to perceive an emotional crisis over the possible disappearance of a dictator Israel has depended on closely for thirty years.

Some of the pieces are remarkably revealing in their total self-interest and even paranoia and all of them lack regard for the larger principles of human rights and democracy.

That set of facts completely explains Harper’s silence.

Harper is a highly selective advocate of human rights and democratic values.

And his behavior through a genuinely historic crisis marks another sad act in the busy work of dismantling Canada’s international reputation for fairness and decency.
_____________________
From another reader:

“Stupid title from an uneducated twit.”

Now, surely, there’s the mark of an educated man, using language like that.

I do think someone who throws names around the way this anonymous person suits them far better than Jeffery Simpson, who, in general, is one of Canada’s most perceptive and astute columnists.

We haven’t seen democracy in Egypt yet?

Well, part of the reason is Israel’s support and dependence upon a dictator like Mubarak. Its constant efforts, day and night, to prop him up and use him.

Often unsaid, but nevertheless true, is the fact that Israel has been a major drag on the flowering of democracy in the Arab world.

Everything which happens within a thousand miles of Israel must be viewed through the lens of Israel’s narrow and often paranoid interests.

Iraq, previously the most advanced country in the Arab world, was unquestionably one with its previously growing middle class on the way to developing democracy after Hussein (who just happened to be a good buddy of the same United States Israel leans on until he took a turn against American policy).

Now it remains a hopeless wreck: a million dead, countless injured, treasures destroyed, and an economy in depression for a generation. And just who is it that insisted on attacking Hussein and whose narrowly-defined interests did that assault serve?

Only Israel and its apologists in the United States.

God, look at Gaza. A genuine free election, cleaner than the election of George Bush, and what does Israel do?

Arrests members of the government, threatens the leader with assassination – no idle threat coming from Murder Incorporated – refuses to even talk, breaks innumerable international laws by breaking off mail and funds to Gaza, imposes a brutal blockade designed to starve people out, pressures its friend Mubarak to build walls, and kills unarmed humanitarians on the high seas.

My, there’s a set of responses which certainly demonstrate great respect for democracy and human rights.

The entire tone of this person’s comment, as well as its almost complete lack of logic, demonstrates exactly what I addressed in my previous comment. Israel’s apologists know almost no bounds in their demands and pleadings for Israel’s self-defined interests.

Israel can only be a normal country if it behaves like one, and it is difficult to see one act or policy which in sixty years reflects normal national behavior, including respect for neighbors, respect for laws, respect for international obligations, and respect for democratic values and human rights – this last particularly involving anyone outside the borders of Israel’s own peculiar democracy, defined, as it is, to serve only one ethnic/religious group.
_________________________
To another reader:

How can things get worse in Egypt?

They cannot.

And you repeat the historical fallacy of comparing today’s Egypt to 1978’s Iran.

For a dozen reasons, too long to list, that is completely inaccurate.

 

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

 

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

Gee, I do think recalling what the term “carpet bombing” actually means, this use of language is utterly stupid and brutal.

BP has “carpet bombed” an oil slick with oil dispersants.

America has carpet bombed several million people to their deaths in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, sending countless thousands of others to lives without limbs.

Oh, it also left a toxic sea of Agent Orange – millions of pounds of the horrible stuff – oozing in the soil of Vietnam to cripple newborns for generations.

No daily headlines and melodramatic language was used by the press during those utter savageries.

I really think this use of words tells us something not very pleasant about Americans.

If you kill so much as some American shrimp or soil a beach, it is terrible, unforgivable crime, but America reserves the right to barbeque, blow-up, and poison all the people it wants anywhere it pleases.

And does anyone doubt the fact that because BP is a “foreign” company, it is so savagely attacked? BP certainly recognizes this: their new CEO is an American.

Of course, the final irony in all of this is that this kind of industrial accident could happen any day to any operator in the Gulf, a certain level of risk and danger being inherent in deep-water drilling.

But Americans suck up energy the same way they do drugs. If Americans stopped buying lumbering trucks and SUVs and stopped buying houses on the desert with three-car garages, you wouldn’t need these operations.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY CLIVE CROOK IN THE FINANCIAL TIMESYes, exactly.

Whether in war or foreign affairs or economics or trade, the basic problem is the American attitude of “I want it all, and I want it now.”

Another word for this is entitlement.

I think there really is no cure for this sickness, just as it is virtually impossible to undo the damage to a person raised by parents who behaved as though they were his servants.

The only time we saw some deviation from this obsession was in the Great Depression, a learning experience comparable to repeatedly hitting one’s head into a wall.

But, as we’ve seen, even depressions have been banned in America now. You can buy your way out, and go back to just what you were doing.

____________________

Yes, Wendell Murray, the American military expenditure is actually cancer-like in its growth, and only recently we were assured by the good Mr. Gates that there would be still more coming.

American politicians today sometimes harangue about China’s military expenditure, which at somewhere between 10 and 15% that of America’s (with four times the population), seems almost miniscule.

There is no rational explanation for this.

Consider the countless billions squandered in Vietnam – inflate it to present dollars and the sum is immense – and to what end?

Trillions were spent on the Cold War, almost all of it wasted. The Soviet Union finally collapsed based on the flaws in economics and logic embedded in its very foundation and structure, not owing to America’s military might.

I think the practice reflects a combination of the American entitlement syndrome (we are entitled to make all others fear our might) and the Moby Dick obsession with chasing the white whale.

There always seems to be a white whale for America.

Spain’s remaining North American Empire of the 1890s, Communism for decades going back to the 1920s (when Hoover first showed his obsession with getting rid of anyone who could be regarded as a Communist), to Islam in recent times.

Does that reflect a basic paranoid trait in a good portion of the population, the legacy of the horrible Puritans? I’ve long thought so. I think Australia was lucky to get the convicts rather than the Pilgrims.

I do believe the world needs seriously to start re-thinking the role of the American dollar as reserve currency in light of the county’s proved record of irresponsibility. That role for the currency leaves Americans with an option no one else has in paying for its lack of control. Look what it did after Vietnam.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

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

When I read this piece by Tom Flanagan, I can only wonder at the basis of tenure in our universities, for, truly, here are bits of weak observation, clichés, and half-truths pasted together and offered as analysis. Worse, there is a thread of partisan propaganda holding the bits together like a string of beads.

“Harper announced that his Conservative government would adhere to the national interest in formulating Canada’s foreign policy…”

I am sorry, but anyone who genuinely understands the history and foreign affairs knows that that has, everywhere and always, been the basis of foreign policy. To say anything else is a declaration of just plain ignorance.

Genuine national interests do change over time – after all, your interests are different when you are exporting, say, fighter planes than when you are exporting wheat. But also, and very importantly, yet something Flanagan conveniently leaves out, people’s and government’s perceptions of what are the national interests change, often for no more reason than political ideology.

The authors of the report Flanagan pretends to analyze are “not mushy-headed idealists obsessed with soft power…” so they deserve some attention. Is it usual for a professor intending to be taken seriously in what follows to use the kind of pejorative language and straw-man argument we’d get from Rush Limbaugh?

Yes, if you are a neo-con propagandist.

“These people deserve our attention when they talk about genocide.”
Good God, “genocide” is one of the most over-worked words in our contemporary language, and, far more importantly, concern about it is always used by people like Mr. Flanagan as a tool for other purposes. This is no small point.

No power or great power ever goes to war over perceived genocide.

Most importantly, has the US, a Frankenstein of military power if ever there was one, ever opposed genocide, other than in words? It is the US which holds political and economic sway over international agencies like the UN, and it is the US which has the military power to do something.

We have had several authentic genocides in the modern period.

We had a genocide in Rwanda (around a million killed). The US simply refused to use the word internally so that they could ignore it.

We had a genocide in Cambodia (over a million killed), caused by America’s de-stabilizing of the once peaceful country with its bombing and secret invasion. When tough little Viet Nam went in to do something, the US stood back and said, ‘See, we told you, the domino theory at work!’

We had a genocide in Indonesia with the fall of Sukarno. Five hundred-thousand people, vaguely identified as communists, had their throats cut and their bodies dumped into rivers.

Not only did the US not react, there were officials at state department phones late into the night transmitting names of candidates.

I would argue, too, that America’s slaughter in Vietnam was a genuine genocide. About three million were killed, mostly civilians, for no reason other than embracing the wrong economic system.

Many aspects of Bush’s “war on terror” have assumed aspects of genocide. Ever heard of the three thousand prisoners in U.S. care who were driven out to the desert in sealed vans to suffocate by General Dostum’s men while American soldiers watched, picking their noses? This came after Secretary Rumsfeld publicly declared Taleban prisoners should be killed or walled-away for life.

‘Never again’ is a slogan – we’ve proved that – and, like all slogans, it is selectively applied to sell something, just as Flanagan does here.

Great standing armies have virtually no record of doing worthy things.

They do, very much, have a record of fighting pointless wars, intervening where they do not belong, and even intimidating or overthrowing governments.

Flanagan’s “beyond our power to fulfill” is nothing but a plea for more militarism and closer association with a United States which has overthrown governments in Iran, Guatemala, Chile, and a dozen other places as well as killing millions in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq for absolutely no good purpose.

Great power like that is something to be very wary of, not to embrace.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY CLIVE CROOK IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES

Good God, what a lack of logic we see below.

Saying something was vengeance does not communicate approval, but how rarely we see the word “vengeance” used in all discussions of this matter. Americans prefer to play the innocent victim, and it is an act that has grown tired, unconvincing, and even offensive.

The point is clearly that the constant bellowing about mass murder from America completely ignores America’s own blood-soaked record of murder.

Indeed America’s record is unquestionably the bloodiest of any state or organization since the death of Stalin. Vietnam, Cambodia, Somalia, Iran, Chile, Guatemala, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and so many other, perhaps lesser, horrors over the last half century.

America has killed millions and millions with its Frankenstein military, almost all of it to no good purpose, and Americans accept that all this carnage is for their defense and thump their chests when anyone questions it.

For the writer who seems not to understand the attack of 9/11, it had several completely obvious causes (and, please, causes are not the same as justifications), all of which, from the perpetrators point of view, represent an aggressive assault on the Muslim world.

What’s more, these were all avoidable. They reflect that poisonous cocktail of American arrogance, ignorance of others, bullying, and bombing those they don’t like.

First, there was the US moving its troops into territory viewed as sacred by conservative Muslims. Putting women in army fatigues into Saudi Arabia was the rough equivalent of having a naked go-go dancer on the stage at a Baptist revival meeting.

America’s horrific past treatment of Iraq everyone seems to have forgotten.

The first Gulf War was engineered, Hussein having got a wink and a nod about reclaiming the territory of Kuwait, much as Israel’s Six Day War was engineered, and the locals understand that even if our press treats these events differently.

The U.S. assault with B-52s killed a vast number of poor Iraqi conscripts in their pitiful sand castles. The bodies on the desert were in such huge piles they reportedly resembled the discoveries of the first Nazi death camps.

Concerned about public relations, the US hid the facts, bulldozing the bodies into mass graves (much as was done, by the way, when 3,000 prisoners were murdered and buried in Afghanistan by the bloodthirsty General Dostum under U.S. approval and control).

Still, with the end of the brief but bloody war, Iraq’s agony was not over.

The heavy restrictions the US heartlessly kept on Iraq killed a vast number of innocents over a decade, thousands and thousands of children. The details were largely suppressed in the Western press, but hardly in the Middle East.

The CIA’s secret war against the Russians in Afghanistan played a major role. All knowledgeable intelligence people use the term “blowback” to describe what happened in 9/11. Local fighters were equipped and given intelligence to the tune of several billion dollars, all the while feeding the conservative Muslim fighters with propaganda that the Russians were infidels invading their lands.

The CIA’s connection with some of these people continued right up until 9/11. That is why the men who destroyed the buildings had legitimate U.S. visa, again something never emphasized in our press. There was a complex, unknown program of training certain of these people in the U.S., and it backfired.

Unquestionably America’s one-sided support of Israel and its bloody excesses – Israel behaves as an exact geo-political miniature of the US in the Middle East, having attacked, often more than once, every neighbor it has – contributed to immense anger and frustration.

The horrors of Israel’s big invasion of Lebanon were also downplayed here, but not in the Middle East.

Of course, in the background, there was the overthrow of Iran’s democratic government, a joint American-British project, and the installation of that torturing vampire, the Shah, whose Savak used to pull prisoners’ finger nails out in their basement torture chambers, something we never heard any complaints about from that human-rights loving land of America.

And later, the U.S. actively encouraged the Iran-Iraq War so that Iran would be worn down (they lost a million men), assisting Iraq with weapons and intelligence.

Later, of course, the U.S. invaded a neighbor with a major border with Iran and still occupies it.

The U.S. has never stopped bashing Iran, and today allows Israel to threaten this country that has never in its modern era attacked anyone.

There is a far more complex record than I can summarize here, but any clear-thinking person knows exactly why 9/11 happened.

They also know that the U.S. has taken such savage revenge – killing more than a million people and ignoring all international law and order – that the original crime is fading in significance.

How immensely uninformed, or just plain dishonest, it is for anyone to claim they do not understand what caused 9/11.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY ALLAN MALLINSON IN THE TELEGRAPH

Allan Mallinson, this is simplistic, uninformed propaganda.

“Undermined at home” smacks of charges of “defeatism” or “stab in the back” or “fifth columnists,” and in using it, you demonstrate a lack of clear thought.

Morale always suffers when you send armies to do the wrong thing, and Iraq and Afghanistan were colossal mistakes.

The British public had overwhelmingly shown its opposition to the invasion of Iraq, but Tony Blair managed to abuse the immense power of a modern prime minister by joining in that pointless mass murder.

Afghanistan cannot be “won” because you are fighting a major part of the population itself, and you are attempting to foist institutions and customs on a people mostly not ready for them.

The invasion of Afghanistan was the product of Bush/Cheney/ Rumsfeld paranoia. The fact that major NATO nations refuse to seriously engage there is owing to the simple fact that they do not perceive a threat there. As well, they do not see how anyone can “win.”

The Bush administration was the most shamefully ignorant and brutal in memory for any Western society. Blair’s having slavishly followed that troika from hell speaks for itself. The man is an ethical nullity.

Given those facts, your words ring oddly uninformed and, indeed, rather dangerous.