JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Well said, indeed.

You’ve captured many aspects of the person and the situation perfectly.

The words about Harper being an actor who understands his own limiting persona are brilliantly discerning.

I’m quite concerned about the charming and attractive Justin going for the leadership.

First, his presence in the race may well intimidate other, possibly more talented and suitable candidates.

He does very much appear to lack the fierce intelligence of his father, his personality traits being more like those of his mother, albeit without her excesses.

But even a Pierre Trudeau might well not succeed today, our interests and attitudes having changed a great deal.

There is a huge burden on the shoulders of the next Liberal leader: Harper’s thugs are changing almost everything we have understood Canada as representing, and our international reputation has plummeted as we are seen as a complete servant of American-Israeli interests. Another majority would be hideous.

We desperately need a strong, effective leader of the Liberal Party, someone who can at least prevent a majority, and someone with shrewd political judgment. The NDP certainly has selected the right kind of leader for the times with Mulcair.

Another amateur-hour Ignatieff, a man with no support from people and no expertise and a man with weak personality traits, would be disaster.

The Liberal Party’s insiders are responsible for the entire Harper Era.

First, there was the infighting against a very popular and competent Prime Minister.

Then there was the nasty work inside the Party against Chretien supporters.

Then there was the poor handling of what was in many ways an understandable scandal whose roots were in serious concern with the country’s future, not just graft.

Then there was the failure to select Bob Rae, one of the most polished politicians of our day.

The less able but likable Dion was given no chance and inadequate support.

The pompous and surprisingly thinly talented Ignatieff was stuffed into the leadership with no democratic support, just as the insiders had intended when they recruited him in the United States.

His judgment proved a disaster.

The Party insiders have failed us entirely, and one hopes their role with Trudeau is not similar.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Yes, indeed, it is a disgusting race for money.

But that’s only the “getting elected” part.

The actual job, once in office, is even more disgusting because it has become almost meaningless.

The major policies of the United States are, without question, driven by the military-intelligence-security apparatus in meeting the needs of imperial special interests.

The doltish George Bush was president in name only, formalizing decisions made by the Neo-con group – Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, etc – which worked hand-in-glove with the military-intelligence apparatus and key special interests.

Obama is yet another example, although a much brighter and capable man. He has made not a dint in the ugly creation of Bush’s crew. War, torture, restricted rights, intense special interests, the work of Bush’s ugly crew – all continue uninterrupted.

And why is anyone surprised? The military and intelligence have always been the antithesis of democratic and human rights.

And the larger they get, the more dominant they become, their leaders enter into every aspect of what should be civilian life.

The U.S. military now is busy deciding the future of several states abroad, and we know from the words, here or there, of several high officers and from documents like manuals that have leaked that there are plans for virtual military control of American society should some new crisis strike.

Besides, every day new police-state operations come into being. The TSA now patrols some highways and rides some inter-city buses besides being at airports and a number of other places. They have begun purchasing mobile versions of the back-scatter x-rays used at the airports mounted on vans to patrol streets. And drones are everywhere talked of and tested within the U.S.

The presidency simply means very little in the face of this massive assault on rights and privacy. No president, not wanting to share John Kennedy’s fate, can oppose it in any meaningful way.

And with no new revenues to be raised, only more deficits piled sky-high, there isn’t the slightest room to do anything for most Americans, those outside of the military-intelligence-security and special interest coterie.

And eventually, how will those unbelievable deficits be paid off? By gradual devaluation of the American dollar, leaving all the chumps out there in the world holding the reserve currency in fact holding the bag.

What decision by what candidate could in any way change that certain outlook?

Taxes? You must be kidding?

The refusal to pay taxes is part of what made America at its start.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Well stated, my feelings exactly about Bob Rae.

It is important to emphasize that the Harper Conservatives are, and will remain, a minority party.

It is only this set of circumstances that have let them rule – not the appeal of their leader, not any clever strategies, and not the support of most Canadians.

This tells us we suffer a tremendous democratic deficit under our current system.

One could hope a government that mouths stuff about democracy would bring in reform, but we know that isn’t going to happen.

One can only conclude that either a coalition or the effective death of one of the liberal (small “l”) parties will end Harper’s ugly efforts to abolish Canada in favor of the body politic of Texas.

We remain in as much of mess as when the insiders of the Liberals gave the party’s leadership, as though it were private property, to that arrogant political nincompoop, Ignatieff, insuring that the Liberals could not come back.
_______________________________

“It was Chrétien that disabled the Liberal party. he was just as tyrannical as Harper is and set the stage for the Harper method of operation.”

Chretien was a magical politician.

Only Rae even comes close.

He had a charming public persona, and he was tough in private.

I can’t imagine how else a politician could be so successful.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

“A Congress without compromise serves no one”

Yes, indeed.

But Mr. Simpson is spitting against the wind.

Extreme and divisive attitudes absolutely characterize United States’ politics, the same kind of politics Harper works diligently towards establishing in Canada.

But the principle in Mr. Simpson’s quote is only in part true.

The Congress can serve no genuine purpose for the community at large, but it perfectly serves special interests.

The battle between the individual (or regional) interest and the community (or national) interest is an old one for any legislative body, but once you allow the special-interest payment for government though campaign contributions – which is exactly what the U.S. has and what Harper works towards – then the community interest will virtually always loose.

It is almost an unwritten rule of representative government.
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“The political stalemate in the U.S. should give pause to those who clamour for an elected upper chamber in Canada.”

A good point.

And with Harper working towards special-interest financing of elections, the situation would only be more pathetic.
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“The problem in the USA is and always has been that it is not a multi-party democracy, but a two-party power sharing agreement that gives special interest groups enormous power to sway political decisions by promising to deliver blocks of voters over single issues. It does not matter who is in power.”

Also a good point.

It is a duopoly in politics, and everything true of duopolies in economics is true in politics.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

It’s always the same with these meaningless imperial wars of America’s.

After chewing up people and resources for years, leaders are fearful of the notion that it was all to no purpose.

You cannot, no matter how much you bomb and kill, reshape an ancient society to your liking.

Only long-term economic growth does that, and war represents the very opposite, destruction.

The Afghanistan invasion was a pointless exercise in vengeance and American arm-pumping.

The UN and NATO only have their names slapped on the pathetic effort because the United States pressured and threatened and cajoled its way into getting them involved.

To this day, no greater physical evidence of the truth is to be found than in the pitifully token commitments of troops by all the American allies, a thousand or two here and there in specially limited roles – not what you would ever see were America’s extreme and hysterical words on the nature of the effort believed by anyone.

Canadians and others died for absolutely nothing here, but no leader would ever have the courage to say so.

But worse, tens of thousands of Afghans were killed by invaders who never understood what they were doing.
_____________________________________________

“Steve, when he made that speech in his fishing vest in Kandahar, said ‘We [Canadians] don’t cut and run’. You mean that now, 158 casualties and ten years later, we should cut and run?”

Very revealing when people use loaded terms like “cut and run.”

Who would ever describe it in that fashion were Canadian troops or police killing innocents in our streets and roads, and people’s revulsion caused them to yell “stop!”

But that is exactly what “NATO” – America’s human shields against world opinion – has done for years in Afghanistan.

If people at home with the opportunity to inform themselves don’t understand what has happened in Afghanistan – and many do not – how are a bunch of soldiers dumped into a hot, confusing, almost totally alien place supposed to know anything about what they are doing?

In the end, Canadian soldiers died because in government it was said “we owe one to the Pentagon.”

And a man like Harper, the most dishonest and manipulative prime minister in our history, can only appeal to the most unthinking, from-the gut responses in our people with his “cut and run” to cover up the waste and shame of the whole sordid business.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Exactly.

But that is because they are not accurately called Conservatives.

Harper’s party is a Northern affiliate of the Republican Right, which also is not in any way a genuine conservative party.

It is the party of the imperial establishment, full stop.

Whatever Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex” wants, it gets.

Whatever measures represent traditional, responsible conservatism are irrelevant.
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“conservatives are actually on point — starve the beast.
they won’t admit to it, but that is their true calling.”

Wrong.

That is what they like to pretend they are doing.

In effect, they are spending irresponsible amounts of money on new matters.

How is the F-35, a gulag of new prisons, a pointless war in Afghanistan, and a host of other measures starving anything?
____________________________________________

“They? They great unwashed majority that does not agree with you? They?”

How do you know the majority?

And how do you know it is unwashed?

Are you Canada’s preeminent secret pollster?

Of course you are not.

Expressions like yours are simply a display of the same kind of ignorant arrogance we see from Harper regularly.

Or from the shabby likes of Newt Gingrich.
_____________________________________________

Harper is just a far less garrulous and amusing version of Newt Gingrich, albeit wearing a red-and-white tuque instead of being wrapped in Old Glory.

________________________________________

“How about ADSCAM, where did that money go…?”

Simply pathetic.

Harper’s thugs stand in contempt of Parliament, in violation of all principles of an open society, and now in violation of our election laws.

In sum, Harper has pissed on our democratic values.

The Adscam business involved a genuine effort to preserve the country’s integrity, an effort abused by a small number.

There’s no comparison – none.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Yes, you might well have thought that.

But recall Richard Nixon’s behavior for his second election.

As anyone knew then, he pretty well (sadly) had being re-elected a certainty.

His opponent was one of the most honorable men ever to run for the presidency, but being honorable in America is little more than a sign of weakness to many: it is, after all, a country organized and administered on principles of Social Darwinism.

So despite the near-certainty of a win, Richard Nixon had a gang of thugs doing break-ins, smear-jobs, and was seeking secret contributions by the sack-full. The White House was staffed up with unpleasant men ready to do anything for their leader.

He ended, of course, by ending his own presidency.

The general frame of mind of Richard Nixon at that time is a close parallel to Harper’s today.

There are the clearest elements of paranoia, immense anger, relish for frat-boy dirty tricks, and a tendency towards monomania – all the stuff we saw with Richard Nixon and stuff we’ve seen again with the likes of a Newt Gingrich or Tom Delay.

Harper is a genuinely sick puppy.

Sometimes it happens that people who were known as narrow ideologues do rise to the office to which they are elected or appointed (in the case of judges), but not this kind of unbalanced personality.

I’m afraid so long as Harper holds his office we will continue to see Canadian political traditions of decency and ethical behavior eroded.
_____________________________________________

“Autocracy verging on dictatorship….. Don’t agree? Just wait and watch!”

Indeed.

But the fault is also in a political system where a man of Harper’s unpleasant character, once given a technical majority 39.6% of the vote, can pretty well do anything, if he is so inclined.

We have not suffered from this serious flaw in our political structure before only because we have not been so unfortunate to have a man of Harper’s almost demonic personality in office.

Canada suffers from a democratic deficit as serious as that of many other countries one does not normally associate with the goodwill Canada has enjoyed internationally for decades.

Harper of course also realizes that his opposition is divided hopelessly, and he will take the fullest advantage of that fact.

Tyrannical-oriented personalities always have used the principle of “divide and conquer” in their governing. Hitler ran the Third Reich by creating a whole series of competing fiefdoms whose chiefs endlessly squabbled, having recourse only to Hitler himself, floating as it were above the ugly turmoil.

It is an effective method, at least for a time, if your concern is not with the people of a country but with your personal rule.

I’m certainly not suggesting any relationship between Harper and Hitler – only the parallel of the way a power-driven dark personality operates to hold power.

Well, the Liberal Party handed Harper this situation on a platter. Twice they turned down a very intelligent and effective politician, Bob Rae, on the basis that there were bad memories in Ontario of aspects of his premiership but also on the basis of a genuinely stupid effort by some back-room boys to parachute Michael Ignatieff into the leadership, a man of almost unparalleled political ineptitude.

Now they’ve given Bob Rae the job (temporarily), but it is a hopeless way to give someone a big job: the party is in pathetic shape, Rae looks without genuine support, and he is just that much older.

Jack Layton’s magnificent triumph in Quebec was in large part because the Liberals had Ignatieff hopelessly droning and sputtering. Quebec always admires genuinely eloquent men: just look at the record of leaders in the PQ or the BQ, some of the greatest firebrand speakers of our time.

So Harper’s current position is almost more an accident than a personal achievement, but here is a man whose dark animal cunning will seize every advantage he can from the luck of the draw.

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Yes, indeed, the university has become a commodity, as a reader below observes.

And of course the universities – since they are in effect paid by the pound – want to move as great batches through as they can, and at the lowest possible cost. Economic reality does not end at the doors to whatever hallowed hall.

But there is more to the issue than that.

Part of what we are seeing is the result of dozens of years of grade inflation and “social promotion” in our public schools.

It is also the result of “democratizing” higher education. In effect, we’ve said that almost anyone is entitled to a degree in something or other, and that we reject the long-held idea that university is for the best and brightest.

We even had a woman create a controversy because she could not attend with and assist her mentally-handicapped child in university – that case surely highlights some of what we are doing. As does the fact we are graduating tens of thousands whose costly degrees have virtually zero economic value in the day-to-day world.

Our universities are coming offer degrees in almost anything you can name. This is the American model in which “degrees” are offered in subjects like circus, playground management, television studies, etc. We’re well along the way to aping the practice.

Of course, degrees of that nature are virtually meaningless and of no real value as investments in education.

Our once wonderful polytechs and community colleges are all clamoring to get in on the action too by becoming universities. Then everyone working there becomes a “professor” and every graduate gets a “degree.”

My favorite example of the cynicism of “professional educators” today is found in our schools or faculties of education. Every year they pour out new batches nobody needs or wants. Schools mostly aren’t hiring. And even if they were, many of these graduates still would not be desirable as teachers, undergoing as they do an almost non-academic, even anti-intellectual, year of study.

But the staff at the teachers’ colleges are kept employed. And the students are kept off the streets for one year. And politicians like McGuinty can blubber about being friendly to education.

And the poor students, soon to be seriously disillusioned, pile up mountains of debt.

We really are building ourselves into a second- or third-rate educational system and making our country into a not-very-effective competitor for a fiercely competitive future.

High school graduates in Korea or China know far more than half of our university graduates.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Not an economic model, indeed, but also not a social or political model.
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“The US has a very poor history of government-run enterprises, except the military…”

Except the military?

You have to be kidding. America’s military is the most inefficient enterprise on earth.

Billions just disappear into holes.

Projects go over their development costs and time horizons by vast amounts, everything from the V-22 Osprey to the F-35 just in recent years. Billions and billions and billions over budget.

Most of the time, all the military does is sit around consuming resources and doing nothing real or economically beneficial to the majority of society.

Men being paid pretty fair wages, earning early retirement benefits, consuming government food and clothing, and most of them unskilled guys who could not hold on to a decent ordinary job.

Yes, they do something beneficial for America’s wealthy establishment, and everyone one else, those who pay taxes, pay the bills. They keep the world safe for American policy and economic expansion of corporations.

The Founding Fathers, most of them, knew a standing army was a terrible waste and a threat to civilian values, but they would have no idea of how dangerous it could be.

It is a fundamental principle of our species – for whom, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely – that a great powerful force will be used for some purpose or another by politicians.

Just so Vietnam. America killed an estimated 3 million Vietnamese in horrible fashions and wrecked their land with mines and poisons, ultimately to no purpose whatsoever.

Just so Iraq, with about a million dead owing to America’s pointless invasion and a once-prosperous Arab country set back for a generation.

And just so countless coups and intrusions and small conflicts – almost all pointless from a larger point of view and all having nothing to do with the actual defense of the United States.

Even the post office looks efficient and purposeful compared to America’s Frankenstein military which consumes the GDP of a decent-sized country every year.
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“Canadians have cornered the market on self-righteous sanctimony, moralistic whining, and self-congratulations.”

My God, the American who wrote that either never attends his own local Fourth of July celebrations or is simply blind to what he is used to.

Is there ever a speech in America that does not grate the sensibilities of thoughtful people across the planet?

Just listen to the meaningless rhetoric about democracy or human rights or ethics or blessings from God or freedom from representatives of a government that has crushed democracies time and again, ones that disagree with it, a government which today runs an international torture gulag, and a government in which money determines pretty well everything, from the direction of national policy to the outcome of elections.

You are of course, by those Fourth of July claims, the greatest at everything on the planet.

Perhaps, it is thinking that way that makes you so eager to bomb the crap out of anyone who disagrees with you?

By the way, here is just a small list of comparisons and matters of record where the United States is genuinely number one. I could easily expand it.

Infant mortality is higher in the United States than in Canada.

Average life expectancy is lower in the United States than in Canada.

More people per capita go to prison in the United States than in Canada, but not just Canada, more go to prison than in any other advanced nation, by a long measure.

America has the highest illegitimate birth rate of any advanced country, although its noisy Christians always blubber about that kind of thing and America self-righteously refuses to fund international projects that involve abortions and even birth control.

Americans consume as many illegal drugs as the rest of the world combined.

America spends more on its military each year than the rest of the planet.

America is the world’s largest arms dealer, by far.

America’s murder rate is many times that of Canada.

America’s police forces have an international reputation for brutality, having been cited by organizations like Amnesty International on many occasions.

America has a unique sense of environmentalism, building Jack and Jill bathrooms and three-car garages across the deserts of Arizona, Nevada, and Southern California with never a thought where future water for all those toilets is going to come from and never a care about all the electricity needed for around-the-clock air-conditioning of five-bedroom houses, nor for all the roads and parking lots and cars in an arid region.

No thought for tomorrow could be the new national motto, just as we’ve seen with the irresponsible financial arrangements which threw the world into a crisis.

You cannot even go to a movie from Hollywood without being led to believe America has done everything. It won WWII even though it sustained a loss of about one-third of one percent of the dead in that terrible war where over 50,000,000 died.

There was even a movie some years ago in which America’s broke the German enigma code, not the British who actually did it.

God, what a ridiculous people you’ve become.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Very poor effort, Mr. Simpson.

“One stunning triumph does not a visionary make”

That’s just a cheap form of straw-man argument.

Jack Layton never claimed to be a visionary, and the people who mourned his loss, too, did not for the most part see him as a visionary.

Indeed, the truth is quite the opposite.

Here was a man concerned with down-to-earth realities, with making life better for average people, a man who was an effective politician in trying to get at least some modest accomplishments, a decent and happy man, and a man who kept a civil tongue in his head.

That all may not sound like much, but it is more than any of our recent leading politicians can claim – indeed, it is pretty much the polar opposite to that dark bulk we now call our prime minister.

As for visionaries, well we’ve likely had too many of those, because generally visionaries are rather like religious fanatics. We see them on silly television talk shows, we see them playing the fool in our education system, their books on self-help of every description are puked out from the publishing industry, and we read of them in useless business books.

And who were the truly large visionaries of the last century in politics and world affairs? People like Henry Kissinger, Lyndon Johnson, and Tony Blair – war criminals every one trying to reach the immortality of the Maos and Stalins and Hitlers.

I’ve learned to immediately tune-out as soon as someone is called a visionary or even uses the word. It’s as tiresome as hacks in the arts who talk about everything being “incredible,” and far more dangerous.
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“Even in death, Layton’s a media wh0re.” – redneckgal

You sure picked an appropriate pseudonym.

But why take half measures and not go all the way?

I suggest you tell it as it is.

Lay claim to Big Fat Ignoramus.

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

If you study American history, you will know that this is a nation which never, never anticipates or plans ahead.

It has gone through many crises only after having pounded its head into a wall many times.

That observation has remained true from the creation of the Constitution – after the pathetic Articles of Confederation – to entering World War II.

Another debilitating American characteristic is its obsessions. There are always obsessions, and the Tea Party is only the latest manifestation of this.

Of course, it never hurts to endlessly be told you are number one in just about everything: it becomes pretty hard for those who adopt this naive faith to believe the country is being driven over a cliff. How can that be for Number One?

______________________

A reader in the U.S. writes:

“Everyday life down here isn’t all doom”

Oh yes, indeed, everything is just fine in Dorothy’s Kansas.

Americans are busy demanding homes with three-car garages, five bedrooms, three baths, and central air out in godforsaken desert sprawls like Arizona or California or Nevada where the future water supply is non-existent.

Or building such crappy chipboard villages on valuable farmland in places like the Midwest.

Granite counter tops as far as the eye can see, and Jack-and-Jill sinks from coast to coast.

All of it requiring more roads, more cars, more fuel, more electricity generation, more maintenance with absolutely no thought for the future at all.

And so many of the buyers have saved no money for what they think they deserve.

And meanwhile you keep hundreds of bases abroad and an armed forces of over two million butting into everyone else’s business. And you cannot even run your own affairs.

You are killing civilians daily in Pakistan, in Afghanistan, in Somalia, in Yemen, and supporting Israel doing the same in Palestine.

But how very nice that your weather is beautiful.

The quoted reader demonstrates exactly why the United States is declining, declining in economics, declining in ethics, declining in democratic values.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Parties, like great families or national empires, do have a limited life.

A great family like the Eatons rose to being a household word and then declined to nothingness in several decades. Except for the name on the Eaton Centre, no ordinary young person of the next generation will even know who they were.

It is possible, but I don’t absolutely think so, that Canada’s Liberals have begun just that same descent along the arc of power.

To explain this phenomenon of declining power, it is not necessary to assert notions like being spoiled by success.

After all, the set of problems facing a nation changes over time, so much so that in periods of say fifty years, the old problems are forgotten or unrecognized by a different generation.

There have been countless examples of this in my lifetime, the greatest surely being America’s barbarous war in Vietnam.

Today, I’m sure if you asked most young adults about that ghastly effort, killing three million people in ten years of terror, many would not know where Vietnam is located and many would have no idea of when the war occurred.

That inevitable process of fading mass memory over the generations is part of why parties fade away.

But also, leadership always plays a key role. We’ve all seen in great family dynasties the way the iron-willed founders are succeeded often by less capable sons and grandsons.

Just look at Trudeau, one of our great leaders – whether you like his policies or not, he was a great leader. His son Justin, a handsome and intelligent young man, clearly does not possess the same talents and ruthless drive for success. One can almost feel the difference in temperament and attitude and drive.

And the Liberal Party has made some bad choices in its leadership recently.

Then there is the inevitable role of luck and fortune in the rise and fall of parties and families.

Old man Kennedy in the United States made his serious money through work with the Mob during Prohibition. Take away the historical mistake of American Prohibition and likely the Kennedy family would never have risen to such heights.

The bad luck of the Liberals has been two-fold, at least.

First, Quebec having been taken out of play in national politics. Second, the appearance of an opponent more dark and ruthless in his application and abuse of power, Stephen Harper, than they have ever faced.

Harper is simply a new phenomenon in Canada – a man who is perfectly comfortable with the Republican Right types like a Dick Cheney or a Tom Delay or Newt Gingrich – ugly, bad-tempered, ruthless men all.

The Liberals have never faced such a man before. Moreover they do it not with a Trudeau or a Chretien but an Ignatieff, a man of no political experience and little political talent.
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From another reader:

“Shouldn’t Bob Rae be front and centre reminding us what an NDP Government can do to You !!!”

Bob Rae was a responsible and capable premier.

Those were dangerous days economically, and Rae got us through.

He tried the path of the least hurt to people. If it had been someone of Harper’s ilk, I guarantee thousands would have lost their jobs, permanently.

Just wait, if Harper gets his majority, the budget will be balanced on tens of thousands losing their jobs as whole departments and programs are abolished.

To say anything else is just ignorance.

The people still whining about Rae Days make themselves sound like pathetic big babies.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

“The NDP platform seldom gets a costed look. It’s a pastiche of guesses and conjectures.”

Please, it is exactly the same for all parties, only in the case of Conservatives, we’re not talking about election platform items, we’re talking about actual policy.

We have no idea, and Parliament has no idea, of the cost of current Conservative policies and proposed legislation. None.

The complete lack of costing of government proposals and policies and campaign policies is one of the greatest flaws in our democracy – a hole big enough to drive a fleet of trucks through.

An ignorant vote is no vote at all.
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“Steal the election?”

Enough, please, of such complete ignorance. Reading this kind of line makes one think we live in Orwell’s 1984.

Coalitions are, and always have been, a completely legitimate part of parliamentary government.

Just because Canada has not used the tool to any extent does not make it an inappropriate one.

Dozens of parliamentary democracies have been governed this way, including at this moment Britain and Israel.

The mindless repetition of Harper’s thoughtless slogans about coalition sadly demonstrates the poor knowledge of a large part of our electorate.

An ignorant democracy really is not much of a democracy, but this kind of sad ignorance is at the very foundation of all Harper’s efforts.

Indeed, Mr. Simpson, I think Harper’s use of this slogan is more dangerous than anything else being said by anyone.

If he fails to get his majority, he is setting up people in the West for deep resentment about the East.

It reminds me quite sadly of Hitler’s “stab in the back” line about why Germany lost World War I.

This kind of intellectual and ethical filth works.

But it works only at the peril of civil society and democratic values.
__________________________

Our democracy is in genuine trouble.

Mr. Ignatieff is an appointed leader in the 21st century.

Mr. Harper is a control-freak who feels free to bend every rule and tradition of Parliament to keep his place and promote his agenda.

No one seems to care and no one seems to be able to do anything about a man who stands in contempt of Parliament and a man who has abused democratic values in countless situations in committees and in appointments.

Everyone points to the Bloc in Quebec as being against our values when in fact the Bloc’s existence and our tolerance of it represent the finest part of Canadian civil and ethical values.

Indeed, it is a sad thing to have to say, but Mr. Duceppe, in a number of ways, represents democratic values and statesmanship better than the current leaders of our two major parties.

This whole election is meaningless. Harper plays the tiresome and anti-democratic game of seeking out a limited number of “swing” ridings and in those ridings blasts his horn on narrow wedge issues of little interest to anyone else.

Nowhere, absolutely nowhere, does Mr. Harper offer us a set of cohesive policies around which we can unite as Canadians.

And Ignatieff is not much better, a man of surprisingly mediocre political talents considering his noted background.

And Harper spews the anti-democratic venom of “the stab in the back” if he doesn’t get his way.

Harper represents the most poisonous individual ever to hold high office in Canada and he will leave a legacy of hateful ads, secrecy, no tolerance, poorly-considered comments, pandering to certain groups, and a whole lot more.

Texas-style hateful politics.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

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

Jeffrey Simpson, you just could not be more wrong on this matter.

Yes, there is an unintended consequence, but there are unintended consequences in every conceivable way of financing parties.

Private financing, in palate-loads delivered to loading docks, is the American system that has given them, quite simply, the best government that money can buy.

Did you know that the average American Senator spends literally two-thirds of his or her time trying to raise money?

Mrs Clinton, in her race for the New York Senate, spent $45 million, an amount which brought a gasp even from her easy-virtue hubby.

If you remember, Bill Clinton, when President, was selling nights in the Lincoln bedroom for gigantic campaign contributions.

Those giving large amounts of money always get something back, if only privileged entrance to the Senator or Representative.

We must weigh the unintended consequences of one method versus another for their pernicious qualities.

Public financing is important, and it is very much a measure of our devotion to democracy.

The BQ is a legitimate party, representing the views and interests of a fair number of people in Quebec, and it deserves the same treatment as any legitimate party.

Tilting the finance system is a cheap idea from someone desperate for a quick fix to our current political impasse. It is worse in my view than the suggestions you recently pooh-poohed of the Liberals and NDP merging or the Liberals getting rid of that sea-anchor of a leader, Ignatieff.

Separatism is fading, as anyone may observe, slowly but surely.

Why? Because people in Quebec now see that they are treated as an important part of the country and because young people have careers to get on with and because in-migrants to Quebec do not see separatism as a reason for coming to Canada and because native Quebecois, like all the world’s advanced people, have low birth rates.

Besides all of that, the BQ has acted mostly the part of a responsible party, albeit one with geographically-limited interests. That is more than can be said of Harper’s Conservatives on many issues of importance.

I sometimes find it slightly amusing to call the BQ a separatist party, given the nature of its day-in, day-out activity.

And, last but not least, doing what you recommend would only be viewed in Quebec as a targeted policy against Quebec’s interests, and indeed that view would be completely right.

Foolish column, Jeffrey Simpson, very foolish.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

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

“Desperate measures don’t have to be stupid measures…”

Jeffrey Simpson, as one who regards your analyses often with admiration, I must say you could not be more wrongheaded here. This column suggests a party insider blubbering.

Getting rid of a political liability like Ignatieff is not extreme: it is the most usual, work-a-day politics, much like dumping a poorly performing minister.

Even further, since Ignatieff was never properly elected as leader, being parachuted into both his riding a few years ago and then into the leadership by backroom insiders, he is owed nothing by most voters.

And one might perhaps have developed a different view, had he taken command and proved a Trudeau of Chretien, but, no, he has proved a Stanfield. Actually that is unfair to Stanfield, because, despite his weaknesses as a politician, he was an admirably honorable man.

Ignatieff is uninspiring and even boring, and he is unimaginative, surprisingly so, considering his much-vaunted academic background.

And when it comes to honor, Ignatieff stands before us in a badly tarnished suit of armor indeed. I can never respect a man who has said the things he has said in the past, most especially one pretending to be liberal (in the best sense of that word).

He is a crypto-neo-con. He is anti-democratic. His is no genuine voice for human rights, despite the risible pretensions of his past chair at Harvard. He comes off as a wine-and-cheese fop without having any of the devastating wit of a Disraeli.

I think my views in this have some valid application, because I’m the kind of voter the Liberals are seeking, progressive in all social matters and traditional and sound in finances, as well as one who votes for integrity and character regardless of party.

And for me, those qualifiers mean I can never vote for Ignatieff.

I am deeply distressed over the national political impasse we are at. Ignatieff can never be elected prime minister. Harper can never command a majority.

Yet the narrow extremist Harper is cunning and aggressive, and he is permitted to rule much as though he had a majority, and the man is trashing all our traditions of civility and decency in politics, aping every shabby view and technique of Newt Gingrich twenty years ago.

We need change, but not just empty gasbag change.

Until sentiments in Quebec come into a new balance, the only genuine changes I see possible are leadership change in the Liberal Party and a merger or coalition with the NDP.

Parties appear and disappear over time. They are not a set of Egyptian pyramids to stand forever. In Britain, the Whigs disappeared, the Peelites disappeared, the Liberals disappeared, and today Labour is fading.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

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

You lose when you choose the wrong battles.

America is fighting the people of Afghanistan, at least a very large portion of them.

That is a battle you can never win unless you are prepared to behave like Stalin’s Russia and crush everyone.

Sadly, America is being pulled in that direction. Its drone killings and air attacks have almost certainly killed far more innocent people than suspected “bad guys.”

There never has been a definable “mission” in Afghanistan, other than not-to-be-uttered task of American vengeance.

America went there, against the advice of many wise people at the time, as a response to arm-pumping bullies sitting in bars across the land watching images of the twin towers endlessly repeated over beer. It was the same belly-over-belt battle cry you get for the Superbowl.

The effort gained a modicum of international respectability by Bush-Cheney strong-arming the United Nations into passing a resolution, something which at that time, with America’s great financial and economic strengths and calling in many markers with threats and promises, was not overly difficult to achieve and something it has done a number of times.

But the real test of the international community’s belief in America’s “cause” is the numbers of troops they committed and the nature of their assignments.

The numbers are so small and the assignments are so limited that it becomes a very black joke when America sounds its trumpet about a mission vital to the whole world.

It clearly is not, else millions of troops would have poured into Afghanistan and completely occupied it. NATO fully engaged would be an awesome event, but it was never more engaged than press briefings and contingents of troops the size of a Remembrance Day parade.

Canada went there, having offended the Bush-Cheney sensibilities a few times (thank you, again, Mr. Chretien, for keeping us out of the dirty, murderous hell of Iraq) because it felt the pressure – the same kind of pressure with which the U.S. obtains U.N. resolutions – that it “owed one to the Pentagon.”

The Liberals expected the commitment to be similar to that of other NATO countries – that is, minimal – but our current wannabe-Republican government managed to put them in the worst possible spot. Pure incompetence, as was the turning over of detainees, mostly poor farmers – for torture, something they continue to hide.

Ours is a fool’s mission. Canada’s forces have done their best, but doing your best in a pointless task goes nowhere, and that is where we are, nowhere.

The Taleban need never have been our enemies. They attacked no one. And the guys we allied ourselves with are every bit as backward. Indeed, few seem aware of the fact but it was the Northern Alliance – “our” guys – who first let bin Laden stay in the country.

The Taleban, formed in the face of a murderous chaos after the Russians left to provide what locals regarded as clean government, only refused to extradite bin Laden because the U.S. provided not one scrap of evidence against him, the provision of such evidence being the normal procedure in extraditions everywhere.

The measure of American dissimulation is the absurd occasional recording of bin Laden, a man who was certainly killed in the air bombardment at the beginning, a bombardment so awful the U.S. never wanted to reveal the details, just as it has always hidden the extent of its victims in Iraq.

All the garbage about women and backwardness is just that, garbage: it was Bush-Cheney propaganda to win over soccer moms for war. Yes, Afghanistan is backward, but we have done very little in reality to change that – actually an impossible task for a vast land of 30 million – and the world is screaming with backward places and abuse against women.

In Africa, 3 million women a year suffer genital mutilation, and in many places there young girls are routinely raped by the older men in their village who are in no way held accountable. Where are the calls to invade and sort that horror out? There are none, of course, but we kid ourselves that that is why we are wasting lives and great treasure in Afghanistan.

Again, Afghanistan is a fool’s mission.

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

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

Yes, indeed, the memory will remain.

Ugh, I’m sorry, Jeffrey Simpson, but nothing about the Olympics is a bigger waste of time and money and publicity than the torch run.

Imagine the immense costs and logistical problems of lugging this goofy-looking object around every backwater of Canada?

It all started, as it always does, with the immense silliness of flying a flame in an airliner from Greece. Pure idiocy.

And it ended this time in the hands of a man who has lived for years in the United States.

But he’s a celebrity, a celebrity raised in Canada.

My God, what a magical moment as he stood there in what looked like a fireman’s coat with red mittens trying to roast a marshmallow at a camp fire.

The damned torch looks like nothing so much as a cheap prop in a science fiction movie. It truly is a homely object, something most people wouldn’t pick out of a neighbor’s recycle box.

And the picture going with this column touchingly shows an athlete holding a plastic mini-torch, resembling a Christmas ornament dollar-special at Wal-mart.

My, it is all stuck in memory, even if we have to pay the immense cost of this ridiculous Las Vegas show, and we don’t have the money.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

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

The American Supreme Court has always, except for a brief few decades during the 20th century, been an institution for freezing progress.

This view of corporate spending as free speech is, in many ways, comparable to the Dred Scott Decision before the Civil War.

Runaway slaves were still someone’s property and needed to be returned.

So far as this decision goes, it’s back to the political jungle, although, in truth, American politics never quite left it behind since even the spending reform was not that awesome.

Money in America simply overrides democratic process on average.

When America was founded, a privileged local aristocracy ruled. About 1% of people in Virginia could vote (only white males of a certain wealth). The Senate was appointed (till 1913). The President was elected by the Electoral College, an elite of those with money. The “popular” vote – the 1% – did not even matter, the College elites did (they still do, but at least their votes are apportioned).

Well, some of that has changed, but along the way, American politics also has adapted to maintain a political reality not far from that of 1789 in many ways: the way that is done is with money for marketing and advertising and “exposure.” Tons of it.

In economics, with imperfect competition, we know barriers to entry of a market are vital, and barriers include tons of advertising, paying stores “shelf money” to pack the shelves with your line of products, and slightly differentiating your product from someone else’s – all making it near impossible for upstarts.

American national politics, effectively a duopoly between two parties through many rigged local regulations, exploits all of these practices.

Of course, the money also buys “face time” after elections. In any large American state, it is literally impossible to meet a Senator, much less have some time, unless you are a large money-supplier.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

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

I must say it is a bit delusional to draw conclusions about Harper’s character from the Haiti disaster.

The fact is, and has always been, the United States works hard to keep Haiti at arm’s length from American shores, and there’s no compassion or humane sympathies involved.

Now if Stephen Harper is one thing it the most spineless of leaders towards the United States.

He is, by all reckoning, a card-carrying affiliate of the Right Wing of the Republican Party, a Gingrichite with a darker, less expansive personality.

So when he speaks about long term commitments to Haiti, he’s just doing what the U.S. State Department expects, just as we’re doing what the Pentagon expects in Afghanistan.

In the sense about which Jeffrey Simpson is talking, he actually is not two-faced. He is absolutely consistent.

Harper is very much two-faced in another sense. His is a deeply flawed character, taking no direction from anything other than his desire for power. That means his ethics in all things remain completely flexible, so much so as to be meaningless. His smiles are all deeply phony as are his compassionate words.

We have seen this quality expressed in him countless times now, and his proroguing Parliament to cover up his human-rights failings in Afghanistan is utterly devoid of ethics. The Sponsorship scandal, involving money misused out of patriotic motives, almost looks good compared to Harper’s disgusting ways with human beings.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

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

Govern themselves badly indeed – this is fundamental truth that comparatively few appreciate.

But Jeffrey Simpson may not appreciate how conditioned Americans are to accept poor government.

The widespread hatred of all government and taxation works towards this: as in, do what you like, but do not raise my taxes.

So does the artificial hyper-patriotism constantly drummed everywhere in the society play an important role of immense social pressure.

The drumming has several effects. First, there is a general propensity to see critics of any major policy as unpatriotic.

In the Vietnam era, critics were widely told “to love it or leave it,” a disgusting thing to say to another citizen, but decades later, the same filthy, divisive words are heard concerning the fantasy-induced war on terror.

The Washington establishment – the Pentagon, the CIA plus about thirteen other intelligence agencies, the ancient, almost unchanging Senate, and the major military contractors – almost form a government within a government, Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex, a genuine breathing presence in American society and not just a turn of phrase.

Obama – as humane and intelligent a man as America can produce – already has been captured in its tentacles. It is hard to distinguish what is going on abroad today from what went on under the ghastly Bush.

That is to say, national elections do not change much today in America.

And this complex eats money, leaving not a lot of room for programs like national heath.

And in such a society, the penetrating sense for so many is one of always living on the edge, just getting by, one step removed from financial chaos, and that sense of things works to the benefit of the Washington establishment’ s demand for resources.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

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

Mr. Simpson, you are right on these details.

People who criticize you on this simply do not know what they are talking about because they are part of America’s obsession with great white whales, an obsession closely shared by Israelis and Israel’s apologists.

The most fundamental realities are the following.

The Taleban is not an invading guerilla force. The word “insurgents” nicely hides the fact that they are natives of the land we have invaded.

Moreover, they are a substantial portion of the population, not a small group.

And they attacked no one.

The 9/11 bunch were mainly Saudis, almost certainly on a secret CIA training program in the U.S. that went very sour (they had valid American visas, and they were being followed closely by Mossad).

Osama bin Laden has been dead since the horrific bombing of Tora Bora. The extent of that bombing has been kept secret, but it was earth-shattering by first-hand accounts.

Al Qaeda, as a former British Foreign Secretary admitted a few years ago, does not exist. It is a Pentagon nickname to cover a group of disparate fundamentalist Muslims who hate American policy. The word means toilet.

America has worked to keep alive the idea of both bin Laden and Al Qaeda because they serve as focuses for the lunatic “war on terror.”

You cannot have a war on a technique or a set of attitudes: it’s a pure nonsense, rather like Israel’s mantra about there being no such thing as a Palestinian people.

America went to Afghanistan, dragging others along, for vengeance, which it got in spades. Now, it does not know what to do.

In a sense, it is the victim of its own propaganda. As well, there are now huge entrenched interests in the Afghanistan effort, everything from Blackwater Corporation to the manufacturers of Hellfire missiles. America’s Israel apologists, too, never saw a war against Muslims they didn’t like: put them in their place, so to speak.

A very great assembly of forces for a newcomer like Obama to oppose, and, truth be told, he has already buckled.

But he cannot win his war. Absolutely, he cannot hold down a huge country of 30 million people, a land of mountains and deserts and sweltering heat and hardscrabble poverty; moreover, a place where millions deeply resent America’s arrogance and brutality.

One hopes that Obama intends only to make a show and to reach a compromise with the Taleban from a position of increased strength and then get out with a shred of dignity. It is starting a system of payoffs – successful short-term in Iraq – hundreds of millions for opponents to lay down their arms temporarily.

But I am not optimistic. The Afghans are some of the toughest, hardest people on earth, largely because they live in an extreme part of the world with almost no wealth.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

 
Yes, in a world run by the kind of rules we were taught as children by traditional parents, churches, and schools, that’s what would happen.

But that world, a world in which the good guys always win and where honesty always counts, is just a hopeful dream as most of us sadly learn after being buffeted about by the brutal realities.

These events provide us, those who are paying attention, the perfect definition of what Harper’s government truly represents.

Harper, a man of supposedly conservative principles (which traditionally are thought of as standing for old-fashioned stuff like honesty and responsibility) in fact is an ugly opportunist willing to do almost anything to cover the blundering stupidities of his cabinet.

Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People” was always a favorite play of mine.

Here we see Mr. Colvin as the good Dr. Stockman, and Harper as one of the backroom leaders of the mob ready to run the doctor out of town for telling the truth that the town’s public baths are dangerous to health.

Well, we can’t change the fundamental opportunism and dishonesty of Harper and MacKay, but we can all celebrate the bravery and honesty of Mr. Colvin.

Doing so makes Canada at least a little better place.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

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

I have heard Rick Hillier speak at some length recently on CBC Radio. Naturally, he is out promoting his book.I thought he largely came off as a whiner, rather naïve about the realities of war and politics.Hillier went into Afghanistan literally barking about doing some killing, arrogantly tossing aside Canada’s sense of itself as a peaceful and peacekeeping place.

His words rankled many people, and naturally a control-freak like Harper put limits on Hillier’s mouth.

I tend to agree with Chantal Hebert’s assessment that Hillier’s book, unintentionally on his part, will only contribute to Canada’s not continuing a military commitment in Afghanistan beyond its commitment.

The entire Afghanistan adventure is nothing more than a demonstration of America’s ability to behave much as it pleases in the world. In the aftermath of 9/11, it pulled out all the stops in finance and diplomacy to get UN and NATO recognition of what essentially was vengeance.

The invasion never made any sense, and after America’s superficial “victory,” it had no idea what to do, except to let its brutal special forces loose on villages all over Afghanistan. Its “victory” amounted to a pact with the devils of the Northern Alliance – monsters like the mass-murderer General Dostum being as bad or worse than the Taleban – and it achieved nothing but a great deal of killing and the dispersal of the Taleban.

No NATO country – especially powerful ones like France or Germany – has made a commitment of troops that is in keeping with America’s paranoid assessment of the world dangers of Afghanistan – that fact is telling beyond anything else.

Canadians should never forget that the only reason we sent troops to Afghanistan was a decision in Ottawa that “we owed one to the Pentagon” after having refused to participate in America’s missile shield and its even more disastrous and murderous adventure in Iraq.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

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

Yes, indeed, Jeffrey Simpson, but I think the problem goes deeper than that.

Ignatieff was parachuted into his seat.

Ignatieff was parachuted into the party leadership, and indeed over the heads of better men than himself.

He is an “insiders’ leader,” a backroom boy, not a people’s leader, and I think the public “gets” it.

No man who genuinely respects democratic principles could have accepted those terms of having a political career in this era. It might have been acceptable in the 1950s, but it is not today.

The trouble is Ignatieff’s whole background is replete with such contradictions in ethics and principles.

He was always touted as an academic who represented human values, but the reality was glaringly at odds with that claim.

I cannot imagine one of our great humanitarian writers – say a Graham Greene – ever doing what Ignatieff did in supporting torture and Nazi-like invasion of a country, an act which ended in a million deaths and a couple of million refugees.

I heard Ignatieff interviewed on several occasions years ago, saying things which were totally at odds, at least to my sensitivities, with strong humanitarian values.

He virtually worships American power and influence in the world. He actually warned Canadians against opposing American excesses, and, as we all know, he so identified with that imperial power that he went around there bragging of being an American.

He actually competed in his first bid for leadership by attacking the party’s achievements, providing Harper with film clips to use against Liberals.

Now, of course, other past statements of his own are used against the party.

Ignatieff is a disaster. The faster he steps down, the better.

Sadly for my country, Harper is an equally unfit man to represent Canada.

A political nightmare, surely.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

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

Jeffrey Simpson,

This is one fine piece of writing.

You have stated the situation with remarkable clarity.

Were I to sum the American situation up, I would say it is necessary for that tired old political bromide, the centerpiece of so many bloated speeches by local Congressmen at Fourth of July picnics, the American Dream, to be put into a well-earned retirement.

I think it safe to say, problems so long in their creation, with habits of thinking so deeply ingrained, are not going to be solved in a brief period.

The so-called green shoots we see may be nothing more than fragile plants, force-fed with fertilizer, destined to shrivel.

We may well be in for a long, dark period of adjustment.

Unfortunately, as with its many pointless bloody wars, the U.S., owing to its sheer mass, necessarily drags the whole world into the mess it has created for itself.

Any solution pumping countless billions into the economy and pushing banks and others to make credit available is just more of the same decades-long behavior.

Rather than taking the hit necessary to wring out the economy, a huge platter of more of the same is being served up.

I’m not sure this is the right thing to do, but the right thing is too painful for any politician to make policy.

In a sense, I think this points to an even larger issue, and that is the question over the very ability of a people like Americans to govern themselves sensibly, rather than a constant lurching this way and that, both in domestic and foreign affairs.