John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY CRAIG MURRAY IN CONSORTIUM NEWS

 
“The Most Unpopular Government in UK Political History

“The disillusionment will be on the same scale as Boris Johnson’s bombastic promises”

 
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/12/14/the-most-unpopular-government-in-uk-political-history/?unapproved=391014&moderation-hash=f0686a8bd6f9945f044d0711f33dc1ea#comment-391014

This is a good summary of forces set in motion by Britain’s election of Boris Johnson, a summary coming from Craig Murray, a writer worth reading.

It seems almost beyond understanding that a man like Boris Johnson, caught various times recently lying and misrepresenting things – a man even with an instance of a police call concerning domestic violence at his girlfriend’s flat not long before the election – and a man with a long record of schoolboy crassness and name-calling, should be given a mandate.

But you have only to look at the United States to see a comparable example in Donald Trump, a man who should actually embarrass America with his bellowing crassness.

Our Western “democracies” are so feeble.

With 43.6 % of the people’s votes, Johnson is said to have a “landslide” victory. Donald Trump actually received a minority of 46.4 % of the people’s votes.

Such are the outcomes of our custom-tailored democratic institutions.

In Johnson’s case, I believe two major circumstances worked for his “landslide.”

First, Britain was bone-achingly tired of more than three years of previous government leaders’ words and schemes over BREXIT. For all that time, you could not look at a newspaper without seeing articles and reports on the subject.

It was an extremely complex, technical subject demanding more time and effort to grasp than most people could possibly give, the very reason the earlier Conservative leader, David Cameron, should never have held such a referendum.

Tiresome, to say the least. Johnson simply threatened to be done with it all, one way or another.

Second, over much the same period – although four years instead of three – Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party has been under almost constant assault by special interests.

Another very long, wearying effort. Corbyn, essentially a decent man of traditional liberal and progressive values, was called names and challenged regularly by outlandish accusations. Libelous at times. We saw even the direct interference in British politics of several political leaders from another state, Israel.

Corbyn’s sense fairness and balance were not wanted in that part of the world. Intensely so.

He survived the assault but was weakened, and many would say he failed to stand up to accusers as forcefully as he should have. Even supporters do tire of that kind of response.

Both men – Trump and Johnson – have set their attention to major, society-changing efforts, destructive efforts in the view of many observers, yet they do so without even that fundamental democratic concept of clean and fair support from a majority.

Donald Trump literally threatens the stability of the much of the world’s trade and economy with tariffs and a massive sanction regime and telling both friend and opponents how they should be conducting their affairs. And that is all apart from his many military threats and open support for coups and the theft of other countries’ resources.

Boris Johnson displays many similar views and attitudes. He is Donald Trump with an Eton accent and a boyish smile instead of a grimly-set jaw. The traditional “special relationship” between Britain and the United States is about to be given a whole new meaning.

John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CBC NEWS (AND REMOVED BY AN EDITOR)

 

“Dumped by Liberals over anti-Semitism allegations, Hassan Guillet explores options

“Montreal candidate says he was ‘shocked’ by party’s decision”

 

Hassan Guillet, a former Muslim Imam turned politician, seems from his pictures and words a very decent and sympathetic man, one without hate.

Just because a special-interest service organization has characterized something he said or wrote in the past as anti-Semitic definitely does not make it so.

Keep in mind that over the last couple of years, an intense campaign has been waged in Britain by just such service organizations against Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, one of the fairest and most decent men in politics. He is as far from being prejudiced as you can get.

But he has a history of also being fair and balanced towards Palestinian interests, and that undoubtedly earned him a long and ferocious attack using never-proved assertions of anti-Semitism. The attacks at a couple of points even had Israeli politicians, including the Prime Minister, butting into the internal political affairs of Britain with their comments. Corbyn had a determined enemy.

Well, Jeremy Corbyn was able to withstand the assault. He had to fight for months, but he had lots of support and an admirable personal record of standing for principles.

Hassan Guillet was not able to withstand the assault made against him.

Hassan Guillet’s political party leader, Justin Trudeau, appears to have made no effort concerning charges against a man who had been his personal choice as candidate in a particular constituency. He simply dropped Guillet upon hearing from a prominent service organization, surprising even the candidate.

We do know from his behavior as Prime Minister that Justin Trudeau is a rather squishy kind of man when it comes to standing up for anything against the powerful. His support for every major aspect of Donald Trump’s ugly, chaotic foreign policy is a very disheartening case in point.

And we had revelations about Trudeau, who likes advertising himself as a supporter of transparency in government, and his behind-the-scenes efforts for the legal difficulties of a certain large Canadian engineering company, a set of events which saw him drop an honest minister who spoke out about her concerns and treatment during those events. Canada’s Ethics Commissioner has ruled Trudeau clearly violated the Conflict of Interest Act.

So, with that quality of leadership behind him, Hassan Guillet stood little chance. He was out almost immediately, leaving him embarrassed and disappointed. We have no knowledge about the exact nature of the charges against him because CBC chose not to explain them.

That seems unfair both to Hassan Guillet and to readers who really want to understand something like that, when recent history, the case of Jeremy Corbyn, tells us clearly that such charges can be made without real substance in an effort to destroy a politician.

There’s an awful lot of Islamophobia in politics today. America’s current President actually bellows ugly remarks directly from the White House, a place where he is supposed to represent all the people.

Just look at the vicious charges and name-calling in the United States against two new Muslim women politicians, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.

Already there are plans afoot to work against them in the next election. These women have expressed legitimate criticism of Israel’s often shocking behavior. I’ve read nothing we could call hate, but they are accused of it almost daily.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RINF

 

Norman Finkelstein is a thoughtful and decent person, and the revelation that it was his sarcastic notion that was deliberately misinterpreted into vicious charges anti-Semitism contains elements of the Keystone Cops.

Papers like The Guardian and The Independent have run the most provocative and truly mindless pieces of propaganda during this huge McCarthyite hate-fest.

Even the leader of Israel’s Labour Party has joined in for his share of expressions of horror and disbelief that such anti-Semitism can exist, and that from a man who lives in a country where 5 million people are prisoners with zero rights, guilty of no crime.

It is all really about killing off Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, a man Israel dislikes as too independent-minded.

No one seems to recognize how utterly inappropriate it is for another country, or even talk of another country, to be guiding political events in Britain.

This vicious outbreak in Britain actually makes the American system of political payments to cooperative politicians from the Israel Lobby seem rather temperate.

Much more of this kind of absurd circus is literally going to consign the word anti-Semitism to the dust bin of history. Then, just maybe, we can all begin the first honest discussion of Israel’s hideous behavior towards a whole people which is the only way to create pressure for change.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN

Once again, here is an article of which The Guardian, so long as it pretends to genuine journalism, should be ashamed.

Contrary to the completely uninformed words of the article, Putin does not work to keep “the West off-balance.” He is keen to cooperate and work together with Europe and America, as he has demonstrated many, many times. Do you not see the ugly, needless throwback-to-the-Cold War implications of the language used in this article about Putin versus the West?

Putin is cautious – combined with a keen intelligence and decisiveness – this makes him the likely most superb leader in the world today.

Any reader of character can see that Cameron, Hollande, and Obama are missing some of these qualities in various proportions. Cameron virtually comes off as a Music Hall parody of a Prime Minister making overly-pompous pronouncements and demands while Hollande cannot rise above the role of limp-shouldered provincial school master. Obama is an ambitious blunderer who only plays official spokesperson for the Pentagon and CIA. None of that is Putin’s fault.

Putin waited a long time before entering Syria, and when he did so it was under the invitation of what remains the only legitimate government, no matter what Cameron or Obama assert in strained words. That government is a legitimate ally of Russia’s and is entitled to assistance against terrorist forces introduced and armed by third parties. But even now, Putin’s natural caution sees Russia working only with air and missile forces with the Syrian Army doing the fighting under them.

Now that he has made the decision, he gives it the effort it deserves. And while I hate war, much as Jeremy Corbyn does, I cannot help seeing Putin as a courageous and right-thinking figure. He stands a good chance of bringing the horrors of Syria to an end. He works towards peace and stability while America’s public record for years now is almost non-stop war and deceit.

And all the phony mainline press stories and all the dumb statements from the ridiculous man who heads NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, and all the Pentagon threats and name-calling cannot change that. Newspapers running such propaganda only reduce themselves in the minds of thoughtful people to being the modern equivalents of the old Soviet apparatchiks constantly generating bone-headed propaganda no one could possibly believe.

Putin fights only the same terrorists that The Guardian and every other mainline newspaper have screamed about now for several years, giving great publicity to their beheadings and other atrocities, although your effort now to question Putin’s motives does make me question your previous motives. It was so easy to run stories about the gruesome horrors of ISIS while doing nothing about it, wasn’t it? Indeed, you claimed the satisfaction, along with that silly puff-ball of a Prime Minister, David Cameron, of morally pooh-poohing ISIS while remaining secretly satisfied with the dirty work it did to destroy Syria. And all the publicity and pompous speeches just happened to play comfortably into supporting the shameless and continuous stream of Islamophobia with which we’ve been inundated in Europe and America since 9/11.

Nothing could be more hypocritical and completely dishonest.

Yet again, the horrors of Syria have nothing to do with Assad. He started nothing. And such horrors as use of chemical weapons had nothing to do with him. And they certainly have nothing to do with Mr. Putin. The people responsible for the deaths of a quarter million, countless atrocities, and the piteous streams of refugees are Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar working under the auspices and complete approval of the United States and its brutal Middle East colony, Israel.

That group of nations wants Syria reduced to the same kind of divided, helpless mess as Iraq – a bleeding body left on the ground with its limbs hacked off – but they don’t want to take direct responsibility for the criminal assault, as America and Britain did, often to their regret, in Iraq.

You, The Guardian, only effectively work to continue the horror by publishing dishonest stuff, but I’m sure I waste my breath on senior editors who already know much of what I’ve said. Now, for general readers I’ll only say that if this is what appears in a paper of The Guardian’s traditional liberal and non-corporate reputation, you can only imagine what garbage is regularly strewn over the pages of The Times, The Telegraph, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. It is extremely difficult for ordinary people to get even a glimpse of truth through a phalanx like that defending brutal government deceit. And that is just what is intended.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN

No wonder The Guardian keeps running the smarmy words of the world’s greatest a$$hole, Tony Blair, against Corbyn. You really are trying to sink his candidacy.

By the way, it really is unfair for newspapers to make political recommendations.

It’s not part of legitimate journalism, although I grant it has a long tradition.

____________________________

Israel is reported as not happy about the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn.

And it has nothing to do with “anti-Semitism,” although without a doubt that now-tired canard will be used, or suggested subtly, yet again.

It has really to do with Corbyn’s independence of mind. And I would suggest The Guardian shares this view.

Right now, much of Europe marches in lockstep with America, and America’s foreign policy allows for almost no independence of mind, especially when places like the Mideast are involved.

America’s campaign contribution system – a disgrace which has close to eliminated effective democracy in the country – is at the root of the problem.

The American Lobby for Israel – not a figment of anyone’s fetid imagination but a hard reality documented by scholarly work – is the most well-organized and financed in the country, and Congressmen and Senators listen when it speaks.

Not only are substantial contributions at risk in opposing them, but there is always the threat of the major news sources going negative on such opponents in their local constituencies. Owing to unlimited corporate mergers, now only a half dozen mega-corporations control most of what Americans read and see on television. They are all friends of Israel if you judge by their words. The situation is very much like the Rupert Murdoch situation in Britain, only more so.

That is why freshmen Congressmen all dutifully attend the free trips for “information” Israel provides after every election. Declining to go is risky indeed, for you will be marked down as “not being a friend of Israel.”

That is why the American Congress today listens to the raging nonsense of Netanyahu’s violent government against their own elected President over an important international agreement. It is a scandal almost beyond describing for the government of the world’s greatest power to behave in this way.

And that is why Jeremy Corbyn can expect some rough treatment ahead. There is no allowance for independence of mind or, for that matter, ethical standards.

Tony Blair, as most readers know, has zero independence of mind, and he appears to have been born and educated without any ethical compass. He’s proved that scores of times. And being so had its rewards: amongst other prizes that tumbled into his lap after he helped kill a million Iraqis was the Israel Peace Prize, a one million dollar thank you for a job well done.