JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Surely, this is the dumbest column in a long line of dumb columns.

Ibbitson’s blind right-wing hate must have reached an intense pitch to produce it.

Even in old age, Vidal was one of the best raconteurs on the planet.

He was brave in what he said, and said it so wittily.

Just listen to Michael Enright’s CBC Radio interview with Vidal on Sunday Edition (repeated Aug 5).

Vidal’s reputation will live in the brilliant-critic tradition of Orwell, Jonathon Swift, Dr. Johnson, or Voltaire.

His literary talent wasn’t as large as some of those great people, but his speaking to truth and razor wit were the equal of any of them.

Unlike Mr. Ibbitson, who will be forgotten with his last droning column.

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

“It’s what the Chinese and Indians and Japanese and South Koreans and Malaysians and Indonesians and Filipinos and Vietnamese and all the others think of us that matters now.

“That’s where the growth is. That’s where we have to go. Even if the Pacific alternative is a much, much harder row to hoe.”

Yes, Mr. Ibbitson, that statement is very true so far as it goes, but in fact it doesn’t go very far.

I believe you are playing word games, being essentially dishonest while seeming to say true things.

Harper’s only “achievements” in widening our world trade has been to walk in lock-step with America, both in the pathetic little agreements with small states in Latin America and in joining the Pacific Rim effort.

Both of those efforts have more to do with America’s desire to lock-in these smaller states in geo-political terms than any meaningful extension of the world’s free trade.

Nothing of substance has been done by Harper concerning the world’s growing future giants: China, India, Brazil, and Russia.

Again, that failure relates to his servility towards the U.S., an imperial power which is very wary of closer relations with these countries and would not appreciate genuinely Canadian initiatives.

In fact, we have not had in my lifetime a prime who cares quite so much about what Americans think.

Indeed, in his words and actions, I think it completely fair to describe him as an American wannabe.

Yet he is your man, Mr. Ibbitson.

The basis for the rupture in American-Canadian relations, if it may be called that, is simple: Harper has been hit with the stunning truth so many leaders in the world have been hit with in the past: when you cozy up to the big bully to the South, giving him everything he wants and then some, you do not earn any reciprocity or special status.

In fact, you just keep getting asked for more. My favorite recent example is Tony Blair, a man who demeaned the office he occupied with lies and crimes serving American interests, and yet who was not even listened to on issues where he thought he could make a contribution to world affairs.

He became a pathetic figure, having money showered on him in his retirement (the way America tends to reward those who have served it acceptably), but having made no contribution to humanity worth mentioning and having served American interests with war crimes.

Harper has, along many lines, badly compromised the integrity of Canada’s traditional identity and role in the world while chasing the fantasy of becoming America’s favored son, a traditional identity which most American governments did not like but had some grudging respect for.

Now we look to American eyes as a rather pathetic figure, begging for pipelines, begging for inclusion in trade talks, begging for their honoring free-trade treaty terms which they have regularly violated when it suited their needs.

And we’ve compromised ourselves heavily, more or less cutting the attachments in the world that depended upon the perception of Canada as an honest broker, a fair-minded and progressive society reaching out to the world.

And we owe it all to your boy, Stephen Harper.

http://chuckmancartoons.blogspot.ca/search/label/CHUCKMAN%20CARTOON%20-%20HARPER%20-%20CANADA%27S%20HARPER%20-%20THE%20VISION%20THING%20-%20FLAG%20OVER%20ROCKIES

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

If this is true, why is creepy Harper pursuing the nightmare of perimeter security with the U.S.?

The column is little more than reverse-psychology Harper boosterism.
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A reader writes:
“Free trade isn’t so great when one partner is WAY bigger than the other.”

In economics we know that the smaller partner in a free-trade deal gains disproportionately compared to the larger one.

That is why all free-trade deals with the U.S. are complex: the U.S. tries to gain maximum advantage out of that known starting point.

In fact, many U.S. free trade deals are little more than enticements to small countries to sign on to voluntary American involvement and interference.

Such deals mean the U.S. only has to threaten to abrogate the treaty to hold a genuine hammer over the head of a small country.

All of the deals with places in South America and Central America are of precisely that nature.

And what has Harper done in these matters?

Dutifully run down to Central America to sign parallel agreements in keeping with American policy – these deals have all been virtually economically worthless to Canada and represent zero Canadian initiative.

I haven’t seen a sign of what Ibbitson is blubbering about.

In fact, Harper’s is the most cringing and servile government in our history with regard to America and its interests.
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“Free-trade is a myth.”

That statement is certainly true.

True free trade exists only in theory, just as the form of economic organization we call perfect competition exists only in theory.

All free-trade agreements are forms of managed trade, managed according to some negotiated set of rules.

The free trade of classical economics is beneficial to all partners, however the smaller and less sophisticated economy – the one making the greatest economic gains – has to make the largest adjustments.

That means that while the economy as a whole gains, individual regions and industries can suffer badly in the transition. Canada certainly experienced this under North American free trade.

Keenly aware of the vast size of its markets and their attraction to smaller countries, the United States never, never signs a free-trade agreement without squeezing maximum geo-political advantage out of it.

The geo-political price may in fact outweigh the economic gains to the smaller partner in the view of many citizens of the smaller country.

You do not get anything for free, and certainly not in free trade agreements.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED COMMENTS TO A COLUMN BY JOHN IBBITSON IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Well, they have just the man in the prime minister’s office to accommodate their wishes.

For the next four years our dark bulk will give them everything they want.

And, of course, part of what they want is another Tony Blair, loyal puppy trotting around in whichever direction the master steps, licking the blood from his boots.

It’s truly embarrassing being a lone imperial power ready to bomb the crap out of anyone who disagrees with your policies, so it greatly helps the American psyche to have guys like Blair or Harper there, ready on a moment’s notice to join the fight and make it all look larger and more like a genuine cause than it really is.

We’ve just seen that with Libya, and I’m afraid we’ll see a good deal more.

The Canadian people, I’m confident saying, do not support wars of aggression and intervention and coups abroad, but a government in office with 39.6% of of votes is capable under our system of completely subverting their wishes.

We have a deadly serious democratic deficit, and we are about to see under the dark bulk just how much death it can generate.
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“A chastened United States is looking to Canada to help it carry the weight of the world.”

John Ibbitson, with a sentence like that you should not be writing professionally.

Chastened? By the impact of its own immense excesses?

Help carry the weight of the world?

Who in God’s name asked the U.S. to do this?

And what you really mean here is that it wants Canada to squander part of its resources, people, and reputation for the role of international water boy.

But that is nothing new.

Not many years ago we were being constantly harangued by the American ambassador and many others about not spending enough on the military and living off the protection of the United States.

The loudmouth, cryptoNazi Patrick Buchanan was one of many saying this in public.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

I do have a problem with “visions” generally, but, when someone has no legitimate right to be called a liberal, talks of the “liberal vision,” I can only laugh.

I cannot think of one evidence of Ignatieff’s having a genuinely liberal spirit.

Here are just some of the facts:

He does not speak out on any of the great issues of our day.

He didn’t subject himself to a democratic contest to gain his leadership job.

He provided the ammunition – his own foolish words at his first convention – for Harper attack ads against the extremely decent and thoughtful Mr Dion.

He came back to Canada rasping and blubbering on one occasion about how you cannot ever oppose America because they’ll make you pay.

Presumably that absolutely amoral advice applies even when what America engages in is mass murder, as it was in Iraq.

He was published and broadcast in the United States defending the mass murder in Iraq and accepting “mild” torture.

He has distinguished himself in nothing, shown no political courage, since becoming leader.

He well deserves to fall on his face.

I will always hold his ambition and ego responsible if Harper gains a majority and proceeds to tear down the decent Canada we all love.

Intellectuals are supposed to “know themselves,” and it couldn’t be more clear that Ignatieff either has no idea of his own limited political capacities or has such an ego he believes himself capable of tasks for which he has no talent.

Good-bye, Mr Ignatieff, you won’t be missed.

As the saying goes, don’t forget to close the door on your way out.
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Again, so long as Quebec has been out of play for the Liberals and Conservatives – the very basis for the horrible minority freak show we’ve experienced for some years – the only way to defeat Harper is through a coalition.

Mr. Dion and Jack Layton both understood this basic truth, but the Don Quixote of Canadian Liberal politics, the one wearing the colors of the Pentagon on his sleeve, did not.

This silly man actually sneered at Dion’s signing up to a coalition.

Ignatieff is so ineffective a politician, he countered Harper’s appeal to ignorance with his dishonest “stab in the back” stuff about coalitions “stealing elections” only by the most insipid statements.

Well, Harper has been a prime minister with the support of only one-third of Canadians. The two-thirds against him all represent some degree or other of progressive vote.

That’s not democracy.

A coalition of the two-thirds would have been.

And just try telling the dozens of governments in the world who have been or are ruled by coalitions that they stole elections.

Only the truly ignorant repeat this Hitler-like mantra.

Coaltions are everywhere and always a valid part of parliamentary government.

You blew it, Ignatieff, big time.

Unfortunately, we’ll all have to pay for your blundering and meddling.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Speaking of being a “master of delivery,” consider Ignatieff’s ridiculous ad running over and over on CBC Radio, the one about his mother – yes, you heard right, his mother – and health care.

It is absolutely off-putting.

Instead of talking hard and seriously about a major issue, this so-called master of delivery talks about mom.

Who in his right mind is going to pay attention to that?

It’s a pathetic effort to play on emotions associated with motherhood to gain support. Yuck.

And it is clearly also a weak further attempt to cement the idea that he is, after all, a local boy.

Ignatieff has always been overrated as an intellectual, as a speaker, and as a man concerned with human rights.

Many people clearly see all this, and it’s why Ignatieff is falling on his face.

Again, what “master of delivery” plays Pa Kettle on a long cross-country bus trip and thinks he is doing anything worthwhile?

Playing Pa Kettle was already an admission of failure.

People aren’t listening because they know the Ignatieff Show is boring, and his season is about to be cancelled.

He will win only a bitter legacy of being responsible for Stephen Harper’s winning a five year term, free to tear apart the Canada so many of us love.

Ignatieff is the perfect example of hubris – a man of no political talents and not having the character to resist taking what was handed to him by some sorry backroom politicians.
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From another reader:

“Freedom of choice, Harper and, his Evangelical Christian Theo-Cons if successful at a Majority Government dream of a roll back of same-sex marriage laws plus enshrine fetal rights on the citizens of Canada”

Harper represents a far more pervasive threat than that, an act which would be next to impossible.

Harper will eliminate federal subsidies to parties, thus opening the gates to complete special-interest campaign contributions. You want to see what a set of disasters this can open up? Look at the United States where this is the way it’s done.

Supreme Court appointments represent the some kind of long-term danger as campaign-finance changes.

Harper will continue marching in lock-step with the United States on a huge range of issues, from purchasing the clunker F-35 which costs the GNP of a small nation to sending more Canadians on America’s now regular crusades against those with whom it disagrees and to a perimeter treaty and to giving the US a special place in our Arctic.

Of course, we will continue for years to hear intellectual trash about criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism. Maybe we’ll even get a law in that police-state direction.

He will build his new gulag of prisons, no matter what the cost.

The Foreign Service – Pearson’s beloved Foreign Service – will continue to be told that there are no such things as child soldiers.

Our reputation internationally goes from being another Sweden to being another Pinochet’s Chile.

Program cuts to end the deficit. You ain’t seen nothing yet.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

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

John Ibbitson,

You really do have it entirely wrong.

I’m surprised at how much so. Perhaps it’s your American-wannabe inner-self seeking expression?

There is nothing new, and certainly nothing genuinely anti-status quo, about the goofy Tea Party.

Good Lord, Sarah Palin – George Bush with a sex change – was there, and they were applauding that total airhead as she waved her arms around like a Baptist tent preacher.

And surely, you understand that there is nothing new about Palin except the color of her hair.

In fact, the Tea Party is the same tiresome bunch we’ve heard from dozens of times before in the U.S.

It’s a re-run of a re-run of a re-run there: back to political basics and origins.

It’s almost a hobby amongst the U.S. Right Wing, every once in while, we get a bunch of them with a new set of slogans.

This latest group of clowns reminds me of Lamar Alexander working desperately towards the Republican nomination in 2000, by going around in a red lumberjack shirt and offering the profound suggestion of a part-time government.

Likely it was a custom-made lumberjack shirt since good old Lamar is a multi-millionaire. Of course, in one sense, old Lamar was only talking about formalizing the de facto reality: America does have a part-time government if you count the time spent soliciting money.

Were you aware that one of their speakers at the convention also called for the re-establishment of literacy tests for voting? It’s the old code phrase for eliminating black votes.

Anti-status quo? Yes, if you count going backward a century as being anti-status quo.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY JOHN IBBITSON IN THE TORONTO GLOBE AND MAIL

These claims about experience and inexperience are always laughable.

We had Hillary Clinton, supposedly so greatly experienced, shouting at the close of the Pennsylvania campaign about obliterating a nation of 70 million.

What is McCain’s experience? He made his name by getting shot down over Hanoi. What was he doing there? Bombing civilians. Some experience.

McCain came home to the woman who loyally waited for him, his former wife, and divorced her while having an affair with Cindy, his current wife, and a very wealthy woman. His first wife had been horribly disfigured in an automobile accident, and he up and left her for greener pastures.

Then there was McCain’s wonderful experience with the Savings and Loan disaster in the U.S. He had a close association with some of its biggest crooks, and he never suffered a bit for it.

And there’s the remarkable experience he had when his new wife, Cindy, was caught stealing drugs from the charity for which she volunteered. Cindy was a closet drug addict, but was apparently not ready to spend any of her own fortune on the habit. She stole large quantities of drugs from the charity instead.

She never paid any real penalty for this activity whereas you or I would do hard time in a federal prison. There was Sen. McCain using every ounce of his influence to get her off lightly.

So much for experience.

I’ll take intelligence and thoughtfulness any day.

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Some pretty silly stuff here.

Calling Obama a rock star is pathetic. This highly intelligent man – he taught a very demanding law course at the University of Chicago, one of the world’s most distinguished universities – has never behaved with the artificial manners rock stars use to lure their fans.

He is a naturally attractive figure. Holding that against him speaks for itself.

This shallow way of describing Obama is, by the way, the latest tactic of McCain in his campaign, which says a lot about his effective intelligence.

As for people having put or not put their “butts on the line,” well, that’s pretty laughable.

First, to those who’ve read some history, the fact is Kennedy was almost charged by the Navy with incompetence and dereliction of duty using his PT boat.

The same happened over his early notorious affair with a Russian spy. The FBI was after him. Only influence saved him, the kind of influence Bush has had his butt saved with time and time again.

With McCain you get a butt that has spent a lot of time in highly unethical places.

But anyone who votes for someone because of where the candidate happens to have put his or her butt deserves just what he gets.

Ridiculous and childish.

Obama showed a toughness and purpose in the Democratic primary that is still not fully appreciated. He beat a very tough lady with great name-recognition. She under-estimated him and proved a lesser general.

So will McCain. His relatively low effective intelligence will achieve that perfectly.