John Chuckman

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is what Mr Freedland effectively is defending.

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY MARGARET WENTE IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

This is the second trashiest thing Margaret Wente has ever written, and that is saying something because she occupies herself with a great deal of trash.

Apart from insulting brave humanitarians, the underlying theme here is a quieter re-statement of the idiotic assertion that the very selectivity of people’s interest in Israel-Palestine displays their anti-Semitism.

People should show more concern about North Korea? First, North Korea is an absolute government. Israel claims to be a democracy, and with that word “democracy” goes a lot of associated concepts about human rights and ethical government, else it wouldn’t be a claim worth making, but we plainly see endless abuse and refusal to honor human rights by Israel.

Ms Wente truly ought to register as a lobbyist for Israel.

Readers may be interested in the following.

Ms Wente’s all-time great piece of idiocy critiqued at:

http://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/05/28/the-iraq-wars-trashiest-piece-of-propaganda/

A critique of the moral-trash theme of selectivity buried in her current piece:

http://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/the-peculiar-state/

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“Nor should the people of Gaza be punished for the incompetency of its leaders as Ms Wente so kindly suggests.”

True, except that no one has ever demonstrated Hamas as incompetent.

Quite the opposite appears to be the case, Hamas has held its people together after more than three years of brutal, illegal blockade and that after Israel’s inhuman assault called Operation Cast Lead, in which Israel killed 400 children and a thousand others.

I’d say Hamas has shown the qualities of British leadership during The Blitz.

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“Could someone quote a reliable source giving the total of Israelis killed by Hamas rockets or incursions? In the game of numbers, numbers matter.”

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_NtgXlrcvXZA/SWfEpYDqzwI/AAAAAAAAZm0/v8qp2yKvyVo/s1600-h/ROCKET+qassam37.jpg

The rockets – overgrown homemade fireworks – have never been proven to have killed anyone, although while Israel was wading through the blood of 400 children and a thousand others in Operation Cast Lead, it claimed that about ten Israelis were killed, a claim like so many from Israel never substantiated.

By the way, just one fact is most telling here. The United Nations’ Special Rapporteur for Palestine, Richard Falk, a distinguished American academic and a Jew, only recently published the fact that Israeli forces have killed 1,335 Palestinian children since the year 2000 in their various incursions, suppressions, and brutal policing.

Now, there is a real record of achievement of which to be proud, Ms Wente.

The stuff of democracy to be sure.

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“And it is interesting that in UK, France and Canada you have Conservative governments and then all of them including US Congress and Senate creating special committees to fight anti-Semitism.”

“…anyone even tangentially linked to it can kiss his/her career or life good-bye.”

Apologists for Israel use the term “anti-Semitism” in exactly the way the late Senator Joe McCarthy used “communist” or “pinko.”

The technique is called demonizing and intimidating your opponent, and the intention is to stop people from even considering your opponent’s arguments and observations.

Never mind dealing with the facts and arguments of your opponent, just label him as something filthy.

Israel does this with the word “terrorist” also.

It labels people who oppose its ghastly policies as “terrorists,” conveniently forgetting that Israel itself was founded in the terror of the Irgun and Stern and other murderous gangs and forgetting, too, that there is only one source of regular assassination, illegal arrest, property theft, and constant abuse of 4 million people in the Middle East, and that   source is Israel.

We have all heard of narco-states, but I believe today it is right to describe Israel as a mafia-state, a state where the government itself murders whoever it thinks worth murdering and steals whatever it thinks worth stealing.

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“Meanwhile the country is bounded on all sides by hostile nations, much larger than itself.”

Who chose this troubled location?

Who established their beach head, as it were, with the horrors of the Irgun and Stern gangs?

Who has attacked every neighbor it has, and some two or three times?

Who keeps 4 million people in a state of abuse and a lack of any rights at all?

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“Since ceded to the Israels after WWII, a land of mostly wandering shepherds has been transformed into a modern, vibrant, productive land.”

First, no one ceded that land to Israelis.

What authority did the British Empire have giving away the homes and farms of others?

Transformed into a vibrant, productive land?

First, Israel is the most subsidized entity on earth.

It has received hundreds of billions – yes, billions – in subsidies from the United States and others.

The U.S. government gives about $500 per year per Jewish citizen of Israel, and it has done so for decades.

The U.S. also gives priceless technical assistance and access to intelligence and cooperative projects of every description.

Germany has poured tens of billions in reparations into Israel, rightly so in view of past crimes, but still an immense subsidy.

American Jewish organizations have also poured tens of billions into Israel.

Israeli Americans enjoy the special privilege of dual citizenship, something the United States is averse to for others, and this means they can freely travel back and forth transferring technology and other huge benefits.

Its economy only flourishes because half of its trade is with the United States, enjoying as it does a privileged free-trade agreement that would be the envy of any small country.

Its agriculture only flourishes because it diverts the water of others in this dry region.

Then what does it do with the stolen, precious water?

It grows things like tomatoes and clementines to send all the way to the United States, a place with tons of capacity to grow such things.

The real economic cost of this agricultural nonsense is immense. The replacement cost of water in Israel is reflected in its desalination plants (also subsidized) which produce some of the world’s most costly water.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO AN EDITORIAL IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Accountability in news?

You must be kidding.

Rupert Murdoch’s key to success in all his news operations was to understand what an utterly false and sentimental idea that has become and to offer the globs of raw meat that attracts viewers and readers.

Fox News is the perfect example. It contains almost no genuine news. It frequently plays the role of obvious propaganda outlet. It has no accountability. And it laughs at the ideas of scrupulousness and ethics.

Even though News of the World and Fox are the absolute trash pits of the news world, respectable papers like the Globe and Mail are not so far removed from them as your editors would like to think.

You play games with readers all the time, from the selection of pictures used to the titling of stories.

And the editorials on the editorial page have become a disgrace of hypocrisy and half-baked notions.

Your pretensions in political endorsements are laughable, and you should be ashamed of even still carrying on that hack tradition intended to buy you favor from politicians.

That grand old lady of pomposity, The New York Times, has a long record of dishonesty and favortism. On more than one occasion, it has kept CIA plants working in its newsroom, writing deliberately manipulated stuff, and gone after certain people in its pages based on secret tips from that most disreputable of all police agencies, the FBI. On many matters, e.g. Israeli affairs, it makes no pretense of showing fairness in its stories. It also pompously pretends to endorse things only serving its own interests.

The late I.F. Stone, an extraordinary and genuine journalist, warned people again and again that you must read between the lines and that you must compare what other sources say.

Unfortunately, a good part of the population only has the patience, and perhaps the understanding, to absorb headlines and sound bites. Your industry, and it is an industry not a cause, knows that and continues to play on it.

The truth is that most journalists are either heavily prejudiced or bent or not very competent or lazy. Stories are often rewritten press releases. The idea of being “embedded” with the military is utterly dishonest and contemptible.

The ideal of the journalist dedicated to the truth almost does not exist. A few people in my lifetime – like the late I.F. Stone, Semour Hersh, Anthony Summers, Robert Fisk, and a few others – did or do what journalists are supposed to do.