JOHN CHUCKMAN
POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY MARGARET WENTE IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL
One thing is clear, a computer could certainly replace Ms. Wente, and do so handily.
Computers are really good at things like searching around on the Internet for what others have said and then regurgitating it.
JOHN CHUCKMAN
POSTED RESPONSES TO AN EDITORIAL IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL
Of course, the right-wing hacks who regularly write editorials at the Stackhouse Globe would say that.
A bloody military organization for a peace prize?
A military organization which, with the end of the Cold War, has no legitimate purpose beyond maintaining American hegemony in Europe and serving as a responsibility-diffusing “front” for brutal American policies like those in Afghanistan or Libya or Yemen or Syria?
An organization which in recent years has killed tens of thousands?
The prize for the EU was a bit flaky, but the Globe’s suggestion is genuinely mentally-unbalanced.
But then the Peace Prize has almost no meaning any more in view of its shabby record.
Other winners include Barack Obama, who is now busy slaughtering thousands of people by drones; Henry Kissinger, a genuine war criminal; Andrei Sakharov, father of the Russian hydrogen bomb; Simon Peres, political father of Israel’s nuclear arsenal; Menachim Begin, an old Irgun terrorist with lots of blood on his hands; Al Gore, the biggest phony pitchman since Oral Roberts; Mother Teresa, a religious zealot of questionable ethics; and Aung San Suu Kyi who plays the professional victim for American foreign policy besides being a bit off her nutter.
By the way, the Globe editorially now seems an out-of-date Cold Warrior. I hesitate to say it, but the tone really has become almost un-Canadian. Look South to the land of Captain Ahab chasing after White Whales for its origin.
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I’m nominating John Stackhouse next year for his diplomatic finesse in dealing with the embarrassing Margaret Wente.
He managed to make both plagiarism and hypocrisy quietly acceptable.
No one was hurt in the ugly battle (not counting the Globe’s reputation), and everyone went home keeping a job.
That’s about as much an achievement as some of the actual winners have under their belts.
And ethically it’s in keeping with the tone of this editorial where, as in Orwell’s Oceania, “war is peace.”
We just add “lying is truth” to Globe slogans.
JOHN CHUCKMAN
POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY MARGARET WENTE IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL
Defends herself?
Is that what you call these less-than-honest words?
Words which add up to shabby hypocrisy?
Actually, this piece is interesting for what it reveals – unintentionally, I’m sure – about Wente’s methods.
Her past “journalism” – and, despite being an opinion columnist, she has engaged with what would fall under that rubric – follows exactly the same pattern as this limp, self-serving rubbish.
Again, just look to efforts like her “reportage” on Vancouver’s injection sites or the end of the Iraq War.
As far as her opinion columns, she has always taken the thoughts of others – carefully selected others – and basically written dust-jacket blurbs for their books or articles, without an ounce of original thought.
Finally, John Stackhouse’s leadership on this matter has been about as poor and shabby as this Wente effort.
But Stackhouse is the man who has given us a new low level in Globe editorials, so that is hardly a surprise.
When the nation’s leading paper – and, yes, despite the efforts of John Stackhouse, it remains that for now – appears to condone plagiarism, what can anyone say about all those thousands of mediocre students who regularly depend upon the nasty practice?
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“I’ve noticed that right wing conservatives in the US (as well as in Canada) attempt to vilify their political opponents instead of engaging in meaningful debate. It appears that the same tactic is being used by the left wingers posting here.”
There are few things people hate more than blatant hypocrisy, and here we have hypocrisy over plagiarism.
And all that is over and above her day-in-day out practice of defending what cannot be defended and pretending at intervals to report on things she has not investigated.
The woman has abused her privileged platform once too often.
JOHN CHUCKMAN
POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY MARGARET WENTE IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL
“Liberal arts students have been sold a bill of goods by universities…”
Typical Wente: what is at best one aspect of a situation – a partial truth – is offered as an explanation for it. In this case, what she is writing about is more an effect than a cause.
The truth is that, starting sometime after WWII, North American high school graduates have sought “higher education” in increasingly great numbers.
Every family in the United States loves telling others, “My kid’s in college,” and it is the same in Canada, only parents are more likely to say, “My kid’s in university,” the word “college” never having achieved quite the same meaning.
There are several genuine reasons for this.
After WW II, with developments like veterans’ benefits for education and the crash expansion of many state and provincial universities, new waves of post-high school students were created.
We had a second boom in post-high school education when the post-war baby boom swelled demand for higher education in the 1960s.
In truth, many of the expansions may have been excessive, but an institution once built will want to be filled.
Family and personal pride played, and still play, a great role with many families proud of their first member ever to graduate beyond high school.
There is also a decades-long trend in grade inflation in our elementary schools and high schools. An “A” average today may not in many cases equal the strength of a “C” average of 60 years ago, but it will get you across the threshold of some academic institution.
Entering here too is a new sense of democratization in North American society. What was once an institution for people only of superior intelligence has become something serving the average and sometimes even the below-average. Indeed, we saw an extreme example of the forces at work here in the recent case of a mother insisting she should attend classes with her retarded child to assist.
The opening of new state or provincial institutions or branches of existing ones – always expanding the number of places – now typically responds to many regional political pressures. We also have the phenomenon of former polytechnical schools aspiring to becoming universities.
And we have waves of earlier graduates hoping to land university teaching posts.
College or university has also become a place to spend some time with job markets having no resemblance to those of 60 years ago.
Then, any reasonably bright high school grad could get a job with prospects quickly and quickly find another if the first proved unsatisfactory. Neither is the case today. A good job advertised is as scarce as a gold nugget and will attract hundreds of resumes.
Indeed, today people submit resumes for jobs like janitors or store clerks, unheard of 60 years ago when such jobs were quickly filled by sight..
The resume has something of the effect of a bidding war on a house for sale: the ones with more pluses get the only chance at success.
Institutions and companies and organizations have increasingly demanded academic study beyond high school.
In some cases, this reflects genuinely increased needs for expertise with new technology and systems and concepts, but in many cases it is just an extension of the grade-inflation process and a process of pseudo-professionalization of what are really vocations, not professions.
Companies today know that half the high school graduates are indeed not at all good prospects ( the same half that 60 years ago dropped out and landed a good job in a steel mill or auto plant or a police force) and instead of wasting great resources sorting through them, they allow the higher education system to pre-sort them.
Thus, by inertia, we’ve allowed costly higher institutions to sort out to some extent what we might have done more economically at the high school level.
This process is effectively never-ending, with master’s degrees replacing bachelor’s and doctorates replacing master’s degrees on top of bachelor’s degrees replacing high school graduation.
A perfect example of this is found in elementary school teaching. Once, not too many decades ago, a high school graduate spent eight months getting a certificate and could then teach. Today the prospect must have a general bachelor’s degree and a certificate.
No one, other than those with sinecures in the public education establishment, believes that the average elementary teacher is any better in skills or knowledge, and indeed there is an argument for their being worse since today there is virtually zero evaluation or assessment of teachers in their classrooms.
Now McGuinty talks of two-year certificates: a case of pure grade inflation and pseudo-professionalization.
And we have pseudo-professionalization in many fields from nursing to police. You can get a degree in the United States at least in playground supervision or circus or television.
The idea of a good liberal education making a flexible person ready for a now ever-changing job market remains a true generalization, but like all generalizations, the devil is in the detail. A student of mediocre abilities remains a graduate of mediocre abilities, regardless of any degree. And a second-rate university luring students with easy entry requirements and soft grading is not doing a great deal to equip them for the tough demands of a globalized world.
The universities want to fill seats since education has become commoditized and government support per student is less than it once was in real terms. The fact that so many still want to go, despite their private knowledge of their academic limits, is what is driving the system. Sadly many will earn only debts and not prospects. Again, education provides a good example with Ontario graduating about 12,000 certificate students a year for what is said to be 7,000 places. Those with experience in public education will doubt even that number.
In some sense, we’ve created the worst of all possible worlds of education. It has tended to copy that of the United States now for many years, the American system being the world standard of a system without almost any standards, only elite schools still holding to old ways and not even them in many instances.
JOHN CHUCKMAN
POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY MARGARET WENTE IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL
Quebec is not leaving Confederation.
There is not the tiniest bit of evidence for saying that.
So why do people keep saying it?
Because it’s such an emotionally charged statement it gets people’s attention, quickly.
Ergo, Ignatieff pathetic comments: words from a man who has proven, over and over, he is not all that perceptive, and a man who sure wants attention.
The man spent most of his life writing books – and as any good professional writer will tell you – that is a lonely business. Indeed Graham Greene wrote of the writer having a splinter of ice in his heart.
Further still, writing books is not necessarily the same thing as either having genuine new ideas or of being a perceptive analyst of current affairs.
The Toronto Liberal Party insiders who lured Ignatieff back to Canada with the promise of his leading the Party never understood these facts.
And, clearly, Ignatieff did not understand them either. He does not truly know even himself.
He has proved a remarkably unperceptive and narrow academic with little ability to relate to society.
It is only natural that Margaret Wente would choose to defend his empty observations. That’s the kind of thing she specializes in.
After all, they are pretty well cut from the same cloth, only Wente has no academic standing.
Two streams of humid air blowing against the realities and subtleties of their time.
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“Get off it Cons, Iggy is not really anti-Canadian in any sense. It is only your stupidity (based on Harper’s 15 sec. talking points) that makes it seem so in your own minds only.”
That would be a laughable comment were it not so sad.
You totally confuse the Right Wing with critics of Ignatieff.
Sorry, but there are many, many genuinely liberal-minded people in this world who do not think well of Ignatieff.
Indeed, there is a strong argument for consigning Ignatieff to the softer wing of the neo-conservatives.
His record during his time at Harvard is quite unpleasant, including, of course, writing in support of our generation’s biggest war crime, the invasion of Iraq, which killed about a million people, destroyed a promising society for a generation, and left about 2 million refugees. He also supported “torture-lite.”
Ignatieff has never qualified as a genuine liberal. He is a special interest man, and his aura of being a significant voice in human rights is just that an aura. His record is a poor one if you scrutinize the details.
Ms Wente’s entire background in writing of world affairs reflects the neo-con position, from endless apologies for Israel’s savagery to her almost putrid embrace of the same invasion of Iraq.
Again, here is a near-demented Ms Wente some years ago on all that death and destruction in Iraq:
http://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/05/28/the-iraq-wars-trashiest-piece-of-propaganda/
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“He is entitled to his opinion, but its clear he was never a great choice for Liberal leader.”
But he never was a choice, was he, in the sense of the word choice we assume in a democracy?
He was parachuted into the role by a group of Party bosses.
Just as he was parachuted into his West End riding when he first showed up on stage playing his return-of-the-native act.
Now, what kind of a principled politician, or would-be politician in this case – principled in democratic and human values – accepts such gifts from a group of insiders?
To answer the question is to summarize Ignatieff’s credentials as a principled politician.
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“To be honest, in travelling across Canada, I have found far more of a sense of separation and even hostility in Western Canada. I have rarely heard from a Quebecker the kind of vitriol towards other Canadians as some of the comments/attitudes I’ ve encountered In B.C. & Alberta in recent years.”
Well said.
Your observation confirms my own over some years.
I’ve never heard such genuine low-life comments as I’ve heard in Alberta.
Stephen Harper serves as a kind of bellows blowing on hot coals in this matter.
Wente’s ignorance here is little short of phenomenal, exceeded only by the man of proven poor judgment she’s defending.
Again, here’s what a woman of genuine perceptive intelligence – one of Canada’s best political columnists – has to say:
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1167952–michael-ignatieff-s-bbc-comments-on-shaky-ground?bn=1
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The following two postings are mine from the original column by Michael Ignatieff:
Please, go away, boring man.
You were a complete flop as a political leader.
And in your previous efforts to get some attention in the Globe, you’ve demonstrated less-than-Sterling abilities as an idea man.
Indeed, it was your poor judgment and blind ambition which are responsible for the Harper’s licence to act against much of what Canada has represented in my adult lifetime.
Now, you play the old “look out for Quebec” card.
Tiresome and inaccurate.
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“This is what this guy does best. Babble. Of course in their little world he is known as a deep thinker.”
His reputation as a thinker is immensely overblown, as all thoughtful people came to understand from most of what has come out of his mouth since accepting as an inheritance, as it were, the promise of leadership of the Liberal Party.
I cannot believe how trivial and unperceptive he has proven himself.
But, then, he did support criminal invasion and torture when still doing his blubbering in the United States, didn’t he?
Globe, you do readers no service giving this guy free space for advertising himself.
Indeed, there is almost a touch of black comedy here with a man proven to be so out of touch, and not just concerning Canada, still coming back repeatedly to offer views and advice.
The term “idiot-savant” comes to mind here, but I’m not so sure about the “savant’ half of the phrase.
JOHN CHUCKMAN
POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY LYSIANE GAGNON IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL
“Our new culture of compulsive communication”
I like the expression even though it is highly inaccurate.
Tweeting is not our culture.
It represents the habit of a portion of our population, and I’m not sure that it qualifies even as a “culture” for them.
Likely they represent the same portion that has always had a compulsive problem with communication.
Young folks used to talk for hours on land-line phones, generally about nothing of any import.
The expression “verbal diarrhea” is quite old: I remember it in a university psychology course in the early 1960s.
Sadly, too many of our columnists and radio hosts suffer with a form of the same complaint: they write about trivia and passing fads and elevate them into the substance of “culture.”
Apart from Ms. Gagnon and, of course, Margaret Wente, much of our new Radio One CBC is of just this nature.
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“My younger colleagues used Wikipedia as a source for everything, were unwilling to spend time reading the texts or accessing the libraries, and I spent hours editing our written projects. The ability to write a concise, grammatically correct sentence (let alone a paragraph) seemed to be beyond the other contributors…”
I recognize the problem the writer describes, but it, in fact, has little or nothing to do with technology.
The truth is that technology is, in general, not yet in our schools, at least in any meaningful way.
We are badly behind by world standards.
It is simply amazing how many teachers do not know how to use a computer or know about good data sources on the Internet.
The problem you describe has several actual causes.
First, social promotion now sees people quickly rising to the levels of incompetence in schools.
High school grades have become a poor indicator of ability or performance.
Second, our colleges and universities are taking in students who simply should not even be in those institutions.
The institutions do this for purely monetary purposes, as when Ontario’s schools of education graduate 12,000 each year and only 7,000 get jobs (I even doubt that number).
Teachers at all levels are frequently lazy and indifferent. That’s the main explanation for “group work” despite all the blather about team work.
They only have to mark a third or quarter of the number of projects.
What you find often in assigned groups is one or two who work conscientiously and the others “ride their coat tails.”
So far as the ability to write, no demands are made by many teachers in Ontario.
The so-called literacy test is a pathetic little game, and the game allows teachers to avoid being tougher in classes about writing skills, as they once were.
Many teachers’ ability even to explain to students principles of research – such as confirming a source with another source – are often non-existent, as you see with Wikipedia (a good source but one that requires other source confirmation).
Many of our current teachers are themselves the products of this poor system, and they enter the system only to further degrade it.
It’s a sad situation, and we are wasting huge costs to no advance of education.
Your comment also confuses – as does the columnist’s piece – what really is technology.
Yes, Tweeting involves the use of a technology, but then so does answering the telephone or the doorbell.
JOHN CHUCKMAN
POSTED COMMENTS TO A COLUMN BY TIMOTHY GARTON ASH IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL
Sorry, Breveik fed on a lot of “mainline” writers, people like Mark Steyn.
I do wish we could counteract the flood of Islamophobia and propaganda by apologists for Israel’s brutality, but there are such people writing for every newspaper in the Western world.
It is their thinking – the kind of stuff Margaret Wente periodically expels about the Middle East – that Breveik fed on.
We should not be intimidated by these horrible events into putting all the blame on the Internet – that would be foolish and it would be wrong.
The subtler forms of prejudice and injustice we regularly receive from people like Thomas Friedman or Margaret Wente or Charles Krauthammer or Jeff Jacoby or Mark Steyn is far more dangerous than blogs on the Internet.
Why?
It comes wrapped in the robes of noted newspapers, giving it a sense of weight of authority or importance for the weak-minded or unanalytical, and some of it has far greater circulation than most things on the Internet.
There is no question that a man like Breveik respected symbols of authority – he was totally captivated by things military.
No Joe Blow on a blog would have appealed to him the way a Mark Steyn did.
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A reader quotes:
“All that is required for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing. “
A wonderful quote.
But like all aphorisms, it leaves the details out – a bit like a prescription without all the ingredients.
“Doing something” is not the same thing as “doing the right thing.”
The examples of Norway and the United States are important.
Norway has chosen deliberately to keep its openness, freedoms, and rights. It struck out at no one, not even killing Breveik in capturing him.
The United States – after one terrorist incident, which by the way was actually smaller than Norway’s as a proportion of population – has gone berserk.
It has started two wars, bombed half a dozen countries, killed maybe a million people itself, passed stupid, anti-democratic laws, and turned its borders into those of a fascist state.
I’ll take the Norweigian response any day.
Your response is that of the United States or of that other place which partly inspired Breveik, the garrison state, Israel.
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 A COLUMN BY MARGARET WENTE IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL
“There were lots of parties with Mexican music and free booze.”
I’ll call this Wente journalism.
The woman was not even there, but reports gossip – or is it even gossip? – as though it were established fact.
This is as poor as journalism gets.
JOHN CHUCKMAN
POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY MARGARET WENTE IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL
“He’s more like Ted Kaczynski, who didn’t care what he blew up…”
That is simply appalling, Ms Wente. It is both uninformed and ignores the elephant in the room.
Assange’s organization combed through the material and did not release names in highly sensitive cases.
The biggest chunk of missing material is from communications with Israel.
There are two theories for this.
First, that Assange made a deal with Israeli authorities ahead of time to withhold material.
Second, that WikiLeaks is being used by Mossad to “get out” certain messages.
And we know from history there is tons of material on Israel.
The embarrassment and hurt to the United States is nothing new for the Israelis.
For decades, they have done as they please regardless of what the U.S. thinks.
Just consider the 1967 war, whose ghastly results persist to this day.
And consider Israel’s two hour all-out attack on the USS Liberty, a spy ship, during that war. Israel did everything it could to sink it, killing a large portion of the crew. It made lame excuses afterward for the attacking the well-marked ship which it had been advised would be on station to keep Israel to its secret promises around the war.
The attack was covering General Dayan’s movement northward from the Sinai of armor – something it had previously told the U.S. in private it would not do. The resulting conquest mess we live with to this day. Those conquests were Israel’s entire secret purpose in making that war happen as a big black operation.
There are countless other instances, including Israel’s duplicitous nuclear program, something Kennedy was totally against when he discovered it. Well, the program is still there, but Kennedy isn’t.
How about Israel’s participation in the Suez Crisis with Britain and France, something Eisenhower put an end to?
How about the many insults like that offered the Vice President recently?
The icing on the cake, as it were, was the most damaging spy in American history, Israeli hero, Jonathon Pollard. Some of what he stole was sold to Russia.
Israel never even blushes over Pollard, and to this day, they continue to beg and plead for his release, despite the fact that a quarter of the senior American intelligence agents would tender their resignations were that to happen. There have been dozens of formal and informal requests – immense pressure – to release a man that under other circumstances would have been shot.
And there have been many spying instances, right down to a group of Mossad spies who were right behind the 9/11 guys, a group of phony “house movers” arrested in New York and deported and a group of “art students.” None of it ever explained.
It is well known that the United States is more intensively spied on by Israel than it is by any other ally.
Note: for those not familiar, Ms Wente is one of Canada’s most persistent and blind defenders of Israel’s bloody excesses.
JOHN CHUCKMAN
POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY MARGARET WENTE IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL
“Omar Khadr is a lucky young man. He is lucky to be entitled to Western justice…”
Even for Margaret Wente, this is perhaps a new low.
Lucky young man?
Ideologue parents push him into war at fifteen?
Shot twice, in the back, by Americans?
Taken to Guantanamo against all international conventions?
His first years in isolation without any contact or representation?
Tortured many times?
Part of his torture consisted of making him sit in uncomfortable positions with raw wounds?
Being forced to appear before a kangaroo court, which has no proper jurisdiction?
Being forced into confessing to something he did not do?
More than one-third of his life in that hellhole?
A bright boy deprived of education?
His country’s government too afraid of Washington to insist on his rights?
Ms Wente has a very odd idea of lucky.
I should remind readers of how bizarre Ms Wente’s thoughts about children have been in the past, just so long as they were Islamic children:
http://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/05/28/the-iraq-wars-trashiest-piece-of-propaganda/
Margaret Wente herself is a perfect example of the shortcomings of conventional journalism.
She does stories such as the fairly recent one about free-injection sites in Vancouver with almost no genuine research and only with the clear purpose of propagandizing against an important experiment.
She does utter nonsense propaganda like her long piece on the Iraq invasion, packed with misinformation and lack of genuine investigation – see: http://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/05/28/the-iraq-wars-trashiest-piece-of-propaganda/ .
She shills, again and again, for the return of Conrad Black, a convicted felon.
She defends the indefensible as in Israel’s inexcusable bloody attacks on innocents.
What is the common thread in Ms. Wente’s work when she strays beyond safe and fluffy subjects like the horrors of a backyard barbeque not working?
Defense of the establishment, promotion of a biased right-wing point of view – a defense not done with facts and investigation, which I could respect, but with playful words and personal fantasies.
No wonder people turn to the Internet and unconventional sources. The Ms. Wentes of this world are intellectually and ethically spent.
Wikileaks and the leaker, if ever known, should receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
The truth is that war is the greatest act any government ever undertakes, and yet it remains the act in which the people of every democracy are kept in virtual ignorance.
The press always quietly conspires with the government in suppressing, minimizing, and selecting.
Voters and taxpayers need to understand what is they are voting for and paying for.
The farther we go from this principle, the closer we get to a meaningless democracy with the Pentagon effectively running our affairs.
And that’s pretty much the case today in the United States, Obama’s election having made not a whit of difference to what the brainless Bush was doing.
Ms. Wente appears now to have exhausted her rational mental faculties in the relentless drive to create propaganda supporting Israel’s military and the Pentagon.
The United States, I remind readers, has killed about a million people in Iraq, unknown tens of thousands in Afghanistan, and three million in Vietnam, and those numbers don’t count all the smaller murderous efforts like Somalia, Pakistan, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Panama, and its loving support for Israel’s bloody predations against largely defenseless people.
In the total of all these places, the United States has created millions of refugees and countless cripples.
It has overthrown legitimate governments all over the world, including democratic ones in Chile, Iran, and Guatamala.
But somehow, Ms. Wente assures us, Iran is so terrible?
Iran, which has started no wars in its entire modern history?
Iran, which while a theocracy (just like Israel) is a relatively open place where one may visit and a great deal of information flows (compared to many other societies on earth)?
Iran, compared to the 3 million annual cases of genital mutilation of women in Africa?
Iran, compared to the routine rape of girls by their fathers and other elders in Africa?
Iran, compare to the bride-burning in India?
Iran, compared to the hideous treatment of millions of widows, including young girls who had been married off for profit to old men who die, in India?
Iran, compared to occupied Afghanistan where a majority of women still wear the burka?
The world is filled with cruelties, and Iran is one of lesser parties to them, but Israel wants Iran attacked, so Ms. Wente does her duty churning out more unbalanced rubbish.
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One further thought.
And just whose holy book is it which commands the stoning of unfaithful women?
Israel doesn’t stone women, but the Ultra Orthodox there often attack women they regard as “loose.”
There have been cases in recent years of prostitutes having been burned alive in homes mysteriously set alight.
Well, we sure know you’re not, Ms. Wente.
One cannot help believing you keep your television tuned to Fox television around the clock for inspiration in your work.
Inspiration for the right-wing attitudes you so clearly imported from the American Midwest and continue feverishly to promote.
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Everyone should listen to the interview done last Saturday, June 19, by the redoubtable interviewer, Kathleen Petty, on CBC Radio’s The House.
Quebecor’s VP, Kory Teneycke, praised here by Ms. Wente, appeared on the show for God knows what reason since he answered not a single question, and Ms. Petty, as always, was prepared with meaningful questions and hard facts, the kinds of things so notably missing from many of Ms. Wente’s efforts.
Teneycke exhibited impatience, a tone suggestive of anger, and did not answer one factual question. He referred to entertainment value in blubbering about the new network, nothing about honesty or facts. He was genuinely pathetic.
If Teneycke’s performance on The House suggests the new network’s ability to inform, it’s going to be a sad dumb-show.
But fans of the stupidities of Fox – a network which makes no effort at honesty or balance or often even facts, and which specializes in commentary on the level of Rush Limbaugh – apparently including Ms. Wente, will be happy.
The subjugation of women has been a feature of all major Western religions.
Christianity has a history of everything from iron chastity belts to trading women for payment, dowries.
Orthodox Judaism treats women as totally subservient to men, even today in Canada.
There is nothing unusual about Islam, except in the minds of the prejudiced, in this matter.
In general Muslims come from less-developed countries, so naturally their customs reflect ours of a few hundred years ago.
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By the way, genital mutilation is not a Muslim custom.
It is an African custom, by Africans some of whom happen to be Muslim.
There are about 3 million women each year in Africa mutilated in a village ceremony.
Actually the backwardness there makes Afghanistan look good.
“There has been a shocking lack of moral seriousness in this debate…”
To the extent that may be true, Ms. Wente, I can only say there is a shocking lack of moral seriousness in your column.
Pretty close to vapid, that.
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“It would be a problem if there were killing fields. Where are the killing fields?”
There were killing fields, my blithely ignorant friend.
After Rumsfield stated in Nazi-like fashion that all the Taleban prisoners should be killed or walled away, 3,000 were driven in batches out to the desert and suffocated in vans.
The facts have been documented by Scots documentary film maker, Jamie Doran.
America’s initial carpet bombing, which was used to decimate the Taleban, while the Taleban’s nemesis, the Northern Alliance advanced to take over, killed God knows how many, and the Northern Alliance contained some of the ugliest cut-throats on the planet, but that’s okay, they were our cut-throats.
And there is no counting how many thousands of innocents have been killed by America’s years of careless bombing since. There are scores of instances of everything from whole wedding parties to village elders being slaughtered by mistake. We get no count, of course.
And what about the secret prisons – places like Bagram Air Base or Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean? We have no idea what goes on in those secret, ghastly places.
The entire crusade has been a stupidly wasteful, immoral project. The Taleban never attacked us. They need never been our enemy. They are backward, but so is every other party there.
People like the writer of this comment and Ms. Wente swallow all the propaganda about purpose and women and schools. Most women in Afghanistan today wear the burka, and most schools opened for girls close out of fear, and it ain’t the Taleban alone causing the fear.
It’s a 14th century place. It cannot be changed in anyone’s lifetime, although you can just keep killing, the way Israel has for 60 years in its neighborhood. We do not belong there. We’ve only contributed to the mass of abuse and killing and stupidity in the name of keeping the Pentagon happy.
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“War is horrible, and bad things are done – even by good people.”
This is the oldest, most meaningless cliché known.
What a thoroughly immoral way to excuse psychopathic activities.
I heard an interview with a (former) American soldier who was on that Wiki-leaks video of the helicopter pilots blasting people into pieces of meat. He arrived to see the mess, and says he now despises the expression, “War is hell.”
The American soldier from the video said clearly that the horror people saw on that video is what war actually is, and the cliché just doesn’t cut it.
We protect ourselves from the realities of war simply so we can keep treating it as the moving of colorful little lead soldiers on a map and doing good things for others.
Those in power have a severe responsibility to go to war only when it is absolutely necessary, because, whether necessary or not, the war will be filled with abuse and horror.
The invasion of Afghanistan was not necessary. Our continued presence is not necessary. Our soldiers have been reduced to unacceptable acts to no worthy purpose.
McGuinty’s energy policy is little short of madness.
He decided, quite arbitrarily, to close Ontario’s coal-fired stations. The fact is that Ontario’s coal-fired plants are among the more efficient of those in the central continent, a crucially important fact generally ignored in discussions.
The problem with air pollution from such plants – and I mean the problem in Ontario – is the dozens of inefficient plants in the U.S. Midwest: the prevailing winds bring their heavy pollution here.
When you close a relatively efficient plant and then experience a surge in demand, as for summer air-conditioning, Ontario buys power from the U.S., often from the very plants which are the genuine problem. So you close an efficient plant and buy from an inefficient plant, creating a net effect of increased pollution.
None of the renewable energy sources, and certainly not wind power, is capable of coming even close to replacing what is called base-load power, the power ready to be called upon twenty-four hours a day.
Wind turbines can go for days in some locations producing nothing or close to nothing. They are also a visual blight on the landscape, a serious source of noise pollution, a threat to migrating birds, and the electricity they generate is very costly.
Wind power was embraced in Northern Europe in large part owing to the fact that people already lived in a high-cost energy regime, gasoline going for far greater prices than people in Ontario have ever seen. If all energy is already high-cost, it is less noticeable to add slices of still higher-cost energy to the mix.
But even then, there has been a good deal of disappointment in Europe with the actual performance of wind turbines. They appear, under conditions of mass use, to be even more inefficient and costly than we thought.
Now, Ontario is very concerned about jobs and its manufacturing base. What do you think will be the effect on luring industries to Ontario of high-cost electricity?
Either the industries will go elsewhere, or McGuinty will allow them to be subsidized at the household consumer’s expense. Not only will households pay for their own higher-cost electricity, but they will pay for industry’s higher-cost electricity.
And, as a further thoughtful gift from McGuinty, we’ll pay HST on the whole big increase.
Investmants in further upgrades to the coal stations would have been an infinitely better choice.
McGuinty wants to play the eco-hero, but he has made the wrong call on every aspect of energy policy, threatening the future competitiveness of Ontario.
Maybe us “Eastern bastards” will indeed end up “freezing in the dark.”
If you truly believe what you say, then you should be open to public comment.
It is actually, in this day, rather pathetic to write a piece like yours and hide from comments.
Apart from what the overwhelming majority of humane people feel at seeing and hearing regularly Israel’s ghastly behavior, we have the words of two men of shining credentials in the matter, Bishop Tutu and Nelson Mandela, who have said on more than one occasion that Israel has re-created apartheid.
That excellent man, Jimmy Carter, has said much the same. Of course, he was instantly labeled an anti-Semite, a favorite shabby trick of the apologists for Israel’s ugly behavior.
About three thousand souls – including 400 children and a fine Canadian doing his UN duty – have been murdered in the last couple of years in Lebanon and Gaza by Israel. Gaza is treated like a Middle Ages city under siege, not even being allowed the products to rebuild Israel’s destruction.
People who have had homes and farms for centuries in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have their families destroyed regularly as their property is seized by people born in New York or Toronto or London, and the behavior is simply called “facts on the ground.”
Walls are built on the land of others, water is diverted, people living in their own place are abused endlessly by numberless checkpoints and humiliations.
The reasons many people focus on Israel’s behavior are simple.
One, we cannot avoid hearing and seeing it constantly while we do not see what goes on in rural India or parts of South America. We hear of every election, every cabinet change, and every violent act. This is not the case with a place like Ecuador, a country of roughly the same population.
Two, Israel constantly represents itself as a modern democratic state, but its behavior towards its neighbors is that of a ghastly third-world country. We all expect more of modern states than we do places like Ecuador.
Three, Israel’s behavior seriously threatens peace in the world, having as it does its own illegal nuclear weapons and the thermonuclear support of the United States. There is no other way to look at Israel’s many calls for Iraq to be invaded (answered by Bush), Syria to be attacked and Iran to be attacked.
Checkpoints, walls, computerized machine-gun towers, invasions, sieges, mass arrests, kidnapping, torture, assassination, abuse of power over regulations in building and utilities, and constant threats – there is no rational defense of all that ugliness.
All Israel has to do is accept its borders and respect its neighbors to have genuine peace, but it does neither of these things. Its borders expand like ooze over the land of others, and it treats its every neighbor with contempt.
You simply defend what is indefensible.
This piece demonstrates the kind of subject matter Ms. Wente should stick to.
She has written many ridiculous – indeed downright dumb and even vicious – columns, especially where international affairs or public policy on human rights are concerned.
But here she offers legitimate considerations.
I suggest it is not just “educational romanticism” that is responsible for the mediocrity and poor performance (for many) of our schools.
It is the American wish-fulfillment dream of everyone being the same, virtually interchangeable in many or most things. It derives from Puritan notions which still drive a lot of attitudes in America.
The notion also seems to be an effort at psychological compensation for the very harsh, and growing, inequalities of every kind in America – the courts, the economy, primary education, higher education, and more.
Unfortunately, these American notions have been seeping into Canada, almost imperceptibly at any time, by osmosis as it were.
Also, the public education establishment is subject to more fads and whims than almost any institution we have. One year, homework is great; another year, homework is an unnecessary burden. One year, there is zero tolerance for violence; another year, there is zero tolerance is gone.
Great sums are wasted on “programs” for ugly matters like bullying, when the only genuine solution is the people on site – teachers and administrators – taking responsibility and actively intervening in their communities, the schools.
The math curriculum is needlessly complex, yet students, even in grade five, do not know the fundamental building block of their times tables.
It is all avoidance of responsibility, buck-passing, and butt-covering, always with plenty of politically-correct words, and it is also, to a considerable extent, a comparatively recent import from the Great Land of Victims All, America.
People certainly are not the same, but they all deserve genuine, meaningful consideration from our schools and other institutions, and for many that means things like good training in trades or even good training in social behaviors. We are not doing the job.
CHUCKMAN'S WORDS ON WORDPRESS: COMMENTS FROM THE WORLD'S PRESS 