JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY NEIL REYNOLDS IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

“For a president, pride can prove a fatal weakness’

What a colossally ignorant assertion, demonstrably false.

No one runs for that office who does not have an ego as big as an aircraft carrier.

And the greatest presidents have had the most overweening pride.

Franklin Roosevelt had a titanic ego.

So did Theodore.

And Kennedy.

Globe, please get a new columnist who has something to say to educated people.
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“it doesn’t matter who wins. The usa is on the wrong track and neither side will do what is needed to right the ship.”

Yes, It truly does not matter.

Other than to the giant egos of the two contenders and to those benefitting from the disposition of the spoils in appointments.

The United States has learned the neat trick of appearing to be a democracy while in fact being the same kind of plutocracy it was in the 1790s.

The government within the government gets its way no matter which of two very similar candidates wins.

Faux journalists like Reynolds play around the edges with meaningless details having nothing to do with the real engine of power.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY NEIL REYNOLDS IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Never has it been the mission of the NDP to “eradicate capitalism,” whatever that portentous phrase is supposed to mean.

Neil Reynolds here displays his ignorance or prejudice, and perhaps both. Certainly he presents a straw-man argument, feeble as virtually all his mental meanderings are.

The NDP is typical of the kind of social democratic parties that we’ve seen in Europe for many decades: parties committed to easing the huge disparities which just naturally arise under the powerful operations of unregulated capitalism.

Capitalism – in the likely case that Neil Reynolds doesn’t understand the meaning of the word – involves the accumulation and concentration of capital in private hands.

It is from this concentration that we get the great investments which make our society richer in material goods over the long term.

Communist societies long ago proved that you dismantle this mechanism at your peril.

But the mechanism is so ruthlessly efficient in pure economic terms that large numbers of less able competitors are left with little, including what humane people regard as basic services.

All genuine social democratic parties represent is sufficient re-distribution through taxes to pay for social programs to prevent the natural outcome of raw, unregulated capitalism which is unarguably a tendency towards Dickensian England or the two-fisted ugliness of the Mafia.

Franklin Roosevelt’s government in the United States proved, for any who care to study it, that social democratic measures can actually work to preserve the basic dynamic mechanism capitalism in times of immense stress and impending revolution.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY NEIL REYNOLDS IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

I beg to differ on your assertion that “journalism has come a long way.”

There is absolutely no objective evidence supporting that.

Indeed, the very fact that you pat yourself on the back, as it were, with that assertion tells us something not encouraging about your perspective.

In many ways, journalism today is in a terrible state, and I do not just mean the Murdoch machinations.

Newspaper columns and editorial pages are full of people passing off propaganda as journalism.

Important stories are regularly suppressed by mainline papers and networks.

There is no balance in coverage of a number of on-going situations, as for example in the Middle East or Iran.

Almost no true investigative journalism takes place outside the work of a few famous figures like Semour Hersh or Anthony Summers or Robert Fisk.

Most so-called news stories are just re-written press releases.

So-called reporters now go to wars “embedded” with the military, and they basically report, as one would expect, nothing worth reading.

The mergers of news organizations into massive corporations is an inherent threat to genuine journalism.

There is the clear tendency towards “infotainment” or soft stuff that passes for news and cheaply fills column-inches.

Journalism has many aspects of a dark comedy. Younf people march off to now-countless journalism schools, churning out graduates like sausages, all thinking one day they will be new Woodward and Bernsteins.

But they end up, if they even get a job, giving the weather forecast on a small town television station which wouldn’t know a news story if it was handed to them, and which in any event would never broadcast anything controversial or challenging.

Local boosterism is all you find in every small-town paper and station.

And at the “high” end, it is very much starting to look the same.

As far as “hidden” sources go, standard journalism would grind to halt without them.

After all, it is only leaks from unknown government officials, serving their own purposes and not journalism’s, that ever give us any real stories.

There was a retired CIA official who used to speak of his “mighty Wurlitzer organ.” What he meant was the set of newspapers and stations he could play like the keys of a musical instrument to get his story out, giving each a slightly different nuance, and he enjoyed himself greatly being able to bend all those so-called journalists into doing what he desired.

In a word, that’s journalism.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY NEIL REYNOLDS IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Comment from another reader:

“A noble tribute to a great man.”

Washington was considerably less than a great man.

His appointment as commander of the revolt in Massachusetts by the Continental Congress effectively ended the authentic little bit of popular revolution in the whole American Revolution.

When Washington assumed command, he wrote letters describing the patriots as rabble and “scum.”

Washington was an extremely arrogant and aristocratic man, known in Virginia and at the continental Congress for his aloofness and coldness.

He had worked hard for a regular command as a British officer, he was a great admirer of the British Army, and he was crushingly disappointed when he didn’t get it after his service in the Seven Years War.

Having no great inheritance, he set himself to making a fortune – he became one of the richest men in the Colonies. He achieved that in two ways.

One was through land speculation, on a grand scale in the very territories, further west, that the British government was trying conscientiously to keep for the native people. He would claim and survey land and then sell parcels to new immigrants. He had a reputation as a sharp trader who left more than a few with a sour feeling over their business.

Two, and most importantly, he married the richest woman in the Colonies, the widow Martha Custis, who had been left a good fortune. Theirs was not a warm and loving relationship, but kind of a cordial business deal.

As a former colonial temporary officer for the British Army during the Seven Years War, Washington felt entitled to design his own colonial’s uniform to wear in attending the Continental Congress, advertising as it were his potential services as an officer if they should be needed. It was a slightly ridiculous display, but Washington was totally in love with military life and would serve where someone would use him.

When he rode into Massachusetts and took command of the militias no one there actually had given him, he instituted flogging and hanging of troops for disobeying the strict new rules he laid down in the British tradition, and these were men who had volunteered, not to be under Washington but to serve against British occupation.

Washington was a terrible general, losing virtually every battle in which he was engaged, winning only one clear, minor victory and another minor half-victory. The revolt succeeded not because of Washington but because first, the British were mostly half-hearted about the whole thing, and second, something little recognized by Americans, because of the French.

The two decisive victories would not have happened without the French, the first at Saratoga, a huge surprise for the British owing to the immense effort the French had made to arm Washington’s army, and two, owing to the remarkable generalship of Benedict Arnold on the American side.

Arnold, of course, was to be cast as Judas Iscariot in the official myths of the American Civic Religion. He was an immensely more talented general than Washington, and Washington, being jealous, actually worked to hold him back in promotion, which was why Arnold eventually went over to the British.

The context of being called “a traitor” is very important to understand in the American revolt, and few Americans do understand it. It has been observed that about one-third of colonists supported the revolt, about one-third opposed it (Loyalists), and about one-third were totally indifferent to the “revolution.”

A French aristocrat who came over to take a commission – a common practice for well-heeled adventurers from Europe, much as Washington’s own background with the British Army  – remarked that there was more enthusiasm for the American revolt in the cafes of Paris than he observed in America.

So the so-called revolution was never a popular uprising beyond the brief local experience of those in Massachusetts who had volunteered to oppose the occupying British.

And why had the British occupied Boston? Because Americans refused to pay their taxes, taxes raised by the way mainly to pay the immense costs of the Seven Year War (aka, The French and Indian War) from which Americans greatly benefited by getting the French out of the Mississippi and Ohio River Valleys.

Not wanting to pay tax remains a recognizable trait to this day in America.

The other decisive victory was Yorktown, a battle which ended the war, but Yorktown would never have happened without the French. It was the French commander who pushed for taking advantage of the opportunity. Washington foolishly wanted to attack New York, an almost guaranteed losing proposition. It was local French commanders and experts who guided the battle, and it was French ships that blocked a British escape by sea. It was also French weapons used and French loans feeding the American troops.

Upon surrendering his command later, Washington, who always made a big deal about serving those years for no pay, submitted his expenses to the Continental Congress. Washington was a canny businessman, even if a poor general, and his contract was for no pay but all expenses, the kind of deal any defense contractor today would love having.

He submitted a bill for over 400,000 dollars, an immense amount in that day. Washington kept count of every bottle of wine he drank or served his guests, and his table was always bountifully supplied with luxuries even at Valley Forge while the common soldiers suffered terribly, and Washington demanded for every cent of it back.

He got it because the Congress was so relieved with eventual success and because he was a wealthy and influential member of the compact of families then running things.

His poor soldiers never even received all their back pay. Eventually they were given script which many sold at huge discounts to the face value because they could not wait so long for their little bit of money, that canny old Washington being one of the dealers in buying it up and eventually profiting handsomely.

The French never received any genuine gratitude for their efforts, and Washington went so far as to turn his back on poor old Tom Paine, author of influential pamphlets during the revolution, when he was thrown into prison and threatened with being guillotined during the French Revolution. Washington wouldn’t lift a finger to help him.

The French never received their generous loans back, and to this day while knowing a name or two such as Lafayette, most Americans do not understand it was the French who actually won the war.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY NEIL REYNOLDS IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Aesthetics are not unimportant, especially when you propose dotting the landscape with homely objects.

But I disagree with you, almost completely that only aesthetics count here.

The problem is not just aesthetic.

Windmills have serious economic problems.

They do not provide base-load (always available) electricity.

Indeed, they can sit still, generating nothing, for days at a time.

We have seen recently in other jurisdictions that very high winds can destroy windmills and that extreme winter can disable them.

At best windmills can supplement the energy mix, and a rather small supplement at that.

Already in Germany and in Britain, they have had real disappointments with the energy-generating capabilities of windmills.

Windmills also are a hazard to migrating birds, especially when huge farms are built.

And they do generate a kind of “white noise” that drives some people living near them almost crazy. This potential health problem has not been adequately examined.

McGuinty has stupidly over-invested in these inefficient monstrosities because of all the people who think anything involving wind or water is automatically “green.”

It is the same crowd who thinks the narrow and crowded streets of Toronto should all have bicycle paths, something that will only be possible when we limit the traffic going into the city, either through tolls or fees.

Gas plants are economically hazardous in any quantity because our gas supplies are dwindling, and prices will sharply rise.

No one likes nuclear right now, of course.

Clean coal generation is one of our best bets for the near-term, but I know there’s no convincing the “bicycle path” crowd.

Few in the general public also seem to understand how foolish McGuinty’s closing of Ontario’s coal-fired plants is. Ours are among the cleaner plants, and they could be made even cleaner with not a huge investment.

Meanwhile the relatively dirty coal plants in the American Midwest – scores of them – not only continue to send their pollution to Toronto, but as McGuinty closes our plants, when he needs additional electricity – as for peak air-conditioning – he will be buying, at premium prices, from those same American stations, and he will be causing them to generate even greater pollution.

You really want to be green? Stop sending fleets of garbage trucks daily down 401 Highway taking Toronto’s NIMBY trash to Michigan. And put a limit on the cars choking the city. And put a stop to hideous inefficient urban sprawl.

But politicians like McGuinty will do none of things.

No, he will continue playing a game of peanut-and-shells with our energy supply and patting himself on the back before the “bicycle path” crowd.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED COMMENTS TO A COLUMN BY NEIL REYNOLDS IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

From another reader:

“It [the US] talked Israel into letting Hamas contest Palestinian elections.”

‘The results of which, when Hamas won, were ignored by both Israel and the US, leaving Abbas in power more than two years after his term officially ended.’

Yes, and further, Mark Shore, Israel’s secret service is well known to have helped Hamas in its early days.

It wanted an opponent for Fatah, so that we would end up with the very kind of mess we have.

I am sure in doing so, Israel never once regarded Hamas as a potential dangerous enemy, and it most definitely is not dangerous today.

The “terrorist” bit is a fraud which serves Israel’s larger purpose of keeping the Palestinians divided and politically ineffective while Israel slowly continues to absorb more of other people’s property.
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A number of readers have looked at my article of some years ago, “Hiroshima, Mon Amour.”

I encourage others to do so because it convincingly puts the lie to people like Neil Reynolds and their facile, dishonest generalizations.

Since I wrote it, the assessment for the damage to Iraq has only grown. One scientifically-sound study put it at over half a million deaths, and another at about a million.

There have been more than two million refugees (that glorious bastion of democracy, the U. S., having refused to take any of them). Even today, huge numbers are unemployed and the basic services still do not operate dependably. A generation of people has no chance to make a better life in a country which once had great promise.

Quite an achievement, that.

Needless to say the U.S. has always kept quiet, except for the most innocuous remarks. It never reveals the horrors it has created, just as in the First Gulf War, the bodies of tens of thousands of poor Iraqi conscripts who were forced to sit in sand dunes while being carpet-bombed by B-52s were bulldozed into the ground. No numbers were ever given.

You’ll find the essay at:

http://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/hiroshima-mon-amour/

Readers may also enjoy:

“Favorite Contradictions and Absurdities Concerning the War in Iraq”:

http://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/05/27/favorite-contradictions-and-absurdities-concerning-war-in-iraq/

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY NEIL REYNOLDS IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Good God, here is a column delivered directly from Cloudcuckooland.

Indeed, George Bush is a war criminal.

He also was ready to sign off on any repressive measure at home that came along.

His vice-president, another war criminal and on whom he depended heavily, is surely one of blackest characters in modern American history- a man we easily imagine as a henchman for Hitler or Stalin.

Iraq was not about democracy, and truly only a badly uninformed person or a propagandist would say that it was.

I very much suspect Mr Reynolds of being the latter.

Iraq was about dumping Israel’s most implacable enemy, about dumping a former American friend who no longer followed the imperial line and had become quite an inconvenience, and, way down there on the level of the mysteries of human psychology, Iraq was about pathetic George Bush trying to outdo his always more intelligent and successful father.

What Bush did in Iraq was the equivalent of having used a nuclear weapon on civilians.

Please see my piece, Hiroshima, Mon Amour:

http://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/hiroshima-mon-amour/

Neil Reynolds, it actually is rather disgusting that someone living in the freedom and comfort of Canada could write this intellectual filth.
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From another reader:

“Canada…peopled by intellectual midgets…”

My, that certainly is testimony of high intellectual achievement on the writer’s part.

I do believe, when you call names to an entire group of people, it is called prejudice.

It certainly reflects ignorance.

And we may add further, using a pseudonym, adds cowardice to the writer’s list of illustrious qualities.
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From another reader:

“Much is made of Israeli democracy.

“But Israel is only a democracy because its democracy hasn’t been challenged.

“Israelis would not contemplate submitting to an Arab majority, so Israel isn’t really a democracy at all. Its constitution is increasingly interpreted to exclude the possibility.”

Yes, but there’s even more on the issue of democracy.

One likes to believe that a genuine democracy also applies democratic principles abroad.

Yet nothing could be further from that concept than Israel’s practices.

It behaves like a muscle-bound bully towards all its neighbors and is friendly only to tyrants like Mubarak who assist its narrowly-defined interests.

We have countless examples of this anti-democratic behavior, but its ghastly behavior towards Gaza over the last four years is a breathtaking example.

Yes, Israel resembles apartheid South Africa in its “Bantustan” policies. People with sterling credentials on the subject have called Israel’s practices apartheid – Bishop Tutu, Nelson Mandela, and Jimmy Carter.

And while we’re speaking of South Africa, let no one forget Israel’s secret deals with that state concerning atomic weapons. Simply ghastly.

Israel’s apologists are addicted to name-calling when anyone points out these egregious abuses of human rights, decades and decades of them.

But is one to give up all principles, all concern for justice and fair-play for fear of being called names?

I think not. It is precisely in such matters where we can define those who love freedom and those who only mouth empty words.
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The bottom line regarding Israel and democratic values is easily stated, without name-calling and citing only facts.

What kind of democracy kills 1400 people in a giant, fenced-in refugee camp, which is what Gaza is?

What kind of democracy kills between 300 and 400 hundred children as part of that horror?

What kind of democracy carefully calculates the just above-starvation level of calories and then enforces a blockade – illegal to be sure – to keep only that level of sustenance going across the border?

What kind of a democracy attacks an unarmed flotilla of humanitarians on the high seas, killing a number of them and terrifying the rest?

What kind of democracy drops countless cluster bombs in civilian areas of Southern Lebanon?

What kind of a democracy targets UN observers bravely doing their jobs and kills them?

What kind of democracy weekly steals more of the property of others in the West Bank and Jerusalem, using the contrived laws to do so?

What kind of democracy assassinates, assassinates, and assassinates – instead of talking to people?

As I’ve written before, we can only be grateful there are not more such democracies in the Middle East.

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY NEIL REYNOLDS IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Children range from sadly dull in intelligence to brilliant.

They also run from lethargic to bursting with energy.

Our public education – rooted in averages – and with both feet firmly planted in the ooze of political correctness simply does not recognize this reality.

Because we jumble them all together, many, many, and at both extremes, are not served well, indeed perhaps not served at all.

We’ve eliminated trades training, an honorable and valuable education. We do nothing in most places with fitting kids with apprenticeships nor is the practice of co-operative education at all common.

Not to speak of the often poor quality of teaching to our young – many never get a chance to optimize the talents they have.

We have gym teachers teaching math and other bizarre combinations in grade school, the place where foundations are built.

Principals busy themselves with committees and other bureaucratic rubbish, anything to get away and sound important, rather than working desperately to see that their schools function at their best.

The official curricula are often pathetic, not even written in good clear English and stuffed with pompous nonsense instead of focusing on what really matters.

There are no music or art programs nor are there decent libraries in many, many grade schools.

Many schools have few computers and few teachers who know how to use them.

If we could genuinely change our schools, there would be something interesting for every student, and no teacher could play the nasty game of not working hard to help and then promoting them out of his/her hair regardless of skills absorbed.

But we can’t, and it is the teachers’ union which keeps things as backward and frozen in time as they are.

So relax and enjoy the reality of what we have created.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY NEIL REYNOLDS IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

The Lego matter is of virtually no consequence. Indeed, I know from my experience with young kids that Lego used for robots are a good learning, and artistic, material.

Where our government can’t say no, and on matters of severe consequence, is to the teachers’ union.

Going into a recession, Dalton the Magnificent gave the teachers a multi-year contract unlike what you’d find in any other business.

And for that small fortune in increases, he got nothing of meaning for education. Nothing.

And it’s not as though we don’t have needs.

Look at the staffing of the School Board in Toronto if you want to see fortunes squandered.

A Director who was a proven flop in Hamilton, yet pulls in a huge salary and benefits, coming up with trivial ideas instead of real management.

A Board so stuffed with political correctness that it can’t balance its own budgets.

Superintendents who are mostly flannel-mouthed former principals.

Flocks of “consultants” – teachers tired of the classroom and looking for a break – click-clacking around with notebook computers drawing down handsome salaries for sheer appearances.

And a herd of teachers who cannot even manage to teach the kids such basics as reading and the times-tables, yet insist on being called professionals.

We are talking billions here, not a few million.