John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CHECKPOINT ASIA

“If Trump could pick the Democratic Party nominee, he’d pick Biden”

I couldn’t agree more.

Biden is a man who is able to generate no excitement or enthusiasm. He’s a place-filler. And a very temporary-looking one, given both his age and feeble behaviors.

He’s also a man with a rather shabby political record. Everything from his lousy treatment of Anita Hill decades ago in the Senate Judiciary Committee to his advocacy with Obama for extrajudicial killing on an industrial scale by the CIA.

I just can’t imagine how they are going to prevent some aspects of his behavior in Ukraine from surfacing. Ukraine itself might have incentive for providing evidence to ingratiate itself with Trump.

At the very least, and something we know without additional evidence, Biden’s behavior as Obama’s proconsul to the new coup-installed government of Ukraine included effectively taking a large bribe, one in the form of the appointment of his son to a company director’s position.

His son, Hunter, was completely unqualified for the position. He had no industry contacts or influence. It was in an industry about which he knew nothing, and it concerned a country whose language he could not even speak. On top of all that, he had a record as a serious drug addict. He received, for years, an unheard-of salary (for directors of companies) of $50 thousand dollars per month.

Biden also has the same annoying tendency as Hillary Clinton of just suddenly blurting out some claim about his past that’s just complete fiction, as his recent claim about being arrested when trying to visit Nelson Mandela in prison decades ago. It resembled Hillary’s proven-false claim about coming under sniper fire in Bosnia.

He has done that kind of thing many times over many years, including a story about being asked to award a Silver Star to a heroic soldier in Afghanistan, an event which never happened. Again, he claimed he always opposed the invasion of Iraq when just the opposite is the case, he is remembered as an enthusiastic supporter, and an early one.

That kind of story-telling isn’t about the forgivable failings old age. It represents an inherent mental or psychological problem, the need to present yourself to others as being at the center of events. It’s almost a version of Munchausen’s syndrome.

Apart from his quirks and shabbiness, his whole political career has been sitting-on-the-fence establishment, never having created anything new or valuable, but always looking for an opportunity to advance himself.

Add his newfound propensity, much commented on in the press, for making what do seem to be age-related errors and forgetfulness, such as the very recent introduction of his wife as his sister, and his nice smile just won’t do it.

The Democrats are desperate, and they’ve put themselves in that position. There can be little doubt the party bigwigs have worked hard to discredit and defeat Bernie Sanders, a man who inspires much enthusiasm among voters, and especially young voters.

And they’re going to make the world desperate with four more years of the most remarkably ignorant and foul-mouthed man ever to be President.

It is possible the Democrats have a secret plan here. A writer has suggested that Michelle Obama, who ranks in polls as the most admired woman in America – yes, she does outpoll Oprah – could be waiting in the wings to save a divided convention.

While she has no qualifications, she is likable and well-spoken and carries a last name that still has luster for some Americans. She might well be able to defeat Trump, who, after all, had no qualifications when he ran. And what a delicious irony that would be, because Trump loathes anything associated with Obama.

The truth is, although we like to fool ourselves into believing otherwise, qualifications and experience no longer matter that much for the office of American President. The Dark State calls the shots on all significant matters of foreign policy and empire, and the various key party leaders do the same on domestic issues.

There is little of consequence a modern American President can truly decide, but his tone and manner and those of his appointments still do mean something for international relations, which have reached their lowest point in history under Trump.

America already has had a few “talking head” Presidents, ones who sit at the Oval Office desk smiling, make speeches with someone else’s words on a teleprompter, and sign pretty much whatever paper is placed before them by one of the “heavies.” At least this one would have a pleasant smile, and many would be happy about a woman finally being elected, and a second black American to boot. It would be widely applauded, and America just doesn’t get any applause anymore.

The object of the whole effort is to get rid of Trump, and if Michelle Obama can do it, the Democratic establishment plots will have achieved something worthwhile. While I’m fond of Bernie, as I’ve said before, his domestic programs would never be enacted by the best Congress money can buy, and there is little anyone can do to alter the affairs of empire. Those matters really are in other hands, as Trump’s many ridiculous flip-flops about Syria amply demonstrated.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JUDITH TIMSON IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

The only part of this piece worth reading is the way Judith Timson starts it with her and the kiddies having a gay old time at a past Pride Parade, describing it the way some suburban housewife might describe the family’s being at Disney World. She only left out Granny.

“The mood was celebratory on that early summer day as we stood shoulder to shoulder with a gay elementary-school vice-principal….”

Note the use of words like “celebratory” and “early summer day” to set a mood.

And don’t you just love the “shoulder to shoulder” bit, as though Ms. Timson were describing a World War II rally for Rosie the Riveter or describing her participation in a March on Selma Alabama in the 1950s?

This is a classic technique of the propagandist: it might be called the benign, fairy dream, and its purpose is merely to serve as a prop to be knocked over by what follows.

The insincerity here almost grips one like an unwanted waft of heavy cheap cologne.

Gay Pride’s history is not like that at all.

Anything resembling Ms. Timson’s fairy story is a very recent, rather sanitized occurrence. I lived in Toronto during the days of police raids and arbitrary arrests. And anyone knows, or should know, that the Pride Parade was early on treated in Toronto as a somewhat shameful, reluctantly-permitted event.

Much like the way Toronto always had, years ago, a grim King Billy Parade instead of a joyous St. Patrick’s Parade.

The point is that gay people have a history of fighting injustice and oppression, and many of them are still at it, and those latter are the ones who insisted on the right to express themselves on Israeli apartheid.

And I’m sorry, Ms. Timson, but the word “apartheid” is absolutely accurate. We have Nelson Mandela, Bishop Tutu and Jimmy Carter as just some of our star witnesses for the state of affairs in Israel, all honourable men with an intimate understanding of injustice and abuse, Jimmy Carter, by the way, having been labelled an anti-Semite in Israel for stating the plain truth.

Once Jews very much shared that quality we see in many gays, ready to defend the downtrodden, but today it does seem a majority of them serve as apologists for abuse and injustice and killing instead, just so long as the abuse and injustice and killing are done by Israel.

This is a shameful column, written to defend the indefensible, but I’m thankful there are a lot of others, brave gay people in Toronto, ready to stand both for free speech and against oppression.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

RESPONSE SENT TO MARGARET WENTE ON A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL WHERE COMMENTS WERE NOT PERMITTED

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.