JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY MICHAEL IGNATIEFF IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Ignatieff yet again proves what a remarkably thoughtless person he is for someone who enjoyed the status of an intellectual concerned with human rights.

But then, even in his old sinecure at Harvard, Ignatieff frequently defended American imperial interests and displayed no concern for America’s increasing violence and authoritarianism in the world.

The horrors in Syria exist for one reason only, and that is America’s effort to determine the future of most of the countries of the Middle East for the benefit of its imperial satrapy in the region, Israel, itself a country which regularly kills, tortures, kidnaps, imprisons, and steals.

Turkey’s behavior in offering the “rebels” refuge and border access and its threats against Syria are all at the behind-the scenes behest of the U.S.

The American Ambassador recently killed in Libya – another American disaster – was involved in smuggling weapons and Islamic fighters into Syria. That’s why no one in Obama’s government can give an honest accounting of the event.

Some of the thugs fighting in Syria are the kind of people the U.S. wouldn’t even admit through its own border, yet it seems perfectly okay for them to go to Syria and murder and destroy.

The hypocrisy and lack of ethics are stunning.

Israel’s murderous thug of a prime minister of course just chuckles at Syria being tied down in such a bloody mess.

The aim here is to destabilize Syria, perhaps dividing it into parts, and removing the Syrian army as a piece on the Middle East chessboard.

The fact is that Assad, like Hussein, provides a secular government in a region torn with religious hostilities. That’s why Islamists hate him. Treatment of women too is better than in many parts of the Middle East.

But none of that counts when the U.S. decides in private that it is time for change in your region of the world.

The country which has killed millions over recent decades now feels entitled to control events anywhere its fancy takes it.

And flacks like Ignatieff – for that is what he is – help form the chorus of support for evil.

He’s trying desperately, I think, to reclaim his sinecure at Harvard.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

There simply is no doubt that this terrible set of events was “engineered” by the United States, and blame for the bloodshed belongs ultimately to Americans.

Much of what the press blithely calls “Arab Spring” started with Dick Cheney and the Neocons and the CIA, with Israel cheering while looking on, laying out an ambitious long-term program to disturb all the balance in the Middle East.

There was a huge budget appropriation created, hundreds of millions of dollars, at the time, and likely more secret funds provided.

Naturally, the aim was to disturb things in Israel’s favor, although, in many details as things have played through, it has not always gone that way.

The Syrian situation is especially flagrant with Israel and the U.S. having supplied arms to discontented groups – what country does not have these to one degree or another? – and Turkey agreeing to provide the same kind of safe refuge for rebels that parts of Pakistan supply to Afghan fighters.

The Russians are right to oppose this kind of massive covert effort to overturn the governments with which they are friendly.

The U.S. and Israel are total hypocrites here, yapping about democracy when they couldn’t care less about democracy so long as the next government is without Assad.

What kind of democracy do you see in Iraq? In Afghanistan? In Bahrain? In Yemen” In Saudi Arabia? Or in Libya, where American forces killed hundreds of people directly?

The United States itself is so full of dissidents, unhappy minorities, and far-out kooks, you could find hundreds of thousands, including Aryan Nation folks, Militia types, Millenialists, Separatists, down-at-the-heel minorities, and general discontents.

And if you were so inclined, you could secretly heavily arm these extremists and minorities and unbalanced types with guns and explosives and intelligence and fill them with propaganda.

I’m sure it wouldn’t be that difficult to get riots and revolts going in many places.

But all you have to do is look back to the black urban revolts of the 1960s and later to see what would happen. That’s when the National Guard shot hundreds in the streets, and no one said a word about democracy.

All such killing by governments is unacceptable, but it is even more unacceptable that far-away governments would cynically set such violence in motion and sit smiling contentedly, occasional interrupting their perverse pleasure with histrionic speeches about democracy and human rights.

Recall, please, the United States cynically killed maybe a million people in Iraq, and it had nothing to do with democracy. It gave the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan in the 1980s several billion dollars’ worth of arms to kill Russians. It killed tens of thousands itself in Afghanistan without a sign of democracy. It cynically caused some of the Kurds to revolt in Kissinger’s day, resulting in their mass slaughter. It kills in Pakistan, Yemen, Bahrain, and other places, and democracy has nothing to do with it. And it carried out a holocaust in Vietnam, with 3 million horribly killed, and democracy had nothing to do with it.