John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT

 

And I very much hope it’s true.

Assad is a highly intelligent and decent leader for this part of the world.

Independent-minded and rather brave.

A defender of religious minorities in a land with many of them.

Only America’s gaggle of mindless followers keeps reciting the pre-written lines about his being unfit or unacceptable – as if it were any of their business anyway.

Where are these people’s critical words when it comes to genuinely vicious madmen like Erdogan, King Salman, and Netanyahu?

We never hear a peep.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO AN ASSOCIATED PRESS STORY

“Major escalation“?

Talk about bias in reporting!

This is it, big time.

Israel has pounded Gaza for three days, and it has killed 28 people at last count.

It also ruthlessly assassinated a leader of the government, and did so right as he was negotiating a long-term ceasefire with them.

Netanyahu is simply a madman for whom the lives of Palestinians mean nothing.

All of this savagery by Israel is really for two purposes, neither of which is ethical or honorable.

One, Netanyahu faces election, and he uses the blood of the people of Gaza to fire up support.

Two, Netanyahu clearly is getting ready to steal more land from the Palestinians by annexation. This kind of activity acts a screen and preparation.

Israel’s behavior is completely unacceptable to all fair-minded people.

Please understand, those who know no history, Gaza is essentially a giant refugee camp dating to the 1948 days when Israel’s army and terror squads – the Irgun and Stern and Lehi – fanned out through Palestine to murder many people, hoping to frighten them away.

It is densely populated, and its population is about half children. Every Israeli Prime Minister has hoped to put end to its existence one way or another.

No one but a madman or psychopath would bomb such a place.

Remember too, the last time Israel invaded, it killed 400 children plus about 1400 others.

Ever since that atrocity it has kept a blockade to prevent normal life, and it has murdered unarmed people on the high seas to enforce its bully behavior.

At first, it even calculated what starvation calories would be and only allowed enough food to enter to just barely prevent starvation, not even chocolate bars were let in, nor were the building materials needed to repair the damage from Israel’s ruthless bombing.

After quiet diplomacy from outside, there has been a slight let-up in calories.

Just ask yourself what you would do if treated in this way? I know what most gun-owning Americans would feel like doing against repression, savagery, and abuse.

What are the poor people of Gaza to do? Just all leave? If so, for where? Or are they to lie down and just accept virtual slavery from Israel?

Meanwhile, Israel steals the homes and farms of others week after week in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

American politicians, cowards all, say nothing for fear of being smeared and losing valuable campaign contributions from the Israel Lobby.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Fact 1: Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program according to every expert and credible intelligence agency.

Fact 2: Iran belongs to the Non-proliferation treaty and it permits regular inspections.

Fact 3: Iran has demonstrated no aggressive intentions in its modern history.

Fact 4: The President of Iran likes to make tail-twisting statements and likes to poke fun at pretensions, but he has never threatened Israel. He is often misquoted by Israel in that regard, but what he actually said is nothing more than what the CIA itself has said in internal studies of Israel: it does not have a long-term future in its present state, and that fact has nothing to do with war.

By the way, with all the propaganda we have dumped upon us regularly, not many people know that Iran’s President is an extremely intelligent man, possessing a PhD in Civil Engineering. He is not a wild-eyed fanatic, a description which much better fits the current Prime Minister of Israel.

Fact 4: Israel does not belong to the Non-proliferation Treaty, and it allows no inspections of any kind, ever.

Fact 5: There’s a good reason for not belonging to the treaty because Israel in fact has a nuclear arsenal of about 150 warheads. It broke every law there is in achieving this status.

Fact 6: Israel is one of the only countries known to have worked towards the proliferation of nuclear weapons. It worked with and assisted apartheid South Africa in becoming a small nuclear power. The current President of Israel’s signature is on documents from decades ago offering to sell nuclear weapons to South Africa.

Fact 7: Israel has very much demonstrated aggressive intention – indeed, it has done so for the last 60 years, attacking every neighbor that it has, many more than once. It started several major wars and it has committed outright atrocities against the people of Gaza and Lebanon.

Fact 8: Israel is led by screaming madman, a man who daily issues threats against those who have not attacked his country and works tirelessly to get the United States engaged in yet another war. Both the Presidents of France and the United States are on record as saying that he is liar who cannot be trusted.

Grovel, grovel, grovel. Mr. Baird, it’s okay to get up off your knees now. It truly is distasteful to see a Foreign Minister of Canada behaving in this irrational fashion.

Is there any stupid behavior this government is incapable of as it chases campaign donations from special interests?
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“Nothing quite like a story about Iran to bring out the Jew haters.”

This kind of carelessly stupid rhetoric is repeated every time anyone criticizes Israel.

The only merit in this boringly-repetitive and hateful man’s words – and those of several regular chums here in the cause of defending what cannot be defended – is that this charge is becoming hopelessly threadbare.

The words already have become close to meaningless from constant repetition.

But the words are well on their way to becoming laughable, in a black comedic sort of way.

Remember the fairy tale of the boy who constantly yelled “Wolf!” He enjoyed himself with his stupid antics, but when a real wolf appeared, there was no one who would listen and help him.

It is the people with hard ethics and concerns for human rights who always are the only real friends of people undergoing terrible treatment.

The likes of Harper and Baird – right-wing opportunists – were the very people in every country of Europe who never spoke up in the late 1930s. They were busy joining Bunds and Fascist organizations of every description in Britain, Germany, Italy, and the United States.

Not a single liberal of conscience joined such filthy outfits.

And it is liberals of conscience today who criticize Israel’s outlandish and savage behavior.

The leader of North Korea – a state often described as “rogue’ – is comparatively quiet and peaceful compared to the madman running Israel today.

There is no other way to see the facts, unless you are blind ideologue who cares nothing for truth, which of course is exactly what your use of language says of you.