John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA TODAY

 

Of course the Israeli Defense Minister prefers ISIS to Iran. Big surprise.

Israel has been a major secret collaborator in creating and supporting ISIS.

It is a tiresome game that has been going on.

Saudi Arabia and Turkey – both low-key allies of Israel now for some years – are not doing work of which Israel disapproves.

Ever notice how ISIS never attacks Israel or Israeli interests, just makes the odd vague threat to maintain its credibility as a radical outfit? Of course, it is the same for Saudi Arabia and its interests, the Saudis being a paymaster who is never threatened.

Israel has become a kind of genuine nightmare in the Middle East, contributing to instability and destruction and death in every direction.

It is opposed to Iran only because Iran is potentially the Middle East’s big player, the role it covets for itself.

All Israel’s rubbish about Iran’s existential threat is just that, rubbish.

Iran has never threatened Israel, but Israel has busied itself with threatening Iran regularly and even assassinating Iranians.

Indeed, modern Iran has never started a war with anyone, while Israel has attacked every neighbor that it has, some many times.

Israel is able to play this ugly game only from behind American protection, a rather cowardly position like the proverbial calling someone names from behind your mother’s skirts.

By the way, Obama has for the most part catered to Israel’s unending and tiresome demands on many fronts, as has been the case for so many senior American politicians, Israel’s well-financed and coordinated lobby holding their public declarations of loyalty to ransom.

But in the one matter of not allowing war with Iran to be started, he has made himself the most hated American president in Israel’s brief history, while doing one of the only genuinely worthwhile things of his presidency.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY CLIVE CROOK IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES

Wendell Murray is right: there is a huge capacity in America for increasing taxes.

It has been a race to the bottom for years in cutting taxes. From old man Reagan to lunatic Bush, there has been no limit to cutting the sources of nourishment for society’s bones and sinews, the infrastructure of government.

On top of that insanity, there has been the imposition of wars and increased military budgets – to the point, by the way, where the U.S. now spends more than the entire rest of the planet on the means of destruction – with no responsible method of accounting for their payment.

I believe Americans will not accept the kind of taxation required. Their sense of entitlement and the “I want it now, and I want it all,” syndrome are still throbbing away, much resembling teenagers with crushes, despite the economic crisis.

Obama has backed off one issue after another in response to less-than-rational pressure, and I cannot see him being tough in this matter. The truth is Americans do not want a tough president, unless by “tough” you are talking about bombing foeigners somewhere.

He sounded good on the Middle East in the beginning, looking for a genuine peace, and now I’m not sure I can tell him from George Bush, but then the mid-term Congressional elections would be sorely affected by a loss of contributions from the apologists for Israel.

He sounded good about war in the beginning, although his main stress was only the suggestive fact that he did not vote for the atrocity in Iraq, but still he runs two wars, and he has lowered himself into the ethical hell with his horrible drone attacks on Pakistan, killing many civilians and de-stabilizing that society.

He has responded in an almost ridiculous fashion to the whining complaints about the BP blow-out. I say “whining” because it is Americans themselves who insist on consuming as much gasoline as they possibly can, driving lumbering pick-up trucks and buying homes with three-car garages.

The attacks on BP are, so far as I can tell, unwarranted. Was BP indeed doing anything different to the many other operators in the Gulf? If not, then the blow-out is just bad luck, one of those one-in-a-thousand possibilities inherent in any risky business, which is certainly the nature of drilling for oil more than a mile beneath the sea.

And the attacks on Obama are unwarranted. This was not a case of a cabinet-level official totally failing to do his job, and a president just blithely going about things as usual while a city sinks and a thousand people die.

But Obama, again with mid-term elections ahead, has responded as though these attacks were warranted. His heavy-handed treatment of BP has been inappropriate and hostile to a major company from a friendly nation.

No, I don’t expect much from Obama, and that is part of the reason I expect America is headed for a dark chapter, a serious decline, dragging the rest of us with it. This is a people who appear from countless examples in their history to learn only by banging their heads into walls.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY CLIVE CROOK IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES

I think you’ve got it quite wrong here, Clive Crook.

The New Yorker is famous for its humor, and it is a humor not to everyone’s taste.

It is stylish and sophisticated, sometimes bordering on a bit vague, almost ethereal.

But this cartoon does not fit that pattern at all.

It is, if anything, a bit like a political version of what one might expect from Mad Magazine, over the top, poking you right in the eye, and rather teenagerish in tone.

The fact that it does not fit the pattern should tell us something.

The New Yorker cover is definitely making a statement, thinly disguised as humor.

And I believe Obama’s campaign is right to object. The cartoon is very much on the level of 1860’s newspaper cartoons in America portraying Lincoln as an obscene ape. It throws into one document every cheap shot taken at Obama during the primaries, including Romney’s unpleasant trick of repeatedly referring to Obama as Osama.

I know some very intelligent people work for The New Yorker, so awkward things like this do not happen by mistake.

Just imagine a cartoon of Bush in a Nazi uniform.

A cartoon of that nature would actually have far more historical basis – both in regard to Bush’s own actions at home and abroad and to the behavior of his rotten grandfather who traded with the Nazis – but I think it fair to say that there would be a firestorm over it.

The problem with this cartoon is that it superficially represents a satire on Obama’s name-callers, but it really is exploiting the opportunity for other purposes, a version of the old adage about having your cake and eating it too.

I suspect, but of course do not know, that the New Yorker is appealing to the prejudices of a sizeable segment of its large Jewish readership in New York.

It is a pity, but there is definitely a prejudice running through that community concerning Obama and Israel. And, of course, something of which British readers will not be aware, there is an old and traditional enmity between large parts of the black and Jewish communities in the U.S., quite nasty at times.

Those concerned about Obama in this regard would likely rather have candidates who shout about incinerating a nation.

I do believe Hillary’s near insane remark during the primaries about incinerating Iran was aimed at this community and its financial backing when her campaign was running on empty. There really is no other explanation for her bizarre outburst.

This is all dangerous and nasty stuff.

I also find it objectionable to drag the candidate’s wife into scorn the way this cartoon does. As one lamentable commentator, Oliver Kamm, wrote, “…where [Michelle Obama} stands politically [is a] matter of public interest…”

This uninformed statement was justified on the basis of the vicious assaults made on Mrs. Clinton during her husband’s presidency. The brutal stupidity of that speaks for itself.