John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN

Once again, here is an article of which The Guardian, so long as it pretends to genuine journalism, should be ashamed.

Contrary to the completely uninformed words of the article, Putin does not work to keep “the West off-balance.” He is keen to cooperate and work together with Europe and America, as he has demonstrated many, many times. Do you not see the ugly, needless throwback-to-the-Cold War implications of the language used in this article about Putin versus the West?

Putin is cautious – combined with a keen intelligence and decisiveness – this makes him the likely most superb leader in the world today.

Any reader of character can see that Cameron, Hollande, and Obama are missing some of these qualities in various proportions. Cameron virtually comes off as a Music Hall parody of a Prime Minister making overly-pompous pronouncements and demands while Hollande cannot rise above the role of limp-shouldered provincial school master. Obama is an ambitious blunderer who only plays official spokesperson for the Pentagon and CIA. None of that is Putin’s fault.

Putin waited a long time before entering Syria, and when he did so it was under the invitation of what remains the only legitimate government, no matter what Cameron or Obama assert in strained words. That government is a legitimate ally of Russia’s and is entitled to assistance against terrorist forces introduced and armed by third parties. But even now, Putin’s natural caution sees Russia working only with air and missile forces with the Syrian Army doing the fighting under them.

Now that he has made the decision, he gives it the effort it deserves. And while I hate war, much as Jeremy Corbyn does, I cannot help seeing Putin as a courageous and right-thinking figure. He stands a good chance of bringing the horrors of Syria to an end. He works towards peace and stability while America’s public record for years now is almost non-stop war and deceit.

And all the phony mainline press stories and all the dumb statements from the ridiculous man who heads NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, and all the Pentagon threats and name-calling cannot change that. Newspapers running such propaganda only reduce themselves in the minds of thoughtful people to being the modern equivalents of the old Soviet apparatchiks constantly generating bone-headed propaganda no one could possibly believe.

Putin fights only the same terrorists that The Guardian and every other mainline newspaper have screamed about now for several years, giving great publicity to their beheadings and other atrocities, although your effort now to question Putin’s motives does make me question your previous motives. It was so easy to run stories about the gruesome horrors of ISIS while doing nothing about it, wasn’t it? Indeed, you claimed the satisfaction, along with that silly puff-ball of a Prime Minister, David Cameron, of morally pooh-poohing ISIS while remaining secretly satisfied with the dirty work it did to destroy Syria. And all the publicity and pompous speeches just happened to play comfortably into supporting the shameless and continuous stream of Islamophobia with which we’ve been inundated in Europe and America since 9/11.

Nothing could be more hypocritical and completely dishonest.

Yet again, the horrors of Syria have nothing to do with Assad. He started nothing. And such horrors as use of chemical weapons had nothing to do with him. And they certainly have nothing to do with Mr. Putin. The people responsible for the deaths of a quarter million, countless atrocities, and the piteous streams of refugees are Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar working under the auspices and complete approval of the United States and its brutal Middle East colony, Israel.

That group of nations wants Syria reduced to the same kind of divided, helpless mess as Iraq – a bleeding body left on the ground with its limbs hacked off – but they don’t want to take direct responsibility for the criminal assault, as America and Britain did, often to their regret, in Iraq.

You, The Guardian, only effectively work to continue the horror by publishing dishonest stuff, but I’m sure I waste my breath on senior editors who already know much of what I’ve said. Now, for general readers I’ll only say that if this is what appears in a paper of The Guardian’s traditional liberal and non-corporate reputation, you can only imagine what garbage is regularly strewn over the pages of The Times, The Telegraph, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. It is extremely difficult for ordinary people to get even a glimpse of truth through a phalanx like that defending brutal government deceit. And that is just what is intended.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

More intellectual crap from Aural Braun.

Mr Braun is a full-time lobbyist for the interests of the Israeli-U.S. effort to re-shape the planet.

Mr Putin, as one of the true independent-minded statesmen of our time, is of course at odds many times to a dangerous vision of world affairs.
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“Please, Obama is a joke. He is a complete amateur, never worthy or prepared to be president.”

I wish it were true that Obama’s behavior could be explained by “amateur” status.

But it cannot be.

He came to office with dreams and enthusiasms and some sound thinking, but in the face of the forces which truly govern America, he quietly threw up his hands and has become effectively a hostage.

He undoubtedly feared assassination, but it is not just such a dark threat which likely influenced him.

Day to day, he works with a relatively small group of people – military and intelligence officials, members of the imperious Senate, big money political contributors, including the powerful Israel Lobby – and that group is not friendly to the language of an Obama before election.

Look at any other notable American politician and presidential aspirant, and you see the same thing at work.

Hillary Clinton, over the last 20 years or so, has gone from a rather idealistic person to an unpleasant, acerbic advocate of Imperial America. She has told bald-faced lies in public countless times and uttered words which might have been written by an old crypto-Nazi like Dick Cheney.

Her husband was once a man of some ideals, too, but his two terms in office were marked by not one achievement of any worth, and he became little more than a kind of giant vacuum cleaner for political donations, setting some ghastly precedents like selling nights in the Lincoln bedroom of the White House or pardoning a big-time criminal at the end of his term in exchange for many millions of political dollars.

This is the modern reality of imperial America: elections at the highest level simply do not matter. By the time a politician has managed to scrabble to become a contender, with all the endless secret begging for campaign funds, he or she has become part of the problem, not the solution.

In economics, we speak of barriers to the entry of markets. The American campaign finance system requiring truckloads of private money to run is effectively a barrier to entry in the political market, a barrier against the idealistic or those who would do anything to interfere with America’s entrenched governing establishment: the military-industrial-intelligence complex along with such powerful special interests as the Israel Lobby.

This barrier is reinforced by a duopoly of parties in that market, each being not very different than the other, except in some volatile social interests of no concern to the establishment.

And anyone who even chances to pass over those barriers faces everyday life with some dark and powerful people who will not watch their power diminished.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Muscularity?

Is that what you call the killing of thousands of innocent people – often women and children – by buzz-cut thugs at the controls of computer games with real missiles?

Is that what you call having “kill lists” of American citizens?

Is that what you call the horrors secretly initiated in Syria?

Or the fact that the CIA’s torture gulag was never dealt with?

Well, muscularity has definitely been the image sought by some governments. Posters of Mussolini typically featured that quality.

For Canadians and most of the rest of the world, it really does not matter which of these sociopaths is elected.

Romney has always been an unattractive, nasty-minded figure, and Obama has thrown off virtually every quality that made him once attractive and a source of hope.

The only issue that makes any difference for the future of world affairs between these two is their degree of subservience to Israel.

Romney literally grovels to the madmen now running Israel.

Obama, while not setting the standards of toughness towards Israel required for genuine peace, has at least not quite grovelled.

And he has so earned the hatred of Netanyahu that that lunatic is busy interfering in an American election with ads made for Florida, a criminal act by the way under American law.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Trump is this generation’s outstanding example of American sleaze.

We know perfectly well that were this absurd offer to Obama taken up, Trump’s $5 million so-called donation would be turned into a charitable write-off on his taxes.

Trump is a belligerent, vulgar loudmouth who has a no skill but in in separating people from their money, but in America both those qualities are counted as genuine talents.

Otherwise, he’s a ridiculous-looking man with yellow-dyed hair grown a foot long at the back of his head and combed forward, a man who is rarely photographed without his mouth wide open, his teeth bared, and his finger stabbing at someone.

If Americans didn’t worship money, he would be viewed as the uncouth bully he is.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO AN EDITORIAL IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

A “new” Romney?

A “hesitant” Obama?

Yes, perhaps for one hour on a particular night in one year.

God knows Romney had nothing to lose: he could go for broke – that is, “broke” for him, which isn’t much.

And God knows what was running through Obama’s mind – maybe, a deeply concerning fact on national security or some other matter he had just been advised of.

But we all know that performance is not Obama in full campaign mode.

And we equally know that Romney offers no special promise of performance: he’s been running for president for at least five years (he spent $20 million of his own money in a desperate dash for the nomination in 2008), so we know Romney’s attitudes and behaviors, and they are not attractive nor are they even interesting.

Romney is a man who has never done anything but pursue wealth, and he has done so ruthlessly and without principle (as in keeping money offshore) – a mighty dull and unpromising individual to do anything else and a man the majority of people can no more identify and sympathize with than those in Canada can identify with that icy ideologue, Stephen Harper (whose “majority” represents only 39% of voters and is only an artifact of the democratic deficit in our voting system ).

Only a foolish person would draw definitive conclusions from that brief time on the stage and assert that the campaign was “beginning.”

But, as readers know, Globe editorials under John Stackhouse have reached an all-time record for juvenile, narrow thinking.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Yes, indeed, it is a disgusting race for money.

But that’s only the “getting elected” part.

The actual job, once in office, is even more disgusting because it has become almost meaningless.

The major policies of the United States are, without question, driven by the military-intelligence-security apparatus in meeting the needs of imperial special interests.

The doltish George Bush was president in name only, formalizing decisions made by the Neo-con group – Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, etc – which worked hand-in-glove with the military-intelligence apparatus and key special interests.

Obama is yet another example, although a much brighter and capable man. He has made not a dint in the ugly creation of Bush’s crew. War, torture, restricted rights, intense special interests, the work of Bush’s ugly crew – all continue uninterrupted.

And why is anyone surprised? The military and intelligence have always been the antithesis of democratic and human rights.

And the larger they get, the more dominant they become, their leaders enter into every aspect of what should be civilian life.

The U.S. military now is busy deciding the future of several states abroad, and we know from the words, here or there, of several high officers and from documents like manuals that have leaked that there are plans for virtual military control of American society should some new crisis strike.

Besides, every day new police-state operations come into being. The TSA now patrols some highways and rides some inter-city buses besides being at airports and a number of other places. They have begun purchasing mobile versions of the back-scatter x-rays used at the airports mounted on vans to patrol streets. And drones are everywhere talked of and tested within the U.S.

The presidency simply means very little in the face of this massive assault on rights and privacy. No president, not wanting to share John Kennedy’s fate, can oppose it in any meaningful way.

And with no new revenues to be raised, only more deficits piled sky-high, there isn’t the slightest room to do anything for most Americans, those outside of the military-intelligence-security and special interest coterie.

And eventually, how will those unbelievable deficits be paid off? By gradual devaluation of the American dollar, leaving all the chumps out there in the world holding the reserve currency in fact holding the bag.

What decision by what candidate could in any way change that certain outlook?

Taxes? You must be kidding?

The refusal to pay taxes is part of what made America at its start.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

The best government money can buy.

America now has only the superficial appearance of democracy.

It is in fact a plutocracy.
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Campaign finance reform is almost impossible in the U.S.

And the main reason for that assertion is that the American Supreme Court has ruled: 1) that corporations are individuals under law; and 2) that giving money to campaigns is a form of free speech under the Bill of Rights.

How did that bizarre situation happen?

Year after year, appointments made to that court have moved it further and further to the extreme right.

Just think about the position Harper is in to reshape our Court, and you will have every reason to feel afraid for our future as a democratic nation.
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Harper’s long term strategy includes adopting something resembling the American system of finance.

That provides a subtle way of tipping our politics permanently towards the right wing, since money is so important to “getting a message out,” “defining an issue,” and creating “name-recognition” – among other manipulative concepts of political marketing.

He already eliminated government support for parties – unfairly characterizing an enlightened policy with pejorative words – and as we can all plainly see, he works tirelessly to serve special interests in a position to advance large sums.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

I don’t think Ms. Verma’s analysis hits the mark.

The American public is pretty evenly divided on gay marriage.

So there is no gain or risk in Obama’s taking this public position.

The even split simply allows him to take what is a principled position.

American politics are so poisonous and divisive in general that no one takes a principled position on anything, unless it happens to be favored by at least half the people.

Obama himself has demonstrated in over three years of power not a single meaningful position of principle apart from this.

He is, sadly after such promise in his rise, a complete creature of the establishment, and today’s establishment in the US doesn’t genuinely care about matters like this.

It is the belly-over-belt crowd that is viciously opposed to this basic principle, and Obama cannot command their votes in any case.
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“We get away with doing alot of stupid things, for a while. Then the accumulation leads to more stupid decisions until we reach a tipping point.

“Same sex marriage is just one more stupid thing heaped upon the pile.”

Yes, and it is clear you are a true expert in stupidity.
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“America is a Christian nation!

“Obama is trying to force his lifestyle on America!”

Christian nation?

America?

You do not have any idea what you are talking about.

Can you see the Christ who chased the money-changers out of the temple thinking corporate America was to his liking?

Can you see the Christ who addressed the least of these accepting America’s ghettos and grinding poverty while wealth spills out like water in many places?

Can you see the Christ who commanded turning the other cheek accepting the blood-soaked horrors of Afghanistan or Iraq or Vietnam?

If, by Christian nation, you refer to its founders, then you simply have read no history:

http://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/05/26/ashcroft-american-history-and-speaking-in-tongues/

Readers may also enjoy these examinations of America’s Christian Corporatism and its crackpot leaders:

http://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/05/28/in-jesus-name/

http://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/05/27/jabba-apologizes/

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Quits?

Big deal.

Threatening the President’s life is a crime in the United States.

The man belongs in prison.

This whole matter shows how sick and twisted the support for Israel has become.

Bad enough calling every critic of Israel’s ugly policies an anti-Semite, a favorite practice of frustrated supporters who do not get what they want.

But now this?

It is not to be taken lightly that a prominent man feels he can do this.
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“The Israelites are given over to murdering people that they don’t like ………

“Shamir and his Stern Gang murdered Count Bernadotte, the Swedish Peace Envoy ………”

Yes, indeed, along with literally hundreds of other murders and acts of terror in the 1940s.

Israel was born in terror, and instead of growing into a respectable member of the world community, it has only gone on to become something very unpleasant, violating all fair-minded people’s sense of fairness and decency.

And it comes as no surprise that its fervent supporters behave in the same fashion.

It was not that long ago that a prominent American lawyer advocated in writing the execution of all family members of any Palestinian caught in an act of terror.

And what single act in our day is more terrifying than Israel’s assault on Gaza, which is basically a refugee camp, killing 400 children, a thousand others, and lying about every detail of that savagery since?

Then still imposing 4 years of illegal and inhumane embargo on the same people and using murderous acts of piracy to enforce it?

Israel, sadly, has become little more than a mafia state: it murders, it steals, it oppresses, and it breaks all international law with impunity, lying and shamelessly claiming the right to do things no one has the right to do.

And the public is supposed to say fine because poor Israel feels threatened.

Israel is threatened seriously by absolutely no one or nothing but its own insanity.

The threat Obama represents, if it can even be called that, is that Israel must eventually abide by rules and treaties, assuming its previous borders, but Israel wants everything and it wants the non-Jews gone.

Hardly a stance any person of ethics can be expected to agree with.

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

America’s establishment is working hard to repeat the scenario of WWII in the Pacific.

Japan was never going to attack the U.S. but after a long period of harassment, trade restrictions, and threats, Japan decided it had no choice.

This is going to become the most dangerous and fearful effort facing Canada’s current younger generation’s time.

And it is completely unnecessary, just as was America’s holocaust in Vietnam where about 3 million people were slaughtered to maintain America’s presence in Asia.

Obama is just as much a creature of America’s military-industrial complex as George Bush or Ronald Reagan.
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“Our US friends should understand that military outreach costs money, and today the US has little of it.”

Yes, but you forget that the United States, having the privilege of the world’s reserve currency, is in a unique position financially.

It has abused, and will continue to abuse, the nations around the world holding its currency.

It will continue inflating gradually or it may at some point devalue.

In either case, America will leave dollar holders around the world “holding the bag,” no different in any respect than a conscienceless fraudster like Bernard Madoff.

So not only does it promote war and violence, it cheats everyone to pay for its stupidity.

That is precisely how the immensely costly and pointless war in Vietnam was paid for.

I am only sorry that most people do not have a grasp of this reality which allows America to behave as an unlimited fool in world affairs.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Canada “mulls” future with an important United Nations’ agency?

This kind of politically-motivated, special-interest blubbering casts a very dark shadow on Lester Pearson’s distinguished career and achievements in international affairs.

Our dear current foreign minister is again working hard to destroy Canada’s international reputation for fairness and decency, but of course that’s what his boss Stephen Harper has worked ceaselessly towards since holding office, and we know no one utters a word on anything in this government that hasn’t been pre-approved by the chair-throwing leader, even his almost uncontrollably angry and nasty gorilla boy, Baird.

Good God, aren’t the Palestinians to be considered as full human beings unless Israel nods to say they are?
And just consider in whose company Baird’s words place us: Just the other day, Israel’s foreign Minister Lieberman made clear public threats to murder Mr. Abbas over these matters. And those threats come after numberless others from a man who is just about as much a lowlife as you would find in any dictatorship on the planet.

But no objections are ever made by the United States, a country which actually believes it stands for human rights and democratic principles: indeed, we hear the opposite, that the United States will stop funding the agency, in effect reneging on treaties and long-standing obligations. Do it my way, or I’ll take my things and go home is the glorious response of our freedom-loving neighbour.

And why is that?

Because Obama is in political trouble, and he needs campaign funds and good press, just the things the American Israel lobby is in a position to grant or withhold.

So all sense of fairness is cast aside by Obama in pursuit of re-election, a man who has proven himself a weak and ineffective president in just about every respect, except when measured by the number of his extra-judicial killings by drone, which is now in the thousands.

And of course, running after Obama is Stephen Harper, desperately running along behind like the neighborhood’s most unpleasant brat trying to gain favour yelling “Me too!”

And there’s another aspect of Pearson’s distinguished legacy disappearing: when Lyndon Johnson demanded Canada send troops to Vietnam – he actually grabbed Pearson by the lapels – Pearson had the guts to say no.

From Harper, we get Canada volunteering for whatever stupid and demeaning job he sees before the United States even asks.

How low we’ve fallen.

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“Here are a few excerpts from the Hamas charter…”

Well, how many terrible things has Hamas actually done compared to what we know Israel has done?

When was the last time Hamas killed 400 Israeli children?

When was the last time Hamas pirated ships on the high seas, killing 9 people only trying to deliver humanitarian assistance?

When was the last time Hamas or any other organization dropped a million horrible cluster bombs inside Israel, as Israel did in Southern Lebanon?

When was the last time Hamas held ten thousand Israelis as illegal prisoners?

When was the last time Hamas removed hundreds of Israelis from their homes and just stole them?

When was the last time Hamas openly murdered scores of highly-placed Israelis?

And have you ever read the bloody horrors of the Old Testament?

Huge sections of it are packed with violence, ruthlessness, intolerance, arbitrary rules for everything, and just plain hatred of others.

And it is the Old Testament ideas governing Israel in many aspects, courtesy of the ultra-Orthodox parties who always make up the balance of power there.

Read those ghastly stories of war and murder and rape and slavery and weird laws about what cloth you may wear and what food you may eat, and, yes, how women are totally subservient to men, how a child should be sacrificed if his father believes he hears God demanding it, and you will understand why Israel respects none of its neighbors and has attacked most of them more than once.

And, oh, it could not be clearer in the Old Testament that all non-Jews are inferior beings, not to be spared any brutality – nothing Hamas or any other Arabic group has ever written and accepted is more poisonous than that.

Some basis for a state in the 21st century. A state which demands to be recognized as a one-religion state, a state which even today treats all its non-Jewish citizens as second-class at best.

And if you have a very dark sense of humor you will enjoy the bad joke of a Jews-only democracy, surely no different in concept to an Islamic state.

Of course, if Israelis find Muslims so repulsive and backward, we might ask why the founders of modern Israel insisted on creating it in a place totally inhabited with and surrounded by them?

Makes a lot of sense to me.
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“The entire UN is corrupt.”

Then why does Israel always wave the UN documents which – under pressure from foreign powers – mandated its creation?

Your expressed view is ridiculous.

The entire rest of the planet’s population is corrupt because it doesn’t do what a tiny population in Israel demands?

Of course, you also neglect the fact that Israel stands in contempt of a host of UN resolutions. Being in contempt of just one has been used as an American excuse for bombing others.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSES TO AN EDITORIAL IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Well, the day before, Hillary Clinton said in Libya the United States would welcome his killing.

It doesn’t get too much shabbier than that.

Her brutal words reminded me of Donald Rumsfeld’s statement, early on in Afghanistan, that all the Taleban prisoners should either be walled away or killed.

And, what do know, a short time later, 3,000 prisoners the U.S. had held disappeared.

We know today they were driven out in batches in sealed vans onto the desert to suffocate. Then their bodies were dumped into mass graves.

Americans didn’t do the actually murders, they just facilitated and encouraged them. Its soldiers – who were in charge everywhere – just stood around picking their noses while mass murder was carried out.

America is up to its hips in blood, and there no longer seems to be much in the way of limits.

Gaddafi’s blood is definitely on Hillary’s hands. I knew she was a rather nasty piece of work, but now she is a murderer.

As is her boss with his 2 to 3 thousand killings in Pakistan in the last couple of years, virtually all of them civilians.

There’s no use pretending that only bloody dictators will be subject to extra-judicial killing in future.

Indeed, the United States has over the years been close friends and patrons of many dictators, and it still is today.

It’s just a question of whether the leader or a group of people toe the American policy line in deciding whether they will be attacked.

The emerging nightmare scenario is the United States playing God across the entire planet, striking down anyone who disagrees seriously enough with it.

This is not a time for exultation over the death of a dictator, but shame and profound concern about the nature of our children’s world.
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“The purpose of a trial is to determine guilt

“Perhaps there are only a dozen or so people in the world who so blatantly admit their crimes to the world that a trial would be unnecessary.”

You could not be more incorrect.

A trial is never, never unnecessary, full stop.

The purpose of a trial also is very much to proclaim that there is rule of law and openness in handing out justice – indeed, that part of the meaning of trials is far more important than determining guilt.

Only people or countries with something to hide encourage this kind of lawlessness, and that very much is the case for the United States.

We either have a society of laws, or we do not. You cannot have it both ways.

Although both the United States and Israel very much act as though they can.

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

This is just sick.

And the BBC coverage of this story says that Obama personally approved this South American military junta style killing.

Some enlightened president.

None of us can possibly know just what this man actually did – beyond speaking against the unjust practices of America – but it does seem to me that the greater the threat an individual is understood to be, the greater the need for all conventional forces of law and intelligence to obtain his arrest through legal channels.

This behavior of America’s – and Israel’s, since American tactics were copied from Israel’s dirty practices – is a one way trip to nowhere: it is a giant step backward for human rights and democratic practices.

Very possibly we are looking at the dawn of a dark new age in which America plays God with the entire planet.

You either have a society – and that includes international society – which is ruled by laws or you do not.

This is as far as you can go from the rule of law.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Al-Qaeda said?

You certainly do not have to be a “conspiracy theorist” to look on such a statement with hard cynical eyes.

First, we have the word of former British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, as well as other distinguished people that there is no “Al-Qaeda,” the term being a made-up catch-all for “bad guys” in general.

Since the word literally means “toilet,” it has always seemed unlikely there is such an organization even without the testimony of people who know.

Second, we pick these things up off a supposed Al-Qaeda web site?

Please, how long do you think it would take – with the NSA and CIA and other agencies constantly monitoring the Internet – to have special forces breaking down your door if you had a web site designated as an official Al-Qaeda web site?

A day? Maybe hours?

This kind of report lacks journalistic credibility.
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Response to another reader who says:

“So really the threat is still there and all must be vigilant.”

Vigilant for what?

People-eating aliens from space?

The Rapture?

Anti-Christ?

Spores from space?

Asteroids on a collision course with earth?

That is a ridiculous mode of thought which the propagandists and powers that be exploit to the hilt.

People who do murderous things are always part of life, especially in places like the United States.

You don’t have call them terrorists, just criminals or violent mental cases.

And responsible citizens have always reported truly doubtful behaviors to authorities.

Today we have lunatics day and night seeing things that aren’t there.
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Response to another reader who asks:

“Was there ever a Bin Laden?”

Yes.

He was a son of a distinguished and rich Saudi family and he is known to have intensely disliked the ruling House of Saud, and that’s why he could not live in his own homeland.

He served in America’s proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

He is reputed to have been a brave man and a quite intelligent one.

Being an enemy of the House of Saud was itself a very dark mark against him for the United States after his being used in Afghanistan, but he also grew to dislike the United States.

He disliked the U.S. for manipulating his people over Afghanistan. They fought against the Soviets based on the notion that the Soviets were godless interlopers in Afghanistan, set on suppressing Muslims – that is the kind of line the CIA repeated endlessly while handing out Stinger missiles, rifle grenades, and packages of plastique.

After the Soviet defeat, he saw the U.S. beginning to do the very things they used to inflame hatred of the Soviets in a long series of events which saw Americans encroaching on what he and others regarded as sacred land. American troops in Saudi Arabia, land of the Prophet, and supported by the corrupt House of Saud, were especially detested.

Beyond that, our knowledge is pretty sketchy.

The U.S. never offered proof of his involvement in 9/11.

Indeed, the Taleban government in Afghanistan was willing to extradite him when the U.S. requested it after 9/11, if evidence were supplied, that being the normal international procedure in all extraditions.

It was the U.S. who refused, a fact never explained.

The U.S. made up its mind to invade Afghanistan and teach the world a lesson in the meaning of vengeance.

The odd fact is it was not the Taleban who even invited bin Laden to live in the country, it was the previous Northern Alliance government, the very same people the U.S. used to fight the Taleban, the very people who rule there today, and many of them are just as intolerant and backward as the Taleban.

The Taleban, while backward and nasty in their views, need never have been our actual enemies.

Many responsible people believe bin Laden was killed in the horrific bombing of Tora Bora a decade ago. If such were the case, it is reasonable the U.S. would want to keep it a secret to prevent the creation of a martyr.

I don’t know, but I was somewhat inclined to accept that.

This recent claim of his assassination, even if true, is so full of uncertainties and inconsistencies that great doubts exist as to what actually happened, and I am not referring to pictures or the lack of them.

It is quite possible that the Pakistani government actually gave him up to the CIA in return for some benefit – as perhaps a slowdown or halt to all the drone attacks and special forces assassinations.

There is a credible report from Pakistan that it was the Pakistani military who landed and entered the compound – this would have the effect of handing Obama a prize for his re-election – something which has not been at all certain.

Any government would be tired and angry about such high-handed treatment. But American activity’s impact on fundamentalist areas of Pakistan has been devastating in terms of terror incidents against the government for its silent cooperation. American arrogance has caused Pakistan to pay a high price in instability, literally tens of thousand of deaths.

On the other hand, Obama may just have staged a big show, a setting for announcing what may have been true for ten years.

I don’t see what gruesome pictures would settle since we can be sure there would have been pictures taken ten years ago in the mountains of Tora Bora.

Whatever is the case, I’m sure he is dead, but again we have no idea as to what his responsibility for 9/11 or other acts was. It does seem to me that he provided the United States with something of an Emmanuel Goldstein figure, the mythical arch villain with whom Oceana constantly frightened its citizens in Orwell’s 1984.

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Oh, yes, true words indeed.

But I fear they are good seed cast on barren ground.

The United States has demonstrated, time and again, that it is only capable of adjusting its governance after smashing its head into a wall, often after several times.

Its political system is a creaking wreck, a kind of man-made monster lumbering along, force-feed by special interest campaign contributions and marching to the drumbeat of outdated assumptions and truly ignorant superstitions.

Despite decades of declining real income, the American middle class remains moved by silly slogans like “the American Dream” and “America First,” much resembling the flock of some religious cult who even after being fleeced by its leaders insists the religion is true.

The United States is a plutocracy, perhaps as corrupt as France in 1788, and it is an overstretched world imperial power serving the narrow interests of its plutocrats, but always it is mouthing slogans about democracy and freedom and justice, largely dead and empty language, to its ordinary inhabitants.

People insulated from the effects of wars and bad times – the plutocrats and ruling establishment in Washington – just do not feel the impact of such terrible turns of event.

Elections only matter in the most nominal way in the United States, they are part of keeping the myths going, as we’ve seen so clearly in the case of Obama.

This bright, optimistic, and charming man took the world’s attention by storm after eight years of the rancid and hated George Bush.

But in two years what has he achieved? Almost nothing of consequence.

The wars go on. Indeed, they are now killing civilians weekly in Pakistan.

The Pentagon and the American intelligence apparatus have swollen into great wallowing beasts, consuming vast resources to no good purpose.

After a terrible financial catastrophe, what has been changed? Nothing, just countless billions given away to stimulate a temporary respite, paying for which threatens the very security and international position of the American dollar.

We see no meaningful legislation to regulate future financial excesses.

We hear not one voice speak about the painful sacrifices required to pay for all the ghastly excess of war and financial anarchy.

Do we see even one meaningful political change in the way elections are conducted and financed, something that might promise future reform? We do not.

Has anything changed, despite Obama’s early suggestion of a new policy direction, with America’s client state Israel and its terrible seemingly-endless abuse of millions?

Obama’s one big act, his health-care legislation, is an abomination, disliked by liberals and conservatives alike, an ugly ineffective costly compromise.

Has anything happened with the paranoid, democratically destructive legislation around American security, virtual police-state stuff which is unbelievably costly by every possible measure?

Nothing has changed. The election of 2008 might just as well not have taken place.

No individual, however bright and enthusiastic, can move the American establishment from its firm position of ignorance and selfishness and power.

And we all know what Lord Acton said about power.

His words apply to all power, no matter how established, even democratically-camouflaged power.
_______________________

If you want some interesting insight into the assumptions and attitudes of the American middle class, watch a few American real-estate, cable-channel television shows.

People often want three-car garages. They want granite counter tops. The want four bedrooms. They want three bathrooms. They want central air-conditioning.

They have saved no money. They are looking to finance on the basis of 100% mortgages.

And, perhaps worst of all, they are looking at subdivisions in the middle of nowhere, in Colorado or Texas or Arizona. Places which require cars for everyone and every single errand. Places which require twenty-four-hour-a-day air conditioning for major parts of the year. Places often with no long-term, dependable water resources, often genuine deserts.

Some of these shows actually deal with the results of the earlier excesses, people whose home prices have cratered, who owe huge amounts on their mortgages, people who are trying to sell ugly behemoths they can’t afford, and people who feel entitled.

Americans are entitled to walk away from homes and the loans which financed them when the value of the mortgage exceeds the value of the property, a fact not often appreciated in Canada where we honor contracts. They just hand the keys to the bank and go.

In buying homes, Americans often walk away from contracts too. That’s why in most places the signs in front of homes say they are “under contract” rather than “sold” during the interim between signing and closing. Realtors often keep showing homes “under contract” just in case. In America, for sure you do not know you have a valid sale until the little closing ceremony when money and keys are exchanged.

Another fact not always appreciated in Canada is that American home owners have long had the privilege of deducting the interest on their mortgages from their federal income tax. Yet even with this financial boost, still they cannot make a go of it, and for the simple reason that the deductibility has only encouraged still larger purchases and likely inflated prices.

Such shows tell us a great deal, exhibiting like educational films the results of America’s inability to govern itself sensibly. We see the grassroots reality of loose and chaotic government.

But when I say loose and chaotic government, I always exclude the intelligence monstrosity, the Pentagon, and America’s many and brutal police forces. Nothing loose there – just a quasi-police state taken for granted.

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Well said, Mr. Crook.

And I think this points to an underlying truth about the government of America.

If a man as intelligent, optimistic, and hard-working as Obama can get things so wrong, who possibly can get them right?

He is being torn apart in the world’s mightiest, most unforgiving force-field,a set of demands from scores of directions, many or most irrational and unforgiving.

America’s national politics have many similarities to being caught in the gravitational pull of a black hole.

The force cannot be resisted, and there is only one possible end to the event: the object caught will be reduced to its constituent atomic particles.
_________________
From another reader:

‘Another question: Is not “productivity” even more of an empty mantra than “competitiveness”?’

Empty mantra?

Productivity is a real and measurable quantity.

Unfortunately, in the popular mind, higher productivity means just something like just working harder, but that is not at all the case.

Take the example of two small farmers, one still using a hoe and spade and the other using a new small tractor.

No matter how hard the farmer with the hoe works, he can barely compete with the farmer who has a tractor. Indeed, the tractor makes such increases in productivity that its owner will be ready to buy more land since his tractor enables him to work more without a huge increase in time and other inputs. Or he may choose to do still other work with his tractor in his time freed up.

Productivity is the ratio of the amount of output (the product) to the amount of an input – often called a factor of production, as capital or labor, but most often measured in terms of labor. The ratio may be in terms of hours or dollars or still other measures.

It is possible to substitute up to a point more labor for capital goods like tractors if you have an economy with huge surpluses of underemployed labor, as has been the case of China or India, since hiring from this pool of labor does not raise costs.

Competitiveness is a nation’s (or a company’s, within a nation) ability to produce goods and services at lower cost, so long as that cost has adequate returns to the factors used in producing it.

The adequacy of the returns to factors of course varies from country to country and industry to industry: we know interest rates, the price of capital, and wages, the price of labor, vary.

The United States remains competitive in areas of high-technology and advanced services, but in all traditional industries it is pretty well uncompetitive.

Its car industry, for example, is just holding on through various artificial barriers and helps. Within a few years, China is going to come crashing into North America with quality products at lower cost.

We have already seen the results in recent decades: American real wages have dropped for decades.

But even in areas of high-technology and advanced services, countries like China and India are catching up. They invest in education and technology, and they appear to have natural intellectual gifts making them very comfortable with computers and engineering.

China today produces the world’s fastest super-computer and is entering areas like high-speed trains or advanced aeronautical products. India, with its language gift from the British Empire, is busy in areas like finance and banking and on-line computer services.

The world does not sit still. The rate of change in technology, which over the long term, drives economic growth, is on a steep rising curve, which means the rates of change we see will only continue to come faster and with greater impacts. America in no way possesses a unique grasp of technology or of the ability to adapt to its changes.

Indeed, it could well be argued that the ancient adaptations Asian people have made to group cooperation and civility are superior qualities for a rapidly changing world. Just so, their clear superior average endowment in mathematical ability – measured on many international tests – gives them a powerful underlying advantage.

America’s postwar period of easy superiority, a time when all serious competitors were prostrate, is now over – that is, the so-called American Dream, that glib, largely meaningless political slogan, is dead.

On top of those realities, America has so over-extended itself with debt and waste on war in every direction, there is a huge price to be paid before an equilibrium can be reached to even start new competitive efforts. Obama and other American leaders are not willing to say any of this.

It’s just more of the same-old, same-old blubbering and slogans, whether from Obama or the Tea Party.

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

“President Obama’s great promise has been utterly wasted in policy-setting.”

Absolutely, and I have to believe he represented the last great hope of changing America’s course, Mr. Murray.

The entire planet breathed a sigh when Bush left office and this bright, charming young man entered.

But I cannot think of one area now where Obama has not disappointed, often greatly disappointed.

It does really seem that elections do not matter in the United States.

The pointless Afghan War goes on and on.

America is killing hundreds of civilians in Pakistan.

Iraq remains the mess America has made of it, millions reduced to hopeless lives for a generation.

America’s client, Israel, continues its brutal, bloody policies, never once making a genuine effort at peace, never once even acknowledging the inhumanity of its actions.

Internally, American politics are the same dog-fight they ever were. The Culture of Complaint prevails in everything, the Tea Party being just the latest change of costume for the same old play. No sense is heard anywhere on the national scene, at least from anyone of influence or even potential influence.

Sinking into old age as I am, it is exceedingly melancholy to consider the way virtually nothing in America has changed for the better since I was an angry young man over the horrors of Vietnam. American political rhetoric remains as utterly meaningless as 45 years ago.

The slaughter of innocents continues all over the globe, indeed, now is becoming computerized so that buzz-cut young men in secret rooms can play games at computer consoles, pumping their fists after sending a Hellfire missile into a home full of people.

I think it likely the only force now which will precipitate real change in America is its relative decline in the world, an unavoidable reality, which will cause many changes in attitudes and beliefs as it truly takes hold.

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Competitiveness and innovation are never affected by government exhortations, nor indeed are they affected by any other exhortations, including those of business schools or “inspirational” speakers.

They come from the underlying real economic and financial conditions of a country and of the world in which it functions.

One can only look at the United States’ position in the world and offer a bitter smile at Obama’s empty words.

Debts of monumental proportions in every accounting from international balances to personal finance, idiotic pointless wars, and mindless military and security expenditures – all at the same time new competitors like China, India, Brazil, and even Russia grow to new strengths.

The United States is simply not competitive in so many areas of its economy. Nor is there any reason to believe that it can become so before undergoing a great deal of painful adjustment, the kind of adjustment its government works tirelessly to avoid.

Their government ignores reality because Americans are on average surely the world’s greatest whiny babies when it comes to painful adjustments.

It is their sense of boundless entitlement, fostered by countless dumb politicians blubbering in Fourth of July speeches about the American Dream and passing laws and budgets, year after year, which are completely irresponsible.

That is simply a one-way trip to nowhere, no matter how big your economy and how great some of its past performance.

But Americans are suckers for tent preachers, in everything from new product advertising to politics and self-help gurus helping themselves to people’s pocket books, and Obama is really starting to sound like one more of a tiresome breed.

The answer, of course, is for America to shut-up and roll its sleeves up – even then there are no guarantees of the same kind of future as it has enjoyed in the past – but you never fire America’s imagination by truth and reality.

Miracles, sermons, sugar plums, and fairy stories are always in demand.

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY STEPHEN POLLARD IN THE TELEGRAPH

“So why has the US done nothing except pressurise the Israelis over settlements for the past two years?”

That seems an extremely naive question besides being factually an inaccurate description.

The only way to get a fair peace in the Mideast is with pressure on Israel. After all, Israel literally holds all the cards, occupying the land, controlling the people, regularly stealing bits of the property of others with no effective opposition, and being militarily a Frankenstein monster compared to the Palestinians, a military monster which regularly strikes out killing and maiming large numbers.

Israel has also managed to quash every outside effort to reach peace, as with the Oslo Accords. And Obama started out right, for the first time being a little tough on Israel rather than the usual complaisant attitude.

Still, anyone viewing the last two years objectively would hardly say he has seriously pressured Israel. But, in fact, he has now turned quite around. Why?

The answer is obvious: serious local electoral troubles plus the tireless efforts of the Israeli Lobby.

That is precisely the formula which got Israel recognized as a nation in the first place.

President Truman was under tremendous political pressure in his reelection bid.

He had no intention originally of recognizing Ben-Gurion’s self-declared state. There was no good argument for doing so.

But then Truman was literally inundated by lobbyists and apologists for Israel. His life was almost made a misery by platoons of special pleaders.

So he agreed to recognize Israel, and he was reelected.

Clearly those two things do not constitute cause and effect, but money is the mother’s milk of American politics and, undoubtedly, large campaign funding pledges plus promises of press support were made between the two events.

Obama went into office with a balanced and reasonably fair attitude towards Mideast peace, the first modern president to do so.

But he too was met by a wall of pressure – influential delegation after influential delegation.

His name also became widely hated in Israel, as his assistant, Rahm Emanuel, unhappily discovered on a visit to Israel with his family.

At the same time, his reelection prospects have turned around dramatically owing to the ongoing poor economy in the United States and to Obama’s widespread perception as an elitist serving the interests of bankers and corporations.

So now he has quietly backed off all of his original Mideast positions.

He has also made some dramatic efforts, in light of his new political weakness, to placate Israelis and American Jews – e.g., signing a ten-year arms gift agreement with Israel, supplying Israel with some new weapons technology, and offering Netanyahu a ridiculously extravagant bribe for a few months of cessation of settlements.

Obama’s getting ready to run as a less-than-heroic figure, and he needs all the help he can secure, so he has abandoned any pretence of fairness or the much-required pressure on Israel for a fair peace.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

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

Many of the criticisms here are true, especially those about costs.

But since when in America is it possible to legislate a neat, rational, economical, sensible bill about anything?

That’s not just a sarcasm.

American legislation is often so convoluted, so fraught with nonsense, that it in practice it achieves the opposite of its title.

That’s just a reality of government in America.

The one real merit of this legislation is that the door is finally thrown open to some extent on healthcare.

And that’s no small thing.

With time, the legislation will be refined, improved, and perhaps changed significantly.

The real truth is that America – with its opinionated extremes, its ideologies, and its sheer volume of noise – learns often only by banging its head against walls.

We have seen that time and time again.

Turning America in anything is like turning a super-oil tanker in a tight channel, and too often there is a drunk at the helm.

America is a chaotic society, yet pretends to be well organized, and it is overflowing with posing and melodrama.

It is, as Robert Hughes said, a culture of complaint.

________________

“…it is opposed by most of the country; and it is now law. I would never have believed this possible in the United States.”

Clive Crook, that statement by someone as well-informed as you astounds me.

A great many major votes in Congress do not reflect general public opinion in America. Check out public opinion on subjects like gun control, abortion, and some of America’s wars.

The truth is that a great many Americans do not vote, so while their views are reflected in a valid poll, they have no political influence.

Also, Congress blurs many issues with immensely complex omnibus bills, making it difficult to sort out votes.

And since representation is what economists call “bundled,” voters will forget or forgive an unwelcome vote on some issues so long as they get what they want on others.

In a political duopoly, no voter gets the policies he or wants without lots of extra baggage from either party.

Finally, there has been an immense amount of misinformation, genuinely stupid stuff like the rubbish about death panels put forward by genuine airheads like Sarah Palin.

Once voters see that such misinformation is what it is, views will alter. There will undoubtedly be a big educational drive too.

I would have much preferred another approach – this one has many shortcomings – but it is step forward, and it will make it easier to make refinements in future.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JOHANN HARI IN THE INDEPENDENT

 

Yes, absolutely, the secret prisons in Afghanistan, and those in other places, cast a grim shadow across Obama’s smiling face.

I believe that decisions like keeping America’s torture gulag operating abroad are the greatest source of people’s disappointment with Obama.

But I’m afraid people were being unrealistic to expect much else.

America is an empire, not a dreamy “shining city on a hill,” but a rather brutal society which feels entitled to run the affairs of others in all parts of the planet.

It does this through a combination of its immense economic and military might.

America’s own population lives under a version of Social Darwinism, as relatively few people abroad fully appreciate. There is relatively little sympathy or patience for the concerns of foreigners, a simple but brutal fact.

The American establishment – the intelligence industry, the Pentagon, the defense contractors, and the huge multi-national corporations – do quite literally form a government within a government.

That is not a left-wing fantasy or a slightly paranoid delusion – after all, it was a Republican president and former general, Eisenhower, who first sounded the warning. It is the ineluctable result of this stupendously wealthy and largely unaccountable set of institutions.

A great many dark and devious men hold high positions in this establishment, and they have billions at their disposal plus a general population which is passive in accepting their actions.

Think only of the pointless holocaust in Vietnam. Countless billions wasted, an estimated 3 million Vietnamese murdered in an orgy of killing, and a devaluation of the dollar afterwards to help pay the bill. All of it done for nothing more than the fears and prejudices of that establishment.

The last American President who truly challenged that establishment died on November 22, 1963.

Obama wants to be the elementary civics-class textbook version of a president, the kind of president which the establishment tolerates from either party, not end up being either driven from office in shame or worse.

To talk with genuine expectations about change of any real consequence today in America is utterly naïve. It’s just about as meaningful as talking about change in the France of the late eighteenth century with its dukes and cardinals and princes, whose carriages simply thumped over the bodies of peasants who happened to be in their way.

Yes, a revolution did happen then, but try that in an empire with a military establishment pushing two million, all armed with unbelievably powerful weapons and a set of at least fourteen intelligence services which spy on every phone call and e-mail and even check the books you read at the library.

The French Revolution will never be repeated, and the pathetic American libertarians who naively believe that holding on to their beloved rifles and pistols secures their freedom surely only bring a quiet chuckle from those who know better.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

This is just one more stupid, blundering injustice by the United States.

They kidnapped these men and have held them illegally for eight years, torturing and abusing them.

There are no proper charges against any of them. There is no court competent to try them. Any evidence is utterly worthless, contaminated by American torture and illegal procedures.

America has held them for most of that time without lawyers, without family visits, and without access by the Red Cross.

International law has been broken, as well as important international conventions.

These men should be released.

They are a danger to no one, even the ones who might once have been.

They are completely compromised. Everything which could be known about them is known.

They are of no use to any terrorist organization, even if there were one called al Qaeda, which there is not.

Apart from all the other things one might say about this illegal imprisoning of men in a remote part of Illinois, it is, above all, meaningless public relations.

If he is not going to free the innocent – which is what they are under our law as well as that of the United States – Obama might just as well leave them at Guantanamo now that that the torture and abuse have stopped.

Cuba is a far more pleasant place than Illinois in the winter.

And can you imagine how they will be greeted by a general prison population after eight years of relentless propaganda about how terrible they are?

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO COLUMN IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

I believe Obama is dithering, although their may be some truth to the idea of putting pressure on the Mayor of Kabul.

There is a basic conflict at work here: Obama’s decency and humanity versus an American establishment which never hesitates to kill people over pride.

Obama has the weight of the entire military-industrial complex on his back – the half trillion dollar a year industry of professional war-making in the Pentagon, the vast parade of defense contractors who’ve made countless billions from the war – plus the pressure of the Israel Lobby, always in favor of war against Muslims with talk about being soft on terror.

This mission is pointless. You cannot remake the institutions and customs of a nation of about 30 million in a few years.

Imagine invading seventeenth century Spain and telling people that the Holy Inquisition must end, nuns must give up the habit, Moors and Jews must be admitted as full members of society, and women must have equal rights?

Yet that is a close parallel to what the U.S. at least claims it is doing in Afghanistan.

Americans have failed in Iraq and they failed in Afghanistan, just as they failed in Vietnam and Somalia and a number of other places.

You can’t bomb people into democracy or into modernity, but you sure can kill lots of innocent people.

America’s only clear-cut victory goes back to WWII and that required sinking to complete barbarism, using the atomic bomb on civilians.

The basic problem is that ideologue Americans seek the wrong victories.

They are always fighting imagined devils, whether communists or Muslims, instead of dealing in practical terms with the world. And the truth is they don’t really want to fight if it means they suffer real losses. So they bomb. This is a formula for guaranteed failure.

Dropping dollar bills instead of bombs would have been a more sensible policy.

Just dumb.

Now America’s Captain Ahabs risk repeating their insane experience of the killing fields of Cambodia, a neutral country that was secretly bombed and invaded for the same lunatic reasons that Pakistan is now being bombed and driven to kill its own people. With the toppling of a neutral government, Cambodia dropped into the hands of true madmen, and America shares full responsibility for what happened.

But the lessons are never learned by America’s jingo set.

There’s always a new dawn for these ideologues when enough bombing and brutality will get the desired results, even if the poor country on the receiving end is reduced to rubble.

The great irony is, of course, the Taleban never had to America’s enemies. They were not international terrorists, and they attacked no one outside their land. They offered to extradite bin Laden and others if the U.S. just provided some evidence for its claims over 9/11, the normal procedure for extraditions everywhere.

But the U.S. just angrily refused, and it prepared to attack.

The assault on Afghanistan was about absolutely nothing but vengeance. The participation of the UN and NATO was just a diplomatic nicety arranged through the cajoling and threats behind the scenes.

What NATO countries really think of Afghanistan is clear from their response to repeated calls from the U.S. for more forces. The psychology of immediately post-9/11 had been right for governments not to refuse, something they did do a little later with the vast war crime of invading Iraq.

They simply do not regard Afghanistan as a serious threat, and it is not.

But the U.S. is stuck there after getting vengeance – at least 50,000 died just in Kabul from America’s invasion – with no idea of what to do next, and no idea of how to make a graceful exit, and the American establishment’s idea of a graceful exit is what was done to Japan.
_____________________

Some interesting statistics on Afghanistan were released the other day.

From one Afghanistan’s own ministries, it was announced that 12 million people, including 3 million children, out of a total population of 30 million, live in serious poverty. so much so that many of the children are malnourished.

My, what an achievement, America, after 8 years of invasion and occupation and tens and tens of billions spent on killing and destruction.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

It’s not been a pretty history for the Peace Prize.

At least, Obama gave the world something to celebrate and have some hope about.

Does anyone remember that he replaced the most ignorant and vicious man ever to hold the office? The world was morally exhausted after eight years of that cretin.

A man who killed maybe a million people?

The Peace Prize in general has an odd history and is surely the most ambiguous and inconsistent of prizes.

I think Al Gore’s prize was more than a little odd.

Well, then there’s the just plain shameful horrors of the prize.

Henry Kissinger, certified war criminal?

Menachim Begin, old Irgun terrorist?

Shimon Peres, political father of Israel’s nuclear weapons?

Theodore Roosevelt, imperialist extraordinary?

A few awards in recent decades meant something for sure, as that to Doctors without Borders or that to Jimmy Carter.

But, in general, it’s not a proud history.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

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

This does seem a tremendous waste of time.

Israel clearly has its own agenda, and that agenda does not include what any fair-minded person calls peace.

How can you have “peace” while you continue daily to steal the farms and homes and water of those with whom you are supposed to be making peace?

Of course, there’s also Israel’s re-creation of South African apartheid in all its unrelenting fury, treating millions as less than equal humans.

And what additionally do we have in Gaza?

A brutal blockade stopping assistance to a people who have done nothing other than elect a government Israel doesn’t like, and that act of war (for so blockades are considered in international diplomacy) comes after a savage attack, killing hundreds and hundreds of civilians, including a great many children.

Israel insists it is a victim, but the claim is ridiculous on the face of it.

Israel is unrelentingly aggressive, and demonstrates no guiding principles of democracy and human rights towards others.

That ugly Israeli stance can only change if the United States finally shows some courage and stops sending a gigantic annual subsidy to a state that takes its money and then sneers back that it will do exactly as it pleases.

And, considering Israel’s supporters’ fine-tuned art of constantly lobbying Congress with targeted contributions, what does any realistic person believe are the chances of that?