John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT

 

There are at least two reasons for this provocation by Turkey.

ISIS has been financing itself by stealing Syrian oil and selling it to Turkey at a discount.

Putin’s recent heavy bombardment of the trucks and facilities involved undoubtedly irritates Erdogan, and I believe his own son is involved in this whole operation.

The second reason for this is that it was meant to put a stop to a genuine anti-ISIS coalition.

When I say “genuine,” I mean one which actually targets the terrorists – as Russia is doing – and not one which targets Syria and effectively protects ISIS, which is the pattern of America’s efforts, the ones supported by a disingenuous David Cameron.

Turkey is the last country wanting a genuine coalition since it is a major supporter of ISIS. It uses those murderous thugs against both the Kurds Erdogan so hates and of course against the government of Syria, a reasonable government which opposes some of Erdogan’s fetid dreams of empire.

Of course, in any matter involving Erdogan, there is always the sheer fact of his mental instability as an explanatory variable. This man who built himself a grotesque, one thousand-room palace recently, makes contradictory statements on important matters every few days, and hates some groups like the Kurds with an intense white heat is a genuinely erratic and unstable man.

It’s all a dirty business, and the only honest major player is Putin. Cameron, Obama, Erdogan, and Netanyahu are outright liars and supporters of terror. They are also guilty of supporting criminal invasion of a peaceful country. Hollande was with them but has been wavering.

The various words by American Defense Secretary Ash Carter over recent time sound just like something from Dr. Strangelove, full of dark threats and anger over America’s dirty plans being thwarted by Putin.

If what these people were doing in Syria was honorable and acceptable to public opinion, why do they keep lying and hiding what they are doing?

There is no doubt Turkey’s act was premeditated. If the plane was in Turkish airspace, it would have been only for seconds over the point of land which sticks down into Syria.

You do not shoot someone for that, especially when it is well known what they are doing.

The plane crashed 4 kilometers inside Syria.

And we have the surviving pilot saying there was no warning at all.

In the end, I very much believe Erdogan will regret this rash act. Already, Russia is building a no-fly zone in the area.

The missile cruiser Moskva is to be stationed in the area with instructions to attack threats.

Putin is also putting the S-400 anti-aircraft system, the world’s most formidable, at the Russian base.

Still further, fighters will accompany all bombers now.

John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT

Sorry, David, but I do think Jeremy Corbyn likely understands exactly what ISIS represents.

It really is you, David, who pretends not to understand.

After all, you support American policy in the region, don’t you, David, even though, if I may be permitted to say, you do so with just a trifle too much groveling?

American policy is about using filth like ISIS and al Qaeda to destroy the beautiful land of Syria. America helped round up this collection of human trash from many places, including Benghazi, and along with Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, it armed, trained, and supported them in their murderous rampage.

Of course, the Americans do not say that openly, David, but anyone who does just a little thinking can see the pattern. Those who do not see it, choose not to see it.

The U.S. drops bombs in the desert and on Syrian infrastructure, pretending to attack ISIS. The bombing of so-called terrorists you want to do, David, is clearly of the “Me too, Mr. Obama, Sir!” kind.

You really are so transparent, David, quite an ineffective puff-ball of a Prime Minister trying to sound stern and heroic. But then you have no one to answer to, do you, with a “majority” government representing 35% of British voters? Not your fault, is it, that Britain’s election system has such a built-in democratic deficit?

By all accounts, that horrible tyrant Assad is somehow strangely supported by a substantial majority of Syrians owing to his policies of secularism and protection of religious minorities. Then there’s the fact that he accepted at least a million refugees fleeing the American-British invasion of Iraq which killed about a million people, but he’s not fooling you, is he, David? He’s a heartless tyrant who must go. After all, he didn’t listen to you about getting out of town.

I’m just waiting to see how you’ll wiggle your little trotters and oink (sorry for the reference, David, but I couldn’t resist) after Putin’s air force has sent the American-organized cutthroats running for home. There are already reports of some fleeing. Maybe you’ll take them in, David? But I understand you’re not that fond of refugees.

Putin just proves what amazing things can happen when you actually aim for the enemy you claim you are aiming at. In their first 60 sorties, Putin’s boys did more damage to ISIS than America’s claimed 6,000 or so. But then that could be because Americans spend so much effort bombing things like hospitals, or don’t you agree, David?

David, there is one thing I wish you’d clear up for all us lowly, ordinary citizens. What do Rebekah and Rupert think about ISIS? Surely, you discuss the subject on your country weekends?

 

POSTED COMMENTS TO A STORY IN THE GUARDIAN

 

 

David Cameron is America’s biggest fool abroad.

This entire adventure, the CIA’s causing a coup in Ukraine and precipitating a civil war, was a gigantic mistake, a mistake fraught with great risk from the beginning and serving no purpose but to gain a psychological advantage over Russia.

Not only that, but it has always involved the support of neo-Nazi and fascist-militia types, present in Ukraine in sizable numbers and heavily armed.

Russia could literally sweep Ukraine off the map in weeks, but it hasn’t done so and has shown not the least intention of doing so.

So leave the situation alone.

Ukraine’s current government is so incompetent it will fall eventually anyway. It has thrown away a good part of its army to achieve nothing. It has shot down a civilian airliner without ever acknowledging the fact. It has thrown Ukraine’s economy into turmoil. It has endangered its own energy supplies.

These are dangerous clowns, and the only people genuinely happy with them are frat-boys and plug-uglies guffawing in Langley, Virginia.

Of course, I realize Cameron is by this act genuflecting to Washington. Possibly even he realizes in private how stupid it is, but he is a card-carrying member of the cult worshipping American pre-eminence.

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Response to a reader who took exception to my comment about shooting down Flight MH-17:

The simple fact that the investigators are silent tells you a great deal, silent under American influence.

Believe me, if any evidence showed the Russians responsible, we’d hear about it.

It is not that complex a job to determine what happened. It’s been done many times in many places.

The key fact always left out of the story is that America has the world’s most sophisticated spy satellites, called Keyhole Satellites. They cover the earth daily, and one of them was directly overhead the area at the time.

Where are the pictures? Where are the various data tracks?

Simple answer: hidden.

Also, as you should know, America has some of the world’s most sophisticated radars, and believe me, some of them are always trained on the Russian border.

So where are the radar tracks, which absolutely must exist for this event?

Hidden, clearly.

And what is the only reasonable explanation for withholding all the evidence?

To prevent the West from being horrified by what the incompetent Ukrainian military has done.

After all, the mess in Ukraine is their baby, so to speak.

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FOOTNOTE: A MUCH LATER STATEMENT FROM THE MALAYSIAN PRIME MINISTER AS QUOTED IN “SOUTHFRONT”

 

“WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE?”: MALAYSIAN PM SLAMS MH17 INVESTIGATION AS NOT IMPARTIAL AND POLITICALLY MOTIVATED

 

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said that the investigation into the 2014 crash of the Malaysia Airlines-operated Boeing in Ukraine was not conducted in an impartial manner, but was rather focused on simply pinning the blame on Russia for political reasons.

“For some reasons, Malaysia was not allowed to check the black box to see what happened. We don’t know why we are excluded from the examination but from the very beginning, we see too much politics in it and the idea was not to find out how this happened but seems to be concentrated on trying to pin it to the Russians. This is not a neutral kind of examination,“ the prime minister said, as quoted by the Malaysian National News Agency.

“They are accusing Russia but where is the evidence? We know the missile that brought down the plane is a Russian type missile, but it could also be made in Ukraine. You need strong evidence to show it was fired by the Russians, it could be by the rebels in Ukraine, it could be Ukrainian government because they too have the same missile”.

Both Malaysia and Russia were excluded from partaking in the investigation.

If one translates the recent remarks by the Malaysian prime minister from diplomatic language to direct speech, we see that he stated that Malaysia has little doubts that the MH17 was intentionally shot down by the Ukrainian government. He also points out that the side controlling the JIT and thus the investigation is concealing the criminals, hiding data, and limiting the participation of third parties in the ‘international’ investigation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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 IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Moscow has a population of about 11.5 million people.

Russia’s population is about 142 million people.

A crowd of 10,000 is less than 1/1000 of the city’s population.

And less than 1/10,000 of Russia’s population.

Not a big deal, I think.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

No, they do not.

The law is the law, and these gals knowingly and deliberately broke the law in Russia, even recording their acts.

Their behavior wasn’t just illegal under the laws of Russia, it was disrespectful and rude to millions who view the church as a sacred place.

Just try doing something like that at Israel’s Wailing Wall. There wouldn’t be enough left for a decent burial when the D-9 bulldozers were finished.

And we have countless examples of genuinely unjust imprisonment in scores of countries.

Only the other day Bahrain sentenced a human rights activist to three years in prison, and his “crime” didn’t involve the disrespectful behavior of these gals towards the beliefs of millions of others.

No word from the Globe editorial machine on that. Nor do we hear the Globe bemoan the thousands held in Israeli prisons against all proper law.

And what of the CIA’s International Torture Gulag? No words of Globe concern there.

How about the more than two million refugees from America’s war crimes in Iraq? Where’s the concern?

Indeed, the biggest portion of these poor people were given shelter by that terrible country, Syria, where American paid goons are killing by the thousands and trying to overthrow a government?

I could write a list that would fill the newspaper of the savageries and injustices we see in the world right now.

And, believe me, a few goofy gals who deeply offended the beliefs of others would not be on it.

But the good old Globe editors are right out there on the front lines with that glorious defender of human rights and democratic values, Madonna, whining and bellowing about the trivial.

I have no doubt whatever that their sentences will be commuted at some point.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

The Russians are absolutely correct on this issue.

The U.S. has not only lied consistently – talking about imagined Iranian threats – but its entire effort here is in the nature of aggression.

It is the kind of aggression psychologists call “passive-aggression,” a condition in which a certain personality plays the role of weak or passive person while actually carefully manipulating every opportunity to attack another.

It is America which for a decade has espoused the terrible concept of pre-emptive strikes against those believed to offer a future threat, so Russia merely is mimicking the concept.

The American missiles clearly are intended as a threat against Russia’s ICBM force.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

It seems clear that Putin commands more support than anyone else in Russia.

It is equally clear that the small number of demonstrators against Putin, undoubtedly covertly encouraged by the CIA, represents a small minority.

So why do we keep getting junk-think articles like this one from Arel Braun?

Because Putin is intelligent and capable and takes a stand on a number of international issues opposed to the official line from Washington.

As far as Russia’s painful future, Mr. Braun seems unaware that Russia has already been through the worst – a great depression and huge convulsions following the collapse of communism.

We did not hear from people like Braun then.

I believe Russia has a great future – with their resources and gifted people – and they need someone like Putin, not a drunken clown like Boris Yetsin.

The world needs multi-polar power and not a single super one like the United States. That is something in the interests of the overwhelming majority of the world’s people.

We’ve already seen the U.S. behave as a high-handed bully many times in recent years.

Apologists for Israel’s bloody excesses and irrational demands – Mr. Braun having been one of these in the past – do not agree. They want an America uber alles to keep Israel in an unchallenged position as Mideast junior partner in determining world affairs .

I cannot attribute any other understandable motive for an article like this.

Russia will become a more perfect democracy in future, but it needs to grow and become strong and build a strong middle class, and Putin is a pretty good bet for the kind of leadership needed for now.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO AN EDITORIAL IN THE TELEGRAPH

You’ve no basis for saying this.

I’ve seen nothing that would warrant Putin being characterized this way.

He is not the kind of democratic spirit we tend to have in the West, but he is intelligent and capable, and he is the kind of leader a huge nation struggling to get its footing needs.

No democratic nation in the West is without an early history of strongmen, aristocrats, or kings. Indeed, today, those of great wealth still exercise inordinate power in our so-called democratic states.

Just look at the example of Rupert Murdoch, a man whose enterprises appear to have broken every British tradition of civility, privacy, and equality before the law.

But then the True Blue Right Wingers of Telegraph’s editorial staff don’t need proof to spout about those they don’t like, do they?

The truth is we have one absolutely proven gangster state in the world, and that is Israel.

It steals from others whatever it wants.

It kills anyone it feels like killing.

It holds more than 4 million people in seemingly endless bondage.

It threatens the security of every state within a thousand miles of its border, whatever that happens to be on a particular day.

Its leader is so flagrant a liar that two heads of major states were overheard saying so.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Putin is right.

The United States knows no limits anymore to its interference in the internal affairs of other countries.

Just imagine the shoe on the other foot.

When it was even suspected that China might have filtered campaign money through to Bill Clinton, there was all the belly-over-the-belt crowd snorting about sacred American elections.

It’s enough to make an honest person puke.

The United States establishment hates Putin precisely because he is clever and effective.

They would much rather see the spectacle of a drunken clown like Yeltsin and a people languishing in a great depression.

That is precisely why – after decades of Cold War and trillions spent on “defense” – the United States did almost nothing at the time to help Russia, despite pleas from countries like Germany who extended billions in aid.

Mrs Clinton is a rather sickening figure anymore, always on the wrong, always making the wrong arguments, and always serving the imperial interests of America’s bloated establishment.
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“Putin and others like him are a good reason why Canada could never invest in Russia’s fighter jets even though they are very capable and cost effective. Saving 30 million per plane is worthless if Putin decides he doesn’t like us anymore and witholds [sic] spares and upgrades.”

That is an uninformed comment.

As though the U.S. hasn’t on many occasions in many countries withheld spares.

And please, John Diefenbaker only destroyed Canada’s Avro Arrow project, one of the world’s most advanced planes at the time, chopping up every last plane, owing to pressure from the United States over competition in high-performance aircraft sales.

Sadly, he buckled to the pressure, but the United States being such a dominant economy has many ways to make you suffer for failing to toe the line.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY DOUG SAUNDERS IN THE TORONTO GLOBE AND MAIL

“Mr. Putin’s Potemkin-village politics…”

Sorry, there’s almost no thought or analysis in this column.

Just how, in any way, do Putin’s photo-ops differ from what we experience?

Virtually every headline in our major news sources is synthetic.

And our leaders turn virtually one-hundred-and-eighty degrees once they’re in office after an election, often doing precisely what they condemned.

The truth is that Putin is exceptionally intelligent and energetic, and that alone marks him out from many of our leaders.

He has flaws, but are you telling me that our PM, who was held in contempt of Parliament and has lied to us countless times about large or small things and is known for a furious private temper, does not?

And if you want photo-ops even more faked up than Putin’s look to Harper in a parka up north.

He puts on periodic shows to earn nationalist credentials even while he’s busy negotiating away a great deal of Canada’s sovereignty to Americans, the only people who are a serious threat to both northern sovereignty and the Great Lakes.

And the stuff about revolutions is utter nonsense.

Genuine revolutions, like the French or the Russian, virtually never succeed over time. The French had the monarchy back in no time, as did the Russians under a different name.

Revolutions like that in America are often successful, but then they aren’t correctly called revolutions at all. The so-called American Revolution was only a revolt of the locals against foreign lordship and indeed a very conservative event, leaving such godawful institutions as slavery a thriving concern. It basically saw a small group of petty American aristocrats – Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, slaveholders all – replace a group of foreign aristocrats.

And it is a fact that America wasn’t anything like a democracy after its “revolution.” The Senate was appointed until 1913. The President was not elected by the popular vote, but by the propertied aristocrats admitted to the Electoral College. The Supreme made no effort at all to enforce the Bill of Rights – for a very long time, it was only a high-sounding and empty statement of principles, what you might call green-wash.

Blacks, of course, could not vote (effectively not until the 1960s). Women could not vote (not until 1921). Most white males could not vote because they did not own enough property to qualify.

America took about two centuries to become something vaguely resembling a democracy, and even now it has a government within the government – the military, intelligence, security establishment serving giant corporate interests.

Look at America’s recent experience to understand the role of the government within a government.

Bush was likely the most ill-informed and bad-intentioned person ever to be president, and he wasn’t even cleanly elected. Then the people elected a man who sometimes wore sandals, didn’t immediately wear an American-flag pin on his lapel, and taught Constitutional law. After less than three years, you would not know in almost any important detail that Bush was not still president.
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All genuine democracies develop slowly – that is a salient fact of European and North American history.

Always, we first have aristocrats or lords or family compacts – always.

Then through the gradual growth of the middle class under steady economic growth, a large class with substantial resources emerges who do not see their interests being represented by the aristocrats or family compact members.

Then we see a gradual change in political institutions to accommodate the new sizable and growing middle class. The process takes different forms in different countries, owing to cultural and historical circumstances, but it always takes this general pattern.

The same is underway in Russia. At least Putin represents a rather enlightened aristocrat to guide the nation through some of its most tender years. Yeltsin, who blubbered about democracy, was a helpless buffoon and a constant drunk.