John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY PATRICK COCKBURN

 

“The US Has Faced Decline Before – But Nothing Like What’s to Come”

 

I regard this as one of Mr. Cockburn’s more perceptive columns.

He has definitely captured some important truths here.

They are hard ones for Americans to accept.

I find it remarkable how well China is handling matters like information and assistance to the world.

It comes at a time of tireless misinformation and blundering from American leadership.

And the whole world can plainly see that.

Also, despite all the pain and suffering now and in the coming months, the US busies itself still with pointless, unnecessary hostilities in Venezuela, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, and many other locations, making yet more people more miserable.

By contrast, there’s China offering cooperation, partnership, and help.

Xi’s intelligence and mild manner couldn’t be in more contrast to the grimaces and stream of noisy errors from Trump.

Putin very much also is making an effort abroad but Russia’s resources are considerably less than China’s.

We are fortunate to have two such gifted leaders to help offset some of the chaotic rumblings of Washington.

John Chuckman

COMMENT ON AMERICA’S ACTIONS AGAINST IRAN AND OTHER STATES

“It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

I can’t imagine better words to describe Trump’s actions against Iran – all of them, from tearing-up the working international nuclear treaty to imposing war-like sanctions, which indeed hurt millions of children and poor people, and  to threatening with warships and nuclear-capable bombers, and now to assassinating the second-most important man in the country, a national hero, a vicious act that demands a response.

Is it even possible to conceive of a more passionately destructive set of actions, unprovoked and without reason except to satisfy an urge to tell others what to do? How on earth can a nation call itself “great,” as America so frequently does, when that is how it behaves?

In what way did any of it make any part of the world’s people better off or safer? It added only pain and suffering and fear to a great many lives and created threats of war that hadn’t existed. And it hugely decreased the future capacity of the world’s nations to trust the word and good faith of the United States.

Of course, that set of acts is only the worst of a bad lot. There was the desperate attempt to topple a twice-elected government in Venezuela, going to such extremes as turning off everyone’s electricity a couple of times, blockading the country including its receipt of medical necessities, working to collapse its major industries, and literally stealing many of the country’s assets abroad.

Almost at the same time, another coup, a successful one, was staged in Bolivia, toppling a popular, elected government, one elected multiple times.

New threats and warnings were issued to Nicaragua and Cuba, both countries which have suffered horribly under past American belligerence.

A number of other horrors from the past decade go right on generating death and misery, too – misery in the broken ruins of Libya, once the best place in Africa to live with all public amenities from good water to education supplied free, misery in the never-recovered catastrophe of Iraq, in poor Yemen, and in the beautiful land of Syria plagued by paid outsiders, mercenaries, supplied with many terrible weapons, who kill and destroy on a large scale.

And everyone in Ukraine and in the rest of Europe pays a price for America’s coup there – a civil war has killed thousands, the country’s economy collapsed under an incompetent installed government, its population has seriously declined as people leave for jobs elsewhere, huge sets of war-like sanctions have cut billions in healthy trade between Europe and Russia, regular threatening military displays and large-scale exercises are conducted right on Russia’s border – these last supposedly over a Russian “invasion” of Ukraine which never occurred.

The press and political speeches are filled with threatening rhetoric and demands for big new spending on the means of destruction – all in the face of no threat and indeed a situation in Russia everyone in the West would have deliriously cheered back in the 1970s, a reasonable, temperate government ready to do business with anyone and call them “partner.” But Europe and Russia can’t do so basic and necessary a thing as buy-and-sell a commodity like natural gas without immense pressures being brought against them by the United States.

We have a vicious trade war with China, predicated on no more principle than that “We think you’ve been far too successful in your stunning rise [the rise of China being the greatest and most important human achievement of our age], and we want different arrangements which take some of that success away from you, and we’ll hit you with every sanction and tariff we can think of until you give them to us.”

That marks greatness being displayed by America?

There is not one of those activities that the world would not be better off without. Safer, more prosperous, more secure, happier, holding more optimism for the future – in other words, virtually all of the activity abroad by the United States for years represents a dead-weight loss for humanity and the community of nations. That’s quite an achievement. And the cost in dollars has been colossal.

Of course, I blame Trump, but, as I’ve said before, it certainly is not the work of just Trump, as hopeless and vicious and ignorant as he is. There have been no efforts by other branches of America’s government to halt or hinder the craziness. They are all complicit.

Please note, the candidates for the Democratic Presidential nomination, none of them except one unlikely one, even recognize this terrible problem or how to address it. So, for sure, as is usual in the costly stage shows called American elections, when it’s over, no matter which side wins, you will find the same situation prevailing. Just more rude noise and bellowing with Trump, and less without Trump.

America seeks what is not possible given its relative decline in the face of global growth and change and progress. And it seeks it fired by a burning, fanatical belief that it holds an exceptional place in God’s creation.

I fear that deadly combination of American delusions has the potential to do far greater harm than it already has.

John Chuckman

COMMENT TO A RE-PUBLISHED ARTICLE BY THE LATE ROBERT PARRY IN CONSORTIUM NEWS

 

“More Second Amendment Madness”

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/08/10/more-second-amendment-madness/

 

“… false notion that the Framers of the U.S. Constitution incorporated the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights so an armed population could fight the government that the Framers had just created.”

 

The historical truth in a nutshell.

However, when you are dealing with fanatics and ideologues – literally, adherents of a secular religious cult such as American Patriotism – truth has about the same impact as pointing out the absurdity of Lot’s wife or Noah’s Ark or Jonah and the whale or the loaves and the fishes.

There is a fundamental divide in human beings when it comes to matters of belief, and especially intensely-held and fear-forged beliefs. Rational argument, evidence, and logic all get tossed, rejected vehemently because they conflict with what the adherent wants to believe, the adherent perhaps not even fully conscious about why it is he or she so desperately wants to believe.

It is just a fact that an awful lot of Americans want guns. They have paranoid fears, and guns make them feel more secure. They are conditioned by a national history and mythology literally built around the importance of guns, in everything from the frontier and cowboys and cavalry and Rough Riders to Prohibition and threats of communism and terror. And today’s vast American military and empire only provide a constant reinforcing sense of how important guns are in the affairs of state.

This issue is one of those which mark the limits of human rationality.

Considering that we are descendants of animals related to chimpanzees, it perhaps really should not surprise anyone.

Just think of how charming and appealing a chimpanzee can be with its big eyes and smile and stunts and remarkably human child-like intelligence.

And yet we now know from long and careful studies in the wild that part of the chimps’ basic behavior includes clans marching out for surprise attacks on neighboring chimp clans, fracturing skulls and driving the living from their homes and food supply. Sound familiar?

The problem around guns and violence in America is the country’s existing form of government. What the early government, so admirable in high school civics textbooks, began morphing into not many years after its creation.

You have an aristocratic, imperial form of government, itself hostile and belligerent to so many things in the world. It governs an empire built on violence, both inside the continental United States and outside in its possessions abroad.

It is truly incapable of dealing with many domestic matters. It is not really interested or concerned, except for a brief show of mollifying speeches to constituents and meetings after some terrible mass killing. Then it’s back to business as usual.

America’s government responds to money and power, and not to ideas or ideals or human appeals. It pretty much lets “the people” continue in whatever unpleasant social situations they find themselves – violence, injustice, lack of medical care, poor public schools, immense poverty – while it wheels and deals in the lives of still other people living abroad.

Just think about it. What could you actually expect at home from the kind of politicians who created Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and dozens of coups and blockades and interventions, killing and maiming millions? Hurling millions from their homes as desperate refugees? Refugees then often despised and ridiculed by the very same politicians? That, sadly, characterizes the very fabric of American government.

The kind of politicians who tolerate, and even praise as “restrained,” the behavior of Israel at Gaza where it literally ambushes unarmed crowds, week after week after week, demonstrating for rights? And the kind of politicians who continue arming Israel, heavily, even in violation of their own “showcase” laws concerning the use of exported American weapons?

No, you cannot expect much at home from a government displaying that kind of behavior abroad.

And, no, you cannot possibly have rational gun laws in the domestic chaos of jurisdictions that is American society. Where any one local jurisdiction even tries – as in some cities responding to their desperate residents – it is surrounded by a sea of gun-running and legal sales from neighboring jurisdictions. It can achieve nothing, except providing the true Patriot fanatics with yet another example of how gun control fails, something for them to smirk at.

Gun control must be national, but what are the chances of that in America?

_______________________

Response to another comment who used the term ‘snowflake’ to describe the concerns of Consortium News with guns:

 

Truly, for those aware of the realities of history, few expressions are more devoid of meaning than “rights.”

It remains a favorite American refrain, but it is about as meaningful as “privacy” is today with the NSA and intrusive corporate internet monopolies.

Such words resemble those of a child about Santa Claus.

Talk about “snowflake.”

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2019/04/12/john-chuckman-comment-a-few-observations-on-the-idea-of-rights/

 

https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2016/04/22/john-chuckman-essay-the-illusion-of-rights/

 

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ITEM IN MOON OF ALABAMA

 

“There are freshmen from Michigan and Maryland in Congress who recently made some news with comments about the Zionist lobby. Some anti-imperialists and progressives lauded them for their efforts and defended them against attacks. But these are wolfs in sheep clothing.

“Rep. Ilhan Omar: ‘The people of Syria revolted against Assad’s repressive dictatorship 8 years ago today, demanding a more just and free government. Peace loving people around the world stand in solidarity with them in this struggle!’

“Rashida Tlaib: ‘The anniversary of the uprising against the oppression in Syria was yesterday. We must recognize the struggle of those who organized and stood up against injustice. It is my hope that we can see a Syria that is truly free one day.’”

 

I like Ilhan Omar for speaking out on Palestine, just as I like Tulsi Gabbard’s efforts to understand the ugly war in Syria. I admire them both for public courage.

But, please, this is America we are talking about.

To expect anyone in American politics to come along with completely fresh and informed and honest views is just dreaming.

Just as with Bernie Sanders’ so-called socialism or, indeed, anything at all about Sanders.

He’s a distinguished-looking bag of hot air.

He showed everyone what he was made of in his confrontation with the woman who plainly stole the nomination from him, Hillary Clinton.

He’s never been a strong voice against global empire, against the secret terror of the CIA, against the vast intrusions of the NSA, or against the monstrous waste and mass killing of the Pentagon.

And then we have that thoroughbred phony, Elizabeth Warren, making precious little noises all the time about progressive matters while voting for hateful defense and security budgets and never opposing all those wars and offering us in speeches smatterings of the establishment’s poison about Iran.

I’ve said it many times. There are no liberals, genuine liberals, in the United States, at least not in any positions of authority or influence. Not one in the national government. Not one in charge of a major news source. None guiding the nation’s great institutions and foundations and education establishments.

America is about empire and the wars required to sustain it, and that is pretty much it. The rest is elaborate window dressing, theater, playacting. Empires do not get built and maintained and expanded by nice guys, and the resources constantly pouring into empire leave no room for great human or humane efforts.

Another thing I’ve said many times is that you can have either an empire or a decent country, but you cannot have both. America made its choice, long ago.

The entire atmosphere of the place, the education system, the press, the churches, the politics – all immersed and saturated in war and the drive for empire with little room for other values. It can be seen and heard and felt in a thousand details.

What could be more blatantly unfair and anti-democratic than what we see being done to Venezuela today? Yet, where are the American voices against their government’s open use of threats and terror? The politicians? The editors? The great university heads? The church leaders?

Some might claim an excuse over events in Syria because many facts about responsibility for that set of atrocities remained well hidden for a long time. Many facts remain hidden still, despite our learning a good deal here and there.

But here, in the case of Venezuela, we see daily the blunt face of fascism telling people who they should vote for, who should swear himself in as President, who should control the country’s assets, and destroying the national power grid, an act of terror which undoubtedly killed and injured many and destroyed what was in the fridges of literally millions of the most ordinary people.

Why isn’t anyone shouting at the top of their lungs?

All this done by men who say they respect democracy and human rights and expect to be respected in the world as leaders.

You know, Hitler gave one of the great speeches about peace, not long before he started a new war. It was reported by that great journalist and chronicler of Nazi Germany, William Shirer.

And, under the Nazis, Germany had some window dressings of progressivity, various socialistic measures, if you will. It even sometimes held plebiscites.

John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY ALEX KRAINER IN RUSSIA INSIDER

 

“I Wrote a Book Exposing Bill Browder’s Deceptions Because He Could Trigger a Major War With Russia

“Having experienced, first-hand, a vicious war in Yugoslavia, caused by the same kind lying Browder engages in, this author felt he had to speak up.”

 

https://russia-insider.com/en/i-wrote-book-exposing-bill-browders-deceptions-because-he-could-trigger-major-war-russia/ri24782

 

This is a well-written piece. I hope it stimulates people to read the book.

“Today most westerners seem ready to believe that Putin is a tyrant, that he routinely has critics and political rivals assassinated, that he amassed a vast personal fortune and that he runs Russia as his own personal fiefdom.”

Yes, and why is that? Our newspapers and broadcasts are larded with negative stuff about Russia all the time. I can’t recall a time recently seeing a good story about Russia, a huge country with all kinds of diverse and interesting things going on. Some of the stories reach frightening levels of paranoia, as this, following, not long ago in The Guardian (I could cite many more from that truly threadbare excuse for a newspaper, but this one marks a peak in their relentless efforts):

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/05/21/john-chuckman-comment-absurd-lengths-to-which-our-press-goes-to-attack-russia-britains-guardian-holds-hate-russia-day-today-some-of-its-stuff-is-so-ham-fisted-it-reads-like-1959-pravda-atta/

When it isn’t actual accusations of some unproved event, such as Theresa May’s weird Skripal Affair, it is just a clear assumption and tone that our press – always following our dishonest politicians as closely as baby ducks imprinted to waddle behind their mothers – is speaking about a country that is somehow “other,” a country that doesn’t operate by the same rules good old America does.

But it really shouldn’t surprise anyone who has a little history and who observes and thinks about things.

First, we must always remember that America waged a 24 hour-a-day internal propaganda war for decades on the subjects of Russia and communism. The FBI worked tirelessly on the subject, as did the CIA, and the press simply was constantly putting attitudes and perspectives “out there” instead of news or facts.

I still remember, as a young man in my home town of Chicago, when Lyndon Johnson first started committing men towards what would literally become an American-created holocaust in Vietnam, seeing a disturbing editorial in one of the more “liberal” papers in the city, the Chicago Sun-Times – liberal, that is, only by comparison with something like the Chicago Tribune, an unrelenting advocate for all things on the extreme Right. The editorial was headlined, I still remember, “The Reds Are at the Gates!”

Well, decades of that kind of stuff does leave some toxic residue, even after the world has changed. That’s why Germany carried on a long and intense campaign against Nazism after the Hitler years. But voraciously anti-Russia, anti-communist America never has made any effort to expunge the memories and results of the likes of J. Edgar Hoover and Allen Dulles and James Jesus Angleton.

And, today, America’s establishment has new reasons for not doing so and indeed for re-igniting the old fires. It is determined to dominate the globe and force advantages from other nations as a means of avoiding its inevitable relative economic decline and the future change in political influence that that entails. The Neocon Wars in the Middle East have been only one part of an effort in many directions and through many means, including threats and sanctions and coups and attacking international organizations of every description.

Russia and China, naturally enough, are seen as barriers against this intense new effort, but Russia’s geography, touching, as it does, America’s unofficial satrapy of Europe and with proximity to the Middle East containing America’s much-privileged colony of Israel, plus its capacity to literally obliterate the United States, make it the greatest target of establishment hate. Russia today and a number of other states welcome a coming multi-polar world. America’s establishment regards it only with fear and loathing.

America has done nothing now abroad but bomb and kill people for over a decade and a half. I don’t know the actual number of deaths – American sources are very coy about how many people they kill, as we learned in the First Gulf War where the number of Iraqis killed was never offered, although we know it was huge with B-52s dropping full loads on sand forts in the desert – but I’m sure the total comes in at no less than two million.

They’ve destroyed, or attempted to destroy, a number of societies – Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and others. And they work away at threatening and manipulating still others, everywhere from Iran to Venezuela or Nicaragua. They also tolerate atrocities by Saudi Arabia and Israel, and, to somewhat a lesser extent, by Egypt, because those governments serve and support their overall purpose. Browbeaten governments like Britain and France work as willing helpers while constantly misrepresenting to their own people what it is they actually are doing, as with the cutthroats of ISIS or al Nusra in Syria, whom they have supported and assisted.

And then there are the millions of desperate refugees created by all that destruction, so many they nearly destabilized Europe, and discussion of refugees in the United States, in its politics and in some popular culture, has turned into a national festival of hate, as though refugees did nothing but rob and rape and kill. And I am not exaggerating in the least.

Trump has been a keen promoter of these views and attitudes, but his words do not go out to an unreceptive audience. There are large portions of American society very receptive to such stuff, just as they are receptive to crude stuff about Russia.

And, of course, we have a hi-tech state-operated extrajudicial killing machinery that carries on day and night murdering people no one even knows anything about. The victims are selected by the very folks doing the killing, the thugs and psychopaths at the CIA. And when I say “victims” I’m not even referring to the many innocents killed in the explosions of Hellfire missiles, deemed as “collateral damage,” I’m referring to the targets themselves, victims in every sense of the word, people condemned to be burned alive with no charges or lawyer or trial or rights of any kind.

Now, while all that inhumanity and brutality from their own government goes on, you would be hard put to find large numbers of Americans who know much about it. Their press and politicians never directly speak in such terms. Everything reported is couched in euphemism or they just recite downright lies. And there is the fact that Americans often take very little interest in what is going on abroad – in part because America is itself such a large and noisy and dynamic and time-consuming society. But it is an attitude which very much assists the government in its great volume of dirty work. Surprisingly few people abroad I think appreciate this important fact.

When George Bush was running for president, he once bragged and laughed over telling people he never read the international section of his newspaper. It was the kind of stupid joke you expect from a very stupid man, but the anecdote is notable in that Bush felt very comfortable in making it while appealing for votes. The irony of the presidency now being an office having more to do with events abroad (in the imperial wars and manipulations of others around the world) than events at home is lost on many Americans. Their attitudes are extremely naïve.

There is also the tendency in people – especially people with strong ideological beliefs as many Americans have, which work to insulate the mind against outside influence, exactly the way strong religious beliefs do – to not really see what they are looking at. The best example of many I could cite, is Israel’s current relentless slaughter of unarmed marchers in Gaza. Organized gangs of snipers behind fences, week after week, shoot into crowds of people demonstrating for some rights. Something like 18,000 have been injured and something like 180 killed in cold blood, including women and children and even well-marked medics. Yet, Americans see this atrocity and cling to the narrative that Israel is only defending itself from terror, even showing “restraint,” and their press and politicians faithfully work hard to reassure them of that.

Of course, all of this stresses the importance of the press abroad, Russia’s being extremely important today because the press in American-dominated places like Britain and France reads and sounds a great deal like the press in America, mostly making the same assumptions and promoting the same narratives. It is actually quite a distressing phenomenon to anyone seeking decent information or even a little different perspective on events.

No critically-minded person automatically accepts the truth of everything in the Russian press either. Russia has its own efforts at persuasion and motives for evasion at times, but on many international issues it is clear that some valid information is supplied by Russia. That can be confirmed in many ways, from the voices of truly independent, respectable journalists to the rare authoritative voice speaking out from within a country such as Britain or the United States.

And even where it cannot be confirmed, the time-honored analytical technique of comparing what two very different sources, like the United States and Russia, claim about a story can be quite helpful in revealing roughly where the truth is. After all, that’s precisely what judges and juries in our courts do all the time. It is a valid technique, but you must have that other side of the story to use it.

If you are someone in the United States or Britain, say, who relies, day-in, day-out, on some single news source such as CBS or The Washington Post or the BBC or The Guardian, I can absolutely assure you, at least on the matters discussed here, that you are misinformed.

That’s a sad reflection on our Western society, with its claims to Enlightenment and humanitarian principles, but I can’t think of another broad statement that is any truer. The motives for deception and the size of the stakes for doing so rise tremendously with the dirty work of empire and aggression, the very work in which the American government is now engaged full-time.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT

 

“BAE Systems ‘does not know’ if British weapons used to commit war crimes, chairman admits

“Chairman told shareholders gathered at the company’s annual general meeting they were not complicit in war crimes allegedly committed by Saudi Arabia using BAE-made planes and bombs in Yemen.”

 

Well, something we have learned just recently is that Britain has been using thermobaric bombs in Syria. I am not aware of the manufacturer, but the Ministry of Defence apparently accidentally revealed they are used from drones.

These horrible weapons are like a hi-tech version of fire-bombing in WWII.

They use the oxygen in the air to create an extremely intense force, the pressure alone can crush internal organs.

This is barbaric. No wonder the British press is always going on with security service disinformation about Assad’s army using poison gas and “barrel” bombs.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO A COLUMN IN THE GUARDIAN BY PAUL MASON

 

Paul, if you are aware of even one week in human history when the world was not awash with hatred, please let me know.

We are nothing but chimpanzees with larger brains, and, as we know, modern studies of those cute and appealing creatures have demonstrated them as being quite vicious and murderous.

I don’t know what Mein Kampf returning to Germany has to do with anything serious or dangerous, but just bringing it up and associating it with some other larger events demonstrates bias.

This is a tedious, antiquated book which would not even be understood by many today. There is no magical mumbo-jumbo in this book to capture people’s minds.

It is a threat to no one except in some imaginations.

But ignorance very much is a threat to all of us.

The book is of interest to scholars and historians, so why shouldn’t it be available?

Indeed, in Hitler’s day, the book became a kind of social token, much like the Bible, with nice editions being presented as gifts on marriages or birthdays.

Virtually no one ever read it then, just as few read the Bible today.

And, if you want a written record of bloodshed, injustice and hatred, you would have a mighty hard time doing better than the Old Testament.

It was Hitler’s strange brooding personality and gift for fiery live speech that gave him any appeal, but we should always remember he never got more than 37% of the vote in free elections.

He was appointed Chancellor by the ancient President von Hindenburg trying to save his county from chaos in the streets.

After that, Hitler seized power through a series of dark operations, such as the Reichstag Fire, which together amounted to a coup.

Why had the streets of Germany become such a mess that Hindenburg, an old school German officer, appointed someone he genuinely didn’t like?

Because the fine, liberal-spirited government, known as the Weimar Republic, which arose in Germany after WWI was allowed to fall to pieces by Western interests. It wasn’t helped in its many serious problems.

We see such patterns today, but not in the places you may think. We see it in Syria where a tolerant and reasonably fair government is under savage attack by foreigner-subsidized lunatics.

We see it in Libya where America and others decided to destroy a man who once ran his state reasonably well.

We see it in Egypt where absolute government has returned.

We see it in Iraq, a once prosperous country with a growing middle class which undoubtedly would have become democratic eventually, left to its own devices.

None of these events were normal and a result of internal forces.

They all involve external interference and manipulation, the chief players being the United States and its associates in the region.

Now, there’s the real concern for thoughtful people who want peace and justice.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT

 

“… ISIS ideology stretches ‘deep into Muslim society…”

What a complete ass Tony Blair is.

First, he knows nothing about Muslim society, but that fact doesn’t stop him from making sweeping observations.

Second and most important, ISIS itself is an artificial construct, as the duplicitous Blair well knows. It includes many Westerners, even special forces under cover from several nations. It is supported and armed by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and America. It is led by people associated with Western powers. It cannot be therefore an accurate representation of anything about Muslims.

Third, it is really important to remember that the Muslim world has been treated horribly in recent years, country after country having been attacked or destabilized by America and smarmy allies like Tony Blair. There is a wealth of abuse and grievances behind the decision of any young man who does join such an organization.

Drones are killing people in half a dozen countries.

Syria is under terrible attack from outside.

Yemen is under attack by the absolute monarch of Saudi Arabia.

Libya is in a shambles.

Iraq is a broken rump state.

Egypt is back to a dictatorship.

Israel, as usual, abuses millions with no one even taking serious notice.

And the religion of more than a billion people is almost daily maligned in our press, as you have done in publishing Tony Blair’s malign musings.

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 COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT

Mark Steel is just a second-rate propagandist.

Of course, China has its flaws, and some serious ones.

But perspective is everything.

After all, let’s not forget that Britain did help mightily in killing about a million people in Iraq, the creation of a couple of million miserable refugees, and the destruction of large parts of an advanced society for generations.

And Britain happily supports America’s horror in Syria, the letting-loose of tens of thousands of well-equipped cutthroats in an effort to destroy a beautiful land.

I haven’t heard any public cries from Downing Street over the Saudi terror campaign in Yemen, including the use of cluster bombs on civilians. Perhaps I missed something?

No, I don’t think I did. There was nothing either about all the Saudi beheadings and a sentence of crucifixion either. But there was a huge secret arms sale and a project for building prisons in one of the world’s great tyrannies.

Please, stuff like this of Mr. Steel’s is just clap-trap. I doubt very much he raised his voice on such other atrocities as Israel’s murderous abuse of several million Palestinians for half a century. This remains the world’s single greatest example of a complete squashing of human rights and decency: the Palestinians have no votes, no rights, no future, and they can’t even enjoy their homes and farms with any security. Again, that is a matter about which we never hear from good old David or Mr. Steel for that matter.

After all, for David to do so, even slightly, would seriously harm relations with Rupert Murdoch, a man, by the way, whose British publishing empire was built in part on hacking the intimate telephone conversations of hundreds of unfortunate people, including victims of violent crime. To say nothing of casting a pall over those delightful country weekends with Rupert’s designated creature in Britain, red-haired bombshell Rebekah Brooks

Interesting, despite China’s shortcomings in human rights, it has pretty well lived in peace with its neighbors for its entire modern existence.

That certainly cannot be said of the United States or its colony in the Middle East, the two most dangerous states in the modern world, both of whom get David’s unlimited support and affection.

______________________

America has given us nothing but wars and coups and “interventions” since the end of the Second World War. The toll of their attempts to control the planet, including such glorious episodes as the Vietnam War, has been literally as many people killed – mostly civilian, as is the case in all modern war – as were killed in the Holocaust.

Three million victims just in Vietnam, another million in Iraq, a million in Cambodia, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Chile, Guatemala, and on and on.

Israel, America’s colony in the Middle East, has behaved as a miniature replica of the mother country. It has done nothing but kill and suppress people for 65 years, having invaded every neighbor that it has, many of them two or three times.

I don’t see how anyone can write what Mark Steel writes without being entirely ignorant of modern history or deliberately ignoring it. In either case, the result is not worth publishing.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE THE TORONTO STAR

Sorry, but your calling Putin a bully is mighty shabby stuff, Justin Trudeau.

It truly makes you sound like Stephen Harper, likely the most dishonest and disliked politician in Canadian history, a true bully, if you will.

I do not see how there’s really anything you must tell Putin, unless you count repeating some boilerplate phrases borrowed from America’s sprawling junkyard of needless attacks and propaganda.

If there is a legitimate bully on the world’s stage today, it is, without question, America, responsible as it is for the deaths, destruction, and refugees of Syria.

It is America also that is responsible for the mess in Ukraine, putting an illegitimate government in place by coup and then supporting its awful policies of intolerance and war.

And even in the case of Flight MH-17, it is America who has kept things hidden. It never released data from its radars and spy satellite – which was overhead at the time – and that is mighty suspicious. Likely it was afraid of seeing its coup-induced government in Ukraine embarrassed. So we’ve had long delays and much evidence never used and a useless report.

Putin is the most able leader on the international scene today, a totally reasonable man, and a far more honest one than Obama or Harper or Cameron, all of whom lie regularly about matters like Syria. Putin’s country, too, is certainly destined to be a great one in future, given its endowments of natural resources and human ingenuity. It is extremely short-sighted to use American trash-talk about a leader Russians embrace as strongly as they do Putin.

We should welcome working with a reasonable man like Putin for many reasons, but if some chose not to do so, they can at least avoid bellowing undiplomatic nonsense for a few cheap votes, as you did with your campaign statement.

That’s not how your much-respected father would have acted in these circumstances – witness his independent-minded judgment and policies about Castro’s Cuba – and in the case of Russia today, Pierre Trudeau’s way would be far more productive than bellowing.

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?

John Chuckman

COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT

“CIA-backed ‘moderate’ rebels struck by fresh air strikes…”

Sorry, but those words are just plain dishonest.

These creepy guys are accurately described as ‘CIA-backed terrorists,’ just another flavor, if you will, of ISIS, al Qaeda, and the other monsters supplied and let loose on a beautiful country.

You may insert the word ‘moderate’ according to taste.

Just what do you think Benghazi was about and why do you think it has been covered up? It was a dirty American operation to ship Libyan-based terrorists and weapons to Syria that went wrong in an instance of covert operation ‘blowback.’

It is so refreshing to see Putin hurl America’s lies back into their faces, and he does so with genuine grace, never raising his voice or even calling names. Quite remarkable. No one prominent in the West is willing to do so, and certainly not The Independent.

The entire disaster in Syria is engineered by the U.S. and its friends in the area. Its only purpose is to destroy a government supported by a majority of Syrians and one notably tolerant of minorities. It has absolutely nothing to do with democracy.

And anyone who covers up the U.S. operation to supply Sarin gas in small quantities to be used on innocents by these creeps as a false flag to justify further American operations (the exact opposite of what Obama claimed at the UN) just has no interest in truth and may be said to suffer from a serious ethics disability.

________________________________________

Response to another comment:

 

‘The USA wars have killed millions with no concern on who or what they are bombing.’

Indeed.

3,000,000  estimated in Vietnam, mostly civilians cut down by napalm, clusters bombs, carpet bombing, and land mines.

Another million in Cambodia which was destabilized by American bombing and covert invasions, allowing cutthroats to take over.

A million or so in Iraq, and a country left smashed to bits.

How many in Afghanistan? How many in Gulf War I? How many in Yemen? Somalia?

We know 15,000 died at the hands of the dictator installed by the U.S. in Chile.

How many in Iran? in Guatemala? A dozen other places?

It is the greatest public lie of the century that the U.S. cares about democracy, human rights, or even human life.

The U.S. cares only about control.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE NATIONAL POST

No one writing for The National Post ever gets the situation in Syria correctly.

All of our national press, like that in the United States, deliberately obscures these matters.

America and Russia both talk about stopping terror, but they each mean completely different things.

Not being at all the aggressive leader America never stops yapping about, Putin has not made up his mind about entering Syria, but if he does go to Syria to fight ISIS, among other terror groups working there, it will be precisely because he is supporting the government of Syria and genuinely fighting terror.

Obama doesn’t want Putin in Syria to fight ISIS because the United States is only making a show of fighting ISIS. You don’t fight the people you set up to do a job you want done. ISIS is doing America’s dirty work trying to topple the Syrian government.

When America talks of bombing, it means bombing which can help ISIS, and the other terrorists, complete their dirty work. America bombs Syrian infrastructure, as does Canada in Harper’s stupid effort to join in the American cause.

Sure, sometimes America actually kills some of their recruited ISIS members, but that is for show or because they have somehow exceeded their mandate. Quite possibly, once the government of Syria has been destroyed, America will go after ISIS, but that would only come after.

For Putin to talk of bombing means genuinely bombing ISIS and hampering its efforts to destroy Syria.

It’s all a filthy business, and the sponsors of all the killing and destruction and homelessness are the United States, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. They do everything from training, arming, equipping, and even giving refuge and medical help.

The terrible refugee crisis in Europe is ultimately the complete fault of these parties, none of which even has the decency to take the refugees they create. Harper’s Canada actually takes a token amount of refugees and at the same time joins in the bombing to create more.

The truth is, were Harper to genuinely fight ISIS, Israel would become extremely angry with him, and that could only mean some of Harper’s generous donors of campaign funds – the special interests for Israel he has groomed for years – would also become angry with him.

In this, as in so many things, Harper joins the United States in telling lies to us daily.

John Chuckman

COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN

Once again, France’s Hollande demonstrates the pathetic, almost comic, figure he is by awarding France’s highest honor to the American soldiers who stopped a gunman on a train.

The soldiers’ act was unquestionably a brave one, but no braver than a hundred others that must have happened during the year.

Previously Hollande, in an act which resembled parody, awarded the Legion of Honor to four victims of an attack on a Paris grocery store. His response came close to making the award meaningless: find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time, get shot by mindless gunmen, and suddenly you are elevated to secular sainthood.

After all, violent acts and murders do happen regularly. I cannot recall another instance in which the corpses of a murderer’s victims were elevated to national heroes. If that were the practice in the United States, with 25,000 murders a year, the factory couldn’t keep up with minting medals.

Of course, in both these instances Hollande is playing up to the ridiculous, deliberately exaggerated fears of terror, relentlessly promoted by the United States, and that is their distinguishing, common feature.

In this last one, the train incident, he also flatters those whom he has served with such cringing, dog-like loyalty, the Americans.

My God, how low France has fallen from the days of de Gaulle.

_________________________________

Response to a further comment about why there is so much violence:

 

A certain percent of all human beings, everywhere and always, is mentally unbalanced, including such conditions as psychopathy. That’s just a biological fact, much as saying a certain percent of any population is born blind or lame or with various degenerative diseases.

I suspect the proportion of such people is not wildly different over time, although, of course, the world’s ever-increasing population yields an ever-greater absolute number of mentally ill people.

What has changed in the contemporary world for sure are the unbelievable quantities of deadly weapons available. They are everywhere, in the millions. And why is that the case? Because the United States pushes them (yes, including AK-47s and other weapons not of American origin) out like products from an assembly line to destabilize places in dozens of locations where it is unhappy about either a government’s position on American policy or about a people trying to topple a tyrannical government that America just happens to favor. Examples of the former include Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine, and dozens of others, while examples of the latter include Yemen, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, or Egypt.

Many of these weapons stay around for a lifetime. The most vivid case of this recently was perhaps in Libya. The CIA and others pumped weapons into the place to destabilize Gadhafi. When he was gone, the CIA was back trying to round up some of the vast quantities left in the chaotic country to ship to the madmen they had set up to topple still another government they dislike, that of Syria. It was in that covert operation that an American ambassador was killed at Benghazi, an example of intelligence blowback and an incident never explained because America didn’t want to advertise the facts behind it.

In the process of so much aggression and destabilization, the press is filled day after day with stories arousing all kinds of powerful emotions in millions of people. Just think of the people of Gaza being slaughtered by hi-tech American weapons supplied to Israel in fleet-loads, or of people of Yemen being slaughtered by the same American weapons supplied to the absolute kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a place where the ISIS scare tactic of public beheading is just the day-in, day-out normal practice of government. Just think of the madman running Turkey who secretly ships the same American weapons to terror groups destroying Syria while offering refuge to the cowardly monsters as may be required.

Just think of the horrors of millions of migrants in the press today – all of them a direct effect of America’s various acts in places from Syria to Libya. Those tidal waves of human suffering are tearing many societies apart as well as individuals.

You cannot expect an international society of laws unless you yourself are willing to respect the rule of law.

Nothing could be clearer than that the United States is not willing to live by the rule of law, although it unfailingly pays lip-service to it. In Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Ukraine, and a dozen other places, America is manufacturing misery and oppression on a gigantic scale. And all of the exaggerated stuff about terror keeps citizens intimidated from raising their voices. And of course some of that “terror” is just the legitimate response of oppressed and frustrated people made to appear mindless by America’s relentless propaganda.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE NATIONAL POST

This article by Kelly McParland is rubbish propaganda.

Bob Rae introduces his statement about why he supports the Iran agreement with words “conceding that Iran is a repressive regime that can’t be trusted, hates Jews, represents a threat to the very existence of Israel, encourages terrorism, destabilizes the region….”

That is not so much a statement of conviction, I believe, as it is what it is absolutely necessary to say if you don’t want to be pilloried in the press and by many politicians for a view on an important issue which happens to be at odds with the one prevailing in Israel.

His “necessary” statement contains almost nothing but echoes of myths and propaganda repeated a thousand times in our corporate, and very biased, press.

Iran can’t be trusted? Where’s one scrap of evidence for that? So far as I am aware they keep all their agreements and obligations.

Iran hates Jews? There is nothing to support that. Tens of thousands of Jews live good lives in Iran. I guarantee that the Jews of Iran live far, far better lives than do the occupied Palestinians.

Iran encourages terrorism? I’m not aware of any such events. Iran lives at peace with its neighbors and has not started a single war in its modern history. Yes, it supports allies in the region, as do the United States and Israel, but I can’t accept they qualify as terrorists in quite the same fashion as America’s thuggish recruits now working to destroy Syria.

Contrast that with Israel whose brief modern history is one of continuous attacks on every neighbor it has, many more than once.

Indeed, the Six Day War was deliberately started by Israel to seize lands it still holds half a century later against the will of all those living on them.

It seized part of Lebanon too and occupied it for many years, until Hezbollah drove them out, Hezbollah receiving Iran’s assistance. But that was not terror, it was self-defence by any reasonable reckoning. Hezbollah, in contrast to Israel, never invaded and occupied any part of Israel.

If you want an example of genuine terror, look to the two recent invasions of that refugee camp called Gaza in which about a thousand children were killed, apart from thousands of adults. And look to an endless blockade of the same unfortunate people, a blockade which in its earlier days, before international intervention, actually included a calorie count for allowed imports just sufficient to keep the population alive. Even Gaza’s humble fishermen can only go a short distance into the sea before being shot at.

How about the Israeli bombings of Southern Lebanon in which a million horrible cluster bomblets were dropped where farmers and children could step on them?

Iran is a theocratic state, but it is not quite the miserable place so often glibly described in our corporate press. You may easily finds sites with lots of photos of these lovely people smiling huge smiles and doing a great variety of things you might expect to see in a free society.

Meanwhile Israel has not an imaginary but a genuine nuclear arsenal, something about which it daily lies. It is not a member of the nuclear proliferation treaty, as Iran is, and it allows no inspections around Dimona. And, speaking of proliferation, it is an historical fact that Israel conspired with apartheid South Africa to assist them in gaining nuclear weapons.

We are far, far freer of danger originating from Iran than we are from Israel.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN

An organization, such as ISIS, can only rise out of nothing and literally change a region with a great deal of help.

It cannot be otherwise.

ISIS has been assisted, supplied, and, in some cases, trained by Western interests. We have had countless little revelations of these activities, although we never read about them in the corporate press.

ISIS was even supplied some while back by some of these interests with terrible things like small amounts of nerve gas to use on people so that the United States could blame Syrian forces. Acts just do not come any more cynical and evil than that.

ISIS serves the interest of assisting to bring down a legitimate state, Syria, a state, by the way, which attacks no one and which has never threatened legitimate American interests. They already served to eliminate a leader in Iraq, sending him running off in fear, whom the United States and Israel greatly disliked.

ISIS also serves to solidify the planned smashing of Iraq into mini-states. This was particularly clear in the case of the Kurds, who received great assistance in fighting ISIS, effectively defending their own part of the (former) country against those who now run other parts.

The public does not recognize what is happening because news coverage in our major corporate press is selective and always supports government policy, even black operations policy.

If the United States were serious about fighting ISIS, they could eliminate them in very short order, but they are not serious. They display only token efforts, and increasingly, the reality of these efforts is the destruction of Syrian lives and property – in effect, acting as air support for the terrorists.

Also, the United States appears gradually to be working its way towards direct intervention against the Syrian government, blubbering all along the way about the horrors of ISIS.

When ISIS has served its filthy purpose, maybe it will be seriously attacked. Who knows? But, for now, America’s attacks on ISIS are little more than show and perhaps curbing those who’ve exceeded their brief. After all, these terrorist groups – and there are several doing lots of killing in Syria – do contain some genuinely horrible people, even if they were assembled and assisted through American efforts. The American attacks really assist the terrorists in Syria by attacking Syrian infrastructure.

Turkey, with the blessings of the United States and Saudi Arabia, has given them shelter and border access to Syria, as well as arms shipments. Israel too is involved in surreptitious support, including hospital treatment for wounded fighters in the North and secret arms exports, as is the absolute monarchy of Qatar. And now that proud and fearless defender of American values, David Cameron, has joined the fray in the name of “fighting terror.” My, what a brave fellow he is.

The actual terror that is going on is the destruction of legitimate state, a beautiful and historic land. It is being carved into smaller entities, just as Iraq has been. This comes at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives and the creation of millions of refugees, but the states secretly working on this dirty project only cry crocodile tears over all the deliberately-induced horror.

It’s just one part of a savage scheme to “give birth to a new Middle East,” as former Secretary of State Condi Rice expressed it. So far we have seen a million die in Iraq, aerial bombardment of Yemen, Libya torn apart and reduced to chaos, and Egypt’s fledgling democracy destroyed with a return of dictatorship.

Now, all of this destruction does make people like Mr. Netanyahu very happy, but for countless millions, and for a generation to come, human misery is the chief product of the effort.

Of course, it is this very scheme producing the flood of refugees to Europe, refugees the United States refuses even to help and David Cameron treats as rabble and scum.

The whole business is a psychopathic politician’s dream: inflict all the killing and destruction you wish while condemning the hired help and posing as someone horrified at what they have done. Compared to this, the stunts of Hitler’s Germany to cover its bloody trail – as when it dressed prisoners in Polish uniforms and shot them at the border, claiming they were Polish soldiers attacking Germany – seem amateurish.

The face of evil is no longer merely banal, it is slick and sophisticated and leering at all we hold as values.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN

While the Klu Klux Klan is a nasty and rather ridiculous organization, as a source of evil in today’s world it is minuscule, almost non-existent.

They were once a true national organization in America, as was the NAZI-like Bund organization, but today they are few in few places and virtually unseen.

It seems to me almost a distraction from our many far more terrible events in the world to spend time on what today is a kind of goofy club for people with various degrees of mental problems.

Actually, it might be said that the modern KKK almost serves a slightly beneficial purpose in bringing such people together into one organization rather than let them all go their various ways, and that organization today is thoroughly penetrated by government agents, a task the creepy FBI of J. Edgar Hoover in his heyday scrupulously avoided. After all, Hoover wouldn’t even employ black agents.

On the measure of threats, the KKK today is close to non-existent.

Hate and twisted minds will never cease to be until science either re-engineers the human brain or replaces it with robots.

You must always take account of perspective in such social phenomena. America’s militarized local police alone kill between 1,000 and 1,500 citizens every year, injuring several times that number.

Americans murdering Americans has ranged over recent decades between 25 and 40 thousand each year. By the way, roughly half of that murder is black-on-black in America’s dreadful ghettos.

The President of the United States signs off regularly now on death-squad killings. Thousands have died this way with no charges, no trial, and no voice, drones and computer operators being the only difference from the old Argentine junta dropping people out of helicopters.

America killed more than a million people in Iraq and pretty much destroyed one of the Mideast’s most advanced and promising lands. It would have become a true democracy before too long under prosperity and a growing middle class. Today it is divided wreck.

America and its friends have created a living hell in Syria by supplying, training, and infiltrating lunatic factions into a beautiful and once relatively peaceful land, killing 200,000 and seeing millions of refugees created, refugees they do not even try to help.

Libya is a flaming wreckage today thanks to America and its spineless European associates.

And only four decades ago, America walked away from a true holocaust it created in Vietnam, 3 million dead from napalm and carpet bombing and fragment bombs and land mines and countless tons of Agent Orange.

Its blundering interference in Cambodia saw a neutral government fall and another million innocents die in the Killing Fields.

America’s quasi-colony in the Middle East just killed 2,200 people including about 500 children using American weapons, and that after a previous slaughter of about 1,200, and still they blockade the poor survivors and make weekly threats.

There are many more statistics I could cite, but truly the KKK is about as important as slipping on a banana peel as a source of genuine danger.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO A YOU-TUBE VIDEO

Jolie is a truly absurd figure.

Blubbering preciously in the past about rape in war – something which always and everywhere has been part of the complete destruction of society and its norms and laws that is the very definition of war – here she is now advocating more war.

There’s no need to go over all the sad facts of Syria, a nation which already is the victim of covert brutality by outsiders, but anyone who advocates more killing there has to be considered stunningly ignorant.

I wish people who clearly understand so very little of what goes on in the world would just stick to buying designer shoes and attending dress-up fundraisers for fantasy causes like ending rape in war.

But one only has to remember that she is the daughter of actor Jon Voight, and things become considerably clearer. Voight has always perfectly fit the description of actors offered by the late Truman Capote, “The better the actor the more stupid he is.”

As for Jolie, she would appear to have missed out on both talent and brains.

 

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

COMMENT WRITTEN TO CBC NEWS

CBC radio news has been in serious decline for years, but in your recent coverage of events in Syria, you have touched bottom.

In every newscast and every news-oriented show, the subject dominates. Even on fluff shows like Mary Ito or Bret Banbury we hear about Syria from people who know nothing about it. The problem all this “coverage” is that you investigate nothing and simply repeat the official American view, endlessly.

You have not one qualified reporter on site. No one interviews Syrian officials. No one interviews Russian officials who include many experts on the region. No one talks to good independent reporters or observers, people such as Robert Fisk.

Your broadcasts would not differ in substance if you simply read press releases from the White House and Pentagon.

Even when you report facts upon which people might agree – as for example the number of refugees from Syria, recently cited at one million – you offer no vitally-important perspective, so the end result is effectively CBC joining the tireless American drumbeat to war.

You should well know that when America invaded Iraq, breaking all international law and humanitarian agreements, it killed at least half a million people and created four million refugees. It then refused to take almost any of the refugees, while Syria took a massive two million. Very heartless of Assad, don’t you think?

You keep repeating the American accusations about Assad using sarin gas. In fact, the only certain use of that horrible stuff has been by the violent rabble called the Free Syrian Army. They used small quantities more than once, material either captured from overrun military posts or supplied by American intermediaries such as Israel, which is known to have stockpiles.

And what is the “evidence” you blindly refer to over and over? I can tell you. It is a supposed recording of Syrian officials supplied by Mossad.

Yes, Mossad, the very people who pride themselves at deception and who have a long track record of expertly using it, even in several cases successfully against the United States.

And the recording, even if it could be proved authentic, is ambiguous as to meaning.

You do not kill thousands of people and destroy a country’s infrastructure citing rubbish like that.

The truth is that the entire Syrian “civil war,” as I cannot but believe some of your better journalists must know, is an American black-operation, part of a long series of violent efforts to create a huge cordon sanitaire around Israel. And this particular induced-civil war employs many of the same unsavoury characters typically grouped under the rubric “al Qaeda.”

Recently, this massive covert effort has been failing, despite even more American and Israeli weapons being smuggled to the murderous opposition through Turkey, owing to the successes of Assad’s army. So, now a new casus belli is needed to allow American bombing of Assad’s forces.

The “formula” for this kind of operation was worked out in the invasion of Afghanistan where Americans used everything from Tomahawk missiles to B-52s (with hideous cluster bombs as well as “block-busters”) while locals – the Northern Alliance in that case, including such blood-thirsty creatures as General Dostum – did most of the fighting on the ground. The formula was successfully and cynically repeated in Libya.

The cynics running the induced-horror in Syria for America have gone to the extent now of supplying the rabble with small quantities of sarin to generate a tipping point so Libya can be repeated. It is brutal cynicism with absolutely no regard for Syria’s people.

And remember, if you associate America’s impulses in Syria with either the rule of law or humanitarianism, it was Americans who employed white phosphorus, flame throwers, depleted-uranium (cancer-inducing) ammunition, and cluster bombs in Iraq. Some great defenders of humanitarian principles to be judging what anyone else does.

I realize you cannot present all these underlying realities (after all, your president would be called into Stephen Harper’s office immediately for a chair-throwing meeting), but you do not need to sink to the contemptible level of just repeating every American fabrications with no authority of on-site journalism and no expert opinion.

Shabby, simply shabby.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Terrorism?

What a joke.

The United States just murdered a number of innocent Yemenis with a drone strike.

That is indeed terror, state terror.
______________________________

There is not, and never has been, an organization called al Qaeda.

We have the words of several important statesmen, including a former British foreign minister, that the word was only used inside the American government as a catch-all for “bad guys” in certain regions of the world.

The word actually means “hole” or “sewer.” Can you imagine a secret fierce group calling itself “sewer”?

Yet the continued use of the term – repeated over and over in the press – undoubtedly lends weight to vague assertions about threats, and that is precisely why Washington continues to use this ridiculous language.

So why does the press keep repeating the nonsense?

The answer is found in the degree of genuine independence of thought and investigation exhibited by our mainline press, and that is simply not much.

It is not an organization. It does not send e-mails. It does not write press releases. If indeed it were an organization and it did these things from time to time, does any thinking person not understand that NSA and others would locate them quickly, causing the launch of drones in minutes?

But there are some pretty nasty people out there in the world. The United States has cynically used some of them again and again to get something it wants, the latest being the effort to topple the government of Syria.

It used them in Afghanistan – twice: once to fight the Russians in the 1980s, and a second time to defeat the Taleban government and carry out acts of terror like the murder of thousands of Taleban prisoners – and in Libya and in other places.

The United States in using these people and heavily assisting them – aided by its friends Israel and Turkey – is responsible for more terror in Syria alone than any so-called terrorist group could conceive of doing on its own anywhere.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE TORONTO STAR

Actually, it would be more accurate to say that reason won the day.

Harper’s position – a pathetic echo of vicious American policy – was ridiculous.

There is not an ounce of proof that Syria has used chemical weapons, although there is clear evidence that the rag-tag Free Syrian Army used a small amount of Sarin nerve gas in a couple of instances.

How did they get that horrible stuff? Supplied either by Israel or the US – both have stockpiles – to create an event excusing further intrusion into the affairs of others. Likely it was sent via one of America’s silent partners in Mideast mayhem, Saudi Arabia or Turkey.

Harper – in addition to his un-statesmanlike bullying of Russia – simply lied when he said that only Russia was against intervention. The Germans are also opposed, and others of the G-8 sit on the fence. Only the cowardly post-Blair British government eagerly wags its tail every time America looks their way.

Thank God, American efforts to create a “Gulf of Tonkin” incident for Syria failed, but still its destructive, underhanded efforts, and those of Israel with Turkish and Saudi cooperation, keep the Syrian people in misery.

A dirty shame, just like our prime minister, who incidentally also failed on trade talks with the EU.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

EXPANSION OF A POSTED RESPONSE TO AN INTERVIEW WITH SYRIA’S PRESIDENT ASSAD IN INTIFADA PALESTINE

I am no great defender of unelected leaders like Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, but in the case of Syria’s current troubles I support him and wish him success against the forces responsible for murder and destruction on a large scale in his country.

The great writer, Graham Greene, said:
“…the writer should always be ready to change sides at the drop of a hat. He stands for the victims, and the victims change.”

Syria is the victim in this case, and the bloody bullies attacking Syria are the United States and Israel, both too cowardly to attack directly and both dishonestly claiming that the Free Syrian Army represents a genuine popular revolt.

The aim of the United States and Israel in all this violence is to wipe Syria off the Middle East chessboard, leaving it a divided society with no central direction.

Their efforts are designed to serve Israel’s drive to dominate the Middle East, just as America’s invasion of Iraq served the same drive. Israel aspires to be a miniature replica in the Middle East of what the United States has become globally, and the United States’ government, compromised by its corrupt election financing system and the central role of special interests in that system, is more than willing to grant Israel the role.

The brutality and hypocrisy involved in creating a pseudo-popular uprising and putting millions of innocent people at risk are breathtaking. The United States and Israel have gathered, armed, and supported a gang of thugs and injected them (through Syria’s border with Turkey, Turkey also offering refuge and re-supply) into what was a peaceful country, the very kind of cut-throats neither the U.S. nor Israel would allow to cross their own borders.

The recent death of an American ambassador in Libya at Benghazi, an event which no American official will discuss honestly, was part of the same dark scheme and involved the ambassador working with the CIA to gather killers and arms for export to Syria. The operation badly backfired when some of the thugs being dealt with turned on the Americans, something American officials will not acknowledge out of embarrassment and the desire to hide the dirty business in which they are engaged.

The world is not the simple place of angels and devils as America’s propaganda efforts ceaselessly proclaim it – great camps of goodness and evil ready to do battle for the soul of humanity. No matter whether a government is democratic in origin or not – and given the utter corruption of America’s politics, its claims to authentic democracy are tenuous – powerful insiders are fully capable of bloody, ruthless behavior in secret, destroying the lives of others.

While the United States loves hearing itself talk about being a bastion of freedom and rights, the fact is that over the last 40 or so years, it has been, quite simply, the most murderous nation on earth, killing 3 million in Vietnam plus a host of victims in Cambodia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and in many, many other places either invaded or toppled in bloody coups. It still runs an international torture gulag, of which Guantanamo is only a part.

The world can support a bloody global dictator even less than an individual country can support a local one. So, in Syria we see a stark choice, and the ethical balance favors for once a local dictator.

If you want the rule of law, you must abide by the rule of law, a principle which neither the United States nor Israel makes even a pretense of embracing although they sure like talking about it between bombing runs and terrorist activities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

This confirms what many believed: that it was the rebels, not the government, using chemical weapons.

Now, where does one obtain this nerve gas, sarin, a deadly and sophisticated one which comes in two compounds only assembled at the time of use?

There are only a limited number of countries who make and store it, including both the United States and Israel.

We know about Israel’s chemical arms because there was a crash of an El Al cargo plane in 1992 in the Amsterdam area, killing dozens of people and releasing toxic substances Israel refused to accurately identify.

It was later determined that at least part of the cargo was one of the components of sarin, a cargo which was not declared and which is illegal to ship in most countries.

One has the well-founded suspicion that Israel supplied some of the sarin material recently to that rabble called the Free Syrian Army.

Its purpose in doing so would be typical of Israel’s nasty security forces practices – of which we have a long history including the 1967 War and Israel’s attempt to sink an American intelligence ship – and that is to create a casus belli with the claim that Assad had crossed one of Israel’s many arbitrary “red lines.”

Only in recent days we read a lot of nonsense about the government of Syria having used poison gas, including from America’s pathetic Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, who managed to reverse himself in less than a day after asserting – rightly – that American intelligence did not believe Assad had used chemicals.

His reversal undoubtedly reflected the immense pressure of the Israel Lobby, incensed that he had effectively contradicted Mr Netanyahu’s earlier public claim about Syria’s use.

We see the outlines here of a very shabby story: the desperate efforts of Israel and the United States to support the phony rebellion they created in Syria because it is beginning to look like that rebellion will fail.

What Israel wants in these matters is for Syria to be removed as a power in the region, left as a weak and divided state whose elements will fight with each other for years to come.

Never mind those elements include the same kind of scum that neither Israel nor the United States would even allow to cross their borders. Who cares about the poor Syrians, just so long as once more Israel gets what it wants.

The whole series of events in Syria will prove a textbook example of arrogance, brutality, and cynicism in foreign affairs.

But then that description pretty well sums up the entire brief history of modern Israel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

This is an absurd development.

Yesterday, in the morning, I read Mr Hagel saying that United States’ intelligence did not believe Syria had used chemical weapons.

Because Israel had already just claimed in public that Syria had used such weapons, Mr Hagel was careful to state that the United States used its own intelligence sources.

By that afternoon, we had this new story that indeed the United States thought it likely (but had no hard evidence) that Syria had used chemical weapons.

I know of no example from real life events more deserving of the descriptive term “Orwellian.”

We know from the inadvertently-overheard words of two presidents not terribly long ago, the presidents of France and the United States, talking in private that Mr Netanyahu is regarded by both of them as an inveterate liar.

Mr Hagel, owing to his independence of mind regarding the Mideast, fought quite a battle after the election to be confirmed for his cabinet post.

Of course, his first words about chemical weapons contradicted Mr Netanyahu.

Something happened in the course of one day to turn him around.

Was it the same group which so opposed his nomination and confirmation?

And that group is the special interest of American apologists for Israel’s excesses.

Actually, if anything, virtually the opposite is true. There was a documented incident of the so-called rebels using some form of chemical.

From where did they get the material?

From Israel, in an effort to create a casus belli?