John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN MOON OF ALABAMA

 

“U.S. Intelligence Had A ‘Duty To Warn’ Khashoggi – Why Didn’t That Happen?”

 

An excellent piece which covers many aspects of this dark affair in which a well-known Saudi figure, a critic of the Crown Prince, was simply “disappeared” while visiting Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul to get some papers.

And you are right, no one even questions the Saudi Usurper over mass killing in Yemen. Or his dark work in Syria. Or his abuse of Shia Muslims in Saudi Arabia. So, why expect a lot of to-do over journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, Washington Post connection or not?

It does appear that we increasingly live in a world where the right kind of people can get away with murder, more or less in broad daylight.

To my mind, it’s all just part of the damage done by American hyper-aggressive efforts to assert Washington’s authority in every corner of the world.

Saudi Arabia is important because of the new relationship it has formed with America’s privileged imperial colony, Israel. The United States is using the murderous Crown Prince as part of its campaign to re-make the Middle East, an effort which has already cost about two million lives.

After all, Israel doesn’t have to account for its savage line-ups of soldiers behind fences shooting into unarmed crowds at Gaza, people who are only demonstrating for basic human rights.

These big-game hunting parties with human beings as targets make the old days of Bull Connor in Alabama look almost gentle by comparison.

Yet our press and politicians say almost nothing.

Well, not quite.

The savages are actually publicly praised for their “restraint” in an increasingly-bizarre America.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Shamir was an old Irgun and Lehi terrorist with lots of blood on his hands.

Among other terrorist acts, he authorized the assassination of the UN’s representative in the region, Count Bernadotte.

It is odd that Israel, with many such leaders in its past, whines constantly about terrorists.

Given slightly different circumstances, Shamir would have been hung.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

“The silent threat of the lone-wolf terrorist”

An utterly stupid piece of writing.

We have always, always had “lone wolf” monsters.

How do you think legends like vampires and other monsters became so fixed in people’s minds?

And what do you think the likes of John Wayne Gacy and Charles Manson and Robert Picton and Clifford Olsen represent?

They are psychopathic serial and mass killers, one of nature’s many mistakes, from civilized society’s point of view, in its endless evolutionary experiments.

There may have been a time when such people served a purpose, as in wars in the times of walled cities.

So what purpose does it serve to call such people “terrorists”?

Or indeed to attribute any politics or ideology to their love of killing and torturing human beings?

Nothing, but it feeds the ignorant nightmarish fears being promoted by Islamophobics night and day.

This is “high class” garbage.

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

This is the second trashiest thing Margaret Wente has ever written, and that is saying something because she occupies herself with a great deal of trash.

Apart from insulting brave humanitarians, the underlying theme here is a quieter re-statement of the idiotic assertion that the very selectivity of people’s interest in Israel-Palestine displays their anti-Semitism.

People should show more concern about North Korea? First, North Korea is an absolute government. Israel claims to be a democracy, and with that word “democracy” goes a lot of associated concepts about human rights and ethical government, else it wouldn’t be a claim worth making, but we plainly see endless abuse and refusal to honor human rights by Israel.

Ms Wente truly ought to register as a lobbyist for Israel.

Readers may be interested in the following.

Ms Wente’s all-time great piece of idiocy critiqued at:

http://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/05/28/the-iraq-wars-trashiest-piece-of-propaganda/

A critique of the moral-trash theme of selectivity buried in her current piece:

http://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/the-peculiar-state/

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“Nor should the people of Gaza be punished for the incompetency of its leaders as Ms Wente so kindly suggests.”

True, except that no one has ever demonstrated Hamas as incompetent.

Quite the opposite appears to be the case, Hamas has held its people together after more than three years of brutal, illegal blockade and that after Israel’s inhuman assault called Operation Cast Lead, in which Israel killed 400 children and a thousand others.

I’d say Hamas has shown the qualities of British leadership during The Blitz.

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“Could someone quote a reliable source giving the total of Israelis killed by Hamas rockets or incursions? In the game of numbers, numbers matter.”

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_NtgXlrcvXZA/SWfEpYDqzwI/AAAAAAAAZm0/v8qp2yKvyVo/s1600-h/ROCKET+qassam37.jpg

The rockets – overgrown homemade fireworks – have never been proven to have killed anyone, although while Israel was wading through the blood of 400 children and a thousand others in Operation Cast Lead, it claimed that about ten Israelis were killed, a claim like so many from Israel never substantiated.

By the way, just one fact is most telling here. The United Nations’ Special Rapporteur for Palestine, Richard Falk, a distinguished American academic and a Jew, only recently published the fact that Israeli forces have killed 1,335 Palestinian children since the year 2000 in their various incursions, suppressions, and brutal policing.

Now, there is a real record of achievement of which to be proud, Ms Wente.

The stuff of democracy to be sure.

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“And it is interesting that in UK, France and Canada you have Conservative governments and then all of them including US Congress and Senate creating special committees to fight anti-Semitism.”

“…anyone even tangentially linked to it can kiss his/her career or life good-bye.”

Apologists for Israel use the term “anti-Semitism” in exactly the way the late Senator Joe McCarthy used “communist” or “pinko.”

The technique is called demonizing and intimidating your opponent, and the intention is to stop people from even considering your opponent’s arguments and observations.

Never mind dealing with the facts and arguments of your opponent, just label him as something filthy.

Israel does this with the word “terrorist” also.

It labels people who oppose its ghastly policies as “terrorists,” conveniently forgetting that Israel itself was founded in the terror of the Irgun and Stern and other murderous gangs and forgetting, too, that there is only one source of regular assassination, illegal arrest, property theft, and constant abuse of 4 million people in the Middle East, and that   source is Israel.

We have all heard of narco-states, but I believe today it is right to describe Israel as a mafia-state, a state where the government itself murders whoever it thinks worth murdering and steals whatever it thinks worth stealing.

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“Meanwhile the country is bounded on all sides by hostile nations, much larger than itself.”

Who chose this troubled location?

Who established their beach head, as it were, with the horrors of the Irgun and Stern gangs?

Who has attacked every neighbor it has, and some two or three times?

Who keeps 4 million people in a state of abuse and a lack of any rights at all?

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“Since ceded to the Israels after WWII, a land of mostly wandering shepherds has been transformed into a modern, vibrant, productive land.”

First, no one ceded that land to Israelis.

What authority did the British Empire have giving away the homes and farms of others?

Transformed into a vibrant, productive land?

First, Israel is the most subsidized entity on earth.

It has received hundreds of billions – yes, billions – in subsidies from the United States and others.

The U.S. government gives about $500 per year per Jewish citizen of Israel, and it has done so for decades.

The U.S. also gives priceless technical assistance and access to intelligence and cooperative projects of every description.

Germany has poured tens of billions in reparations into Israel, rightly so in view of past crimes, but still an immense subsidy.

American Jewish organizations have also poured tens of billions into Israel.

Israeli Americans enjoy the special privilege of dual citizenship, something the United States is averse to for others, and this means they can freely travel back and forth transferring technology and other huge benefits.

Its economy only flourishes because half of its trade is with the United States, enjoying as it does a privileged free-trade agreement that would be the envy of any small country.

Its agriculture only flourishes because it diverts the water of others in this dry region.

Then what does it do with the stolen, precious water?

It grows things like tomatoes and clementines to send all the way to the United States, a place with tons of capacity to grow such things.

The real economic cost of this agricultural nonsense is immense. The replacement cost of water in Israel is reflected in its desalination plants (also subsidized) which produce some of the world’s most costly water.

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

“The answer provided was simple: NATO members are there to contain terrorism and build a stable country.”

Rubbish.

Since when do armed forces “build” stable countries?

It has never happened.

Contain terrorism?

I’ve yet to hear of any terrorism coming from Afghanistan.

And most young Afghans won’t even be aware of Canada’s existence despite our billions spent.

Our soldiers just look like Americans, even wearing pretty much the same gear, and in Afghan eyes, we are all foreigners who don’t belong there.
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From a reader we have, “fascist taliban”

That’s uninformed nonsense.

The Taleban was formed in the wake of Russia’s leaving a mess, a mess made worse by the CIA’s secret war of subsidized terror against Russia which left weapons and money in the hands of some truly terrible people.

There was daily killing in the streets all over Afghanistan as the rivals in the Northern Alliance warlords – the guys we call allies – fought each other like street gangs. They also used to extort money on every road so people couldn’t even conduct normal business.

The Taleban was originally a grassroots organization to put an end to that mess, and they very much did so. They also put an end to the drug trade, something flourishing again under the American occupation.

They are not advanced, humanitarian people, but then neither are half our allies in Afghanistan, folks like mass-murderer, General Dostum.

As far as human rights go, amazingly little has changed. Women in most of Afghanistan outside Kabul wear the burka.

This comment is a good example of so much that is printed and broadcast about Afghanistan: it simply uses clichés, clichés that aren’t even Afghan but American.

“Girls who don’t have to worry about having acid thrown on their face by the taliban.”

Yes, and won’t it be a bright day when the children of Gaza get a balanced diet and the things they need for a full life?

And when they don’t have to cower in terror from Israeli jets overhead?

Or fear being used as human shields?

And on that bright day, it will be lovely that the children of East Jerusalem don’t have to worry about their families being thrown out of their homes by settlers who use tricks and excuses to steal the homes of families who have lived there for centuries.