John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY JOHN KIRIAKOU IN CONSORTIUM NEWS

 

“How a Suicide Watch Really Works

“If Jeffrey Epstein’s death turns out to have been self-inflicted, it would represent a complete breakdown in the system that was supposed to protect him”

 

John Kiriakou misses a few things here, and I would like to add new information which gives perspective to the events.

After Epstein was transferred to a cell with another prisoner, that prisoner was transferred out and not replaced. That seems rather odd behavior for a crowded and under-staffed facility.

Plus, there is the fact that we’re talking about an inmate recently taken off “suicide watch,” one who had a recent actual “attempt,” and not just any inmate but an extremely high-profile inmate, likely the most notorious prisoner in the country.

We know now that in the three hours before Epstein died, no checks on his cell were made, even though they are supposed to be made every thirty minutes at that facility.

The guards that were to have done the checks are now said to have fallen asleep, and it is claimed that afterward the log record was falsified to say they had indeed made the checks.

The wife of an inmate in the same facility has told reporters that security there was unbelievably strict. When she visited her husband, two guards and a senior officer were required just for his transfer to the visitors’ center.

There is still no meaningful explanation for why there is no video of the period, just the flabby assertion that the system was out of order.

I tend somewhat to disagree with the author’s assertion, “Epstein was likely a marked man from the minute he walked through the door.”

The author’s basis for saying that is the classic idea that in prisons, sex offenders are regarded as “the lowest of the low.”And that line is very much being taken by the mainline press. It just happens also to have the publicity value of tarring the prisoner, rather than scrutinizing his treatment.

While I think it is absolutely true of the kind of person we usually think of when we read the words, “sex offender,” as, say, someone who sexually assaults a young child, I’m not at all sure that it’s necessarily true of someone like Epstein. Prisoners are, of course, motivated by a sense that where they are forced to live cannot be regarded as a dumping ground for “scum.” There is a strict social hierarchy even in prisons.

Epstein did not regard himself as a “sex offender,” at all. He would openly discuss the matter with others, even members of the press, saying society was hypocritical, just as it was in many places with homosexuality, and that his kind sexual activity, in earlier times, was common in our society.

Of course, we do know that once it was common for a fourteen-year old girl to be married. In Europe, a few centuries ago, girls of twelve were betrothed sometimes, and in royal circles. And that is still common in many poor countries with girls as young as twelve being married off by their families, as, for example, in parts of India. Neither did Epstein’s demi-monde family view him as a “sex offender,” including a list of notable characters, such as Robert Maxwell’s daughter who acted as a Madam for the many young women.

Neither, pretty clearly, did his bevy of famous friends and visitors, including former President Bill Clinton, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, former Sen George Mitchell (I was sorry to learn), Alan Dershowitz, Woody Allen, the Saudi Crown Prince (who, like Bill Clinton, made many trips), many Silicon Valley notables (including Bill Gates who flew on “the Lolita Express” at least once), Britain’s Prince Andrew (many visits), Gov Richardson of New Mexico, (reportedly) former Prime Minister Tony Blair, and scores and scores of others.

I’m sure he was regarded as shady and salacious and off-color, but as a “sex offender”? With the sexual mores of our time? Explicit sex in advertising everywhere? Including images of either very young women or young-looking women used to sell and promote almost anything? Models and actresses and pop singers who starve themselves to appear very young and slight?

I am not sure that inmates would regard a man such as Epstein so much as a “sex offender” as a lucky man with the ladies, including very young ones. I don’t mean to minimize his offense of interfering in the lives of easily-manipulated young women, generally poor ones attracted by the offer of big money and high times, but I’m not sure that with the general public, and especially the shadier types in prison, things are quite so cut-and-dried. I just don’t know, but I think there is room for legitimate doubt.

As far as Ghislaine Maxwell is concerned, she is quoted in a story in Vanity Fair magazine, “When I asked what she thought of the underage girls, she looked at me and said, ‘they’re nothing, these girls. They are trash.’” The same story says Ghislaine’s method of recruiting young women for Epstein was to drive around to spas and trailer parks in Florida, offering them a job with good money. Obviously, she was quite successful. Ghislaine, herself, is said to have kept rail-thin, so that she appealed to Epstein.

We’ve also just learned another extremely important fact from Ghislaine Maxwell, one loaded with suggestion. Epstein’s private island was wired for video, literally everywhere, so that couples could not take off somewhere for a private get-together. If that doesn’t sound like an intelligence service’s elaborate “honey trap,” I don’t know what does.

Hard to see why Epstein and Company would record literally everyone, unless they were creating compromising material for potential blackmail or political pressure. Who would be interested in videos of a number homely, older men making love to young women, other than a blackmailer or a spy agency? But we have no evidence or even suggestion of blackmail. Many of Epstein’s big-shot friends remained his friends for many years, returning for visits again and again.

But there are suggestions, in the way his case was handled by prosecutors for his conviction in 2008 and the highly unorthodox sentencing he received, of some kind of powerful outside influence at work. There’s just no question about that. And, of course, his sentence allowed a complete return to the same arrangements he had had in New York to just continue on a private island, perhaps only adding a certain new sense of exotic adventure for visitors.

I think there are many elements in the whole story suggesting Epstein’s connection with an intelligence agency, the most likely one being Mossad. I say that because “honey-traps” seem to have been a favored technique of that agency. Even with what little we generally hear about such secret matters, we’ve had some well-publicized cases involving them. Including, famously, the entrapment of atomic weapons whistleblower, Mordechai Vanunu, and the work of Tzipi Livni, a former Israeli Minister who is said to have worked earlier on entrapping men who were to be assassinated. She was for some period wanted in Europe on war-crime charges.

 

One small additional thought about why I cannot accept that Epstein committed suicide, apart from what I have written about his nature and personality and conditions at the facility.

This was a wealthy and well-connected man. Had he gone trial, things could have been stretched out for years with the best lawyers.

Why should he kill himself before any effort had even been made?

 

Readers may enjoy these other observations:

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2019/08/13/john-chuckman-comment-some-new-observations-on-the-death-of-jeffrey-epstein-why-i-believe-it-impossible-for-him-to-have-killed-himself-what-this-death-vividly-demonstrates-about-america/

 

EPSTEIN CASE REFERENCES:

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2019/08/14/john-chuckman-comment-the-gift-that-just-keeps-giving-jeffrey-epstein-fascinating-new-facts-about-his-imprisonment-and-before-more-big-names-associated-with-him-and-a-big-and-highly-suggestiv/

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2019/08/13/john-chuckman-comment-some-new-observations-on-the-death-of-jeffrey-epstein-why-i-believe-it-impossible-for-him-to-have-killed-himself-what-this-death-vividly-demonstrates-about-america/

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2019/08/15/john-chuckman-comment-a-word-on-conspiracy-theories-reported-details-of-jeffrey-epsteins-death-just-raise-doubts/

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2019/08/10/john-chuckman-comment-jeffrey-epstein-kills-himself-just-as-the-fun-of-revelations-was-about-to-begin/

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2019/08/11/john-chuckman-comment-more-intriguing-bits-on-jeffrey-epsteins-suicide-in-custody-an-excellent-piece-by-philip-m-giraldi/

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT

 

That must be some journal to publish such a feeble idea and some academic to come up with it.

It is simply ridiculous work to be called science or research or even an idea.

The standards in academia have fallen almost everywhere and thus the rise in pseudo-journals for second-raters trying to get published.

Our world can be divided into things which are simply facts and all the rest, including fears and lies and nonsense.

One certifiable fact of today’s world is that governments have invested increasingly in elaborate lies and misrepresentations to their people. This reflects both increased prosperity with so much more at risk than ever before and the world-scale of so many events and activities.

In Britain, the examples of Tony Blair’s stream of lies or the mysterious death of Doctor Kelly surely resonate with many ordinary souls who could never be called “conspiracy theorists.”

In the United States, the list is huge, as you might expect in a country whose establishment focuses on controlling events everywhere and telling others how to live their lives.

Another fact is that the very term, “conspiracy theorist,” was coined by the CIA decades ago to be used to disparage honest people who just want to know the truth about some important events such as the Kennedy assassination.

That term was picked up by the press and is still used to this day. It’s a rather sad reflection of the state of our press and its relationship to the government and the establishment.

Propaganda articles like this one – The Independent regularly does them to keep the term “conspiracy theorist” alive and flourishing – always dredge up the skeptics about moon landing, clearly in the eyes of most people a paranoid fringe group. We hardly need a professor’s formula to determine the validity of what is complete nonsense.

But such articles never deal with the really hard cases. The lies of Tony Blair. The murder of Doctor Kelly , a man who knew too much about WMD. The downing of Flight MH 17 and the unacceptable investigation of it. The American-induced coup in Ukraine. The murderous efforts of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Israel to topple Assad and turn Syria into the kind of broken mini-states we see in Iraq. The infinite lies that made a million deaths in Iraq possible. Israel’s explanations for the horrors of Gaza. And the list goes on and on.

Great powers playing dirty games lie and hide what they do every day, and calling someone a “conspiracy theorist” who says so is just derogatory, not informative.

It actually resembles, albeit in a lighter vein, calling someone who questions Israel’s brutal treatment of millions an “anti-Semite.” You might not think such a nonsense dirty tactic would work, but it is repeated day after day.

It was Hitler – one of history’s great liars and therefore an authority on the subject – who explained the concept of “the big lie.” Say even something outrageous often enough, and people will believe it, at least enough of them to matter.

Indeed that is a founding, unspoken principle of almost all advertising and of almost all our news sources today. And that is no “conspiracy theory,” just a hard fact.

 

 

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN

No wonder The Guardian keeps running the smarmy words of the world’s greatest a$$hole, Tony Blair, against Corbyn. You really are trying to sink his candidacy.

By the way, it really is unfair for newspapers to make political recommendations.

It’s not part of legitimate journalism, although I grant it has a long tradition.

____________________________

Israel is reported as not happy about the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn.

And it has nothing to do with “anti-Semitism,” although without a doubt that now-tired canard will be used, or suggested subtly, yet again.

It has really to do with Corbyn’s independence of mind. And I would suggest The Guardian shares this view.

Right now, much of Europe marches in lockstep with America, and America’s foreign policy allows for almost no independence of mind, especially when places like the Mideast are involved.

America’s campaign contribution system – a disgrace which has close to eliminated effective democracy in the country – is at the root of the problem.

The American Lobby for Israel – not a figment of anyone’s fetid imagination but a hard reality documented by scholarly work – is the most well-organized and financed in the country, and Congressmen and Senators listen when it speaks.

Not only are substantial contributions at risk in opposing them, but there is always the threat of the major news sources going negative on such opponents in their local constituencies. Owing to unlimited corporate mergers, now only a half dozen mega-corporations control most of what Americans read and see on television. They are all friends of Israel if you judge by their words. The situation is very much like the Rupert Murdoch situation in Britain, only more so.

That is why freshmen Congressmen all dutifully attend the free trips for “information” Israel provides after every election. Declining to go is risky indeed, for you will be marked down as “not being a friend of Israel.”

That is why the American Congress today listens to the raging nonsense of Netanyahu’s violent government against their own elected President over an important international agreement. It is a scandal almost beyond describing for the government of the world’s greatest power to behave in this way.

And that is why Jeremy Corbyn can expect some rough treatment ahead. There is no allowance for independence of mind or, for that matter, ethical standards.

Tony Blair, as most readers know, has zero independence of mind, and he appears to have been born and educated without any ethical compass. He’s proved that scores of times. And being so had its rewards: amongst other prizes that tumbled into his lap after he helped kill a million Iraqis was the Israel Peace Prize, a one million dollar thank you for a job well done.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO THE GUARDIAN ON AN ARTICLE SUGGESTING WHAT GALLIPOLI TEACHES US ABOUT THE IRAQ WAR

Gallipoli was a terrible blunder, a pet project of the same Winston Churchill who gave the world more than his fair share of arrogant ideas and barbarities, including, later, the first mass bombings of German cities, well before Hitler’s bombings.

Churchill was always an advocate of imperialism and plenty of “backbone in war” stuff, and he was fond of referring to Germans as “Huns.”

Yet his is a seemingly benign and heroic figure in history. You can’t help emotionally responding to some of his eloquent speeches and old news photos even now.

Chamberlain, a genuinely decent man in many respects who wanted to avoid a repeat of the Western Front’s unbelievable horror just 20 years later, comes down to us as a somewhat disreputable figure, in no small measure because of the contempt heaped upon him by Churchill.

The word appeasement was used and has since become a favorite insult from the ignorant Right Wing which virtually always wants war and more war.

Of course the entire set of horrors and issues around the Second World War wouldn’t exist had not Britain entered the completely pointless First World War, one its chief cheerleaders for doing so being Churchill. The only outcome of a German victory in 1914 would have been a European Continent dominated by Germany, which is exactly what we have anyway today. But Churchill’s love of British imperialism could not stand the thought of that.

I shouldn’t say “the only outcome” because the other result, an even larger one, of Germany’s success in 1914 would have been no Hitler, no World War II, no invasion of Russia with 27 million killed, and no Holocaust.

People are so easily swayed by emotional words and appealing faces, and they lose the rational aspect of their minds to the rhetoric and backstage lever-pulling of men like Churchill. Democratic politics frequently yields to the superficial charm and secret deadliness of psychopathic personalities. Witness the recent examples of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Tony Blair – all with their smiles and murders and plots possessing varying degrees of psychopathy, to a certainty.

The smarmy Tony Blair years later dedicated all his talents to making an illegal and unnecessary invasion, which we now know killed a million people, seem reasonable and morally right.

He was rewarded afterwards by immense wealth, having served the interests of immensely wealthy people, while the poor people of Iraq were left a disgusting mess of broken infrastructure, no reliable water and power, poisons and explosives everywhere, millions of refugees, no jobs, no hopes, and constant ripples of violence.

Large parts of our people still respond like murderous chimps thumping their chests at the right words put in their ears by the establishment through figures like Churchill and Blair.

I don’t see the author’s suggestions as helpful, and I don’t see any corrective for the foreseeable future. The ugly system we have works for those with power and influence, and it will keep right on working. Only the most fundamental changes in our political institutions offer any hope, and that only far into the future, if ever.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Stark warning?

Tony Blair, mass murderer and liar, walks freely about, scooping up bags of money from special interests.

George Bush, mass murderer and liar and extraordinary ignoramus, sits peacefully on his porch, swilling beer.

Dick Cheney, mass murderer and vile abuser of his office, shoots his ugly mouth off regularly.

Nothing has happened to mass murderer Donald Rumsfeld.

Benjamin Netanyahu continues bullying and threatening, stealing and murdering.

Ehud Olmert, murderer of 400 children among other accomplishments, is retired in comfort.

Ariel Sharon, who spent a lifetime killing people and launching unwarranted wars, was only felled by natural causes.

Henry Kissinger, a war criminal as great as any tried at Nuremberg, still lurks in the shadows whispering advice to the influential.

The totality of those gentlemen’s handiwork makes Charles Taylor look a piker at murder.

I don’t see Taylor’s trial as anything more than the powers-that-be getting an old enemy.

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN IN THE TELEGRAPH

 

Tony Blair’s chief bias is to greed beyond all ethical, and even mentally-sound, boundaries.

That motivates him in everything.

He helped America kill piles of innocent people so that he could retire with sinecures coming out of his ears from grateful neo-cons in America and Israel.

He took a job with the Quartet so he could get an extra salary and a limo and champagne and deference, but he is such a coward he on at least one occasion refused even to land in the region.

He deliberately kept his mumbo-jumbo beliefs secret while prime minister – although people might have guessed from his friendship with the world’s first certified-moron president, Bush – and then, in his retirement, he converted to Catholicism so that he could cavort with the Pope and Cardinals in their Gucci slippers.

Tony Blair is, apart from being just a ridiculous excuse for a human being, always on the side of power and wealth, and that would of course predispose him to Israel versus the Palestinians, who are in no position to give him anything.

Thus, too, the secret trips to Libya to warmly greet Gaddafi.

And recall the way he squandered money on his wife’s appearance when he was prime minister. A ridiculous man of course is likely to have a ridiculous wife, and he does in the woman who was photographed yawning in the Queen’s presence, snorts here and there like Charles Laughton playing Quasimodo, and appeared in her bed dress in front of Downing Street to yell like the proverbial fish-wife at reporters. Imagine a woman of any good sense accepting $7,000 haircuts? (or was it pounds?)

Tony Blair is the prime minister from Monty Python, and that isn’t an exaggeration in the least.

I believe his insatiable greed is a psychological response to people’s natural inclination to laugh at his and his wife’s foibles and pretences, but it makes him utterly useless as a statesman or even a public man.

_______________________

“Legitimate claim to Judea and Samaria”?

Good God, anywhere else such childish nonsense would be laughed away by the entire world.

Israel has no “legitimate claims” to anything, not even, strictly speaking, its 1967 borders.

It manipulated European politicians and forced its way into the region, using terror along a good deal of the way.

The world, after the Holocaust, was in a mood to accept Israel, spurious historical claims or not.

But the world is not in a mood to accept this nonsense about Greater Israel which is nothing but a formula in the modern world for endless war and oppression.

Basing anything in world affairs or diplomacy on ancient writings, and a single group’s religious ones at that, is a very bad joke. It truly is akin to quoting Nostradamus on world affairs or the paranoid insanity of the Book of Revelations.

If ancient books are valid deeds, then Greece owns a good part of Turkey from the Trojan War.

The Phoenicians lived in what is called Israel before there was an Israel. The Egyptians did too for a while. The Iraqis ruled for a while. The Greeks. Then there were the Romans.

Try sorting that mess of possible claims. Simply insane and a formula for war.

By the way, the Palestinians are almost certainly the actual descendants of ancient Israel. Rome followed the practice of allowing residents to stay in its conquests so long as they were loyal to Rome. Of course, in the intervening 2,000 years, they’ve undergone many changes, including religion and language.

What a bitter irony, a polyglot people from Europe – Germany, Russia, and Spain – the modern Ashkenazi and Sephardi who formed Zionism and lead Israel – kick the actual descendents of ancient Israel out of their homes and farms to fill them with migrants from Europe and America.

 

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED COMMENTS TO A COLUMN BY JOHN IBBITSON IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Well, they have just the man in the prime minister’s office to accommodate their wishes.

For the next four years our dark bulk will give them everything they want.

And, of course, part of what they want is another Tony Blair, loyal puppy trotting around in whichever direction the master steps, licking the blood from his boots.

It’s truly embarrassing being a lone imperial power ready to bomb the crap out of anyone who disagrees with your policies, so it greatly helps the American psyche to have guys like Blair or Harper there, ready on a moment’s notice to join the fight and make it all look larger and more like a genuine cause than it really is.

We’ve just seen that with Libya, and I’m afraid we’ll see a good deal more.

The Canadian people, I’m confident saying, do not support wars of aggression and intervention and coups abroad, but a government in office with 39.6% of of votes is capable under our system of completely subverting their wishes.

We have a deadly serious democratic deficit, and we are about to see under the dark bulk just how much death it can generate.
__________________________________

“A chastened United States is looking to Canada to help it carry the weight of the world.”

John Ibbitson, with a sentence like that you should not be writing professionally.

Chastened? By the impact of its own immense excesses?

Help carry the weight of the world?

Who in God’s name asked the U.S. to do this?

And what you really mean here is that it wants Canada to squander part of its resources, people, and reputation for the role of international water boy.

But that is nothing new.

Not many years ago we were being constantly harangued by the American ambassador and many others about not spending enough on the military and living off the protection of the United States.

The loudmouth, cryptoNazi Patrick Buchanan was one of many saying this in public.

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSES TO AN EDITORIAL IN THE TELEGRAPH

“How should we respond to his warning? Ignore it because he made mistakes in Iraq and therefore nothing he says can be trusted? His analysis of Iran is based on far more reliable information than was available about Saddam’s Iraq.”

Sorry, but this piece is not just incorrect, it seems to me to be dishonest.

Made mistakes in Iraq?

How is that anything but dishonest? There were no mistakes, there was only a long and twisted and deliberate effort to deceive, and Blair works hard at it still.

You did not have to be a senior member of a government before the Iraq invasion to know that Bush, and his hopeless acolyte, Blair, were not telling the truth.

The facts were there for a critical mind to sort before the invasion. Solid information from past and current weapons inspectors, leaks from foreign intelligence, the testimony of an émigré Iraqi nuclear scientist, and the views of some heads of state – there was a mountain of legitimate information out there to put the lie to George and Tony.

And there was just the basic history at the time: context is always critical for understanding any situation. The first Bush’s invasion decimated Iraq, much more so than we were ever told, and then we had a decade of bombing, plotting, blockades, and the starvation of Iraqi children.

During all that extended horror, the phony right-wing think tanks in the United States never stopped the lobbying and speeches and publishing papers for the overthrow of Hussein, the very people George Junior hung around with and later made advisors in his criminal government.

His analysis of Iran is based on far more reliable information than was available about Saddam’s Iraq?

How can you write that with a straight face? First, Blair’s access to information can only be less than it was. Two, the general understanding of what is happening in Iran is demonstrably bad, less because Iran is a closed society – it is not – but Israel and its apologists and lobbyists conduct a non-stop crusade of misunderstanding, black information, and blind pressure. Newspapers like the Telegraph cooperate in this effort with editorials like this one.

We have already been told by the best intelligence available in the world that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program. Moreover, many of Iran’s efforts to defuse the situation created by blind international pressure, as its efforts at an agreement with Brazil, point in the opposite direction of Israel’s claims. But even if they had one, they are a threat to no one. Modern Iran has attacked no one, quite unlike Israel which has attacked every neighbor that it has, some more than once.

Last, no country in the world has a record more packed with deception in nuclear matters than Israel. We know Israel has on the order of 150 warheads. We know it has several delivery systems for these weapons. We know that its nuclear weapons plant at Dimona is not open to any inspection. We know that it is not a signatory to non-proliferation while Iran is. We know that Israel lied, stole, and deceived for decades to get its weapons. We know it cooperated with apartheid South Africa, assisting them with their nuclear weapons, against all international agreements and law.

And last, we know Israel has worked for decades to make itself into a geopolitical miniature of the United States, one that strives to control events for at least a thousand miles outside its borders (whatever those are). Efforts to threaten Iran are only the latest phase of this.
________________________

Blair has been so well paid for his criminal cooperation with Bush, it should be embarrassing. Every gift that it is in the power of the American establishment to grant, including various sinecures, has been granted.

America pays its servants well. You only have to look back at its long history of its various satraps, which includes everything from secret salaries from the CIA to various honors.

Blair even got a “peace” prize of a million dollars. Imagine, a mass killer given a peace prize?

But this prize was the gift of an Israeli foundation, so the confusion between war and peace is perhaps understandable.

Blair is an almost contemptible individual, having helped destroy a society for nothing, lied almost every day of his term of office, served the only certified moron ever to be an American president, and now enjoying unearned wealth like a Middle Eastern potentate.

His word on anything, including religion, is simply worthless.

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE INDEPENDENT

He “regrets” the loss of life? How very civil of him.

But just what does that even mean? Is it anything along the lines of saying sorry to the mangled remains of the pedestrian you just dragged to his death under your car while you were driving drunk?

Blair truly is one of the most repulsive leaders of a major country of the last several decades.

Starting a war which ultimately killed a million people and set a society back for at least a generation ranks pretty high in my book of war crimes.

If I wanted to be flip, I could say Tony’s greatest crime was heeding George Bush, but I think that falls in the category of mental illness, not crime.

I think too we should never forget how opposed the British people were to Bush’s evil idea. London had the world’s greatest peace parade.

But Tony managed to manipulate and crawl and lie his way to dragging Britain into that pointless mass killing.

He has been richly rewarded for his dirty work – appointments, sinecures of every description – all the good things in the gift of those he doggedly served, the United States.

And just look at his pictures and hear his empty glib words now.

But isn’t that what you would expect from a supreme narcissist, indeed one bordering on a psychopath?

False charm, constant lies, endless manipulation, and attracted to killing – that is Blair.

It is simply stunning that in the twenty-first century, in an advanced democratic country, a leader can get away with what Blair has.

Indeed, he has prospered beyond anything he likely ever dreamed of, working the miracle of transmuting dead flesh into gold.

Sorry, Tony, all the prayers and masses you can muster and all the perfumes of Arabia won’t touch the stench you carry.

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO COLUMNS IN THE INDEPENDENT AND THE GLOBE AND MAIL

The Munk Debates are a set of silly, costly farces, contributing nothing to advancing knowledge.

This one is particularly ridiculous both for the characters of the individuals involved and the intellectually throwback nature of the topic.

You cannot debate or rationally argue religious matters. You can try, of course, but then you might just as well debate about ghosts or boogeymen or garden nymphs and their impact on society.

This Munk Debate was literally that silly.

The scholastic philosophers tried for ages to apply logic to religion, trying to prove the existence of God and other religious matters countless times. It was all for nothing, and gradually philosophers recognized the pointlessness of the exercise.

The word science means knowledge, while religion proudly claims the world of faith or beliefs as its subject. You simply cannot apply the methods of science to the substance of religion.

Now, of course, you can argue, endlessly, about particular beliefs or faith, and many people do, but it is all a complete waste of effort. We have centuries of Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, and others telling each other where they have matters wrong. It all leads absolutely nowhere in advancing knowledge or even tolerance. Indeed, it has provided the substance and motive for endless wars, tortures, and miseries.

This Munk Debate is also extremely cynical, by several measures. Any organization, attempting to establish a reputation for contributing to enlightenment, which puts on this kind of circus is unworthy of respect.

Moreover, the motivations are so clearly money-making – all those involved being handsomely paid for their trouble – and the grabbing of cheap publicity, for we know the general populace is always ready to get excited on aspects of the topic of religion. The publicity this silly event has generated should be embarrassing for any organization with pretensions to enlightenment.

Putting two big names on a stage to carry out this money-making frivolity is worthy of impresario/convicted fraudster Garth Drabinsky, but again, what utter cynicism to use a genuine war criminal like Tony Blair, a man with the blood of tens of thousands on his hands, giving him a stage to blubber about beliefs while collecting yet another paycheck. He is a man with no shame, no conscience, but an ego resembling a cancer out of control.

Hitchens is a very clever, eloquent man, but everyone knows his views on the subject. He too was just there for a quick paycheck. Moreover, he too is a man of highly questionable ethics, one who worked hard to make Bush’s criminal invasion of Iraq acceptable.

We speak today of such things as infomercials and product placement in news broadcasts. Well, thank you to the Munk people for offering up a glutinous helping of both.

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

This is a celebrity circus, not a debate and certainly not any kind of intellectual event. It is pseudo-intellectual nonsense posing as significant discussion.

Religion is the opposite of logic, and centuries ago philosophers discovered that you cannot argue with logic about religious matters.

The Munk Debates might just as well be an arm of Garth Drabinsky Showboat Enterprises.

The two people involved, while celebrities indeed, are both people who have done no service to humanity.

Blair is a war criminal, pure and simple, and a kind of nasty idiot to boot.

Hitchens is a very clever, eloquent man but one who worked hard to make the criminal invasion of Iraq seem acceptable.

There really is a special place in hell for each of these gentlemen.
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How easily we forget that the history of organized Christianity provides almost certainly the bloodiest tale in all of human history.

The Crusades, that dark saga of Christianity written in blood and terror, continued sporadically over hundreds of years. They served little other purpose than gathering wealth through spoils and sacking cities and easing the periodic domestic political difficulties of the papacy and major princes of Europe.

We hear of the treatment of women under Islam in certain places, not remembering that Christian women were left locked in iron chastity belts for years while their husbands raped their way across the Near East. And the character of Saladin, hard warrior that he was, shines nobly in history compared to the moral shabbiness of Richard Lionheart.

Europe wove a remarkable tapestry of horrors in the name of Christianity from the beginning of the modern era. There was the Holy Inquisition, the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain, the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, the Thirty Years’ War, the English Civil War, the St Bartholomew Massacre, Cromwell’s slaughter in Ireland, the enslavement and widespread extermination of native peoples in the Americas, the Eighty Years’ War in Holland, the expulsion of the Huguenots from France, the pogroms, the burning of witches, and numberless other horrific events right down to The Holocaust itself, which was largely the work of people who considered themselves, as did the slave drivers of America’s South, to be Christians.

Over and above the conflicts motivated by religion, European and American history, a history dominated by people calling themselves Christian, runs with rivers, lakes, and whole seas of blood. Just a sampling includes the Hundred Years’ War, the War of the Spanish Succession, the Seven Years’ War, the slave trade, the French Revolution, the Vendée, the Napoleonic Wars, the Trail of Tears, the Opium War, African slavery in the American South, the American Civil War, the Franco-Prussian War, the massacre in the Belgium Congo, the Crimean War, lynchings, the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, World War I, the Spanish Civil War, and World War II.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY CHARLES MOORE IN THE TELEGRAPH

Oh, I wouldn’t go so far as saying that.

Starting a war which ultimately killed a million people and set a society back for at least a generation ranks pretty high in my book of crimes.

If I wanted to be flip, I could say Tony’s greatest crime was heeding George Bush, but I think that falls in the category of mental illness, not crime.

I think too we should never forget how opposed the British people were to Bush’s evil idea. London had the world’s greatest peace parade.

But Tony managed to manipulate and crawl and lie his way to dragging Britain into that pointless mass killing.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

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

What do you expect a certified war criminal to say about his past activities?

Napolean spent years on St Helena justifying his murderous wars.

Even Hitler, I’m sure, would offer an eloquent rational for his ghastly behavior.

Apart from being a war criminal, Tony Blair has always suffered mental problems too.

Look at his idiotic religious activity.

Look at his ridiculous marriage to a woman who was the most embarrassing spouse in British history since George IV’s wife, Caroline.

And look at his work in the Middle East for which he collects a fat salary and privileges. He’s afraid even to land a plane there.

I do not understand why he is taken seriously enough to quote in the press.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY IRWIN STELZER IN THE TELEGRAPH

Irwin Stelzer does not seem to realize that just because we have a name for a concept does not make the concept valid.

The “special relationship” is as meaningless as cold fusion or angels.

It is a concept which dates back to the days when dominance in world affairs was perceptibly shifting from Britain and its Empire to the United States, an evolutionary process completed by World War II.

I find it difficult to believe that any clear-thinking and informed adult defends what is a name with no content, but I also know that there are other (unexpressed) reasons for doing so.

Already at the time of the Suez Crisis, the concept was pretty much dead on its feet.

Since that time, there have been countless demonstrations that the United States takes no account whatever of Britain’s views in critical areas.

It listens, I’m sure, but listening is cheap, particularly when the payoff is the kind of foolish loyalty Britain has demonstrated in recent decades.

When America tried to pressure Britain to join its pointless holocaust in Vietnam (about 3 million killed by America justifies the term), it was told no.

A few decades later, pathetic Tony Blair enthusiastically joined in another meaningless war, responsible for the deaths of a million and a couple of million refugees.

What did Blair get for Britain?

Absolutely nothing. His views on a number of subjects were listened to and politely ignored.

Tony personally benefited, softening the blow to his ego. He is loaded down with sinecures in the gift of the American government.

Blair goes down in history as pretty much a paid fool who degraded his office with countless lies to become wealthy.

Americans – and I spent half my life in America – simply do not care what others think. Indeed, generally they regard others with skepticism and even contempt as “foreigners.”

British people are often thought of as amusing, but there is a huge reservoir of dislike underneath for everything from monarchy and manners to accents and customs.

Please, always remember, it was Americans who supplied the IRA with arms and money. Collections were taken in bars in large cities countless times, and there was little sympathy when buildings in London were blown up. Why? That wasn’t terror, it was fighting for freedom.

Britain’s best opportunity to influence world affairs is as an important member of the EU. America’s policy towards Britain also has the object of keeping that from happening.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY IRWIN STELZER IN THE TELEGRAPH

The Special Relationship?

Oh, I believe Irwin Stelzer means by that expression the arrangement whereby Britain waits around to serve as a convenient tool to be picked up or tossed away as need arises.

Britain made it possible for the U.S. to call its international-law breaking murderous effort in Iraq a “coalition” effort.

There is no Special Relationship, but it is hard to communicate that to writers like this, too blind to see.

It’s like telling a child there is no Father Christmas.

Blair joined in America’s war crimes and demeaned his office in a hundred ways with dishonesty for the sake of the “Special Relationship.”

What did Britain get for its disgraceful efforts? Nothing.

It was treated as a mouse squeaking near Uncle Sam’s boot. None of Britain’s views were even considered on any international issue.

Of course, Blair personally got plenty in return for his dirty work.

He’s a wealthy man today with many ill-gotten sinecures from American or American-controlled foundations.

Perhaps Mr Stelzer is hoping to enjoy a bit of the same one day?