IS IT OKAY FOR AMERICA TO MURDER ITS ENEMIES? A DAMNABLE QUESTION TO ASK IN A FREE SOCIETY

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY GORDON GIBSON IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

Sorry, Mr. Gibson, there is no moral debate here.

I find it stunning that anyone living in a free country could even pose this question seriously.

The example of Israel is perfect. Israel has secretly, as well as in public, murdered those it calls enemies for decades.

And where has this taken Israel? Israel has no peace. Israel today has the worst reputation in the advanced world as a place of fairness and decency. And Israel gradually sinks lower and lower into a murky abyss of ghastly ethics and democratic values.

We have the witness of Israeli soldiers as to the horrible Nazi-like words with which they were prodded in advance of the Gaza invasion.

Indeed, it is a legitimate question whether Israel as we know it can long continue. The CIA only recently predicted that it would change in 20 years into something else, with many of American and European dual-nationals returning to the lands of their birth.

There is simply no question about these results. That's why Israel's defenders constantly today lash out at what they call anti-Semitism, calling the critics of human abuse haters.

You cannot have a society of laws and justice when you are unwilling to live by such laws yourself. The US has fallen into this same moral pit with its international torture gulags and its assassinations.

This kind of murder is absolutely no different to some rogue cops secretly executing the people they regard as criminals. It is no different to the ghastly work of death squads in Brazil going through poor areas of cities murdering children at night. And it is no different to the past several juntas in South America who made thousands “disappear” by kidnapping them and dumping them out of planes over the ocean.

God, the most precious thing we have achieved over countless centuries of ghastly murder and conflict is a society of laws and defined rights. How damnable that anyone would even toy with the idea of destroying that.

NEW YORK TIMES' ASSERTION THAT CIA HAD ASSASSINATION PLAN AGAINST AL QAEDA BUT DID NOT IMPLEMENT IT

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

And if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.

We know perfectly well that America has been using drones and Hellfire missiles to kill many people, without charge or trial or conviction of anything.

Remember, too, Rumsfeld's bloody Nazi-like words about killing or walling away America's al Qaeda prisoners in Afghanistan.

It wasn't long after that that 3,000 prisoners disappeared.

They are said to have been loaded into trucks and driven out into the desert to suffocate, then being buried in mass graves. This was done by one of the warlord's men while American soldiers watched and picked their noses.

And let's not forget the war crime of the Iraq invasion. A million killed, a couple of million refugees created, a modern society set back for decades. Results no different to having used a few nuclear weapons against a people who did absolutely nothing against America.

So why would there be any hesitation over this? The American establishment has demonstrated a lawless disregard for international law for eight years.

Of course, there wasn't, and I'd bet it was that ghastly Dick Cheney who headed the operation and perhaps the new commander in Afghanistan who managed it.

America has no claim to any kind of ethics or democratic values in light of recent years.

The election of Obama has not changed this position at all, other than offering a friendly smile and a good mind in place of a pathetic lump.

A great deal of effort will be required to restore America's tattered reputation, and I see no efforts indicating that effort is underway.

AMERICA’S STRANGE POLITICAL CULTURE OF GRIEF AND DYING

Note to readers: this was written some years ago, but somehow I missed it when posting older pieces.

AMERICA’S STRANGE POLITICAL CULTURE OF GRIEF AND DYING

John Chuckman

Death in America does not come easily. That is, unless you are homeless or live on an Indian reservation or in one of the nation’s vast urban ghettos or are one of tens of millions of working poor with the kind of health insurance that features exceptions instead of coverage. In all these cases, likely few will note your passing. Losers don’t count in America, except at Fourth-of-July speeches by congressmen in tight races.

Anyone living in the United States must acclimatize to massive public displays of grief. Actually, “public displays of grief” is an inadequate term, for, apart from their Hollywood production values, they seem often to have a starkly political character.

But the subject is complex, and some of its ridiculous aspects reflect a society where beauty contests for five-year-olds in mascara and half-time football shows are cultural events. There is also a business aspect, for grief like everything in America serves the greater “entrepreneurial spirit.”

And there is, amidst all the mess and clutter, a sense of loneliness and anger that comes through, the echoes of life in a society of flourishing Social Darwinism. This last aspect will be the subject of a future essay.

Have you ever noticed the way Americans refer to any event involving death as a “tragedy?” This usage reflects the attitude of people who think they’ve banished death in their child-like enjoyment of measureless entitlements. Death must be really special, and so it is always a “tragedy.”

This word usage also reflects the political correctness that muffles all discussion of serious topics in America with a dense, fluffy coating of euphemism. It’s callous to talk honestly about something like death in America. Such talk may even qualify as being unpatriotic.

Now, “tragedy” has a very specific meaning, and it has nothing to do with accidents or unhappiness or even tears. It has to do with heroic attempts at something worthy despite the fates having ruled that one must fail. All sense of this powerful word is lost in contemporary America.

When first built, the Vietnam memorial was a remarkably dignified statement of grief, that seemed, with its low profile, simple design, and dark color, to speak to both the shame and loss of a pointless war. It was a miracle that anything so thoughtful came out of those years of insane violence.

But the dignity couldn’t last long. Clumps of statues – including figures carefully representing every identifiable marketing segment of the voter population, always excepting gays and Arabs – are springing up like toadstools after a period of warm rain. And, of course, there has to be an “information center.” Dignity is gradually giving way to the ambiance of a Niagara Falls gift shop.

Endless photographs of people rubbing names onto paper or touching the surface with tremulous fingers or leaving teddy bears, an entire small library of coffee-table books full of such pictures, have almost turned the wall into an official national how-to display center for grief.

The private acts of individuals grieving are, or should be, just that, private. Overly-photographed, overly-televised, overly-written-about acts are not private, they are public – and not the public of solemn ceremony, but the public of performance or advertising. Americans often no longer seem to understand this distinction, or, as with so many things, they want it both ways.

We also have a fake wall that tours the country on a truck, as well as several hundred local mini-walls and fake walls in cities, towns, and states that feature subsets of the names on the wall in Washington. I am sure there are people who imitate what they’ve seen repeated over and over in magazines, movies, and on television when the fake wall pays a visit at the local Wal-Mart parking lot. Tremulous fingers rub names on a plastic wall inside a truck.

To placate veterans of another hideous, pointless war, “the Korean conflict,” yet another wall was built – this one far less subtle or interesting, perhaps reflecting its being a rushed after-thought. This one unfortunately resembles a huge Russian-gangster tombstone with faces etched on dark granite. It comes with an army of life-size aluminum soldiers, “Joes,” (wasn’t that the name used by the cute little Korean lads always asking the generous Americans for chocolate in all the “B” movies about Korea?) grimly trudging along.

Soon we will have the grandest memorial of all – a gigantic pile of rock slabs and flags and men’s and ladies’ rooms honoring World War II. The artist’s renderings suggest a bowling-tournament trophy built on the scale of Egypt’s Great Pyramid. This eyesore is to be assembled after fleets of Sikorsky helicopters drop the required eighteen million pounds of granite dead center of The Mall in Washington.

Support for this one came right from the grass roots, from the sale of t-shirts and baseball caps at Wal-Mart and smoky beer-socials at veterans’ posts. The resulting memorial has everything you’d expect short of beer-bellied figures in baseball caps and XXX t-shirts labeled “Proudly Made in the U.S.A.,” but, who knows, that may come over time.

Building ugly, expensive memorials is not limited to Washington. Nor is their subject matter limited to war. Walls of names at one time threatened to become as commonplace as fried-chicken outlets. Several airline crashes have their own versions.

Now, other conceptions have come into vogue, perhaps inspired by the massive aluminum “Joes” of the Korean-conflict memorial. For example, we have a memorial with scores of concrete posts down in a Florida swamp in memory of an airline crash.

If we were to build something like this for every victim of every crash (about 50,000 Americans die in automobile crashes alone each year), memorials would soon represent a serious pedestrian hazard, with people tripping over them or banging into them while talking on cell-phones.

But the strangeness of America’s public grief goes far beyond strange memorials. We have people who gather, in Busby Berkley re-creations of 1970 flower-child scenes, to throw flowers into the ocean years after the crash of an airliner or to light candles in bottles along miles of shore – not private, spontaneous acts of grieving, but choreographed displays, carefully documented on film to become spots on the evening news or the covers of magazines. Grieving here becomes an avenue to Andy Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame.

Being a victim – or part of the subset, survivor – opens new prospects for even the humblest. Victims are interviewed, photographed, appear on day-time talk shows, travel, have books written about them, and often go on lecture circuits. They may even have agents. It’s pretty heady stuff, and it sure beats what most people do for a living.

Indeed, there is an almost irresistible movement in America to raise being a victim to the status of a profession. It is already an occupation.

Soon one or two dozen of America’s countless weird little colleges – places like the Bull Connor Memorial College for Christian Gentlemen, or the New Jersey Turnpike Drive-Through College for the Performing Arts – will offer courses and even degrees in victimhood and survivorship. Why not? You can get a degree in circus in America. Or a degree in recreational leadership. Or a degree in nothing. Four-year B.V.s just seem too good a business opportunity to be missed.

Most people in the world, following the loss of a loved one, seek peace or solace or some other definite and recognizable state of being. But in America, people seek “closure.” The quest to find an acceptable personal meaning for this undefined, self-help-book term is the starting point for many a career as victim or survivor.

Closure may come quickly or never – it is a very flexible concept, allowing for short, meteoric careers or more sustained, long-term ones. Some captives of the American embassy in Iran went on for more than a decade talking and writing about little more than being on the receiving end of what American armed forces are doing to Al-Qaeda prisoners in Cuba.

For about a year or two, every relative of every person affected by the Oklahoma City bombing was interviewed so many times that every ounce of pathetic remembrance was drained from them. I used to wince as soon as I heard the lead-in for another of these on National Public Radio. There was this awful mental image of reporters squeezing the ragged, pulpy scraps of an exhausted lemon to get a last drop of juice.

Of course, there are Oklahoma City victim support groups and associations of every description plus survivors’ reunions and home-coming events. Grief counselors – another field for combining grief and profit in America -streamed in for weeks, jamming the town’s airport and bus station. And probably upwards of four hundred books were published by and about victims. Victims can spend the rest of their lives just reading about themselves.

Again in Oklahoma City, there is the unavoidable colossal memorial – this time, it consists of a fleet of giant, ugly chairs that look as though no one would ever have wanted to sit on one.

Undoubtedly, the terrorist attack on New York will top all previous grief-events for intensity of as well as endurance. This promises to go on for decades. We already have decals, official logos, baseball caps, t-shirts, shorts, lapel pins, books, videos, electronic games, and framed prints. It is well on its way to spawning a major new industry of survivor-souvenirs and memorabilia. And a stupendous memorial is almost certainly in the works. Perhaps Disney will do a plastic copy to minimize the diversion of tourists to New York.

Now, don’t misunderstand. When the terrorists attacked, America deserved the world’s sympathy and help, and she richly received it. But now, quite apart from its being well past time for a grossly self-indulgent people “to get a life,” the country’s brutal, stupid response – undoubtedly killing more innocent people than died in the attack itself and causing more misery than can be imagined in such a poor land – means she has relinquished further claims to the world’s sympathy.

It’s hard to sympathize with people who insist on the very special, precious, eternal nature of their own loss, while failing even to notice what they do to others. The moral values here closely resemble those of certain survivors or victims in Texas who parade outside the prison during an execution and excitedly talk to newsmen about the closure someone’s death is bringing to their lives.

Closure on this one is going to be right off the scale and probably will take generations. At the heart of the matter, as someone perceptively noted, is that Americans want to be liked and just cannot understand why someone dislikes them so much. They could easily learn why if they only would listen to others, but that will not happen.

Not listening is something of a national characteristic, and there’s almost a sense of pride attached to it. But then, Americans are proud of a lot of loopy things, like the fact that B-2 bombers are such neat-looking, high-tech planes – totally ignoring the fact that each copy costs them about forty top-quality, well-equipped high schools and requires maintenance for every hour’s flying equal to the total annual salaries of several teachers.

Besides, the entire workforce of government and corporate media labor mightily day and night to keep emotions on the boil. CNN stupidly blares from every office and public place much like the tele-screens in 1984 reporting approved details of Oceania’s endless war. Outsiders are certainly not welcome. At all. Unless, of course, they’re sending troops or money.

There is simply no perspective in any of this. Every four or five years, Americans killing Americans generate enough names to fill the Vietnam memorial in Washington. They murder the same number of people who died in the World Trade Center every few months.

Indeed, until a recent, not well-understood decline in American homicides, this figure was enough killings just-over every two years to fill a new wall. Enough killings to equal the carnage of the World Trade Center about every six weeks (just a few years ago, murders ran at 1800 a year for New York city alone). That rate of killing created the equivalent of ten Vietnam walls in the first couple of decades after the war – all filled with names of Americans killed by Americans.

In the same state where tens of millions were spent on the Oklahoma City memorial, there is no memorial to, nor even much memory of, twice as many black Americans slaughtered in Tulsa by insane white mobs and dumped into mass graves during a rampage in the 1920s. Even their property was stolen, just as was the case for Japanese-American internees of concentration camps about twenty years later. Nor is there a memorial in the state of Florida where a similar event occurred.

The colossal brutality of American slavery receives no adequate memorial. The re-creations of slave auctions at colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, actually help soften the image of slavery, but even these silly play-acts by summer students in gingham are quite recent. Slavery at virtually all national historic sites was simply ignored.

Imagine the real auction blocks with slaves stripped naked to display their muscles. Or, in the case of females, to show other assets of interest to isolated plantation owners. Imagine the chained slaves defecating like horses as they are driven to or from the market in gangs. Imagine the stinking holds of ships where they were packed like cord wood, with the substantial numbers who died or got sick in shipment being tossed overboard as they were discovered. America has never come to terms with the immensity of slavery. Where’s the huge and piteous memorial owing here?

Something like two thousand kids a year are killed by child abuse in the United States – that’s another wall full of names since the end of the war in Vietnam – all children. But there is no wall provided.

Of course, the deaths of children and the documented abuse of literally hundreds of thousands more every year, doesn’t stop “pro-life” folks from weeping over fetuses. Never mind all those real kids in pain and difficulty, never mind all the homeless, never mind all the runaways and child prostitutes, and never mind all the families whose lives are no more than emotional vacuums – they’re murdering fetuses!

The bizarre outer limits of grief culture were reached when dozens of Americans gathered in Washington to weep over stem cells. Most of the mourners likely wouldn’t be able to offer a coherent definition of a stem cell, but that fact didn’t get in the way of their much photographed and televised grief. It wouldn’t surprise me if these people announce a special memorial to stem cells killed in New York labs by the terrorist attack.

Now, the discovery that a few middle-class children accidentally were killed each year by air bags created waves of publicity and demands for change. And change in the regulations came quickly. But the murder of an American child every few hours (until the recent decline, but the number is still shameful), often at the hands of another child in urban ghettos, generated only a flat-line graph on the monitor of national concern.

Executions in the United States elicit sympathy from some, but the death penalty is popular. Candidate Bush saw no political risk in making sophomoric remarks about people waiting to be executed in Texas. And there’s a well-known picture of him smirking during a remark about the upcoming death of a particular inmate.

America is still the only country to have used a genuine “weapon of mass destruction.” Twice. On civilians. Not much grief is ever expressed over that.
Actually, quite the opposite, as we are reminded at every commemoration of Pearl Harbor that the few thousand Americans killed in an attack on a military base more than justified the mass incineration of women and children, hospitals and schools.

One especially sensitive American reader recently wrote to tell me that the entire Middle East should have been reduced to radioactive glass after the attack on the World Trade Center, and that I should just mind my own business about it. Needless to say, such expressions of grief are touching.

Three to four million Southeast Asian people perished in the insane orgy of killing Americans call the Vietnam War, three hundred thousand went missing, and, over the years since, thousands of farmers have been crippled or killed by the mines and unexploded bombs left behind. Not to mention the unholy effects of an ocean of Agent Orange bubbling and gurgling its way through the water tables of Southeast Asia.

And yet, a quarter-century after that holocaust, there were news stories about whether the Vietnamese were being sufficiently cooperative in finding sets of American remains. Remains that by that time and in that place were surely nothing more than dust, buttons, and dental fillings.

This was just one of many demeaning rituals the American establishment put the Vietnamese through because of their intense rage at losing the war. But this absurd ritual of digging for dust and buttons was possible and took meaning precisely because Washington could exploit strange American attitudes towards death – virtually encouraging the pitiful, hopeless belief by a portion of the public in the survival of missing men – to support a vicious policy.

Every three days, cigarettes kill as many Americans as died in the World Trade Center. Does the Congress take serious action to suppress or better control cigarette smoking? Not really. Other countries have been far more imaginative and aggressive.

America’s courageous legislators leave most of the responsibility to the courts with state lawsuits whose very settlements presume continued heavy smoking and whose proceeds often are not even spent on smoking or health.

Now compare the daily, genuine menace of cigarettes with the threat of terrorism.

Despite the World Trade Center, an American’s chances of dying from terror are just about equal to slipping on a banana in the bathtub during a thunderstorm. Almost nonexistent.

Here was one event involving three thousand people out of a population of two hundred and eighty million, one event spread over a period of many decades of America’s controversy-filled dominance in world affairs. And that one event involved a series of unrepeatable favorable circumstances for the perpetrators, circumstances which actually reflect on the same glorious legislators’ unwillingness to attend to business before by mandating such simple measures as locked cabins and more professional inspection staff.

Yet after that one event, the good old boys in Congress instantly passed police-state legislation, negated many Constitutional protections, launched an undeclared war, ignored the Geneva Conventions, and stand ready to spend countless billions more.

It truly does make a remarkable difference who dies and under what circumstances in America.

THE DEATH OF ROBERT MCNAMARA

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY DANIEL FINKELSTEIN IN THE TIMES

McNamara may be the greatest modern example of the banality of evil.

He was, in his heyday, a dry, boring man with the appearance of a corporate executive who taught Baptist Sunday School classes.

He was very bright and energetic, but dry and boring, driven by an insane need for success and with no evident ethical standards beyond those associated with the ferociously ambitious.

The United States, under his advice and that of others like McGeorge Bundy, created the greatest holocaust since that of World War II.

An estimated three million Vietnamese were killed, many of them suffering horrible deaths from napalm and early versions of cluster bombs.

Carpet bombing by B-52s made parts of that poor country resemble the surface of the moon.

Left behind were millions of pounds of the hideous Agent Orange oozing through the ground to cause birth defects for perhaps centuries.

Left behind too were hundreds of thousands of land mines to cripple and kill farmers for decades after.

The reason for this horror? The Vietnamese were fighting a civil war and the side with the wrong economic beliefs was winning.

Of course, it also relates to America's penchant for obsessions, its Captain Ahab drive to chase and kill the great whale.

In the 1960s, it was communism.

Today it's Islamic fundamentalism.

In his later years, McNamara was a sad figure. He very much did come to regret his role. He was almost driven by the ghosts of all those dead souls.

THE LIKELY TRUTH BEHIND PALIN'S RESIGNATION AS GOVERNOR

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

The latest word is that Palin resigned so abruptly owing to a new, yet-undisclosed scandal brewing.

It is said that an Alaskan building corporation called SBS was given the contract for building the arena in good old Wasilla, and in return it helped to build her rather impressive home.

A separate report indicates that the costly supplies were delivered from SBS while others actually built the home.

It is clear to anyone who has seem pictures of her home that it is beyond the means of this woman's meager achievements and large family and the high costs of building in Alaska.

No one who is thinking clearly believes her bizarre act was a political strategy. It simply is not the way politics are done in the U.S.

Candidates running for nominations virtually always retain their existing offices until the last possible moment.

Palin likely reached a secret deal with a prosecutor behind the scenes. We may never learn the full truth.

But we know from other events that her ethical standards are extremely flexible. The case of her wildly spending two hundred thousand dollars of other peoples' money during her campaign on designer clothes is the clearest example of many.

She was given an account for a modest topping up of her wardrobe, and promptly went on an insane buying spree buying stuff for her entire family.

McCain and establishment Republicans were outraged behind the scenes, but they managed to keep it reasonably quiet. She had to return the clothes and has no friends in that wealthy wing of the party.

THE IDEA THAT PALIN'S QUITTING AS GOVERNOR IS A POLITICAL PLOY

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

“If I had to bet right now, I think we just saw the opening statement of the 2012 presidential race.”

Unbelievable, you quit your public post early, and that means you are running for president?

There must be something we do not know that has happened in her private or official life behind this.

It remains stunning that in such a powerful, rich country as the United States this woman would be taken seriously for even five minutes by any group larger than her immediate family.

Every time she opens her mouth a cliché falls out.

“It would be apathetic to just hunker down and go with the flow.”

Go with the flow? I think it’s called doing the job for which you were elected.

And her tiresome whimpering about “the real America.”

Haven't we had enough of the “the real America,” from every huckster and professional rustic in the Republican Party for decades?

"A recent CNN poll had Ms. Palin running neck and neck with former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney."

Good God, the late freak Michael Jackson's name inserted into a poll in America would produce comparable results.

Besides, Mitt Romney is a stiff, cold, and unappealing man who spent twenty million dollars of his own money promoting himself and still failed.

“We are not retreating, we are advancing in another direction.”

Quoted from the lips of the very Douglas MacArthur who was ready to bomb China with nuclear weapons and whose drive to the border with China - despite many warnings - brought a million Chinese "volunteers" into the war.

Wasn’t eight years of the first certified moron president enough?

________________________________________

Phil Gramm and what his momma used to say about “getting’ down outta” the wagon to help push it?

Deadbeat Bush and his never having read the international section of the newspaper? Lamar Alexander and his rustic lumberjack campaign shirts (custom made)?

Nixon and his wife Pat’s “cloth Republican” coat? Privileged, spoiled flyboy McCain, son and grandson of admirals, and his regular guy look?

Dan Quayle and his “potatoe”?

Former Sen. Roman Hruska and his plea that members of the Supreme Court should reflect all qualities, including mediocrity?

LAWRENCE MARTIN ON THE BIZARRE NOTION WE SHOULD CELEBRATE THE FOURTH OF JULY BECAUSE THERE IS A CANADIAN IN THE WHITE HOUSE

POSTED COMMENT TO A COLUMN BY LAWRENCE MARTIN IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

Lawrence Martin, this piece is a little pathetic.

I like Obama and wish him well, knowing full well no one can seriously alter the course of America's paranoid imperial policies.

After all, the combination of all the vested interests of the FBI, the CIA, the dozen other intelligence agencies, the Pentagon, America's Borgia-like wealthy clans, and its immense corporate interests reduce the voice of the people in an election to a little squib.

It's nice to see that charming smile at the White House, but it hardly compensates for all the things that are terribly wrong.

The Iraq withdrawal has turned into a game of words.

Fighting has intensified in Afghanistan.

America is busy interfering in Iran and lying about it.

Guantanamo continues, as do horrid places like Bagram Air Base.

The ugly laws of the Patriot Act continue.

Some military bureaucrat daily sits down to a control panel somewhere in the US and lines up a Predator Drone to fire Hellfire missiles down at some poor people in Pakistan who are promptly incinerated with no arrest, no trial, not even any proper charges. Then the operator happily goes to lunch, having done his morning’s work.

Israel got away with mass murder in Gaza, and now it continues to block entry even of building materials to help clean up the mess. More than a million tortured people and Obama doesn't say or do anything so far as we can see.

ONTARIO CONSERVATIVE HUDAK'S VERSION OF SPRINGTIME FOR HITLER

POSTED COMMENT TO A COLUMN BY MARGARET WENTE IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

Hudak blubbering about Mike Harris sounds like the Ontario politics version of "Springtime for Hitler."

MORE HOT AIR ON THE WORKINGS OF PARLIAMENT FROM PRESTON MANNING

POSTED COMMENT TO A COLUMN BY PRESTON MANNING IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

Preston Manning is personally responsible for bringing up Harper as his political protégé.

So far as I know, it is the only political act of substance for which Preston Manning can claim any legitimate credit in his entire lamentable career.

And it is precisely Mr. Harper's mean spirit, his divisive political practices, and his selective ethics that have altered our Parliament for the worse.

Now, that good old Preston is endowed with a pseudo-academic, mini-institute of his own - a personal propaganda platform, courtesy of oil money - he can play the philosopher, above the fray.

What a bad joke this man is.

THE GOVERNOR OF BIBLE-BELT SOUTH CAROLINA AND HIS GLANDS

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

This is just standard stuff in the Bible Belt.

Tiresome, really tiresome.

This idiot actually told us how he went to tell his mistress it was over, accompanied by "a spiritual advisor."

The problem, Dear Governor, is not in your spirit, it's in your glands.

AHMADINEJAD WON INDEED AND THE REAL SOURCE OF INTERFERENCE IN IRAN’S ELECTION IS LIKELY THE UNITED STATES

June 27, 2009

AHMADINEJAD WON INDEED AND THE REAL SOURCE OF INTERFERENCE IN IRAN’S ELECTION IS LIKELY THE UNITED STATES

John Chuckman

A recent article called “Ahmadinejad Won, Get Over It” by Flynt and Hillary Leverett is not the only source with serious credentials offering reasonable, non-sensational explanations for events around Iran’s presidential election.

Kaveh Afrasiabi, a scholar who once taught at Tehran University and is the author of several books, says many of the same things.

Close analysis of the election results gives absolutely no objective basis for making charges of a rigged election. Mousavi’s expected win – expected, that is, by the Western press and by Mousavi himself - never had any basis in fact.

Afrasiabi also tells us that Ahmadinejad is extremely popular with the poor in Iran, a very large constituency, and he tells us further that Ahmadinejad spent a great deal of time traveling through the country during his first term listening to them. Ahmadinejad is himself a man of fairly humble origins with a good deal of genuine sympathy for the poor.

Of course, the public in the West has been treated to a barrage of propaganda about Ahmadinejad, conditioned by countless disingenuous stories and editorials to regard him as the essence of evil, ready to stir up trouble at a moment’s notice. These perceptions, too, have no basis in fact.

Ahmadinejad is a highly educated man, ready and willing to communicate with leaders in the West, although given to poking fun at some of the shibboleths we hold to. His office as president is not a powerful one in an Iran where power is divided amongst several groups, just as it is in the United States. He has no war-making power.

Even his infamous statement about Israel – mistranslated consistently to make it sound terrible – was nothing more than the same kind of statement made by the CIA in its secret study predicting the peaceful end of today’s Israel in twenty years or the statement by Libya’s leader, Gaddafi, saying Israel would be drowned in a sea of Arabs. Unpleasant undoubtedly for some, the statement was neither criminal nor threatening when properly understood.

The post-election troubles in Iran definitely reflect the interference of security services from at least the United States and Britain. We have several serious pieces of evidence.

First, Iran discovered and arrested just recently a group with sophisticated bomb equipment from Britain. They were caught red-handed, although our press has chosen to be pretty much silent on the matter. Of course, we all recall the arrest of a group of fifteen British sailors a couple of years ago, an event treated in our press as the snatching of innocents on the high seas when in fact they were on a secret mission in disputed waters claimed by Iran.

Robert Fisk recently wrote an excellent piece about photocopies of what purported to be a confidential official government report to the head of state, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, regarding the election results. It attributed a ridiculously small share of the vote to Ahmadinejad and was somehow being waved by Mousavi’s followers all over the streets. It seems clearly invented as a provocation, much in the fashion of the famous “yellow cake” document before America’s invasion of Iraq.

We know that Bush committed several hundred million dollars towards a program creating instability in Iran and that Obama has never renounced the operation.
Iran, surrounded by threatening enemies and the daily recipient of dire threats from Israel and the United States, has absolutely no history of aggression: it has started no conflicts in its entire modern era, but naturally enough it becomes concerned about its security when threatened by nuclear-armed states.

Such threats from the United States are not regarded idly by anyone, coming as they do, from a nation occupying two nations of Western and Central Asia, a nation whose invasions have caused upwards of a million deaths and sent at least two million into exile as refugees.

It is a nation moreover that definitely threatened, behind the scenes, to use nuclear weapons against Afghanistan immediately after 9/11, helping end that threat being one of the main reasons for Britain’s joining the pointless invasion in the first place.

In assessing the genuine threats in the world, please remember what we all too often forget: the United States is the only nation ever actually to use nuclear weapons, twice, on civilians. It also came close to using them again in the early 1950s hysteria over communism – twice, once against China and once in a pre-emptive strike at the Soviet Union - and again later considered using them in Vietnam.

As for the other regular source of threats against, Israel, it is a nation which has attacked every neighbor that it has at one time or another. In the last two years alone, it has killed more people in Lebanon and Gaza than the number who perished in 9/11. It is also a secret nuclear power, having broken every rule and international law to obtain and assist in proliferating nuclear weapons.

Of course, there are many middle class people in Iran who would like a change of government. Such yearnings are no secret and exist everywhere in the world where liberal government is missing, including millions of Americans under years of George Bush and his motivating demon, Dick Cheney.

But saying that is not the same thing as saying that a majority of Iran’s people want a change in government or that the election was a fraud.

And remember, too, Iran had a democratic government more than half a century ago, that of Mohammed Mosaddeq, but it was overthrown in 1953 and the bloody Shah installed in its place by the very same governments now meddling in Iran, the United States and Britain.

THE FANTASY OF FIXING WHAT IS WRONG IN EDUCATION BEFORE IMPLEMENTING ONTARIO'S DAY CARE-KINDERGARTEN PROPOSAL

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY ANNE KOTHAWALA IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

Government pretty much is incapable of correcting the serious problems of our public schools.

Only a dedicated, tough, and highly intelligent premier – an Obama type – could make anything real happen, and I sure do not see any prospect of such a politician coming to power.

The right wing tried reform and utterly failed: Mike Harris and the boys made a series of totally ineffectual changes, including that bad joke we call the literacy test, something McGuinty has kept only because it is a useful political tool manufacturing statistics that seem to show progress.

McGuinty has done nothing but literally throw money at the teachers' union to buy peace for his government while we pay the bills. He has asked and received nothing in return, and he is too weak a character to demand anything real.

The teachers’ union is responsible for the extremely high cost of running our schools, costs which mean there are few resources for improved facilities and expanded services.

Just one tiny example of many I could cite: substitute teachers in Ontario are paid the same rates as regular teachers, a totally excessive and unnecessary cost. Further our teachers in many places are entitled to nearly a month of sick days – this on a 9-month work year – and it is a common attitude to routinely take them, leaving taxpayers paying two salaries for one poorly-taught classroom.

Even McGuinty’s weak minister has commented on the huge costs of sick days in Ontario.

The only way to improve public schools is to make teachers accountable. Accountability is a basic principle we accept in almost all our institutions except public education.

We have some wonderful, dedicated teachers, but we have a great many poor, unmotivated, even unintelligent ones, and the entire structure of administration in education, from vice-principals to superintendents, pretty well comes from these ranks.

Most have never had serious management experience, and most have no concept of accountability. That is why we have a mess.

The kindergarten/day care proposal is a sound one – the first meaningful thing McGuinty has come up with for education, but it won’t happen. The teachers’ union is already attacking it, and if it gets its way, the program will be costly and ineffectual.

SLEAZY SARKOZY TELLS PEOPLE HOW THEY SHOULD DRESS - WITH HIS EMPHASIS ON ONE GROUP HE DISPLAYS CLEAR ANTI-MUSLIM PREJUDICE

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

What right does the president of a country have telling people how to dress? Or disparaging how they dress?

Since when in Western society is it acceptable to attack people for their religious practices?

Sarkozy is intellectual sleaze, playing up to widespread, ignorant anti-Muslim prejudice.

Would Sarkozy have opposed the French nuns who wore the most oppressive outfits only decades ago? Indeed, some still do.

Would Sarkozy oppose elaborate bridal gowns with veils?

What about the popular styles of the 1940s which included huge hats with veils, often large and elaborate veils?

Is he going to oppose Mennonite women for their backward clothing?

How about the dress of certain ultra-orthodox Jews whose outfits look like something from several centuries ago?

To see images of some of these things, here are some sites to give perspective:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_NtgXlrcvXZA/SdOdvLUhEfI/AAAAAAAAc6E/JQPP-9wqokk/s1600-h/nun.jpg

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_NtgXlrcvXZA/SaF4EqbXfuI/AAAAAAAAbgo/lIoS4v34VY4/s1600-h/Mennonites_R.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_NtgXlrcvXZA/SOUVIK_Yk6I/AAAAAAAAP8Q/HjPVxlDzHbE/s1600-h/MARY+WITHOUT+WORDS.jpg v

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_NtgXlrcvXZA/SIiw63c6GlI/AAAAAAAAO2s/7wiAsalGPCg/s1600-h/HEAD+SCARF+-Andrea-BeretScarf.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_NtgXlrcvXZA/SIixRnqWFCI/AAAAAAAAO3E/DfZZ4YlKGYw/s1600-h/NUNS+-+TWO.jpg

http://www.bestweddingdresses.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/singletier-20bridal-20veil.jpg

THE END OF KODACHROME

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

I too loved Kodachrome.

My picture library includes about 4,000 images on Kodachrome.

While long a holdout against digital photography, I finally went over to it when I thought the quality had reached a high level.

So I made my little contribution to Kodachrome's passing.

Still it is melancholy to see the end of such an extraordinarily fine product.

Kodachrome had a longer life in the finished slides than just about any other color film.

It was comparable to Technicolor for movies. Movies shot in Technicolor survived many decades for restoration, while other film stocks literally faded away, losing forever certain images.

Historical slides in Kodachrome from the 1930s are still good images. Other color films after only a few decades faded away.

IGNATIEFF'S MISSING THREE DECADES NOT EVEN THE GREATEST THING HE IS MISSING

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY REX MURPHY IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

Three decades in Canada is only part of what Ignatieff is missing.

Perhaps more important is his lack of any real contact or bond with people.

There is something, not just aristocratic, but almost autistic about Ignatieff.

He just does not reach the emotions because he just does not feel them.

Contrast him with a wonderfully earthy and charming politician like Chretien, and you feel there is nothing there.

Even in the sphere of the intellect, supposedly Ignatieff’s great strength, I find him surprisingly wanting.

Again, compare him to Trudeau whose brilliance shines in every photo and is burned into memory, and there is little there but mannered words and the indulgent remembrance of a well-connected family.

Ignatieff is altogether an unimpressive politician.

If you add his absence and long lack of interest to Canada, he becomes even more unappealing.

And if you add his past defense of torture, mass murder, and imperial brutishness, there is nothing there worth talking about.

This sad situation is made sadder still by the utterly soulless Harper, a robot with no personality and no sense of ethics, giving us nowhere to place a comforting vote of trust.
_______________________

"Whether Canada ends up as one national government or two national governments or several national governments, or some other kind of arrangement is, quite frankly, secondary in my opinion."

- Stephen Harper

Many thanks to the person above for posting this. Of course, we must also rememmber Harper supported America's mass murder in Iraq, and wanted us to join in the slaughter.


http://www.flickr.com/photos/chuckmancartoons/56297395/

NETANYAHU HAS SOFTENED HIS STANCE ON TWO STATES? I DON'T THINK SO

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

"Softens his stance" is inaccurate.

Obama has backed Netanyahu into something of a corner. Those who want genuine peace have always believed it can only come when the U.S. makes demands of Israel for all the immense subsidies it has poured into that state and all the unpleasant risk it has assumed in doing so.

Netanyahu's response is to say, "Okay, I'll mouth your phrases, but I’ll make them meaningless."

It’s a nasty game various governments of Israel have played a long time. The decades-long “peace process” has been only a way to gain time to absorb more Palestinian homes and farms and water minus the Palestinians. It really is a ploy which covers what may fairly be characterized as slow-motion ethnic-cleansing.

Netanyahu’s conditions are ridiculous to any fair-minded person.

First, you cannot speak of negotiation when you set a precondition like recognizing Israel.

Withholding recognition is one of the only bargaining chips the poor Palestinians have: it is a perfectly ordinary tactic in international affairs.

You cannot tell Palestinians they must give it up before negotiations.

Or rather, you can tell them that, but it amounts merely to another way of saying you don't accept a two-state solution, another way of buying time to grind away at the poor Palestinians and what little they have.

Besides, how do you recognize Israel when its borders change almost weekly? Where is Israel?

It certainly is not the Israel of the various 20th century agreements underlying Israel’s birth, all documents showing two roughly equal states. Nor is it the Israel of the Green Line.

Perhaps most important, how do you recognize Israel as “the Jewish state” when nearly 20% of its population is not Jewish?

It is an absurd demand, and deliberately meant to be absurd.

To all fair-minded thinkers, the genuine barrier to peace just could not be clearer.

ONTARIO'S PROPOSED SYSTEM OF COMBINING DAY CARE WITH KINDERGARDEN IN SCHOOLS

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

This is a great idea, but it won't happen.

First, for now, Dalton the Magnificent has spent Ontario silly on GM and Chrysler.

Second, and more important for the long term, the teachers' union will never let this happen on its turf.

Already, the head of the teachers' union has spoken against it.

The burdens the teachers' union would place on a program like this would make its costs impossibly high.

Until a politician is ready to take on our Public Teachers' Guild, education can show no growth and imagination, precisely what this program promises.

____________________________

"...let them be with their moms (or dads)."

Comments like this show no understanding outside the writer's very limited life experience.

You might think it was 1954, and Ozzie and Harriet were hanging around the house all day, just waiting to make Kool-Aid and help with homework.

Seventy percent of women work today.

We also have "families" where children are almost things tolerated rather than precious objects, mothers who've had children with three or four men and are not prepared to devote themselves to mothering. This is a major problem in neighborhoods like Jane and Finch where so much hideous violence has happened.

A program like this would help them all.

__________________________

"I'm stunned....."

Yes, Mike, you are.

ON OBAMA'S NEED TO LEVEL WITH AMERICANS ABOUT THE ECONOMIC CRISIS

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

Jeffrey Simpson,

This is one fine piece of writing.

You have stated the situation with remarkable clarity.

Were I to sum the American situation up, I would say it is necessary for that tired old political bromide, the centerpiece of so many bloated speeches by local Congressmen at Fourth of July picnics, the American Dream, to be put into a well-earned retirement.

I think it safe to say, problems so long in their creation, with habits of thinking so deeply ingrained, are not going to be solved in a brief period.

The so-called green shoots we see may be nothing more than fragile plants, force-fed with fertilizer, destined to shrivel.

We may well be in for a long, dark period of adjustment.

Unfortunately, as with its many pointless bloody wars, the U.S., owing to its sheer mass, necessarily drags the whole world into the mess it has created for itself.

Any solution pumping countless billions into the economy and pushing banks and others to make credit available is just more of the same decades-long behavior.

Rather than taking the hit necessary to wring out the economy, a huge platter of more of the same is being served up.

I'm not sure this is the right thing to do, but the right thing is too painful for any politician to make policy.

In a sense, I think this points to an even larger issue, and that is the question over the very ability of a people like Americans to govern themselves sensibly, rather than a constant lurching this way and that, both in domestic and foreign affairs.

HATE SPEECH

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JENNIFER LYNCH IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

The very concept of hate speech is a dangerous one, smacking of Maoism.

It is so clearly an Orwellian concept open to endless abuse and no generally agreed definitions.

The expression can be used as a fair casual description: it is one I use to describe the likes of Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter.

But what it represents should never be regarded as a crime.

At the point when hate speech actually becomes threatening or dangerous as opposed to unpleasant and ugly, we have the entire criminal and civil law to deal with it.

Those who advocate the increasing criminalization of speech are always found, upon examination, to be acting out of special interests, not out of society’s great interests.

The very idea that you could jail someone for saying something is repellant to a free society.

To avoid having the likes of Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter assuming too great an influence in Canadian society, our schools need to do a proper job of teaching, by words and example, what it is to have a civil and humane society. I am afraid, increasingly, they fail in this task.

CONSERVATIVE MINISTER LISA RAITT'S ABSURD APOLOGY

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY LAWRENCE MARTIN IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

It was an unpleasant melodrama.

It is simply idiotic to appeal to people on the basis that your relative died after you've shown such insensitivity.

If Ms. Raitt's personal experience had been so moving, why did it not inform her future speech?

Ridiculous.

This is American bathos politics at its worst.

And Ms. Raitt is an unpleasant narcissist.

No wonder Harper likes her.

A SILLY COLUMN ATTRIBUTING AFRICA'S PROBLEMS IN GETTING INVESTMENT TO NONSENSE ABOUT THE DARK CONTINENT

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY INNOCENT MADAWO IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

First, Moyo is right, aid almost never helps.

There are many reasons why this is so, including the fact that much of aid is consciously given as an ongoing bribe to get votes in international forums, to bribe corrupt officials into keeping business interests safe, to support the vast waste of militaries, and to supply good jobs to careerist aid workers from the West.

There are good aid projects, but they are always led by dedicated people and they usually are under-funded. The reality of politics just does not support such efforts over the other projects serving the purposes above.

But more importantly, I completely disagree that investment doesn't go to Africa because of some nonsense about the "dark continent."

That is just excuse-making.

Investment avoids places with poor government, places with backward laws, places with overwhelming corruption, places with instability, and places with civil disorder.

Those are circumstances that prevail through much, if not most, of Africa.

Would the writer invest substantial personal savings in enterprises in any of these places as opposed to investments in stable Western economies?

Of course not.

AN INAPPROPRIATE DEFENSE OF SARAH KRAMER AT ONTARIO'S E-HEALTH

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY MARCUS GEE IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

There is no defense for this woman who abused her responsibilities.

You cannot call yourself a manager if you don't question some of the ridiculous expenses she did not question.

Also, her excuse for the exorbitantly-paid consultants ($3000/day in a number of cases) was the idea of getting up to speed rapidly.

But that approach - throwing money at something - is the McGuinty approach to education, a guaranteed failure.

We have the testimony of one honest consultant who told us it was all so badly organized, he was sitting on his hands while being paid. He quit, but clearly most did not.

Of course, she was not alone.

McGuinty's Minister in this portfolio is a pathetic man. When he opens his mouth, you understand why things went so badly wrong.

He should be dismissed too.

In general, there are open applications on the Internet for this purpose which may be used free.

There are also other provinces already with systems. We could easily borrow or adapt.

The whole enterprise is a scandal, much like our public education system's failure to get the basics done.

WHO SAYS "GOD" MORE BUSH OR OBAMA?

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY DANIEL FINKELSTEIN IN THE TIMES

Bush did say God told him to do several things.

John O'Farrell should do his own research on his question, rather than expecting others to do it for him. I'm sure Google would get you a hatful of such quotes in a few minutes.

In general, you cannot get at the truth of a matter like this by just adding up citations.

American presidents must bring God into their speech, going back to Washington, who was a deist, or Jefferson, who was altogether a skeptic. There is just too big a pool of Puritan descendents to ignore.

After all, only about fifty years ago, Congress added "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance, itself already representing a rather obnoxious, fascist-tinged practice.

It is very clear that Obama is a sophisticated man, a genuine intellectual and one who questions things.

It was equally clear that Bush is a dull man no one would call an intellectual, one moreover whose idea of sophistication was to dance naked on a bar room table after drinking lots of beer(something he actually did).

I don't believe that Bush was any more religious than Obama, but he cheaply, very consciously exploited religious feelings of fundamentalists at every turn, having been advised that it was the thing to do.

When Obama mentions God, he clearly does it in the Washington tradition.

THE CASE OF CONSERVATIVE MINISTER RAITT'S EMBARRASSING RECORDED CONVERSATIONS

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

Sorry, Ms. Blatchford, I don't think you can convincingly defend Ms. Raitt.

You and other critics of the public's reaction miss the point entirely.

Yes, it was a private conversation.

Yes, Ms. Raitt undoubtedly knows about cancer.

Yes, Ms. Raitt may be an intelligent person.

No, use of the word "sexy" in and of itself is not horrible.

It is the total sense of this conversation that is wrong. We, virtually all of us, know that it is wrong.

It displays a truly callous monomaniacal ego at work, thinking only of the career advantages she can reap from the situation, not the kind of person most Canadians want making important decisions in government.

Ms. Raitt is not unique in politics with the narcissistic quality of her personality, but she has been caught and documented.

Even if Harper doesn't dump her and she doesn't resign, I think she will remain damaged goods as far as national politics go.

THE HORRIBLE CASE OF MR. ABDELRAZIK LEFT STRANDED ABROAD AND TIME TO BRING HIM HOME

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY IRVING COTLER AND DAVID GROSSMAN IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

The real story behind the government's disgraceful treatment of Mr. Abdelrazik is our government abasing itself for fear of offending the least American sensitivity.

We know there are high-level Americans who have even the basic facts of 9/11 wrong - both the Homeland Security Secretary and Senator John McCain spoke foolishly only recently.

There has been in America generally a big head of steam and lack of clear thinking over the crime of 9/11, but we do not have to accommodate America's every whim and myth in these affairs.

America's head of steam is why they are in Afghanistan, and it is why we are there.

America's head of steam is why we've left a boy to rot in Guantanamo.

America's head of steam is why we've quietly cooperated in the transport and torture of several Canadians.

And America's head of steam is why we are doing irrational things like no-fly lists and bio-metric records of visitors.

It is time to act responsibly on at least this one matter of human rights.

OBAMA'S CAIRO SPEECH AND THE REALITIES OF ACHIEVING A FAIR PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST

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

Obama’s speech was an extraordinarily sensitive one. Americans and others are used to hearing only clap-trap on this topic.

He actually said something, and what he said is correct.

But I have to say where is any evidence that sensitivity or truth carry any weight in American politics? And that is especially true in all matters touching on the Middle East.

America’s Right Wing has already attacked Obama’s words, as has the mob of professional apologists for Israel’s bloody excesses.

But even the great mass of Americans who take little interest in world affairs and know only the mantra lines the mainline press repeats endlessly.

Doing anything that at all conflicts with those lines earns you some hard looks.

Israel's supporters in America will use this to their benefit to prevent a genuine settlement in the Middle East, something we have every reason to believe Israel does not want.

After all, the constant, go-nowhere "peace process" serves simply to gain the decades of time for much of the rest of Palestine to be absorbed without its unwanted residents, for D-9 bulldozers to continue flattening homes and olive groves centuries old on the most specious of excuses.

Israel just ignores all agreements and documentation going into its modern re-creation from the Sykes-Picot Agreement to the Balfour Declaration and the UN maps for partition. All of them saw two states, somewhat equal in extent.

Ignored too are the UN Resolutions concerning the aftermath of the Six Day War.

Indeed, there is every reason to believe Israel engineered the Six Day War knowing full well it could handily win and make a great new land grab. We have the testimony of important historical figures on this matter, including President de Gaulle.

It was the same kind of dark-ops project as so many others, including the vicious attack on the USS Liberty in an effort to drag the U.S. into that war. The U.S. kept a massive silence over the attack on one of its ships, allowing the feeble excuse of a mistake to stand, a ridiculous claim in view of the facts the ship was extremely well marked and the attack lasted two hours.

Just as Israel’s illicit nuclear arsenal is ignored regularly in all the noise about North Korea or Iran. Ignored too was Israel’s help in proliferation by helping apartheid South Africa to briefly become a nuclear power.

The most damaging spy in American history, Jonathon Pollard, remains in prison, but there is a constant flow of intense pressure to release him.

Israeli spies were on to the perpetrators of 9/11, but the several spy groups – a phony moving company and a bunch of “art students” - were arrested afterward and sent home with no public statements about what it was that they had been doing.

If all these many events have not altered American public opinion and Israel’s place of unwarranted privilege in Washington, how will Obama ever succeeed?

I find it difficult to believe that Obama can turn around the momentum that has continued decade after decade, a momentum of slow-motion ethnic-cleansing in Palestine and America’s subsidizing the state doing it.

THE PALIN PARADOX? THE IDEA THAT AMERICAN ELECTORAL DISTRICTS WITH MORE MEN ELECT WOMEN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY DANIEL FINKELSTEIN IN THE TIMES

Could be, but I believe there is another explanation.

Alaska is a place heavily peopled with militia-types, backwoods throwbacks, and Aryan-nation types, much like Idaho.

Sarah Palin fits the profile of an ideal candidate there, utterly uninformed about the world at large yet ready to offer an opinion on any of it, being blithely unaware of how parochial her every sentence is. Such places very much want parochialism, male or female.

Her having Russia as “a neighbor,” with its assumption of knowing something about world affairs, pretty much sums up the situation.

Her equivalent as a male is more far common, places like Texas, Mississippi, or Oklahoma growing them almost like a toxic crop.

HITLER MAD? THAT'S THE EASY WAY OUT

RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY DANIEL FINKELSTEIN IN THE TIMES

"Mad. But so too was Hitler"

Authoritative psychiatric studies of Hitler tell us clearly that he was not mad.

His not being mad is precisely what makes him so frightening.

Madness is tragic, not frightening.

Humans are simply capable of anything, given the right set of beliefs or obsessions.

It's the damned human race, a gang of nasty chimpanzees with the brains to be even more destructive than their ancestors.

GAY MARRIAGE AND DICK CHENEY?

RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

I think we all recall what Cheney means when he says something along the lines of "people ought to get a shot at" something.

Apart from blasting his friend in the face with a shotgun while drunk, he oversaw the murder and torture of a number people.

Sarcasm aside, this is the only statement the man has ever made which is ethical.

We've had gay marriage in Canada for a few years now, and there are no signs of the anti-Christ or Gog and Magog to be seen.

Even its previous opponents have come to accept it as the normal part of society which it is.

Of course, this one ethical Cheney statement likely owes its origins to his gay daughter, although Lynne Cheney would blow a gasket at anyone's saying that.

EGYPT AND AUTHORITARIANISM AND OBAMA AND INSTITIONALIZED HYPOCRISY

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY IRSHAD MANJI IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

Irshad Manji,

A very good piece, except for the unrealistic last part.

The truth is that the authoritarian government in Egypt is just what the Washington establishment wants, even if that might not be the case for Obama himself.

And the truth is the authoritarian government of Egypt is just what Israel's establishment is comfortable with. Israel's governments are very comfortable doing business it.

Now between those two forces in American policy, how likely do you think your recommendation is?

Despite all the phony rhetoric in Washington about democracy and rights, I cannot imagine their welcoming an Egyptian democracy.

Hypocrisy is institutionalized in foreign affairs.

HARPER TELLS CANADIAN JEWISH CONGRESS HE WILL LEGISLATE TO ALLOW SUITS IN CANADIAN COURTS BY VICTIMS OF TERROR: A DANGEROUS ANTI-DEMOCRATIC PROPOSAL

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

This is a dangerous, anti-democratic path to follow.

What is a "victim"?

What will be "support" of terror?

Not to say what is "terror"?

The extremism that attends every discussion of Israel and terror gives us just a hint of the ugly legal excesses to which this proposal could open us.

What I most fear is a new kind of "slap" suit to shut up those who criticize Israel's bloody excesses.

This is pretty shabby stuff for a Canadian Prime Minister to do or even offer to do on behalf of the interests of another country.

Maybe if Ignatieff comes out strongly against this, I can even manage to support him, a man whose background views are extremely negative for me.

Harper is trying to drag Canada completely into the American camp on this, ignoring Canada's traditional balanced view of the Middle East.

This may well be the most destructive act Harper has attempted.


__________________


There is nothing rational in all the words and acts surrounding the topic of terror.

Of course, the very concept of a War on Terror is, and always was, irrational. A war against a method or belief. Absurd.

Also, quite legitimately, one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter.

This proposal would invite all of the irrationality that surrounds this topic to jam its way into our courts.

It's a very odd proposal for a genuine conservative too, people who generally are very careful about what goes on in courts and critical of courts stretching their authority too far.

It's completely wrong for anyone genuinely supporting human rights and democratic values.

But then we all heard Harper a couple of years ago criticizing the UN when Israel targeted and killed four brave observers in southern Lebanon, including a brave Canadian officer doing his duty.

The man is really shameless. This also reminds me of the cards that went out to Jewish Canadians for their holidays, something which of course unpleasantly implied the existence of ethnic lists in Harper's Party.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS BLUBBERING ABOUT AMERICANS NO LONGER ADMIRING THE MOTHER OF PARLIAMENTS IN VIEW OF EXPENSES SCANDAL

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS IN THE TELEGRAPH

I don't know what Christopher Hitchens is going on about, and I strongly suspect neither does he.

Americans are just generally ignorant of the nature and workings of Parliament.

Honestly, having grown up and lived half my life in America, I feel it fair to say that outside of some academics and devoted followers of world affairs, few Americans have the least idea about Parliament.

And over time, I suspect this becomes more and more true since Americans know one thing if they know anything, America is the greatest.

This should not surprise because amazingly few have any idea how their own Congress works.

Hitchens in this only confirms what I believe is a truth about his writing: the man is an obsessive writer even when he has nothing to say. I grant him saying it eloquently though.

A COLUMN ASSERTING THAT JESUS WOULDN'T VOTE FOR BRITAIN'S BNP

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY MICHAEL NAZIR-ALI IN THE TELEGRAPH

Jesus wouldn't have voted for Blair either.

Or Bush.

Or Sarkozy.

Or a lot of other politicians.

He would have driven the entire American Congress off Capitol Hill just as he drove the moneychangers from the temple.

And now we know he would do the same with the Mother of Parliaments.

Seems to me his recommendation here is not a strong one.

A POLL SHOWING WHAT A QUARTER OF AMERICANS BELIEVE MEANS PRETTY CLOSE TO NOTHING

RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY DANIEL FINKELSTEIN IN THE TIMES

"In my last two paragraphs I mentioned a poll in the US indicating that a quarter of all Americans blame the Jews for the financial crisis either moderately or a great deal. I concluded by saying that I don't like it when people mob up."

Daniel, you cannot take such a poll seriously.

A true random sample of American opinion on almost any subject is always disturbing.

After a few years of the bloody pointless invasion of Iraq, a poll showed sixty-odd percent of Americans believed that Saddam was involved with 9/11.

I don't recall the number, but a surprisingly large percent of Americans believe in the devil and believe that the Mark of the Beast is 666.

Polls showed a good slice of Americans believing that the Apollo Mission to the moon was faked.

I very much don't like it when people mob up either, but a quarter of Americans believing anything you care to name is not mobbing up, not surprising, and virtually predictable.

As for David Irving, I admire your publishing his e-mail, but I wish you had shown the restraint not to characterize it. People can interpret for themselves.

ON OBAMA'S BEING FIRM WITH ISRAEL OVER ITS SETTLEMENTS

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

“Obama Firm.”

Well, let's hope so. The only way we will ever see peace and an end to the abomination of Israel's occupation is if the U.S. is firm.

Indeed, America needs to be firm about a lot more than freezing settlements on freshly-grabbed land.

Obama does have the best chance of doing something meaningful here of any president since Israel's founding, both because he is so popular and because everyone in the world – other than the ceaseless apologists for Israel’s bloody excesses - recognizes the status quo is a disaster.

And it is not a disaster waiting to happen. It has happened.

The single greatest cause of all the ugly business summed up under the title War on Terror is Israel’s behavior towards its neighbors and America’s toleration of it.

Yet, despite Obama’s exceptional opportunity, I am not hopeful. If you read the saga of Truman’s recognition decision at Israel’s emergence as a state, you realize just what serious pressure is.

And look at Hillary Clinton. She went to Palestine once and made sympathetic statements. Then, when she wanted to be Senator, she took almost a one hundred and eighty degree turn in her language. Pressure indeed.

ON THE NOTION OF CANADA'S MILITARY BEING INADEQUATE AND SOME GENERAL TRUTHS ABOUT THE NATURE OF MILITARIES

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY FORMER GENERAL LEWIS MACKENZIE IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

"Our infantry ranks are so diminished that Canada's combat role in Afghanistan has to end"

Good.

There is no more wasteful enterprise on earth than the military.

Like police, you need some military, but it should always be regarded with great care as a necessary evil.

And the bigger the military of a country is, the greater is the temptation of politicians to use it to bad purposes.

Analysts of the pointless bloodbath called the Great War agree that the level of armaments in the various states was a major contributor to starting the war. And what was Hitler’s first priority after taking power? The armed forces, of course.

The United States is the clearest contemporary example of that hard truth. Here is a nation that rebelled against imperial military forces only to end up being a greater imperial military force.

It spends as much on its military Frankenstein as all the other countries on the planet put together.

And the results are: occupation of two countries, neither of which ever attacked that country; regular bombing in a third country, Pakistan; constant threats to a fourth country, Iran; support of apartheid in Israel; plus innumerable other intrusions and black-ops.

The world surely is a better place for the three million the US murdered in Vietnam, isn't it? And for the sea of Agent Orange and landmines it left there? And for the million deaths it generated in Cambodia by destabilizing a neutral government with secret bombing? And don't forget the million or so killed in Iraq plus a couple of million refugees and an economy set back for a lifetime.

Lord Acton said it best for all time: power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Why is it that conservatives and militarists like Lewis MacKenzie do not understand these things? That’s like asking a careless boy why he just smashed a bird’s nest.
________________

Arctic sovereignty I fear is an illusion.

Who is it that is actually going to challenge it?

Why, the world's military colossus of course.

Would our outposts of troops wave at the passing American atomic submarines and guided-missile cruisers?

THE EFFORT TO REMOVE A CHILD FROM HATEFUL PARENTS

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

This is a dangerous path the editorial would have us follow.

I had experience years ago as a substitute teacher in the US that brought home how common this kind of business is. It isn’t just Aryan nonsense, it’s often religion and other dark and hateful matters.

A little girl who obviously trusted me enough to raise an intimate family matter came to me after class, asking me, her face clearly showing fear, what I thought about "the Mark of the Beast (666)."

She had been filled with terrible stories from the delusional Book of Revelations by her lunatic parents.

I did my best to give her helpful answers, explaining patiently not everyone agreed on these matters, but I understood that to in any way challenge her parents’ ghastly beliefs would be to invite all hell to break loose and would do nothing for the child.

I did my best, but felt in the end I failed her.

From my limited experience, I know this kind of business is not uncommon.

In another case, I thought drugs were involved with a young girl. When I explained this to the teacher who had been on a course for the day, she nearly had a fit. “Don’t even mention that word to me!” She was terrified of “opening a can of worms.” Teachers and school authorities all too often are not the least helpful.

We have ignorance, hate, and intolerance - in one form or another - being taught by parents in thousands of homes. This is just one of the reasons I laugh when I hear the teachers’ mantra about getting parents involved. The truth is that the involvement of incompetent or ill-intentioned parents is the opposite of helpful.

Are we to remove all such children? We cannot possibly.

Just to handle the cases of pure, unmistakable abuse, our child welfare institutions are inadequate.

The truth is that most abuse - psychological and physical and sexual - is overwhelmingly at the hands of parents or other relatives. The case of the stranger-abuser is extremely rare.

Look at the record of the Catholic Church. Its priests have horribly abused thousands, yet we take no legal action against them as a society.

I am comforted by the flexibility and adaptability of children to grow out of the teachings of idiotic parents or other authorities. After all, the Pope today was a member of Hitler Jugend as a boy. I myself attended a church that taught the dark things that little girl in the US feared, and I grew into a strong-minded skeptic.

OBAMA AND GUANTANAMO AND THE OMAR KHADR CASE

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

"First of all, we need to know a lot more about each individual still being held in Guantanamo..."

That's rather cowardly, to say the least.

We know more than enough.

These men were arrested and sent to Guantanamo against all international law.

They have been abused and tortured for years, again against all international law.

For years, they were allowed no lawyers, no visitors, and even the Red Cross was not allowed to visit.

The US has not only ignored international law and obligations, it ignores its own principles.

You cannot have a Bill of Rights worth spit if its provisions are completely ignored as soon as you put a toe over the border.

The very existence of this concentration camp - for that is precisely what it is - is an affront to people who love freedom and decency.

It is also the final proof of George Bush's complete incompetence: he foresaw none of the consequences of creating this horror.

______________________


The case of Omar Khadr is the one I am thoroughly familiar with.

He has suffered, at the hands of American soldiers, beyond the understanding of most.

He was a mere boy, pushed by ideological parents, when he went to Afghanistan.

At the age of 15, he was shot twice, in the back, by cowardly American soldiers.

Then he was arrested and imprisoned in violation of all international conventions about child soldiers.

He was charged with a crime over something that is not even a crime in war, that is shooting one of your opponents.

But as we know now, he didn't even do that. It has all been trumped up.

Khadr was tortured for years, again against international conventions. This included a particularly vicious American interrogator, well known for his brutality, having the boy with two horrible wounds trying to heal sit up regularly in uncomfortable positions, pulling at his wounds.

Khadr was held with no access or help for years.

I recall in many, many wars abroad having nothing to do with the US – civil wars and revolutions and colonial wars from Spain to the Congo - American soldiers of fortune and motivated idealists going off by the thousands to fight for one side or the other.

They weren't subjected to this Nazi-like treatment afterward. This is a total disgrace on the part of the United States.

And our Prime Minister's cowardly refusal to stand up for a citizen and an abused boy is also disgraceful, but he unfortunately reflects American sensibilities. To have asked for this boy, in view of a family history which includes a dead father who knew Osama bin Laden, would have been viewed as an unfriendly act by an insanely mad American government.

And we have the horrible irony that some of the images from that other ghastly place, Abu Ghraib, now being held back include images of American guards Sodomizing young prisoner boys. Our great investigative reporter, Seymour Hersh, has told us this over and over, but America pays little attention.

NETANYAHU'S VIOLENT NONSENSE ABOUT THE ROAD TO MIDDLE EAST PEACE BEING THROUGH TEHRAN

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

Netanyahu is one of the world's more dangerous leaders.

He has no grasp on reality and panders to dark fears.

The US blew Iraq into a wasteland for Israel's benefit. Yet politicians like Netanyahu insist on doing that to Iran too.

Iran has attacked no one in its entire modern era.

Israel, by contrast, has attacked every neighbor it has, some more than once.

Its brutal savagery in Gaza is only not condemned more widely because the press tends to be intimidated by the false accusation of "anti-Semitism."

The best intelligence tells us clearly Iran is not working towards a weapon, but even if it is, so what?

Europe managed a long peace under MAD.

A monopoly on nuclear weapons is the most dangerous possible situation for this technology.

Many believed the US was close to using them in Afghanistan. That fear brought Britain into the pointless crusade.

Israel has a monopoly in the Middle East, and we can see the results. No willingness whatever to pursue genuine peace and no willingness to stop its long-term abuse of millions of Palestinians.

Netanyahu stands only for the forces of darkness. Peace is a word in his mouth which means only "do it my way."

IS FOREIGN AID WORKING?

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY MARTIN WOLF IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES

This is a murky question, and necessarily so since foreign aid is a murky subject.

A good portion of foreign aid has nothing to do with wanting to help people. It represents a form of bribery, very much resembling the “pensions” that the king of Spain or France in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries would award to important people in other countries.

Keeping influential people abroad under “pensions” is a very effective method of limiting their behavior.

Aid payments also are a way of securing votes in international forums such as the UN. The US, for example, regularly quietly threatens those it wants to vote a certain way with reduction or removal of aid.

Much of aid goes to making corrupt leaders wealthy – and in third-world countries, there is rarely any other kind – or to building prestige projects which have little or no economic value.

A good portion of aid goes directly or indirectly to military projects, thus further impoverishing already poor lands in the name of government security.

Another good portion of aid gets spent on salaries and travel expenses for middle-class Westerners who supervise projects. While some agencies in the world do genuinely important work through either paid or volunteer work, there is a large cadre of professional humanitarian types who absorb substantial amounts of aid themselves while helping relatively little.

Much of aid also comes with conditions that make it much less useful than it might be otherwise.

The US, for example, has long stood against the propagation or abortion and even birth control in programs it supports.

There is no greater single thing we can do for the progress of many poor lands than vigorously supporting all forms of fertility control. Overpopulation – in relation to a place’s resources and economic opportunities – is the world’s most serious economic and social problem.

It also happens to be the world’s greatest ecological problem, dwarfing the impact of all the anti-pollution efforts of the world’s advanced countries.

I actually do not know what the answer is concerning aid. It may well be one of those questions for which there is no good answer.

Individuals and certain private and government programs do some great work, but that has to do with their motivation and good management, but the greed and self-importance of our own governments and institutions may render impossible any systematic effective approach to aid.

That’s a gloomy view, but then it is the damned human race we are talking about.

THE ROAD TO VICTORY IN AFGHANISTAN IS THROUGH PAKISTAN: VIETNAM AND CAMBODIA DEJA VU

SERIES OF POSTED RESONSES TO A COLUMN BY JEFFREY SIMPSON IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

"The road to Afghan victory runs through Pakistan."

I am sorry, Jeffrey Simpson, to see you give any recognition to this ugly business.

The US had no business in Afghanistan in the first place – no Afghan attacked them, and Americans never even tried to offer evidence of complicity in 9/11 for purposes of extradition. Britain joined in the insane crusade, we know, because they truly feared the US was close to using nuclear weapons.

Now to "win" the US is exporting its pointless, destructive war to still another country.

The parallel with Vietnam and Cambodia is genuine and frightening. The US bears major responsibility for the Cambodian Killing Fields by its weakening of a neutral government through secret bombing and incursions. It is always demanding “cooperation” from people not involved or interested in its bloody adventures.

Few people realize that the border to which you and American officials refer is no border at all. The Durand Line is a relic of British imperialism, and it was never even properly finalized.

The Pashtun – the major pool of Taleban recruits – live on both sides of the Line as though it did not exist, which indeed for them is the case. It's like talking about the border between Quebec and Eastern Ontario.

Musharraf, for all his faults, kept at bay the US effort to spread its war into Pakistan, but they managed to get him out through manipulations, bribes, and black ops. He was a dictator but an honorable one with the best interests of his country in mind.

Now they have a somewhat cooperative government from the US point of view. All you have to do is ask what that means in terms of Pakistan’s own interests and understanding of interests. It goes precisely against them.

The US assassinates groups of people – often complete innocents – every week with drones and Hellfire missiles.

Now they’ve pushed the Pakistani army to fight its own people. They are killing their own people and creating tens of thousands of refugees fleeing their homes on behalf of the views of lard-ass bureaucrats in Washington sitting in leather chairs, gazing out at the Potomac.

Of course, Canada’s involvement is no different in kind, just in extent. We are there because we owed one to the Pentagon. How very meaningful.

Gee, I wonder how long it will be before Washington equips the drones they’ve started flying along our border with Hellfire missiles? After all, major officials in Washington, including the last Republican presidential candidate, still blubber paranoid nonsense about the 9/11 bunch having come through Canada.

And just think of the government we will have to stand for our interests: Harper, a man who just cannot grovel enough to American interests, or Ignatieff, an adopted American, who may well even be a CIA mole.

_________________


The Taleban did NOT refuse to hand over people after 9/11.

To say that is plainly ignorant.

The US requested extradition of certain people, and the government of Afghanistan, then the Taleban, asked for some evidence to support the request.

The US refused.

Yet that is the standard operating procedure everywhere with extradition treaties: the requesting state must supply some evidence to support the request.

But the US simply refused.

And to this day, we have not been given one shred of genuine evidence that Osama bin Laden did what everyone assumes he did.

Why does everyone assume that?

Because the US government says so, and because the major corporate media have repeated the assertion endlessly.

Again, if you want a world of laws and civility, then you must respect the laws and be civil yourself.

The US seems to believe it is above that principle, and its only excuse is its power.

Might makes right.

_________________

How short memories are.

Clinton not only rained down missiles in Afghanistan killing God knows how many people, he bombed a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, killing a number of people and destroying a valued facility in a poor part of the world.

Absolutely no evidence has ever been given that that plant was anything but what was claimed, a pharmaceutical plant.

Of course, this fact also shows American meddling in Sudan going back a long time.

Any wonder it is a mess there?

MORE FIREPOWER FOR AFGHANISTAN AND A NAZI-LIKE ASCETIC GENERAL MCCHRYSTAL

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

Plenty of firepower, oh boy! I guess the more than a hundred civilians murdered just days ago by jets wasn't enough.

Just what this poor country needs.

Kill, kill, kill - that's America's idea of a human rights mission.

I don't know how many readers have noticed, but the new general appointed by Obama's government for Afghanistan, McChrystal, is nothing but a professional assassin.

A Nazi-like ascetic who barely eats, something that would interfere with his efficiency and joy in killing.

He'll run an operation like the ghastly Operation Phoenix in Vietnam, an operation directed by CIA in which the thug special forces crawled around on moonless nights to cut the throats of people like village leaders.

They murdered at least 20,000 people that way.

That's what the new general has done for some years in Iraq.

God, what are Canadians doing working with such bloody creatures?

THE RUBY DHALLA ABUSE OF CAREGIVERS BUSINESS

POSTED SERIES OF RESPONSES TO TWO COLUMNS IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

It's time for Dhalla to step down.

The caregivers' advocate who has just testified is a sincere and decent woman who has not the least reason to attack Dhalla, not even knowing who she was originally.

So we have four independent people speaking against Dhalla: the two widely quoted caregivers; the advocate; and another caregiver.

None with the least motive to attack her.

Indeed, were it as pleasant to work in Ruby's home as Ruby claims, any caregiver would go pout of her way to keep the job.

What is so crummy about this is that Dhalla, by sticking to her position, is effectively calling all these perfectly decent people liars.

We learned, from a previous poster under one Dhalla story, that Dhalla is known in Ottawa as a difficult person with whom to work, as well as having the highest turnover in staff of all members of parliament.

Funny how this advocate's testimony precisely confirms this information about a politician she never knew about until now.

Have a little shred of honor, Ruby, and resign.

________________


Ms. Dhalla does herself no favor by blubbering about conspiracies. It sounds a bit flaky, to say the least.

The committee may handle this badly, as the Conservatives handle so many matters badly, but public opinion is what is important in this matter.

Three women, all hard-working women from abroad, have independently said much the same thing.

They have no common motive for saying what they say, other than the wish for some fairness after considerable unfairness.

Why would Ms. Dhalla be the object of any conspiracy? She simply is not that important or controversial a public figure.

Of course, one is not guilty in courts until proven so, but here we are dealing with the court of public opinion, and it does not work the same way.

Sorry, Ms. Dhalla the court of public opinion thinks your behavior stinks.





DHALLA AS KALI

NETANYAHU AND THE TWO-STATE SOLUTION: SOME HARD TRUTHS

POSTED SERIES OF RESPONSES TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

Netanyahu isn't determined to go slowly, he is completely against a Palestinian state.

He has made this clear many, many times.

Indeed, from Netanyahu's past statements, it seems very clear he has contempt for Palestinians, an attitude not uncommon in Israel.

If you want peace, you embrace it. Full stop.

If you want what Netanyahu wants, you behave as he does.

What does he want?

The rest of the Palestinian territory without the people.

Going slowly in this way is properly called slow-motion ethnic cleansing.

___________


"What you have in the Holy Land is a clash of ethnic nationalisms infused with religious ideas."

I do not think that is accurate.

The Jews - at least the non-European ones - and the Palestinians are closely related people, indeed it is an Israeli scholar who recently told us that the Palestinians are pretty much the remains of the ancient Israelis left after the Roman conquest.

As far as religion, Israel is one of the most secular societies on earth. Only the ultra-orthodox segment gives it any religious color.

___________


"There will be peace when your friends in the Arab and Muslim world agree to recognize Israel's right to exist."

The writer above may be sincere in believing that, but Israel is completely disingenuous when it repeats this tired bromide over and over.

One of the few negotiating levers Palestinians have ever had is withholding recognition. Israel otherwise holds about all the power levers.

Any person who reads the world's news should know the artificiality of that notion.

It is common practice among states to withhold recognition as a negotiating position. The United States has done it many, many times.

The US waited decades to recognize the Soviet Union.

It has gone the best part of half a century without recognizing Cuba's government.

Further, how do you recognize a state with no clearly defined borders?

One, moreover, intent on expanding its de facto borders?

Further still, the formulation Israel always insists on is recognizing Israel as the Jewish state. What about the million and a half Arabs who supposedly hold citizenship?

Asking people to certify you as a Jewish state is exactly akin to asking people to certify you as a Muslim state or any other “ism” you care to name.

The above points make clear just how complex the Israeli/Palestinian matter is, and there are many other matters of international law involved.

It is anything but a simple fight between religions.

_____________


"...the two state concept is as much a contributor to peace as was the splitting on Korea into north and south..."

That is wrong and poorly informed.

The entire history of the creation of the state of Israel, going back to agreements with the British government through the UN mandate, assumed and mapped out two states.

It is only since Israel became a reality that the two-state concept has virtually disappeared.

The Six Day War itself, and we have the testimony of some very important historical figures including President de Gaulle, that Israel contrived with deliberate provocations and black-ops to get the Arab states to attack, knowing full well that with its serious advantage of front-line US weapons it would easily win.

Israel knew it could count on the US too. Indeed, with the USS Liberty incident - the deliberate two hour attack on a well-marked American spy ship in the Mediterranean - Israel tried to pull the US in from the beginning.

We see the result. More than forty years later, occupation continues along with a constant bureaucratic pressure to remove Arabs, take land, bulldoze homes and olive groves.




PEACE FROM THIS MAN?



HERE IS NETANYAHU'S OFFICIAL LIMO

CONSERVATIVE ATTACK ADS: A POX ON BOTH YOUR HOUSES

POSTED SERIES OF RESPONSES TO A COLUMN IN THE GLOBE AND MAIL

Harper is indeed a goon, but even goons get it right sometimes.

Ignatieff only confirms the arrogant, princely image of Conservative attack ads when he uses language like "from afar."

No one but a writer speaks that way.

And then we have: “Is that the type of Canada you want? To have a government decide who is a good Canadian and a bad Canadian? Who is a true Canadian and who is a false Canadian?"

This is a plainly false dichotomy. No one said Ignatieff was a "false Canadian," whatever that would be anyway.

And the government made no statements.

A political party did.

Ignatieff does not look especially effective in opposing these advertising suggestions. Could that be because they are largely accurate?

I dislike Harper. I dislike American-style campaigning.

But the Liberals opened themselves to this and more with their anti-democratic crowning of a life-long ex-pat as leader, an ex-pat moreover who enthusiastically embraced the American empire and its worst excesses.

_________


You just knew it was coming.

Harper's Conservatives so much resemble Rush Limbaugh in the way they deal with political competition, dragging down Canada's political discourse to the level of East Texas.

Yet, in this case, while I disagree with Harper's low-life approach, I cannot help but agree with the message contained in the ads.

I saw my first ad last night, and I must say that they have hit their mark.

It really is a sad situation in Canada's political life to have two such people leading our major parties.

I recommend voters not register support for either of these political cretins.

____________

The word "arrogant" covers many qualities other than those we normally associate with it.

There is a slippery, dishonest quality about Ignatieff that is observed in his almost every statement and action (Uncle Fester, above, captures it well).

Ignatieff is simply not made of the same stuff as the quality leaders the Liberal party has supplied us in the past, indeed, a rather remarkable series of men.

Harper, as all observant Canadians know, is himself a man of slippery values, inconsistent ethics, and a low-life approach to politics. He very much resembles Rush Limbaugh without the nasty humor.

Harper has introduced us to a shabby American-style of politics.

Could that be because his base and funding in Alberta are pipelined up from Texas for the oil industry? I think there is truth there. His advisors included just such people.

Returning to Ignatieff, we can say that he is, for all intents and purposes, an American, an adoptee but still an American.

His Canadian background means about as much as that of John Galbraith.

Actually less, because Galbraith did clearly reflect Canadian attitudes and influences in his writing and advocacy.

Not in my lifetime have Canadians been offered such a poor choice of party leaders.

A pox on both their houses.

THE FOOLISH AMERICAN NOTION OF PROMOTING DEMOCRACY

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JOSEPH NYE IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

"George W. Bush tarnished the idea of democracy promotion, but that doesn't mean it's not a worthy goal..."

Sorry, this is a dangerous and stupid idea, and it wasn’t just Bush who has made a hash of things since WWII. Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Bush pere, and sleazy Clinton all interfered in other people’s affairs, killing many and helping few.

We need to make our own democracies as admirable as possible, so that people admire them.

But the history of the modern era just could not be clearer about the way democracy comes about.

Economic growth produces a middle class of size and substance. Once this group is large enough, it does not want its decisions made by autocrats or aristocrats.

Democracy blooms naturally from a healthy economy over time. It is as inevitable as mushrooms on the lawn after spring rain. It causes old customs to drop away and promotes human rights through the wider enjoyment of society's blessings.

So we should be ready to assist others in making their societies grow and offering technical assistance.

Anything more is Bushism.

Joseph Nye is an American, and he cannot resist the evangelical urge to change others: it is as American as cherry pie, and it is stupid and destructive.




A POSTAGE STAMP TO THE GLORY OF AMERICA'S PROMOTION OF DEMOCRACY

THE CAMBRIDGE SPIES OF THE 1950s AND THE GOOD PURPOSE THEY MAY WELL HAVE SERVED

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY DANIEL FINKELSTEIN IN THE TIMES

I don't know how you can rank people much of whose work remains secret to this day. You really do not know how effective or damaging each was.

So far as we know, few spies were more damaging than Maclean and Philby in their top form.

Many of your names of course are the Cambridge Circle.

I actually think - although full revelation of their work could change my assessment - these men served a high cause.

The US was in the turmoil of McCarthyism and the Pentagon contained a number of generals ready and willing to launch a pre-emptive nuclear attack on Russia.

There were actually plans for doing this at one point. After all, the early 1950s were less than a decade after the US used two atomic weapons, on civilians no less.
And MacArthur was ready to use nuclear bombs on the Chinese just at the dawn of the 1950s to clean up the mess he himself created at the Yalu River.

Those were ugly days, fanatical and dark. People today cannot appreciate them fully without reading some good books.

Russia's progress in getting nuclear weapons and in having the details of many US secrets likely saved the world from a catastrophe.

The cold War was nasty, but MAD actually contributed to tolerably peaceful situation.





MISS ATOMIC BOMB IN NEVADA 1950s




HAVING A GAY OLD TIME: WAVING AND SMILING BEFORE OBLITERATING A CITY

TEACHERS' UNIONS A BARRIER TO EDUCATION?

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

Teachers' unions are a barrier to improving public education, not the only barrier, but the single greatest one.

The unions always make noises about being concerned with quality education and the welfare of children, yet their primary effort is to protect the jobs, levels of remuneration, and number of responsibilities of their members. These two primary goals are not compatible.

The unions will always say the public should spend more, but they speak from a point of view that assumes resources are virtually limitless. They are not, of course. In many jurisdictions the taxes on the homes of retired couples and widows supports the schools.

If you examine the budget of any school, you will see the teachers' income is overwhelmingly the bulk of the budget, leaving no room for better libraries, music rooms, art rooms, and even computer labs.

Many, many teachers do not even know how to use a computer, something that should be a condition of hiring and/or continued employment. You cannot even bring the benefits of computerization with people who cannot use them.

While there are many outstanding teachers, there are also many virtual incompetents, and the system we have not only tolerates this, it encourages it.

The entire establishment, from top to bottom, is corrupted by the power of the unions. The teachers’ colleges, many of them, have low standards of admission and teach politically correct pap and unanalyzed notions. Even at a place like Harvard, you have a professor known for “multiple intelligences,” a notion with no empirical basis. Yet you’ll find professionally printed posters in classrooms promoting multiple intelligences.

The education schools simply adopt notions from pop psychology or business literature in a highly naïve fashion and teach them as though they were a body of facts. Ideas like those of the late and now-disgraced Bruno Bettleheim get sucked into the curriculum. Why?

Because teaching wants to be called a profession, rather than an avocation which is what it really is. There is not legitimate body of scientific and analytical knowledge which makes teaching a profession, the way there is for science or law or medicine. There are the tips and tricks of experienced, successful teachers, but these are often forgotten by an establishment trying to render itself a profession.

We would improve our schools overnight if we opened teaching to enthusiastic and knowledgeable people who want to teach and help kids, including retired managers and engineers from industry, musicians, actors, scientists, and photographers, and just great young enthusiasts with expert knowledge.

We need a simple system where such people are used as substitutes and practice teachers a brief time and then, upon demonstrated competence, given their own classes.

What most teachers learn in education courses contributes nothing to education. Rather it is all part of an elaborate guild system supporting the fallacious notion of “professional educators.”

My best and most remembered teachers were the people who knew a great deal about their subject and were enthusiastic communicating it. That is the ideal we should have, not the almost Soviet idea of professional educators.

Indeed great past educators, like Roger Ascham who taught Elizabeth Gloriana, have said it is important to have the best teachers at an early age. We often have the opposite today, grade schools teachers thinking they are competent in almost anything while often it is actually nothing.

Typically schools – because wages and benefits are so high – cannot afford specialists in many subjects, and they pretend teachers are interchangeable from gym to math or library to English. Simply ridiculous, and we are wasting vast resources.

We get nonsense coming out of the educational establishment like the idea that teachers need only the expertise of teaching theory rather than any real knowledge about what they are teaching. That’s why the textbooks today so often have large crib sections in the teachers’ edition, basically telling people about something they are about to teach yet know little or nothing about.

In many schools in America, you’ll find ridiculous banners about being somebody and being self-confident. There are even morning rituals, like some kind of Pol Pot rally, around the theme. The teachers and administrators (virtually all former teachers too) carrying on this stuff have no idea of what they are talking about. The prisons are full of hard criminals loaded with self-confidence, as one observer has noted.

The principals running schools are generally just former teachers who have no genuine experience administering anything. Sometimes it happens they rise to the challenge, but all too frequently they do not. They’ve taken some additional gimpy education courses – and if you haven’t been exposed to these, you cannot believe how soft and without real content they are – and earn meaningless graduate degrees.

The politics of dealing with the mess we’ve created are almost impossible. That’s why I put my faith in technology. We are already starting to see the beginnings of a new future with things like the best teachers being recorded and available that way online at any time. I do think in fifty years our idea of the conventional classroom will be as outdated as the guild halls.




BUT HE'S A UNION MEMBER IN GOOD STANDING

IGGYMANIA OR IGGYPHOBIA ?

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY LYSIANE GAGNON IN THE TORONTO GLOBE AND MAIL

The only cases of Iggymania ever reliably reported were discovered in Ignatieff's immediate family.

Even there, Iggymania apparently is a somewhat insipid contagion, known to have caused one or two relatives to experience a brief sniffle when exposed to one of his speeches.

However, some researchers have come forward with the theory that even these sniffles are not Iggymania but Iggyphobia.

COMEDIENNE WANDA SYKES TELLS A FUNNY JOKE ABOUT RUSH LIMBAUGH AND UNBELIEVABLY PEOPLE RUSH TO HIS DEFENSE AND ATTACK HER

RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

If Rush Limbaugh is a patriot, then there is no better demonstration of Dr. Johnson's famous line, "Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels."

The fact is that Ms. Sykes' line is genuinely funny, and, like all genuinely funny things, it tells a ferocious truth in highly compact form.

Rush Limbaugh is, as a book title told us, a big fat idiot.

A big fat idiot, moreover, who spent years taking illegal drugs.

NEWSPAPER JOURNALISTS WHO ATTACK THE INTERNET FOR ITS LACK OF AUTHORITY OR QUALITY ARE OFFERING BARELY DISGUISED PREJUDICES AND SPECIAL INTERESTS

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY NIGEL FARNDALE IN THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

"The mountainous, steaming quantity of horsedung out there on the internet...."

This is an often repeated notion, and it is completely wrongheaded. Indeed, such statements actually disguise prejudices and special interests.

First, they reflect an anti-democratic attitude, an assumption of superiority over the masses "out there."

The fact is that the Internet contains nearly everything that humanity does, both good and bad. The Internet has wonderful creations by bright minds as well as junk of every description.

If you do not have the judgment and background to distinguish one from the other, then likely you are also having serious trouble in regular life too.

Traditional print journalists and pundits are very fond of repeating Nigel Farndale's bromides. They like to portray themselves as giving the public authoritative and informed comment that is now endangered.

Why?

I think it is little more than their sensing the economic erosion of traditional media and fear losing their quite privileged positions to some of the sweaty masses.

The real truth is that traditional newspapers have failed the public so many, many times, that they have lost considerable credibility and authority. When was the last time a major newspaper dug into something really important and brought the public the information it needs to cast informed ballots? It certainly was missing during the Iraq horror, as it was missing for much the of the American holocaust in Vietnam or in the ghastly reign of J.Edgar Hoover in Washington.

It is a poorly kept secret that various newspapers put out various “lines” on important public issues and have done so since their beginning. We all know that political parties have favorite newspapers and plant stories. We all know that certain government agencies plant stories and selectively leak.

And we all know that many columnists, draped in togas of disinterested authority and adorned with laurels of wisdom, are effectively paid propagandists. People like Mark Steyn or Thomas Friedman spring instantly to mind.

That sad situation has been true since at least the time of Thomas Jefferson when he was American Secretary of State and secretly put Philip Freneau and James Callender on the government payroll to write and publish attacks on George Washington’s administration.

Well, the technology of the Internet has begun to free us from the confines of traditional newspaper publishing, and it is not such a bad thing when you consider the true record of establishment newspapers.

As a wise American once said, there is freedom of the press only for those who own one.




"HERE'S TO JOURNALISTIC INTEGRITY!"




"HEY, I'LL DRINK TO THAT!"

OBAMA'S OPPORTUNITY TO APPOINT A SUPREME COURT JUDGE AND SOME OF THE GENERAL DIFFICULTIES IN SUCH APPOINTMENTS

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

The real issue in selecting judges for America's Supreme Court is not the candidates' 'left' or 'right' orientation.

The heart of the matter is in whether they are 'strict constructionists' concerning interpretations of the Constitution or whether they believe judges' interpretation, with advancing times and changing circumstances, is just as much a part of the Constitution as the words on parchment themselves.

This bears certain similarities to the Catholic Church balancing the Gospels with tradition, tradition being something which is changeable and varies from place to place.

While this division in views does tend to come down to conservative views versus liberal views, it is not necessarily so. You certainly may believe that interpretation is important and yet be conservative in some of your views.

My own view is that 'strict construction' is akin to the Christians who believe every word of the Bible is the literal word of God.

The writers of the Constitution, with apologies to the likes of Tom Delay who used to carry a copy with him at all times like a Testament or donor card, actually overlooked many possibilities and made some genuine mistakes.

The U.S, wasn’t much of a democracy in their day – and many would argue it still isn’t much of a democracy – but essential characteristics of the society have changed a great deal in a couple of centuries. In early Virginia, for example, about 1% of the population could vote, roughly the same percentage as is represented by the Communist Party today compared to the Chinese population.

Of course, even were their handiwork perfect, it would no longer seem so two and a quarter centuries later. The changes that come over time with technology and the economy are profound (which takes us back to the previous column on genetics too).

Just one aspect of technology’s influence on law we see today is the literal melting away of copyright standards with digital material and the Internet.

Still further complicating the judge-selection business is the way some individuals change when they have the appointment, Warren being a classic example.

________________________________


'Empty slogans such as "strict construction" have no meaning whatsoever and are merely code words for following a far right wing agenda, just as "states rights" was once a code word for segregation.'

Sorry, that is rather wide of the mark.

"Strict construction" is certainly no empty slogan: it is precisely one end of a continuum of judicial philosophies in the United States.

Of course, there are few, if any, judges who hold to the extreme ends of that continuum, but you must have a descriptive term for each extreme to mentally place someone along it.

I think it is playing fast and loose with the courts to use the terms "liberal" and "conservative." Courts are, in theory free of politics. Of course, they are not truly so, but the cause is not helped by openly describing judges in that fashion.

The natural results of strict construction do tend to be conservative, but then America is, and always was (except for a brief time, under and after FDR), a very conservative country.

Thomas Jefferson didn't even believe the Court had the right to decide anything affecting the individual states, and he was ready at one point for secession over precisely that matter.

That was the absolute zero, if you will, of strict construction, and America has a large population that still regards Jefferson as America's greatest sage.





YOU HAVE TO ADMIT IT LOOKS A LOT LIKE THE SUPREME SOVIET INSIDE

THE APPROACHING REVOLUTION IN VALUES

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

"...genetic discrimination in hiring will be illegal, of course..."

The "of course" reflects today's values, but progress in genetics is going to upset virtually all of our accepted values.

Why? Values have to do with the verities of our world and the nature of the choices we make.

But the verities are all on their way to being tossed out the window.

We see just the leading edge of a revolution coming with matters like people having themselves cloned, parents having another child just to provide transplant parts for a loved and sick one, and truly designer babies with every important characteristic selected by parents.

The bizarre possibilities - bizarre by today's perspective - are virtually endless, so human values and ethics - and the laws reflecting them - are in for the greatest revolution of all time over the next century.




THE APPROACHING STORM

RIGHTS CANNOT DISAPPEAR WHERE THEY NEVER EXISTED

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY RAMESH THAKUR IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

Ramesh Thakur, this is intellectual rubbish.

"The reality of recent reversals on human rights, civil liberties and press freedoms is hard to miss."

Human rights only exist where the population honors them and where that population enshrines them in their laws.

Those conditions do not exist, and never have existed, in Afghanistan.

And to blame that fact on the Taleban shows only that you literally do not understand the place you are writing about.

The war lords of the Northern Alliance are every bit as horrible as the Taleban. You don't even mention their mass murder of 3,000 Taleban prisoners through suffocation in the desert.

You don’t mention the fact that virtually all of the women in places, places ruled by the warlords, outside Kabul – and even many there – still wear the burka.

You don’t mention the Potemkin schools that open with fanfare and close for lack of funds.

You don’t mention the immense poverty and virtually complete lack of a modern economy. You don’t mention the war lords involvement with poppies.

Afghanistan is a backward, poor, tribal society. Full stop.

Such backward places in India still burn brides. Such backward places in Africa see young girls routinely raped.

You do not advance a society with conquest and occupation, America's idea of a human-rights mission. Carpet-bombing is not a tool of democracy, no matter what your fellow institute arm-chair experts in the U.S. say.

God, they just murdered maybe a hundred people with their stupid bombing. And in Pakistan, they are pressuring the government towards collapse.

You are only defending a corrupt and murderous effort which has nothing to do with rights.

IS THE REPUBLICAN PARTY GOING UNDER?

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

Perhaps readers may recall that Senator Specter worked on the Warren Commission investigation of the John Kennedy assassination. The fact is certainly an indication of how long he has managed to survive in national politics.

But details of his work on the Commission show us something else too.

Senator Specter was the author of the Single-Bullet Theory. When the Commission could not sort out a set of contradictory facts, Specter secretly mashed them together into the theory now long-since discredited by all serious students of the assassination.

Perhaps this shift in parties is another such brainstorm?

The Republican party well deserves its fate. For decades it has been a ridiculous organization, a rickety marriage of philosophical conservatives with the Christian Mullahs of America's Religious Right.

In other words, the impossible marriage of those who in theory believe in freedoms with those who do not.

The party has stood on the wrong side of almost every great ethical issue for decades.

Moreover, it gave the world eight years of the brain-dead Bush administration which also happened to be the least ethical group of people to control the White House in memory. It has taken Americans as a whole a while to begin fully grasping the extent of the disaster Bush created on almost every front from foreign affairs to the domestic economy.

I do think the Religious Right itself is in decline. Their worst period of interfering in politics and demanding unreasonable laws and regulations represented perhaps the last great outburst of these backward, anti-scientific people as a force in American politics. The full decline will take a while, but I think its inexorable decline has begun.

The force of progress and clear thought and science was overwhelming them with fear, and they sought to stop progress in many public spheres, a truly impossible task in a world where science has become a gigantic, unstoppable establishment.

I think this fact has been sinking in to some degree, and they will return to exercising their religious rights where they belong, at home and in churches.

Of course, without the strength of the Religious Right, the Republicans become de facto a permanent minority party.

If these speculations are correct, then we are at an historic watershed in American politics, as when the Whig Party died.

Unfortunately, it does not necessarily mean a more liberal America. The Democratic Party has become an almost meaningless one in terms of philosophy or policies. Its last president, the sleazy Clinton, could pass, judged by his few, undistinguished achievements, as a middle-of-the-road Republican.

This shift in politics may represent a truly historic opportunity for Obama. It may give him the room, as people full of uncertainties look desperately for leadership, to accomplish a great deal to become a president of Rooseveltian proportions. Maybe.




THE MAGIC BULLET STRIKES

SWINE FLU AND THE POOR JOB THE PRESS DOES REPORTING IT

POSTED RESPONSE TO COLUMN BY ANDRE PICARD IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

Thank you, Andre Picard, for some good sense.

I have always thought that the SARS outbreak in Toronto was far overplayed. Contrary to the slap-yourself-on-the-back stuff we hear regularly about such a good job of management, much of it was actually botched.

CBC Radio, which should have better judgment, was one of the worst offenders. Bulletins all the time. Numbers all the time. No perspective at all. Thousands die every single year of regular flu and pneumonia alone. I'm sure the media contributed to the serious economic slump in Toronto.

Now we are getting the same rubbish again. Even perhaps false information.

The WHO has said there are only seven confirmed deaths so far, but the media keep reporting more than 150, a number which if even accurate is not a statistically significant health event in the world's population.

Last, I would just remind people that modern medicine can do almost nothing against flu anyway.

I believe telling people to go to hospital is irresponsible. As far as going to your doctor, well you are lucky if you have one, so why put him/her at needless risk?

When you take someone to the hospital with flu, after waiting hours, you will be told to take aspirin, liquids and perhaps a diarrhea-prevention compound to avoid de-hydration, and rest.

There is nothing else to be done. Antibiotics are a useless waste for viruses. Anti-virals are often ineffective and costly.




"HI, I'M FEELIN' JUS' FINE"

PARALLELS BETWEEN TRUDEAU AND IGNATIEFF BUT IGNATIEFF IS NO TRUDEAU

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

The parallels are few and shallow; the differences are immense.

Trudeau was a remarkable man, capable of surprisingly large acts.

Ignatieff is just one more somewhat above-average academic without a truly original idea or act to his credit.

Trudeau's personality sparkled. It showed in his eyes.

Ignatieff's natural tendency is slightly gloomy and aloof. The eyes are uninteresting.

Trudeau held the basic principles of a "just society" very dear, and one always sensed he would fight for them.

Ignatieff has no core principles that are large and that he would sacrifice for.

Trudeau stood up to American arrogance and irrationality.

Ignatieff has proved already he just blends into it.

When Trudeau spoke of human rights, there was authenticity.

When Ignatieff speaks of rights, he sounds like he's quoting a textbook.

When Trudeau looked upon injustice, you knew he was affected.

When Ignatieff looks on injustice, you know it doesn't even penetrate his consciousness.

___________

Harper is indeed a liar and, more importantly, a moral coward, a quality he has demonstrated many times.

And Ignatieff is a liar, and, more importantly, a moral coward, a quality he also has shown many times.

IGNATIEFF AND HIS PURPOSE IN RETURNING TO CANADA

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY WILLIAM JOHNSON IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

"How do we make this place worthy of our dreams? How do we fix what is so obviously wrong? Those questions became my own. It's why I came back. It's why I entered politics. It's why I'm here."

This quote tells us a great deal about Ignatieff.

First, the arrogance comes through in "worthy of our dreams."

Canada is one of the best countries in the world in which to live. To ask for more is arrogant.

Indeed, it is typically American, and just look at how many places America has made worthy of dreams. Vietnam. Cambodia. Afghanistan, Iraq. Chile. Palestine.

Then there is the vast ghetto gulag stretching right across America.

“Obviously wrong?”

I simply do not agree that tensions and pressures from different interests in our society are obviously wrong. We deal with it, and we often become a larger people while dealing with it.

In the society Ignatieff admires so much, the United States, separatists, for example, would have been beaten and thrown into prison. Their party would never have been tolerated in the national legislatures. The secret services would be working overtime on dirty tricks.

I much prefer tolerating an essentially decent man like Duceppe in our Parliament. His movement is unquestionably gradually fading, in part precisely because Canada is a good place to live.

“It’s why I came back.”

Clearly, that is a disingenuous statement. He came back for the opportunity to cap his ambitious career with a prime ministership. And his lack of ideas and his lack of ease with those outside the elite are the clearest evidence for this motive as they are also the clearest evidence of his unsuitability to be leader of the Liberal Party.

ON THE LEGALITY OF BUSH'S TORTURE TECHNIQUES

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

Sorry, but this does sound a bit like scholastics arguing over the number of angels accommodated on the head of a pin.

If waterboarding is torture - and it is important to remember that it was not the only technique used by Bush's goons - then it falls under all the prohibitions of international treaties and conventions.

Moreover, it falls under prohibition in America's Constitution.

You do not have to be a lawyer to understand those things.

Yes, I know the fatuous argument that these acts were kept offshore, but surely a free society's best principles do not stop applying as you cross the border. Otherwise, they may well prove meaningless, even at home, as indeed on many occasions they have in the United States over the last two and a quarter centuries.

Still further, there is the profound issue of what kind of a country you want.

The opportunity to prosecute is an opportunity to show the entire world that the country truly does not embrace these methods and attitudes.

But I very much fear that it does rather embrace, at least a very substantial part, this ugliness.

America has a very brutal history, one not well understood by many abroad and many Americans themselves. It has been no enemy of such things.

For example, waterboarding was used in the Philippines uprising against American occupation after the Spanish-American War, itself a dark chapter in greed and deception in American history.

____________


Some clarification.

It is unlikely that we would ever have a precise definition of torture in law, but I do not think this is necessary for a decent society.

Indeed, since human knowledge and technology keep advancing, new tortures are always going to be invented. The law cannot keep up in detail.

But the lack of absolute precision in law should not prevent our taking those to court we believe have violated a concept we all instinctively understand, and there is the spirit as well as letter of the law.

Especially when the implications of our not acting are grave for the future of a free and decent society, a goal which is the object of much of law in the first place.

A great deal of prosecution under certain laws involves judgment.

Indeed all cases going to the Supreme Court - that is, cases claiming a violation of Constitutional rights - involve judgment.

It just is not possible to write something like a Bill of Rights without a high level of generalization.

We expect high-sounding and even inspiring phrases in such documents. The judgment of the Court is an absolutely the sine qua non of making such a document meaningful (despite the opposition of Jefferson and his political gang to that concept, a crowd whose descendants remain a significant American presence).

In everyday law, we see judgment used by the police about just whom to arrest. We see judgment by judges about who receives bail. And of course we see judgment by juries and indeed superior court judges.

THE TWISTED USE OF AHMADINEJAD AS PREPARATION FOR ISRAEL'S ATTACKING IRAN AND THROWING THE WORLD INTO CHAOS

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY MARCUS GEE IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

Marcus Gee asserts in this column what is not proven and likely cannot be proven. This is irresponsible for someone in his position.

I am no admirer of Ahmadinejad, but I have yet to read a statement that he has made - fairly considered in context and not distorted by those who hate him - that could be called anti-Semitism.

Apologists for Israel's bloody excesses - and Marcus Gee is a prompt and regular contributor to that cause - love to pull Ahmadinejad's statements out of context and even distort them because Israel's leaders have built a huge head of steam and want to attack Iran, pitching the world into a serious crisis. They are looking for every excuse to build a case for doing so.

Ahmadinejad does not like Israel: that does not make him a demon or a Nazi. He has never said he would attack Israel. He has never advocated terror against Israel.

He has said Israel will come to an end by the very nature of its circumstances. In fact the CIA in a secret report has said exactly the same thing: Israel, as it is, will dissolve away within 20 years. That may be unpleasant for some, but it is not a crime and it is not even a threat.

It is important to understand, too, that Ahmadinejad does not have serious power in Iran anyway. His is a weak office. Power in Iran is distributed over several entities, as it is in the United States. Ahmadinejad can not order war.

Yet Israel threatens to attack Iran daily, and the threats have only become more vicious lately. This would be an event to pitch the entire world into a crisis, and Marcus Gee is effectively supporting it.

Israel has done many nasty things in its short life. It holds ten thousand in its jails. It abuses an entire population of millions daily, holding them in virtual bondage.

It viciously killed 430 children in Gaza plus a thousand others for no good reason. Not long before it killed 1,400 in Lebanon for no good reason, leaving behind, for good measure, tens of thousands of cluster bombs to maim and kill for years.

To this day Israel refuses to tell the UN where it dropped these ghastly things which almost make landmines look humane. And to this day, after its savage and cowardly attack on Gaza, it will not allow proper assistance to get into the stricken people.

Israel blubbers about democracy but will not talk to a democratically elected government, treating them as demons or witches which they are not.

Iran has attacked no one in its entire modern history.




THESE YOUNG IRANIANS ARE TERRIBLY THREATENING, AREN'T THEY?




THESE SWEET FACES FROM GAZA WERE NO MORE THREATENING, BUT THEY REPRESENT A SMALL SAMPLE OF ISRAEL'S HANDIWORK

ON PROSECUTING THOSE AMERICANS WHO TORTURED AND MADE IT POSSIBLE TO TORTURE

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

The fear of prosecution is the only effective tool we have to prevent repetition of this unholy business.

Even a failed prosecution serves this purpose to some degree. Washington careerists do not like facing the expenses and uncertainty of long trials.

Avoiding prosecution serves only to make the dirty work easily repeatable, no matter what Obama's administration may say about not using such methods again.

God, it was only in the late 1970s that the Church Committee uncovered some of the elaborate efforts to assassinate Castro, efforts in some cases using the mafia. The U.S. was running a Murder Incorporated said one observer.

Yet here we are, roughly three decades later, and the U.S. is busy assassinating and attempting to assassinate people again.

Again, it is only a little more than three decades since the killing fields of Cambodia, a true holocaust in which something like a million perished and countless were tortured and abused.

The U.S. had a major responsibility for the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror. It effectively toppled a peaceful, neutral government with heavy illegal secret bombing and armed incursions, allowing the monsters to take over.

But here we are again, the U.S. every week or so uses robot drones and Hellfire missiles to kill people in Pakistan it believes are suspects in Taleban operations in Afghanistan. It not only largely kills innocent people, enraging many, it is irresponsibly weakening the government of Pakistan.

Of course, the U.S. has no more business being in Afghanistan than it had being in Vietnam, its excuse for bombing Cambodia and the scene of the world’s greatest holocaust since World War II with 3 million dead and millions of pounds of hideous Agent Orange and landmines left behind to continue killing for decades.

Clearly the savage blunders of the past do get repeated.

ON THE SENSIBLE NOTION OF TREATING TERROR AS ORDINARY CRIME

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

Treating terror as ordinary crime has always been the view of reasonable people.

The United States, after 9/11, could have used diplomacy, international treaties, legal procedures, and intelligence agencies to get justice.

What it got by invading Afghanistan was not justice, but vengeance, rather extreme vengeance in fact, killing tens of thousands needlessly.

My favorite analogy or thought experiment, made soon after 9/11 and near the invasion of Afghanistan, is crime in a big city ghetto. Having grown up on the South Side of Chicago, I was keenly aware of failing neighborhoods, gangs, and crime.

Just imagine, following a violent crime by some gang in an American ghetto, the police getting the cooperation of the local National Guard to send fighter jets over the offending neighborhood, dropping cluster bombs and firing Hellfire missiles.

They would of course kill many innocent people, injure many more, and bring further economic damage to areas already suffering. They may well not even have killed the perpetrators.

Such violent action would make no sense for justice or peace. It would only make sense as vengeance or as a way to intimidate those who would dare think of doing wrong.

But this is precisely what the United States has done in Afghanistan, just as it is precisely what Israel does regularly.

That is why the violent activities of these two states can fairly be characterized as state terror, a form of terror which has badly eroded the very meaning of what we traditionally mean by terror.

You simply cannot have justice and lawful society unless you are prepared to live by it yourself.

We live in a globalized world, and such lawless activity cannot be regarded as internal matters of the state inflicting it.

The point becomes even more acute when you consider matters such as Guantanamo and the CIA International Torture Gulag.

Here is the United States, mouthing words about freedom and rights incessantly and one having those things enshrined in its Constitution, yet it seems to regard it as perfectly fine to ignore every right and freedom one inch outside its border.

And it never stops pompously preaching to others, such as China, about rights and freedom. And just so Israel whose government never fails to mention its being the only democracy while holding ten thousand prisoners illegally and millions more in a form of bondage.

___________________________


The word "terror" has been deliberately worked and abused so that it has a special quality for the bulk of people.

There has been, effectively, a long and relentless advertising campaign to make people react to that word the way people in the sixteenth century reacted to "witches."

The situation reminds me very much of one of Stalin's most feared words, "wreckers."

Every time Stalin started talking about wreckers, it was the signal for a new round of arrests, murders, and horrors.

Crimes are crimes, and we are only civilized when we use our legal institutions properly to treat all crimes.

When the claim is made that there is a special class of criminals - called terrorists - it is a signal for far worse crimes to be committed by the very authorities uttering the claim.




PEOPLE SHUDDERED WHEN HE UTTERED THE WORD "WRECKERS"

ON OBAMA'S RELEASE OF BUSH TORTURE PAPERS AND HIS REFUSAL TO SEE CIA TORTURERS CHARGED AS THEY SHOULD BE

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY CON COUGHLIN THE TELEGRAPH

What is security, Mr.Coughlin?

Is it the security of a healthy, free society or is it the security of a system of Stalags?

The choice truly is that stark.

Words like yours flirt with fascism. Indeed, "flirt" might be a generous word to use.

The only defense for these obnoxious CIA torturers is that they were just following orders.

Haven't we come then nearly full circle since the Nuremberg trials?

Although I must say that punishing the CIA in a serious fashion is impossible.

The CIA is a law unto itself with the president often not even aware of some of the things they are doing towards longer-term goals.

Please remember that the only president who actually threatened the CIA - out of anger over the Bay of Pigs - was assassinated.

Legality is not even an issue here.

The invasion of Iraq broke every international law on the books.

Abu Ghraib, the same.

Guantanamo, the same.

The assassinations in Pakistan, the same.

The mass killing of Taleban captives in the early days of the Afghan invasion - 3000 disappeared and their bodies are buried in the desert - the same.

The shooting, imprisonment, and torture of a boy - Omar Khadr - the same.

Israel's savage, cowardly attacks on Gaza and Lebanon, using American weapons and having tacit American permission, the same.

The U.S. is now so beyond such niceties as law and international conventions that Obama's election cannot possibly turn it around greatly.

It is a brutal imperial power with no consideration for anyone standing in what it considers its way.

THE ABSURD NOTION OF MICHAEL IGNATIEFF AS "A TRUE PATRIOT SON"

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY MICHAEL VALPY IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

Ignatieff is as much a patriot as he is a defender of human rights.

Which is to say, not at all.

He is a repulsive opportunist.

After spending his days speaking on behalf of America's brutal imperialism, he just returns to the land of his youth to have a go at a second career as prime minister.

Note I didn't say "returns home" because his past words and actions make it abundantly clear he does not regard Canada with warm feelings.

As much as I dislike Harper, and that is a great deal, Ignatieff is the worst possible alternative to be found on the planet.

He is actually a surprisingly small-minded thinker in many respects, he is overwhelmingly an admirer of American hegemony, he is a defender of torture and bloodshed, and he is putridly smug about himself.

His is a genuinely poisonous presence in our political life, much like having a mole from the CIA running a national party. Indeed, one suspects that that is exactly what he is.

_______________________


The stuff above about Canadians rejecting an intellectual is uninformed rubbish.

As to Ignatieff's being better able to succeed in Europe, again rubbish. He has a wide-spread reputation there as "neo-con lite."

The writer must never have heard Ignatieff at any length.

Ignatieff truly is the equivalent of the Walt Disney organization's notion of an intellectual.

That is undoubtedly why he served a stint as a BBC presenter, that broadcast organization in recent years having been reduced to a mere shadow of itself while serving the aims of the likes of Tony Blair’s government.

There is no fierce independence of thought in Ignatieff, the indispensable requirement to wear the laurels of intellectual.

Indeed, quite the opposite.

There are no striking views or original ideas associated with his name. None.

There is no great defense of the little guys of this world, the downtrodden, the abused, the victims, the underdogs of any circumstances that is associated with great intellectuals and with great writers, the kind of thing Graham Greene considered indispensable to the title of writer.

There is a great deal of wordiness, much of it rather mannered, stylized, dry, much like a costly garment wrapping around nothing.

BELIEF THAT THE EARTH WAS FLAT: THE OLDEST NONSENSE TAUGHT IN SCHOOLS

RESPONSE TO A POSTED COMMENT IN THE INDEPENDENT

Belief that the earth was flat?

Sorry, no educated person believed that in Henry VIII's time or even long before.

That is a loose notion from six-grade geography teachers.

Eratosthenes calculated an fairly accurate diameter for the earth in about the third century BCE.

Ptolemy, centuries later, calculated a much less accurate one.

The issue amongst early explorers was really over whose calculation was right, the differences representing vast distances to Asia.

It is only the views of educated people that counts in matters like this since there will always be people who have odd superstitions and ill-founded ideas.

Even today, I'm sure there are inhabitants of remote Africa, Indonesia, or South America who believe the world is flat.




NO EDUCATED PERSON BELIEVED THIS

HENRY VIII AND THE THEORY THAT HIS WOUNDS CAUSED HIS TYRANT BEHAVIOR

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE INDEPENDENT

It has been a theory for a very long time advanced by some biographers that Henry's leg wound, a suppurating wound for the rest of his life, was responsible for his tyrant behavior.

Certainly in his youth, apart from a handsome athletic appearance, he enjoyed the company of intellectuals and was a fairly impressive scholar himself, as well as a musician and writer.

Elizabeth inherited his intellect with her ability to speak six languages and her love of music.

He apparently had a rather sweet temperament, although he allowed no one to assume any sense of equality in his presence.

It is not impossible there was a genetic strain in Henry - exacerbated by his pain - because Henry VII had a seriously mean streak himself and Elizabeth at times displayed a colossally ugly temper.

As to Anne Boleyn's miscarriage, I don't think that was her downfall.

Anne's strong, rather controlling personality was.

Once the long pursuit and courtship were over, that side of Anne's temperament showed clearly (she was the Great Elizabeth's mother after all), and Henry did not like any sense of competition from women.

AN OBAMA DOCTRINE?

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


The world, thank you very much, will do quite well without an "Obama Doctrine."

What's wrong with the idea of a chief executive who simply does his job without pretense to imperial or papal grandeur?

The pomposity of the various presidential doctrines - many of them rather shabby statements when their fancy wrap and ribbons are removed - indeed, the very use of the word "doctrine" is the surest sign of American's having fully absorbed the concept of empire.

The president is, after all, just an elected official with a limit on his/her time in office.

THE UPCOMING PULITZER PRIZES AND THE GENERAL FOOLISHNESS OF PRIZES

RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY DANIEL FINKELSTEIN IN THE TIMES

Prizes generally are foolish business.

Even the most prestigious - the Nobel - often gets it wrong. Just look at the winners in literature. The authors loved and read often are not on the list. Those on the list include those few read. In science even we find things like Einstein having won for one of his lesser contributions, not relativity.

The Peace Prize is compromised beyond meaning with several leaders whose hands are very bloody receiving it, all in the hope one presumes of influencing the course of events.

The Academy Award is just silliness, although people like it for exactly that reason. Goofy gowns, goofier speeches, and Fred Astaire glitter.

Some terrible films have won. Just recall Liz Taylor in Butterfield 8, an unwatchable, bad movie, even in its day. And then there are the fad films – Dances with Wolves - which are heaped with prizes despite being good but not original work.

The Pulitzer is the most hopeless prize of all. It has not only got it wrong many times, it has been hopelessly compromised by crooked journalists and crooked newspapers. A New York Times correspondent in Russia in the early part of the century we now know won for totally created material. And there have been more scandalous examples in recent decades. The prize has a flag-waving agenda that has nothing to do with quality or ideas or even journalism.

Just consider the oleaginous laureate Thomas Friedman, a man whose job is to rewrite Pentagon material and other imperial propaganda into chirpy copy.

With history books, it has often missed great books while giving awards to second-rate or boring work.

Just consider the odd idea that there must be a best each year in anything. It just isn't so. Creativity and genius don’t follow clocks or calendars.

Science for example progresses steadily but often with spectacular work only coming after years or decades.

IT IS ALMOST MEANINGLESS TO APPLY THE WESTERN LANGUAGE OF RIGHTS TO MANY PARTS OF THE WORLD INCLUDING AFGHANISTAN

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

This is a silly leather-armchair-by-the-window editorial.

You are imposing concepts on a place which, in general, has no more grasp of them than they do quantum mechanics.

Afghanistan never has been any thing but a collection of tribes. It is not a country in the sense that we understand. It has no meaningful central government, no bureaucracy, and few roads.

Yes, it is a colored patch on our maps, but even its borders are vague, the main border with Pakistan simply being a line drawn by a British official about a century ago.

For the people living on each side of that border, the so-called Durand Line, it is meaningless. They are tribal people, the same tribe living on both sides of that line.

Afghanistan is nothing but a collection of tribes, many of them living impoverished, hardscrabble lives in an environment of barren mountains and deserts.

They are hard people with ancient, unpleasant customs and attitudes, owing to their harsh circumstances which is precisely why the idea of defeating them is, and always has been, ridiculous.

A place like this only makes progress through steady economic growth, and you don’t get that from guns and bombs, America’s idea of a human-rights mission.

America invaded to kill people, not to help anyone, and Canada has been sadly dragged along for the ride.

The world is so much more complicated than this view. It is not a place entirely to our liking. Ancient, anti-progressive customs and attitudes come with the territory of poverty and economic backwardness, much as malaria or high infant mortality.

Go try enforcing anti-homophobia in Jamaica or rural Africa. Go try teaching women's rights in rural India or South America. In any of these places, you could be killed just for your words.




AFGHAN WOMEN STILL MOSTLY WEARING BURKAS



INTENSE HOMOPHOBIA IN JAMAICA



BRIDE BURNING IN INDIA



BRIDE BURNING IN INDIA

AMERICA'S CRIMINALLY STUPID WAR ON DRUGS IS JUST ONE PART OF A LARGER PATTERN OF BEHAVIOR

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

Yes, indeed, a criminally stupid war on drugs.

Intelligent analysts have said this for many years. Milton Friedman wrote on this subject, fearing for the loss of basic freedoms in America with police crashing down doors and waving deadly weapons around in people’s homes on mere suspicion or the tips of others wishing "to get" someone.

But the intelligent analysts’ efforts have been all to no purpose.

Why?

Look at the stomach-turning television shows of a few years back, shows like 'Cops,' showing the clearest police brutality and disregard for human rights. These shows were actually very popular.

Consider the incarceration rate in the United States, the highest in the advanced world by far, although that clearly has not impacted the United States’ claims to the highest murder and violent crime rates in the advanced world.

The United States, with its obsessive/compulsive personality disorder, knows no other way of doing things.

The template for the war on drugs has been applied yet again to the mindless war on terror. Of course, you cannot have a war on methods or beliefs and, of course, the use of terror to strike back for injustices is as old as civilization, but those elemental facts do not in any way affect America's current great crusade.

Oh, and we must not forget the decades-long war against godless communism in which the U.S squandered something on the order of 3 trillion dollars and countless lives in other countries, all while building the careers back home of monsters like J. Edgar Hoover.

Hoover broke every rule of decency and human rights and democratic values, yet his name remains in big metal letters on the FBI building in Washington.

What other land speaks at the highest level about democracy and human rights while sending B-52s to carpet-bomb some vaguely threatening people abroad? Who else sends money and warehouses-full of armaments to an abusive state like Israel which uses them to kill children and women while enforcing apartheid and ethnic-cleansing?

But Israel, like the U.S., is a democracy, isn’t it? One, moreover, surrounded by evil too, just the way the U.S. sees itself in the world.

You cannot hope to change America’s insane war on drugs without changing an entire underlying way of thinking, full of lurid delusions, a quite insane way of thinking, actually.




EVERYONE KNOWS BUSH TOOK COCAINE YET THIS SAME SELF-RIGHTEOUS CREATURE NEVER GAVE A PARDON TO THE MANY OFFENDERS FILLING TEXAS'S DEATH ROW AND ITS PRISONS

ON CBC'S LOWERING OF STANDARDS OF EXCELLENCE IN AN EFFORT TO GAIN MASS AUDIENCE: A REGRETTABLE TREND BEST SEEN IN THE EMBARRASSING JIAN GHOMESHI

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

Sorry, you have this matter entirely wrong.

Jian Ghomeshi clearly did not do the required research for an effective interview. He broke the rule every good interviewer knows, that you must know your subject before you meet.

Professionals like Shelagh Rogers or Eleanor Wachtel or Don Newman would never be caught flat-footed as Ghomeshi, something one finds regularly with him. This was only the most embarrassing of many blunders and poor judgments.

He is simply the weakest host ever placed into this once venerable time-slot on CBC Radio.

And it is a very good question as to why he even interviews trashy characters like this guest. The answer is simple: he is the most visible evidence of CBC's lowering its standards and pandering to a mass audience. Who even needs a CBC that tries to compete with trash radio?

Ghomeshi interviewed, some while back, a mother in B.C. whose young daughter was exposed to a raw pornographic magazine (“Butt”) in a store carrying young people’s clothes. It was stupidly used as part of a display.

Ghomeshi literally badgered the mother - mildly, but nevertheless definitely badgered – as though she were the villain in the piece with her complaint, going against free expression.

It wasn’t even a national story, just an embarrassing local business, so why did Ghomeshi feature it? Complete lack of judgment.

What part of children and pornography did Ghomeshi not get I asked? Well, he got his own back, in spades, from this trashy hillbilly, another interview that should never have taken place.

Ghomeshi regularly drags up trashy candidates for interview, as Gene Simmons, the former member of the rock group Kiss, known for his own crude talk.

In another interview, Ghomeshi talked to a pop singer about his girlfriend’s “hot body.” Great, morning public radio is to sound like a locker room?

I simply do not agree that Jian Ghomeshi is "a polite and gracious host." He does not have the skills for his job, and he does not have the wide interests and sharp mind of so many CBC personalities, including other new-generation CBC personalities like the intelligent and talented Matt Galloway.




HERE ARE EXAMPLES OF THE QUALITY OF GUEST MR. GHOMESHI HAS BROUGHT TO WHAT WAS ONCE CBC RADIO'S MOST VENERABLE TIME-SLOT

IGNATIEFF KEEPING HIS POLICY IDEAS CLOSE TO THE VEST?

POSTED RESPONSE TO COLUMN IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

Well, we know where he stood on the use of torture.

And we know where he stood on the illegal invasion of Iraq which has left more than a million corpses and several million refugees.

And he voted with his feet, for all to see, on proper democratic process for his party's leadership: against it if it is to his personal advancement.

So I know more than enough.

I don't care what policies - or should I say slogans - he has tucked away.

Ignatieff does not deserve our support.

OBAMA GETS A TOKEN 5000 MORE TROOPS FOR AFGHANISTAN FROM NATO: AN IMPRESSIVE NUMBER OF DRIVERS COOKS AND MEDICS

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE INDEPENDENT

I am impressed: five thousand more cooks, drivers, and medics.

It just could not be clearer that NATO does not agree with the United States' twisted view that Afghanistan is a serious threat.

You do not have to plea, bribe, and threaten - as the U.S. has done over and over in recent years - to get nations who genuinely feel endangered to help fight.

There is no threat.

Even Obama's charming personality and the world's great wishes for his success in cleaning up the horrors left behind by Bush cannot cause NATO's leaders to take this pontless engagement seriously.

The U.S. made a colossal mistake invading Afghanistan, and once there it did not even know what to do, other than killing a lot of people and committing a number of hideous war crimes.

It has established a government there no one respects. It has established former Northern Alliance warlords in the provinces, people in many cases just as repulsive as the Taleban. Its invasion released a flood of hard drugs on the world. It blubbered about women - as a propaganda ploy, its invasion being about killing, not women's rights - yet today the burka is seen everywhere outside the capital, and even in the capital, it is worn by half of women.

And no one, other than the delusional, can believe you can change the patterns of an ancient, hardscrabble society of 25 million. They will leave the 14th century as they experience sustained economic growth, and no other way.

The five thousand non-combat troops might well be called a politely-offered fig leaf for America's delicate dignity.




OBAMA GETS HIS FIG LEAF FROM NATO

BLAIR AND HIS BLUBBERING ABOUT RELIGION

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE INDEPENDENT

Blair was always a preacher, never a statesman.

Now he is where he belongs, mouthing vapidities and hurting no one.

Unfortunately, he leaves behind about a million dead in Iraq, hundreds of thousands wounded and crippled, millions with no employment, and a couple of million refugees.

I've heard of people who went into the wrong work doing damage before, but surely this is a case for the record books.

Considering what his words actually produced over the last decade, you really have to wonder about religious people paying attention to this hare-brain.

OBAMA'S LETTING GO HIS NATIONAL SECURITY APPOINTEE AND THE ISRAEL LOBBY

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE INDEPENDENT

This is one of the few times the unpleasant truth behind a high-level American decision has been exposed so clearly.

There isn't even a question in this matter.

The Israel Lobby acted here quickly and overwhelmingly to eliminate the appointment of a highly qualified man they happen to regard as too independent in his thinking regarding the Middle East.

It is stunning that a country of 7 million so deeply influences the policies and decisions of the leader of 300 million, a country of 7 million, moreover, with violently paranoid behaviors and an unwillingness to make any sacrifice for peace.

It is a potentially dangerous and de-stabilizing situation when it comes to matters like Iran.

It really is time for Israel to make peace and stop abusing its neighbors, but the only force on earth that can force Israel to do so is the American government.

But the American government seems incapable of exercising the least independent or fair judgment here, even under a strong, intelligent, and popular leader like Obama.




A DISTINGUISHED AND ABLE CHARLES FREEMAN AND HE IS JEWISH - BUT TOO INDEPENDENT-MINDED FOR THE ISRAEL LOBBY

NORTH KOREA'S MISSILE TEST AND THE ASSERTION THAT THE COUNTRY DEFIED THE UNITED STATES

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE INDEPENDENT

Defied?

I was unaware that Washington served in a paternal role in North Korean affairs. It is an independent country, fairly looking to its own defences.

I am certainly no admirer of North Korea, but I understand their fears. When you have nuclear weapons and capable missiles, you don't end up like Iraq.

With all the flap artificially generated by Washington over this event, people lose sight of some real facts.

The U.S. remains the only country ever actually to use nuclear weapons. It used them twice, both times on civilians.

Younger readers may not know that during the Korean Conflict General MacArthur was ready to use nuclear weapons on China. He was more than psychologically ready, he pushed hard and planned the attack out. Thank God, reason prevailed.

And MacArthur's intended use of nuclear weapons followed on his advance to the Yalu River, an act which the Chinese had long before warned they must regard as a threat to the security of China.

The only country in the world literally to take over another country in recent years, again, is the United States.

The only country in the world that maintains a large and secret nuclear arsenal is America's subsidized client, Israel, and it maintains this arsenal in perhaps the most sensitive part of our planet, casting a threatening shadow for a thousand miles around and inciting others to follow its example for their own safety.

MORE TIRESOME CRAP ON THE WAR ON TERROR

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY WESLEY WARK IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

Wesley Wark's piece is just intellectual Jello.

The very idea of a war on terror was an absurdity from the beginning.

You cannot have a war on a method.

Terror is the vengeance taken by the suppressed and voiceless as it is sometimes also the work of psychopaths with an ideal.

Terror is as old as organized warfare.

Indeed, today the word "terror" is pretty much become meaningless owing to the work of organized warfare.

Since WWII organized warfare always and everywhere kills more civilians than soldiers, and it uses ever more terrible weapons to do so.

I don't know of any terror organization with a record one-tenth as appalling as, for example, the United States.

Two atomic bombs dropped on civilian targets. Terrible fire-bombings of civilian cities. Three million slaughtered in Vietnam and a legacy of Agent Orange and land mines left to kill and cripple for a century. A million killed in Iraq and a modern society reduced to poverty. Prisoners of war by thousands exterminated in Afghanistan.

Any thoughtful person might well say, what the hell is Mr. Wark talking about?

Well, he is in a business that makes its living through fear.




I SEE A DEAD HUMAN BEING, A RESIDENT OF AFGHANISTAN, AND AN AMERICAN THUG POSING AS A BIG-GAME HUNTER, BUT I DON'T SEE ANY WAR ON TERROR




OH, HERE IT IS: THE WAR ON TERROR

HORRIBLE NEW LAWS IN AFGHANISTAN IN ONE ODD WAY DO REPRESENT PROGRESS

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

Well, we have made progress of a sort in Afghanistan.

We've come full circle from Bush's propaganda of years ago about women in Afghanistan, propaganda intended to win over soccer moms to an invasion that had nothing to do with human rights.

The place we've come to is to realize that you cannot change the culture and habits of an ancient, backward society in a few years, and especially with the use of armies.

Trying to alter the society of Afghanistan is like stepping back in time to fourteenth century France and trying to get women out of the convents and nuns out of their habits.

Ridiculous. And you'd only have made yourself an enemy to attempt doing so.

Only time and economic growth will change things in Afghanistan.

And surely it is clear to most that you do not get economic growth by bombs and invasion.

As I've said before, the U.S. would have achieved more dropping dollar bills on the countryside from its planes.





AN AMERICAN HUMAN-RIGHTS MISSION




GEE, SHE'S NOT FROM THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY - MORE LIKE THE EARLY 20TH

MORE ON GEORGE GALLOWAY'S NOT BEING ADMITTED TO CANADA

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

This is a shameful episode for Canada.

George Galloway is an honest and outspoken man, and it is only for being honest and outspoken that he was excluded from Canada.

What are the apologists for Israel's bloody deeds so afraid of that they must try to stop those who disagree with them from speaking?

The answer of course is always the same nonsense: Hamas is a terrorist organization.

In fact, Hamas is a democratic and honest organization, perfectly willing to come to a modus vivendi with Israel, but not willing to do whatever Israel demands before there even are talks. Perfectly sensible.

It is all so bitterly ironic. Israel was founded with the ugly terror of the Irgun and the Stern and other murderous groups, but now it is everyone else who is a terrorist.

And we must never forget Israel just killed 400 children and a 1000 others for nothing.

All Galloway did was bring some emergency supplies and turn them over to the people who are the government in Gaza.

_______________________

"I would argue that Galloway's message (whatever it is), has become lost in his own self-importance..."

Self importance? Bringing emergency supplies to people Israel just decimated and still keeps penned up like livestock?

It was, anyway, David Hume who so rightly pointed out that seeking for the glory of worthy deeds was itself worthy.

People - none of them - ever acts without a component of ego; it just is not possible.

And anyone who claims otherwise is either being dishonest or a fool.

______________________

"A blowhard of a "career politician" of over 20 years in office is hardly credible either Mr. Galloway. Have you had any position of power while in office? What has he done for his local constituents? We don't need any hypocritical politicians here from overseas, we already have enough of our own!"

You, sir, may believe such rubbish, but I do think that in a free country others are entitled to decide for themselves.

That is the very essence of a free society, not the poor judgment and still poorer information of people like yourself and the Conservative government.

_____________________

"This is a lie. Hamas has called for the destruction of Israel. That's very "moderate" of them. Jeez. I'm willing to listen to both sides but I can't recall the Israeli government every publicly calling for the genocide of Palestinians."

Oh please, Israel just murdered 400 kids plus a thousand others, and it keeps 1,500,000 people penned up like cattle.

And just a little while before that, it killed another 1,400 in Lebanon.

It refuses to tell the UN even where it dropped its godawful cluster bombs by the thousands, so that those horrible things can keep killing.

Only someone with a rather bizarre imagination could possibly believe Hamas could ever do anything serious against Israel. That's a more ridiculous claim than saying Canada threatens the U.S.

And, although I am sure it has escaped your attention, Hamas never used the word genocide. It only refuses to recognize Israel - a common negotiating position - and says Israel will come to an end eventually.

You might check your dictionary, but that last is not the same thing as genocide.

It is indeed something that a secret report of the CIA’s also said recently, saying Israel would likely dissolve into a Palestinian-Jewish state with many settlers returning to the U.S. and Europe. All within twenty years.

My, how dreadful.







IF YOU ARE AGAINST GEORGE GALLOWAY, IT DOES TEND TO MEAN YOU ACCEPT THIS

ON GEORGE GALLOWAY'S BEING REFUSED ENTRY TO CANADA

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY REX MURPHY IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

Shame on you, Rex Murphy.

This column is a nasty piece of weasel-work, the kind of thing I thought you were above, even though I disagree with many of your views.

You are calling Galloway names, defending what cannot be defended, and, at the same time, suggesting they find a way out of what is a police-state action.

George Galloway is an honorable man. He stands for principles, which more than you can say for Mr. Harper and yourself in this instance.

He has a piercing intelligence. And his way with words leaves even you, Rex, looking the true "sad sack."

He is a member of the Mother of Parliaments in good standing. There is no legitimate reason on earth to refuse him entry to Canada.

The only reason he is being treated in this police-state fashion is his views on the poor people of Palestine.

Israel's apologists simply hate him.

How shameful of you to speak disparagingly against him, but not a word about Israel's murder of 400 children and a thousand other people.

And to this day Israel will not supply the UN maps of where they dropped the dreaded cluster bombs in Southern Lebanon during another savage attack which killed another 1,400 or so, including a brave Canadian officer doing his duty.

IS OBAMA SIMPLY RE-BRANDING BUSH POLICIES?

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

I do think you are drawing conclusions here too early.

In foreign affairs, we have yet to see the essence of Obama's policies.

I agree that words he has used so far are mostly "rebranding" Bush, but it is impossible in a country like the United States to come in and just change course entirely.

Words may be used to ease the way to new policies. After all, American presidents never tell the truth leading into their policies, and the last president was positively a psychopathic liar. He murdered a million people based on lies.

I think clearly Obama’s hope in Afghanistan is to quietly reach a modus Vivendi and get out of that useless, pointless conflict. I think he will quietly deal with Taleban supporters, at least factions of them after his big show of force.

Were he to do things in a different way, in a bold, straightforward way, he would quickly become political road-kill in the United States. The political system is so corrupt and distorted that the real arguments in most great issues are never made.

And we must remember, the gigantic, powerful establishment any new leader faces in the United States: the military establishment, the intelligence colossus, the corporate benefactors of Bush’s years, and the many Borgia-like families who treat the U.S. much like their private playpen.

I never did believe Obama could make remarkable progress against these and other entrenched interests. America is a very conservative country at heart, conservative in the worst sense of that word. It is also a great imperial power whose people believe naively in the quasi-religious tenet that America is a bastion of freedom and human rights.

But I will be pleased with some moderate progress on a few fronts, and I think we must just be grateful we have a reasonable man leading, rather than a cretin.

Imperial Rome will only reduce its arrogance and pretensions and propensity to war when other centers of power have fully emerged.





AMERICA'S LIBERTY





ROME'S ATHENA

THE FRITZEL HORROR AND OTHER DARK TRUTHS

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY GEORGE PITCHER IN THE TELEGRAPH

We know that in the case of child abuse of various types, parents or close relatives are responsible for something on the order of 80% of cases.

It is rarely a stranger doing such things, despite parents' inordinate fears of children falling into the wrong hands.

I think it is likely true that sexual abuse by parents is far commoner than most believe.

Many of our old dark fairy tales and myths suggest this.

We also see it as quite common in places like parts of Africa where men routinely rape young girls.

And we know from studies that many prostitutes had childhoods with fathers that raped them.

We are a savage species, chimpanzees with bigger brains, but the brains do not overcome our nasty origins.

Remember, in a number of species in the animal world, fathers often kill the children.

We are, as Mark Twain said in his last years, the damned human race.

And just look at our willingness to kill large numbers of children in war. The U.S. and Britain killed thousands in Iraq. Israel just killed four hundred in Gaza.




OUR SOMEWHAT BIGGER BRAIN ONLY MAGNIFIES OUR ABILITY TO INFLICT PAIN AND KILL

THE STONING OF GEORGE GALLOWAY'S EMERGENCY ASSISTANCE MISSION TO GAZA IS NOT ABOUT GAZA BUT IRAN?

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY DANIEL FINKELSTEIN IN THE TIMES

Daniel, these are not well-considered comments.

First, you are totally inconsistent.

You quote Mubarak as though he were a fair and impartial authority in these matters.

President Mubarak is a dictator, one of decades standing, and he has some very large interests in supporting American policies, about $2 billion a year in keeping-the-peace payoffs for a start.

At the same time, you always have been a defender of Israel's de rigueur
position that Hamas - a truly democratic organization - is a terrible bunch of beasts.

And, as we know from other times, you promote the also de rigueur position about the great blessings of democracy in Israel.

Mubarak is little more than a thug, but he is a peaceful thug towards Israel so I guess that makes his opinion worthy?

As to Haaretz, quoting Israelis on anything having to do with Gaza, or Iran for that matter, is rather like quoting a South African paper in the heyday of apartheid on events in a Bantustan. The view is utterly predictable.

I object strenuously to your calling George Galloway a "blustering fool" if only because it so clearly untrue.

Galloway has a piercing intelligence, and he is, without a doubt, the most remarkable orator in Britain today.

His mission on this delivery of assistance to a people left shattered by three weeks of bombardment is not something to make light of.

How do you know, Daniel, that the stone-throwers were not Israeli agents? My God, we have boundless precedents for such activity and worse.

If the stone throwers were indeed Egyptians, then it is certain they were not acting, as we used to put it during the Cold War, spontaneously.

Spontaneous displays do not happen in Mubarak's Egypt, as I'm sure you well know.

So, I’m sorry to say, I don't find even a shred of honest analysis in your words here, but then you are riding your favorite hobby horse again, aren’t you?

CHINA'S LOCK-DOWN OF TIBET IS TELLING?

POSTED RESPONSE TO AN EDITORIAL IN THE TORONTO GLOBE AND MAIL

No, it is this editorial that is telling.

It forcefully brings home the fact that its writer does not understand the situation in China.

China is a land of great ethnic diversity. No government there can afford to have groups making inordinate demands and creating unrest, which is exactly what the original crack-down in Tibet was in response to.

Tibet has been part of China for many centuries. It enjoyed a brief, brief period of a degree of independence.

Most critics of China are not even aware of this history.

I don't know about the editorial writer, but I vividly remember Detroit being "locked down" with armed forces killing something like 44 rioters in the street and marching around with bayonets.

I also remember a large part of Los Angeles being locked down and more than 20 people being shot by armed forces in the street.

The same for a portion of Chicago.

Oh, and I'd like to see what happens to people who organize a party to give back the Hawaiian Islands or New Mexico or Texas. Believe me, the terror laws would be applied swiftly.

China has done nothing - absolutely nothing - you would not see in the United States under similar circumstances.





MANY AMERICANS CONFUSE TIBET WITH SHANGRI-LA

FRUM TAKES ON LIMBAUGH BUT IS ANYTHING BUT A HERO HIMSELF

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY DANIEL FINKELSTEIN IN THE TIMES

Rush Limbaugh is one of the ugliest phenomena in American politics, perhaps only exceeded by Ann Coulter.

But the group from which David Frum has made his living for years is the group that has used and rewarded Limbaugh for his years of service as America's Lord Haw Haw.

David has some very dark marks against his own name, some of which you will find discussed in this article I wrote some years ago.

He is anything but a hero.

http://chuckmanotherchoiceofwords.blogspot.com/search/label/CHUCKMAN%20ARTICLE%3A%20SICK%20PUPPIES%20-%20OR%20THE%20DANGEROUS%20DELUSIONS%20OF%20NEO-CONS





VILLAIN? HE DEFINITELY QUALIFIES



BUT HERO? I DON'T THINK SO - ACTUALLY THEY DESERVE EACH OTHER: TWO RIGHT-WING PORKERS PAID BY THE POUND OF WORDS

NEWLY DISCOVERED PORTRAIT: RALEIGH OR SHAKESPEARE?

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE TELEGRAPH

It remains a fair question.

The portrait has the good looks we would expect from an actor, Shakespeare's first calling.

But then Raleigh was one of Elizabeth's most prominent courtiers, and we know that group only included handsome men. Elizabeth was picky about brains and looks.

The eyes indicate intelligence, but Raleigh too was an exceptionally intelligent man.

If the sonnets are to be believed, Shakespeare was gay, and I have to say the face in this portrait does not appear to be that of a gay man, although one certainly cannot always tell such things.

The beautiful clothing in the portrait - actually the finest portion of the painting - would be what you expect in one of Elizabeth's courtiers. They used to outdo each other in trying to impress at court.

Shakespeare's theater work had undoubtedly made him a man of some means, but I'm not sure this made him so well-off that he could wear such finery. Then again, people undoubtedly wore their "Sunday best" for such portraits.

The other doubt in my mind is Shakespeare's status in the early 17th century. Theater was not a completely respectable business as it is today. Would a prominent theater person have a portrait commissioned?

On the other hand, this does not seem to me the face of a man of action, and that was what Raleigh was in spades.

But even if the portrait were to be Shakespeare's, that leaves completely unsettled the matter of whether he wrote the plays or provided a cover for someone else.





WHO IS HE?

CANADA'S MISSION IS FAILING IN AFGHANISTAN

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

I don't know what else was ever expected.

Of course, the truth is nothing was legitimately expected because this entire enterprise showed no genuine planning or forethought.

The original American invasion was stupid and pointless, pure vengeance with no clear purpose.

The Taleban were not responsible for 9/11, but the U.S. was thirsting for blood and so the country had to be invaded.

Since then they've killed thousands and thousands of innocent people and bombed the crap out of this poor country, all while claiming they are improving it.

They've committed war crimes, including complicity in the savage killing of several thousand prisoners.

Our joining in on the basis of "owing one to the Pentagon" could result only in the costly, pointless operation in which we are now engaged.

Yes, the odd poll says people are glad for us, but all that means is that in such a poor, backward country people are glad to get whatever they can free from foreign soldiers.

Also polls cannot possibly reflect the population there since no one is going to poll the Taleban or many remote villages.





AMERICA DELIVERS ANOTHER LOAD FOR DEMOCRACY

IS INTELLIGENCE HERITABLE?

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY DANIEL FINKELSTEIN IN THE TIMES

There is a lot of confused thinking around this subject. In the U.S., I.Q. tests in the public schools were done away with years ago. The reason: the tests consistently showed below average performance for black children.

I do think the word “race” is so contaminated from history that it must to be avoided, but we can accurately speak of groups in so far as the members of a group share a bundle of characteristics from thousands of years of common history and adaptation to various places and conditions.

The I.Q. test is an imperfect concept, of course, but we know to a certainty that the test has a certain degree of predictive ability for certain types of success. The very term “intelligence” itself is imperfect, leading to many vaguely defined concepts including the hazy idea of multiple intelligences coming from an educator at Harvard

Of course, all statements about various groups’ performance in these tests are statistical in nature. They do not necessarily apply to any given individual.

No one of good sense prejudges anyone's abilities from color or ethnicity, but we know the groupings inaccurately called race include many general characteristics other than skin color. For example, Caucasians, Blacks, and Asians are all known to suffer in different statistical patterns from various diseases and conditions. Patterns in the incidence of everything from heart disease to diabetes are quite different. Why would we expect it be any different with characteristics of the body’s most complex organ, the brain? Is such knowledge to be cast aside in the name of political correctness?

Millions of IQ tests in the U.S. – from public schools and armed forces enlistment - do show fairly dramatically that there are differences between groups. When you have millions of observations for any phenomenon, you know you are dealing with something real.

These millions of tests show 'Caucasians' with a mean IQ of about 100, 'Blacks' with a mean IQ of 85, and 'Asians' (and Ashkenazi Jews) with a mean score in the range of 107-115.

IQ tests only certain skills, skills around problem-solving and mathematical reasoning. There are many other human skills not captured by the scores.

But life experience in many countries does tend to confirm that the specific skills measured by IQ are important in a number of careers. Business, finance, and science are notable for high numbers of Jews and Asians and low numbers of Blacks. We find this pattern in country after country. It is not prejudice to observe it.

The abilities measured by IQ - the abilities to solve certain kinds of problems and math skills – surely contribute directly to these easily observable results.

We see a much smaller presence of black people in these fields, and it cannot be sensibly argued that this is owing to prejudice. Opportunities to go to any school are today wonderfully open in all qualified in advanced countries.

Now, look at the sports field. American football, baseball, basketball are virtually dominated by blacks (who constitute 13% of the population) owing to their innate athletic skills and strength. The same for professional boxing.

Why should these observations cause vituperation?

These are not arguments for prejudice or racism. They are arguments for better dealing with many social problems.

There is an unfortunate syndrome of black behaviors we see consistently demonstrated in country after country - Britain, United States, Canada, South Africa, Jamaica, and many others.

These include having children early, absentee fathers, dropping out of school in large numbers, attraction to gangs and violence, and lack of economic success on average.

At the other extreme of human experience, what do we see in the behavior of Asians and Jews? Putting off having children, almost always finishing school, strong bonds from fathers for children, much less violent activity, and remarkable economic success in free countries.

You can't deal properly with any problem when you pretend it doesn't exist.

We test for a multitude of things against which people do not argue.

We test everything from pulse and blood pressure to agility and speed. We test the efficient working of various internal organs. We test artistic ability. We test acquired knowledge. We test driving skills. We test sight.

Why does this one test, whose meaning really is limited to certain kinds of problem solving, raise so much heat?

We know that there are vast differences in results just within any one group. Are these differences imaginary or culturally induced? There is no basis for saying that.

So why, when a comparison between groups is made, does the test become worthless, biased, culturally contaminated, and a host of other pejorative adjectives?

We all see regularly, with our own eyes, people who are clever at what they do and people who are barely able to function. These are the extremes, but everyone falls somewhere on the spectrum.

What is the least odd or prejudiced in saying there are differences between groups if the empirical results warrant the statement?

Prisoners are routinely tested for IQ as one component of understanding their actions and for their rehabilitation. Criminals do tend to have lower intelligence, as well as many mental illnesses. Labs regularly test for IQ in studies to determine the effects of chemicals or new drugs. Scientists typically put study results of, say, the impact of certain chemicals on children in terms of how many I.Q. points are lost.

This is a topic society is going to have to deal with eventually.

OBAMA KEEPS AFGHANISTAN VERSION OF GUANTANAMO AT BAGRAM AIRBASE GOING

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE INDEPENDENT

I am sorry to read of this.

But it is America that Obama leads, not Ronald Reagan's fantasy shining city on a hill.

America is an imperial power with a vast network of intelligence agencies, secret police, military officials, corporate war profiteers, and powerful, ruthless old families much resembling the Borgias of Italy centuries ago.

You cannot just reverse what these groups believe is in their interests. If you try, you put yourself at risk.

America's establishment can ruin you and even eliminate you.

There are the examples of Clinton who became the center of sleazy scandal, going down in history as a shabby failure, and Kennedy who died trying to fight some very powerful interests. His brother too.

I firmly believe Obama's basic instincts are not bent towards this sort of overseas criminal behavior - something not typically true of American presidents, men like Bush or Nixon or Johnson being quite comfortable with it - but he is not in a position to change America's excesses.

What we get with Obama is an intelligent and decent man who will make at least some decisions in light of broader interests. I'm afraid that is the most we can hope for.

Those who wished for more were hoping for what cannot be.




I AM AFRAID THIS IS AS CLOSE AS AMERICA GETS TO A SHINING CITY ON A HILL

MORE ANTI-MUSLIM GARBAGE IN THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY DENIS MACEOIN IN THE TELEGRAPH

Denis MacEoin, this piece lacks any perspective, save that of uninformed, paranoid anti-Islamism.

It is just irresponsible to write such stuff, feeding prejudice with red meat.

We have many, many religious groups that do not mix with mainline society.

Mennonites in many parts of the world stay to themselves, living in segregated communities, and refuse even to drive cars. Traditionally, members who violate the rules face the devastating fate of being "shunned," ignored by everyone in the community.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews behave in even more extreme ways. They dress in similar 19th century costumes, live in segregated communities, and maintain elaborate, and even oppressive, rules for that must be followed. Women cannot even leave their husbands without the threat of losing their children while men may readily divorce a wife.

How about all the Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians who still live in monasteries and abbeys?

How about Buddhist monks?

Extreme evangelical Christians tend to avoid much of normal everyday society, disapproving of many mainstream activities. They found their own schools and other institutions with this aim in mind.

Then there are all the non-religious groups that tend to behave in similar ways, everything from nudists to survivalists.

God, isn’t it time we stop publishing anti-Muslim garbage?




DO MENNONITES INTEGRATE? NO. ARE THEY GOOD AND VALUABLE CITIZENS? YES.

TONY BLAIR'S PEACE AWARD: WHAT IT IS REALLY ABOUT

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY ANDREW PIERCE IN THE TELEGRAPH

Andrew Pierce couldn't be more right in his main theme.

Blair is a ghoul, an ethical nullity, still collecting booty years after his crimes.

But the author does overlook the actual meaning of this award.

The award had nothing to do with peace as most understand that word.

It comes from Israel, and the blood-drenched policies of Bush and Blair served what Israel sees as its interests.

Why else is Bush so praised in Israel, the only country in the world, including his own, where the man is not despised?

Israelis have some very odd ideas of peace, after all.

They include never speaking to their opponents, assassinating their leaders, imprisoning others, and holding a vast population almost in bondage.

Attacking a refugee camp like Gaza with bombs and tanks – for that is what Gaza is, full of refugees from earlier horrors Israel inflicted on Palestinians – is about far from peace as you can get, but it served what Israeli leaders saw as their needs.

And it couldn’t have happened without the quiet approval of Blair’s comrade in war crimes, the wretched Bush.




PERHAPS ONLY IN ISRAEL WOULD PEOPLE THINK THIS WORTHY OF A PEACE PRIZE




BLAIR MIGHT ALSO HAVE GOT THIS AWARD, BUT NOT BEING AN AMERICAN CITIZEN DISQUALIFIED HIM

A FORMER GUARD WRITES OF GUANTANAMO BUT SADLY MAKES THE ERROR OF SAYING IT IS AGAINST WHAT AMERICA STANDS FOR

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY BRANDON NEELY IN THE INDEPENDENT

Thank you for this, Brandon Neely.

But your statement near the end that "it [Guantanamo] goes against everything the United States of America stands for" simply does not reflect historical facts.

Guantanamo, to paraphrase H. Rapp Brown, is as American as cherry pie.

America's is a bloody history, full of injustice. The only reason we don't speak of the growth of America as being like that of Imperial Germany is that America's victims were mostly weak and poorly organized, rather than established European states.

Of course, we all know how America first ethnically cleansed the East of Indians in the "Trail of Tears." Thousands died in this hideous operation. All their land and homes were stolen.

Years later, when it wanted the very land these people had ruthlessly been removed to, America pretty much tried to exterminate them in a long series of mass slaughters.

We all know about a couple of hundred years of slavery and then a hundred years of Jim Crow.

But many Europeans - and more than a few Americans - do not know of the shameful Mexican War.

Or the shameful Spanish-American War, started with a phony claim over a warship.

Or the U.S. efforts to put down rebellion against its rule in the Philippines, where torture was widely used. Water-boarding started there.

Many do not know the ugly story of the annexation of Hawaii. The entire population there signed a petition against the American take-over and sent a delegation to Washington to present it to Congress. No one would even talk to them.

Few in Europe know of the many mass murders of blacks during the 1920s. Whole small communities, hundreds at a time, were wiped out and their land was stolen. There bodies went to mass graves.

The homes and farms and other property stolen from Japanese Americans during WWII Internment was never returned. The later compensation was a pittance for many compared to what was stolen.

There are many other ugly stories over just two centuries, and it is simply incorrect to play the Ronald Reagan theme of the shining city on a hill. It just ain't true.




MASSACRE IN KOREA




WOUNDED KNEE MASSACRE




MASSACRE AT MAI LAI VIETNAM




ONE OF THOUSANDS OF LYNCHINGS

ON ISRAEL AND GAZA AND THE TIRED CHARGE THAT CRITICISM OF ISRAEL IS ANTI-SEMITISM

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE INDEPENDENT

Howard Jacobson,

Yours is a shamefully dishonest article.

You are playing word games with mass murder, and truly, in the end, your circumlocutions restate the same disgusting tactic used by the defenders of Israel's bloody excesses: you are anti-Semitic if you criticize Israel.

Is Israel a country like any other or is it not? That truly is the heart of the matter.

If it is a country like any other, then its savage behavior in Lebanon and in Gaza and in the West Bank is completely unacceptable.

It has nothing to do with any "ism."

But if Israel is somehow to be considered by different standards than other countries, if it is to have special rules and allowances, then the real "ism" involved here is Israeli exceptionalism.

You cannot have it both ways, try as you might.

Israel does not talk to its opponents ever. It makes only public show of talking to a pathetic man like Abbas. The others it either assassinates - and there have been many bloody assassinations - or labels as "terrorists."

These are the techniques of tyrants, not states which respect human rights and democratic values.

Just because Israel is technically a democracy does not mean it cannot act as a tyrant.

A prejudiced majority can keep a technically democratic state behaving like a gang of thugs. We saw this in the American South. We saw this in apartheid South Africa. We saw this with France in Algeria. And we see this in Israel.

Even as Israel went about the business of killing, among others, 400 kids in Gaza, in the West Bank more of other people's land and homes was being seized.

How can anyone possibly regard this in a positive light?

If Israel would start treating its opponents with decency and respect and agree to return to its 1967 borders, we could have peace, genuine peace.

It is not Hamas that prevents this happening. Hamas has shown readiness to talk and reach a modus vivendi more than once. It kept the previous truce agreement scrupulously, which Israel broke.

The leaders of Hamas are intelligent, educated professionals, elected cleanly.

They represent for Palestinians the same yearning for clean government that Obamas does for America.

But Israel will not even talk. Ridiculous.




IT'S ANTI-SEMITIC TO BE REVULSED BY THIS?

ON AL JAZEERA'S EFFORT TO GET A LICENCE FOR THEIR NEWS SERVICE IN CANADA

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

I hope they get their licence.

I've followed Al Jazeera on the Internet, and they bend over backward to be fair and objective.

They do some good reporting.

During America's Terror in Iraq, Al Jazeera was the only source giving us objective reports of what was happening in places like Fallujah.

Their war correspondents were very brave, as they were again in the horrors of Israel's Gaza Assault.

There were definitely reports of American soldiers in Iraq targeting Al Jazeera reporters, a number being killed. Bush also, we know, wanted to bomb their broadcast building.

Folks like the Canadian Jewish Congress oppose Al Jazeera for two primary reasons.

One is the very honesty in reporting of events like Gaza that should be our main reason for wanting them here. Just as Americans in Iraq, they don't want outsiders to see the horrors they inflict.

The second reason is a dishonest argument about Al Jazeera being an outlet for terrorists and anti-Israeli radicals.

That is simply a false charge against their news service.

Al Jazeera does have another service in Arab lands on which speakers are free to voice their views, but this is kept entirely separate from the news service.

The truth is the news service is more honest and scrupulous than outfits like Fox or CNN. CNN has given utterly false reports from war zones several times. Fox is just an outlet for right-wing propaganda.

ON OBAMA'S EFFORT TO GOVERN BY CONSENSUS

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

The political divide in America is more visceral than it is in many other places.

It always has been.

I believe it reflects not just differences of view or understanding but of basic genetic make-up.

The Puritan strain in America gives us not just a tribe of Right Wingers but a nasty contemptuous propensity found in many American political commentators and politicians.

I think it not without some truth that the good folks in America always ready to bomb some society with which they disagree and going back to supporters of the extirpation of America's First Nations and the supporters of all-out, unforgiving war in the American Civil War are of a piece with the kind of Right Wing politics we see so often in America

The Coulters, the Limbaughs, the Gingriches, the Gramms, the DeLays, etc, etc represent a genetic strain going back to the horrific diatribes of dark souls like John Knox. They were horrible people in the 16th century and their descendants still are.

In America they are sentimentalized as religious refugees in distinctive garb, munching on the first Thanksgiving dinner.

In fact, they were so obnoxious in their behavior in 16th century Europe that no one wanted them around. Many used to go to the church meetings of other groups and raise ugly disturbances, showing absolutely zero tolerance for the beliefs of others. It was mobs of Puritans who ran through the great cathedrals of England hacking up ancient sculptures, burning paintings and manuscripts, and even destroying the graves of historic figures.

Of course, the reality is that after the first Thanksgiving these charming folks busied themselves with destroying the natives who had helped them.

Nothing has changed. This curse remains unlifted.

Unfortunately, America received so many Puritans in its early days while Australia was lucky to get the criminals.




AMERICA'S VIEW OF THE PILGRIMS




WHAT THE PILGRIMS ACTUALLY LOOKED LIKE

MICHAEL IGNATIEFF AND STEPHEN HARPER ONE OF CANADA'S "MEMORABLE DUETS" ?

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY DAVID MITCHELL IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

Yes, but they form an entirely new kind of "memorable duet."

A duet of grotesques.

Harper and Ignatieff are memorable only for both being repulsive politicians.

Both have ethical issues so large, many of good conscience simply cannot consider supporting either one of them.

Harper has demonstrated time and again his acts do not in any way resemble his words, as well as complete flexibility in his principles.

Ignatieff is a member of parliament, and now leader of the Liberals, owing only to his complete lack of respect for democratic values.

Harper and Ignatieff supported the horrors and crimes of Iraq, and had either of them been PM at the time, Canada would have participated in that criminal invasion.

Ignatieff has supported "mild" torture, and no matter what he says today, that utterly disqualifies him as a decent human being.

What a miserable period ahead in Canadian politics.

One can only hope the Liberals see the truth before their convention and select someone else as permanent leader.

Ignatieff has blood on his hands: some successor to Pearson and Trudeau and Chretien.

___________

Harper and Ignatieff are both intelligent.

But the least knowledge of history will teach you that intelligence does not protect us from people who are also mad or evil or simply unethical.

Both these men feature strongly in the last category.






HARPER AND IGNATIEFF: THEY DESERVE EACH OTHER BUT WE DON'T

ISRAEL'S TRAGEDY IS ITS POLITICIANS: A FALSE THESIS

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY LIAM FOX IN THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

This makes no sense.

In a democracy, in the final analysis, you must put responsibility with the people voting and supporting its institutions.

Otherwise, all the talk of the merits of democracy is rubbish.

The people pretty much get the goverment they deserve in any democratic state.

What people fail to realize is that democracies are not automatically decent forms of government. A majority with bad intentions can indefinitely impose its will.

Only a bill or charter of rights offers some protection against such majority abuse, but Israel does not have one, nor is it likely that it ever will with religious definitions governing many aspects of its society.

It truly does not matter much who is elected in Israel.

The choice of a woman who worked with Olmert is hardly promising. He is surely a war criminal by any reasonable, meaningful definition.

Olmert launched a savage bout of killing just so his party could have election bona fides.

As to Lieberman, he is quite rightly characterized as a fascist. Were this any place but Israel, the world's press would be saying just that.

Netanyahu has a long record of inflammatory statements and corrosively negative attitudes. He is a dark, unpleasant figure, altogether.

More than once, he has openly expressed contempt for Arabs.

It is generally put that Israel has moved to the right, but I rather think it is more accurate to say that Israel has moved into darkness.

I don't know how it could be more clear that Israelis do not want a just peace.

Oh, yes, if asked about peace in general in polls, they say yes, but peace in general is a meaningless abstraction. Genuine peace has to be qualified by all the small print.

I wonder how many readers are aware that while Olmert was killing maybe 400 children in Gaza, there was heavy activity in the West Bank seizing more of other people's land?

Recent revelations through Google maps demonstrate the intensity of Israel's continuing efforts to seize land through informal settlements.

Other revelations through government papers demonstrate clearly the government's quiet collusion in such illegal and unethical efforts.

We will have peace if Israel is prepared to return to its 1967 borders, but there is not the least indication that that is likely or even possible.

But peace isn’t just borders, it is treating your neighbors with respect and decency, but we see no sign of this from Israel, and it is Israel that holds all the cards.




SOME OF ISRAEL'S HANDIWORK IN GAZA

IRAN'S REVOLUTION: ITS VIOLENCE IS CHARACTERISTIC OF ALL TRUE REVOLUTIONS AND THE ROLE OF AMERICAN POLCY IN CREATING THIS ONE

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY ROBERT FISK IN THE INDEPENDENT

But this is the story of every genuine revolution.

By genuine I'm excluding events such as the American Revolution or Britain's Glorious Revolution, important and rather violent events but only rather loosely called revolutions.

True revolutions are always explosive, violent, life-changing events. That's why we can use the word for events like the Industrial Revolution, a world-changing set of events that hurt numberless people.

Indeed, when you are familiar with the history of such events, the word revolution takes on the kind of connotations of earthquake or natural disaster.

But most political revolutions are completely avoidable. They always come out of an environment of abuse and excessive privilege and trampling on others. The signs are always there to read too, requiring only changes in policy or reforms. This was absolutely true in such revolutions as the French and the Russian.

The policies of the United States, it should be remembered, bear a great responsibility for the extremes of Iran's Revolution. It overthrew the first democratic government in the Middle East to install the bloody Shah, and they supported that vampire for years in every way they could.

He was sold what then was an amazing pile of armaments, being equipped to serve as an American surrogate in the region.

Meanwhile Savak, his secret police, pulled out the finger nails of victims and murdered thousands.

The U.S. has never stopped playing such dirty games.

It supported Hussein in his horrible war against Iran, an 8-year long horror that in terms of the proportion of population killed or hurt compares to the Great War for major European countries.

Today it supports Israel's endless threats against Iran for the sin of entering the modern age with satellites and nuclear power stations. And it says nothing of Israel's horrible abuses and of its nuclear arsenal threatening everyone in the Middle East.

ON CELEBRITY ACADEMIC, RICHARD FLORIDA, AND HIS REPORT FOR DALTON MCCGUINTY, CIRCUS RINGMASTER OF ONTARIO

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

Already Richard Florida has become a kind of academic celebrity, and so far as I can perceive it is not owing to a wealth of original thought.

I am always keen to hear new ideas on favorite topics, but I honestly have to say I haven't heard or read one from Mr. Florida, despite a good deal of exposure.

Since coming to Toronto with fanfare, Mr. Florida has been interviewed many times of CBC Radio, sometimes at length, and he has contributed columns to the Globe.

After repeating many times why he came here, stuff about Canada's promise and opportunities - rather disingenuous, I think, since it was a plum academic appointment that brought him here - he talked at length about the late Jane Jacobs.

I was, along with so many, a great admirer of Jane Jacobs, and her classic book I devoured forty years ago. But her ideas are definitely not new and are widely known in Canada, and constantly associating yourself with her seems both a bit presumptuous and rather unpleasantly ingratiating.

One wanted to say, if you have something new to say, please, just get on with it.

Now he has written a much-advertised report for the Circus Ringmaster of Queen’s Park, Dalton the Magnificent, and I have heard him in several interviews discussing it, including one interview by the incisive Kathleen Petty with which he expressed great satisfaction.

God, I’m sorry, but he was vacuous. To make a point about today’s financial crisis and not dumping money into declining industries, he talked about people at an earlier period not stimulating agriculture but encouraging industry, the coming great sector.

Mr. Florida attributed the successful transition to the importance of the industrial sector in terms of employment in part to government’s not dumping money on an old sector.

Industry came to absorb the people leaving farms because of naturally occurring economic forces, including the industrialization of agriculture itself and increasing reductions in the demand for farm labor. The transition had nothing to do with government policies or the lack of policies. There were simply irresistible new forces at work owing to technological change.

Indeed, the fact is that today, although agriculture only now employs a small fraction of the labor force, government subsidies to agriculture remain one of the world’s great economic problems, the U.S. and the E.U. spending many tens of billions on this old sector every year.

Mr. Florida’s stuff about creativity in our economy is not new. Many names stand out from Schumpeter writing about creative destruction to Deming’s studies on continuous improvement.

Mr. Florida points to places like California and Massachusetts as centers of creative new industries, and indeed they are, but a government like Ontario’s cannot just make this happen. A major part of the reason these developments have occurred in those two places is that they each have constellations of great academic institutions attracting great minds from many places.

Boston, for example, has a half dozen major universities, at least two of which rate among the greatest in the world. You cannot just replicate that kind of intellectual infrastructure, at least not in anything less than decades of committing major resources.

And no one is going to prevent governments like Ontario’s from dumping billions in stimulus into declining industries: that is the stark reality of politics. Even a Northern Neocon like Harper has been boxed politically into spending tens of billions he did not want to spend.

Saying they shouldn’t isn’t wisdom so much as shouting against a hurricane.




RICHARD FLORIDA, SERIOUS ACADEMIC OR TENT-PREACHER PITCHMAN?

SCIENCE AS RELIGION?

RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY CHRISTOPHER BROOKER IN THE TELEGRAPH

A rubbishy playing with words, Mr. Booker.

Science cannot be a religion.

Science - true science, not the fraudsters on the edges - is a method.

It is a scrupulously defined method for establishing not truths - there are no "truths" in modern science - but as a way of understanding the way things work.

The method could take us anywhere, and the crucial characteristic of a scientific mind is that it is that it goes where the method leads.

Preconceptions have no role.

How can a method be a religion? Religion is nothing if it is not a set of tenets taken on faith as truth.

It cannot.