EDITORIAL ON THE IMPORTANCE OF READING JUST RAISES THE NEED FOR SERIOUS REFORM IN PUBLIC EDUCATION - NOTE ON DRIVEL BOOKS

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

"Reading is like oxygen..."

Not really, and by making that exaggerated claim the Globe places itself on the side of all the phony politicians and teachers and school administrators who day in and day out make false and even ridiculous claims about reading and literacy.

The Globe editorial writer would perhaps be surprised at the number of parents who do, or even cannot, read. After all, it wasn't just yesterday we began graduating people who are functionally illiterate.

And preaching to such parents is both foolish and effectively just another way of shirking the responsibilities of our teachers and schools to do the job parents do not.

Even more surprising would be the number of elementary school teachers who do not read, and haven't the least interest in it.

We have too many teachers - and this is especially important in the primary grades - who report to work each day with much the same attitude as the proverbial post office worker: I want my pay, my days off, and my pension, and "I'm outta here."

Such people should never have been hired for so important a job, yet I guarantee we have platoons of them today in our schools.

Typically at times when in the past we experience teacher shortages, any warm body that walks through the day was hired. Trouble is, once hired, they remain in place for a lifetime of inadequate and unsupervised (we have absolutely no systematic check on teachers' work ability and habits today) lethargy.

And all up the line we have teachers who wanted to get out of the classroom as principals, superintendents, directors, and "professors" at teachers' colleges. There's no escaping their influence.

It would be an interesting assignment for a Globe reporter to interview a number of school officials and teachers on their reading. I think the results would be eye-opening. Does anyone really believe that the ex-football player heading up Toronto schools is a serious reader?

And it's the same for the politicians setting the poor rules. Ontario's "literacy" test is a bad joke. I say that having first-hand experience with Asian students attending Ontario schools. It is a foolishly conceived test, set and marked by teachers. Those who "fail" it just take a bird course the next term to be deemed as having passed.

Now with politicians handing out the raises and benefits, what do you think is the motivation of those marking this test every year?

If we want to see help in reading for all students - as in any other subject you care to name, as well as the use of computers - we will demand of our rather handsomely rewarded teachers that they do the job for which they were hired.

We will put some of the best teachers in the early grades. It was Roger Ascham, Elizabeth the Great's tutor, who argued for the ablest teachers at an early age. We frequently do the opposite, I'm afraid.
We will test the kids with a genuinely objective, machine-readable test periodically, one not set by teachers and ex-teachers seeking extra income.

So, please, dear Globe, do not spout meaningless figures of speech unless you are prepared to support the fundamental changes required. Nothing's easier and more useless than mouthing platitudes while the big ugly machine chugs on. Reform is what we need.
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"There are certainly a lot of drivel books out there."

Yes, indeed.

And the education establishment has brought some of the worst of it into the schools.

I refer to the dull books stuffed into "literacy closets," bought from publishers trying to make a quick buck on parents' concerns and the education establishment's mouthings about literacy.

At the same time that considerable resources have been wasted on these over-priced and uninteresting books, we have let libraries in schools decline into a shameful state.

A school library should have the best of children's literature on the shelves and a friendly person in charge to introduce them to the books and teach them about using our great public libraries.

On the whole, we simply do not do this.

So-called "teacher-librarians" - a recent historical creation which is neither fish nor fowl - preside over the pathetically supplied and poorly maintained libraries on a part-time basis, and many of them show no interest in library content or children's reading skills and interests, nor are they themselves lovers of books often.

They are there to fill in the holes in the principle's schedule for teachers briefly away for some temporary reason - a ghastly anti-educational concept altogether.

We need lovers of books in the libraries, people dedicated to promoting the use and value of libraries. Library technicians, selected for their skills with books and children, would provide a superior human resource.

Just go see the lovely people working at many branches of our public libraries. No one comes away feeling they are there to fill holes.

Young children need a loving and informed introduction to books, especially the large numbers of them with no hope of receiving that at home.

BELINDA STRONACH REVIVES A TIRED OLD MATTER FROM THE REPUBLICANS OF 20 YEARS AGO - TERM LIMITS AND WHY THEY ARE WRONG

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

Sorry, Belinda, but this is just a mild rehash of notions that the nasty wing of the Republican Party mouthed a couple of decades ago.

We had ambitious politicians blubbering about everything from term limits to instituting a part-time government in Washington.

The skills and experience gained by thoughtful politicians in their careers are not contemptible stuff and, in a number of ways, serve the public well.

The problems facing national governments in today's world - and I don't mean just the current economic setback but all the immensity of globalization and world-scale problems like global warming and war - are complex and demanding, not the stuff for dabblers and part-timers.

Indeed, the idea that people would move regularly from industry into government and back again can be a formula for even greater influence of special interests in government.
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I've always defended Belinda against the stupidities of people like Peter MacKay.

But that does not mean that I accept her as in any way innovative or creative or even effective.

She was a sort-of CEO under daddy's watchful eye, and she was a largely unsuccessful politician, leaving no lasting mark beyond a scandal.

So she is hardly qualified to offer advice in these matters.

And the advice she does offer is Newt Gingrich a la 1992.

Not impressive.

Again the formula of out of industry into government and back into industry is one for even more inappropriate influence by special interests.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: CBC SPENDS A LARGE SUM ON 75TH ANNIVERSARY PUBLICITY - SUCCEEDING ONLY IN REMINDING US WHAT WE'VE LOST

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

I wouldn't have minded the expense had there been something genuinely to celebrate.

Instead such occasions only remind one of how far CBC has fallen.

And in doing this, current senior management has made a terrible strategic mistake, having partially or fully alienated its traditional listeners and supporters.

No one can doubt that the dark bulk we call prime minister is going after CBC eventually.

Why would the man who does things like end the Wheat Board without farmers' approval or destroy the gun registry (against general public support) or end public support of election costs hesitate?

The man has a tyrant's mindset, and he is quietly dedicated to turning Canada into a pathetic imitation of the United States by virtue of a 39.6% mandate - which is to say, by virtue of no mandate at all, but a purely technical victory in our flawed election system.

CBC's current senior management has managed to destroy a good deal of what was valued by listeners while not really succeeding in gaining a hoped-for huge new audience.

How else could it be, stuffing dull mediocrities like Jian Ghomeshi, Evan Solomon, or George Stroumboulopoulos down our throats? Or playing the low end of popular music in a desperate effort to gain young listeners? Or its repeated wading up to its armpits in favoritism and nepotism, while mouthing stuff about prejudice of various kinds? Nepotism is prejudice of the most blatant kind.
CBC has no hope of being a hugely popular network, unless, that is, it just becomes like other networks, in which case, there is no case for keeping it.

It should be a showcase for Canada's best in ideas, conversation, music, the arts, and comedy, and that necessarily means an appeal that is quite different than all the commercial networks. Not everyone wants to listen to the best, just like not everyone likes the opera or the ballet, but it should be there for anyone who is interested.

OBAMA PROMISES TO EXERT AMERICA'S POWER IN THE PACIFIC - A DIRECT THREAT TO CHINA - SOME PERSPECTIVE ON THIS IDIOCY

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

America's establishment is working hard to repeat the scenario of WWII in the Pacific.

Japan was never going to attack the U.S. but after a long period of harassment, trade restrictions, and threats, Japan decided it had no choice.

This is going to become the most dangerous and fearful effort facing Canada's current younger generation's time.

And it is completely unnecessary, just as was America's holocaust in Vietnam where about 3 million people were slaughtered to maintain America's presence in Asia.

Obama is just as much a creature of America's military-industrial complex as George Bush or Ronald Reagan.
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"Our US friends should understand that military outreach costs money, and today the US has little of it."

Yes, but you forget that the United States, having the privilege of the world's reserve currency, is in a unique position financially.

It has abused, and will continue to abuse, the nations around the world holding its currency.
It will continue inflating gradually or it may at some point devalue.

In either case, America will leave dollar holders around the world "holding the bag,” no different in any respect than a conscienceless fraudster like Bernard Madoff.

So not only does it promote war and violence, it cheats everyone to pay for its stupidity.

That is precisely how the immensely costly and pointless war in Vietnam was paid for.

I am only sorry that most people do not have a grasp of this reality which allows America to behave as an unlimited fool in world affairs.

HARPER MIGHT HAVE BEEN EXPECTED TO RELAX THE BULLYING WITH A MAJORITY - REFLECTIONS ON TYRANNICAL MINDS AND DEMOCRATIC WEAKNESS OF CANADA'S PARLIAMENT

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

Yes, you might well have thought that.

But recall Richard Nixon's behavior for his second election.

As anyone knew then, he pretty well (sadly) had being re-elected a certainty.

His opponent was one of the most honorable men ever to run for the presidency, but being honorable in America is little more than a sign of weakness to many: it is, after all, a country organized and administered on principles of Social Darwinism.

So despite the near-certainty of a win, Richard Nixon had a gang of thugs doing break-ins, smear-jobs, and was seeking secret contributions by the sack-full. The White House was staffed up with unpleasant men ready to do anything for their leader.

He ended, of course, by ending his own presidency.

The general frame of mind of Richard Nixon at that time is a close parallel to Harper's today.
There are the clearest elements of paranoia, immense anger, relish for frat-boy dirty tricks, and a tendency towards monomania - all the stuff we saw with Richard Nixon and stuff we've seen again with the likes of a Newt Gingrich or Tom Delay.

Harper is a genuinely sick puppy.

Sometimes it happens that people who were known as narrow ideologues do rise to the office to which they are elected or appointed (in the case of judges), but not this kind of unbalanced personality.

I'm afraid so long as Harper holds his office we will continue to see Canadian political traditions of decency and ethical behavior eroded.
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"Autocracy verging on dictatorship..... Don't agree? Just wait and watch!"

Indeed.

But the fault is also in a political system where a man of Harper's unpleasant character, once given a technical majority 39.6% of the vote, can pretty well do anything, if he is so inclined.

We have not suffered from this serious flaw in our political structure before only because we have not been so unfortunate to have a man of Harper's almost demonic personality in office.

Canada suffers from a democratic deficit as serious as that of many other countries one does not normally associate with the goodwill Canada has enjoyed internationally for decades.

Harper of course also realizes that his opposition is divided hopelessly, and he will take the fullest advantage of that fact.

Tyrannical-oriented personalities always have used the principle of "divide and conquer" in their governing. Hitler ran the Third Reich by creating a whole series of competing fiefdoms whose chiefs endlessly squabbled, having recourse only to Hitler himself, floating as it were above the ugly turmoil.

It is an effective method, at least for a time, if your concern is not with the people of a country but with your personal rule.

I'm certainly not suggesting any relationship between Harper and Hitler - only the parallel of the way a power-driven dark personality operates to hold power.

Well, the Liberal Party handed Harper this situation on a platter. Twice they turned down a very intelligent and effective politician, Bob Rae, on the basis that there were bad memories in Ontario of aspects of his premiership but also on the basis of a genuinely stupid effort by some back-room boys to parachute Michael Ignatieff into the leadership, a man of almost unparalleled political ineptitude.

Now they've given Bob Rae the job (temporarily), but it is a hopeless way to give someone a big job: the party is in pathetic shape, Rae looks without genuine support, and he is just that much older.

Jack Layton's magnificent triumph in Quebec was in large part because the Liberals had Ignatieff hopelessly droning and sputtering. Quebec always admires genuinely eloquent men: just look at the record of leaders in the PQ or the BQ, some of the greatest firebrand speakers of our time.

So Harper's current position is almost more an accident than a personal achievement, but here is a man whose dark animal cunning will seize every advantage he can from the luck of the draw.

ON CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS' DEATH

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

A brave man indeed, and a devilishly clever one.

I much regretted his views on Iraq, but I admire still his ability to criticize with a sharp tongue the many absurdities of the human condition.

OLEAGINOUS AND DISHONEST MINISTER JASON KENNEY FORBIDS THE NIQAB AT CITIZENSHIP CEREMONIES - A WORD ON CANADA'S NOT-QUITE SECULAR NATURE

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

A READER WRITES:

"We are a secular Nation, church and state must always be separate. Ban the veil. A citizenship ceremony is a State function..."

That's actually quite inaccurate.

The writer thinks he lives in the United States apparently.

This province spends countless millions each year on Catholic education, an unthinkable arrangement in the United States.

Until quite recently, the Lord's Prayer was a regular part of public schools and many formal gatherings.
Being a secular humanist, I do not favor such practices, but I also recognize the past political compromises they represent in a country which does not have founding documents so uncompromising as America's.

I ask whether Sikhs must remove their turbans and other symbols for this ceremony?

And Jews their yarmulke, or in the case of ultra-orthodox, their huge hats and beards which effectively cover faces and even lips?

Are nuns required not to wear habits if they belong to an order still using one?

Are Protestants required to remove the cross on a chain often worn around their necks? Helena Guergis used to march around with a rather large one. I don't recall any objections.

The writer simply does not know what he is talking about.

But then neither does the minister, Jason Kenney.

The proudest garb any of us can wear is tolerance, but it seems to be in short supply these days.

MARGARET WENTE CALLS DURBAN CONFERENCE THEATRE OF THE ABSURD : SHE'S RIGHT FOR ONCE BUT NOT THE WAY SHE INTENDED

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

Yes, it was Theatre of the Absurd.

Peter Kent blubbering about things he doesn't even understand, embarrassing himself and our country before the world.

And all those tell-tale photos of Peter, red-faced and strained.

I'm sure he was seriously getting into the sauce each night, alone in his hotel room, re-living in his mind how he embarrassed himself that day.

The only dignified act possible for this shabby little man is to resign.

But we all know that's not on, don't we? Incompetents in big jobs always hang on to every rank and privilege to which their undeserved office entitles them.

Helena Guergis had to be thrown out the door, didn't she?

Oh, and let's not forget that this absurd little man, when Junior Minister of Nothing, almost declared war for Israel on behalf of 34 million Canadians.

That lunatic outburst would have got him fired in any normal government as completely out of order and a potential danger to the country.

Instead in Harperland, it got him promoted to enjoy full ministerial privileges and all the expense-account booze he can possibly drink.

PALESTINIANS DON’T EXIST: NEWT GINGRICH’S IGNORANT COMMENT DURING A DEBATE – ISRAEL’S INAPPROPRIATE INFLUENCE ON U.S. – FACTS ABOUT THE MIDDLE EAST’S HISTORY – MYTHS MIXED IN POLICY

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

Gingrich reaches new levels of the ridiculous here, reminding me a bit of the time some years ago when apologists for Israel insisted no one should use the accepted term, suicide-bomber, inducing George Bush to give a speech in which he used the non-existent term, homicide-bombers. Of course, it sounded ridiculous, but no more so than much of what George Bush said.

Gingrich has always, always been a two-faced politician, a slimy manipulator, and a man who has served various special interests for a large enough wad of money.

Here he claims what is, is not.

Even the Bible speaks of the Philistines, albeit with a negative perspective.

And why does he do this?

To attract large campaign donations from The Lobby.

There is no other explanation, because Gingrich has always been a man of shallow and rather easily altered convictions.

What an absurd business to inject into the political debate in America, especially considering here is a nation with scores of serious problems, but that's what a politician without ethics is willing to do.
And one has to believe The Lobby is desperate to the point of insanity to invite this kind of garbage.

The world is becoming totally disillusioned with Israel: its behavior is consistently aggressive, unethical, and malevolent, and no ignorant, shallow words from Newt Gingrich or anyone else is going to convince them that what they see daily is not the truth.

Israel's credibility with people all over the world keeps falling, and indeed has not much further down to go.

All that rather than just make peace and treat its neighbors with respect. It does say something very unpleasant about Israel that no blind insistence by manipulated American politicians can overcome
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". . . despite what some folks say, it turns out that Christians are VERY open-minded. Doing whatever you want is perfectly OK with them ... as long as once in awhile you say that you've sinned but have now -- SHAZAM ! like MAGIC ! -- been forgiven by God."

It's an aspect of one of America's favorite continuing themes: eternal youth and being born again.
Redemption is a concept repeated in America to the point of being sickening, day after day.

You can do anything - and Newt has done some disgusting stuff - and have redemption.
The popular culture is replete with stories of drunken or drugged hillbilly singers who find redemption, along with endless tedious stories of sports figures and politicians.

There's always a new prospect for everyone so long as they just believe.


Believe in what?

Essentially believe that you are special, going to live forever, and truly cannot do anything wrong.
By the way, Newt is not just a serial adulterer, one of his egregious stupidities was announcing to his past wife, dying in a bed of cancer, that he was divorcing her.

Doesn't that just say something profound about this man's character? I do believe we are dealing with a psychopath here, a relatively mild one but a psychopath.
That being understood, how easy for him to deeply cut and hurt millions of people already suffering decades of abuse from his campaign-fund paymaster.
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"...Palestine Liberation Organization executive committee member Zahir Muhsein. Here's what he said:
"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity."

What an abysmal comment.

First, how in God's name can you honestly quote one man as representing the truth on so profound a matter and speaking for millions of people? You cannot.

You might as well quote Mordechai Vanunu on the nature of Israel.

You are just repeating an immensely tiresome and deeply dishonest idea that Jordan is where Palestinians belong.

Jordan does not want millions of Palestinians.

Millions of Palestinians do not want Jordan.

No, the Palestinians just want the homes and farms they have resided in for centuries and centuries.
And they don't want the migrants from Europe and America who pretty well define the establishment of Israel stealing any more of their homes and farms.

And what does Israel and apologists for Israel's abuse, like yourself, want?

To ethnically-cleanse millions of people, stealing all their homes and farms.

In a futile effort to make that palatable, you spew nonsense like this about there being no Palestinians.

The existing apartheid situation in Israel and occupied Palestine is only intended by Israel's establishment as a temporary one, intended to make these poor people get up and go from endless abuse and deprivation.

Go where? Go anywhere so long as it is not in the territory of what has now become that malevolent fantasy of Greater Israel.

As all apologists for Israel's abuse, you conveniently forget that all the countries of the Middle East, including Jordan, have no long history, but that does not render any of them invalid.

The shape of the modern Middle East arose out of matters like the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the imperial adventures of Britain and France.

And the bottom-line truth is that all nationalism is pretty much a child of the 19th century. National states, as we know them today, virtually did not exist before then.

Europe and other parts of the world were divided into princedoms and empires everywhere, entities which included a polyglot of languages, religions, and ethnic identities - the Austro-Hungarian Empire being perhaps the most obvious example with its Germans, Tyroleans, Italians, Hungarians, and many others.

Nationalism is almost a virus that infected Europe in the 19th century with the idea that Germany should be for German-speakers and Italy for Italian-speakers, etc.

We saw where that virus led: in the limit, Hitler's Reich with its absurd racial theories is where blind nationalism goes.

The early Zionists were infected with exactly the virus of nationalism sweeping Europe, and today in few places of the world is there a more backward-looking sense of identity than in Israel.
Israel for Jews. No room for others.

That sounds terrifyingly familiar.
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"It seems that the Jews of modern Israel are the invented people; not the Palestinians.”
Indeed.

A fine Israeli academic has written a serious and scholarly book on the Jewish people and Israel's identity.

Everyone concerned about the Middle East should read it.

You'll find my book review here:

http://chuckmanmiscellanea.blogspot.com/2011/10/review-of-shlomo-sands-invention-of.html

But even were the findings of this research to prove inaccurate, there still would be no excuse for Israel's abuse and oppression.
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“ Clearly, the anti-Israel posters here have no real notion of the history of the region and are simply parroting Palestinian talking points."

I would be willing to match my knowledge of the region's background with you or any other apologist here for Israel's interests.

There is nothing more intellectually dishonest than repeating endlessly the same technically true but trite observation, an observation which is meaningless.

Again, no country in the Middle East has less historical basis than Israel, a place largely founded and governed by Europeans and Americans.

And modern scholarship seriously questions whether these founders and rulers even have any legitimate connection with the place called Israel because they are likely not descendants of the ancient Hebrews.

The Palestinian people most likely include most of the direct descendants of the ancient Hebrews.

The Romans were known not to throw all the population out of their conquests, and there is no record of them doing so despite the modern notion that the Jews have been wanderers since being thrown out.

Both the Biblical stories and some Jewish notions of ancient history we know to be incorrect.

There is for instance no record - and this among some of the world's great past record-keepers, the Egyptians - of Israelis being enslaved or even living in Egypt.

Moses is an Egyptian-origin name, not Hebrew.

And somehow or other I have doubts about Jonah living in the whale.

You don't base boundaries and world affairs on myths and superstitions, but if you do you get just the kind of mess we see today in Israel.

A COLUMNIST WRITES, RATHER ABSURDLY, OF ISREAL’S LIBERAL VALUES BEING STOMPED OVER – THE TRUE NATURE OF LIBERALISM – SAUDI ARABIA’S SECRET RELATIONSHIP WITH ISRAEL

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

Liberal values?

In Israel?

Which values would those be?

Assassinating anyone the state pleases?

Attacking anyone the state pleases?

Keeping about 4 million people in virtual bondage?

Stealing other people's homes and farms on a weekly basis?

Please, this is a silly way to write.

There are a small number of decent, liberal-minded people in Israel - people like Urey Avnery - but they do not in anyway characterize that society as a whole.

Indeed, they are treated often as outcasts or traitors.
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"Somehow zandoli claims that Israel and Saudi Arabia are allies. This must be some strange form of distributive property applied to countries.
"It's almost like saying that because Canada and Cuba have cordial relations so does the us and Cuba based."

If you cared to inform yourself, you'd know that behind the scenes Israel and Saudi Arabia cooperate closely on a number of matters.

This is of course kept from the public or the Saudi dynasty would be toppled.

The U.S. plays a key role in the relationship.

By the way, Israel - despite its phony stuff about being the only democracy in the Middle east - has always best loved cooperative tyrants in neighboring lands. It was great pals with Mubarak in Egypt and was rattled by his fall.

Indeed, that is why the military in Egypt is taking so long to bring reform, the U.S. closely watching on Israel's behalf that nothing too radical happens (for "radical" read "democratic").

Israel had some good connections with Gaddafi too, and it loves the King of Jordan.

Israel is about as far as it gets from liberal values as a society, but it loves playing the hypocritical game of blubbering about democracy while secretly pushing the United States to suppress it in the region.
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"Liberal values desperately need to be stomped on."

We see several ignorant comments resembling the one above.

They all have in common a clear lack of understanding of what the word "liberal" means.

Liberal does not mean left wing, except in the vituperative and hateful politics of the United States.

Liberal is a very old and honorable term having to do with belief in democratic values and human rights. It is associated too with general concepts like open government, fair dealing, and, as a matter of fact, free trade.

There is a long record of liberalism in Western society which involves many great people, most of them not of "the left."

Thomas Jefferson was regarded as a genuine liberal in his day, and yet Thomas Jefferson today is the godfather of the American Right Wing.

In the poisonous political atmosphere of the United States, the word has been abused much the way puritans used the term "papists."

Yet, there is a grain of truth in their vituperation because people like Gingrich, Palin, Delay, Bush, Cheney and others of the extreme right are not genuine friends of democratic values or human rights.

Those kinds of establishment types have always cosied up to tyrants and dictators who were agreeable to America's notions of how things should be run.

The postwar record of the United States includes countless coups and interventions, many against democratic governments, and friendship with a host of brutes from the Shah to Pinochet and Marcos and Ceausescu and Thieu and Suharto.

And that record is the result of the very people who vilify the word "liberal' and ignorantly associate it with "left wing."

CANADA’S PATHETIC MINISTER OF THE ENVIRONMENT AT THE DURBAN CONFERENCE, PETER KENT – A PRETEND MINISTER APPOINTMENTED TO WHAT STEPHEN HARPER THINKS OF AS A PRETEND MINISTRY

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

"Canada is blaming China for being “obstructionist” on a climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol.'

I read a number of newspapers each day, and it could not be clearer that China has demonstrated a new and exceptional willingness to cooperate on climate change, indeed, even indicated a willingness to lead.

Peter Kent, know-nothing pretend minister for a pretend portfolio, already has made a fool of himself at the conference.

So now what does he do? Why of course he attacks China, thinking he has killed two birds with one stone.

The "two birds" are finding someone else to blame for his own inept and embarrassing performance as well as reverting to that favorite of ignorant Cold Warriors, China as the "yellow peril."
Kent is incompetent, utterly.

China right now is doing more on climate change - everything from experimental power stations and other technologies to being the world's chief producer of solar panels - than Canada could even dream of doing.

Given their status as a country that only began emerging from third-world status thirty years ago, they absolutely put us to shame on this matter, and Canadians should realize that on a per capita basis - the only fair way to look at it - China is responsible for only a fraction of Canada's emissions.
This performance of Kent's reminds me strongly of Peter MacKay's whiny-baby performance in Parliament over his abuse of helicopters for private use.

Meanwhile Canada proceeds with the world's filthiest energy project, the tar sands - truly filthy by every measurement, not just carbon emissions - happily ignoring the consequences.
You truly could pull some people off the street and get some better-performing and more thoughtful ministers than this sad lot of Harper's.

By the time Harper is ready to pick up his pension, he will have wrecked Canada's international reputation on every possible front.

NEW BORDER DEAL BETWEEN CANADA AND AMERICA – WHY IT’S A BAD IDEA AT THIS TIME – AMERICA’S DECLINE INTO A POLICE STATE

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

America is well on its way to being a police state, and it is as this disturbing development occurs that our misguided government has opened us to the lack of privacy and the very different way of treating people which is the American way.

What other so-called democratic society sends men to be tortured abroad? What other democratic society has the secret police (the FBI) able to check up on what citizens have been reading? What other democratic society has such a huge portion of its people in prisons?

What other democratic society has been cited over and over for extreme police brutality by international organizations like Amnesty International? What other democratic society is carrying out a massive program of extrajudicial killings in at least six countries?

Our press goes on about leaders like Putin or Gaddafi, but America's last president killed more innocent people than any of them, and its current one is working hard on the same goal despite his meaningless peace prize.

This agreement is a very saddening development, but then almost everything happening or being promised to happen under Harper is more than a little saddening.

A man with 39.6% of the vote is ripping apart Canadian institutions and traditions and blackening our international reputation as a decent society, busy aping the United States in many of its most backward works.

Talk about a democratic deficit: we have a very serious one and stand in need of genuine parliamentary election reform.

PUTIN COMMENTS ON AMERICAN INTERFERENCE IN RUSSIA’S PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS – REFLECTIONS ON AMERICAN INTERFERENCE ABROAD – THE COMPLETE NASTINESS OF HILLARY CLINTON IN HER OLD AGE

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

Putin is right.

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

Just imagine the shoe on the other foot.

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

It's enough to make an honest person puke.

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

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

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

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

That is an uninformed comment.

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

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

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

CBC’S DECLINING STANDARDS – FURTHER COMMENT – CBC’S FATE UNDER THE HARPERITES – CBC’S INTELLECTUAL SUICIDE

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

In the past, CBC could have counted me as a voice against Conservative cuts.

While I was no great admirer of CBC's television efforts - with a handful of exceptions - I considered the radio something special indeed
.
But current management at CBC has chosen to dumb-down the radio network horribly, and I cannot defend what is no longer special.

Yes, there still are some very special people on the radio - Bill Richardson, Robert Harris, Eleanor Wachtel, Bob McDonald, Bernard St-Laurent, Rita Celli, Michael Enright, and a few others presenting the kind of material no commercial station would present - but there is now also a vast wasteland of insipid new programming.

And the roll call of the remaining genuinely talented people includes mainly people not far from retirement. We can only expect their shoes to be filled by more droning mediocrity under CBC's existing management.

CBC Radio will never capture the "younger" audience with a dollop of pop music and younger faces, but it sure has alienated past CBC supporters with the loss of quality and authenticity.
If CBC doesn't represent the nation's best and most articulate and intelligent, what does it represent? Mush seems to be the answer, sadly.

Jian Ghomeshi is a pop record promoter pretending to be an intellectual, a person with a not-very-interesting mind, poor judgement in many areas, and, no matter how hard he tries, a mediocre interviewer with his lack of perceptive intelligence.

Evan Solomon's very voice is droning and annoying - he has none of the talents or vast store of knowledge of the people he replaced. He's a plodder with a raspy voice.

Matt Galloway is the best by far of a bad lot - a clearly sympathetic and decent man whose care about his city comes through, but he still cannot conduct an interesting interview, and his choice in music is bizarre to say the least.

Julie Nesrallah is a perky person who does know something about music, but she talks in teenage-silly-girl terms, almost sounding like a Valley Girl at times - not my idea of a great presenter of classical music.

The radio news anymore contains grammatical errors and often reflects poor judgment in the stories presented and how they are presented. Little real reporting is heard, just some young person on the scene making generalizations he or she might have made without the travel expenses. The questions in the listener's mind are so obvious at times, you just wonder how they did not occur to an editor or reporter.

The quality CBC should represent increasingly just is not there.

ONTARIO'S PROPOSED LAW ON SCHOOL BULLIES GIVING SCHOOLS MORE POWER TO DISCIPLINE - BULLIES AND PARENTS - PARENT VERSUS PEER INFLUENCE - BULLY TEACHERS

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

I support the idea.

However, the main problem with bullying has always been teachers and administrators who do not pay attention to what's happening under their noses and are reluctant to step in when they do see something.

Schools are communities, and the authorities of the communities are the adults. Children look to them for safety, but in so many cases today they look in vain.

The anti-bully programs with slogans and videos and t-shirts we have today are little more than a way for administrators to cover their behinds. Window dressing.

Maybe the legislation will change the situation somewhat.

Of course, there are more than a few teachers who themselves are bullies, but you just try getting anything done about them. Impossible.

I do hope the generally spineless McGuinty sticks to this, but in view of past efforts, I'm not hopeful.
We had zero-tolerance on violence - a good thing for the safety of the entire school community - but as soon as one ethnic group found its students in trouble more than others, the policy was dropped like a hot potato.

Yelling prejudice about stats is a pretty sad way to destroy a good policy.
_____________________________________

"Bullies learn from their closest role models - their parents."
I don't think that is accurate.

First, every serious study ever done shows clearly children's closest role models are their playmates and peers.

Parents, despite their many hopes and pretensions, have remarkably little influence outside of supplying the necessities of life and a relatively safe place.

I'm sure the parents play a role, but I'm convinced that role is largely through genetic endowment.
Time after time, we find the parents, or at least one parent, of bullies are themselves bullies.

That fact has a lot to do with the school authorities being so reluctant and irresponsible in taking a bully child on: the results will be a confrontation with bully parents, and in our education system today, parents who make lots of noise are paid attention to.

We must remember that all the principals and superintendents and others administering public education are themselves teachers - many of them teachers who just wanted to get out of the classroom and all of them people who never rocked the boat.

It is a perfectly closed system, guaranteed to produce the results we see.

So while expectations of parents are important, expectations of the very teachers who are in the schoolyards, halls, gyms, and classrooms have to become a whole lot higher with regard to tolerating abuse.

Holding parents legally responsible is just passing the buck, and almost certainly leads to further abuse at home by bully parents - not a solution helpful to society.

We must provide mechanisms to support, and indeed demand, the removal of genuine bullies from the regular schools. I say genuine bullies because just about all children sometimes tease or call names, something which must be corrected by authorities but equally something that does not identify a genuine bully.

A real bully is someone who enjoys inflicting discomfort on others - doing so is a basic part of his or her personality. It likely is a mild form of sadism or psychopathy, or, in some cases, not so mild.
When such people are identified, they really need to be removed from the general school population, and we must provide special, tougher disciplined schools suitable for them.

None of this removes the basic responsibility from teachers and administrators. They must correct all the children just indulging in the taunts and teasing most children engage in at some stage, and they must identify the genuine hard cases which need to be removed from the general population.

Anything less solves nothing. McGuinty's ridiculous 1-800 number to report bullying is a costly administrative nightmare, useful to no one. It is just a way to cover his behind. If the authorities inside a school are already ignoring their responsibilities, what is the use of a report form from an anonymous telephone call center in Bangalore India, or indeed anywhere else?

Absolutely nothing. It's just busy-work to defuse a problem.

So unless you are prepared to support genuine reform, holding school authorities responsible for what happens under their noses and giving them the authority to act, this problem will continue forever, only becoming larger with a growing population.
___________________________________

"I am a teacher and unfortunately, many of the teachers that I have worked with throughout my career have been bullies. We need to address bullying from the very top down--including administration, as many of them are bullies, too..."

Indeed.

We've all known them, bully teachers, but what is anyone to do about them?
A teacher pretty well has to be caught stealing or committing sexual abuse to be dismissed.

I can still remember the names of a couple of genuine bully teachers more than fifty years after experiencing them - a good measure of their bad effect.

Virtually all other inappropriate behavior, as well as downright incompetence, is tolerated and protected in our public schools much as pedophile priests have been protected by the Catholic Church for ages.

The teachers' union protects the day-to-day creeps who do not reach such excesses as theft and sexual abuse, but still make many children miserable through their careers and teach them little worth teaching.

This issue of bullying is very interesting, opening as it does, the whole set of issues confronting public education.

Serious reform is one of our greatest needs in society.

AMERICA'S KILLING OF PAKISTAN'S TROOPS - FACTS ON AFGHAN BORDER - AMERICA'S CAVALIER RECORD OF KILLING NON-COMATANTS

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

Your headline on this story is dishonest, as is so often the case with stories about America's endless colonial wars.

It wasn't NATO that shot up these troops.

It was the United States.

But the U.S. is always so cowardly that it attributes all its ugly actions to NATO.

The fact is that NATO is only in Afghanistan with what, by all reasonable standards, is a token force: seven hundred here, two thousand there, etc - and almost all in non-combat roles.

Only the U.S. keeps 100,000 heavily armed troops and a large air force in Afghanistan.
___________________________________________________

"Forty million Pashtuns have been freely moving across the British-imposed border for hundreds of years..."

Precisely.

Despite American question-begging of the matter, there is not and never has been a true border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Durand Line was set by colonial Britain as a temporary measure, one to be reviewed and changed if appropriate a hundred years later. But that has never happened.

The Pushtu people have every right by ancient practices to move about the way they do.

The United States, today's great bully to the world, insists there is something evil in their movement.
The only thing evil there is the United States' occupation and continued abuse of a people who have done nothing but live their hardscrabble lives and defend themselves against the army that a few decades back bombed and napalmed an estimated three million Vietnamese for the sin of embracing the wrong political party.

The entire business is insanity, and how very sad that United States' politics are so corrupt and venomous that smiling peace-prize winner Obama has become every bit the mass killer George Bush was.
_______________________________________________

"US has quite a history of mistakes - in addtion to the mistake in killing Canadians in Afghanistan one should also recall the Reuters incident in Iraq..."

Yes, and there's so much more. U.S. soldiers on a number of occasions murdered al Jazeerah correspondents in Iraq, almost the only press trying to tell the truth.

U.S. troops also murdered a brave Italian intelligence officer who had managed to free a captive Italian journalist, one not liked by the American military because her tendency to be truthful.

It is only a quiet history because the press cooperates with the Pentagon to consistently play events down and avoid the hard language which is appropriate.

Yes, there was the killing of Canadians, but there has been so very, very much more stupid, pointless killing by American forces.

Whole families wiped out.

Wedding parties attacked.

Trucks full of village officials bombed.

Not to say anything of the endless assaults by special forces troops banging on house doors, tossing in stun grenades, and holding women and children at gunpoint while they march off husbands and brothers for torture .

And never forget the disappearance of 3,000 American prisoners early in the war: they were taken out in sealed truckloads by an American warlord-ally and allowed to suffocate in the desert, their bodies dumped into mass graves in the middle of nowhere.

And that atrocity came within a very short time of Rumsfeld yelling about all the Taleban prisoners ought to be walled away for life or executed.

The Afghanistan war is the work of a well-armed bully, and it has nothing whatever to do with rights or freedoms or democracy.

The bully was determined for revenge on a crime that Taleban were not even responsible for. The bully as humiliated because some desperate men succeeded in a large suicide assault on America's precious soil.

And the bully ignorantly thinks he can remake a society of 30 million people living under ancient customs and a poor economy.

It will never happen, but so long as the bully insists on trying, lots of innocent people will die for nothing.

I'm not even sure that that is true: the bully actually just doesn't know what to do with Afghanistan, apart from killing, killing, and more killing.

There is no justification for the entire ugly business.

REVIEW OF BARRY ERNEST'S THE GIRL ON THE STAIRS - THE 48TH ANNIVERSARY OF JOHN KENNEDY'S ASSASSINATION

JOHN CHUCKMAN

A note to readers: Normally, I post my book reviews only on another site of mine, Chuckman’s Miscellanea of Words, but because of the nature of this book and its being the 48th anniversary of John Kennedy's assassination, I am also posting on this site.

This is a modest book both in its aims and in its physical size, but it is a book which makes a genuine contribution to understanding the Kennedy assassination, and it is the best thing I have read on the subject in some years.

The central finding of the Warren Commission was that Oswald was Kennedy's assassin. So while Mr. Ernest's aims seem modest, calling into question Oswald's movements in the wake of the shooting, they work powerfully against that central finding.

Here is a self-published book written by a man who originally had not even planned to write a book, and it contains genuinely new and significant evidence.

You will find here no unproved theories against the officially accepted explanation, nor will you find phony efforts to protect the official story. Books of both those types have been published in abundance for decades, indeed to the point where I long ago sickened of reading them.

Mr. Ernest documents his long-term, off-and-on again efforts to satisfy his own curiosity concerning the assassination and, particularly, to locate a significant witness the Warren Commission went out of its way to minimize, slight, and ignore, Ms. Victoria Adams. Ms. Adams worked in an office on the fourth-floor of the Texas Book Depository in November, 1963. From a remarkable vantage point, she and some fellow workers watched Kennedy's motorcade enter the Plaza and approach the fatal area. Then they heard noises like fireworks and saw the president's car begin to rush away.

As a side note here, just the fact that a group of people, only about 40 or 50 feet above the motorcade, could gather and open a window to look down on it tells us a great deal about the terribly poor security arrangements made that day by all police and protective agencies.

Ms. Adams and a co-worker suspected something was wrong and quickly sought the stairs to the ground floor - the same stairs Oswald is supposed to have taken immediately after the shots, indeed the only full-height set of stairs in a building whose elevator at the time did not operate. Her seemingly insignificant act proved to have many serious implications.

Ms. Adams saw no one on the stairs. She heard no one, even though the creaky and echoing nature of the stairs and stair well meant that you always heard other steps on them, no matter how many floors away. She was accompanied by one of her co-workers, Sandra Styles, who could thus certainly corroborate or contradict any of Victoria Adams' testimony, yet Ms. Styles was never interviewed by any of the agencies investigating. The FBI made no attempt to re-stage and time the path of these women, as they did for a number of other people.

The author, after finally finding Ms. Adams, gaining her trust (often a requirement with significant Kennedy-assassination witnesses who have been badgered and even intimidated in the past) and having her tell her brief story in fine detail, succeeded also in finding her former co-worker, Ms. Styles, who, indeed, corroborates Ms. Adams perfectly. She also provides a detail of just what was happening in the Plaza when they decided to go down, providing an amazingly accurate time marker for their descent's start.

Ms. Adam's own words - recorded e-mail exchanges - tell any perceptive reader that she was (she died a few years ago) an intelligent and perceptive observer, the very kind of witness any attorney or prosecutor likes to put on the stand.

The author also discovers a transmittal letter at the National Archives that has Dorothy Garner, office manager of the same text-book publishing company for which the two women worked, seeing Roy Truly and Officer Marion Baker arrive on the fourth floor after Victoria Adams and Sandra Styles left, an important fact because these two had previously stopped on the second floor where Officer Baker had a brief confrontation with a relaxed Lee Oswald in the cafeteria as they raced up from the ground floor to inspect the building.

Ms. Adams not only saw no one on the stairs, but when she and her friend briefly went outside, she did see Jack Ruby, a man she did not know until she saw the television pictures later of him shooting Oswald.

Many of the more unhelpful and even crazed books on this subject I sometimes think likely come under the auspices of the very agencies who have worked so hard to promote the official story: lunatic books help discredit all critics of the official story. When I say lunatic books I mean books along the lines of The Man Who Knew Too Much or JFK and the Unspeakable.

Worthless books which seem to serve the opposite side include Gerald Posner's Case Closed, which offers the pretence of tough-minded analysis, or Reclaiming History by Vincent Bugliosi, which is just a giant prosecutor's brief supporting another prosecutor's brief, or Edward Jay Epstein's Legend and Counterplot, both efforts to confirm the main conclusions of the Warren Commission after the author's having gained some credibility with his Inquest, a book which supports limited and late criticism of the Commission.

For people coming to the assassination for the first time, Mr. Ernest provides a few nice little summaries of fact, the most important being J. Edgar Hoover's virtually immediate acceptance of Oswald's guilt, his then having prepared within weeks a report setting out the flimsy case. Lyndon Johnson's appointment of the Warren Commission made the publication of his report inappropriate, but that report provided the structure on which the commission report was built, the commission itself never doing any genuine investigation of its own. Indeed, since the entire Warren Report was created in a few months, there is a prima facie argument for its complete inadequacy to so demanding a task.

Readers who wish to know more after reading Mr. Ernest's book cannot do better than the books of Joachim Joesten, the finest and certainly the sharpest of all early critics, and Anthony Summers' Conspiracy, which although dated remains the best single book ever written on the subject.

Interestingly, both these authors came from Europe. The Warren Commission Report itself offers a valuable comparison for these and any other books on the subject.

My only serious criticism of Barry Ernest's book is that he failed to provide an index, an important omission. However, except for that fault, I recommend this book virtually without qualification to all people curious about the greatest unsolved crime of its time.

I take this opportunity to remind readers of Bertrand Russell's penetrating question, still never answered: "If, as we are told, Oswald was the lone assassin, where is the issue of national security?"

Further, I remind them that if a matter so important as the assassination of an American president in the mid- 20th century could be handled in so careless and dishonest a way by government agencies, why would anyone expect something more with other sensitive issues and what are the limits of government's lying? That is why the assassination of 48 years ago remains a timely matter.

CANADIAN INTELLGENCE OFFICIAL SAYS LONE WOLF TERRORISTS ARE A DANGER - THE ANSWER TO PARANOID NONSENSE - VIGILANCE FOR A FREE SOCIETY

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

This is utterly paranoid nonsense from the CSIS official.

There is, and always has been, the risk of twisted individuals doing harm to the public.

It happens every day, but we do not call it terror unless the perpetrator happens to be a Muslim.

Just what do you think Clifford Olson or Robert Picton or Paul Bernardo were?

What do you think the creepy guys who shoot people in the Jane and Finch area are?

If we let our officials act the way the government of the United States has, we simply will no longer have the Canada we love.

The truth is no terrorist can take Canada away from us: we can only do that to ourselves.

The United States today is virtually a police state. Passengers are frisked and x-rayed even on local flights.

People are submitted to intense questioning on the least suspicion of a second-rate police-mind. The TSA now patrols some American internal highways and pulls people over arbitrarily.

The very books you borrow from the library are recorded by the FBI, an agency with its own past history of genuine terror tactics. The mails are invaded. Internet use is recorded. All phone conversations are recorded.

People convicted of nothing are secretly detained in prisons. The CIA continues to run an international torture gulag. The CIA murders people proved guilty of nothing every week by drones and missiles.

Is that the kind of environment the CSIS official desires?

I suspect it is the environment which is dear to the heart of a control-freak like our prime minister, a man who is also such an American wannabe he readily swallows whatever the American government dishes out.

God save Canada from the sick thinking of the CSIS official.  
___________________________________________

“You have a better chance of falling off a ladder and dying or slipping and falling in the bath tub and dying than in a terrorist attack. Largely it's a tactic to scare the population into allowing for infringement on rights and freedoms and herd the electorate more readily."

Absolutely.

There are more deaths on bicycles every year even in the US than from any conceivable form of terror.

Americans murder their fellow citizens to the order of 20,000 each year.

Americans kill their fellow citizens on the highways to the order of 40,000 every year.

Half a million American children are seriously abused by a member of their own family every year.

Doctors making mistakes kill tens of thousands of Americans every year.

Thousands of young people are permanently injured every year in America playing violent sports like football.

Four hundred thousand Americans are taken by cancer every year - much of it preventable as in the case of smoking and exposure to other hazards.

Every society at all times has a substantial group of people who are subject to vague fears more than others and people who would like to closely control others for their own comfort: there is a natural distribution of them in any population.

But when you give such people – who tend always to be drawn to security or police or military work – too much leeway and resources in the name of paranoid fears, you begin to open yourself to the debilitating reality of a police state, whose ultimate limit is nothing less than  the horrors of Stalin’s Soviet Union or Hitler’s Reich.

The vigilance required to keep a genuinely free society is not the vigilance of outfits like the FBI or CIA or CSIS or the military: it is the vigilance of each of us against those who would abuse us in the name of terror or dark fears.
_______________________________________________

"Can CSIS and the Harper regime tell us how many Afghans and Libyans have been killed in their own country by Canadians."

Thank you.

The number of Afghans killed, mainly by the U.S., is in the tens of thousands.

The number of Libyans is in the thousands, again mainly by the U.S.

And we've assisted in bombing Libyan infrastructure back to the Stone Age.

That is no exaggeration, and no press in Canada will tell us the dark truth, not even CBC, these days quaking in its boots over its fate under the dark hulk we call prime minister.

Nothing to be proud of, any of it.

And if you really think about it, these were acts which only created legions of young men with grievances for the future.

Oh, but we do  have the buzz-cut thugs at the CIA playing computer games with drones and Hellfire missiles destroying the lives of thousands of others to protect us, don't we?

That thought sure makes me feel safe. How about you?

OBAMA AND SARKOZY'S OVERHEARD WORDS ABOUT NETANYAHU - MICHAEL BELL SAYS THERE IS A MESSAGE FOR ISRAEL IN THE INCIDENT

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

A message for Israel?

Yes, but far more importantly, the incident provides a message for the rest of the world.
When have we ever had such stunning first-hand evidence of Israel's inappropriate access to the President of the United States?

Obama, leader of the free world and a man with the immense burdens of a country of more than 300 million people, has to give time, "every day," to the the querulous leader of a country of 7 million people, about one-third of the population of Madagascar or one-half the population of Ecuador?

I'd bet Obama hears far less frequently from the governor of California, a vitally important part of his own country and a state with nearly five times the population of Israel.

This is the mouse that roared indeed.

And there can be only one reason why the president must give this huge portion of his precious time to the leader of almost exactly 1/1000th of the world’s people: the Lobby for Israel and the political need to keep them happy, that is if you expect the campaign contributions and favorable press it can deliver going into an election.

Any informed and critical-minded person knows there will only be peace in Israel’s region when the United States stops extending unheard-of privileges to this belligerent and demanding state puts genuine pressure on it to settle fairly.

You will never see peace if you must pick up the phone every day to speak politely and attentively to the likes of Netanyahu.

Netanyahu and most of his predecessors – killers and terrorists like Begin or Olmert or Sharon - do not want peace as almost anyone on earth understands the word. They have always wanted more land – that’s what the 1967 War was really about – and they want the land without its people. How on earth do you ever get peace out of that? You don’t.

So American pressure becomes essential, but America’s debased system of campaign financing – which sees people in high office scrabbling for money throughout their terms of office – makes it impossible to apply that pressure without serious political damage.

But when more people understand how bizarre the relationship between Israel and the United States truly is perhaps there will be a re-balancing of political forces.

Either that or we all must wait the two decades the CIA estimates have given the current state of Israel, enduring all the brutality and misery entailed, before all the dual-passport holders from America and Europe tire of the mess they’ve made and go home, leaving the true residents, both Jewish and Palestinian, to work out the details of single state, the only long-term settlement which can possibly succeed.

AHMADINEJAD SAYS IRAN WILL NOT RETREAT FROM ITS PATH - COMMENT ON IRAN'S POSITION AND NUCLEAR DETERRENCE

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

"Imagine a country invading the hypothetical countries of Greenland and Alaska and then saying they wanted to attack Canada because it has nuclear capability. What would you expect our leadership to do? Obey the aggressors and accept their demands we lay down on our backs?"

Indeed.

And further, Iran is surrounded by nuclear powers.

Where did the notion come from that only certain countries are entitled to nuclear weapons in perpetuity? Countries who are somehow appointed gods on earth?

Why was Israel ever allowed to develop nuclear weapons, breaking every rule in the book? And why is allowed to keep them, always lying and dissembling but always ready to threaten?

Israel has certainly created enough division and destruction in the world just using its conventional weapons, which, by the way, it has used illegally numberless times, American supplied weapons supposedly being under strict contract for use only in genuine defense?

Israel's record in the matter of nuclear arms is ghastly: it cynically helped apartheid South Africa develop nuclear weapons in exchange for strategic materials, offering the worst example of proliferation in the nuclear age.
I'm sure the various governments of the world all knew about it. Only the people were kept in the dark.

Further, Iran has never started a war in its modern history, unlike Israel who has attacked just about everyone within reach, twice-over, and screams every day about the need to attack Iran.

So far as any thoughtful and informed person can tell, Iran is not developing nuclear weapons, but if indeed it is, so what?

The balance of terror kept the peace in Europe for half a century, and an Iran with such weapons would provide exactly the same needed balance against an aggressive and always-demanding Israel.

Perhaps that is the only route to peace, not Israel's bizarre idea of peace, but genuine peace.

NETANYAHU PUSHES HARDER FOR AN ATTACK ON IRAN - THE CLOUD OF MISINFORMATION SURROUNDING THIS TERRIBLE SITUATION

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


Israel is pushing hard now for one reason, and it is the same reason why they have Obama and Clinton looking like Neanderthals over the worthy agency, UNESCO.

Obama is extremely vulnerable going into the next election, and he needs all the campaign funds and good press he can get.

It is a nightmare situation in which we have a tiny state with extreme views and never-ending belligerent demands literally push around the world's super-power.

Although they play a role, American fundamentalist Christian notions about Israel are really not what determine this poisonous relationship.

It is America's campaign-finance system that does, and also, to some extent, the concentration of media in so few hands.

The United States’ government is so bamboozled by Israel that it will do close to anything if Israel demands it loudly enough.

Kill an American citizen with impunity? Israel has done so on many occasions from the attack on the USS Liberty to the piracy on the high seas of a humanitarian convoy.

Use American high-tech weapons, supplied in great abundance at knock-down prices, while totally ignoring the strict provisions about use only for self-defense contracted into their supply? It has done so on countless occasions.

Ignore America and the world's strict regime governing nuclear weapons? And doing so even while pointing the finger at another state, demanding that it be attacked although innocent of the very behaviour of which we know Israel is grossly guilty?

Ignore America and the world's strict regime governing the proliferation of nuclear materials and weapons? Israel got off with complete impunity for assisting the apartheid regime in South Africa to develop nuclear weapons.

Start a secretly-engineered war of aggression, the 1967 War, in which you quickly seize the lands of millions of others - lands which you feel you are entitled from a 2500-year old collection of religious mysticism – and reduce the entire populations to an apartheid regime in which you strip them of all rights and proceed gradually to steal their homes?

Have the name of the most damaging, treacherous spy in American history, Jonathon Pollard, honored in Israel as a national hero?

Patiently endure an endless stream of demands that Pollard be released, the latest to which it has been reported Obama was almost ready to agree, completely to the opposition of almost all high-ranking military and intelligence officers, this last being the only real barrier against the lunatic idea?

The very fact Pollard was not executed in the first place, his treachery being far more damaging than that of most of the spies the United did execute?

Having Israel's argumentative and demanding and unpleasant Prime Minister with virtually open access to the Oval Office?

Having the United States fight proxy wars for Israel, the only genuine explanation for the horrors of the Iraq invasion?

Giving Israel unfettered access to American markets and technology, often in direct conflict with the interests of American companies?

There seems to be almost no limit to Israel’s impossible demands of America.

Now the thug, Netanyahu, wants war with Iran. Israel keeps blustering that it will itself attack Iran – using, of course, the very American weapons whose use for aggressive war is contractually forbidden. But Iran is not helpless, and Israel knows, that even if it does have the capacity to attack a thousand miles away that there will be serious (and deserved) consequences.

So Israel wants a get-out-of-jail-free card from the United States if it does prove itself to have the capacity for a first strike, and, if it does not have that capacity, it again wants the United States to do its killing.

We have here a black comedy of, pound-for-pound, the world’s most belligerent and lawless little country demanding an attack on a country which has attacked no one in its entire modern history. And it makes this irrational demand of the world’s super-power, whose current weak and pathetic president might just prove inclined to grant the evil wish.

God help the world of our children with the deadly legacy of a genuine Frankenstein monster now driving its maker.
______________________________________
FROM A READER:

"Iran for 36 years has been taunting the Jewish State with "wiping it off the map".. Constant anti semitism and hatred.. Now Israel will raise its mighty hand and nuke tipped Sam 44's and lob one down the throat of the Beast! Happy Hunting!"

An incredibly ill-informed and violent comment.

Iran has not once threatened Israel, not once.

It does not even possess the means to do so seriously.

And every source of genuine intelligence tells us Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons.

The only support for your nonsense view was the current President of Iran's mistranslated and endlessly repeated words.

What he actually said was no different to the CIA's assessment of Israel's future: Israel cannot maintain its current fantasy situation in the part of the world where it is located, in a sea of Arabs.

It will eventually meld with Palestinians and others into a single Middle Eastern state, with many of its non-Middle Eastern citizens, dual-passport Americans and Europeans, returning home.

Your comment serves only the purpose of exhibiting for all to see what irrationality and violence are at work in Israel's demands.

CANADA'S NEW GORILLA-BOY FOREIGN MINISTER "MULLS" MEASURES TOWARDS UNESCO AFTER U.S. STUPIDLY CUTS OFF FUNDING IN AN EFFORT TO IMPRESS ISRAEL

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

Canada "mulls" future with an important United Nations' agency?

This kind of politically-motivated, special-interest blubbering casts a very dark shadow on Lester Pearson's distinguished career and achievements in international affairs.

Our dear current foreign minister is again working hard to destroy Canada's international reputation for fairness and decency, but of course that's what his boss Stephen Harper has worked ceaselessly towards since holding office, and we know no one utters a word on anything in this government that hasn’t been pre-approved by the chair-throwing leader, even his almost uncontrollably angry and nasty gorilla boy, Baird.

Good God, aren't the Palestinians to be considered as full human beings unless Israel nods to say they are?
And just consider in whose company Baird’s words place us: Just the other day, Israel's foreign Minister Lieberman made clear public threats to murder Mr. Abbas over these matters. And those threats come after numberless others from a man who is just about as much a lowlife as you would find in any dictatorship on the planet.

But no objections are ever made by the United States, a country which actually believes it stands for human rights and democratic principles: indeed, we hear the opposite, that the United States will stop funding the agency, in effect reneging on treaties and long-standing obligations. Do it my way, or I’ll take my things and go home is the glorious response of our freedom-loving neighbour.

And why is that?

Because Obama is in political trouble, and he needs campaign funds and good press, just the things the American Israel lobby is in a position to grant or withhold.

So all sense of fairness is cast aside by Obama in pursuit of re-election, a man who has proven himself a weak and ineffective president in just about every respect, except when measured by the number of his extra-judicial killings by drone, which is now in the thousands.

And of course, running after Obama is Stephen Harper, desperately running along behind like the neighborhood's most unpleasant brat trying to gain favour yelling "Me too!"

And there's another aspect of Pearson's distinguished legacy disappearing: when Lyndon Johnson demanded Canada send troops to Vietnam - he actually grabbed Pearson by the lapels - Pearson had the guts to say no.

From Harper, we get Canada volunteering for whatever stupid and demeaning job he sees before the United States even asks.  

How low we’ve fallen.

__________________

"Here are a few excerpts from the Hamas charter..."

Well, how many terrible things has Hamas actually done compared to what we know Israel has done?

When was the last time Hamas killed 400 Israeli children?

When was the last time Hamas pirated ships on the high seas, killing 9 people only trying to deliver humanitarian assistance?

When was the last time Hamas or any other organization dropped a million horrible cluster bombs inside Israel, as Israel did in Southern Lebanon?

When was the last time Hamas held ten thousand Israelis as illegal prisoners?

When was the last time Hamas removed hundreds of Israelis from their homes and just stole them?

When was the last time Hamas openly murdered scores of highly-placed Israelis?

And have you ever read the bloody horrors of the Old Testament?

Huge sections of it are packed with violence, ruthlessness, intolerance, arbitrary rules for everything, and just plain hatred of others.

And it is the Old Testament ideas governing Israel in many aspects, courtesy of the ultra-Orthodox parties who always make up the balance of power there.

Read those ghastly stories of war and murder and rape and slavery and weird laws about what cloth you may wear and what food you may eat, and, yes, how women are totally subservient to men, how a child should be sacrificed if his father believes he hears God demanding it, and you will understand why Israel respects none of its neighbors and has attacked most of them more than once.

And, oh, it could not be clearer in the Old Testament that all non-Jews are inferior beings, not to be spared any brutality - nothing Hamas or any other Arabic group has ever written and accepted is more poisonous than that.
Some basis for a state in the 21st century. A state which demands to be recognized as a one-religion state, a state which even today treats all its non-Jewish citizens as second-class at best.

And if you have a very dark sense of humor you will enjoy the bad joke of a Jews-only democracy, surely no different in concept to an Islamic state.

Of course, if Israelis find Muslims so repulsive and backward, we might ask why the founders of modern Israel insisted on creating it in a place totally inhabited with and surrounded by them?

Makes a lot of sense to me.
________________________________
"The entire UN is corrupt."

Then why does Israel always wave the UN documents which - under pressure from foreign powers - mandated its creation?

Your expressed view is ridiculous.

The entire rest of the planet's population is corrupt because it doesn't do what a tiny population in Israel demands?

Of course, you also neglect the fact that Israel stands in contempt of a host of UN resolutions. Being in contempt of just one has been used as an American excuse for bombing others.

THOUGHTS ON GADDAFI'S KILLING

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

Well, the day before, Hillary Clinton said in Libya the United States would welcome his killing.

It doesn't get too much shabbier than that.

Her brutal words reminded me of Donald Rumsfeld's statement, early on in Afghanistan, that all the Taleban prisoners should either be walled away or killed.

And, what do know, a short time later, 3,000 prisoners the U.S. had held disappeared.

We know today they were driven out in batches in sealed vans onto the desert to suffocate. Then their bodies were dumped into mass graves.

Americans didn't do the actually murders, they just facilitated and encouraged them. Its soldiers - who were in charge everywhere - just stood around picking their noses while mass murder was carried out.

America is up to its hips in blood, and there no longer seems to be much in the way of limits.

Gaddafi's blood is definitely on Hillary's hands. I knew she was a rather nasty piece of work, but now she is a murderer.

As is her boss with his 2 to 3 thousand killings in Pakistan in the last couple of years, virtually all of them civilians.

There's no use pretending that only bloody dictators will be subject to extra-judicial killing in future.

Indeed, the United States has over the years been close friends and patrons of many dictators, and it still is today.

It's just a question of whether the leader or a group of people toe the American policy line in deciding whether they will be attacked.

The emerging nightmare scenario is the United States playing God across the entire planet, striking down anyone who disagrees seriously enough with it.

This is not a time for exultation over the death of a dictator, but shame and profound concern about the nature of our children's world.
_______________________

"The purpose of a trial is to determine guilt.

"Perhaps there are only a dozen or so people in the world who so blatantly admit their crimes to the world that a trial would be unnecessary."

You could not be more incorrect.

A trial is never, never unnecessary, full stop.

The purpose of a trial also is very much to proclaim that there is rule of law and openness in handing out justice - indeed, that part of the meaning of trials is far more important than determining guilt.

Only people or countries with something to hide encourage this kind of lawlessness, and that very much is the case for the United States.

We either have a society of laws, or we do not. You cannot have it both ways.

Although both the United States and Israel very much act as though they can.

ARE UNIVERSITIES SHORTCHANGING CURRENT STUDENTS? OR IS CANADA CHANGING ENTIRELY WHAT EDUCATION MEANS AND TO ITS FUTURE DISADVANTAGE?

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JEFFREY SIMPSON IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL
 
Yes, indeed, the university has become a commodity, as a reader below observes.

And of course the universities - since they are in effect paid by the pound - want to move as great batches through as they can, and at the lowest possible cost. Economic reality does not end at the doors to whatever hallowed hall.

But there is more to the issue than that.

Part of what we are seeing is the result of dozens of years of grade inflation and "social promotion" in our public schools.

It is also the result of "democratizing" higher education. In effect, we've said that almost anyone is entitled to a degree in something or other, and that we reject the long-held idea that university is for the best and brightest.

We even had a woman create a controversy because she could not attend with and assist her mentally-handicapped child in university - that case surely highlights some of what we are doing. As does the fact we are graduating tens of thousands whose costly degrees have virtually zero economic value in the day-to-day world.

Our universities are coming offer degrees in almost anything you can name. This is the American model in which "degrees" are offered in subjects like circus, playground management, television studies, etc. We're well along the way to aping the practice.

Of course, degrees of that nature are virtually meaningless and of no real value as investments in education.

Our once wonderful polytechs and community colleges are all clamoring to get in on the action too by becoming universities. Then everyone working there becomes a "professor" and every graduate gets a "degree."

My favorite example of the cynicism of "professional educators" today is found in our schools or faculties of education. Every year they pour out new batches nobody needs or wants. Schools mostly aren't hiring. And even if they were, many of these graduates still would not be desirable as teachers, undergoing as they do an almost non-academic, even anti-intellectual, year of study.

But the staff at the teachers' colleges are kept employed. And the students are kept off the streets for one year. And politicians like McGuinty can blubber about being friendly to education.

And the poor students, soon to be seriously disillusioned, pile up mountains of debt.

We really are building ourselves into a second- or third-rate educational system and making our country into a not-very-effective competitor for a fiercely competitive future.

High school graduates in Korea or China know far more than half of our university graduates.

A NEW BOOK I HAVE NOT READ BY JUDYTH BAKER ON OSWALD AND THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION SOUNDS A BIT CONFUSED BUT RINGS TRUE ON A NUMBER OF POINTS

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

The Globe's piece on the interview with Judyth Baker is so condensed, I'm sure it has lost much meaning.

I cannot at all assess her words treated poorly, as they are, by the Globe, although when she mentions things like the Reily Coffee Company, I know exactly to what she is referring.

The cancer labs ring bells too since a significant figure in the conspiracy was a highly eccentric pilot and gifted amateur researcher in New Orleans named David Ferrie, a man who was later murdered in an extremely violent fashion.

Her connection of the lab work like that with the CIA is likely something she surmised but did not actually know. If the CIA sets up such operations, the people who work there never know for whom they are actually working, much like the employees of the fake Apple Stores in China who believed they worked for Apple. 

Her talk about Oswald in intelligence also rings true. Oswald, when he went to Russia from the Marines, was undoubtedly a low-level spy set up to find out about the realities of Soviet life by one or another of America's numerous intelligence agencies. We know for a fact that there were a few other servicemen who did much the same thing in the 1950s.

Her talk about Oswald's loyalties rings true. He was, in fact, a fairly patriotic young man who joined the Marines when underage, and because of his above-average intelligence, he was trained for secret radar operations with the new U-2 ultra-high flying spy planes in Asia.

The young Marine suddenly had a series of still unexplained incidents in his life abroad, started taking an interest in Russian matters, and someone trained him in a condensed course in the Russian language, a difficult language to learn. The course almost had to be the kind developed by and commonly used by the American military and intelligence.

Then he showily defected to Russia, with a lot of silly, deliberately public statements about his approval of the Soviet Union - something which totally goes against every factual thing we know about Oswald.

When he eventually returned, he was peacefully integrated back into American life...with, of all things, a Russian bride - this, at a time when there was such intense red-baiting that you could get in trouble in the United States for subscribing to the wrong magazine. It really was that dark and hostile, and what happened with Oswald's return just could not ever have happened without hidden explanations.

(Oswald’s reintroduction to American life included his mysterious introduction to a group of Russian-speakers living in the Dallas area, an event whose probability of chance happening must be virtually zero.)

We also know Oswald worked at least part time in the period of his work at the Reily Coffee Company as an FBI informant. The Warren Commission itself was knocked off its pins when it learned something of this, but managed to sweep it under the carpet.

Next door to Reily’s was the Crescent City Garage, which just happened to provide parking for various government agencies. Two blocks away was the Newman Building, where ex-senior FBI Agent Guy Bannister had an office and where Oswald was not only seen but some of the pro-Castro leaflets Oswald sometimes showily distributed were actually stamped with its address.

There is sound testimony that a known FBI agent was seen once handing Oswald an envelope around the Reily location. Money? And of course, Oswald's last note to the FBI in the Dallas office was literally destroyed by the Agent in Charge immediately after the assassination. We have nothing but lies about what it said from the very people who should have gone to prison for destroying evidence and obstructing justice.

As someone who, years ago, spent a good deal of time studying the assassination, I remain convinced Oswald was sucked into something he did not fully understand, but he didn't shoot the president, and indeed, both temperamentally and by poor shooting skill, he simply couldn't have.

The only genuine candidates for carrying out the elaborate scheme - and it was elaborate - were a few well-equipped candidate groups who had genuine motives and plenty of resources. For any one of whom to be identified in 1963, would have meant a major loss of confidence in America's security organizations and perhaps a major blow to American policies. Also, there is the distinct possibility that the authorities never learned who was responsible – a fact itself which have been highly damaging to the sense of national security and well worth covering up.

While I have many questions about the statements thrown together in the Globe piece, I know Ms Baker is an intelligent woman who did indeed work in research. That is no guarantee of truth or of detailed knowledge but it is reason to read what she says. I look forward to reading her book

Readers may enjoy:

http://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/1544/

http://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/06/06/lincoln-was-wrong-the-ease-of-fooling-most-of-the-people-most-of-the-time/


___________________________

"Oh, God... Spare us the JFK conspiracy nonsense.

"I've been to Dealey Plaza and the 'grassy knoll' several times. The physical space is much smaller than it appears on the Zapruder film.

"Any decent Marine markman could've laid down several accurate shots from the Texas School Book Depository window.

"End of story. Unless you're Michael Moore."

Just the kind of comment one gets from someone who has read or studied virtually nothing serious on the subject but yet feels qualified to speak.

The Zapruder film - long suppressed early on - shows Kennedy's body responding, according to the laws of physics, to a shot from the front, full stop.

Interestingly, several notable press descriptions of the unseen film at the time - most notably Dan Rather's on CBS - proved absolutely inaccurate later.

Interesting also is the fact that in the Warren Commission's hastily assembled jumble of evidence, some key frames from the film were printed out of order, blurring the evidence of response to a projectile from the front.

The Luce family who originally purchased the film - of Life Magazine and Time fame - were well known for cooperation with the CIA. Luce publications are known to have been used as covers for phony foreign correspondents.

The autopsy photos, poor as they are, show massive damage to the rear of the head, half the scalp hangs down - always evidence of an exit wound with bullets as they mushroom through flesh.

The doctor in charge of the autopsy wrote one report and then destroyed it - actually a criminal act.  The one we have is his re-write, the re-write of a military man under great pressure.

All those attending the president at the hospital in Dallas attest to massive damage at the rear of the head.

Bullet entrance wounds - unless dum-dum bullets are used - always resemble what you'd see from the stab of an ice-pick. Often they are almost undetectable, as witnesses to the killing of a young man at a Toronto school realized.

The Warren Commission said hard-jacketed bullets were used, so the case for the back of the head being an entrance wound is zero.

Oswald was not a decent "Marine marksman." He was a terrible shot, getting his badge finally as a mercy with a low score.

Those who knew him in Russia confirm his utter lack of facility with a rifle.

Finally, no expert marksman has repeated the feat attributed to Oswald. Indeed, a few years ago, tests in Italy – it was an Italian rifle supposedly used - confirmed its impossibility.

The overwhelming majority of witnesses in the Plaza turned towards and pointed towards and ran towards the grassy knoll immediately after the shots.

Last, the second investigation of the assassination - the Congressional one - accepted that there was a shooter from the front on the basis of expert analysis of inadvertent recordings of a policeman's motorcycle radio left open.

FORTY YEARS OF LIES

A Note to Readers: I am re-posting this article in view of the coming forty-eighth anniversary of the assassination of John Kennedy. It remains an accurate critique of many key aspects of that event and was repeated in many publications around the world. You may also enjoy another later piece, “Lincoln was Wrong: The Ease of Fooling Most of the People Most of the Time,” at http://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/06/06/lincoln-was-wrong-the-ease-of-fooling-most-of-the-people-most-of-the-time/

November 12, 2003

FORTY YEARS OF LIES

"If, as we are told, Oswald was the lone assassin, where is the issue of national security?"
Bertrand Russell 

John Chuckman



NOTE: PLEASE ALSO SEE MY LATER COMMENT ON AN IMPORTANT NEW PIECE OF INFORMATION, BY FAR THE MOST IMPORTANT WE HAVE RECEIVED AS IT CONTAINS OUR FIRST BITS OF TRUTH ABOUT THE ASSASSINATION FROM A GOVERNMENT SOURCE:

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/07/13/john-chuckman-comment-the-first-genuine-information-in-the-kennedy-assassination-records-release-to-give-us-some-genuine-information-about-what-happened/



Bertrand Russell's penetrating question, one of sixteen he asked at the time of the Warren Commission Report, remains unanswered after forty years. That should trouble Americans, but then again there are many things around national secrecy today that should trouble Americans.

The most timely lesson to be taken from the fortieth anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination concerns secrecy and the meaning of democracy in the world's most powerful nation. Perhaps no event better demonstrates the existence of two governments in the United States, the one people elect and another, often far more influential, as capable of imposing false history about large events as the fabled Ministry of Truth.

Since the time of the Warren Commission we have had the investigation of the House Select Committee and, in the last decade, the release of truckloads of previously-secret documents.
These documents were suppressed originally in the name of national security, but the fact is, despite their release, much of their content is heavily blacked out, and dedicated researchers know many documents remain unreleased, particularly documents from the CIA and military intelligence. Would any reasonable person conclude anything other than that those documents are likely the most informative and sensational?

Was it ever reasonable to believe that material of that nature would be included in document releases? Just a few years ago, records of some of the CIA's early Cold War activities, due for mandated release, were suddenly said to have "disappeared," and that declaration was pretty much the end of the story for a press regularly puffing itself as the fourth estate of American society. You do not have to believe in wild plots to recognize here the key to the Warren Commission's shabby job of investigation. As it was, several members of the Commission expressed private doubts about the main finding of Oswald as lone assassin.

There is a sense in these matters of being treated as a child sent to his or her room for not eating the spinach served. This is not so different to the way the American government treats its citizens about Cuba: it restricts them from spending money there so they cannot freely go and judge for themselves what is and isn't.

As it happens, the two things, Cuba and the assassination, are intimately related. Almost no one who studies the assassination critically can help but conclude it had a great deal to do with Cuba. No, I don't mean the pathetic story about Castro being somehow responsible. That idea is an insult to intelligence.

No matter what opinions you may hold of Castro, he is too clever and was in those days certainly too dedicated to the purpose of helping his people, according to his lights, ever to take such a chance. Even the slightest evidence pointing to Castro would have given the American establishment, fuming over communism like Puritan Fathers confronting what they regarded as demon possession, the excuse for an invasion.

There never has been credible evidence in that direction. Yet, there has been a number of fraudulent pieces of evidence, particularly the testimony of unsavory characters, claims so threadbare they have come and gone after failing to catch any hold, remaining as forgotten as last year's fizzled advertising campaign for some laundry detergent.

The notion that Castro had anything to do with the assassination is like an old corpse that's been floating around, slowly decomposing, periodically releasing gases for decades. And it is still doing so, Gus Russo's Live by the Sword of not many years ago being one of the most detailed efforts to tart-up the corpse and make it presentable for showing.

Any superficial plausibility to the notion of Castro as assassin derives from the poisonous atmosphere maintained towards him as official American policy. Researchers in science know that bias on a researcher's part, not scrupulously checked by an experiment's protocols, can seriously influence the outcome of an otherwise rigorous statistical study. How much more so in studies of history on subjects loaded with ideology and politics?

When you consider with what flimsy, and even utterly false, evidence the United States has invaded Iraq, it is remarkable that an invasion of Cuba did not proceed forty years ago. But in some ways the U.S. was less certain of itself then, it had a formidable opponent in the Soviet Union, and there was an agreement with the Soviets concerning Cuba's integrity negotiated to end the Cuban missile crisis, an agreement which deeply offended the small army of Cuban exiles, CIA men, and low-life hangers-on who enjoyed steady employment, lots of perquisites, and violent fun terrorizing Cuba.

Considering America's current crusade over the evils of terrorism, you'd have to conclude from the existence of that well-financed, murderous mob in the early 1960s that there was a rather different view of terror then. Perhaps there is good terror and bad terror, depending on just who does the wrecking and killing?

If you were a serious, aspiring assassin, associated with Castro and living in the United States during the early 1960s, you would not advertise your sympathies months in advance as Oswald did. You would not call any attention to yourself. It is hard for many today to have an adequate feel for the period, a time when declaring yourself sympathetic to Castro or communism could earn you a beating in the street, quite apart from making you the target of intense FBI interest. Oswald was physically assaulted for his (stagy) pro-Castro efforts in New Orleans, and he did receive a lengthy visit from the FBI while held briefly in jail, but this was not new interest from the agency since he was already well known to them.

Whatever else you may think of Castro, he is one of the cleverest and most able politicians of the second half of the twentieth century. He survived invasion, endless acts of terror and sabotage from the CIA and Cuban exiles, and numerous attempts at assassination, and he still retains a good deal of loyal support in Cuba. A man of this extraordinary talent does not use someone like Oswald to assassinate an American president. And if Castro had made such a mistake, he quickly would have corrected the error when Oswald made a (deliberate) fool of himself, over and over, in New Orleans well before the assassination, his actions there looking remarkably like the kind of provocateur-stuff a security service might use to elicit responses and identify the sympathies of others.

Oswald's (purported) visit to Mexico and clownish behavior in New Orleans laid the groundwork for the myth of Castro's involvement, and that almost certainly was one of the purposes of the activity, laying the groundwork for an invasion of Cuba. The motive for the assassination is likely found there. It is just silly to believe Castro risked handing the U.S. government a new "Remember the Maine."

In recent years, we've had Patrick Kennedy say he believes Castro was responsible, but his views on this matter are more like built-in reflexes than informed judgment. Besides broadcasting a tone agreeable to America's political establishment, his statement comes steeped in de' Medici-like conviction that Castro's success stained the honor of his ferociously ambitious family. Cross that family's path, and you earn a lifetime grudge. That's the way the family fortune's founder always behaved.

Robert Kennedy hated Castro (just as he hated other powerful competitors including Lyndon Johnson), and he took personal oversight of efforts to assassinate him. Robert also hated certain elements of the Mafia, who, after supporting his brother with money and influence in the election, felt betrayed by Robert's legal actions against them. The killing of Castro would have made all these people much happier, Havana having been one of the Mafia's gold mines before Castro. Interestingly enough, it appears that the FBI, under pressure from Robert, was at the same time making efforts to crackdown on the excesses of the Cuban refugees. Their excesses , including insane acts like shooting up Russian ships and killing Russian sailors in Cuban ports, threatened relations with the Soviet Union.

One of the centers of the FBI's crackdown effort was New Orleans, and that is where it appears clearest that Oswald worked for them. His defector background made him a logical candidate for provocative activities like handing out leaflets about Castro. At the same time he was offering his services as an ex-Marine to at least one of the refugee groups.

Oswald almost certainly had a minor role in American intelligence, an assumption that explains many mysterious episodes in his life. We know the Warren Commission discussed this in closed session. We also know Texas authorities believed they had discovered such a connection. And we know the FBI in Dallas destroyed important evidence.

If you're looking for Cuban assassins, why not some of those nasty refugee militia groups, armed to the teeth by the CIA and trained to terrorize Castro's government? They also terrorized their critics in Florida. The extensive preparations necessary for assassinating the President might have raised little suspicion from the CIA or FBI at a time when these groups, subsidized and protected by the CIA, were carrying out all kinds of violent, lunatic acts. There are strong parallels here with the suicide-bombers of 9/11, who undoubtedly eluded suspicion because the CIA had been regularly bringing into the country many shady characters from the Middle East to train for its dark purposes in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Cuban extremists in Florida were furious over the Bay of Pigs and felt betrayed by Kennedy's terms for settling the missile crisis. You couldn't find a better explanation for the CIA's unhelpful behavior over the years since. Imagine the impact on the CIA, already badly damaged by the Bay of Pigs and Kennedy's great anger over it, of news that some of its subsidized anti-Castro thugs had killed the President?

I don't say that is what happened, only that there is at least one conjecture with far more force and substance than the official one. Assassination-theorizing is not one of my hobbies, but I have contempt for the official explanation, and it seems rather naive to believe that the American security establishment would have been satisfied with the insipid conclusions of the Warren Commission.

Furthermore, it is difficult to believe that the vast resources of American security and justice employed at the time - that is, those not concerned with kicking up dust into the public's eyes - were not able to identify the assassins and their purpose. Documents covering a surreptitious, parallel investigation almost certainly exist because what we know includes suggestions of two investigations intersecting at times. Perhaps, the best example of this is around the autopsy (discussed below).

Kicking-up dust around the assassination is an activity that continues intermittently to this day. In a piece a few years ago in the Washington Post about new Moscow documents on the assassination, a reporter wrote, "Oswald...defected to the Soviet Union in 1959 and renounced his American citizenship."

Oswald never renounced his citizenship, although he made a public show of wanting to do so. This was one of many theater-of-the-absurd scenes in the Oswald saga. We now know that on one of his visits to the American embassy in Moscow, Oswald was taken to an area reserved for sensitive matters, not the kind of business he was there to conduct.

The Soviets let him stay, never granting him citizenship, always treating him as an extraordinary outsider under constant scrutiny.
   
The Washington Post reporter also wrote, "Historians have expressed hope that the documents could shed light on whether Oswald schemed to kill Kennedy when he lived in the Soviet Union...." That begs the genuine question of whether Oswald killed Kennedy and kicks-up more dust. No historian of critical ability could think that way. The Soviets went out of their way at the time of the assassination to reassure the U.S. government that they had no connection with it. Any credible evidence they could produce, we may be absolutely sure, was produced. The stakes were immensely high.

The testimony of many Soviet citizens who knew Oswald agreed that he was a man temperamentally incapable of killing anyone. An exception was his (estranged) wife, Marina, who found herself, after the assassination, a Soviet citizen in a hostile country, able to speak little English, the mother of two young children with absolutely no resources, and hostage to American agents who could determine her destiny.
                           
Even so accomplished and discerning a journalist as Daniel Schorr has assisted in kicking-up dust, writing some years ago at the release of more than a thousand boxes of memos and investigative reports from the national archives that there wasn't much there. Somehow, Schorr had managed to digest and summarize that monstrous amount of information in a very short time. Then again, in view of all the blacked-out information, maybe Schorr's assertion owed less to incredible skills at reading and digesting information than to serene confidence in the methods of the establishment.

Schorr went from the merely silly to the ridiculous with his assertion, "There remains no serious reason to question the Warren Commission's conclusion that the death of the president was the work of Oswald alone." How re-assuring, but, if you think about that for a moment, it is the equivalent of saying what never was proved has not now been disproved, so we'll regard it as proved - absurd, yet characteristic of so many things written about the assassination.

Schorr went on to praise Gerald Posner's new book, Case Closed, as "remov[ing] any lingering doubt." We'll come back to Posner's book, but Schorr also saw fit to trot out the then obligatory disparaging reference to Oliver Stone's movie JFK. Why would a piece of popular entertainment be mentioned in the same context as genuine historical documents? Only to associate the movie with Schorr's claim that the documents had little to say.

Every handsomely-paid columnist and pop news-celebrity in America stretched to find new words of contempt for the Stone movie, miraculously, many of them well before its release. The wide-scale, simultaneous attack was astonishing. You had to wonder whether they had a source sending them film scraps from the editing room or purloined pages from the script. When Stone's movie did appear - proving highly unsatisfactory, almost silly, in its explanation of the assassination - you had to wonder what all the fuss had been about.

I was never an admirer of President Kennedy - still, the most important, unsolved murder of the 20th century, apart from the lessons it offers, is a fascinating mystery for those who've studied it.
 
The President's head movement at the impact of the fatal shot, clearly backward on the Zapruder film, a fact lamely rationalized by the Warren Commission, is not the only evidence for shots from the front. In the famous picture of Mrs. Kennedy reaching over the back of the car, she was, by her own testimony, reaching for a piece of the President's skull. Equally striking is the testimony of a police outrider, to the rear of the President's car, that he was struck forcefully with blood and brain tissue.

The doctors who worked to save the President at Parkland Hospital in Dallas said that the major visible damage to the President was a gaping wound near the rear of the skull, the kind of wound that typically reflects the exit of a bullet with the shock wave generated by its passing through layers of human tissue. We've all seen a plate glass window struck by a B-B where a tiny entrance puncture results in a large funnel-shaped chunk of cracked or missing glass on the opposite side.

The President's head wound, as described in Dallas, is not present in published autopsy photographs. Instead, there is a pencil-thin entrance-type wound in an unknown scalp. Although the Secret Service agent, Clint Hill, who climbed aboard the President's car after the shots, testified to seeing a large chunk of skull in the car and looking into the right rear of the President's head, seeing part of his brain gone, the autopsy photos show no such thing.

The wound at the front of the President's neck, just above his necktie, which was nicked by the bullet, was regarded by those first treating him in Dallas as an entrance wound since it had the form of a small puncture before a tracheotomy was done. But the throat wound in the published autopsy photos is large and messy.

The nature of the pathologists forcefully raises Russell's question. Why would you need military pathologists, people who must follow orders? Ones especially that were not very experienced in gunshot wounds, far less so than hospital pathologists in any large, violent American city? Why conduct the autopsy at a military hospital in Washington rather than a civilian one in Dallas? Why have the pathologists work with a room full of Pentagon brass looking on? The President's body was seized at gunpoint by federal agents at the hospital in Dallas where the law required autopsy of a murder victim. Why these suspicious actions and so many more, if the assassination, as the Warren Commission and its defenders hold, reduces to murder by one man for unknown motives?

The autopsy, as published, was neither complete nor careful, rendering its findings of little forensic value. There is some evidence, including testimony of a morgue worker and references contained in an FBI memo, pointing to autopsy work, particularly work to the President's head, done elsewhere before receipt of the body for the official autopsy, but no new documents expand on this. We do learn the relatively trivial fact that the expensive bronze casket, known to have been damaged at some point in bringing it to Bethesda, was disposed of by sinking in the ocean, but the morgue worker said the bronze casket arriving with Mrs. Kennedy was empty and that the body, separately delivered in a shipping casket, displayed obvious signs of work done to it. The FBI memo, written by two agents at the "earlier stages" of the official autopsy, states that the unwrapped body displayed "surgery of the head area." The same FBI agents also signed a receipt for a mysterious "missile removed" by one pathologist.

The official autopsy avoided some standard procedures. For example, the path of the so-called magic bullet through the President's neck was not sectioned. A mysterious back wound, whose placement varies dramatically from the hole in the President's jacket (a fact officially explained by an improbable bunching-up of the jacket), was probed but no entrance into the body cavity found. The preserved brain - what there was of it, and with its telltale scattering of metal fragments - later went missing. One of the pathologists admitted to burning his original draft before writing the report we now see.

The Warren Commission did no independent investigation (it did not even examine the autopsy photos and x-rays), adopting instead the FBI as its investigative arm at a time when the FBI had many serious matters to explain. The FBI had failed to have Oswald's name on its Watch List even though they were completely familiar with him, seeing him at intervals for unexplained reasons. His name even had appeared earlier in an odd internal FBI advisory memo signed by Director Hoover. The FBI also had failed to act appropriately on an explicit threat from a known source recorded well before Kennedy went to Dallas. And the agency destroyed crucial evidence.

With a lack of independent investigation and the absence of all proper court procedures including the cross-examination of witnesses, the Warren Report is nothing more than a prosecutor's brief, and a sloppy one at that, with a finding of guilt in the absence of any judge or jury. The only time the skimpy evidence against Oswald was considered in a proper court setting, a mock trial by the American Bar Association in 1992, the jury was hung, 7 to 5.

Oswald's background is extraordinary. By the standards of the 1950s and early 1960s, aspects of his life simply make no sense if viewed from the official perspective. Here was a Marine, enlisted at 17, who mysteriously started learning Russian, receiving communist literature through the mail, and speaking openly to other Marines about communism - none of which in the least affected his posting or standing.

He became a defector to the Soviet Union, one who reportedly threatened to give the Soviets information about operations of the then top-secret U-2 spy plane. Some even assert he did provide such information, making it possible for a Soviet missile to down Gary Power's U-2 plane just before the Eisenhower-Khrushchev summit. Unlikely as that is, for Oswald would certainly have been treated harshly on his return to the United States were it true, he did know some important facts about the U-2's capabilities, because this Russian-studying, communist literature-reading Marine was posted at a secret U-2 base in Japan as a radar operator before his defection.

At a time when witch-hunting for communists was a fresh memory and still a career path for some American politicians, Oswald returned to the U.S. with a Russian wife, one whose uncle was a lieutenant colonel in the MVD, the Ministry of the Interior, but the CIA and other security agencies supposedly took little interest in him. Oswald's source of income in the U.S. at critical times remains a mystery. A mystery, too, surrounds the connections of this young man of humble means to some well-heeled, anti-Soviet Russian speakers in Dallas after his return from the Soviet Union. His later ability to get a passport for travel to Mexico in just 24 hours - with a personal history that must have ranked as one of the most bizarre in the United States - is attributed to "clerical error."

Oswald, so far as we know, was a patriotic individual when he joined the Marines. There is no evidence that he was ever actually a communist or member of any extremist organization. In fact, there is striking evidence suggesting he did work supporting the opposite interest after his return to the United States. Thus the address on some of the "Fair Play for Cuba" pamphlets he distributed in New Orleans was the office of Guy Bannister, a former senior FBI agent and violent anti-communist, still well-connected to the agency.

Oswald's connections with the FBI have never been satisfactorily examined. There are many circumstances suggesting his being a paid informant for the FBI, especially during his time in New Orleans. A letter Oswald wrote to a Dallas agent just before the assassination was deliberately and recklessly destroyed by order of the office's senior agent immediately after the assassination with no reasonable explanation.    

One way or another, all the major police or intelligence agencies were compromised during the assassination or its investigation. The Secret Service performed abysmally, in both planning the motorcade and responding to gun fire. Some of the agents on duty had actually been out late drinking the night before, as it happens at a bar belonging to an associate of Jack Ruby, Oswald's own assassin. The performance of the Dallas police suggests terrible corruption. The FBI failed in vital respects before and after the assassination. The CIA failed to cooperate on many, many details of the investigation. These facts understandably encourage the more farfetched assassination theories.

The CIA has never released its most important information on Oswald, importantly including documentation of his supposed activities in Mexico City at the Cuban and Russian embassies where every visitor was routinely photographed and identified by the CIA. We may speculate what a thorough vetting of CIA files would show: likely that Oswald was a low-grade intelligence agent during his stint in the Soviet Union, perhaps working for military intelligence to collect information on day-to-day living conditions and attitudes there, one of several men sent for the purpose at that time; that he was trained at an American military school in basic Russian and encouraged to build a quickie communist identity by subscribing to literature and talking foolishly before defecting. We would also likely find that he was serving American security, probably the FBI, during the months before Dallas in the murky world of CIA/FBI/Cuban refugee/Mafia anti-Castro activities; and that in the course of that anti-Castro work, he was sucked without realizing it into an elaborate assassination plot, offering the plotters, with his odd background, a tailor-made patsy. The CIA assessment of Oswald would likely show, just as testimony from his time in the Soviet Union shows, that Oswald was not capable psychologically of acting as an assassin, lone or otherwise. 

The case against Oswald is a flimsy tissue. It includes a poor autopsy of the victim offering no reliable evidence; a rifle whose ownership is not established; a rifle never definitively proved to have actually killed the President; a claim that jacketed bullets were used, a type of ammunition that could not possibly cause the kind of wounds to which many testify; the accused's record of mediocre marksmanship in the Marines; a parafin test which showed no residue on his cheek despite his supposedly firing three shots from a bolt-action rifle; a single palm print claimed to have been obtained from the rifle after earlier failed attempts; gimmicky, suggestive photographs of Oswald with a rifle declared montages by several experts; a completely unacceptable evidence chain for the shell casings from the site of Officer Tippit's shooting, those submitted as evidence being almost certainly not those found at the scene; a bizarre history for the bullets supposed to have killed Tippet; an illogical weighting of witnesses who told different stories about Tippit's shooting; plus many other strange and contradictory details.

Moreover, Oswald had no motive, having expressed admiration for Kennedy. And Oswald was promptly assassinated himself by Jack Ruby, a man associated with the murky world of anti-Castro violence, someone whose past included gun-running to Cuba and enforcer-violence in Chicago.

There is a kind of cheap industry in publishing assassination books, most of which are superficial or silly. This fact makes it easy to attack credible efforts to question the official story, but in this respect the subject is no different from others. Just look at the shelves of superficial or trashy books on psychology, business management, or self-help available in bookstores.

Russell's question echoes again and again down the decades as adjustments are made to the official story. Employing techniques one expects to be used for covering up long-term intelligence interests, various points raised by early independent researchers like Joachim Joesten or Mark Lane, have been conceded here or there along the way without altering the central finding. This is an effective method: concede details and appear open to new facts while always forcefully returning to the main point.  

A significant writer along these lines is Edward Epstein, an author whose other writing suggests intelligence connections. His first book on the assassination, Inquest, conceded numerous flaws in the Warren Report. Epstein went on in subsequent books, Counterplot and Legend to attack at length - and for the critical reader, quite unconvincingly - ideas of conspiracy, Oswald's intelligence connections, and his innocence.

The Report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, 1979, was the grandest effort of this type. The Committee was used for selective leaks and plants, as for example the publication of some bootlegged autopsy photos, which ended by raising only more questions. Leads often were not followed-up, greatly frustrating some of the able investigators employed. The Committee squandered the last opportunity to pursue an independent, well-financed investigation - last, in the sense of never again being able to overcome the inertia against assembling the needed resources and authorities and in the sense that with passing time evidence deteriorates, memories fade, and witnesses die. Despite the Committee's attention-getting conclusion from technical analysis of an old Dictabelt recording that a shot probably was fired from the front, it also concluded that the shot missed, a truly bizarre finding that welds hints of conspiracy to yet another assertion that Oswald was the only killer.

Gerald Posner's Case Closed, 1993, was another of these. You couldn't help noticing this lamentable book being widely reviewed and praised. Why would that be? Because, without producing any new evidence and despite a number of errors, it freshly re-packaged the main speculations of the Warren Report, but no repackaging of the Report's jumble of partial facts, guesses, and accusations can strengthen its conclusions. You can't build a sound house with large sections of the foundation missing.

Priscilla Johnson's Marina and Lee,1980 , was another kind of book, one of several resembling the kind of quickie books churned out to discredit Anita Hill in the Judge Clarence Thomas confirmation. Ms. Johnson managed to interview Oswald in Russia - I wonder what connections might have made that possible? - and later used that fact to gain access to Oswald's widow, Marina. Impressing many who had heard her as a distracted and confused person, Marina was a woman who had been subjected to immense, frightening pressure from the FBI and other security services after the assassination. The book is an almost unreadable hatchet-job on Oswald's character, effectively diminishing the image that comes through many photographs and anecdotes of a rather naïve, brash, sometimes rude but not unlikable young man caught up in events he incompletely understood.  

The official story of the assassination remains pretty much unchanged from just a few days after events of forty years ago: one man with an almost broken-down rifle, no expertise, no resources, and no motive killed the President, and he was himself killed by a man with the darkest background simply out of sympathy for the President's wife. Those with no vested interest and critical faculties intact can never accept such a fable explaining the brutal work of a well-planned conspiracy.

Now, the really horrifying possibility is that the security agencies never discovered the assassins despite vast efforts. That means officials hold tenaciously to the Oswald story to cover national nakedness. The FBI has a long and shabby record of blunders and going after the wrong people, and when you think of the CIA's many failures assessing the capabilities and approaching demise of the Soviet Union, the many failures in Vietnam, and its miserable failure around 9/11, that is not a farfetched possibility. The answer to Russell's question then becomes that national security indeed applies, if only in the unexpected form of hiding miserable failure.

But if you can write false history of an event so large as a Presidential assassination, what truly are the limits?