FURTHER TO GERALD CAPLAN'S REASONED WORDS ON IRAN - JOHN BAIRD, THE CONSERVATIVES' UTILTY ATTACK-DOG MINISTER, SAYS IRAN IS A THREAT AND NOT RHETORIC - SOME HARD FACTS

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

Why on earth would anyone think John Baird knows what he is talking about?

Apart from the fact that Mr. Baird has proven himself in public numerous times a dishonest and patronizing and unethical politician, Canada in fact has no equivalent of MI6 or the CIA, so we have absolutely no information sources of our own (CSIS being limited to domestic efforts).

Baird is merely echoing the words of Israeli and American sources, both of which not only have their own special interests for what they say but are proved liars in countless instances.

We have the blunt testimony, made public through error, from the presidents of France and the United States as to what a complete liar Mr. Netanyahu is, an unprecedented and unimpeachable testimony into secret affairs.

Israel endlessly plots to gain advantage and position throughout the Middle East. Its plots have nothing to with genuine security but with a desire to sit as arbiter of all affairs within a thousand miles of its borders (whatever those are).

Only the other day the United States quietly cancelled a large joint military exercise with Israel, having become quite fearful that Israel would exploit it for engaging the United States in war with Iran.

Top level American military and intelligence men expressed their deep concerns to Obama that Israel's series of black operations in Iran, including the assassinations of several scientists were aimed at triggering just such an event.

It would not be the first time for Israel: both the Six Day War and the two-hour attempt to sink the American electronic spy ship USS Liberty in 1967 were black operations, the second intended both to blind the United States as to what was happening in the war and as an effort to draw the United States into it.

And you cannot get much blacker than Israel's now-known sharing of nuclear technology with apartheid South Africa.

Baird serves Harper's interests as a faithful junk-yard dog, and we all know Harper has bent over backwards to express views on Israel and Israel's interests which have no basis in Canada's traditional foreign policy.

Harper is motivated in at least two ways in this dark effort: one, he is a fundamentalist Christian full of biblical nonsense about Israel and the end of time from the nightmare lunacy of the Book of Revelations.

And two, Harper is miming American Republicans in being totally solicitous of all things Israeli because it brings in a steady flow of campaign donations, and we know Harper has as a goal for personal achievement to destroy and replace the Liberal Party, with campaign financing games being a major tool towards the goal.

Baird only demonstrates he is one more shabby new-Conservative politician ready to put short-term goals of party political success ahead of Canada's genuine long-term interests, which absolutely do not include ugly business like starting another Iraq-style war with Iran, a country guilty of nothing, and perhaps convulsing the world into a major crisis.
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"I recently watched a documentary about the rise of Adolph Hitler. Seeing all those cheering, delighted 'fans' at every event as he gave his speeches made me wonder what kind of people could applaud that sort of bile and hate. Reading the comments in the Globe, though, I can easily see we still have that same sort around today in Canada. I think half the regular comment posters here would cheer another Hitler if he promised to rid the world of Jews."

The comment is ignorant beyond telling.

I have studied the rise of Hitler in serious and scholarly books. The rise of such people provides important historical lessons needed to protect democratic and human values.

Most Germans never wanted Hitler.

Despite the most strenuous efforts, he was never able to get a bit more than 37% of the vote.
Hitler took over in an elaborate coup d’état after having been appointed as Chancellor by President Hindenburg, an old man desperate for peace in the streets and a man who previously was quite contemptuous of Hitler.

And most Germans never wanted war, but they were trapped by a vicious and ruthless government. Just read the works of the great American journalist of Hitler's time, William L. Shirer. He was there, and he was an intelligent and perceptive witness to events.

It is not just a coincidence that the popular vote for Harper is close in percentage (39.6%) to that of Hitler's highest achievement: every society has malcontents, ideologues and savages as part of its fabric, just as a certain percentage of every human population is mentally unbalanced.

And when people - politicians or ordinary people making grossly dishonest comments - tell lies, over and over, louder and louder, we should all be acutely aware we have entered a danger zone in human affairs.

Baird has nothing but prejudice and no genuine information whatsoever to support his yelling and chest-beating.

How would we distinguish that mode of behavior from a small-time Joseph Goebbels type?
We cannot.
__________________________________________

"A very good reply by Mr. Baird.

"The difference between Iran and other dangerous countries like Pakistan is that Iran actively funds, trains and directs terrorist organizations that target the likes of Israel and the US and now Saudi Arabia. Iran is also very bellicose about annihilating Israel or the Zionist regime like they call it (as if there is a difference?) and this is before anyone was talking about attacking Iran.

"In the end, people here who ignore the facts at all costs will never be convinced until a bomb falls on their head."

It ain't our heads on which bombs will fall.

It's 70 million completely innocent Iranians.

Just as the Iraq invasion - again, a product of Israel's tireless efforts on a very weak American president - killed hundreds of thousands of innocents and destroyed a society for a generation.

It is only the genuine ideologues and haters pushing for extreme measures against Iran.

And surely we all know by now where policy driven by ideologues and haters takes us.

A one-way trip to nowhere.

And note what colossally dangerous prejudice the person making the comment displays: “other dangerous countries like Pakistan."

Goebbels couldn't have said it better.
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“The only threat a nuclear armed Iran poses is to the American ability to invade them.
“End of story.”

A brutal truth, but only a partial truth.

No country would ever use nuclear weapons in that fashion, because it would be national suicide.
And that is also precisely why the ideologues and haters who promote Israel's twisted views do not understand reality.

We know Israel has at least 150 nuclear weapons because former President Carter told us that a couple of years ago.

The truth is that even were Iran developing nuclear weapons - and it is decidedly not doing so - all that would result is the kind of stand-off we had in Europe for decades.

And that stand-off kept the peace.

Israel does not fear Iran with nuclear weapons per se. It fears the rising influence of Iran in the region, an influence which in part stems from America's stupid invasion of Iraq, another insane project advocated by Israel.

Israel unquestionably wants the same kind of virtually absolute authority in its region that America enjoys in the world at large.

The word for that is simple: it's imperialism.

So here we have, once again, imperialistic and grossly selfish motives posing as desperate security fears and humanistic concerns.

It simply ain't so.
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"a rapid [sic] left-wing Jew" liza writes in describing Mr. Gerald Caplan.

Again, Goebbels could not have said it better.

How does anyone, not mentally unbalanced or viciously hating, write such ugly things?

Were anyone other than an apologist for Israel to utter such hate-speech, he or she would be attacked savagely.

But it's okay when you promote war and destruction on behalf of Imperial Israel.
__________________________________________

"It really is time for people to wake up. This is real.

"Remember 9/11."

Ah, the ultimate stupidity has been uttered: "Remember 9/11."

9/11 was a crime committed by 19 unstable men, each of whom paid for it with his life.

But that didn't stop the arm-pumping, belly-over-belt crowd from murdering in blind rage at least half a million people having nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with it.

Gee, I'm glad we have writers like this to remind us of stupid human beings can be.
We're chimpanzees with bigger brains, just big enough to cause horrific destruction.
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"Perhaps Mr. Baird and his colleagues will take the time to educate themselves"

When what you are after is propaganda and appeals to humanity's worst instincts, you don't educate yourself.

Why let education stand in the way of rage and irrationality?

It's so much more fun to stomp up and down like Mr. Baird does, the very picture of an angry child, albeit a terribly ugly one.

http://chuckmancartoons.blogspot.com/2010/06/canadas-john-baird-does-lunch.html
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"Gerald Klu Klux Kaplan has the IQ of pond scum and it is to this paper's eternal shame that it publishes his ignorant and hateful delusions. Since when does the globe publish racists like him? If Mr. Klu Klux Kaplan hates the jooz so much, maybe he should write for Stormfront or something."

Sorry, but apart from the misspellings, isn't it people like you who hurl ugly names, instead of cogent arguments, who demonstrate low IQs?

Although in truth, IQ has nothing to do with it.

Goebbels was a highly intelligent and educated man, but he was a hater and a believer in ugly fantasy.

And just so, this writer.
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“Baird and his staff write well, but they cannot hide their ethically indefensible support for Israel's politics of repression, aggression, and religious superiority. I worry far more about Israel and the US than I do about Iran.”


They don't want to hide it.

They make a very clear and public appeal to the supporters of Israel's bloody excesses.

It's precisely the scenario we see with America's Republicans, all racing to outdo each other in excessive and nasty statements about whatever it is that Israel does not like.

How can anyone argue that such people are serving the national interest?
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"For those whose comments are full of anti Islamic stuff, are you aware that a proportion of the Palestinian population that was driven out after WW II was Christian?"


I'm glad you remind us of that truth.

Hanan Ashwari, for example, an able politician and academic, is Christian.

And so are tens of thousands of Palestinians.

By the way, it is illegal in Israel for Christians to preach conversion as they do in Canada or the United States every day.

A WRITER CORRECTLY OBSERVES THAT THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA ARE WRONG ON THE IRAN THREAT - INDEED AND WHAT IS BEHIND IT ALL

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

There is nothing threatening about Iran, absolutely nothing.

Indeed, after the horrors of the Iran-Iraq War - started by Hussein's Iraq and encouraged and abetted by a United States keen to see Iran hurt - which was a war on a per capita basis about as bloody for Iran as WWI in Europe, Iran has had every reason to avoid war.

Despite the religious extremes of the state - something, by the way, very much present in Israel too with its nasty ultra-orthodox groups - Iran has not been aggressive towards any of its neighbors.

Iran is not even heavily armed if you take as a standard of comparison Israel, the world's most heavily armed country on a per capita basis, its spending beyond all reason for the size of its economy.

Indeed Israel, as we all now know, is armed with nuclear weapons, the very thing it daily shamelessly accuses Iran of working towards.

It is sickening to hear Israel threaten day after day a people who do no harm.

And of course Israel doesn't just threaten by itself, it pushes the United States through a lobby the like of which exists no where else to threaten and make ominous moves and demand extreme sanctions.

The United States keeps two to three aircraft carrier groups off the coast of Iran, an immense and terrifying presence which Iran has done absolutely nothing to deserve.

Israel itself now has at least one submarine there, likely equipped with American Harpoon missiles it illegally fitted up with small nuclear warheads a few years back.

What could be more threatening than this presence accompanied by the frightful rhetoric we hear and read from Israel?

There is one sad truth in this matter, and that is the inordinate influence of the Israel Lobby on U.S. politics.

The United States committed a world-scale atrocity invading Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands and setting back a vibrant Arab land decades.

And the only real reason for that crime was to flatten Israel's most unflinching opponent. While the U.S. has never admitted that formally, both analysis of the situation and an inadvertent blubber from George Bush confirm it.

Now Israel wants Iran flattened, under the flimsy excuse Iran is developing nuclear weapons, something every single expert who knows anything says is not so.

What Israel actually wants is Iran flattened because of its growing influence in the region. Israel, quite simply, wants to be hegemonic power in the region, a miniature replica of the United States in the world at large.

And we are fed an endless series of lies and distortions to assist Israel in achieving that. Look at every Republican presidential candidate, and you will find people receiving massive campaign contributions to promote nonsense from "there are no Palestinians" to "I'd attack Iran immediately," none of which is fair or ethical.

And in Canada, we have an American Republican wannabe as our prime minister now who tailors his statements to precisely the same purposes and for precisely the same reasons.

Insanity.

AMERICAN MAGAZINE EDITOR SUPPORTING ISRAEL QUITS AFTER ADVOCATING PRESIDENT OBAMA'S ASSASSINATION - ISRAEL'S DESCENT INTO INSANITY

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

Quits?
 
Big deal.

Threatening the President's life is a crime in the United States.

The man belongs in prison.

This whole matter shows how sick and twisted the support for Israel has become.

Bad enough calling every critic of Israel's ugly policies an anti-Semite, a favorite practice of frustrated supporters who do not get what they want.

But now this?

It is not to be taken lightly that a prominent man feels he can do this.
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"The Israelites are given over to murdering people that they don't like .........
"Shamir and his Stern Gang murdered Count Bernadotte, the Swedish Peace Envoy ........."

Yes, indeed, along with literally hundreds of other murders and acts of terror in the 1940s.

Israel was born in terror, and instead of growing into a respectable member of the world community, it has only gone on to become something very unpleasant, violating all fair-minded people's sense of fairness and decency.

And it comes as no surprise that its fervent supporters behave in the same fashion.
It was not that long ago that a prominent American lawyer advocated in writing the execution of all family members of any Palestinian caught in an act of terror.

And what single act in our day is more terrifying than Israel's assault on Gaza, which is basically a refugee camp, killing 400 children, a thousand others, and lying about every detail of that savagery since?

Then still imposing 4 years of illegal and inhumane embargo on the same people and using murderous acts of piracy to enforce it?

Israel, sadly, has become little more than a mafia state: it murders, it steals, it oppresses, and it breaks all international law with impunity, lying and shamelessly claiming the right to do things no one has the right to do.

And the public is supposed to say fine because poor Israel feels threatened.

Israel is threatened seriously by absolutely no one or nothing but its own insanity.

The threat Obama represents, if it can even be called that, is that Israel must eventually abide by rules and treaties, assuming its previous borders, but Israel wants everything and it wants the non-Jews gone.

Hardly a stance any person of ethics can be expected to agree with.

REVIEW OF JOAN MELLEN’S FAREWELL TO JUSTICE - THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION AND JIM GARRISON'S INVESTIGATION

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.

The blurb inside this book tells us that Joan Mellen is a professor of English and creative writing at Temple University, and sadly that fact confirms my darkest fears about American education, because Ms. Mellen, as amply demonstrated by significant portions of this book, often cannot write a literate paragraph. It is appalling how many badly written pages are in this volume.

Why did I continue to read it? I am a great admirer of the late Jim Garrison, who incidentally was a pretty fine writer, and being aware of the hatchet-job books done on his efforts in the Kennedy assassination, I wanted to read something of a defense. Ms. Mellen’s book is one of the few, so I persevered through her muddy paragraphs in hopes of reaching a bit of clear water and learning something.

Well, it does get somewhat better through the middle of the book, and there are some interesting points and details raised here.

I very much believe that Jim Garrison stumbled upon something big in New Orleans, something very big, part of the conspiracy to kill John Kennedy, a conspiracy carefully ignored by the Warren Commission and later by The House Select Committee.

Garrison was a very intelligent and able man, but no individual, no matter how bright and brave and dedicated, could have completely withstood the assaults of a Washington establishment determined to smear and mislead and destroy him. The imbalance of forces was terrifying, and the efforts likely shortened Garrison’s life. This book does document some of that in its better-written portions.

I never shared Garrison’s belief that the CIA as an organization killed Kennedy, although it just could not be clearer to people who’ve read enough on the subject that the CIA always worked to manipulate and distort evidence in this matter. Indeed, it continues to do so to this day.

For Jim Garrison, fighting all the dirt and abuse, it would naturally seem that they were covering their own responsibility. I believe rather that they have been covering what would have been explosive information in the 1960s: that their private army of Cuban terrorists killed the President, aided more than likely by the direct or indirect help of the CIA handlers responsible for arming, training, and paying that gang of cutthroats in their long efforts at mayhem and murder in Cuba and in Florida.

People today almost cannot imagine the fetid political atmosphere in the United States of the 1950s and 1960s. It was poisonous, so much so that in many other places people were deeply concerned that the United States would do some terrible things. That view was part of what informed spies the Britain’s Cambridge Circle. The United States in that era seriously considered a pre-emptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union and later on China and it thought nothing of invading a country like Cuba or of overthrowing even democratically-elected governments like those in Guatemala and Iran.

Discrediting the CIA in any way at that time, much as it was deserved, was regarded almost as treason, and that was why the CIA lied and cheated its way through every effort at genuine investigation. The CIA was up to its armpits in collusion with mobsters and thugs of every description to achieve the overthrow of Castro, and when its secret army of Cuban fanatics killed the President, with or without the assistance of their professional CIA handlers, it simply could not be revealed. Truth be known, I feel confident many of the CIA’s career men were glad when he died, believing he did not possess the blind faith they embraced.

The FBI too was glad. Hoover hated the Kennedys beyond describing. And with CIA backing and other political backing, it felt safe to cover and even destroy evidence in its almost laughable race to find poor Oswald guilty, and it was very convenient to portray Oswald as a “Commie nut” since the lifelong passion of Hoover was to lynch as many Communists as he could, even while he was friends with American gangsters.

For some while after the assassination, the CIA tried – through articles and books by its assets in American publishing – to blame Castro for the assassination, but that pathetic story pretty much withered away, Castro being far too clever to have hired someone like Oswald or to have given America’s establishment the excuse it wanted to cover an invasion.

It is well known in intelligence operations that you not only prepare a primary fall-back story – the Castro story – but a secondary one should that fail to gain traction, and that second one is blaming the mafia. The inept Robert Blakey, largely responsible for the feeble efforts of the House Select Committee investigation, put that idea forward. So too did others in a series of contrived books.

It is still around today, with new proponents surfacing periodically. What the story ignores is the virtual impossibility of getting the various mafia clans – the mafia not being a single organization but a group of loosely cooperating families – to agree on so extreme an act, putting all their billions in assets at risk and giving law enforcement the perfect excuse to shut them down completely.

Again, in Bertrand Russell’s profound question, “If, as we are told, Oswald was the lone assassin, where is the issue of national security?” So we pretty much know ipso facto that Oswald cannot have been the lone killer, and that’s apart from his lack of motive and talent and an almost complete lack of sound evidence.

So what is the CIA hiding? Its own embarrassment and incompetence and criminal behavior with terrorist groups like the Cuban refugees, as well as the extreme danger to a free society of having such a well-financed organization with almost no responsibility to anyone.

FOR THE MUSLIM WORLD IT"S NOT A SAFE OR EASY PATH TO MODERNITY - A COLUMN BEGS THE QUESTION OF WHEN IT IS EVER SO FOR ANY SOCIETY - SOME HISTORY

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

Sorry, the premiss of this piece is shabby.

There's nothing special about “the Muslim world" which makes the path to modernity neither safe nor easy. Indeed, saying so, demonstrates not a good grasp of history and provides one more sad bit of evidence of the Islamophobia with which we are inundated.

Just a few hundred years ago, Christians were hacking each other into pieces and burning alive those who varied in some minute detail, such as the nature of the bread and wine at mass, in their faith.
Yet Europe today is generally regarded as the world's most civilized and tolerant set of societies in the world, although the social impacts of heavy immigration are beginning to erode that view.

The path to modernity is never, never safe or easy, for anyone, and, truth be told, it is never finished. We are always playing catch-up in our laws with the social changes engendered by technical and economic change.

The idiot-savants at the Pentagon and the CIA would have us believe that you can just change an ancient society in a matter of years, but that belief is the equivalent of thinking you can remove an ancient, ailing oak tree from your yard with a hand scoop.

It took virtually all Western societies centuries to evolve even to the state of civilization we see now.

The beginnings of the modern era go back about five centuries, a time span which reflects the emergence of a new standard in economic growth. Still, even those five centuries are filled with riots, revolutions, wars, and countless horrors.

Even in “the New World,” the United States took more than two centuries to become the approximation of a democracy we see today. In the wake of its Revolution, almost no one could vote, it being estimated that maybe one percent of Virginians could vote, blacks and women being excluded but also, often not appreciated, most white males. You had to have a certain amount of wealth to cast a ballot.

Even then, the Senate was appointed until 1913, the President was elected only by the Electoral College (a small group of the moneyed elites), the popular vote did not determine anything, and the Supreme Court dared not dream of enforcing the Bill of Rights across states so it remained an empty set of high-sounding words. It took decades of change and strife to get what we see today, including what was the bloodiest war ever experienced by Americans, the Civil War, in which it lost roughly twice the people it lost in WWII.

The immense turmoil and mass murders in getting votes and rights for blacks went on for most of the country's history. In the 1920s, several black towns in Oklahoma and Florida were virtually wiped out by white mobs, the bodies of hundreds buried in mass graves.

Women only gained the vote in 1921 after a long and difficult struggle.

The truth is that democracy in some form and respect for human rights are virtually inevitable when an old society experiences consistent economic growth. Economic growth and the rise of a strong middle class act almost like a solvent on the customs and beliefs of old societies. It is a long process, and it is never without a good deal of pain.

Even in North America we are not through with the process of economic development affecting old ways: look at all the turmoil over matters like rising divorce rates, abortion rights, and gay marriage – all things which are necessary and, in a sense, inevitable for a free society which continues to grow and change.

MY WHAT A SURPRISE: TALKS BETWEEN ISRAEL AND PALESTINIANS END WITH NO BREAKTHROUGH

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

Breakthrough? Isn't that a rather delusional word to use in this context?

How do you get a breakthrough from a nasty bully who for some years has had everything going his way? Continued assassination, torture, abuse of millions, illegal blockade, and no one dares say a word.

What incentive can you possibly think of to push Israel towards fairness and decency? How else do you make a bully behave himself if you don't apply pressure?

Only the United States pushing hard to get results - as Obama started 3 years ago doing - would get even minimal results, but of course Obama was literally reviled and called hateful names in Israel so now he has joined the crowd of bought-and-paid for American politicians who dare not say one tough word about Israel.

We heard the quiet truth from Sarkozy and Obama at the press meeting a while back when a couple of honest exchanges were heard by reporters in error. It was almost the only truth we have had reported in years on this appalling situation.

Israel and its Lobby in the United States have created a virtual machine to stall all meaningful efforts and to create an endless, almost sickening round of absurd statements in the mouths of American politicians hoping to get elected.

Gingrich, Santorum, and Romney - to say nothing of the truly ignorant Bachmann - have all made ridiculous statements on Israel's behalf just for some campaign funds in Iowa. Where's Israel's incentive to compromise?

After the last Congressional elections in the United States, about 80 new Congressman were given deluxe trips to Israel where they are typically feted and fed the right words to use in future. To refuse such a "gift" is almost like signing your own political death warrant, so virtually all of them go.

What have the poor Palestinians to counter that kind of unbelievable influence peddling? Nothing but a just cause, and in the power structure in Washington, that counts little more than spit.

MICHAEL IGNATIEFF SAYS WE NEED A POLITICS OF FAIRNESS: DOES THE MAN RECOLLECT ONE DETAIL OF HIS OWN MISERABLE POLITICAL CAREER?

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

Mr Ignatieff, here's what I consider serious unfairness in our politics.

A few Liberal Party insiders go down to Harvard to lure a boring academic to return to Canada with the promise of likely leading the party about which he knew nothing.

The boring academic got parachuted into a riding about which he also knew nothing, and he refused to live in the riding, even though he once said that he would.

The boring academic made some speeches, in the course of pursuing the party's leadership, undeserving of it as he was, with thoughtless statements ready-made for exploitation later by Conservatives in attack ads.

The boring academic later, after the political demise of the politician who beat him out for the leadership, accepts being parachuted into the party's leadership without being tested by any meaningfully democratic process.

The boring academic proves a boring and genuinely inept political leader.

Every poll and gathering proves Liberals themselves do not like the boring academic, but he persists until he can lead the party to its degrading defeat.

And sure enough, the boring academic makes a dumb decision for an election which dooms Canadians to at least four years of Harper's slash and burn.

After quitting in a rush and accepting a sinecure at the University of Toronto, the boring academic manages to pound out a boring article every once in a while to be published in the Globe and Mail.

Sound familiar, Mr Ignatieff?

HARPER AS HOCKEY PRIME MINISTER?

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

Rubbish.

Cute kitties in his lap didn't work.

Neither did banging out pop songs on a piano.

So the dark bulk is trying to use hockey to make himself look human to Canadians.

But it won't work. This man is an obsessive creature endlessly seeking new avenues to exert his power.
Nothing else matters to such a man.

He reminds me, as a personality type, of Martin Bormann, the terrifying eminence grise of the Third Reich.