CHUCKMAN'S OTHER CHOICE OF WORDS

WAR ON TEROR NEEDS TO EXAMINE EVENTS IN YEMEN?

2009-11-11T07:52:00.000-08:00

RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY RICHARD SPENCER IN THE TELEGRAPH

Richard Spencer,

Anyone who uses seriously the phrase "war on terror" immediately loses my attention as being someone with little worth saying.

You cannot have a war on ideas or techniques.

But you can very much have a war on a group of people whose religion or politics you do not like.

If people like you spent your time combing through the local mutterings of politicians and others in various countries, you could make just as superficially extreme-sounding a case.

Every day in the backward parts of that vast sprawl called America, you can find the most appalling things being said by local political or religious leaders.

In the backwoods of India or Africa, some of the statements made and practices done daily would curl your hair.

And in Israel, orthodox rabbis regularly say and do the most horrific things by the standards of the 21st century.

BORIS JOHNSON'S SHABBY APPEAL OF NOT BETRAYING THE FALLEN IN AFGHANISTAN

2009-11-09T06:33:00.000-08:00

RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY BORIS JOHNSON IN THE TELEGRAPH

Boris Johnson, your speaking of "betrayal of the fallen" is simply the cheapest, shabbiest old politician’s trick there is in times of war.

No logic, no facts, only an appeal to misplaced emotions. Wrapping yourself with a bloody flag is not an argument: it is the kind of thing we expect from the likes of America’s Sarah Palin, an utterly uninformed airhead.

Just because a dishonest politician like Tony Blair commits people to their deaths in a pointless cause does not mean that the nation must continue in it after people have begun to understand what has been done to them.

Imagine applying Boris Johnson's non-thinking, emotion-laden principle to past wars. The evil Lyndon Johnson committed the United States to the most destructive and utterly pointless colonial war of the 20th century in Vietnam: his only real reason being fear that Nixon would “out-Commie” him in the next election. The United States would still be slaughtering people if governed by Johnson's principle.

Johnson's thinking reminds me of General Earl Haig, the incompetent, strutting commander who sent half a million men to their deaths in the summer of 1917, achieving nothing.

THE NEWS THAT ABBAS IS ABOUT TO STEP DOWN AS PALESTINIAN PRESIDENT

2009-11-07T15:20:00.001-08:00

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL
It cannot come too soon.

Abbas is a pathetic figure, representing a Palestinian version what in the United States used to be called a Step'n Fetchit, indeed there was a minor black comic actor who went by that name in early American films.

He has never served his people well, not through any bad intent on his part, but through a complete lack of the skills needed for his position.

It has at times been genuinely embarrassing watching him quietly swallow the garbage Israel regularly pitches in public, claiming it is working on the "peace process" while stealing more of other people's land almost daily.

But, of course, one must also take account of the long line of assassinations of Palestinian leaders by Israel, including quite likely Arafat, who was probably poisoned in the same secretive way as an early attempt on Sheikh Yassin before he was finally blown up in his wheelchair by a Hellfire missile.

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stpnlll,

I applaud your sentiments, but they are just that sentiments, and sentiments have no role in the ugly game of power politics being played by Israel.

Israel has made it abundantly clear that it will never accept this outcome. Many prominent Israelis are on record as saying not only is a one-state solution unacceptable but also a two-state solution whether federated or not.

The continuous march of settlements and slow-motion ethnic-cleansing taking place in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem is in keeping with long-held beliefs by Israeli leaders that all of the parts of Israel from 2,500 years ago must be Jewish, and that certainly includes the West Bank.

As long ago as the Camp David talks with President Carter, Begin, an old Irgun terrorist, kept telling Carter that Israel must have Judea and Sumaria, ancient names for areas where millions of Arabs live.

That idea is such a fixation for many Israelis that indeed there can never be meaningful peace without U.S. intercession against it.

And what are the prospects for that?

HILLARY CLINTON "CLARIFIES" HER COMMENTS ON ISRAEL'S SETTLEMENT - JUST ONE SAD PART OF OBAMA'S ALREADY-FAILED NEW MIDEAST POLICY

2009-11-04T06:05:00.000-08:00

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

Well, how nice to find Ms Clinton has caught up with the world's people.

Despite what their governments may say under various kinds of pressures, most people in the world know Israel's policy of settlements is not legitimate. Indeed, it is outright theft, besides breaking international agreements on occupations.

It is disheartening to see the way Obama - starting with a fresh mandate, a good mind, and the knowledge that there can be no peace without real pressure on Israel - has given in to the relentless efforts of the Israel Lobby.

There seems to be no hope for a rational and humane settlement. Israel just carries on with apartheid and a gradual, relentless ethnic-cleansing while it stands in contempt of dozens of UN resolutions, any one of which could have been used as a reason for UN military intervention.

And we are to simply pretend it is not happening and never criticize Israel for fear of being called anti-Semitic.

A true nightmare for human rights and freedom.

AFGANISTAN AND WHY CANADA IS THERE AND RICK HILLIER A NAIVE AND WHINING GENERAL

2009-11-04T06:01:00.000-08:00

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

I have heard Rick Hillier speak at some length recently on CBC Radio. Naturally, he is out promoting his book.

I thought he largely came off as a whiner, rather naïve about the realities of war and politics.

Hillier went into Afghanistan literally barking about doing some killing, arrogantly tossing aside Canada's sense of itself as a peaceful and peacekeeping place.

His words rankled many people, and naturally a control-freak like Harper put limits on Hillier's mouth.

I tend to agree with Chantal Hebert’s assessment that Hillier’s book, unintentionally on his part, will only contribute to Canada’s not continuing a military commitment in Afghanistan beyond its commitment.

The entire Afghanistan adventure is nothing more than a demonstration of America’s ability to behave much as it pleases in the world. In the aftermath of 9/11, it pulled out all the stops in finance and diplomacy to get UN and NATO recognition of what essentially was vengeance.

The invasion never made any sense, and after America’s superficial “victory,” it had no idea what to do, except to let its brutal special forces loose on villages all over Afghanistan. Its “victory” amounted to a pact with the devils of the Northern Alliance – monsters like the mass-murderer General Dostum being as bad or worse than the Taleban - and it achieved nothing but a great deal of killing and the dispersal of the Taleban.

No NATO country – especially powerful ones like France or Germany - has made a commitment of troops that is in keeping with America’s paranoid assessment of the world dangers of Afghanistan – that fact is telling beyond anything else.

Canadians should never forget that the only reason we sent troops to Afghanistan was a decision in Ottawa that “we owed one to the Pentagon” after having refused to participate in America’s missile shield and its even more disastrous and murderous adventure in Iraq.

ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF HOW NOT TO WRITE A BOOK REVIEW - THIS ONE BY CHARLES MOORE ON ANDREW MARR

2009-11-03T12:02:00.000-08:00

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY CHARLES MOORE IN THE TELEGRAPH

This is a truly silly review which fails on its own terms.

I haven't read the book, but nothing said here confirms the title of the review.

Indeed, Charles Moore, through his use of parentheses after quotes or assertions only indulges in exactly what he accuses the author of.

If you have a critical point to make you do not need a nudge-nudge, wink, wink.

Histories, even great histories, are full of judgments.

Just read Churchill or Gibbon or Tacitus.

It is always the responsibility of critical readers to examine several books on a subject of interest to get a feel for the variation in assessment of a period or individual.

Just as witnesses at a trial can each give different accounts of something they actually saw, so it is most certainly with history or biography. The “truth” is only ever vaguely indicated in a cloud of doubts and differing assessments, much the way, at the sub-atomic level, the Uncertainty Principle makes it impossible to define at once all the variables of a particle.

I should have thought that fact elementary for anyone claiming to have such a grasp of history that he can call an author “ignorant.”

AFGHANISTAN'S KARZAI DECLARED WINNER OF ELECTION - NOW THERE'S A CAUSE TO FIGHT FOR

2009-11-02T07:40:00.000-08:00

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

A declared election winner, no less.

And after all that ballot-box stuffing.

Now there's the kind of democracy heroic young people are ready to die for.

I guess Americans have taught the Afghans this much: how to run an election Florida-style.

THE LIMITS TO THE USE OF HARD POWER - OR ANOTHER ACADEMIC WRITES WITHOUT THINKING USING LANGUAGE FROM THE BANALITY OF EVIL

2009-11-02T07:36:00.000-08:00

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

Sorry, Gordon Gibson, as soon as a writer uses a term like "hard power," I stop reading, knowing full well he has nothing to say.

The phrase is the creation of Pentagon consultants on expense-account lunches.

Bullying and ruthless violence - a million dead in Iraq, two million displaced - may not be summed up as "hard power" except by a person who is not thinking about what he is writing.

PETER MACKAY, RIGHT DISHONORABLE GENTLEMAN, TO WED CTV EXECUTIVE

2009-11-02T07:34:00.000-08:00

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

And if she leaves him, will he call her a dog in public?

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_NtgXlrcvXZA/SrkrN_v2mPI/AAAAAAAAg9M/O8PVQZtwrFM/s1600-h/CHUCKMAN+-+MACKAY+-+PIG+-+DISHONOURABLE+GENTLEMAN.jpg

MORE SILLINESS ABOUT THE PRESS NOT LIKING IGNATIEFF BECAUSE HE IS AN AUTHOR - GOD, DO PEOPLE LIKE THIS HAVE EYES AND EARS?

2009-11-02T07:29:00.000-08:00

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

"I think the media hate Ignatieff because he is a successful author."

That kind of comment indeed confirms Churchill's sarcastic view on the average voter in a democracy.

Oh, please, it has nothing to do with books.

Ignatieff has simply proven a dreary public persona. Anyone with ears and eyes understands that.

He has no charm and sparkle like Chretien.

He has no piercing intelligence and commanding presence like Trudeau.

He has no sense of being a man of the people, a la Pearson.

He is almost totally unsuited to the job he has taken on, and it has nothing to do with this or that member of his staff.

The sooner he steps down - from a job he did not even get democratically - the better off our country will be.

We need an admirable, sparkling leader to stop that creature Harper, that walking assemblage of pieces of corpses, who is wrecking much of what most Canadians hold dear.

Ignatieff's little political career by appointment is nothing more a continuation of the disastrous split in the Liberal Party when Martin pushed out Chretien.

If Harper gets a majority, we are all going to be very sorry.

The ghastly crew of creatures who are Harper's loyal legion - ever see Tom Flanagan's picture? Unsmiling tight thin lips, he could have a career doing roles like Silas Marner or a remake of the Night of the Living Dead - are just getting going in anticipation of Harper's being able to sweep away everything they hate.

RICK SALUTIN ADDRESSES CBC'S DUMB NEW APPROACH TO THE NEWS

2009-11-02T07:26:00.000-08:00

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY RICK SALUTIN IN TORPONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

Thank you, Rick Salutin, I agree with your sentiments, except that I would use stronger language.

CBC is simply being dumbed-down everywhere. I very much fear that it will, before long, reach the point of no longer being worthy of public support as a true quality national broadcaster.

Perhaps the worst example is the lukewarm-dull Jian Ghomeshi, a man who is basically a pop recording promoter with nothing interesting to say – Dick Clark forty years later - taking up the venerable morning slot of Radio One. Simply ghastly for those who appreciate intelligent talk

Hip-hop – the ultimate dumbed-down music, and not infrequently a form of genuine hate-speech or insipid anti-hate, is now pushed on almost every show.

I spent one half-hour with the new Evan Soloman political show, replacing Don Newman’s outstanding Politics. It is a disaster of quick takes and flashing signs, resembling one of the crasser sites on the Internet.

My wife and I absolutely hate it. Don Newman brought a subtle, penetrating intelligence to quality interviews with national figures, and he had people capable of replacing him, notably the astute Susan Bonner, but, no, this pop guy was slammed in ahead of them with a goofy Sesame Street format.

Perhaps the most depressing thing about CBC Radio – always in the past a beacon of excellence not equaled by the television network – is the now generally low quality of the news broadcasts.

First, it often presents stories as brief headlines which immediately raise more questions than they answer. You just have to say to yourself, is there no editor thinking about what’s being said?

Second, it is just unblinkingly stupid about matters like illness, spreading foolishness and fears instead of hard facts. During SARS – a disease that killed 44 people when ordinary flu and pneumonia kill thousands every year – the network was turned into a morning-to-night source of poor information, containing no perspective.

Later, all we heard about was bird flu, despite the fact that bird flu never became a serious threat.

Now, it’s H1N1 morning until night, almost never with anything new or truly helpful being said.

The only exception I’ve heard was on The Current with the superb Anna Maria Tremonti in a piece where we learned of important research showing that it is likely opportunistic bacterial infections on top of H1N1 causing deaths, not just the flu virus.

I actually hear ungrammatical language at times on morning news casts out of Toronto, language which would never have been tolerated in the past.

CBC Radio still has some genuine treasures: Eleanor Wachtel, Kathleen Petty, Bob McDonald, Bernard St. Laurent, Bill Richardson, Michael Enright, Rick Mercer, and others, but what is notable about the list is the average advanced age. What happens when they retire? More (ugh!) Ghomeshi and (yuck!) Soloman and (gasp!) Stroumboulopoulos.

There will then be absolutely no reason for a “national broadcaster.”

_____________________

Radio 2 has a case of the same chronic acne afflicting Radio 1.

There are some exceptions, but the disease has ravaged a fair portion of the network's public face.

I just do not understand why the public broadcaster has to ape the worst of commercial broadcasting.

The whole point of a public broadcaster is to offer thoughtful talk and excellent music not found other places.

It is just a fact that such broadcasts will never be wildly popular, but they are there for anyone to turn to.

Becoming pop and dumb is like turning the opera into just one more rock band. There's no point.

AFGHANISTAN OBAMA AND DITHERING - THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX ON THE BACK OF A DECENT MAN

2009-10-27T08:56:00.000-07:00

POSTED RESPONSE TO COLUMN IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

I believe Obama is dithering, although their may be some truth to the idea of putting pressure on the Mayor of Kabul.

There is a basic conflict at work here: Obama's decency and humanity versus an American establishment which never hesitates to kill people over pride.

Obama has the weight of the entire military-industrial complex on his back - the half trillion dollar a year industry of professional war-making in the Pentagon, the vast parade of defense contractors who've made countless billions from the war - plus the pressure of the Israel Lobby, always in favor of war against Muslims with talk about being soft on terror.

This mission is pointless. You cannot remake the institutions and customs of a nation of about 30 million in a few years.

Imagine invading seventeenth century Spain and telling people that the Holy Inquisition must end, nuns must give up the habit, Moors and Jews must be admitted as full members of society, and women must have equal rights?

Yet that is a close parallel to what the U.S. at least claims it is doing in Afghanistan.

Americans have failed in Iraq and they failed in Afghanistan, just as they failed in Vietnam and Somalia and a number of other places.

You can't bomb people into democracy or into modernity, but you sure can kill lots of innocent people.

America's only clear-cut victory goes back to WWII and that required sinking to complete barbarism, using the atomic bomb on civilians.

The basic problem is that ideologue Americans seek the wrong victories.

They are always fighting imagined devils, whether communists or Muslims, instead of dealing in practical terms with the world. And the truth is they don't really want to fight if it means they suffer real losses. So they bomb. This is a formula for guaranteed failure.

Dropping dollar bills instead of bombs would have been a more sensible policy.

Just dumb.

Now America's Captain Ahabs risk repeating their insane experience of the killing fields of Cambodia, a neutral country that was secretly bombed and invaded for the same lunatic reasons that Pakistan is now being bombed and driven to kill its own people. With the toppling of a neutral government, Cambodia dropped into the hands of true madmen, and America shares full responsibility for what happened.

But the lessons are never learned by America's jingo set.

There's always a new dawn for these ideologues when enough bombing and brutality will get the desired results, even if the poor country on the receiving end is reduced to rubble.

The great irony is, of course, the Taleban never had to America's enemies. They were not international terrorists, and they attacked no one outside their land. They offered to extradite bin Laden and others if the U.S. just provided some evidence for its claims over 9/11, the normal procedure for extraditions everywhere.

But the U.S. just angrily refused, and it prepared to attack.

The assault on Afghanistan was about absolutely nothing but vengeance. The participation of the UN and NATO was just a diplomatic nicety arranged through the cajoling and threats behind the scenes.

What NATO countries really think of Afghanistan is clear from their response to repeated calls from the U.S. for more forces. The psychology of immediately post-9/11 had been right for governments not to refuse, something they did do a little later with the vast war crime of invading Iraq.

They simply do not regard Afghanistan as a serious threat, and it is not.

But the U.S. is stuck there after getting vengeance - at least 50,000 died just in Kabul from America's invasion - with no idea of what to do next, and no idea of how to make a graceful exit, and the American establishment's idea of a graceful exit is what was done to Japan.
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Some interesting statistics on Afghanistan were released the other day.

From one Afghanistan's own ministries, it was announced that 12 million people, including 3 million children, out of a total population of 30 million, live in serious poverty. so much so that many of the children are malnourished.

My, what an achievement, America, after 8 years of invasion and occupation and tens and tens of billions spent on killing and destruction.

LEONARD SAX AND MORE ON SEGREGATED EDUCATION AND THE ENTIRE MISDIRECTION OF "PROFESSIONAL EDUCATORS"

2009-10-23T09:00:00.000-07:00

RESPONSE TO A CBC RADIO ONE PROGRAM ON THE CURRENT

Your guest, Leonard Sax, only proved how little genuine scholarship and hard thinking often go into discussions of education.

First he told us of research showing the differences in brain development between boys and girls at a young age – actually pretty fatuous research since the difference is a practical reality that any person of moderate observational powers, having passed through public education at any time over the last century or so, took for granted.

When your interviewer remarked that such research would seem to say that segregated classes might then be necessary in general, we got a cotton-mouth response typical of the education establishment, “No, I wouldn’t go that far in making a generalization.”

Of course, the sad truth is much of what passes for scholarship in education is extremely feeble stuff.

I remember when I was an undergraduate at the University of Toronto reading announcements of PhD theses at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. There was always some genuinely comical stuff, virtual parodies of serious scholarship, Monty Python does educational research. Many professors then at U of T actually objected to the University’s granting degrees for OISE because of its poor standards of scholarship.

And I’m afraid this is a general condition. Even at a world-class institution like Harvard, a prominent member of the education faculty expounds a notion of multiple intelligences, a notion having absolutely no science to it. Many public schools in the U.S. actually have posters in classrooms proclaiming the notion of multiple intelligences as though it were education’s equivalent to Maxwell’s Laws on Electromagnetism.

Of course, for years, education faculties quoted the University of Chicago’s Bruno Bettelheim as though he were an authority - that is, until we discovered the famous child psychologist was a fraud and an abuser of children.

There are endless examples of this sort of thing in education, all tending to point to the fundamental truth that teaching is neither a profession, in the sense that there is a basic body of knowledge and standards, nor a science. It is a skill, and the way to hone a skill is to get on with it, not to talk about it.

Ontario’s public education establishment has done nothing but flip-flop decade after decade, going from one half-considered notion to another.

First, tests were important, then they were not so important. First, plenty of homework was vital, then it was not so vital. First, there was zero tolerance for violence, then not really. First, report cards were important means of summing progress, then they were reduced to bland phrases from a computer. First, failure was an important tool, then everyone passed. First, teachers were authority figures, then they were mere facilitators. One could actually write an embarrassingly long list of such complete nonsense.

Any other institution which behaved in such a wildly erratic manner would become the butt of jokes and would fail utterly.

The only difference for our schools is that no one is allowed to say they are failing, but they are, because Canadians are not genuinely competitive in international comparisons, and, in a globilized world, there really is only a world standard for our children’s future opportunities.

One suspects that all this meaningless arm-flapping represents an ongoing effort by “professional educators” to avoid true responsibilities and the hard realities of education, regularly announcing a new notion as a solution, much like still another new elixir from yet another quick-money quack rolling his travelling road show into town.

Fill the classrooms with competent teachers – there are many, but there are also many incompetents protected by their union.

Give them a reasonable curriculum – the current one in Ontario is also right out of Monty Python - and the resources they require, especially libraries and computers.

Then give them the authority they need – authority against the many politically-correct principals and, importantly, against whining, overly-interfering parents.

Stream kids according to their proven abilities, kids having no talent for academics only clog the classrooms and themselves miss alternate forms of education – e.g., shop - that might excite them and give them something of value for their futures.

Open teaching up to all talented and interested people – retired professionals, artists, musicians, businessmen, and others wishing to teach full or part-time – without the need for that most discreditable of all academic documents, a degree from an education faculty which is a guarantees of no hard knowledge or skill or even affection for teaching kids.

Those and a small number of other measures would increase the effectiveness of our schools immensely. As trite as it sounds, we really do need to emphasize basics.

THE TORONTO SCHOOL BOARD'S CHRIS SPENCE PROPOSES AN ALL-BOY SCHOOL

2009-10-21T07:14:00.000-07:00

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

Sorry, but this is a hopeless, go-nowhere idea.

First, Chris Spence, who is a very pleasant man but a truly ineffectual executive, displayed his obsession with boys' performance - there's no other word for it than an obsession - for all his years in Hamilton, where his genuine academic achievements were almost non-existent.

Second, every failed school in Chicago – where I grew up and attended a variety of terrible and excellent schools depending on the neighborhood we lived in - was long ago renamed an “academy.” It's a meaningless gesture, and the schools that were failing are still failing.

Third, this amounts to a back-door approach to the even more meaningless afro-centric school idea. To a great extent, the boys with which this is a concern - that is those dropping out in large numbers - are black Canadians. Something more than a form of segregation is required.

The real problems of these boys could be handled in the existing system, were the School Board to show any genuine thinking or imagination.

Serious research shows that putting failing boys on a treadmill for a vigorous effort in the morning yields maybe three hours of much improved docility and learning. Hyper-active black American boys who could not read actually were able to learn to read doing this.

Something along these lines is one of the real solutions to the problems of failing boys.

Another approach to the same problem would be a soccer league that would see boys spending a little time every morning in a demanding practice.

These approaches must of course also be combined with efficient teaching, using only teachers who have some insight into these problems. A good many of our existing teachers simply would not qualify.

AMERICAN FALLACIES IN AFGHANISTAN

2009-10-21T07:11:00.000-07:00

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JOHANN HARI IN THE INDEPENDENT

Thank you, Johann Hari has told the truth succinctly and accurately.

Of course, the Taleban - never the same thing as al Qaeda, but constantly blurred together in American popular media and by dumb national politicians like John McCain - never attacked anyone.

9/11 was the work of Saudis, and the dead perpetrators were virtually all in the United States on valid visas, almost unquestionably part of a secret CIA training program which backfired. There was an American diplomat at the time who raised the issue of great pressure from the CIA for certain embassies abroad to issue visas expeditiously.

The Taleban never had to be an American enemy. They were even willing to extradite those guilty for 9/11, provided that the U.S. offered some evidence for its extradition request, a normal procedure everywhere in the world, but one with which the United States angrily refused to comply.

The United States invaded for vengeance and no other reason, and it got plenty of it with about 50,000 killed just in Kabul.

From the beginning, the United States used propaganda about things like women’s rights to justify its extreme violence, the best propaganda always being based on truth.

The United States only quickly succeeded in its “victory” by using the brutes of the Northern Alliance on the ground fronted by the same kind of carpet bombing it so loved in Vietnam.

It worked, at least dispersing the Taleban, if not producing a genuine victory.

And who were these fine allies in the Northern Alliance?

Brutes like Genreral Dostum, a torturer and mass murderer absolutely. It was likely his troops, under American auspices, who conducted the atrocity of killing 3,000 Taleban prisoners in the early days.

They were put into sealed vans, driven out onto the desert to be suffocated (a la early Nazi experiments with mass killings), then dumped in mass graves – all done while American soldiers watched.

Today, after all those years of occupation and brutal American tactics, outside Kabul virtually all women still wear the burka, and even in Kabul, an estimated half of women wear it.

America’s Potemkin village schools in the countryside for girls are often closed as soon as their photo-op opening is over. The government is unable to fund the schools and pay the teachers, and the local warlords do not want them anymore than the Taleban does.

Imagine going to seventeenth century Spain and trying to force Catholics to give up all their bizarre practices from self-flagellation to nuns’ cumbersome habits or The Inquisition? Ridiculous, of course, but that truly is a parallel for what the U.S. claims it’s doing in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is simply not a country as we are used to thinking of countries. It is collection of tribes living hard-scrabble lives in mountains and deserts, and it is demarcated by arbitrary and historically-meaningless boundaries vis-à-vis Pakistan.

Many people understood the invasion was a mistake before it happened, but the vicious idiots then running the United States ignored them.

The United States spent ten years in Vietnam, killing an estimated 3 million people with their barbaric tactics and throwing Cambodia into instability and “the killing fields” to achieve absolutely nothing.

And that precisely – albeit with a smaller pile of bodies – is America’s achievement to date in Afghanistan.

And note that it is well on its way to de-stabilizing Pakistan with its killer-drones and demands that Pakistan attack its own people, just as it once did Cambodia, and for the same sorry excuse that there occupation troops are affected by activities in the other county.

The real answer is, of course, to swallow its pride and get out.

Note that I only refer to America, and not to NATO or the UN. That is because in the early days after 9/11, the U.S. was able to brow-beat or cajole the appearance of international support for this violent folly. Its influence in these international bodies, heavily financed by the U.S., is great, and it often uses them to cover its unilateral desires.

The reality is that no NATO nation believes that Afghanistan is a genuine threat: we know this from their pitifully small commitments there. Only Captain Ahab America sees Afghanistan as the great white whale that must be killed.

AFGHANISTAN AND REFLECTIONS ON A PBS FRONTLINE DOCUMENTARY

2009-10-16T12:21:00.000-07:00

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

I stopped watching Frontline years ago.

There were too many tame programs with no real analysis, the documentary content-equivalent of PBS’s nature specials, as that on apes narrated by Charlie Sheen.

And, several times, more hard-hitting items were removed from their schedule. Shameful.

Since the rise of Newt Gingrich, PBS executives started wetting their pants and reducing the network to fluff. Their anchor news show, the News Hour, was reduced to arguments between political party chairmen saying nothing and tame news coverage.

However the scene you describe, Clive, is strong stuff, and should tell Americans something, but there are none so blind….

Of course, there is the reason why there can be no victory in Afghanistan.

I'm not even sure what the Military-Industrial bureaucrats mean by "victory." Afghanistan reduced to an Illinois suburb with shopping centers and SUVs in the driveways of homes?

The U.S. went there for vengeance, and that is what it got. It killed tens of thousands, including an estimated 50,000 just in Kabul.

It did this with horrible weapons and carpet bombing, and to minimize American casualties on the ground, it let the nasty people in the Northern Alliance do most of the legwork. It also participated in horrible war crimes against Taleban prisoners, as the 3,000 who disappeared, buried in the desert after having been suffocated in vans, a la early Nazi experiments with mass killings.

Once the U.S. had a technical victory - actually nothing but dispersing the Taleban to the hills - it did not know what to do, and it still does not.

Its troops have used brutal techniques - never likely to be shown on Frontline or any other American television. Years of special forces thugs going from village to village, knocking down doors, holding guns on families, and taking away men from households.

And every time it calls an air strike, civilians die.

Now it is spreading its horror into Pakistan, having quietly intimidated the Pakistan government into cooperating in matters that are not really their interests.

I, of course, recall that wonderful achievement of America's during its pointless holocaust in Vietnam of de-stabilizing the neutral government of Cambodia and helping pave the way for the "killing fields" which it did absolutely nothing to stop.

Indeed, when the brave Vietnamese went in and stopped the horror, American bureaucrats stood, arms folded, saying I told you so, it's the domino theory at work.

Colonial wars are not legitimate "policy" in the 21st century, and, as good students of history know, wars generally solve nothing.

The great irony is that the Taleban never attacked anyone, had nothing to do with 9/11, yet the U.S. has made them into an enemy.

They are, of course, a major part of the population of Afghanistan, an absurdly poor and backward place, while the U.S. military with all their shiny G.I Joe equipment are occupiers. No one likes occupiers ever, except those who profit by trading with them, as the prostitutes of Paris in 1941.

Afghanistan is a hopeless disaster of America’s own making, and the soldier you describe, Clive, is a perfect symbol of the hopelessness of the entire crusade.

TOM FLANAGAN BLUBBERS ABOUT THE BLOOM BEING OFF ALBERTA'S GOVERNMENT OWING TO THE WILD ROSE PARTY'S RISE

2009-10-16T12:18:00.000-07:00

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY TOM FLANAGAN IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL
Bloom?

Ed Stelmach?

Flanagan's use of language is just as poor as the rest of his thinking.

This is another piece of poor analysis, calling into question both the basis on which Canadian university tenure is granted and the Globe's judgment in publishing academic commentary.

Alberta, in fact, is experiencing two powerful things.

One, Alberta is adjusting to the painful reality of its economic balloon having been pricked, and with that pricking went a lot of pretensions to greatness we heard and read about when oil was $140 a barrel.

Two, Alberta has always been a place of American settlement. A great portion of the early farmers were Americans moving over the border for Crown Land grants.

That process has only continued. The giant capital-intensive projects of the oilsands have brought a steady stream of American money and American executives from ultra-conservative places like Oklahoma and Texas.

This process is helped by having Harper in Ottawa, a politician who makes no effort to diversify investment in Alberta, Indeed, Harper has tried to restrict diversification of investment by countries like China.

Harper has also contributed to a lack of diversifying markets for Alberta hydrocarbons.

The results are what we see: a large faction for which it is almost impossible to be too conservative.

NATO AND AFGHANISTAN - MORE UNINFORMED COMMENTARY BY LEWIS MACKENZIE - COMMENT ON A COMMENT

2009-10-16T12:15:00.000-07:00

POSTED RESPONSE ON A COLUMN BY LEWIS MACKENZIE IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

"NATO's purpose, now long vanished into history, had been to exist as a counter to the WARSAW pact and the threat of Soviet hegemony.

But now the Soviet Union and the WARSAW are gone - and so should NATO have disappeared"

Absolutely.

But NATO has another important purpose, and it is this other purpose that keeps it going.

The U.S. uses NATO as a kind of theatrical costume for events like Afghanistan. Instead of the world's seeing America acting as lone bomb-dropping lawgiver to the world, it sees the somewhat more benign face of NATO, benign only because the organization carries the suggestion of plausibility with a number of nations agreeing on some objective.

The reality is, of course, America’s NATO allies do not genuinely regard Afghanistan as a serious threat: their relatively small commitments and refusal to expand them effectively are screaming this truth at us.

NATO is also used by American policy to keep Europe from becoming a genuine competitor on the world stage, a role Europe’s economy, the largest in the world, fully justifies.

American policy uses all kinds of subterfuges towards this goal, as for example keeping alive the many decades out-of-date conception of “a special relationship” with Britain, a game, appealing to the feelings of a declined imperial power, which keeps Britain from fully integrating into the Europe which is clearly its destiny.

As for MacKenzie’s silly way of talking about the Taleban, let’s remember they are a major part of the population, not some foreign invader like the United States. And they never attacked anyone in the past. American policies have made them an enemy. Just as American policies are driving Pakistan towards disaster.

Remember what America achieved in Cambodia during its holocaust in Vietnam.

ON OBAMA'S NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

2009-10-12T12:00:00.000-07:00

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

It’s not been a pretty history for the Peace Prize.

At least, Obama gave the world something to celebrate and have some hope about.

Does anyone remember that he replaced the most ignorant and vicious man ever to hold the office? The world was morally exhausted after eight years of that cretin.

A man who killed maybe a million people?

The Peace Prize in general has an odd history and is surely the most ambiguous and inconsistent of prizes.

I think Al Gore’s prize was more than a little odd.

Well, then there’s the just plain shameful horrors of the prize.

Henry Kissinger, certified war criminal?

Menachim Begin, old Irgun terrorist?

Shimon Peres, political father of Israel’s nuclear weapons?

Theodore Roosevelt, imperialist extraordinary?

A few awards in recent decades meant something for sure, as that to Doctors without Borders or that to Jimmy Carter.

But, in general, it’s not a proud history.

THE IDEA THAT THERE MIGHT WELL BE MORE THAN TEN COMMANDMENTS OWING TO PUNCTUATION

2009-10-12T11:57:00.000-07:00

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

Maybe Moses just couldn't make up his mind how many commandments to chip into the stone?

This is right in line with all the folly and the absurdity of that Book.

Indeed, what do we even mean by "that book"?

The Old Testament? The first five books of the Old Testament? The New Testament? The Apocrypha? The Dead Sea Scrolls?

And which translation? Which revision?

As Mark Twain so aptly said:

"It [the Bible] is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies."

ROMAN POLANSKI AND THE DANGEROUS CLAIM THAT ARTISTIC STATUS GRANTS ALLOWANCE FOR VIOLENT CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR

2009-09-30T06:25:00.000-07:00

RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE TELEGRAPH

Polanski, of course, did not only have sex with a 13-year old girl, what Americans call “statutory rape.”

His lawyers at the time managed to cop a plea for that much lesser charge (plea bargains are an everyday ugly fact of American "justice"), and, still, he ran from justice.

Polanski is a real coward as well as a serious criminal.

A man who drugs a 13-year old girl and rapes her - sodomizing her - clearly deserves jail.

There always was a very dark side to Polanski, perhaps best exhibited in his early film “Repulsion.”

France's long protection of him from justice has likely hurt a number of people over the years. Violent pedophiles are never reformed. It's in the genes.

I have been an admirer of Polanski's work, but the claim that being a creative figure exempts you from punishment for ugly deeds is an extremely dangerous one.

You can be a creative force and a criminal, and Polanski is a perfect example of the fact.

MORE ON IRAN'S SECOND NUCLEAR ENRICHMENT PLANT - IRAN AGREES TO INSPECTION

2009-09-27T08:59:00.000-07:00

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

The real question for the world is: when is Israel going to allow inspection of its Dimona nuclear facility?

The answer is, of course, never.

Dimona is a working factory for the production of nuclear weapons components.

Israel doesn't just have a vague possibility of making nuclear weapons - the charge against Iran - Israel makes and deploys them.

And - unlike Iran which has attacked no one in its entire modern history - Israel has proved to the world, over and over, it is ready to use brutal force whenever it chooses.

It did so twice in Lebanon. It has done so many times in Gaza. It has done so in the West Bank. And it engineered the Six Day War so that it could seize the land of the people it still holds in subjugation more than forty years later.

It deliberately attacked the USS Liberty, an American intelligence ship, in an effort to pull the U.S. into its war. It was a bloody business lasting two hours against a well-marked ship.

Or was that attack - never explained properly - to cover up the war crimes Israel was carrying out in the Sinai, where it is known to have executed hundreds of Egyptian prisoners who had surrendered?

Please, just who is the greater threat to world peace?

______________________

"I have heard no credible argument that a Japanese surrender would have resulted from anything other than a full-scale, D-Day style invasion against the Islands."

Sorry, this is just ignorant.

The evidence is there for anyone who reads.

The Japanese made a number of backchannel offers of surrender. They had only one proviso of importance, that they be allowed to keep their emperor.

The U.S. just ignored them. It insisted on absolute, unconditional surrender.

So, the U.S. obliterated two non-military target cities, than took the Japanese surrender and allowed the Japanese to keep their emperor.

And, in doing that, it set a terrible example for all time.

All that horror and destruction was for nothing.

It represented the same poor judgment and ugly Puritan attitudes we saw in Vietnam, Iraq, and still see in Afghanistan. We want it our way, or we will obliterate you.

The use of the atomic bombs on Japan also deliberately considered, in the highest councils of the American government, the strategic value of setting a terrible marker against Stalin.

The story of the losses owing to land invasion was just that, a story, planted in a deliberate propaganda effort to white-wash one of the 20th century’s most criminal acts.

Of course, soldiers would have died, but the story leaves out the fact that an invasion was completely unnecessary to get a surrender.

It was all an inexcusable horror, and the United States has no business telling anyone what it may or may not do. It is simply playing God.

____________________

"Our gratitude goes out to John Chuckman for the unrequested, off-topic history lesson on the Japanese surrender and yet another expected anti-Israel rant - neither of which has anything to do with the subject."

Sorry, Mr Foonman, that too is just ignorant. You have only to scroll through the posts to see reference to America's use of atomic weapons.

It used them twice, both times on civilians.

So how in God's name do they have the moral authority to demand Iran behave in this or that way?

Plus, of course, they've just killed a million people in Iraq - a next-door neighbor to Iran - in a completely illegal invasion.

Where is their moral authority on such issues?

They have none.

And as far as "rants" about Israel and "anti-Israel" statements, perhaps those are the words you like to use to demonize those with whom you disagree.

It is, after all, a favorite tactic of Israel's apologists to call everyone who doesn't agree with them names.

All I've done is set out some raw facts.

How can anyone who is rational and not a pathetic propagandist claim that Israel's illegal nuclear weapons have nothing to do with this issue?

Iran is virtually surrounded by nuclear powers, two of which have very belligerent records of behavior.

Doe it not have the right to look after its defense?

THE ANNOUNCEMENT THAT IRAN HAS A SECOND NUCLEAR ENRICHMENT PLANT: SO WHAT?

2009-09-25T07:24:00.000-07:00

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE GLOBE AND MAIL

Even if Iran were working towards a weapon - something that is not at all clear - why would that be so terrible?

Israel has had a nuclear weapons program since about the 1960s.

That program is totally illegal and has always been hidden. Only gradually, with bits and pieces of information, do we understand the Israeli program.

Israel has abused its nuclear weapons status in several ways over the years.

It has frequently threatened its neighbors, using its weapons to intimidate virtually the entire Middle East. For example it has fitted its small fleet of German Diesel-powered submarines with American Harpoon missiles adapted to carry a nuclear warhead.

Israel participated in proliferation, a case as bad as anything done by Pakistan’s renegade scientist, in its strategic agreements with former apartheid South Africa, which briefly became a nuclear power thanks to Israel.

Israel has used secrets around nuclear weapons, stolen by spies from the United States, to trade with places like the former Soviet Union. That’s why Jonathon Pollard likely will die in prison, the American intelligence and military establishment considering him the worst spy in American history.

Israel has initiated wars and conflicts with every neighbor that it has.

Iran’s entire modern history is peaceful. It was forced to fight a bloody war with Saddam Hussein who was helped by the United States – and possibly secretly Israel - in that terrible war.

Iran is surrounded by nuclear powers, including of course America’s occupation of Iraq after killing a million people there.

Europe grew for decades under MAD, and today represents a great and thriving set of societies.

A form of MAD in the Middle East would also help peace.

I see only two likely scenarios for Israel ever to agree to what the rest of the world calls peace, to stop attacking everyone, to cease its apartheid, and to treat its neighbors with respect.

One is for the United States to stop subsidizing Israel and make some demands. This is a virtually fantasy scenario. Israel’s carefully-groomed influence in Congress makes it impossible.

The other scenario is for Israel to have a competitor that reduces its ability to behave the high-handed bully that it now is. A large state like Iran having nuclear weapons could have just that effect. MAD in the Middle East would be beneficial, not harmful – at least from the viewpoint of anyone other than Israeli Imperialists and their supporters.

And with all the noisy propaganda we read and hear around Iran's extremists (this is actually if anything a very conservative government) everyone should remember that the only country ever to use nuclear weapons was the one represented by Obama, using them twice, both times on civilians.

HARPER'S IDEALOGUES GET UP AND LEAVE WHEN AHMEDINEJAD SPEAKS AT THE UNITED NATIONS

2009-09-24T06:08:00.000-07:00

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

George Bush was allowed to speak.

He killed a million people in Iraq and made refugees of another two million.

Ahmadinejad has killed no one.

Bush killed many tens of thousands in Afghanistan - at least 50,000 just in Kabul.

Ahmadinejad has killed no one.

Israel just killed 1400 people in Gaza and still keeps them penned up like animals.

Ahmadinejad killed no one.

Israel killed 1400 people in Lebanon, including a Canadian officer doing his duty.

Ahmadinejad killed no one.

Israel steals more homes and land and water every day in the West Bank.

Ahmadinejad has stolen nothing.

I do think it fair to ask whether we indeed live in a rational world or one governed by mindless ideologues like Harper?

The game that is being played here with the “agree” and “disagree” buttons couldn’t tell us more clearly.

A gang of mindless supporters of Israel’s every bloody excess works the buttons to create large and meaningless numbers.

And just so with the general behavior of Israel and her mindless supporters like Harper. The tide of world opinion is so clearly against them and growing more so in the face of so much injustice and brutality, yet they insist on shouting against the wind.

As the CIA has reported, Israel has maybe another 20 years before its own contradictions collapse it.

PROPAGANDA POSING AS ANALYSIS - THE CASE OF TOM FLANAGAN AND GENOCIDE

2009-09-22T06:30:00.000-07:00

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

When I read this piece by Tom Flanagan, I can only wonder at the basis of tenure in our universities, for, truly, here are bits of weak observation, clichés, and half-truths pasted together and offered as analysis. Worse, there is a thread of partisan propaganda holding the bits together like a string of beads.

“Harper announced that his Conservative government would adhere to the national interest in formulating Canada's foreign policy…”

I am sorry, but anyone who genuinely understands history and foreign affairs knows that that has, everywhere and always, been the basis of foreign policy. To say anything else is a declaration of just plain ignorance.

Genuine national interests do change over time – after all, your interests are different when you are exporting, say, fighter planes than when you are exporting wheat. But also, and very importantly, yet something Flanagan conveniently leaves out, people’s and government’s perceptions of what are the national interests change, often for no more reason than political ideology.

The authors of the report Flanagan pretends to analyze are “not mushy-headed idealists obsessed with soft power…” so they deserve some attention. Is it usual for a professor intending to be taken seriously in what follows to use the kind of pejorative language and straw-man argument we’d get from Rush Limbaugh?

Yes, if you are a neo-con propagandist.

“These people deserve out attention when they talk about genocide.”
Good God, “genocide” is one of the most over-worked words in our contemporary language, and, far more importantly, concern about it is always used by people like Mr. Flanagan as a tool for other purposes. This is no small point.

No power or great power ever goes to war over perceived genocide.

Most importantly, has the US, a Frankenstein of military power if ever there was one, ever opposed genocide, other than in words? It is the US which holds political and economic sway over international agencies like the UN, and it is the US which has the military power to do something.

We have had several authentic genocides in the modern period.

We had a genocide in Rwanda (around a million killed). The US simply refused to use the word internally so that they could ignore it.

We had a genocide in Cambodia (over a million killed), caused by America's de-stabilizing of the once peaceful country with its bombing and secret invasion. When tough little Viet Nam went in to do something, the US stood back and said, 'See, we told you, the domino theory at work!'

We had a genocide in Indonesia with the fall of Sukarno. Five hundred-thousand people, vaguely identified as communists, had their throats cut and their bodies dumped into rivers.

Not only did the US not react, there were officials at state department phones late into the night transmitting names of candidates.

I would argue, too, that America's slaughter in Vietnam was a genuine genocide. About three million were killed, mostly civilians, for no reason other than embracing the wrong economic system.

Many aspects of Bush’s “war on terror” have assumed aspects of genocide. Ever heard of the three thousand prisoners in U.S. care who were driven out to the desert in sealed vans to suffocate by General Dostum’s men while American soldiers watched, picking their noses? This came after Secretary Rumsfeld publicly declared Taleban prisoners should be killed or walled-away for life.

'Never again' is a slogan - we've proved that - and, like all slogans, it is selectively applied to sell something, just as Flanagan does here.

Great standing armies have virtually no record of doing worthy things.

They do, very much, have a record of fighting pointless wars, intervening where they do not belong, and even intimidating or overthrowing governments.

Flanagan’s “beyond our power to fulfill” is nothing but a plea for more militarism and closer association with a United States which has overthrown governments in Iran, Guatemala, Chile, and a dozen other places as well as killing millions in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq for absolutely no good purpose.

Great power like that is something to be very wary of, not to embrace.