AMERICA AND ITS ECONOMIC PROBLEMS AND WHY NOTHING WE CAN SAY WILL STOP THIS BLIND COLOSSUS FROM STUMBLING AND FALLING

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

Clive Crook has some astute observations here.

The trouble, however, with all reasonable suggestions for the future improvement of America’s position, such as value-added tax, is that American voters are in large part simply not reasonable.

I believe it truly is the heart of the matter that Americans have an ongoing sense of entitlement like nothing found anywhere else. It is captured in that warped political expression "the American Dream," a slogan still mouthed by the pathetic workers losing their jobs, and their homes, likely permanently.

America can't pay for what it imports and expects others to forever hold its debt. It can't pay for its extreme actions abroad but expects others to help bear the load. And the average American makes no effort to alter the most lunatic expectations, the kind of attitude that created the financial crash.

America is wasting immense amounts on two wars and countless interventions, yet it remains insanely stubborn over the taxes needed to support such excess and ignorant concerning the lack of any economic benefit for the average citizen in these colossal expenditures.

Few people comment on another trend underway, and that is the rise of China (and a couple of other potentially great competitors). The competition China offers is necessarily killing American jobs: you might call it "creative destruction" on an international scale.

Instead of focusing on measures needed to compete in an ever more competitive world, American administrations just repeat economic illiteracies and berate the Chinese for being successful. And they continue to spend like drunken sailors on military waste. And they continue to believe that somehow it is entitled always to end up in first place.

It is not, of course.

I think the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, as others have said, may be seen as something of an allegory for America’s problems. BP, unbelievably, was permitted to drill by American regulatory agencies without having taken basic, needed preparations. Blind stupidity based on the slogan that America needs oil – and it does, so long as the endless march of new three-car garages, beached-whale-sized new houses, meaningless urban sprawl, lumbering vehicles continues – threw sensible regulation overboard. Ironically, this disaster, its magnitude still not widely appreciated, has pretty well destroyed the political possibilities of further offshore drilling as supported by Bush and Obama.

America's mythology about itself has rendered it literally incapable of governing itself rationally, and I believe, sadly, nothing we can say will turn that stumbling, blind colossus towards enlightenment. We will all pay a price for its stumbling and falling.

ON THE IDEA THAT ISRAEL WILL NOT GIVE UP ITS NUCLEAR WEAPONS

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

Contrary to the assumptions of Patrick Martin, Israel may, before long, have no choice.

How in God’s name can we accept all the noise and pressure over Iran and North Korea when Israel keeps a nuclear arsenal, threatening others with its potential, including sometimes blackmailing the United States?

The sensational, just-announced publication of secret papers from apartheid South Africa, something Israel has fought hugely against, proves definitively Israel's role as the world’s most dangerous nuclear proliferator.

See the immensely important article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/23/israel-south-africa-nuclear-weapons

I do think the day is fast approaching when Israel's arrogance and brutality will tip the international political balance which has protected its excesses. People and governments everywhere are tiring of Israel’s utterly unethical and savage behavior and its endless demands.

Of course, on the same news day as the story of the publication of secret South African papers, we have news of two countries – Australia and the UK - removing Israeli diplomats in response to Israel’s abuse of their passports in committing its political murders. Israel has done this many times, including abusing Canadian passports in the past.

It is simply a fact that Israel has behaved over the last half century as one of the most peace-threatening nations on earth.

With its black-ops, its creation of the circumstances for the 1967 war it desired (because it would win), its never-explained attack on an American spy ship, its unparalleled spying inside the United States (including documented spies who were hot on the trail of the 9/11 terrorists and did nothing to alert U.S. officials), its illegal creation of nuclear weapons, its playing with proliferation with South Africa, and its ghastly brutality in Gaza and Lebanon, Israel is straining the patience of all its supporters.

John Kennedy knew that Israel was working on nuclear weapons, and we know he completely opposed it. More than a few suspect that that fact represented the real motive for his death.

Israel is very vulnerable to revelations of the many bodies it has buried, and that is what is remarkable about the publican of the South African papers. The publication clearly points to the United States tiring of all the dirty games. It could easily have suppressed this.

OBAMA'S FAILURE IN WASHINGTON WITH CONCILIATION AND COOPERATION

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

Obama's trouble in Washington is pretty much the same thing we are experiencing with Harper.

Harper's model is the Republican Right: offer no cooperation, take extreme measures, and endlessly insult the opposition.

Actually, "Republican Right" is a misnomer: the entire Republican party behaves this way, and this has been the pattern for our adult lifetimes.

It actually is the domestic political equivalent of Israel's "iron wall" towards its neighbors.

No talents around conciliation will help in the least when your opponent is dedicated to be stubborn, unreasoning, and ruthless.

I'm glad Obama tried, but his breath is wasted.
_________________

"Hope = Dope"

Surely the writer of that pathetic comment must recognize that Obama is an exceptionally intelligent person.

But in a country where Sarah Palin can command $100,000 for yelping a few times and where a certified moron like Bush can be president for two terms, bullsh-t baffles brains.

American national politics have become debased to an extraordinary extent, and it is solely the work of the Right which has settled into a philosophy of hooting and calling names and quoting God.

Our trouble, of course, is that that pernicious influence is flooding into our politics through Harper's behaviors, much as BP's oil is flooding the Gulf of Mexico.
_______________

"Like Abraham Lincoln, right?

"And those heroic Democrats that were the originators of the KKK (look it up)? Defenders of the common man, right?"

That is a prime example of how a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Neither the Republican party nor the Democratic party are at all the same things they were in the early 1860s.

Only the names remain.

Indeed, in some ways, their roles have reversed.

Lincoln believed in strong central government, which was what the Civil War was truly all about.

Lincoln's view is anathema to a Republican today.

The Democrats lost the South in the 1960s precisely because of the Civil Rights Voting act.

The Republicans today in many Southern states work hard and subtly to prevent blacks from voting. We saw this clearly in Florida.

RACISM AND POVERTY AND DRUG DEALING AND GUNS

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

I see the accusation of racism made simply for having stated facts.

Racism is a form of prejudice, a word which means judging before you know the facts.

Facts are quite the opposite of prejudice: they are real things which require real explanations.

And this is not an explanation surely: "The reason it's people of African descent engaged in the drugs in Toronto is because they've been left to languish in poverty"

I grew up poor and knew many others relatively poor in my generation. Not one of us ever took or sold drugs, nor did any of us ever use a gun.

Indeed, I grew up on the South Side of Chicago, the tough side of town. The simple fact is that the violent crime rates in Chicago soared with black immigration from the old South and the coming of heavy drug dealing and gun running.

There was a time in Chicago, back in the 1940s or early 1950s, when it was safe to sleep in a nearby park or out on a fire escape. People did this by the thousands before there was much air-conditioning.

No one in his or her right mind would do that today. Indeed, we see significant numbers of heat deaths every summer in Chicago because poor people are afraid to open the windows of their apartments.

Poverty is a function of either a lack of skills to compete in society or a temporary situation under changing circumstances, the last experienced by many immigrants.

People are not "left to languish in poverty." That is a ridiculous statement.

Indeed, in Canada, people of lesser means are treated better than just about anywhere, and immigrants are given privileges they receive few other places.

For example, if you immigrate to the United States, you do not receive free health care. Indeed, in that Darwinian society, you will receive no healthcare until you get a good enough job providing it to you.

Drug dealers are not in poverty: they drive expensive cars and own expensive hand guns. They are people who want to get rich quick without the usual effort, and they do get rich, and they do kill others as part of doing it.

MORE NEO-CON NONSENSE FROM DAVID BERCUSON - IGNATIEFF AND THE LIBERAL PARTY AND FOREIGN POLICY

RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY DAVID BERCUSON IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

Silly David Bercuson is at it again.

"Ignatieff needs to rein in Dosanjh and Rae to restore sense to his party’s defence policies."

Actually I think the Globe needs to rein in David Bercuson to restore sense to its op-ed page
______________________

Ignatieff will never be elected prime minister no matter what he does or doesn't do.

And Harper will never receive a majority.

So Canada remains stuck in a political twilight zone, and we receive only disingenuous advice from the neo-cons like David Bercuson.

The truth is that Harper has violated many traditional and fair-minded principles in our foreign policy, his absolutely outrageous comments about Israel being a prime example.

But we have no one else to turn to right now.

Ignatieff has a record as a man of no principles: support for the killing of a million people in Iraq, support for torture, opportunistic return home, opportunistic parachuting into riding, and opportunistic parachuting into the party leadership.

But that kind of record is just fine with the David Bercusons of this world.

Dosanjh and Rae, for all their faults, are two of the most intelligent, thoughtful, and well-informed national politicians we have.

Either of them beats Ignatieff in eloquence. Either beats Ignatieff in dedication to human rights.

CBC NEWS AND HOW THOUGHTFUL PEOPLE LEARN SOMETHING ABOUT THE TRUTH IN WORLD AFFAIRS

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

Fox News is literally an oxymoron.

CNN is almost as bad, often caught with its pants down playing nasty games.

ABC/NBC/CBS are all owned by huge corporations, and they all bend their tone and coverage to the needs of the Pentagon.

Americans - whom polls show get most of their news from television - are unbelievably poorly informed when it comes to world affairs.

It's a ghastly and dangerous situation for a superpower and/or a democratic country.

CBC is far from perfect in its news, but at least - and this is no small thing - it offers a different point of view, inherently different owing to its financing.

Even if one were to grant a "liberal bias" in CBC - which I do not, that being another conservative copycat line from the Newt Gingrich twenty years ago - so what?

The truth in politics and world affairs is always to be discovered. It is never presented outright by anyone anywhere.

But an interested citizen may garner a good deal of the truth by reading and listening to different sources and interpolating and extrapolating. It is the technique of the late, great independent journalist, I.F. Stone.

I regularly catch errors and biased presentations on CBC, but the situation is no better, likely worse, with private broadcasters. Indeed, the late, unlamented CanWest surely was as low in journalistic ethics and as poor in quality as we’ve ever had.

THE TATE MODERN AND THE SOFT-HEADED IDEA OF ART FOR EVERYONE

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY SARAH CROMPTON IN THE TELEGRAPH

"Tate Modern has emphasised over and over again that art is for everyone...."

Ms. Crompton, that is a highly ambiguous phrase, so much so it is inaccurate.

The world’s great art museums are open to everyone. Anyone genuinely interested in art may enjoy and learn from them. In that sense, art is for everyone indeed.

But true art is by its very nature an elite activity: it is produced by the very gifted for the very wealthy, and that has always been so, whether the wealthy were the popes of the renaissance or the commissions of a modern government.

But the Tate Modern’s concept of art for everyone, just as for other comparable institutions, is the substitution of playgrounds and gimmicks and whimsies, appealing to people with no interest in genuine art, and that is an entirely different matter.

Opera is also for everyone: Mozart is owned by no one. But we know perfectly well, that much of the population has no interest in opera.

If you put on a set of pop songs together and call it a “rock” opera, you are not making opera more available, you are changing entirely the meaning of opera.

The Tate Modern is as poor a representative of genuine art as that pathetic drainage ditch in the park is a tribute to the grace and charm of the late Princess Diana.

THE NEED FOR THE RCMP TO GET THE HELENA GUERGIS BUSINESS CLEARED UP?

POSTED RESPONSE TO AN EDITORIAL IN THE TORONTO GLOBE AND MAIL

"...because her name and career are being destroyed by a taint of criminality, without proof...."

Wrong, on at least two counts.

One, her career as a politician already is destroyed. Who would ever put her in a position of responsibility again?

Two, while we do not have proof of criminality, we have overwhelming proof of Guergis's venality and unsuitability for office.

Her known behaviors and those of her husband - whom she knowingly assisted by lending him public assets and writing inappropriate letters - are enough, surely, for those who expect ethical ministers.

I believe it is likely Ms Guergis has some form of mental instability, else how do you explain her sincere efforts to portray herself a victim when we know the things we know? The Globe has been bamboozled into writing this editorial on the basis of her performance on television.

To maintain high ethical standards in government, we do not need to prove out-and-out, police-investigated criminal behavior.

Ms. Guergis long ago exceeded what should be the allowance for a public servant of venality and stupid behavior.

It truly is a waste of resources to spend more on her.

At her best, too, she was a mediocre minister, and her demotion represents no loss to anyone.

AFRICA'S CENTURY? ONLY THE DREARY COMEDY TEAM OF GELDOF AND BONO BELIEVES THAT

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

The century is being invented before our eyes?

Who writes this stuff?

How do you invent a century?

And surely there are few options to something’s happening than “before our eyes,” a very tired cliché.

Well, I guess it’s the same person who writes the other nonsense in this editorial, such as, Africa being the site of the greatest transformation. You want transformation, you look to China and India, not Africa.

Africa is a disaster, pretty much from top to bottom.

Authoritarian governments. Corruption. Instability. Coups. Civil wars. Crime on a frightening scale.

Superstition with some of the most deadly beliefs on the planet, including the efficacy of albino body parts for health cures or the rights of male adults to rape village girls freely or the regular practice of about 3 million female genital mutilations each year.

The unending violence of Africa undoubtedly is owing in part to its high rate of natural increase in relation to its poor economies and often poor resources. Unfavorable population/resource ratios are associated with crime and violence generally, as for example in Haiti.

African women frequently have babies at an age we regard as part of childhood.

The babies frequently get no attention or support from their fathers, who as often as not have no income in an often subsistence economy.

And that same economy has no capacity to absorb additional mouths.

The girls having the children get no education themselves.

Violent crime is found at rates exceeding any place else on earth. The rates of murder and rape are appalling and likely well understated owing to the lack of modern police and bureaucracy.

How does one set about changing that complex set of behaviors for hundreds of millions of people?

I don’t see how anyone who is not slightly delusional can write or speak of “now is Africa’s moment.”

Tens and tens of billions in aide have been poured into Africa over recent decades, and the results are what we observe today.

I suspect Africa will just grind on the way it is and has been a very long time.

WINNERS AND LOSERS IN BRITISH ELECTION - THEY ALL LOST - AND THE NEGOTIATIONS NOW ARE THE NITTY-GRITTY OF DEMOCRACY

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JANET DALEY IN THE TELEGRAPH

"Even in ignominious defeat, they [Liberal Democrats]have gained an inordinate degree of power."

"I am genuinely shocked by the advocates of “progressive” politics who are now calling for – of all things – a confederation of losers to outmanoeuvre the winners...."

Janet Daley displays here a remarkable lack of understanding about the nature of parliamentary and party politics.

The simple truth is the voters rejected all the parties: there was no winner.

In a party system, voters must choose between "bundles" of policies, no one party having the just right mix for likely most individual voters. Votes are a series of compromises.

When voting results in a hung parliament, this basic truth is sharply revealed.

The negotiations between parties is simply an effort to adjust the "bundle" of policies to better reflect voters' intentions.

Indeed, parties themselves each contain a spectrum of views on various issues: they are not monolithic in their members’ views.

They only gain the appearance of being monolithic because leadership enforces a set of compromises, but the very same process now going on between parties goes on at regular intervals within parties in their caucuses and conventions.

Objecting to what is now happening between party leaders rather resembles objecting to an important aspect of democracy. Compromise is an inherent aspect of party politics, and it is very much an aspect of parliaments in general.

If you don’t receive a clear majority, and the Conservatives certainly did not receive that, you must compromise: essentially, it means voters have rejected your bundle of policies and you must adjust what you had somewhat arbitrarily run on accordingly.

It’s called democracy, and it is not neat and clean like having a Duce, something for which Janet Daley appears to have a bit of a yearning.

CLINTON AND AHMADINEJAD AT THE UNITED NATIONS

RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

Clinton in action always reminds me of a not particularly pleasant child having a tantrum.

This is not diplomacy.

It is phony posing on the international stage for the sake of a constituency back home.

It does seem American policy abroad is almost never in the U.S.'s own enlightened, long-term interests.

It always has its roots in playing up to domestic constituencies. That might not be so bad were American politics themselves something of substance, but they are decidedly not.

Name-calling, ranting, puffery, ideologue thick-headedness – it truly is a sad spectacle for a supposedly great nation.

This juvenile approach to world affairs is not new. There have been countless iterations since World War II.

The more than forty years of stupid behavior towards Cuba is exactly the same completely childish nonsense. The occasional, tiresome name-calling towards China is more of the same.

Ahmadinejad may not rank high as a diplomat, but one cannot help appreciating his sense of humor and readiness to prick the balloons of the pretentious and phony.

And few near the top of American politics have proved him- or herself a more embarrassing phony than Clinton.

THE UNITED STATES AND TERRORISM

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY GIDEON RACHMAN IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES

"The US, terrorism and the European Parliament..."

Sorry, Gideon, a grammatical error has altered the meaning of that statement.

The comma shouldn't be there.
_____________

The entire post-WWII period is marked by American support for various terrorists - just so long as they were "our" terrorists.

Pinochet, the Shah of Iran, the PRI in Mexico, the Cuban exiles in Florida, and on and on.

Was there any event since the Holocaust that was more of a savage pointless exercise in murder than America's War in Vietnam?

Three million killed, in often horrific deaths like napalm, for favoring the wrong economic system?

The neutralist government of Cambodia de-stabilized, thus creating the circumstances for the "killing fields"?

The U. S. for decades winked at the IRA , almost enjoying the sense of "up yours" Britain.

Indeed, most of the IRA's funding came from Americans openly collecting for it.

(So much for the silly idea of a special relationship.)

The U.S. dealt on friendly, helpful terms with every monster from Ceauşescu and Saddam Hussein to Batista and Marcos - just so long as the monsters toed the American line.

During the terror in Indonesia after the fall of Sukarno, workers in the American State Department kept the phone lines humming, suggesting names to the government that was to oversee cutting the throats of 500,000 people on suspicion of being communists, dumping their bodies in the rivers.

The overthrow of elected government after elected government – Iran, Guatemala, Chile – just because they opposed what were viewed as American interests.

The current "war on terror" is actually not about terror at all. It is about people deeply unfriendly to America's abusive policies abroad and to its tolerance for every abuse Israel cares to commit.

America’s various carpet-bombings and Israel’s savagery towards the Palestinians are unquestionably the world’s most consequential acts of official state terror.

America is no enemy of terror, only of the terrorists it does not like.

$3 MILLION SPENT BY ONTARIO ON LEGO FOR ROBOTS IS HARDLY A SERIOUS MATTER TO CRITICIZE WHEN SO MUCH ELSE IS WRONG IN OUR SCHOOLS

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

The Lego matter is of virtually no consequence. Indeed, I know from my experience with young kids that Lego used for robots are a good learning, and artistic, material.

Where our government can't say no, and on matters of severe consequence, is to the teachers' union.

Going into a recession, Dalton the Magnificent gave the teachers a multi-year contract unlike what you'd find in any other business.

And for that small fortune in increases, he got nothing of meaning for education. Nothing.

And it's not as though we don't have needs.

Look at the staffing of the School Board in Toronto if you want to see fortunes squandered.

A Director who was a proven flop in Hamilton, yet pulls in a huge salary and benefits, coming up with trivial ideas instead of real management.

A Board so stuffed with political correctness that it can't balance its own budgets.

Superintendents who are mostly flannel-mouthed former principals.

Flocks of "consultants" - teachers tired of the classroom and looking for a break - click-clacking around with notebook computers drawing down handsome salaries for sheer appearances.

And a herd of teachers who cannot even manage to teach the kids such basics as reading and the times-tables, yet insist on being called professionals.

We are talking billions here, not a few million.

IS TIME ON ISRAEL'S SIDE?

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

"Absent innovation, industry, investment and democracy the balance of palestine will look like Mogadishu within a year. The world will have lost all interest and life for the palestinians will become a nightmare."

There, encapsulated in a brief statement by a reader, is everything wrong with Israel.

The arrogance and ignorance on display towards Arabs are breathtaking.

Lebanon has been a very prosperous place, thank you, and would be more so were it not for decades of savageries from Israel.

Iraq was the most advanced Arab state in the world, advanced both in technology and in matters like women's rights. For all his faults, Saddam was a secular, forward-thinking man in a number of respects. And what happened to Iraq? Flattened by Israeli interests.

Democracy? Israel, a state which insists on calling itself exclusively Jewish and practices ethnic-cleansing daily, hardly qualifies under any meaningful definition of democracy.

And even if we do grant the adjective democratic to Israel, does the writer not understand that democracies are just as capable as any other form of state of atrocities and abuse. The United States in Vietnam? Apartheid South Africa? The Confederate States of America? And just so, Israel.

Democracy is not a state of grace from stupid policy, prejudice, or cruelty. Power is power, however conferred, and, as we know, power corrupts.

AFGHANISTAN PRISONERS: A SHOCKING LACK OF MORAL SERIOUSNESS CHARGES MARGARET WENTE IN A COLUMN WITH A SHOCKING LACK OF MORAL SERIOUSNESS

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

"There has been a shocking lack of moral seriousness in this debate..."

To the extent that may be true, Ms. Wente, I can only say there is a shocking lack of moral seriousness in your column.

Pretty close to vapid, that.
___________________

"It would be a problem if there were killing fields. Where are the killing fields?"

There were killing fields, my blithely ignorant friend.

After Rumsfield stated in Nazi-like fashion that all the Taleban prisoners should be killed or walled away, 3,000 were driven in batches out to the desert and suffocated in vans.

The facts have been documented by Scots documentary film maker, Jamie Doran.

America’s initial carpet bombing, which was used to decimate the Taleban, while the Taleban’s nemesis, the Northern Alliance advanced to take over, killed God knows how many, and the Northern Alliance contained some of the ugliest cut-throats on the planet, but that’s okay, they were our cut-throats.

And there is no counting how many thousands of innocents have been killed by America's years of careless bombing since. There are scores of instances of everything from whole wedding parties to village elders being slaughtered by mistake. We get no count, of course.

And what about the secret prisons – places like Bagram Air Base or Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean? We have no idea what goes on in those secret, ghastly places.

The entire crusade has been a stupidly wasteful, immoral project. The Taleban never attacked us. They need never been our enemy. They are backward, but so is every other party there.

People like the writer of this comment and Ms. Wente swallow all the propaganda about purpose and women and schools. Most women in Afghanistan today wear the burka, and most schools opened for girls close out of fear, and it ain’t the Taleban alone causing the fear.

It’s a 14th century place. It cannot be changed in anyone’s lifetime, although you can just keep killing, the way Israel has for 60 years in its neighborhood. We do not belong there. We’ve only contributed to the mass of abuse and killing and stupidity in the name of keeping the Pentagon happy.
_________________

"War is horrible, and bad things are done - even by good people."

This is the oldest, most meaningless cliché known.

What a thoroughly immoral way to excuse psychopathic activities.

I heard an interview with a (former) American soldier who was on that Wiki-leaks video of the helicopter pilots blasting people into pieces of meat. He arrived to see the mess, and says he now despises the expression, "War is hell."

The American soldier from the video said clearly that the horror people saw on that video is what war actually is, and the cliché just doesn’t cut it.

We protect ourselves from the realities of war simply so we can keep treating it as the moving of colorful little lead soldiers on a map and doing good things for others.

Those in power have a severe responsibility to go to war only when it is absolutely necessary, because, whether necessary or not, the war will be filled with abuse and horror.

The invasion of Afghanistan was not necessary. Our continued presence is not necessary. Our soldiers have been reduced to unacceptable acts to no worthy purpose.

THE CBC AND THE HARPER CONSERVATIVES

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY LAWRENCE MARTIN IN THE GLOBE AND MAIL

It's only been a matter of time.

I've waited for our Neolithic Conservatives to take up the old Newt Gingrich theme. After all, everything else they do and say was done and said in the United States twenty years ago.

Old Newt used to go around talking about PBS as a sandbox for liberal yuppies to play in.

And he had an impact. PBS/NPR today is a very mediocre excuse for public broadcasting. It has lots of big glitzy shows, but its news and public affairs are toothless, just about as unchallenging as the rest of America's major networks.

Well, the left/right business is almost meaningless now thanks to CBC’s own handiwork.

How can you talk about left or right when you are discussing a dumb marketing operation for pop music, surely what CBC Radio is well along to becoming totally?

Well, I guess the Neolithics are concerned about the last gasp of shows on CBC that have genuine meaning and challenge thought, a few intellectual gems in a stunningly meaningless broadcast universe.

Challenging thought we know sure ain’t the business of Harper’s gang of provincial incompetents and bellowers.

But I think they should just wait and save their righteous indignation and spewing and fuming: CBC management is killing the network with the death of a thousand little cuts.

ISRAEL'S FEAR AND LOATHING OF THE NEW U.S. RELATIONSHIP

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY GIDEON RACHMAN IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES

"Israel’s alarm at the deterioration in its relations with the US is palpable."

I don't know about Israel's alarm, but the "deterioration" part has elements of delusion.

George Bush was without question the most inept man ever to be president.

Apart from many other bits of evidence supporting that assertion, we have his relationship with that colossal bulk of corruption and murder, Ariel Sharon.

The relationship as perceived under these two had no basis in a real world. Israel got to do everything - every dirty trick, every killing, every arrogant piece of behavior - that its corrupt leader could dream of, and that pathetic lump, Bush, just nodded. That even went so far as the extreme abuse, and distinctly possible assassination, of Arafat.

Well, now we're back to a more realistic situation so far as the American President goes, a man is in power who, despite serious shortcomings, is intelligent and hardworking.

Unfortunately, on the other side of the relationship, Israel has absolutely hit bottom for the intellectually and ethically squalid in Netanyahu. I'm not sure it is possible to find a prominent Israeli with a more grotesque combination of arrogance, dishonesty, and low-life cunning. He’s fooling no one. His skills as a statesman are zero.

Despite many faults in the American psyche, there is a kind of fundamental decency - which, once aroused, is very powerful. Israel has pushed things to the very limits, and once that deep sense of decency and fairness is aroused, I do think the relationship will rapidly deteriorate, perhaps never to recover.

And whose fault will that be?
________________

"A majority of Israel's Jewish population is of Middle Eastern and North African origin (including, partly, your commenter). So what 'White man's burden' are you referring to? "

Is that dishonest or naive?

Virtually all the founders and most of the prime ministers have had European or American roots, especially European.

And Israel itself is a secular Western society. Nothing about it - from flag to uniforms or political parties - reflects the Mideast.

The only exception is the Orthodox, a people much despised even in Israel for their imposing values on others and shirking responsibilities like military service.

__________________

Well said, David Seaton.

And not only the United States: Israel has never flinched from doing just as it pleased for its often narrow idea of its interests, everything from creating illegal nuclear weapons to assisting the old South Africa to become a nuclear power briefly.

America has been on a one-way trip to nowhere for decades in its relationship with Israel.

It has suffered oil embargo, been dragged willy-nilly into wars, seen Israel abuse the use of the weapons it sells it, suffered Israeli black-ops like the attack on the USS Liberty, and the most damaging imaginable spies like Jonathon Pollard.

It launched the infinitely costly and largely pointless war in Iraq mainly for Israel’s benefit. Yet all it receives from Israel is arrogance, bad advice, and more abuse.

It has stoked the fury of a hundred million Arabs - and all unnecessarily.

A fair policy calls for a fair settlement. Israel’s idea of peace never changes: it is always, I get this and that and the other thing, and you must recognize me and recognize me as a “Jewish state” and you get pretty well nothing.

Israel and Palestine should resemble all the early maps drawn up as parts of the founding documents, not the grotesque distortion we see now. And ethnic-cleansing in Jerusalem and the West Bank must stop. Israel’s insistence on carrying on that way is breeding more resentment and sense of injustice and future horrors than any of us can imagine, but clearly Israel does not have the basic control over its own affairs to stop. The U.S. must do that for them.
________________________

"That Israel is a Western society--not shooting adulterers and homosexuals, allowing diverse religious practice--should not be held against it. I assume you yourself are not interested in moving to a Sha'aria-run republic."

Comments do not come much more inaccurate or beside the point than that.

It reflects the kind of one-upmanship thinking that has driven Israel on an insane course for decades.

First, I don’t hold being Western “against” Israel. The writer should point out where I did so before making such a ridiculous statement.

My point, had he read what I wrote before answering, was that Israel very little resembles something natural in the Middle East, a point I made in answering someone’s disingenuous claim that the majority of Israel’s people had Middle Eastern or African roots.

Second, where I live or choose to live has nothing whatever to do with the problem confronting the world. It’s as irrelevant as the atmospheric composition of Neptune.

Several million Jewish people have chosen this place, yet they refuse to make any realistic effort, any meaningful sacrifice, to make what they have stable and realistic and fair.

Right now, Israel is a fantasyland supported by the greatest level of subsidy from abroad in all history. Its current shape reflects levels of abuse and injustice which cannot be sustained, and others are paying the bills.

Israel, as it exists, is not long-term viable. Its economy is a hot-house thing, for example exporting tomatoes after using some of the world’s most expensive water. It’s a garrison state, not sustainable long-term. It has every neighbor hating it, and behaves as though there were no tomorrow or future reckonings. It drifts along on visions of Greater Israel, and everyone else is supposed to be willing to pay the immense bill to make it happen.

AMBIGUITY IN ISRAEL'S NUCLEAR WEAPONS STATUS? ONLY IN THE MIND OF COLUMNIST PATRICK MARTIN

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

Patrick Martin, it is difficult to believe that you are that naive, so are you being dishonest?

The evidence for Israel’s nuclear weapons is overwhelming.

First, a short while back, Jimmy Carter flatly stated that Israel has about 150 nuclear warheads.

As a former president, former commander of an American missile submarine, and a nuclear engineer, I think it fair to say his testimony is as solid as it gets.

Two, Mordechai Vanunu's strange odyssey surely was another piece of solid gold evidence.

His photographs of the interior of Israel's bomb factory were published in the Sunday Times (they even included the mold for the hollow implosion-sphere), and they were never impeached by any scientist. Quite the opposite, they were confirmed.

Since Israel afterward sent a team of agents who drugged and kidnapped Vanunu, sent him for many years to prison, and keeps him still under heavy restrictions, surely to any analyst’s mind, his claims were only confirmed further.

Again, we have the public assertions of Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld who has gone on record saying Israel’s nuclear missiles were able to reach the major capitals of Europe.

We also have the testimony of Mohamed El Baradei, a scientist and nuclear expert and former head of the IAEA, that Israel has nuclear weapons.

The New York Times Magazine, many years ago, did a feature story of how Israel came to build nuclear weapons. The French were a key part of the effort, at that time France playing a role for Israel a little like the U. S. today as a key weapons supplier and guarantor.

We know today, too, that Israel stole nuclear materials and secrets from the American weapons establishment to assist its efforts.

Israel not only illegally built weapons but was the world's first dangerous proliferator. It had a secret pact with South Africa to assist their building nuclear weapons in exchange for secure access to important resources and other considerations.

A spy satellite actually captured the flash of what was almost certainly a joint Israeli-South African nuclear test in the Indian Ocean. A very limited number of reports, all fine-type stuff, after the fall of the apartheid regime in South Africa, mentioned America’s removing the nuclear material from South Africa.

We know that President Kennedy became aware that Israel was working on nuclear weapons through the CIA. He was totally opposed to Israel’s becoming a nuclear power, but he did not live to alter the course of history. More than a few have speculated that Israel’s secret services were behind the assassination for just this very powerful motive.

Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, proved one of Israel’s best friends in the White House. The weapons program continued, and when Israel attacked the USS Liberty, a spy ship in the Mediterranean, killing a great many of the crew and likely hoping to embroil the U.S. in the Six Day War, Johnson suppressed the story which only gradually came out afterwards.

There is much other evidence – in total, rarely would even a major intelligence agency ever have collected such an overwhelming case.

ONTARIO'S ENERGY POLICY IS SHEER MADNESS

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

There are not many matters over which I could agree with Ms. Wente, but this, by and large, is one of them.

McGuinty's energy policy is little short of madness.

He decided, quite arbitrarily, to close Ontario’s coal-fired stations. The fact is that Ontario’s coal-fired plants are among the more efficient of those in the central continent, a crucially important fact generally ignored in discussions.

The problem with air pollution from such plants – and I mean the problem in Ontario – is the dozens of inefficient plants in the U.S. Midwest: the prevailing winds bring their heavy pollution here.

When you close a relatively efficient plant and then experience a surge in demand, as for summer air-conditioning, Ontario buys power from the U.S., often from the very plants which are the genuine problem. So you close an efficient plant and buy from an inefficient plant, creating a net effect of increased pollution.

None of the renewable energy sources, and certainly not wind power, is capable of coming even close to replacing what is called base-load power, the power ready to be called upon twenty-four hours a day.

Wind turbines can go for days in some locations producing nothing or close to nothing. They are also a visual blight on the landscape, a serious source of noise pollution, a threat to migrating birds, and the electricity they generate is very costly.

Wind power was embraced in Northern Europe in large part owing to the fact that people already lived in a high-cost energy regime, gasoline going for far greater prices than people in Ontario have ever seen. If all energy is already high-cost, it is less noticeable to add slices of still higher-cost energy to the mix.

But even then, there has been a good deal of disappointment in Europe with the actual performance of wind turbines. They appear, under conditions of mass use, to be even more inefficient and costly than we thought.

Now, Ontario is very concerned about jobs and its manufacturing base. What do you think will be the effect on luring industries to Ontario of high-cost electricity?

Either the industries will go elsewhere, or McGuinty will allow them to be subsidized at the household consumer’s expense. Not only will households pay for their own higher-cost electricity, but they will pay for industry’s higher-cost electricity.

And, as a further thoughtful gift from McGuinty, we’ll pay HST on the whole big increase.

Investmants in further upgrades to the coal stations would have been an infinitely better choice.

McGuinty wants to play the eco-hero, but he has made the wrong call on every aspect of energy policy, threatening the future competitiveness of Ontario.

Maybe us “Eastern bastards” will indeed end up “freezing in the dark.”

ON THE FAMILIES OF SOME DEAD SOLDIERS PLEADING WITH HARPER TO STAY IN AFGHANISTAN

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

"...stay course..."?

More stupid American war speech infecting Canada like a contagious disease.

Some Canadians now say "the boys" and we have the brainless McGuinty offering of "the Highway of Heroes."

And, of course, the pathetic, stick-on plastic yellow ribbons.

Our CBC Radio in its decline produced and broadcast an idiotic series called Afghanada. Every word and sound of that propaganda could have passed for something from America, save only the actor with the phony Newfoundland speech.

These are all signs of how destructive this business has been to Canadian values.

The Pentagon is like the fabled tar-baby. You can't touch it without pitch stuck to your hands.

___________________________

"... I disrespected parents of dead soldiers?"

Sorry, but there's another example of trash American speech.

There is no such word as "disrespected." You "show disrespect,” unless you come from Arkansas or the streets of Detroit.

Further, if parents have the sheer arrogance to beg the government to stay in the killing business just to make the loss of their children somehow more meaningful, they themselves are opening the door to justified attacks on their judgment.

Having lost someone doesn't give you a special right to advocate like that. It is shameful and abusive.

It is exactly the kind of non-think we see in America’s professional-victim society.

______________________

"Sorry, old bean. Disrespect may also be used as a transitive verb"

Only by those who also use barbarities like "flied out."

War is, if you will, the secret life of chimpanzees. It is when humans drop all the rules and decencies we have patiently built up over time and set out to murder, rape, and destroy.

That's why, for example, soldiers in Afghanistan are warned by the Canadian authorities to ignore the bloody rapes of boys that take place regularly in this place we're supposed to be saving.

Many have witnessed our own allies and workers like interpreters literally leaving children bleeding on the ground from gang rapes.

I point out that I believe the corruption of language reflects this corruption of values.

America has been a society dedicated to war for decades. It has killed millions needlessly, three million just in Vietnam.

Propagandists now are working overtime to alter our culture in the same direction.

_____________________

"Most of us have the power to use logic and factual information. Use it."

Thus says someone whose entire comment shows little of either.

The Taliban were the government of the country, and they attacked no one. The U.S. invasion drove them out.

The very word "insurgents" is a weasel-word. The Taliban are not invaders. They are not foreigners. They are a large portion of the population of the place.

The governors America has put in their place belonged to the Northern Alliance, people every bit as backward as the Taliban, their former opponents. Indeed, it was the Northern Alliance who permitted bin Laden to reside in Afghanistan.

After the Russians withdrew, the Northern Alliance took power, and ran the country the way a bloodthirsty mafia would. There was chaos in the streets. Fighting everywhere. Injustice everywhere. Corruption everywhere.

The Taliban actually were formed as a "clean government" party, and they did clean things up on taking power, as for instance by totally stopping opium production.

They are not to our tastes, but, believe me, none of the parties in Afghanistan are. They all have 14th century views because the country lives in the 14th century.

Indeed, the drugs are pouring out of Afghanistan, completely ignored by the U.S. because it is some of their people profiting.

You want modernity? You help the economy develop. You do not bomb people.

America went there to kill, it went for vengeance. Everything else is window-dressing. And Canadian soldiers are part of the decorations.

ON IGNATIEFF'S FAILING TO BOOST DEMOCRACY AND SERVE AS PRIME MINISTER BY NOT SUPPORTING THE COALITION - WHY IGNATIEFF IS A POLITICAL ALBATROSS

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

"...he squandered a rare chance to strengthen our democracy..."

Absolutely.

And what is so amazing is the colossal ineffectiveness of the Liberals in allowing the Conservatives to repeat, over and over, the big lie that a coalition is not democratic, unparliamentary.

The truth is, of course, just the opposite.

They also let the dumb slur about deals with separatists prosper.

What hypocrisy, when Harper has never refused their support for something he wanted.

We've paid a price for the Liberals' ineptitude, but I am glad Ignatieff will never be prime minister.

Nothing he has done or said proves he has the talents, the views, or the ethics for the office.

And when it comes to "strengthening democracy," Ignatieff's record in entirely in the opposite direction.

Parachuted back into our country, parachuted into his riding, and parachuted into the leadership - all with a charming record of public support for American aggression and imperialism.

And, on top of everything, he is simply boring as a speaker.

_______________

"@John Chuckman

"Ignatieff is . . boring as a speaker"

* * *

For those with attention-deficit problems, and inability to pay attention for more than 30 seconds to anything that isn't shiny or makes loud noises."

That's a pretty pathetic effort at personal attack.

As someone who graduated with honors from University of Toronto, served as chief economist in a major corporation, published a book, published many essays, has had a column in a metropolitan newspaper, taught university courses, and doesn't even turn on a television, I do think it fair to say the writer doesn't know what she/he/it is talking about.

I have heard Ignatieff interviewed at length, and he is dull. No new ideas, no fresh thought, just a stream of words, and he secretly worships at the feet of the American Imperium. Then there’s the rather raspy voice and the sense one gets from him of never revealing what he really thinks.

And clearly it is not just my judgment.

He has completely and utterly failed to engage the Canadian people, and that miserable failure comes in the face of a political opponent as widely disliked as Harper.

Proof, if ever there were, of a man totally unsuited to his grasping ambition. He simply does not have the goods.

It really is tiresome to see Ignatieff defended by a small band of enthusiastic (and likely delusional) supporters for the supposed merit of being so impressive an intellectual.

First, I defy anyone to produce a truly original idea from Ignatieff. There aren't any.

Of course, true intellectuals rarely if ever run for office.

And finally, politics simply is not about being intellectual. Being smart is important. Paul Martin is smart. Jean Chretien is smart. Harper is smart. Pierre Trudeau was very smart.

Ignatieff wrote books, not very interesting ones in my view, and he blubbered on television at lot – but those are precisely the talents of a David Frum or a thousand other talking heads.

Hardly the stuff of leadership.

__________________

"...why do the most ardent Harper supporters hate the BLOC so much?"

Simply because it has stood in the way of the Conservatives winning a majority.

Duceppe, despite his views on Quebec nationalism (and it is thanks to Mr. Harper that is a legitimate phrase in our national political dialogue), is an astute and capable politician, and I credit him with views that are in the finest traditions of Canada.

The absolute stupidity of Conservative arguments about coalition with separatists is demonstrated by several glaring facts.

First, the people represented by the Bloc are Canadians, and they have elected this party to represent them.

Second, we all have included the Bloc in national leadership debates.

Third, the party is a legitimate part of the Parliament of Canada.

Fourth, Mr. Harper uses their support whenever he can benefit by it.

Last, it was Mr. Harper who passed a formal resolution on Quebec as a nation within Canada.

Of course, if Conservatives wanted to be honest and consistent in this matter, they would oppose including the Bloc in debates. They would oppose admitting them to Parliament. And they would never accept their support on legislation.

But we don’t see any of that, do we?

It would be the death sentence for Conservatives in Quebec. Talk about hypocrisy, this is as rich as it gets.

MORE ON COULTER AND THE UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA - IDEAS? WHAT IDEAS? SHE'S A SIDE SHOW PERFORMER OF HATE

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

How very tiresome to see repeated over and over rubbish about diversity of opinion and free speech.

This event involved neither of those. Neither did it involve ideas.

I defy anyone to provide samples of Ms. Coulter's ideas.

There are none. Had she any, I would feel differently about the event, despite my being against right-wing views.

Coulter is nightclub performer or a circus side-show act. She gets paid to make people laugh at ugly, abusive statements.

She was simply given the old hook off the stage by a large audience who did not want to hear her, much as performers in vaudeville were years ago when the audience booed.

And, by the way, she was given it by her own staff, not by the university.

Ms. Coulter’s every joke drips with venom for groups she dislikes. She makes prejudice funny.

She is every bit as unwelcome as would be Ernst Zundel doing an hour of stand-up comedy. One can imagine the subject of that.

In this case, I applaud the students for exercising their right to free speech too.

And I think it should be noted that besides being a hate-monger, Ms Coulter is coward who ran away from the effects of her own foul mouth.

TORONTO SCHOOL BOARD'S DIRECTOR ANNOUNCES ACADEMIES: A NEW BERNIE MADOFF PONZI SCHEME FOR EDUCATION

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

It is indeed a stupid idea.

The fact is that it has already been tried in other places. It simply does not work.

In Chicago, most of the poorly performing schools in black neighborhoods were years ago renamed into various academies.

Sometimes one academy changes into another academy when the poor performance catches up with them.

Toronto's new Director of education, Chris Spence, spent his last several years in Hamilton as Director. The sum total of his real achievements is zero.

Everywhere the man ever went, a retinue of cameras followed him to produce shots like the one you have leading this story.

When the cameras were turned off, so was the Director, typically rushing out to the next place.

Football players with education degrees just won’t do it. Indeed, it is time to get genuine management and analytical ability heading our schools. Education degrees are just academic fluff.

You'll only get the best ideas in education from the best people, something our public schools fail to understand.

And that goes for the quality of teachers too. There are far too many who should never have been given a classroom. Get some people with real skills in computers and science and music in the classrooms, even if they do not have education degrees.

A name change, a photo op, and some rah-rah change nothing.

_______________________

The grand thing about schemes like Chris Spence's is that by the time everyone discovers what a waste of time and money it has all been, he'll be off somewhere on a gold-plated pension.

Truly, a professional mediocre bureaucrat's dream, and it's the kind of thing that keeps getting repeated over and over again in public education, which I am sad to say sometimes resembles a giant Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme rather than a serious institution.

A new fad every decade at least. All of them flops. New silly lingo. New pretensions. New nonsense.

Meanwhile, absolutely nothing real is done about the quality of kids' education.

Truly nothing.

And nothing will until the management of education is taken out of the hands of teachers and ex-teachers with fluff education degrees and fluff ideas.

QUEBEC AND THE NIQAB - A CASE SURELY OF ABUSING CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS AND A DOWNRIGHT FOOLISH BUSINESS

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

"That piece of fabric, however, negates years and years of fighting for rights and equality for women..."

I'm sorry, but that is complete nonsense.

The writer, and others here, has no basis for judging why a woman wears the veil.

For all this writer knows, the woman behind the veil is a tigress. Indeed, I have heard one interview with a conservative Muslim woman who struck me as a very forceful person.

A few decades back, in films, the niqab was viewed by our public as alluring and fascinating. There are many scenes exhibiting these aspects in old films and serials, scenes made to appeal to our sensibilities.

Now, it has completely turned around with people attributing the most outlandish motives. It’s just the backwash from America’s insane war on terror, fed by Bush’s lame stuff about women when what he was about was killing.

The picture the Globe uses to accompany this article, perhaps a staged shot, shows that quality in spades. The eyes – the face’s greatest communicator of emotion and intelligence – are brought into focus. It is a beautiful image.

These women were admitted as immigrants to Canada with their niqab. What right do we have to say high-handedly, after they have moved their lives here, they must do away with it? None.

This is the attitude of the intolerant and those who do not understand what they are talking about, using flimsy excuses like women’s rights. A woman’s rights include wearing what she wishes, does it not?

The reasons for this garment are complex - social, historical, and not just religious, but for devout wearers religion is very important, more so than its secular critics can understand.

At any rate, the number of Muslim woman who wear the niqab is miniscule. I've never seen one on the street, although the hijab (a handsome babushka) is common. So why this inordinate outrage over it?

Almost all immigrants eventually give up their native dress. It is up to them to decide on that, not shrill accusers in a newspaper column.

Those shrill demands are the way Americans behave. It’s one of their most unpleasant qualities. Live and let live so long as people are not being hurt – that’s the Canadian way, or at least I thought it was.

_____________________

"Imagine what even this newspaper would look like if all the pictures of women had their faces all covered up."

Sorry, but we get unthinking comment after unthinking comment.

A tiny minority of humanity wears the niqab, and a tiny fraction of them is in Canada.

You could also say, by that kind of "logic," what if the newspaper were full of people wearing the gear of Watusi tribes people?

Please, some tolerance and intelligence are needed here.

Ridiculous.

DAVID FRUM FIRED FROM THE AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE

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

This is good news on all sides.

First, Frum, a bag of wind who has worked with America's ugliest neo-cons in advocating American imperialism all over the globe, loses his post.

But perhaps more important, this act is a sharp confirmation of what the American think tanks actually are, propaganda mills play acting as academic institutions.

The American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Cato Institute all operate on the same basis as those television commercials for over-the-counter remedies featuring actors in white lab coats pretending to be doctors.

They offer only one point of view, always.

And now we know they don't even keep staff who even once do not toe the line.

THE ANN COULTER CIRCUS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA: CALLING THIS A MATTER OF FREE SPEECH IS SILLY

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

"…the free exchange of ideas…."

What pompous nonsense!

Coulter exchanges no ideas, only attitudes, hateful attitudes.

And she was not there to speak and inform – she was there to entertain those who laugh at the jokes of nasty-mouthed twelve-year olds.

This woman is a hatemonger without redeeming values.

Had she attacked the appearance or customs of Orthodox Jewish people, as she does those of others, the Globe would be patting itself on the back while pronouncing that Canada has no room for her.

And in that case, you would be right.

As it is, you could not be more wrong.

And your pompous phrasing takes no account of the fact that the University of Ottawa did permit this seething lump of intolerance to speak.

It was a large group of people, exercising their own rights of speech, who shouted her down.

And, as someone who dearly embraces free speech and hates censorship, I applaud them.
_____________________

What Ann Coulter really represents - apart from intolerance and the retarded-development humor of a frat boy - is the triumph of info-tainment.

America is awash in info-tainment, having even at least one entire network dedicated to it, Fox.

She was here to make her offering on an organized tour with promised profits, just as Cirque du Soleil does Los Vegas.

Indeed, circus performer – of the kind from the old days of “freak show” tents - would be one accurate way to describe what she does.

Ideas and information are no more part of her act than they are for nude lap-dancer at a men’s lounge.

It is truly absurd to discuss her in any other light: to do so is to buy in to the idea that Americans are informed by Fox Television.
___________________

Ian Hunter offers us a remarkably vacuous article.

What Mr. Hunter has done here, thinly disguised as a defense of free speech and quality education, is attack Allan Rock, obviously a politician he does not like.

The issue of free speech is truly not present in this incident.

Ms Coulter is a paid performer.

And an audience booed her off the stage.

It used to happen all the time in Vaudeville.

Remember the old jokes about the cane dragging an unpopular performer off the stage?

AMERICA IS NOW ASKING CANADIAN TROOPS TO STAY IN AFGHANISTAN BEYOND THEIR AGREED DEPARTURE IN 2011

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

The sick influence of even our limited involvement with Afghanistan is apparent in the very words of some of these remarks.

"Our boys"!

Canadians never traditionally spoke this way. It is the speech of belly-over-belt American politicians from Mississippi.

"The women of Afghanistan"!

As though the writer had any idea at all, and besides, "the women" were George Bush's ace propaganda ploy.

America did not go there to help women. It went there to kill, and it has killed a great many people.

We have squandered many lives and billions of dollars trying to make the Pentagon smile at us.

That's enough.

Staying longer would be proof that American insanity is catching.

HILLARY SPEAKS AT AIPAC - ISRAEL'S RECENT SHAMEFUL BEHAVIOR - THE SILLINESS OF BIBLICAL CLAIMS TO GREATER ISRAEL

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY GIDEON RACHMAN IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES

There is something almost shameful that an American Secretary of State feels obliged to address the Lobby for Israel on so basic a matter as Israel’s recent behavior towards the United States.

Moreover, Aipac is an organization which has been involved in some very dodgy activities in the past, as reflected in extensive FBI investigations.

Israel publicly insults the Vice president of the United States on a high-level visit and then argues with American officials over their view of the fact.

What other country in the world could get away with such behavior?

And then the prime minister, a man whose intolerance and brutality are a matter of public record, gets a tête-à-tête in the White House?

Israel’s ugly seizure of Arab homes in East Jerusalem violates every international agreement.

Israel’s entire recent behavior – mass murder in Gaza, assassination, brutal blockade, and taking the property of others – is little different to what Serbia was doing when the United States went to war against them.

If you want peace, you talk to your neighbors, you stop abusing your neighbors, and you stop stealing from your neighbors.

But if what you want is other people’s homes and farms, minus the people, in a vast slow-motion ethnic-cleansing, you behave exactly as Israel behaves.

The only nation on earth which can push Israel towards civilized behavior towards its neighbors is the United States, yet because of the campaign-financing efforts of outfits like Aipac under America’s ghastly campaign-finance laws, that needed push is rendered almost politically impossible.

All quite absurd, the most powerful country in the world, a country which has been unbelievably generous towards Israel, has its foreign policy heavily bent by a place with the population of Ecuador.

__________________

When people write about Israel's additional territorial claims in terms of Hebrew Scripture, for most of the world's people it makes as much sense as modern Greece claiming Turkey owing to the Iliad.

If you can quote Scripture as authority in Middle East affairs, you can justify anything, including killing all non-Jewish residents, for that is what the Biblical Hebrews were enjoined to do, over and over.

Many countries could have a claim on the territory we call Israel if this approach were valid, including the Egyptians (who long, long ago ruled there, the Lebanese (viewed as the descendants of the ancient Phoenicians who also ruled there), and perhaps even the Iraqis.

The silliness of this claim is made even greater by the important research of an Israeli scholar who says that the Palestinians are, for the most part, the actual descendants of the ancient Israelis.

When Rome conquered territories, it typically did not remove the inhabitants and it did not interfere with their religion, so long as they accepted Roman rule. Just because, after two turbulent millennia of history, most of the Palestinians are Muslim does not invalidate this concept. Moreover, DNA testing is tending to support this view.

So what we are really talking about with Israel’s modern activities is removing the descendants of ancient Israel who have lived there countless centuries in favor of new immigrants from New York or London. If that isn’t imperialism, I don’t know what is.

On still another level, Biblical claims must be rejected simply because they are dangerous and de-stabilizing. Greater Israel as it has been defined by Zionist scholars – and mind you, there are no maps in the Bible – includes the West Bank and Gaza and pieces of Syria and Lebanon. Does claiming that, or any portion of it, resemble anything but a certain formula for endless war and unrest?

Personal religious views and 2,500 year-old books have no place in international affairs.

In the end, if Israel wishes to be regarded as a state like any other state, then it must behave as we expect other states to behave, and that does not include undefined borders which constantly ooze out over the property of others.

OBAMA'S "TAINTED VICTORY" ON HEALTHCARE - ACTUALLY THE MESSINESS AND INEFFICIENCY OF THE LEGISLATION ARE TYPICAL OF AMERICAN POLITICS

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

Many of the criticisms here are true, especially those about costs.

But since when in America is it possible to legislate a neat, rational, economical, sensible bill about anything?

That's not just a sarcasm.

American legislation is often so convoluted, so fraught with nonsense, that it in practice it achieves the opposite of its title.

That's just a reality of government in America.

The one real merit of this legislation is that the door is finally thrown open to some extent on healthcare.

And that's no small thing.

With time, the legislation will be refined, improved, and perhaps changed significantly.

The real truth is that America - with its opinionated extremes, its ideologies, and its sheer volume of noise - learns often only by banging its head against walls.

We have seen that time and time again.

Turning America in anything is like turning a super-oil tanker in a tight channel, and too often there is a drunk at the helm.

America is a chaotic society, yet pretends to be well organized, and it is overflowing with posing and melodrama.

It is, as Robert Hughes said, a culture of complaint.

________________

"...it is opposed by most of the country; and it is now law. I would never have believed this possible in the United States."

Clive Crook, that statement by someone as well-informed as you astounds me.

A great many major votes in Congress do not reflect general public opinion in America. Check out public opinion on subjects like gun control, abortion, and some of America's wars.

The truth is that a great many Americans do not vote, so while their views are reflected in a valid poll, they have no political influence.

Also, Congress blurs many issues with immensely complex omnibus bills, making it difficult to sort out votes.

And since representation is what economists call "bundled," voters will forget or forgive an unwelcome vote on some issues so long as they get what they want on others.

In a political duopoly, no voter gets the policies he or wants without lots of extra baggage from either party.

Finally, there has been an immense amount of misinformation, genuinely stupid stuff like the rubbish about death panels put forward by genuine airheads like Sarah Palin.

Once voters see that such misinformation is what it is, views will alter. There will undoubtedly be a big educational drive too.

I would have much preferred another approach - this one has many shortcomings - but it is step forward, and it will make it easier to make refinements in future.

CONTROVERSY AND PREJUDICE OVER THE NIQAB - AND THE TRUTH ABOUT ISRAEL'S GROSSLY INEFFICIENT ECONOMY IN RESPONSE TO AN IGNORANT COMMENT

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

Gee, it would be nice if the Globe got its garments right.

At the top of an article about the niqab (a veil for the face), you have put a picture of women wearing either chador (a flowing body garment which is often worn without a veil) or a hijab (a simple head scarf, not all that different to a babushka).

It isn't possible to see from the cropping which garments these are, but are most definitely not niqab.

It really would be nice to get a break from all this mindless, anti-Muslim hysteria.

What do I care what my neighbor wears so long as he or she is a peaceful member of society?

My experience with Muslims is simply one a sweet-tempered people who pretty much mind their own business.

I wish their critics displayed half their excellent qualities.

__________________

"Yeah, it's such a shame how all that hedonism led Israel to become the most prosperous nation in the middle east, with the most diverse economy..."

Pure and utter ignorance, that posting.

Israel is, in fact, the most subsidized country in the world, and it enjoys countless unfair advantages over others.

For decades the U.S. government has given it about $3 billion per year - that's about $500 per head each year.

Oh wouldn't Canadians, or even more the Arabs the above writer so clearly despises, like to receive a foreign government’s cheque of $500 each year? Most of Israel’s population has grown up its entire life with this benefit.

But that $500 per head subsidy is only the start of special advantages.

America shares precious intelligence and technology and access on a scale extended to no one else.

What other relatively insignificant country - Israel's population is about that of Ecuador - gets its president into the White House every few months?

What other country of this size has a generous free-trade agreement with America?

But those are still only the beginnings of the subsidy.

America’s defense establishment enters into all kinds of huge and costly joint projects with Israel – as for the Arrow anti-missile missile – sharing valuable technology and access to the best brains plus money.

American Jewish organizations have sent literally tens of billions to Israel over 60 years, and these immense contributions have been given charitable status exempting the givers from tax.

Europe too gives Israel special status in many economic matters.

Germany of course has paid billions in reparations for the holocaust to Israel – I’m not faulting that, but only pointing out one more huge subsidy. It also supplies Israel weapons - like a small fleet of sophisticated, diesel-powered submarines - at bargain-basement prices.

Israel’s economy is often grossly inefficient, yet its privileged position allows for that. For example, Israel squanders the precious water resources of the region to grow things like tomatoes which it exports to the U.S. and Europe. If the true cost of the water were reflected in the price, Israel’s produce would rot on the docks for lack of customers.

And then at the same time, Israel builds desalination plants to create more potable water at immense cost per unit volume of water.

Israel is many things, but it is neither efficient nor is it an economic miracle. It only has that appearance if you don’t look beyond the gloss.

NOBEL-WINNING ECONOMIST PAUL KRUGMAN'S DANGEROUS THOUGHTS ABOUT CHINA - AND WHY AMERICA HAS NEVER BEEN A GENUINE FREE-TRADER

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JEREMY WARNER IN THE TELEGRAPH

Jeremy Warner, you have it exactly right.

Americans have never been free traders at heart.

And I believe that is because the impulse to dominate, very much part of American culture and tradition, is not comfortable with it. Americans raised for generations with Manifest Destiny and “Empire of Liberty” have an instinctive repulsion around compromise with others.

And, following from the same roots, Americans are largely repulsed by the rule of international organizations so necessary to a better-ordered world. Thus everything from the United Nations to various International treaties are viewed with suspicion or even contempt.

Indeed, America often uses free trade, in the form of free trade agreements, as a weapon for political domination.

After all, classical economics tells us that it is the smaller partner who has the most to gain from free trade.

So when the U. S. signs a free trade agreement with some relatively small countries in South America or the Caribbean (as it has recently), it obtains effectively a sledge hammer over the affairs of those countries: don't get out of line or we’ll abrogate the treaty benefiting you.

Further still, when the U.S. enters into a large and complex free trade agreement – as, for example, the North American Free Trade Agreement – it flexes its muscle whenever it is uncomfortable with a situation rising out of the terms of the agreement.

Students of that historic agreement will know the U.S., on a dozen issues, has simply declared it will not comply, and that is after going through the entire dispute-settling process established by the treaty and losing every decision. For Canada this high-handed behavior has included everything from trade in pork to soft-wood lumber, and for Mexico, it has included many agricultural products plus important services.

Americans, many of them, simply believe they have the best of all possible worlds under the best of all possible governments, and anything which appears to say otherwise is rejected out of hand.

Paul Krugman, despite the Noble Prize, is contaminated with strains of the same thinking we see in Thomas Friedman or Pat Buchanan or a large fraction of the United States Senate.

That is why, in my book about the decline of the American Empire and the rise of China, one of my most important themes was whether the United States would peacefully allow China to compete. I do believe if China is allowed to peacefully compete, it will unquestionably become the world’s most powerful economy in not many decades.

United States’ history puts the odds against it. The rise of Japan was met with immense hostility which eventually caused the Japanese to go to war against the United States, something they had had no intention of doing.

But the American expectation to keep the Pacific Ocean as an American lake made it take policies extremely hostile to Japan. The same motive was still at work only a few decades ago with the American holocaust in Vietnam.

JEFFERSON AS AUTHOR OF DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE: ONLY PARTLY RIGHT - MORE ABOUT JEFFERSON TOO

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY DANIEL FINKELSTEIN IN THE TIMES

You are only partly right, Daniel, calling Jefferson author of the Declaration of Independence.

That is of course what Jefferson liked to think himself - he had an ego the size of a cruise ship - and he had that half-truth carved on his tombstone at Monticello.

But in that as in so many things Jefferson was a rather dark and devious man.

Jefferson's draft of the Declaration was long and slightly ridiculous. The opening memorable phrases were amended to what we know today by that original genius, Benjamin Franklin.

Perhaps more importantly, the Continental Congress whittled his draft seriously down. Jefferson was in fact angry and embarrassed by the editing.

Jefferson’s draft was ridiculous for his lengthy focus on the King’s guilt for the slave trade – this from the lifetime owner of more than two hundred slaves.

Jefferson undoubtedly had a double purpose in this condemnation of the King.

First, at the time, there was actually a surplus of human flesh on the market, and slave prices were falling, and Jefferson was looking after his large investment in flesh.

Second, as always, Jefferson liked to be seen as a great advocate of human freedom, a kind of minor Enlightenment figure if you will with a legacy of words if not acts, so condemning the King would be part of his manufactured legacy.

Jefferson was such a spendthrift all his life, never able to earn his way as a lawyer, he never thought of setting his slaves free. Indeed, he died a bankrupt still.

So far as freedom goes, Jefferson also assisted Napoleon in trying to suppress the slave revolt in Haiti. A number of other ugly behaviors and policies are on his freedom-balance sheet.

The Declaration, if you actually read it (few do), after the wonderful opening words, descends into an almost petulant long list of charges and grievances, taking on a tone of something still true of America, always blaming others for their own poor choices.

All early – before the revolution - visitors to the colonies remarked how healthy and free the American colonies were. The colonies were widely regarded as one of the freest places on earth.

But being asked to help pay with taxes for something which largely benefited them – the French and Indian War – and being made part of a dreaded Catholic place, Quebec, under the Quebec Act caused an almost insane reaction.

The colonists had the benefit of the war and saw no reason to help pay for what they already had, and anti-papacy became a raging storm resembling in its intensity something from Northern Ireland in 1969.

A COLUMN EXPLAINING WHY AMERICAN-ISRAELI RELATIONS HAVE GONE SOUR - SO WHO NEEDS AN EXPLANATION?

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

Why?

Who needs a column to explain the obvious?

Israel hurled a studied insult at the Vice President of the United States on a visit, and expects everyone just to smile.

Unbelievable.

Israel wants it both ways in everything.

Recently a government leader from Brazil was on a visit, and he did not wish to visit a certain monument to a controversial Zionist.

The Israeli government went out of its way to treat his action as an insult.

As far as the U. S. goes, Israel is happy to receive countless blessings - from security agreements and intelligence sharing to the world's richest haul of foreign aid - yet when the U. S. treats any of Israel's high-handed behavior for what it is, the U. S. government is the bad guy.

Ridiculous.

And why is the American Secretary of State calling the leader of an insignificant country of 7 million (less than 6 million if you discount the Arabs Israel has every intention of eventually expelling) to explain her remarks? It, of course, should be the leader of the insignificant country calling her to apologize.

And people say it is the Arabs who behave irrationally.

NETANYAHU AND THE AFTERMATH OF ISRAEL'S POINTED INSULT TO VISTING VICE-PRESIDENT BIDEN - WHERE ISRAEL'S SAVAGE BEHAVIOR IS TAKING US

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE TORONTO GLOBE AND MAIL

Netanyahu is beyond reaching by criticism or speeches, being one of the worst in a long series of prime ministers ready to do almost anything to achieve Israel's unspoken goal: getting rid of all Palestinians and taking all their homes and farms.

There can be no defense of such unethical and brutal behavior, although a large number of Israel's apologists keep trying. After all, the United States went to war when the Serbs were doing much the same kinds of things.

I fear Israel is going to confront the world with a true crisis in the next decade or so, as it drives out the 1.5 million people from Gaza and the several million from the West Bank, and it would do this with no compensation for taking people's property or disrupting their lives.

The blockade of Gaza is nothing but a brutal attempt to drive the people out under the pretense that Israel can't live with "terrorists." Gaza has always been a nightmare for Israel's leaders: 1.5 million refugees huddled in a small enclave inside Israel's claimed territory.

There is little hope to preventing a disaster it seems to me simply because the United States is the only force on earth that can demand reason from Israel, and the lobby for Israel has the members of Congress caught in a web of sophisticated campaign-financing techniques and the threat of unpleasant, noisy opposition at each election.

When President Truman was pondering the question of whether the United States should immediately recognize the state of Israel then emerging from a wave of terror by outfits like Stern and Irgun, frightening Palestinians into a mass exodus from their homes, he is said to have remarked that the lobbying efforts coming at him were like nothing he had ever experienced, overwhelming.

And he faced an election as an underdog candidate, so campaign funds were critical, and that’s how Israel gained recognition.

And nothing has changed: Obama just signed an agreement for $30 billion in American assistance over ten years, yet Israel is neither a poor country nor is it seriously under threat from anyone. That’s more aid than anyone anywhere receives, even people in far greater need. That is only possible under the influence of an extremely tough lobby at home.

So despite well justified criticism from America’s administration as the Vice-president recovers from the grotesque public insult of Israel’s announcing new settlements in East Jerusalem to coincide with his trip, it is almost impossible America will start enforcing fairness on Israel.

And so a truly ugly world crisis seems unavoidable not too far in the future.

______________________

"Mr Chuckman knows, Gaza is under the control of Hamas, a fundamentalist organization openly dedicated to anti-Semitic principles and to the destruction of Israel. Its goal is simply to cast out the infidels and impose Sharia law over all of Palestine."

Just more of the countless repetitions of mindless, going-in-circles arguments.

First, Hamas is not a terrorist organization, except by Israeli declaration. Its history was overwhelmingly as a humanitarian organization.

It was actually secretly supported earlier by Israel's secret service, in an effort to create competition for Fatah, so it cannot have been viewed as much of a threat.

When Hamas became a political party, it ran a clean election and was honestly elected. Most of its senior leaders are professional-type people, not terrorists. Hamas for the Palestinians represented the hope for clean government after the endless corruption of Fatah.

Anyway, no matter what you might imagine Hamas to be, one is supposed to talk to one's opponents for peace. Just because I have neighbors with whom I don’t agree doesn’t give me the right to attack them, attempt to starve them out, imprison them, or murder them, but Israel claims this insane right.

Israel has never ever talked with a legitimate government. As we all know from history – Nixon and China for example – often extreme foes are better able to make peace.

Anyway, all Israel did for years was treat Arafat as though he were a clod of dirt, and many suspect Israel finally assassinated him with poison, something they’ve done many times to others.

If you want peace, you talk, you compromise, and you do not even need American assistance to do so.

If you don’t want peace – indeed, if you want to make those with whom you disagree disappear and you want to seize their property - you do just as Israel does year after year.

It truly is that simple.

CONSERVATIVE JUNIOR MINISTER HELENA GUERGIS'S UGLY AIRPORT MELT-DOWN AND THE PARTY'S PATHETIC POOL OF MINISTERIAL MATERIAL

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

Reading of Helena Guergis’s airport melt-down, I may have new sympathy for the unpleasant Rahim Jaffer, her husband.

Maybe there's actually a good reason Rahim Jaffer (of drunk-driving, cocaine-possession, and getting-off-with-a-slap-on-the-wrist fame) does the desperate things he does?

He appears to be married to a lunatic.

And, yes, indeed, where were the RCMP tasers on this one, as someone above asked?

I guess they save that treatment for poor foreigners who can't speak English and who are not junior cabinet ministers.

And even then, they need four officers against one person to "deploy" the taser.

The photo with the story only shows two RCMP officers with the ghastly Guergis.

God, the new Conservatives have pathetic ministerial material. Peter "we'll fight for Israel" Kent, Helena "I'm God" Guergis, Peter "my ex is a dog" MacKay, Lisa "leave my documents behind" Raitt, Maxime "leave my secret papers at my biker gang girlfriend's" Bernier, and so on.

Our election system is a terrible mess if its result is keeping a bunch of second- and third-raters like this running the country with about a third of the country’s support. We really do need serious election reform.

TIRESOME IN-HOUSE NEPOTISM AT CBC RADIO ONLY REDUCES PUBLIC RESPECT FOR THE NETWORK

RESPONSE TO AN INTERVIEW ON CBC RADIO

"Fresh Air" is the third program recently interviewing Kevin Sylvester about his children’s book.

Sylvester is a perfectly nice man, and I like him, but I turned the radio off.

I'm really tired of this kind of in-house "nepotism" at CBC Radio. It is unfair and abusive.

I know several publishers turned Sylvester’s book down, so I doubt it is some magical production. Indeed, I heard parts of it read, far too many parts, when he replaced Shelagh Rogers one summer. It was actually shameful that he was paid to host a show and his hosting consisted of many, many readings from his work-in-progress.

This making the rounds at CBC shows for free publicity is just wrong since he is both an ex-full-time employee and a current part-time employee. This is abuse of listeners and access to CBC Radio.

Even more, with all the authors in this country, why would one little children’s book - even if it wasn’t mediocre and the writer didn’t work for CBC - get this unwarranted attention?

I'd almost bet that the publisher who did take the book did so knowing full well it would get this kind of excessive, free promotion by his fellow CBC employees.

Simply wrong, and my respect for CBC Radio goes down with each iteration of this kind of behavior.

Is this one more aspect of the general dumbing-down going on, the Ghomeshi-izing of CBC?

HAITI: IS IT HOPELESS?

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

Read Graham Greene's "The Comedians" in considering your answer to this question.

It remains a devastating examination of Haiti although written many decades ago.

___________________

One could theorize that an entire population of ex-slaves provides a poor basis for a society.

In general, the slaves taken by traders were the ones without the wits and cunning to avoid being taken.

Of course, people discussing slavery generally forget that it was African chiefs themselves who traded their people to slavers for profit. They weren't likely to select the most promising of youth.

Slaves were valued only for their physical abilities, strength and endurance.

I think you could fairly speculate that an unrepresentative sample of African population provided the basis for Haiti, a population then missing many of the qualities which go to building a sound society.

Two hundred years of abject failure tells all thinking people that something there is drastically wrong.

The arguments, repeated in a comment here, about past wealth seized and American occupations cannot possibly explain the human hell that Haiti is.

Immigrants came to other parts of North America, virtual peasants from Russia or Germany or Scotland, without a dime in their pockets and became successful in millions and millions of cases.

Haiti has now become the classic case of the development nightmare with a population-resource ratio inadequate ever to achieve anything. No resources and high birth rates.

There have been a small number of successful Haitians. In general, they either live in an exclusive enclave above the squalor or leave, like our Governor General.

Haiti too is an extremely racist society. People are literally graded like fruit by graduations of lightness in their skin color. This was not imposed on the society, but has arisen out of its history.

American interventions, naturally hated anywhere, have always been based in fear that huge migrations of Haitians would land on America’s shore if things became desperate enough.

YAWN: TELEVISION DEBATES COMING TO BRITISH POLITICS

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE TELEGRAPH

American television debates are not, nor have they ever been allowed to be, debates in any sense - they are joint press conferences.

They are scripted and tightly controlled. Times for responses are highly limited. The moderator is jointly agreed upon, and thereby is rather a marshmallow-like newsman, And the questions generally do not touch true controversies.

Past presidential debates are only memorable for the odd mistake, but candidates have always made mistakes, and I think they are often more powerful in print than on the evanescent television image.

There’s also silliness that enters the television debate, a good example being the impression Nixon made with five-o’clock shadow and sweating, and that is no way to judge a leader.

In effect the American debates are the perfect symbols of what national politics have become there: a rather vacuous contest between the duopoly political parties and having much the flavor and sense of the kind of advertising we see for burger chains or the two big soda pop companies. All rather dreary and definitely uninformative.

And, contrary to what was claimed the other day on this topic by Toby Harnden, always ready to exaggerate, the American debates have changed almost nothing real: you don’t get change from an exchange of fluff.

A RUBBISH COLUMN ABOUT EDUCATION IN AFGHANISTAN

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

"Over the past decade, the international community has invested billions of dollars and sacrificed hundreds of men and women in a fragmented effort to stem an increasingly downward tide that has been evident for years."

Cory Anderson, this is complete rubbish.

First, Afghanistan has been torn apart for decades, going back to America's secret war against the Soviet Union in which a couple of billion dollars were spent on destruction.

Indeed, under the Soviet Union, many Afghans, especially women, did better than under the Northern Alliance which came afterward and which is again in charge thanks to America.

Second, it is an occupied country still, and every week bombs fall on civilians somewhere and destroy buildings somewhere.

Third, it is, and was, a poor place, and like all poor places in the world it features backwardness and low levels of education.

Fourth, if by some magic you educated every child to a high level starting tomorrow, the economy would have no place to absorb them. They would virtually all become candidates for emigration, effectively taking with them a costly investment somewhere else.

Fifth, in order to both educate and absorb educated people, an economy needs economic growth and plenty of it.

Sixth, if America had really wanted to assist Afghanistan, it would have dropped dollar bills, not bombs.

Seventh, may I suggest that you avoiding writing about matters in which you have almost no knowledge?

RESPONSE TO A COLUMN ON SOMETHING OR OTHER BY CANADA'S PRESTON MANNING

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

Gee, where’s Preston’s picture?

The thing I enjoy about Preston’s columns is his new cool-guy look, clearly an effort to recapture his lost youth of the 1950-60s.

It is the only thing I enjoy about Preston’s columns.

His words are always tedious pontificating.

But I must say it is nice that some oil company with more money than it knows what to do with or Christian fundamentalist crackpot group gave Preston his very own little institute in which to play chief executive.

It’s so much better than having him in active politics.

Remember, Preston’s legacy to the nation is that nasty cretin we call our prime minister.

ON BARACK OBAMA'S BEING A PUZZLE

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

"Barack Obama is a puzzle."

Yes, indeed, and I think you've described it well.

"His ambitions are genuinely progressive; his temperament is genuinely open-minded. It is a rare and confusing combination, and it explains a great deal."

Yes, again, but I think there's more to the mystery than that.

Pragmatism is of course a philosophy claimed by many Americans, even before it was explicated by William James.

But ideology has also always been a feature of American society, often extreme ideology and often colored with religious or quasi-religious beliefs.

That too shouldn't sit well with pragmatism, but apparently it does.

I put it down to two things in the end.

One is what the fine American historian Page Smith called - misusing a word by standards of our modern understanding - America's "schizophrenia."

There are countless examples of this dating back to the Founding Fathers blubbering about freedom while trading in slaves, what the great Dr Johnson called “drivers of negroes” talking about freedom.

Jefferson, that greatest of blubberers on freedom, supported the tyrant Napoleon trying to recapture Haiti, as well acting in a great many other anti-freedom loving ways.

Lincoln started a great bloody war rather than tolerate the South’s right to self-determination. Lincoln may be viewed actually as the founder of the military-industrial complex with his mighty armies and ironclads. Yet Americans think of him as Father Abraham, an epithet having almost nothing to do with Lincoln’s actual character and behavior.

Look at the America of the last half century. It has started numerous bloody wars, killing millions for almost nothing, and coups, yet it insists on using the language of peace and liberty and principles. It just does not compute.

The one national drive that dominates American history is the drive to empire, to expand and to run the lives of others. Naturally, this drive is not contained in the anthems and speeches, but it is always there, subordinating everything else.

So a kind of “schizophrenic” thinking just comes second-nature. Being part of the fabric of the society, it influences thinking in all matters, domestic as well as foreign.

You cannot spend the best part of a trillion dollars a year on the Pentagon and at least fourteen intelligence agencies and pretend there is some unique freedom in America. That is absurd, yet most Americans desperately believe the absurdity.

HILLARY CLINTON "TOUGH AND TIRELESS" IN ARGENTINA

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY GIDEON RACHMAN IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES

Tough and tireless, yes, but to whose benefit?

"Turn the page" on the coup in Honduras?

When was the last time she or any American Secretary of State talked that way about a coup that the U.S. did not favor?

The Falkland Islands?

They belonged to Britain before Texas belonged to the US.

Before California.

Before Alaska.

And well before the US seized Hawaii against all the natives’ wishes. Their national petition was completely ignored in Washington as the US government annexed the place.

And the people in the Falklands are British in origin and in loyalty.

What you see here is the "special relationship" in action.

Tony Blair spent British lives and wealth on Bush's pointless crusades, and what does Britain get back?

You might think so elemental a thing as support in the Falklands.

But that's not how America operates. It takes what it wants from everyone, and blubbers about principles.

MORE OLYMPIC NONSENSE: PRIDE IN SPORTS ACHIEVEMENT - BUT AT WHAT COST?

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

"...it should be evident that cost calculations can't capture the impact of elite athletic competition..."

Please, Mr. Simpson, this is the most fatuous argument possible for wasting immense sums of money.

Sporting pride?

What about scientific-achievement pride?

What about pride in our primary education institutions?

Or pride in the quality of our libraries?

It does seem to me that these last are pretty clearly a little threadbare, and yet they are far, far more important than adult games.

Sporting pride comes from people who only see what's on the television screen for an hour or two.

They have no sense of the costs involved.

And from an economics point of view, that includes "opportunity cost," what you gave up to have a two-week blow-out signifying nothing.

$6 billion-plus would build about 250 first-class schools which would serve our children for the next couple of generations.

Or it would build a comparable number of great libraries.

Or still, if you chose not to build new institutions, it could have provided great upgrades to several thousand such institutions.

Or it would fund some genuinely world-important scientific research projects, bringing focus to Canada by some of the world’s best brains.

Instead we’ve got beer-soaked memories and a set of tinny-looking medals.

The Olympics is a mug’s game.
______________

And just look at the picture attached to this column: a group of pretty girls wearing ridiculous-looking hats - the kind of hats no one in Canada has ever worn - and, I'm sorry, but the poor women look like servers at some fast-food restaurant chain with a Northern theme.

Or how about the giant inflated Mountie? It resembled the things used at the openings of new car washes.

And that choice was particularly thoughtless considering in what low esteem so many today hold the Mounties, with Vancouver itself having been a focus of their criminal behavior.

What about the little Glow-Lite plastic candles everyone marched in with? Wal-mart Christmas merchandise, surely.

But we did not pay Wal-mart prices for any of this kitsch. It was all custom-designed and custom-made, and I’m sure it all cost a fortune.

Bad taste at sky-high prices.