EDUCATION STUDY SPENDS TIME AND MONEY ON THE OBVIOUS: POOR MASTERY OF MATH IN LOWER GRADES MEANS POOR SUCCESS IN HIGHER GRADES - EDUCATION'S FAILURE

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

The shameful thing truly is that a study is needed to tell us this obvious truth.

The money and time spent on the study itself are reflections of the poor state of our public education.

Math, perhaps more so than any other subject, builds the next row of bricks on that previously laid.

I tutored kids in math, and I learned a good deal about the state of math education in Ontario.

It is terrible.

There is a ridiculously complex curriculum written in education jargon that many a math major would not understand.

The subject areas jump around far too much, proving in effect a large series of short stories rather than a novel with a good plot.

And the teachers use this stupid curriculum, their fear of not covering it all, to avoid doing what really needs doing.

I encountered a number of children in grade five who did not know their times tables, a topic that was part of grade two or three when I was young.

Those not knowing them – because the teachers do not take the considerable effort required to effectively teach them – are of course still passed.

So we end up with the most absurd situations – deliberately created – of children being introduced to things like elementary probability, which is work with fractions, when they do not know the times tables or division facts needed to work with fractions. Or try division problems with double-digit divisors without knowing the times tables.

Any reasonably bright person observing such nonsense knows we are in trouble and knows the education establishment in Ontario has failed our kids.

Good work, Dalton, handing them gobs of money and getting nothing in return but ease in your election.
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"…teach kids math using real life examples when young, cutting up pizza, dividing oranges, slicing cake…"

A totally inadequate and trivial notion, useful at the baby level, something already done by good teachers.

When it comes to multiplying or adding fractions, this notion is completely useless. Or try using wedges to teach double-digit division. Basic algebra? Solid geometry?

Not all math operations can be given easy-see demonstrations, yet they must be learned for the power of what they do.

But they can be taught by patient, methodical teachers, teachers who themselves understand what it is they are doing - something far too often not the case in our elementary schools.

Fundamental ideas like place value and what moving a decimal point left or right does must be absorbed thoroughly.

The real problem is the average poor quality of grade-school teachers and their often lack of any special knowledge. We have gym teachers teaching math sometimes or “teacher-librarians” expert at nothing handling various classes.

And, of course, going beneath that layer of the problem, we come to the fundamental one: a teachers' union which often defends and effectively promotes incompetence.

Those people form the talent pool out of which virtually all the education officials up to the minister come from. The blind leading the blind.

We'll only improve things by efforts like changing the way teachers are trained and taking recognized experts from outside of the public education establishment - as university professors recognized for their skill and expertise - to write curricula. All performance testing should also be handled this way.
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"I think the best way to improve education is to abolish faculties of education, thereby eliminating the affectations and pretensions that go with the limp masters and doctorates in the "discipline". Most of what passes for higher education here is not worthy of the name, and, merely debases the coinage, as evidenced by the shoddy research that only occasionally appears before the public."

Absolutely, spot on.

The best example of this I can think of is the new Director of Toronto Public Schools, a football player with a meaningless doctorate in education. Every time he opens his mouth, it is either to reveal how little he knows or to do a photo-op.

Hire people who know math to teach math, and just so every other fundamental subject.

We have a huge reservoir of talent out there in our retired professors, scientists, technicians of every kind, government specialists, astute businessmen.

Hire them on at least a part time basis with no need for vacuous degrees in education. Throw in local artists and musicians to enrich the schools.

Get rid of the deadwood, people who know nothing and have no enthusiasm.

We could improve our schools dramatically in a couple of years.

TOO EARLY TO WRITE-OFF NEW ISRAEL-PALESTINE TALKS? AN ANSWER TO JOURNALIST ALUF BENN'S EMPTY WORDS

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

Too early to write-off direct talks?

Please.

Representatives for these "direct talks" on the Palestinian side in a sense do not even exist: Abbas's election mandate timed out a year ago, and he stays in office under emergency measures – i..e,, he has absolutely no democratic legitimacy.

But even poor Abbas, a kind of Palestinian "step'n'fetch it" figure if ever there was one, wanted nothing to do with such talks while Israel continued stealing land. The American administration browbeat him for months, threatening him with loss of all aid, into attending.

The only genuinely elected government in any of the territories of Palestine, Hamas in Gaza, remains under Israel’s brutal blockade and imprisonment – that is, those elected representatives who were not illegally arrested by Israel or murdered in assassinations or murdered in Operation Cast Lead.

Representatives for these "direct talks" on the Israeli side are from the Netanyahu government, a group of people who have not the least interest in what any normal person would call peace. The “foreign minister” qualifies surely as a David Duke figure.

Now David Duke in the United States – former Klu Klux Klan chief and minor politician – is treated anytime in the press as a lowlife. Avigdor Lieberman is every bit the hateful racist as Duke, but he is far more poisonous, being the foreign minister he is in a position to make his hate wreck the lives of millions. Because he is an Israeli, Lieberman is treated with respect he does not deserve.

Does anyone but a madman believe anything can come out of that set of circumstances?

The only possibility is that Abbas is virtually beaten down into signing something utterly inappropriate for his people. In that case, the “agreement” won’t be worth the paper on which it is written.

This entire matter is utterly meaningless as statesmanship, it is brutal political theater, intended to please the Israel Lobby in the U.S. to get the Democrats through the mid-term elections without a catastrophic loss of campaign contributions.
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The Six Day War was an elaborate black operation by Israel. It prodded the Arabs over and over with many aggressive acts into hostility, and then it attacked first.

The intention was to seize the lands not seized in 1948 with the terrors of Irgun and Stern - that is, to create Greater Israel, a self-defined concept that has always motivated Israel's government.

The attack on the USS Liberty, a US spy ship on station in the Mediterranean, was intended to blind the US administration while General Dayan turned around his armor to attack in the North.

It was not a "mistake." It was a deliberate two-hour attack on a well-marked ship, one moreover that Israel had been advised would be on station to guard against its ambitions.

Dayan felt that if he had the slot of time, he could achieve all Israel's goals of conquest, and he pretty much did, presenting the world with the fait accompli whose ghastly consequences we have endured since.

It was all a neat trick, wage a lightning war of conquest while getting sympathy as little David fighting off hoards of nasty Philistines, but Israel knew from its first planning it was sure to win.

And we’ve learned since that the “little David” image is a sentimental fairy tale: Israel behaves the part brutal bully in its part of the world, attacking and terrorizing every neighbor that it has, even now threatening people a thousand miles away who have never attacked anyone.

See:
http://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/05/27/was-einstein-right/

ACADEMICS WORKING LIKE ACTORS IN TV ADS WEARING WHITE COATS POSING AS DOCTORS - THE CASE OF AURAL BRAUN ON RUSSIA AND IRAN AND TURKEY

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

Aural Braun’s column reminds me very much of the kind of pseudo-academic stuff churned out by those legions of scribblers working at America’s many think tanks, all of them functioning like the actors wearing white coats in television ads posing as doctors.

In other words, Mr Braun is attempting to sell us a bill of goods, but I’m afraid he doesn’t do a very good job of it.

“…the additional nuclear know-how that Iran is bound to gain from operating the advanced reactor is likely to serve a dual purpose and thereby boost prospects for Tehran’s nuclear weapons program.”

That’s simply inaccurate and question-begging. The best intelligence sources have told us Iran does not have a weapons program. Moreover, by what god-like authority are we to deny scientists and engineers in Iran the right to learn about reactor operations? God knows, Israel’s scientists suffer from no such restriction.

“Second, Russian leaders, President Dmitry Medvedev included, have pushed forcefully for Russian regional dominance, and this includes at least key parts of the Middle East.”

I thought Mr Braun’s qualification was as professor dealing with politics and international affairs? But with that flat-footed statement, he shows no understanding of what large and powerful states always do. They invariably behave in such a way that they serve as the sun to a solar system of states around them.

Indeed, that is precisely what Israel has worked towards since the Six Day War. Israel strives, with its ill-gotten nuclear weapons and bottomless military subsidies from the United States, whose government seems permanently intimidated by a relentless lobby, to become a miniature geo-political replica of the United States in the Middle East, one sharing no understanding or sympathies with the peoples over which it casts its shadow.

“The Erdogan government, which some suspect of considerable Islamist sympathies, has not only challenged Israel but has built powerful ties with Iran and Syria.”

First, I truly doubt Mr Braun would have written this nonsense before Israel’s bloody act of piracy on the high seas. Naturally, Turkey was deeply offended when its citizens were murdered, its word questioned (Turkey had officially examined the ships before they left), and a great deal of property stolen. Israel never even apologized.

Erdogen was treated as a rather exceptional leader by Israel’s apologists when he worked with Israel on a number of matters. Now, he is suddenly a pariah.

I hate to be the one breaking the news to Mr Braun, but Syria and Iran are legitimate, and ancient, countries. There is nothing wrong in having relations with them, even “powerful” ones, to use the same loaded word Mr Braun does.

There is additional news for Mr Braun: despite its Ataturk-started traditions of secular government, Turkey is a Muslim country, so Islamist sympathies are as natural as breathing. Only someone defending the indefensible (Israel’s behaviour), as Mr Braun works towards indirectly in this column, would consider that some kind of accusation.

“Third, although Moscow understands that a nuclear Iran would present a profound long-term danger, it also seems to believe it can control the ‘process’….This is an extraordinarily risky gamble and, in light of Iran’s determination and inventiveness, a foolish one.”

There is not one genuine fact in those statements, but lots of attitude and unwarranted adjectives.

“Superpower restoration for a Russia saddled with a unidimensional, energy-based economy confronting a dire demographic decline is a dangerous pipe dream.”

Apart from its mixed metaphors, that statement is ridiculous. Where is the evidence that Russia thinks it can be a “superpower”?

Russia in fact is a country of about 150 million people with an intellectually-gifted population, some extraordinary technological capability, and an economy that is “over the hump” of its great depression following the collapse of communism, and it is now starting to show potential for serious long-term growth.

WAS DEATH OF BRITAIN'S DOCTOR KELLY A SUICIDE OR A MURDER? THE DISHONEST TERM CONSPIRACY THEORIST AND CONSPIRACIES AS COMMON EVENTS

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

You do not have to be "conspiracy-minded" to believe that Doctor Kelly did not kill himself.

The associate of Doctor Kelly’s, Mai Pederson a military interpreter, who recently revealed facts about his physical state – some injured part of his arm meant he could not wield a knife and made it impossible for him to cut his own wrist – is not a “conspiracy-minded.” She says he also had been advised quietly he was on a hit list. She also tells the story of the red laser site which appeared on his forehead on a walk together in Baghdad, something which made him take the threat seriously.

The relative of Doctor Kelly who said absolutely that that just was not his temperament is not a "conspiracy-minded."

The expert doctors who've said he could not have died the way it is said that he died are not "conspiracy-minded." The vessel cut could not even have bleed him to death.

The term "conspiracy theorist" often used instead of "conspiracy-minded" is actually one that, in my view, automatically marks out its user as dishonest.

It is a way to condemn all people who question the facts of something as borderline paranoids.

It truly is a term without meaning too, displaying for those who are careful of words its user’s lack of thinking.

We do, after all, have genuine conspiracies by governments with large interests. To say otherwise is to display ignorance.

This has always been true in history, but today the stakes are higher than ever in matters of international affairs for some countries.

It is, for example, open knowledge that Israel sends dozens of agents abroad in elaborate schemes to murder those deemed enemies.

And what of the years-long cover-up in Britain of the true events around Bloody Sunday?

What of the case, a few years ago, of a half-dozen American nuclear warheads being shipped across the country? Every outside expert says that the checks and balances make such an "accident" impossible?

What of the downing of the fourth hi-jacked plane on 9/11 over Pennsylvania? It was almost certainly shot down, likely on Cheney's orders, because multiple debris fields stretched for miles, something impossible in the kind of crash claimed.

What of Israel's attack on the USS Liberty, spy ship, during the Six Day War? When Israel finally got around to explaining it, it claimed an "accident"? A two-hour attack against a well-marked ship, one Israel had been advised would be on station and when the lead Israeli pilot made an initial low enough pass slowly to acknowledge crew members waves? Taking the ship out of commission cut off American information of the battle field and gave General Dayan the time to turn around his armor to complete the conquests of the Six Day War, the effort to secure Greater Israel, the results of which we suffer to this day.

What of Israel's nuclear weapons program? Years of intense, high-level deception.

What of South Africa's nuclear weapons program?

By the way, I wonder how many readers know that Doctor Kelly was one of the technical team assigned to take possession of South Africa's nuclear warheads when the apartheid regime ended? Doctor Kelly knew many damaging secrets.

FAR OVER-GENERALIZED STUFF ABOUT HIGHER EDUCATION BORDERING ON NONSENSE - SOME OBSERVATIONS ON INVESTMENT IN HUMAN CAPITAL AND THE SITUATION IN CHINA

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY ROSEANN O'REILLY RUNTE IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

Roseann O’Reilly Runte, this is very thin gruel indeed.

“Imagine a world without innovation. The best ideas emanate from thoughtful research, discipline and team work.”

This statement is demonstrably false.

Einstein did not work in a team, neither did Darwin, nor Freud, nor almost any of the groundbreaking mathematicians of the century, people like Goedel.

Creators from Mozart to Schoenberg or our own Glenn Gould were not team members.

Yes, universities use teams of people in their research, but the fact is that truly new ideas rarely come from them. In the cases where they do, there is usually an individual who has sparked the work with an idea that requires testing and demonstrating.

Education is very important, but professional educators do often tend to overemphasize the importance the role of the institution, versus the inspired teacher or theorist.

Real education should start with the very young, as one of Queen Elizabeth I’s great teachers, Roger Ascham, stated centuries ago. Identifying the talents of the young and nurturing them fully gives a society the best chance of high success.

But it is with the young that Canada perhaps most fails. Many of our primary teachers cannot even use a computer, and many of them know little or nothing about the subject they teach, from math to history.

“Tolerance and respect are based on knowledge. Fear and distrust stem from ignorance.”

Well, that sounds nice as a broad aphorism, but I am afraid that it is largely false. Many highly educated people have been destroyers of society and enemies of tolerance: just a few examples from our last century include Joseph Goebbels, Henry Kissinger, James Angleton, or Vladimir Lenin.

You might include people like Edward Teller or even, to come down to the ridiculous, George Bush (two degrees from prestigious universities, although one doubts they were anything more than “legacy” degrees granted in search of his rich family’s contributions).

And in our primary schools, there is almost no room for what I call critical education. Try teaching children something meaningful about superstition, and you will have Christian Fundamentalist parents looking to be rid of you. Try teaching children to think critically about politics, and you will have party-faithful types after your hide. Try teaching children to think critically about the distortions of advertising, and you will have corporate people making your life miserable.

“Without access to education, wealth disappears”

Again, a highly exaggerated claim, as current events in places like China and India demonstrate. But more importantly, it is the quality and nature of the education that count as what economists call “human capital,” investments which generate wealth.

Higher education has two components: one part is investment, and the other is consumption. When someone studies demanding subjects which are needed in the economy, it is investment. When someone goes to university and muddles through in a “bird” subject, it is mainly consumption, not investment leading to anything of importance to the future economy.
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"First of all, Einstein did work in a team - graduate students and other professors around the world were often consulted and contributed to the many brilliant innovations."

Einstein consulted select people, but he did not work as a team. He actually rather disliked the atmosphere of academic institutions generally.

His important papers have his name, not that of an institution.

And, I must say for someone who is ready to accuse others of ignorance, you seem unaware that he worked at the Patent Office when developing relativity by himself.

You say I cannot negate the column by a few examples, but isn't that ridiculous? Am I supposed to submit a list of hundreds? Which, by the way is completely doable. How many would you like?

This column reflects second-rate institutional academia, the very kind that contributes little to new knowledge and certainly no brilliant ideas.

“As for your dumb-headed assertion that those who take "bird" subjects; which I take you mean anything not directly beneficial to an industrial economy, are simply consuming precious resources which could be better spent pumping out scientists, engineers, doctors etc. is idiotic at best”

But that’s simply not what I said. For someone ready to hurl names, I do think you could read what you comment on before commenting.

I mentioned Mozart and Schoenberg. I could also have mentioned – again, if I were submitting lists – people like Picasso, Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, Edward Steichen, and hundreds of others.

I am well aware of the changes that have taken place in the world, and, while new areas of knowledge have developed, it remains true always that there is education as investment and education as consumption.

A lot of what we see today is education for consumption, of little difference to the real economy than eating jelly beans, and I believe this has been a trend for decades.

I am reminded of Sarah Palin who took 6 years at 5 different institutions to get a bachelor’s degree in “communications.” She remains abysmally ignorant, vastly uniformed, uninterested in serious things, filled with superstition and prejudice, and could have achieved what she has achieved without ever taking a course after high school.

In general, today’s average undergraduate is no better educated than the graduates of a good high school seventy years ago. Indeed, in some respects, they are less so.

We’ve simply inflated undergraduate degrees, much the way a third-world county’s central bank inflates its currency. That contributes nothing to the real economy other than keeping specific people, like the author of the column and the author of the comment, employed churning them out like sausages.
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"The reason why I enjoy and am grateful for my university education is because students are allowed to disagree and question the supposed 'facts' they are given. This model for learning should, if anything, be introduced at a younger age. I would have done a lot better in high school if I knew I didn't have to agree with the teachers point of view."

Please, points of view are not the same as facts. You may disagree with points of view in university, but unless you are a genius with a new discovery, you cannot argue with facts.

But even granting disagreement with points of view, any classroom where a great deal of that goes on is one where education is being consumed, not where valued investment in education is underway.

Can you imagine classrooms filled with students full of attitude arguing with Shakespeare’s use of the passive voice or with the Third Law of Thermodynamics? That is a formula for a living chat room where nothing of substance is achieved.
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"John Chuckman, you have it wrong on China and India. Both are investing heavily in university-based research for precisely the reasons indicated by the author"

Actually, no, I don’t think so.

We served as "homestay" for a gifted student from China for the better part of three years.

Through him and his friends, I am familiar with the circumstances in China facing students. Apart from that, I published a book on China’s growth in 2007.

Yes, China is investing, but up until now, going to university in China was limited to only the very elite of society, and I mean intellectually elite, not just moneyed.

The number of places was, and truly still is, relatively small, and there is a very tough national exam to be admitted, one which would probably exclude three-quarters of the undergraduates in Canada.

Because of these facts, pretty much only very superior talents attend Chinese Universities today.

Many are coming to Canada's institutions precisely because of the difficulty of admission in China.

Also, a bright friend of our young man confided that they regard Canadian universities as far easier. They work you like a dog in China.

PREACHING TOLERANCE TO SWEDEN WHILE DEFENDING ISRAEL'S GHASTLY INTOLERANCE AND THE HYPOCRISY OF CONFLATING CRITICISM WITH ANTI-SEMITISM

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY RONALD LAUDER IN THE TORONTO GLOBE AND MAIL

"Even a tolerant country such as Sweden must not tolerate those who preach intolerance."

Yes, indeed, but the author certainly is being extremely hypocritical in this matter, for the government of Sweden’s responsibility can no greater than that of the state of Israel: it surely is beyond question that anti-Semitic events like those in this story are stoked up by Israel's never-ending series of brutal behaviors.

The example of intolerance and violence against victims best known on the planet is the state of Israel: invasions, murder, illegal arrest, torture, apartheid practices, and ethnic-cleansing.

Right now, Israel, for the second time, is destroying the dwellings of hundreds of harmless Bedouin on the Negev Desert, and it arrests those who oppose its police-state activities to protect their homes.

Previously the government of Israel followed the ghastly practice of poisoning the crops of these people in order to drive them away.

At the same time, not a week goes by in which Israel does not commit a new injustice in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, throwing people off their property with the flimsiest excuse and stealing title to it.

The poor people of Gaza are into their fourth year of a brutal and unjustified blockade, denying them many of life’s ordinary requirements. Israel Post has recently announced that mail will not be delivered to Gaza, in violation of international conventions.

Israel killed with impunity nine human-rights workers on the high seas, and to this day neither the ships seized nor the personal effects Israeli soldiers grabbed from hundreds of innocent people – phones, computers, cameras, wallets – have been returned to their owners. God knows what happened to the cargo which included everything from donated wheelchairs and medicines to food.

Israel weekly makes provocative moves in Southern Lebanon, from cutting down trees on the Lebanese side of the border – yes, other people’s trees - to flying its jets threateningly overhead. It never assisted in locating the countless cluster bombs it dropped to kill and maim innocent people going about their business. It shouts, day after day, for war on Iran, a country which is attacking no one.

And millions go into their fifth decade of living under humiliating and illegal occupation.

Israel freely assassinates anyone it chooses to regard as an enemy, and that likely includes prominent figures like former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri or Palestine’s Yasser Arafat.

I just wonder whether there is even one Palestinian who would not gladly trade places with a Jewish person in Sweden, despite the unpleasantness of some minor vandalism?
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"I stopped reading this article when it attempted to label attitudes about Israel as attitudes about Jews. Israel is a state, not a race or religion.

"Certainly Jews should feel free and comfortable to live in Sweden, and any other democracy. But that has nothing to do with Israel."

Absolutely.

Israel's defenders never seem to grasp this essential truth.

When spokesmen like Ronald Lauder say otherwise, I always feel I'm being told I must drop all clear thinking and sense of fairness under threat of being labeled as anti-Semitic. How is such labeling different to people who use epithets and paint ugly graffiti?

In that sense, I am sorry to say, but I regard apologists for Israel like Ronald Lauder who call critics of Israel anti-Semitic as representing the same anti-democratic and anti-enlightenment values as the unthinking thugs who break windows in a synagogue.

You cannot demand special pleading here: either you are fair and consistent in your treatment of others or you are not.

The thugs in Sweden are unacceptable, but then so are Ronald Lauder’s prejudiced words.

As for Israel’s barbarism and injustice, the day everyone is browbeaten into accepting it is the day we will know Hitler’s ugly legacy to the world lives on.
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"JOHN_CHUCKMAN_ if Sweden hates Israel for whatever reason, that does not give citizens of Sweden or Swedish government the right to abuse Swedish Jewish population that supports Israel because of their history."

I never said that it did.

The author of this comment has commented without reading the material on which he/she is commenting.

A FALSE ARGUMENT ABOUT SUPPORTING SEPARATISM USED TO DEFEND ENDING CANADA'S PUBLIC SUPPORT OF POLITICAL PARTIES

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

Jeffrey Simpson, you just could not be more wrong on this matter.

Yes, there is an unintended consequence, but there are unintended consequences in every conceivable way of financing parties.

Private financing, in palate-loads delivered to loading docks, is the American system that has given them, quite simply, the best government that money can buy.

Did you know that the average American Senator spends literally two-thirds of his or her time trying to raise money?

Mrs Clinton, in her race for the New York Senate, spent $45 million, an amount which brought a gasp even from her easy-virtue hubby.

If you remember, Bill Clinton, when President, was selling nights in the Lincoln bedroom for gigantic campaign contributions.

Those giving large amounts of money always get something back, if only privileged entrance to the Senator or Representative.

We must weigh the unintended consequences of one method versus another for their pernicious qualities.

Public financing is important, and it is very much a measure of our devotion to democracy.

The BQ is a legitimate party, representing the views and interests of a fair number of people in Quebec, and it deserves the same treatment as any legitimate party.

Tilting the finance system is a cheap idea from someone desperate for a quick fix to our current political impasse. It is worse in my view than the suggestions you recently pooh-poohed of the Liberals and NDP merging or the Liberals getting rid of that sea-anchor of a leader, Ignatieff.

Separatism is fading, as anyone may observe, slowly but surely.

Why? Because people in Quebec now see that they are treated as an important part of the country and because young people have careers to get on with and because in-migrants to Quebec do not see separatism as a reason for coming to Canada and because native Quebecois, like all the world’s advanced people, have low birth rates.

Besides all of that, the BQ has acted mostly the part of a responsible party, albeit one with geographically-limited interests. That is more than can be said of Harper’s Conservatives on many issues of importance.

I sometimes find it slightly amusing to call the BQ a separatist party, given the nature of its day-in, day-out activity.

And, last but not least, doing what you recommend would only be viewed in Quebec as a targeted policy against Quebec’s interests, and indeed that view would be completely right.

Foolish column, Jeffrey Simpson, very foolish.

THE COURT'S RELEASE OF ABDULLAH KHADR - OMAR'S BROTHER - AND THE MEANINGLESSNESS OF CALLING PEOPLE TERRORISTS

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

"The integrity of the Canadian judicial system would be better served by extraditing Mr. Khadr to face charges in the U.S."

A genuinely morally obtuse statement, that.

There is a long history of men going abroad to fight for causes in which they believed. And there is a long history of men going abroad as paid mercenaries.

Men went by the thousands to fight in the Spanish Civil War. They went in the thousands to fight in parts of Africa during the 1960s. Some went to South Africa as mercenaries during Apartheid.

Indeed, Jewish Canadians and Americans have gone to Israel to fight in that country's many wars of aggression and participate in its long occupation and abuse.

In all these cases, and in many more over time, we do not afterwards illegally arrest, imprison, and torture the people involved.

The only genuine difference here is the highly questionable use of the word "terrorist," a witches' brew of a word which truly defines nothing.

If you claim “terrorists” are evil people who kill innocent civilians for their cause, then what in God’s name are the United States and Israel? Decades of bloodshed, most of it civilians. Only last week the U.S. bombed and killed 54 civilians in Afghanistan. And we just celebrated the anniversary of Hiroshima – a non-military target in which only civilians died - an absolute black spot on America’s soul.

And we must never forget America’s glorious record of killing 3 million people in Vietnam, most of them civilians, by the most horrifying methods, and the legacy of an earth soaked in poisonous Agent Orange – a true holocaust by any definition of the word.

And then a million victims in Iraq and at least two million refugees created.

Of course, those horrors are not all. The U.S. is far and away the world’s biggest procurer of arms, supplied to everyone from dictators to murderous juntas all over the world for decades.

And the Globe frets about a judge’s correct and lawful treatment of Abdullah Khadr, a mere suspect at arms procurement who had been terribly treated owing to U.S. blood money paid out?

The editorial writer here needs, as they say today, to get a life.

And thank God for fair and decent judges.

CELEBRATING ONLY THE EXCEPTIONAL IN SPORTS? WHERE THAT ATTITUDE TAKES US

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

Rory Gilfillan's words are quite unpleasant and more than a little confused.

First, if you take his basic principle of only celebrating the outstanding, it seems to me that you must logically extend it to all areas of activity.

In schools, in the arts, and in the sciences. And that necessarily implies authorities picking and choosing who should pursue what. In the U.S. they do this with floods of money and privilege, and in China they do this with state authority.

That general attitude results in America, a true social Darwinist society.

Second, while everyone likes being astonished by the fabulously gifted, there are many small pleasures in enjoying the efforts of the less gifted.

Third, I just do not regard sports in general as all that important. For those that do enjoy them, fine, but for society to use many precious resources only to groom and praise those with talented bodies gives you the sense of contemporary China towards sports, a sense not completely different to that which prevailed under the Third Reich.

Yes, it is nice to see gold medals, but really when the Olympics or any other big event is over, two weeks later the beer-fed emotion is forgotten and a hell of a lot of money has been spent on very little of substance. It still all reduces to a modern version of Rome's "bread and circuses."

People like Mr. Gilfillan would have us believe there is more to it, but truly there isn't.

Perhaps almost better the many celebrations of small victories than the big blow-out for a few physically talented people.

CBC EXECUTIVE LEAVES UNDER DARK CLOUD - MORE ON CBC DESCENDING INTO DUMBNESS

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

Hard to know from the information given here just what Stursberg's departure means.

Executive rat leaving a ship he helped direct into sinking in a sea of dumbness?

I do think it is all rather hopeless. CBC is on a one way trip to nowhere.

New dumb shows and dumb hosts and dumb formats abound. Once the remaining quality people have reached retirement, the wreck deserves to be abandoned.

With people like George Stroumboulopoulos, Jian Ghomeshi, Evan Solomon, and now Jan Arden, CBC becomes less and less meaningful everyday, pop fluff with no core of genuine experience and broad knowledge.

God, recently, I gave a try to a CBC documentary series on World War II, hosted by Stroumbouloulos. George, dressed in his usual I’m-cooler-than-anyone outfit, appeared out of a cloud of special effects lighted mist like God descending from heaven and proceeded to make a completely inaccurate statement concerning the war. I didn’t watch another minute of this pop nonsense passing for documentary.

Good old Ghomeshi, Canada’s 2010 answer to Dick Clark’s Bandstand, has had endless promos for an interview with Paul McCartney. Oh, wow, one of the biggest egos on the planet, with almost nothing to say, whose genuine creative work was forty years ago, gives yet another interview. What’s the point and what’s Canadian about it?

Many of CBC Radios shows have become nothing more than amateur hour try-outs for pop singers – the stuff is larded into half the programs. Mary Ito’s show is simply a boring series of second-rate singers and wannabes interspersed with chat about her latest jaunt somewhere. Jann Arden sounds like the female version of Trailer Park Boys.

Who needs a public broadcaster for this kind of vacuous stuff?

BP ACCUSED OF "CARPET BOMBING" THE GULF WITH DISPERSANTS - HERE IS THE ULTIMATE INSENSIVITY IN LANGUAGE AND INSANITY OF PERSPECTIVE

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

Gee, I do think recalling what the term "carpet bombing" actually means, this use of language is utterly stupid and brutal.

BP has "carpet bombed" an oil slick with oil dispersants.

America has carpet bombed several million people to their deaths in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, sending countless thousands of others to lives without limbs.

Oh, it also left a toxic sea of Agent Orange - millions of pounds of the horrible stuff - oozing in the soil of Vietnam to cripple newborns for generations.

No daily headlines and melodramatic language was used by the press during those utter savageries.

I really think this use of words tells us something not very pleasant about Americans.

If you kill so much as some American shrimp or soil a beach, it is terrible, unforgivable crime, but America reserves the right to barbeque, blow-up, and poison all the people it wants anywhere it pleases.

And does anyone doubt the fact that because BP is a "foreign" company, it is so savagely attacked? BP certainly recognizes this: their new CEO is an American.

Of course, the final irony in all of this is that this kind of industrial accident could happen any day to any operator in the Gulf, a certain level of risk and danger being inherent in deep-water drilling.

But Americans suck up energy the same way they do drugs. If Americans stopped buying lumbering trucks and SUVs and stopped buying houses on the desert with three-car garages, you wouldn’t need these operations.

CHAVEZ PROPS UP UNSAVOURY CHARACTERS SAYS THINK-TANK HACK ALVARO VARGAS LLOSA - ONCE AGAIN THE FAILURE OF CONVENTIONAL NEWS IN PUBLISHING RUBBISH

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY ALVARO VARGAS LLOSA IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

"The evidence is overwhelming: Hugo Chavez is propping up the region’s most unsavoury characters"

This is a truly dishonest piece by Alvaro Vargas Llosa, “a senior fellow at the Independent Institute,” but astute readers know that most American think tanks are nothing but well-financed propaganda mills, many of them depending on American multinational corporations for their funding, and some, on the CIA through covert channels.

The statement rather describes perfectly decades and decades of American policy in South America.

Who helped set up the coup in democratic Chile which killed an elected president and ultimately 15,000 other people?

Who tolerated, without so much as a wrinkling of the brow, the military dictatorship of Argentina which regularly made people "disappear" by kidnapping them and dropping them from planes over the ocean? Thousands and thousands of them.

How about “the disappeared” of Guatamala, international organizations putting the toll there at 45, 000 souls, none of them explained, or even identified to their families, to this day?

How about the American Army’s School of the Americas, now renamed owing to its ghastly reputation for teaching the military and police of such states how to control and torture people?

How about more than seventy years of crooked, murderous government in Mexico under the PRI which rigged every election?

All these events and more were known to American officials. Not only were no steps taken to alleviate the situations, the United States enjoyed the “stability” provided by such activities.

God, such vapid propaganda is tiresome to read.

I would think it must be tiresome to produce also, but those “senior fellowships” with leather chairs, expense accounts, and handsome salaries do ease the pain.

THE WIKILEAKS AFFAIR AND THE SHORTCOMINGS OF CONVENTIONAL JOURNALISM

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

Margaret Wente herself is a perfect example of the shortcomings of conventional journalism.

She does stories such as the fairly recent one about free-injection sites in Vancouver with almost no genuine research and only with the clear purpose of propagandizing against an important experiment.

She does utter nonsense propaganda like her long piece on the Iraq invasion, packed with misinformation and lack of genuine investigation – see: http://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/05/28/the-iraq-wars-trashiest-piece-of-propaganda/ .

She shills, again and again, for the return of Conrad Black, a convicted felon.

She defends the indefensible as in Israel’s inexcusable bloody attacks on innocents.

What is the common thread in Ms. Wente’s work when she strays beyond safe and fluffy subjects like the horrors of a backyard barbeque not working?

Defense of the establishment, promotion of a biased right-wing point of view – a defense not done with facts and investigation, which I could respect, but with playful words and personal fantasies.

No wonder people turn to the Internet and unconventional sources. The Ms. Wentes of this world are intellectually and ethically spent.

Wikileaks and the leaker, if ever known, should receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

The truth is that war is the greatest act any government ever undertakes, and yet it remains the act in which the people of every democracy are kept in virtual ignorance.

The press always quietly conspires with the government in suppressing, minimizing, and selecting.

Voters and taxpayers need to understand what is they are voting for and paying for.

The farther we go from this principle, the closer we get to a meaningless democracy with the Pentagon effectively running our affairs.

And that's pretty much the case today in the United States, Obama's election having made not a whit of difference to what the brainless Bush was doing.

U.S. NAVAL FORCES IN EXERCISES OFF EASTERN CHINA

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

Someone who thought a little more deeply than Frank Ching would know that the United States has absolutely no business in these waters and that over time its presence can only be dangerous.

Much like its continued presence in Korea, this is nothing more than an expression of global imperialism and, in a very real sense, an insult to the peoples of this part of the world who are perfectly capable of settling their own international affairs.

The United States, time and time again, has pushed the limits there in Cold War fashion.

Recall the American spy plane under the great idiot Bush that was brought down in China.

The previous new government of Japan was elected wanting to remove America's ugly presence in Okinawa - ugly because it includes nuclear weapons aboard ship - but American pressure brought the new leader down.

And readers should know that there is no definitive proof that that South Korean ship was sunk by the North Koreans. It may have been nothing but an accident aboard the ship, afterwards used to stoke up feelings a la "Remember the Maine!"

Indeed, many of North Korea's extreme behaviors are responses to American provocations never admitted.

TOM FLANAGAN SAYS POWER-SHARING WOULD GO A WAY TO SOLVING CANADA'S POLITICAL IMPASSE - AVOIDING POLITICAL SCIENCE TO PROMOTE HIS RIGHT-WING AGENDA

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

"We are stuck between a majoritarian political culture and the reality of minority government..."

Tom Flanagan shows a remarkable lack of imagination in political affairs.

There are many steps we can readily take to break up the political logjam in which we find ourselves, but they all require some courage and imagination to do things in new ways.

First, of course, we could have coalition government, a perfectly normal practice in parliaments all over the world. This would end, overnight, the embarrassing and destructive politics now at work in Ottawa.

Second, we could change the way we vote, getting rid of our primitive first-past-the-post system. A number of countries have also made this change, thereby extending the value of a vote and the meaning of democracy.

And there are still other measures possible, but none of these interests Tom Flanagan.

Why would that be you may ask? Especially considering he styles himself a political scientist?

The answer, of course, is that Mr. Flanagan functions first and foremost, not as a political scientist, but as a flak for right-wing causes.

Real political changes almost certainly would not favor the right-wing, and I must say rather anti-democratic, agenda Mr. Flanagan tirelessly serves.

Why do I say anti-democratic? Just look at his advice to Harper and his past newspaper pieces.

He supported Harper in proroguing parliament for the explicit purpose of not getting to the bottom of the abuse of prisoners in Afghanistan.

He ranted against coalition government, impugning intentions he knows perfectly well were democratic in nature.

And there are many such pieces to a puzzle whose picture is that of a tight-lipped, right-wing American who wants to import Gingrichism into our national institutions.
_____________________________________


"The West are using this "the West wants in" just to they can cry like little blubbery babies. It's tiresome and worn out."

Amen, Amen, Amen.

That is a truly dishonest slogan, and the repetition of it is an authentic example of whiney baby American politics.

Alberta represents just under 11% of Canada's population. By what jerry-rigging would it be possible for 11% of a population to substantially influence national affairs? The argument is simply anti-democratic.

But since Alberta was extensively settled by Americans looking for free land at the turn of the last century and since its big contemporary industry, hydrocarbons, is almost totally an American-dominated enterprise with experts, executives, and financial people constantly shipped up from places like Texas and Oklahoma, we see a constant re-inforcement of America’s attitudes and whiney-babyism.

And that ongoing, quiet process includes institutions endowed by oil money, which end up with spokesmen like Tom Flanagan or Preston Manning or our dear Prime Minister, former National Citizens’ Coalition flak, Stephen Harper.

OMAR KHADR SAYS HE WILL NOT GET A FAIR TRIAL IN AMERICA - AND HE IS ABSOLUTELY RIGHT

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

A fair trial for Khadr, or any other tortured captive for that matter, after eight years of illegal imprisonment is impossible.

Moreover, how can there be a trial in which no proper jurisdiction exists?

That is the very nature of war.

People invade the home of others - as the U.S. did in Afghanistan - and they get killed doing it.

You do not, afterward, "try" the people who may have killed your soldiers.

But topping it all was Khadr's absolute status as a child soldier.

It is the U.S. who has broken many laws in arresting him (after shooting him in the back), abusing him, torturing him, and imprisoning him.

God, what a dreadful example to the world the U.S. has set.

But when you are as arrogant, ignorant, and rich as America, you just do not care about laws and what the world thinks.
__________________

"Was he fair by throwing that grenade?"

"He'll get a fairer trial and more of a chance than the one that he gave to the soldier that he murdered."

It really is too bad people do not even think for one second before writing such ignorant comments.

Yes, throwing grenades is part of war.

No, he murdered no one. Using a weapon in war is not murder.

You do not get tried for doing what's part of war, only for atrocities, like the ones both Israel and the U.S. have committed by the score in recent years.

And, again, Khadr was a child soldier who, in the name of God, has suffered enough. Shot twice in the back, tortured, held with no rights, and in fact falsely accused of the very act he is said to have done.

FRANCE'S NEW LAW ON WOMEN COVERING THEIR FACES

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

This kind of legislation is just one more chilling aspect of the Islamophobia which has descended on Western society like a poisonous cloud of volcanic ash.

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.

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’s rights when what he was about was killing.

Women wearing the niqab or the burka – both not really common in the Islamic world - were admitted as immigrants to France with their garments and customs. What right does anyone have to say high-handedly, after they have moved their lives there, they must do away with it?

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 these garments among a minority of Muslims are complex - social, historical, and not just religious, but for devout wearers religion is very important, more so than secular critics can understand.

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.

We have women being beaten in their homes by the thousands in all Western countries. We have a world packed with abusive practices towards women – bride burning and horrid shunning of widows in India to female genital mutilation (not a Muslim custom but an African one with 3 million victims a year) to the widespread acceptance of fathers and other elders raping young girls in Africa, and people focus on this insignificant phenomenon?

It wasn’t many decades ago that fashionable women in Britain and the United States wore veils with hats. Would anyone with manners have asked a woman then to remove her veil? Indeed a vestige of this practice remains in our wedding ceremonies with the bride wearing a veil only her husband lifts.

No wonder the Muslim world feels under assault from the West. We bomb their countries. We keep men in secret prisons. We say forms of torture are okay. And we interfere with their religious and cultural practices here. Can anyone blame them for feeling angry?

THE LIBERAL PARTY SENDS ARROGANT IGNATIEFF ON A SUMMER-LONG BUS TRIP TO TOUCH ORDINARY FOLK - RICK SALUTIN CALLS IT HIS HUMBLING

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

He's a bit of a snot actually.

I don't know why he even pursued politics except that backroom boys promised him the top, and Ignatieff thinks being at the top will cap his family's achievement.

Besides snottiness, Ignatieff just really does not like mobs of people. It's obvious in his facial expressions in many, many pictures. Maybe he has Asperger's Syndrome?

You cannot cure a quality like that. It is equipment no politician should have.

Then there is his clear inability to even say anything that excites or interests people.

He's a writer - a man who spends hours a day bent over a keyboard, talking with no one.

He is not a public speaker. He is not a people person.

But above all for me is his groveling - there's no other word for it - posture towards American imperialism.

Essentially that was his master at Harvard. The stuff about human rights was window dressing, much like hearing a man of Bush's quality talk about women's rights.

Ignatieff is simply not a liberal in the best meaning of the word.

His only poor service to Canadian politics is effectively extending Harper's ugly minority rule.
____________________________________________


"Let's face it, the only thing ingrained here is our anti-intellectualism, which borders on anti-intelligence (Canadians are actually proud of it)."

This and similar comments are ridiculous.

Most people who oppose Ignatieff do not do so because he writes books.

They oppose him because he has almost none of the classic political skills. In political terms he’s an idiot-savant.

His only true meaning in the political world has been to extend Harper's time for smashing up Canadian traditions.

And I find an (effectively) appointed leader repulsive to my democratic values.

We need intelligent people in government, and I dearly hope we never go the way America has, taking seriously people like Sarah Palin or George Bush, people with brains the size of a gnat's.

We've had many intelligent leaders, and, truth be told, Harper is intelligent, although I reject his values and the nasty minority crowd he tries to please.

Intelligence in government must be effective - effective for action, not for writing books.

While Ignatieff can write books, he almost totally lacks the kind of effective intelligence required in a good politician.

Intelligence for me is always a primary quality in a politician, but I find Ignatieff utterly unappealing and almost laughably ineffectual.

And apparently so do a lot of other Canadians.

THE HARPER GOVERNMENT'S PROPOSED PURCHASE OF A GHASTLY EXPENSIVE AMERICAN FIGHTER PLANE ALMOST USELESS TO CANADA

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

"F-35 fighters are the price of sovereignty"

Surely this ranks as the most block-headed caption I can recall reading on a Globe editorial. It reads like a quote from some Pentagon-supplied crib book for the press.

What on earth does subsidizing the Pentagon's purchase of these costly planes - which is effectively is just what our purchase represents - have to do with our sovereignty? The Pentagon will be putting them to good use in its endless chain of colonial wars all over the world.

We could not hold off the United States - the only genuine future threat to Canada's sovereignty in both the North and the Great Lakes - for twenty minutes.

The United States has become a military Frankenstein monster, spending - quite literally - more than the entire rest of the planet on the military.

Our purchase of this plane - for which we have almost no use - is a subsidy to the Pentagon's acquisition of them. The small fleet we can afford represents little genuine military capability.

And readers should be aware that the capital cost of acquiring these planes, high as it is, is only the beginning.

Modern high-tech, high-performance military planes require immense and costly maintenance efforts.

They are almost like Japanese Kobe cattle being hand-rubbed and fed beer every day.

America's "stealth" fighter and bomber, for example, must each have special climate-control hangers, and they take the kind of attention to detail of the space shuttle after a flight in orbit. The costs are staggering.

This purchase is about the stupidest waste of money a person could come up with, only excepting a continuation of our dismal mission in Afghanistan, something which also does no more than support the Pentagon’s hormone-driven insanity.
________________________________

"Protection, undefined, as in this editorial, is little more than a racket."

Good line, that.

How very true, much resembling the undefined use of words like security or sovereignty.

Dumb and meaningless, but appealing to the herd instincts of many.

The chest-thumping knuckle-draggers are out in force on this one - mainly, I suspect, aggressive little boys who like expensive, bright toys (so long as others pay for them).
_________________________________

"MacKay's announcement is another indication of a serious minister putting serious tools into the hands of the people who protect us."

Peter MacKay's entire history in cabinet is marked by poor performance in his various roles, childish insults mumbled in Parliament, and a rather feeble effort to appear a forceful figure.

Strong is the last adjective any thinking person would apply to him.

Protect us? From what? The boogey man?

Well, he finally found his niche, the military, where money is thrown around like confetti and everything is justified with totems like “protect” or “security” or “sovereignty.”

Carried to its limit, that kind of thinking gives you the Pentagon, the most wasteful, destructive, and anti-democratic force on earth, and a major contributor to the decline in the United States now clearly underway.

MARGARET WENTE HALLUCINATES ABOUT THE POSSIBLE STONING OF A WOMAN IN IRAN - OR HOW TO IGNORE SCREAMING REALITIES FOR A PROPAGANDA POINT

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

‘This regime has taken so many lives. There’s got to be a time when it stops’

Ms. Wente appears now to have exhausted her rational mental faculties in the relentless drive to create propaganda supporting Israel’s military and the Pentagon.

The United States, I remind readers, has killed about a million people in Iraq, unknown tens of thousands in Afghanistan, and three million in Vietnam, and those numbers don’t count all the smaller murderous efforts like Somalia, Pakistan, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Panama, and its loving support for Israel’s bloody predations against largely defenseless people.

In the total of all these places, the United States has created millions of refugees and countless cripples.

It has overthrown legitimate governments all over the world, including democratic ones in Chile, Iran, and Guatamala.

But somehow, Ms. Wente assures us, Iran is so terrible?

Iran, which has started no wars in its entire modern history?

Iran, which while a theocracy (just like Israel) is a relatively open place where one may visit and a great deal of information flows (compared to many other societies on earth)?

Iran, compared to the 3 million annual cases of genital mutilation of women in Africa?

Iran, compared to the routine rape of girls by their fathers and other elders in Africa?

Iran, compare to the bride-burning in India?

Iran, compared to the hideous treatment of millions of widows, including young girls who had been married off for profit to old men who die, in India?

Iran, compared to occupied Afghanistan where a majority of women still wear the burka?

The world is filled with cruelties, and Iran is one of lesser parties to them, but Israel wants Iran attacked, so Ms. Wente does her duty churning out more unbalanced rubbish.
_____________________________________

One further thought.

And just whose holy book is it which commands the stoning of unfaithful women?

Israel doesn't stone women, but the Ultra Orthodox there often attack women they regard as "loose."

There have been cases in recent years of prostitutes having been burned alive in homes mysteriously set alight.

IS ISRAEL A NORMAL STATE? ASKS AN ANALYST - A BRAVE QUESTION BUT IT COMES WITH A WHIMPER OF AN ANSWER

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

This article starts with a brave question, and I think for most people the answer is apparent with the asking of the question.

But like the famous line of T.S. Elliot, the piece ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.

After asking a question which would never pass the lips of Israel’s establishment, the article makes the very claims and assertions the Israeli government would make.

“Israel has never done anything comparable to the late Syrian leader Hafez al-Assad’s 1982 massacre of more than 20,000 members of the Muslim Brotherhood in the city of Hama.”

While I’m the last to defend dictators, this is a completely unsubstantiated claim of what happened in Syria. Perhaps worse, the assertion about Israel is just false. Israel’s first invasion of Lebanon was just about that bloody.

And what of the achievements of the Six Day War, a war deliberately calculated by Israel’s establishment to win the land of the self-defined Greater Israel – all the Palestinian territories plus slices of Syria and Lebanon - it had failed to grab at its founding?

Israel went so far as to attack ruthlessly an American intelligence ship to suppress information of General Dayan’s movements of armor, the general’s purpose being the quick seizure of all the lands Israel desired and then presenting the world with a fait accompli.

And how do you reckon the toll of misery of decade after decade of hundreds of thousands of refugees plus the forty-plus years of truly abusive occupation?

I could continue, for unquestionably the invasion of Iraq was about and for Israel’s benefit. That’s million people killed and a couple of million refugees, refugees taken, in large part, by poor Syria.

“So is it true, as many defenders of Israel claim, that the Jewish state is judged by different standards from other countries? I believe it is.”

This completely ignores the fact of Israel’s establishment constantly claiming that is the only democracy and representative of human rights in its part of the world.

If you claim one standard but behave by another – truly indistinguishable from the region’s dictators – I do think the world is entitled to comment. Israel holds ten thousand illegal prisoners, imposes a ghastly blockade for over three years, imposes countless checkpoints on people’s ordinary lives in the West Bank, regularly assassinates those with whom it disagrees, and uses every underhanded technical gimmick it can think of to keep stealing other people’s land.

Indeed, it could be well argued that the kind of Israel we see has effectively retarded the development of democracy in the Arab world. Israel’s cooperative friend Mubarak, a dictator of thirty years, is supported by everything the United States can think of, suppressing all genuine democratic movements. For a long time, it was the same with Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Opposing Israel’s excesses has provided a rallying cry for every dictator in the region. At the same time, the United States and Israel would prefer these populations suppressed by dictators who in private mind their own business or are even rather cooperative, a la Mubarak.

“That all Jews, including Israeli Jews, should remain haunted by a horrible past is understandable. But it must never be used to justify aggression against others.”

But that is precisely what Israel’s establishment and its army of apologists abroad do, day and night. It is, if you will, a ghastly form of special pleading.

“There are other reasons, however, for the double standard directed at Israel. One is what the liberal Israeli philosopher and peace activist Avishai Margalit has called “moral racism.” The bloodlust of an African or Asian people is not taken as seriously that of a European – or other white – people.”

But isn’t that exactly what happens inside Israel? Day in and out in countless ways, Shepardic Jews are not treated with the same respect and regard as Ashkenazi Jews. And the poor small lot of dark-skinned African Jews are treated with palpable contempt. The world should have higher standards than Israel itself in these matters?

“…the legacy of colonialism works against Israel in another way, too.”

Oh please, this is tiresome old idea to trot out. Besides, in the eyes of most Arabs, Israel is itself an example of colonialism. Here is a tiny enclave – truly a garrison state - living in the midst of many tens of millions of people for whose cultures and aspirations it has absolutely no understanding or sympathy. You could draw a parallel to Israel’s position today with that of European Crusaders who built massive forts in the Middle East at places like Acre.

In the end, if Israel expects to be treated as a normal country, it must behave like one.

Surely, most people, including likely most Jews, know Israel has yet to behave as anything resembling a normal country.

FORMER ASSOCIATE MAI PEDERSON EXPLAINS WHY SHE IS CERTAIN BRITAIN'S DR. KELLY WAS MURDERED IN THE RUN-UP TO THE IRAQ INVASION

RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY ANDREW MALONE IN THE DAILY MAIL

This is an excellent article, and the witness is totally convincing. Her knowledge of Dr. Kelly’s physical disabilities and the fact that she conveyed what she knew early in the investigation to British police are important tests of her believability.

I have long thought Kelly was murdered, the general nature of the situation in which he was found having only the most superficial plausibility, but the idea that agents of Tony Blair's government did it always seemed ridiculous.

Cui bono?

It is difficult to imagine a more likely candidate than Israel's secret service.

First, the Iraq invasion was endangered by Dr. Kelly's expert knowledge and willingness to talk.

Second, he had demonstrated his willingness to talk in his BBC experience, something which generated frustrating and unsatisfactory results.

Third, we well know Israel assassinates those with whom it strongly disagrees regularly, and this has included other scientific figures, notably Canadian Gerald Bull, a world authority on big guns who had worked for Hussein.

Fourth, the Iraq invasion was not about oil nor was it about tyranny. It was about Israel and the perceived need by the American establishment to eliminate Israel’s most implacable foe.

Israel was the great beneficiary of the invasion.

Fifth, the method likely used resembles methods used by Mossad, as in its recent murder of Mahmoud al Mabhouh in Abu Dhabi, who was heavily restrained while being injected, with his room being set as though nothing out of the ordinary happened. There, great effort was made to make the event look natural. So too in the case of Yasser Arafat, who was likely poisoned by Israeli agents.

MARGARET ATWOOD ASKS WHAT KIND OF COUNTRY YOU WANT - COMPARISON OF POLICE AT TWO DEMONSTRATIONS

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

Thank you, Ms. Atwood, well put.

I always treasured the restraint and decency of police in Canada, having come decades ago from a tough part of a tough American city.

The first time I was shocked out of my warm glow was with the OPP shooting at Ipperwash. That pointless and brutal event much resembled the activity of thugs like the FBI, an agency which has a huge list of abuses and violence and stupidity and literally thousands of victims over its history.

The Toronto example however is turning out even worse than first reports, so the contrast Ms. Atwood offers is even greater.

I heard today on CBC Radio the chilling report of a man with artificial legs who was arrested.

The police apparently ordered him up - he was sitting on the ground - but he couldn't stand without the sticks he uses, and he explained all this to the police.

Then some genuinely bad-apple cop reached down and pulled one of his legs off.

Then the disgusting cop ordered him to hop.

The man was under arrest for more than a day without his appliances.

There was also the ugly case – involving genuine police-state brutality – of the man who was arrested while with our highly regarded journalist, Steve Paikin, who witnessed everything.

Such behavior by police ranks with the vicious criminal morons who killed a distraught Polish man in Vancouver's airport.

I know, thank God, that most police do not behave in this way, but policing always is a job which both attracts dangerous personalities - psychopaths of varying degree - and challenges the self-control of those with bad tempers. People who want some “action” are inevitably drawn to policing, much as they are to the military.

Only a tough standard of review of excesses and the absolute determination to rid ourselves of such thugs in uniform are defenses against them.

I do not think we are in danger of all our police behaving the way American cops have a well-earned reputation for behaving in many small towns and poor parts of cities, Amnesty International having cited many times police brutality in America as common.

But I do think our institutions governing police are weak. Those cops in Vancouver, at the very least, should have been rudely dismissed. So too the cop who pulled off the artificial leg and ordered a man to hop.

Show the thugs the door, and I do not think we have to worry about their sickness taking hold. Doing so would serve as a declaration to the world that Canada is determined to remain a decent society, the kind of society where people peacefully protest the closing of prisoner farms as Ms. Atwood did.

WESLEY WARK ON CANADA'S RICHARD FADDEN C.S.I.S. AFFAIR AND A RIDICULOUS COMPARISON TO KENNEDY AND DULLES

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

Oh I do think Wesley Wark has missed something very important, but that is not unusual in Wark’s pieces.

Richard Fadden can't say it, but I'd bet serious money he was given a wink and nod by Harper for his earlier statement.

Traditionally, it is only with such approval that spy agency masters ever speak out in public.

Harper, of course, now cowardly denies having done so, leaving Fadden hanging out to dry, as they say.

No other explanation is plausible for those who understand anything about spy agencies.

As to Wesley Wark’s poorly chosen example of John Kennedy and Allen Dulles – poorly chosen both because the situations are not comparable, CSIS never enjoying the power and resources of CIA - and because Wark fails to offer the full story which involved in part Kennedy using Dulles as a fall guy for a stupid, blundering decision.

‘As JFK famously told CIA director Allen Dulles before forcing him to step down over the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, “You might think the buck stops here, but it’s you, Allen, who is going to resign.” ‘

Yes, Mr. Wark, but it was Kennedy who ended up dead.

POLITICS AND THE AMERICAN SUPREME COURT - THE ABSURDITY OF THE JUDGE BORK FIDELITY-TO-THE-ORIGINAL POSITION - AND THE ROLE OF MILITARISM

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

"With time, society changes, and the gap between justices who believe in fidelity to the original document and those who believe in a “living constitution”–equally defensible positions, regardless of one’s politics–gets wider."

That is absolutely true, with the exception that "fidelity to the original" can be called an equally defensible position.

Not in rational terms. It cannot be.

The Judge Bork view of things is exactly comparable to the Fundamentalist Christians who believe the earth and all it contains was created at one stroke about 6000 years ago.

The world now changes rapidly, and the rate of change only grows more rapid with changing technology. All forms and practices of government must change in response, not necessarily promptly but regularly.

Also, the simple fact is that the American Constitution was a document of compromise, and some of the compromises were with forces we now find utterly unacceptable, as for example, with the very real political power of slaveholders.

Even further still, the Constitution has many flaws. The Fathers were not all-seeing and, indeed, were downright wrong in some important matters. Some of the things they thought they were doing ended up with the opposite effect to what they intended.

Perhaps the greatest single example of that was the division of war-making authorities, the President as Commander-in-Chief and only the Congress as able to declare war.

Of course, in the modern era, none of America's many wars are declared, so Congress's power is vestigial.

And when the Founders made the President Commander-in Chief, Americans largely believed in no standing armies, so his power was only potential for a situation Congress first decided military response as appropriate.

But today, his power is immense and dangerous because of America's Frankenstein military. He is Commander-in-Chief of a thing greater than all the world's armies combined.

In a very real sense, this immense contemporary power violates the fundamental ideas of the Founders because the President's office was deliberately designed to be weak, which indeed it still is in domestic affairs.

But the Bork view very much fits the military-industrial complex America has become. Empires and militarism are quite comfortable with sticking with ways which facilitated their rise.

The great irony is that the sentimental sense of America which is so often cited by Bork-types in fact no longer exists, and, to a considerable extent, never did.

America is barely a democracy at home and literally behaves the part of a tyranny abroad often.

TORONTO'S GAY PRIDE PARADE AND THE ANTI-ISRAELI APARTHEID GROUP OF MARCHERS - A SAD ATTEMPT TO DEMONIZE THEM

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

The only part of this piece worth reading is the way Judith Timson starts it with her and the kiddies having a gay old time at a past Pride Parade, describing it the way some suburban housewife might describe the family’s being at Disney World. She only left out Granny.

“The mood was celebratory on that early summer day as we stood shoulder to shoulder with a gay elementary-school vice-principal….”

Note the use of words like “celebratory” and “early summer day” to set a mood.

And don’t you just love the “shoulder to shoulder” bit, as though Ms. Timson were describing a World War II rally for Rosie the Riveter or describing her participation in a March on Selma Alabama in the 1950s?

This is a classic technique of the propagandist: it might be called the benign, fairy dream, and its purpose is merely to serve as a prop to be knocked over by what follows.

The insincerity here almost grips one like an unwanted waft of heavy cheap cologne.

Gay Pride’s history is not like that at all.

Anything resembling Ms. Timson’s fairy story is a very recent, rather sanitized occurrence. I lived in Toronto during the days of police raids and arbitrary arrests. And anyone knows, or should know, that the Pride Parade was early on treated in Toronto as a somewhat shameful, reluctantly-permitted event.

Much like the way Toronto always had, years ago, a grim King Billy Parade instead of a joyous St. Patrick’s Parade.

The point is that gay people have a history of fighting injustice and oppression, and many of them are still at it, and those latter are the ones who insisted on the right to express themselves on Israeli apartheid.

And I’m sorry, Ms. Timson, but the word “apartheid” is absolutely accurate. We have Nelson Mandela, Bishop Tutu and Jimmy Carter as just some of our star witnesses for the state of affairs in Israel, all honourable men with an intimate understanding of injustice and abuse, Jimmy Carter, by the way, having been labelled an anti-Semite in Israel for stating the plain truth.

Once Jews very much shared that quality we see in many gays, ready to defend the downtrodden, but today it does seem a majority of them serve as apologists for abuse and injustice and killing instead, just so long as the abuse and injustice and killing are done by Israel.

This is a shameful column, written to defend the indefensible, but I’m thankful there are a lot of others, brave gay people in Toronto, ready to stand both for free speech and against oppression.

HAMAS IS STILL THE PROBLEM? I DON'T THINK SO

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

This is an absolutely unbalanced editorial, reminding one of the kind of brain-dead stuff Marcus Gee used to pound out on the Middle East, rewrites of official Israeli press releases.

Who is doing the killing?

Who is depriving people of normal commerce?

Who arrogantly commits piracy on the high seas?

Who runs around stealing passports and murdering people?

Who holds 10,000 people in prison without proper legal procedure?

Who, after Hamas was elected in a clean election, immediately arrested members of the elected body?

Who, after Hamas was elected in a clean election, immediately threatened its leader with assassination?

Who keeps Gaza surrounded by automated radar-operated gun towers which blast anything which moves within a couple of thousand yards?

When was the last time Hamas killed an Israeli politician?

When was the last time Hamas arrested members of Israel's legislature?

When was the last time Hamas invaded Israel?

Israel's behavior is the only serious obstacle here.

Every thinking person knows you must talk to your opponents to have peace, yet who refuses to talk to Hamas?

Hamas may not like Israel, but it is not, and never could be, in a position to seriously threaten Israel. To say anything else is paranoid rubbish.

Israel wants the people of Gaza reduced to groveling submission, without even the right to self-determination, and, indeed, it really prefers to make them so miserable they leave their homes.

Hamas does not rule in the West Bank. Do we see peace there? No, every week Israelis steal more homes or farms and continue to keep millions under constant threat and abuse.

THE GLOBE AND MAIL'S MATCHLESS LIGHT-WEIGHT MARGARET WENTE ASKS WHO'S AFRAID OF RIGHT-WING NORTH TELEVISION?

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

Well, we sure know you're not, Ms. Wente.

One cannot help believing you keep your television tuned to Fox television around the clock for inspiration in your work.

Inspiration for the right-wing attitudes you so clearly imported from the American Midwest and continue feverishly to promote.
______________________

Everyone should listen to the interview done last Saturday, June 19, by the redoubtable interviewer, Kathleen Petty, on CBC Radio’s The House.

Quebecor’s VP, Kory Teneycke, praised here by Ms. Wente, appeared on the show for God knows what reason since he answered not a single question, and Ms. Petty, as always, was prepared with meaningful questions and hard facts, the kinds of things so notably missing from many of Ms. Wente’s efforts.

Teneycke exhibited impatience, a tone suggestive of anger, and did not answer one factual question. He referred to entertainment value in blubbering about the new network, nothing about honesty or facts. He was genuinely pathetic.

If Teneycke’s performance on The House suggests the new network’s ability to inform, it’s going to be a sad dumb-show.

But fans of the stupidities of Fox - a network which makes no effort at honesty or balance or often even facts, and which specializes in commentary on the level of Rush Limbaugh – apparently including Ms. Wente, will be happy.

IS OBAMA LOSING THE MODERATE MUSLIMS? A SUMMARY OF WHAT THINGS LOOK LIKE FROM WESTERN ASIA

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

"...it has provoked some American neoconservatives, previously firm friends of the Turks, into unrestrained fury."

Neo-cons and unrestrained fury are old friends.

This group of crypto-fascists has spent years advocating virtually unrestrained use of American power, wars all over the globe, and especially in the Middle East.

Western Asia - a vast region of many proud and ancient peoples - cannot be expected to keep mildly accepting such stuff - piled high as it has been with many genuine atrocities.

Iraq was a ghastly mistake - a million killed and two or three million made exiles, and the United States didn’t even have the decency to accept a good share of the exiles. They left it to poor lands like Syria to stagger under the humanitarian burden.

Afghanistan was another ghastly mistake: only the goal of vengeance describes what has happened there. Any reasonable expectations by the U.S. of justice could have been met through diplomacy and economic pressures and police work.

Pakistan is being bombed on the flimsiest of excuses. Families and poor villagers are being murdered weekly - under Obama's watch - in the name of trying to get a few "suspected" bad guys. The victims are in the hundreds, and it has terribly increased civil unrest in that land.

Yemen has been bombed. Recent evidence of the use of cluster bombs in the deaths of about fifty people has come to light.

Somalia has been kept under terrible pressure.

Israel has over the last few years called for attacks on Syria and Iran, buzzing the presidential palace in Damascus with jets and weekly making serious threats towards Iran.

Israel has, of course, invaded Lebanon.

It has treated an elected government and a whole people in Gaza to inhumane and anti-democratic pressure.

Somewhere in the heart of every thoughtful person in this region of the world, the idea will have occurred that American policy is just slightly skewed against them, all for the sake of a small new country of immigrants, most of whom have little sympathy with the people or traditions of the place to which they chose to migrate.

Now, most of these events, to one degree or another, center on some concept of keeping Israel going. That certainly, and not oil, was the reason for all that killing in Iraq.

The people of Western Asia are perfectly aware of that. Their views are based on what they see and hear from friends and relatives, not on the sanitized stuff seen on Fox or CNN or ABC.

And then they see Israel behaving even worse than the Somali pirates on the high seas, the pirates generally not killing any of their victims, and they see the United States saying it is just fine.

Well, it is not just fine. It is completely unacceptable.

Of course, coupled with this is everyone’s growing realization that Israel does not play by any rules but its own. It lied, cheated, and stole to build nuclear weapons. It thought nothing of sharing such weapons with a ghastly state like South Africa, all for benefit of some access to strategic materials.

It started the Six Day war to expand its territory, and continues a glacially-paced process of ethnic-cleansing to absorb those captured territories, minus their people. It steals and forges anyone’s passports over and over again to carry out murderous operations. It even ferociously attacked – a two hour assault with every weapon Israel’s air force had - a United States’ military ship in the Six Day war in an effort to drag the U.S. into the war.

And one or two of the most damaging spies in American history were Americans working on Israel’s behalf. Jonathon Pollard was perhaps the worst, yet Israel actually traded in some of the secrets he stole with the Russians and has never stopped asking for his release.

These states see Israel is always forgiven, indeed more than forgiven, Israel being the receiving end of the most extraordinary foreign aid package in history, five hundred dollars per year per Israeli, year after year after year, the virtual subsidy of a society. After all, there are many poor lands where the annual per capita income is not that large.

Erdogan has been friendly and reasonable in the past towards Israel, especially considering the fact that conservative Muslims are a large part of his secular state. But Israel’s behavior kicked him in the teeth, it having been Turkish forces (NATO) that inspected the convoy to make sure there were no weapons. Also, of course, Turkish humanitarians were on board and some were killed, others having been defamed by Israel’s early efforts afterwards to squirm out of what it had done before the eyes of the world.

What is one to make of these events, if you are a reasonable person who loves peace and democratic values?

I can only conclude Israel’s hubris and utterly unethical behavior and America’s unjust favoritism have driven the world pretty close to the brink of despair, and that likely is more keenly felt in those lands than elsewhere.

More unrest would be felt were more of these countries democracies. But many like “moderate” Egypt are hidden dictatorships, and people do not readily express their frustration and disillusion. Ironically, it is a place like undemocratic Egypt where Israel finds its best partner, while never stopping to remind everyone of how Israel is the only democracy in the region (and many might say, judging by acts rather than words, it’s a good thing there are not more such).

The Obama experience also undoubtedly adds to the great weight of these matters. With a name like his, and being the first black man elected president, Obama naturally raised new hopes for justice, and, indeed, Obama sounded good on the Mideast originally, seeming to understand that only American pressure on Israel can produce genuine peace.

But in far less than two years, all that has changed. Obama seemingly accepts every insult (Biden’s treatment on a visit) and bloody excess of Israel’s, just as Bush did, and Obama is the Commander-in-Chief whose orders see Muslims bombed in several countries.

In most important matters, Obama has proved himself little different to Bush, just a more polished and charming version.

He has left all those people with perhaps less hope than ever, a very dangerous situation.

CANADA'S POLITICAL IMPASSE AND THE FUTURE OF THE LIBERAL PARTY

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

"Desperate measures don’t have to be stupid measures..."

Jeffrey Simpson, as one who regards your analyses often with admiration, I must say you could not be more wrongheaded here. This column suggests a party insider blubbering.

Getting rid of a political liability like Ignatieff is not extreme: it is the most usual, work-a-day politics, much like dumping a poorly performing minister.

Even further, since Ignatieff was never properly elected as leader, being parachuted into both his riding a few years ago and then into the leadership by backroom insiders, he is owed nothing by most voters.

And one might perhaps have developed a different view, had he taken command and proved a Trudeau of Chretien, but, no, he has proved a Stanfield. Actually that is unfair to Stanfield, because, despite his weaknesses as a politician, he was an admirably honorable man.

Ignatieff is uninspiring and even boring, and he is unimaginative, surprisingly so, considering his much-vaunted academic background.

And when it comes to honor, Ignatieff stands before us in a badly tarnished suit of armor indeed. I can never respect a man who has said the things he has said in the past, most especially one pretending to be liberal (in the best sense of that word).

He is a crypto-neo-con. He is anti-democratic. His is no genuine voice for human rights, despite the risible pretensions of his past chair at Harvard. He comes off as a wine-and-cheese fop without having any of the devastating wit of a Disraeli.

I think my views in this have some valid application, because I’m the kind of voter the Liberals are seeking, progressive in all social matters and traditional and sound in finances, as well as one who votes for integrity and character regardless of party.

And for me, those qualifiers mean I can never vote for Ignatieff.

I am deeply distressed over the national political impasse we are at. Ignatieff can never be elected prime minister. Harper can never command a majority.

Yet the narrow extremist Harper is cunning and aggressive, and he is permitted to rule much as though he had a majority, and the man is trashing all our traditions of civility and decency in politics, aping every shabby view and technique of Newt Gingrich twenty years ago.

We need change, but not just empty gasbag change.

Until sentiments in Quebec come into a new balance, the only genuine changes I see possible are leadership change in the Liberal Party and a merger or coalition with the NDP.

Parties appear and disappear over time. They are not a set of Egyptian pyramids to stand forever. In Britain, the Whigs disappeared, the Peelites disappeared, the Liberals disappeared, and today Labour is fading.

FURTHER TO IRAN SANCTIONS: THE INSANE IDEA OF ISRAEL ATTACKING IRAN - THE CONSEQUENCES ARE INCALCULABLE

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

"Either way, Israel doesn't necessarily need Saudi airspace as it has other capabilities"

Do Israel and its apologists ever learn anything?

I think not, because it is the nature of ideologues and extremists virtually to be unable to alter their dark obsessions.

The threat to attack Iran is dangerous, destabilizing, and truly reflects unbalanced thinking.

It only confirms the world's growing view of Israel as out of control and acting outside all the laws of nations.

First, Iran is in a position to do some very unpleasant things in retaliation for an attack. This is not an impotent little country, possessing as it does some pretty sophisticated missiles and armaments, and it sits on one of the world's most important arteries of commerce.

Second, it is extremely doubtful for many reasons that Israel has the capacity to carry out its threats.

Only this morning, the Saudis characterized The Times' report on use of Saudi airspace as flatly wrong and against national policies. The deception work of Mossad?

Third, Israel, despite its twenty four hour-a-day garrison-state status, has many vulnerabilities, being a small geographical area loaded with possible targets.

Iran does not need nuclear weapons to successfully target places like the Dimona nuclear facility, Israel's illicit nuclear weapons factory. Or Israeli power plants.

Iran is perfectly able to send not puny homemade rockets with firecracker tips - the dreaded Qassams which provided Israel's shabby excuse for killing 400 children and a thousand others.

[see:
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkVOzkMPj4kP8cmb9LlBGIRRZbzThpnZgeJuTymJHkjpB8LnllaE_bPbrvgg_F7devyPsOEFdihb1bzxTEFJgyHUwFGa5HwlzvRBS_IeNS6VnM31pVhCleC13ULgcxDP_fsoSr/s1600-h/ROCKET+qassam37.jpg ]

No, Iran's arsenal includes missiles like Shahab-3.

[see:
http://www.fas.org/programs/ssp/man/militarysumfolder/shahab-3.html ]

Iran also has capable anti-ship missiles, as Hezbollah demonstrated by nearly sinking an Israeli military ship during Israel's atrocity in Southern Lebanon.

Fourth, the knowledge for nuclear operations does not go away. They are classic examples of the genie and the bottle.

Fifth, even were a strike possible for Israel, the chance of destroying all of the existing protected and distributed facilities with effect is remote.

Sixth, Iran would certainly set about on its own Manhattan Project after any strike, a priority national program. Indeed, it is quite possible Iran is not working towards nuclear weapons now, but after any strike, it would set them at the highest priority, and they do have the human and material resources to do so.

Seventh, the entire world would react to Israel’s hypocrisy. Only today we have another story in The Guardian about Israel’s proliferation activities with apartheid South Africa.

[see: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/03/south-africa-nuclear-trigger-israel ]

These stories and indeed South Africa’s recent publication of papers concerning its secret dealing with Israel on nuclear weapons reflect changing attitudes towards Israel, for they would previously have been suppressed as Israel tried hard to do.

Israel is an illicit nuclear power – having lied, cheated, and stolen its way to getting there - and it is no longer possible to hide that fact. In the current IAEA talks, Israel as a subject is insisted upon despite the pathetic efforts of the U.S. to suppress the subject.

You can live outside rule of law for a while, as Israel clearly demonstrates, but you cannot sustain an indefinite position of hypocrisy and threat and deception towards much of the world. Even Ghadaffi learned you eventually have to come in from the cold.

The only sensible approach to preventing proliferation in the Middle East is to make the region a nuclear-free zone, and that very much includes Israel.

IGNATIEFF RAISES HIS WEAK VOICE ABOUT THE POSSIBILITY HARPER IS DELIBERATING USING UP TIME IN REACHING AN AGREEMENT OVER PAPERS ON ABUSE OF DETAINEES

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

My, how refreshing to read Ignatieff actually speaking to an important issue.

It could not be clearer what Harper is doing.

The Globe has even published one of Tom Flanagan's trashy columns in which the American neo-con advisor to Harper said in defending prorogation that it was a good idea not to let discrediting information be released concerning Canadian military activities.

Of course, the trouble is that Ignatieff is utterly impotent to do anything.

He can't normally even speak to great issues, much less act on them.

When we need a hero, we have a clownish idiot-savant.

A coalition or merger cannot come too soon.

Harper is a miserable Republican extremist with a tyrant's temperament, and he is a good chess player with Ignatieff no match.

Harper's behavior reminds me of a saying by the late Lyndon Johnson, "It's probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in"

Only in Harper’s case, he is inside the tent pissing in.

AMERICA'S PERILOUS FINANCIAL SITUATION

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

Wendell Murray is right: there is a huge capacity in America for increasing taxes.

It has been a race to the bottom for years in cutting taxes. From old man Reagan to lunatic Bush, there has been no limit to cutting the sources of nourishment for society’s bones and sinews, the infrastructure of government.

On top of that insanity, there has been the imposition of wars and increased military budgets – to the point, by the way, where the U.S. now spends more than the entire rest of the planet on the means of destruction - with no responsible method of accounting for their payment.

I believe Americans will not accept the kind of taxation required. Their sense of entitlement and the "I want it now, and I want it all," syndrome are still throbbing away, much resembling teenagers with crushes, despite the economic crisis.

Obama has backed off one issue after another in response to less-than-rational pressure, and I cannot see him being tough in this matter. The truth is Americans do not want a tough president, unless by “tough” you are talking about bombing foeigners somewhere.

He sounded good on the Middle East in the beginning, looking for a genuine peace, and now I'm not sure I can tell him from George Bush, but then the mid-term Congressional elections would be sorely affected by a loss of contributions from the apologists for Israel.

He sounded good about war in the beginning, although his main stress was only the suggestive fact that he did not vote for the atrocity in Iraq, but still he runs two wars, and he has lowered himself into the ethical hell with his horrible drone attacks on Pakistan, killing many civilians and de-stabilizing that society.

He has responded in an almost ridiculous fashion to the whining complaints about the BP blow-out. I say “whining” because it is Americans themselves who insist on consuming as much gasoline as they possibly can, driving lumbering pick-up trucks and buying homes with three-car garages.

The attacks on BP are, so far as I can tell, unwarranted. Was BP indeed doing anything different to the many other operators in the Gulf? If not, then the blow-out is just bad luck, one of those one-in-a-thousand possibilities inherent in any risky business, which is certainly the nature of drilling for oil more than a mile beneath the sea.

And the attacks on Obama are unwarranted. This was not a case of a cabinet-level official totally failing to do his job, and a president just blithely going about things as usual while a city sinks and a thousand people die.

But Obama, again with mid-term elections ahead, has responded as though these attacks were warranted. His heavy-handed treatment of BP has been inappropriate and hostile to a major company from a friendly nation.

No, I don’t expect much from Obama, and that is part of the reason I expect America is headed for a dark chapter, a serious decline, dragging the rest of us with it. This is a people who appear from countless examples in their history to learn only by banging their heads into walls.