Eric has launched his new book.
Just in from Eric Walberg
Peace & Socialism
Presstv 'Africa today': Nigeria anti-SARS movement
a nice piece on nigeria's 5 years of protests. i'm on at 19:00.
Culture & Religion
Intersex vs transgender: 'the same … only different'
1/ Intersex biology
2a&b/ gay, trans movements
3/ Resistance to trans: Intersex push back
4/ Intersex stories, un-PC trans tales
5/ Cut to the quick
The gay liberation movement/ era is now in its sixth decade, or more, if you count the 'anything goes' 1930s and the wild rutting of WWII, lots of it male-male, followed by the 1950s hangover of paranoia and oppression. The intersex and transgender movements/ era only got going in the 1990s, though the trans movement can also be dated to the celebrity first transsexual Christine Jorgensen in 1961, and the free love 1960s. Of course, there have been intersex (and male-male sex) from the Stone Age.
Ramadan musings: Solzhenitsyn -- everybody's pain in the neck
When you are too close to something, someone, you are not the best analyst. Your feelings get in the way. You reveal more about who you are than who or what you love/hate. But you can see better from afar. That sums up Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who, despite accurately predicting the collapse of the Soviet Union, and being instrumental in achieving that, was deeply flawed in his understanding of his nemesis, provided really bad advice on how to extricate the huge Eurasian, multinational entity from its many crises, and contributed to the suffering of, in the first place, his beloved Russians. Hardly the most Christian act for the devout soul he claimed to be.
Books of Interest
Review: Helen Andrews, Boomers: The men and women who promised freedom and delivered disaster (2021)
In 2018, a majority of millennials said boomers had ‘made things worse’ for their generation. They tried to liberate us, and instead of freedom they left behind chaos.
In all fields touched by the six boomers profiled here---technology, entertainment, economics, academia, politics, law---what they passed on to their children was worse than what they inherited.
Andrews is senior editor at The American Conservative, and her book is a jeremiad, with the flavour of Old Testament divine justice, a call for owning up to one’s sins. The sins are many and the style is refreshingly unapologetically angry. The boomers should not be allowed to shuffle off the world stage until they have been made to regret their actions… In a just world there would be cosmic retribution for taking Jobs’s life’s work and turning it to the most boomerish purposes imaginable.
Review: Richard Falk, Public Intellectual: The Life of a Citizen Pilgrim, Clarity Press, 2021.
Writing this memoir has been as much about discovering my story, that is, myself as it is about telling it. That's Falk's version of Socrates' 'the unexamined life is not worth living.' Or should I say, Forrest Gump's? Falk's life reads like a storybook, starting with meeting Supreme Court judges with his father at age 9 in 1939, making friends with Claudette Colbere, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Liz Taylor (long story) at age 15, befriending and befoeing many of the dramatis personae of the Cold War throughout his long and productive life, finally landing on the shores of democratic socialism as the US charges towards the (literal) finish line.
Travel
Toronto-Port Credit by bike - a breeze by moonlight
Up at 8am and went out to catch cosmos heads as they burst, as they hang over the border onto the sidewalk. It’s nice to say good-bye to my floral friends, especially the catalpas.
Oshawa-Toronto by bike: a Torontonian’s Everest
Oshawa is the last stop on the GO train east from Toronto, 60km -- in theory. I’m sure there are many ace sportsmen who zip back and forth (terrifying walkers), but I’ve never met anyone who tried to do it. Undaunted, I packed my lunch, gathered my pump etc, and aimed for the 8:13 train.
With the new bike craze, there are bike lanes popping up where you least expect them. University Ave, Toronto’s stately boulevard of banks, the US consulate, the Ontario legislature (in that order of importance) now has a spiffy bright designated lane, and a trip down past spooky silent skyscrapers on an early Saturday morning was now a delight. Leisurely pedaling among the monolithsI felt like I owned this concrete paradise, not TD et al.
Middle East
Europe, Canada & U.S.A.
Love in time of covid-19
I’m struck by the fact that all our pandemics, in fact all pandemics are courtesy of ‘civilization’, by which I mean agriculture, overcrowded cities, full of shit both animal and human, home of rats and fleas, carriers of plague. Our obsession with cheap meat means overcrowding, force feeding and ...
Timeline 2010-2019: United States&Canada, Latin America, Europe, Africa&Asia
Note: Links are to my articles for Al-Ahram Weekly in Cairo, Presstv, DissidentVoice and other sitesMy Timelines 2000-2010: United States, Latin America, Europe, Africa&Asia are hereMy Timeline 2010-2019: Middle East here Timeline 2010-2019: United States&Canada 2010 *Republicans retake Ho...
Russia and Soviet Union
Подарок Трампа Сирии: мир во всем мире, благоволение к людям
Russian translation of РI считает, что главным событием 2018 года стало решение президента Трампа вывести войска из Сирии. Этим действием президент немедленно противопоставил себя не только всему вашингтонскому истеблишменту, но даже собственной команде национальной безопасности, состоящей в основном из сторонников американской империи разной степени радикальности. Канадский геополитик, автор книги 2011 года «Постмодернистская империя», публицист в целом левых взглядов, но симпатизирующий консервативному анти-интервенционизму, Эрик Вальберг в специальном материале для нашего издания попытался суммировать все те чувства, которые испытывают сегодня противники американского империализма в англо-саксонском мире. Будем надеяться, что сегодняшнее сообщение о приостановке вывода американских войск из Сирии не свидетельствует об изменении политического курса президента и что в 2019 году мы увидим наконец долгожданную нормализацию отношений России и США.
Внезапно президент Трамп перестал быть дураком, марионеткой своих генералов. Его последние, исторические твиты взорвались как настоящие бомбы. «Уход из Сирии не был сюрпризом. Я выступал за это годами, и шесть месяцев назад, когда я об этом говорил публично, то согласился подождать. Россия, Иран, Сирия и другие — это локальные враги ИГИЛ. Мы выполняли там (так! опечатка, должно быть «их». — Э.В.) работу».
Eric Walberg Interviews
Connect with Eric Walberg
Eric's latest book The Canada Israel Nexus is available here http://www.claritypress.com/WalbergIV.html
Eric's From Postmodernism to Postsecularism is available here
Eric's Postmodern Imperialism: Geopolitics
and the Great Games is available here
Eric's Postmodern Imperialism: Geopolitics
and the Great Games is available here
Canadian Eric Walberg is known worldwide as a journalist specializing in the Middle East, Central Asia and Russia. A graduate of University of Toronto and Cambridge in economics, he has been writing on East-West relations since the 1980s.
He has lived in both the Soviet Union and Russia, and then Uzbekistan, as a UN adviser, writer, translator and lecturer. Presently a writer for the foremost Cairo newspaper, Al Ahram, he is also a regular contributor to Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, Global Research, Al-Jazeerah and Turkish Weekly, and is a commentator on Voice of the Cape radio.
