Eric has launched his new book.
Just in from Eric Walberg
Presstv interview: Banning Presstv, RT shows freedom American-style
with robert fantino from kitchener ontario
Peace & Socialism
So why, really, really, did the Soviet Union collapse?
Was it being constantly invaded? Stalinist terror? The obscene arms race? Plain old ennui?
Russia-Ukraine vs Vietnam-Cambodia
More from Great big book of horrible things (2012)
At #39 (#65 US civil war was a picnic compared to this), Cambodia in 1975 was a bombed-out US-controlled dictatorship. ‘Brother Number One’, Pol Pot was a demented nationalist, devotee of Mao’s cultural revolution, which he succeeded in duplicating to a fault. I.e., millions dead, mass starvation and a megalomaniac Kampuchea uber alles, eradicating not only ‘capitalist roaders’ but all minorities, books, whatever. He took special delight in torturing and killing native Vietnamese, a tiny minority mostly on the border in contested areas. Vietnam took note, and with the Americans finally out of their hair, they took the bait when Cambodians staged border raids. Classic Bismarck.
Culture & Religion
Who is a Jew? Review: Mochkofsky, The prophet of the Andes: An unlikely journey to the promised land
Review: Graciela Mochkofsky, The prophet of the Andes: An unlikely journey to the promised land, 2022.
Inca Jews? Yet another 'lost tribe'? Jewish folklore never fails to surprise. But this is even stranger. This, at least for the Jewish 'colony' (the real Jews) in sleepy Cajamarca, Peru, was more like an outbreak of the plague, which they instinctively shunned, refusing these interlopers even access to their synagogue to pray.
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
Shakespeare by bike
Over time I have accumulated 'my favourite Shakespeare hits' as doses of vitamin, my protein drink, as I ride. I love to find the bull's eyes and implant them, so they can come to my aid. Reciting aloud or in my mind is like playing Beethoven on the piano. Imitating speech (and song) is what makes us humans, gives us the miracle of speech. It's our primary learning engine. Parrots, mocking birds and a few others can, but no primates. It is speech that has turned the world into our world, transforming nature into ... No comment. But there is no wordsmith to rival the Bard. Maybe Dante.
Tolstoy didn't like Shakespeare: irreligious, amoral, teaches that in morality, like politics, you can’t establish any principles because life is too complex. The Devil is the main protagonist in Shakespeare's great tragedies, which suits me fine,
The Humber by bike - All smiles
I sit here, serenaded by our neighbourrhood nice crazy (as opposed to the many very irritating ones. CAMH is just across the road). He’s probably 3 blocks away and his plaintiff tenor wafts through the air. I saw him singing fortissimo a few days ago, as he skateboarded over the college st trolley tracks in the busy traffic, his head high, dressed for modest but tasteful street living, the spitting image of Jake Angeli, the Siegmund parody among the jan6 invaders of the capitol.
Middle East
Europe, Canada & U.S.A.
Presstv interview: Twitter and Facebook out of control
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fggB8761Yc&ab_channel=VoVNews
with Daniel Lazar from New York
PressTV interview: US recession, inflation and Ukraine-fatigue
http://www.urmedium.com/c/presstv/115197
with Mike Harris, Veterans Today, Phoenix Arizona
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.
