Eric has launched his new book.
Just in from Eric Walberg
Presstv interview: Iraqi parliament defies US-Israel
with firaz al-najim Canadian Defenders For Human Rights
https://www.urmedium.com/c/presstv/110431
i'm on at 3:35 and 9:10
Peace & Socialism
Jewish Orientalism: Semites of the world unite!
There is a way out of the Israel-Palestine impasse. Really, the only way out. And it has been staring us in the face since the time when Zionism in its present form was taking shape, from 1900 to 1940. This was Herzl's intent. His Altneuland (The Old New Land, 1902), is a vision of what he hoped would be accomplished by 1923.
Theodore Herzl did not foresee any implacable conflict between Jews and Arabs.
Guest oped: Who Is America's Greatest Enemy, Israel Or Iran?
My dear friend (and translator of Canada Israel Nexus into Persian) Reza Montazami, has asked me to post his assessment of Iran-US relations, which he sees as Iran-US-Israel relations.
*My country and New Horizon are fighting for the American people against the most dangerous threat and enemy to the American and Iranian peoples. We need to ask ourselves, why do patriotic Americans, people in the intelligence, security, and military communities, and political leaders allow American military personnel to be killed or humiliated to serve Israel's interests?
In the spirit of Jonathan Swift's Modest Proposal to solve the problem of the Irish famine, the ex-diplomatic offers conditions for a fair war between US-Israel and Iran.
Culture & Religion
The boy who was raised a girl: If it quacks, it’s probably a quack
Bruce-Brenda-David's dream: Dr Money was a magician with a cape and he said he could make us disappear---pouf!---like that. I woke up and thought we had disappeared.
Remember the study of intersex from the 1930s, before the snip-and-tuck craze that started in the 1950s with ‘scientific advances’ (plastic surgery) and continues today? Showing that most intersex seem to cope just fine with their disfigured gonads? Of course not, as it was buried. Boooring. Much more fun (profitable) to con desperate parents into buying a nice model from your array of high tech doodads: phalloplasty, estrogen, estrogen, estrogen. Did I mention estrogen?
January 4, 6, 8: Historic days for US-Iran-world
Why am I celebrating January 4, 2020, the grim anniversary of the assassination of Iranian General Soleimani and Iraqi commander of the Popular Mobilisation Forces Mohandis, the two leading anti-ISIS fighters? And January 8, 2020, Iran’s answer? (I’m not celebrating January 6!)
It is notable that the anniversary passed in the US without so much as a howdie-do, either by Trumpers or Democrats. It also was downplayed during the viciously contested 2020 US presidential election.
I'm sure Trump did this blatant war crime with two aims.
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
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.
Exploring the amazing Don valley's' by bike
Bike maps need a grain of salt. How to find the entrance to the Taylor Creek path? It's easy from the east end, where it starts just north of Victoria Park subway. But the western end is tangled up in the various ravines mixed up with the 4-lane monster Bayview "avenue' and the Don Valley expressway, snaking through, trying to straighten out Nature. Another false start. Last time I was with Ryan and he was impatient with my bungling, so we ended up at the tacky waterfront. It's an industrial wasteland now, and soon will be glistening high rises and manicured greenery. Yuck.
Middle East
Presstv interview: Iraqi parliament defies US-Israel
with firaz al-najim Canadian Defenders For Human Rights
https://www.urmedium.com/c/presstv/110431
i'm on at 3:35 and 9:10
Europe, Canada & U.S.A.
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.
