Linked with Opium of the masses – part 2.
Eric Walberg is a journalist and writes for Al-Ahram Weekly. He tells on his own website: If you want to see me in action, you can watch a panel discussion about the Annapolis meeting between Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli PM Ehud Olmert: TV Debate, Middle East: Part 1, 5.25 min; part 2, 7.17 min. … (see also all his other videos on Youtube).
He writes: … While Georgians see themselves as part of Europe, “the whole history of Georgia is of Georgian kings writing to Western kings for help, or for understanding. And sometimes not even getting a response,” said its thoroughly Westernised president, Mikheil Saakashvili, in a recent interview. “Not just being an isolated, faraway country, but part of something bigger”. With a population of 4.7 million, this beautiful land, noted for its dozen or so hot-blooded independent-minded peoples, is surrounded by at best indifferent neighbours Armenia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and of course Russia. Its fiery 40-year-old president does not disappoint, with his penchant for thumbing his nose at Russia and lavishly admiring US President George W Bush … (full text, May 7th, 2008).
.
.
Eric Walberg – Canada
Heart of darkness: Afghan Resistance against Foreign Occupation, June 4, 2008.
… For sceptics about the possibility of some form of LHOP/MHOP, just consider the following: if indeed 6,000 elite business leaders control the world’s fate, surely such an immensely wealthy and powerful coterie could solve the food crisis in a flash. The massive expenditures on arms and the wanton destruction they cause every second, could, if stopped, provide the will and resources to restructure the world to end starvation, let alone poverty, leaving lots left over for the elite to wallow in. There is no organised force of any consequence opposing this world elite. What’s stopping it? (full long text about food crisis).
[Explanation: « Made it Happen On Purpose » (MHOP) … and: « Let it Happen On Purpose » (LHOP) …]
Silent tsunami, May 17th, 2008.
Twenty years ago this week the Soviet Union began its withdrawal from Afghanistan, eight and a half years after it was invited by the desperate People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), which had degenerated into intra-party squabbling and was beset by Islamic rebels massively financed by the United States. The straw that broke the Soviets’ back was when the US began providing Stinger missiles to Osama bin Laden and his friends … (full text).
He asks: « Is there more than meets the eye in the sudden flurry of talk about a world food crisis » … (full long text).
… Eric wrote to me, and I fully agree with his view: « My philosophy of journalism is that it should help shape the historical dialectic. Indeed, I hope that our arguments reach Russian political types and help support the Good in Russian politics – renewing the anti-imperial stance of Soviet Russia. It’s not at all a sure thing, with the strong Zionist lobby in Russia which continues to press and fight Putin. His is not yet primarily a principled position, but the principles have becoming stronger the past few years, as he wrestles with both the domestic and international dragons » … (full text, July 8, 2007).
… Building A Future In The Ashes Of The Past: In the five years that followed September 11, 2001, antisemitic incidents doubled in Canada. B’nai Brith reported a total of 935 incidents in 2006 – a quadrupling over ten years, and the highest total since B’nai Brith began its Canadian surveys 25 years previously. Jews make up barely one per cent of Canada’s population, but in hate crimes statistics maintained by Canadian police agencies, Jews are now among the most targeted of all religious and ethnic minorities. This is not a distinctly Canadian phenomenon; it accords quite closely with global trends, although the trend in Canada is among the world’s worst, along with Australia, Britain, and France. Events in the Middle East are now an important factor in these trends, and the spike in antisemitic incidents in 2006 occurred during a year of horrible violence in Lebanon and Israel … (full long text).
Parallel Worlds of the Gods, Man, and Nature.
He writes also: … To date 25 countries have formally recognised the Republic of Kosovo (ROK), and six others have initiated the recognition procedure. Among these 31 countries are 14 of the European Union’s 25 members, the United States, Australia, Switzerland and Norway. Of the former Yugoslavian republics, only Slovenia has recognised it so far, with Croatia committed (it’s on the EU membership short-list). Everyone has their own interests in mind, and one can be sure they are not all altruistic. Interestingly, sometimes both sides of a conflict over independence are against ROK, as is the case with Armenia and Azerbaijan, the former because « the international community violated the legal norms but forgot Karabakh, » according to Armenian Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian. Armenian foe Azerbaijan had peacekeepers in Kosovo as part of Turkey’s contingent, but parted ways with Turkey when it recognised ROK, and has withdrawn them, with very good reason, considering the precedent it means for said Karabakh … (full text, March 15, 2008).
… Post(latest)war manifesto – So, what help is Einstein in finding a way forward now? The fundamentals of his equation for peace still hold. To « win the hearts and minds » of ordinary Americans we need a broad-based platform that integrates the US into the community of nations, as opposed to the present platform of USA world domination through intimidation and state violence. A reasonable mainstream political platform to be fought for within the US would entail:
- 1) a conciliatory approach to « the enemy »: « A genuine solution of the security problem presupposes mutual confidence… but what was actually done both in the case of Germany (re demilitarization of Germany in cooperation with Russia) and that of East Asia (re China and Korea) was the opposite of what might have created confidence »;
- 2) a domestic program defending Constitutional rights and promoting economic stability and justice.
This must be backed up by Gandhi-inspired civil disobedience by intellectuals and ordinary people, and refusal to support the militarization of domestic and foreign policy. The role of intellectuals is key – especially after the war in Iraq settles down into postwar routine terrorism, domestically, where Constitutional rights are eroded … (full text, Oct-Dec. 2003).
Natasha Shulepina: Eric Walberg profiles a journalist fighting on the frontiers of media freedom in Uzbekistan, Sept. 1999.
… It is a shame that Litvinenko died his gruesome death, but he was courting disaster, from his flamboyant press conference onwards. His actions were not well-thought out; he was impulsive and emotional, to the point of touchingly converting to Islam in sympathy with the Chechens as he lay dying. I wonder of Goldfarb and Berezovsky had a hand in that little PR stunt? He is a reminder that the world of international politics is one of intrigue and danger. He played the game and lost. Just as Soviet dissidents had little real influence on events – they were more gadflies or weathervanes, so are the likes of Litvinenko today … (full long text, October 31, 2007).
Russian ogre or hero of our times, May 3, 2007.
And he writes: … It is impossible in the confines of an article to trace the transformation of post-Christian Talmudic Judaism, which is very different than pre-Christian variant. Though Jews continued to live in Palestine, Diaspora became its defining feature along with the ritual prayer to « return », though post-Christian Jews have no more right to immigrate and live there than anyone else. Christians also continued to live there happily until the Catholic pope decided they must be liberated in the 10th-12th cc and raised a European army to invade Palestine not once but four times. But after that fiasco, Christians learned their lesson and have left Palestine in relative peace, satisfying their spiritual urges by living quietly as monks in desolate caves, making pilgrimages, and collecting souvenir bones and bits of wood which they cherished as holy relics — again guilty of misplaced concreteness, but usually harmlessly so. This blessed peaceful period in Palestine only changed with the ascendancy of the Jews in the 19th c, who all this time had been nurturing their tribal Yahweh and their dream of concretising the metaphorical promises he supposedly made millennia ago, a misplaced concreteness far from harmless, as they set about invading and colonising a metaphor … (full long text, December 03, 2007).
Or perhaps the turning point was the radicalisation of the remarkable Cindy Sheehan, mother of a soldier who died in Iraq, now running for Congress. She captured the nation’s imagination when, in her grief and despair, she trudged to President George W Bush’s Texas ranch in the summer of 2005, where he was enjoying a five-week holiday, and set up Camp Casey, in honour of her son, demanding to get an explanation from Bush about the « noble cause » her son supposedly died for. Bush refused to meet with her, but her action gained her the sympathy of the nation … (full text, 20 – 26 September 2007).
Find him and his publications in Al-Ahram Weekly; on Dissident Voice; on Shamir Readers; on Google Video-search; on Google Book-search; on Google Scholar-search; on Google Group-search; on Google Blog-search.
Heart of darkness: Princess Patricia and a Taliban takeover, June 06.
links:
The Biggest Secret Forum – NWO watchdog;
the blog: Harry’s place;
The Forum: SAUDI IN FOCUS;
The writings of Israel Shamir, championing Democracy for Israel & Palestine;