Thursday, April 26, 2007

The Socialism of Fools: Reports From The Front

UPDATE: Is it possible that there's not just one but two neo-communist, pro-Islamist, Jew-bashing Canadian translator-journalists who live or lived until very recently in Tashkent, Uzbekistan? "Simon Jones" admits he's using that name as an alias, but he says he's not Eric Walberg. He also says Adolph Hitler "copied the zionist programme to the letter" so take what he says with a grain of salt; besides, his former editor outed him. When I called Metta Spencer, editor of Toronto's Peace Magazine (which has run articles about Uzbekistan under both bylines, Walberg and Jones), to find out more about this Eric Walberg character, I asked who "Simon Jones" was, and Metta said: "Oh, that's his pseudonym. He needed a pseudonym because of where he was living, you see."

For an account of the recent strategy sessions in Cairo that brought together Canadian and British "anti-war" activists with some of the world's most violent and sinister Islamists and jihadists, the English-speaking world was obliged to rely almost exclusively upon an account ("Anti-Globalists Reach Out to Islamists") in the Egyptian weekly Al Ahram, written by a certain Canadian by the name of Eric Walberg.

There was something odd about his report, I thought. There was a weirdly euphoric tone about it, and it was also a kind of hybrid as these things go. It was partly a celebration of the ongoing convergence between the Islamist far-right and a certain far-left groupuscule that has insinuated itself into the leadership of the "anti-war" movement (in Canada, it runs the Toronto Stop The War Coalition, the umbrella Canadian Peace Alliance, the War Resisters Support Campaign, etc.). The report was also partly a work of dutiful stenography, in service to the conference participants themselves.

Curious to know why this Eric Walberg would be so happy about the moral squalor he had witnessed and participated in, I made some conventional journalistic inquiries about him. You can make up your own mind about whether the result adequately explain Walberg's obvious delight at the prospect of an ongoing convergence of the far-left and far-right. You can make up your own mind about how significant the Cairo conference was in that phenomenon.

Walberg, who appears sometimes to write under the pseudonym Simon Jones, is a Canadian economist and a frequent contributor to Canada's Peace Magazine, a reputable journal based out of Toronto. Walberg has also been a regular contributor to the deliberations of a notoriously anti-semitic thinktank known as the Adelaide Institute, whose leader, Frederich Töben, has done hate-speech jail time in Germany. Töben was one of the more prominent guests at Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Holocaust-denial conference last December.

A survey of Walberg's writings show that he regards Jews as having been the authors of their own misfortunes over the past 2,000 years, and all the great wars of the past century can be laid at the feet of shadowy Zionists - even the "still mysterious collapse" of the World Trade Center in New York on September 11. He has written approvingly of the contents of the Protocols of The Elders of Zion - that classic text of pathological Jew-hatred.

As far as I can determine, Walberg's last real job was a public-relations gig in Tashkent, in the Office of Uzbekstan President Islam Karimov - a dictator who reportedly murders his opponents by boiling them in oil. I've also confirmed the substance of an Adelaide Institute report that Walberg was turfed out of Uzbekistan after being sloppy in the work of hiding his identity behind the pseudonyms he adopts. Writing favourably about underground Uzbek Islamist groups was not so smart, it would seem.

I should point out that it was with the help of a fellow journalist and Walberg's former friends and associates in Canada that I assiduously confirmed Walberg's impressive cirruculum vitae - his degrees from Cambridge, from the Pushkin Institute in Moscow, and so on - and his strange trajectory from a Stalinist campus "peace activist" in Toronto to true-believer in the restoration of the Caliphate, as well as his various personae and noms de plume.

And I should point that by now, you should see whay Walberg was so happy about what went on in Cairo.
In the absence of any in-depth report from a legitimately independent journalist about what really happened at the Cairo conference - about what oaths were pledged, what commitments were made and what vows were uttered - we are left to rely upon Walberg, upon a videotape provided to the Reuters news agency (from which Reuters cobbled together a "news" report), and upon the accounts of the participants themselves.
The "anti-war" participants, thankfully, are not especially reticent. They are not ashamed of their conduct. They are proud of it.
And just in case you think this is all just a matter of cross-cultural ecumenism or something, and the poor dears from Hamas and Hezbollah at the Cairo conference are merely defending the honour of Muslims against the war-making agression of the infidels, you should have heard what Hezbollah's Ali Fayyad had to say about his co-religionists:
We in Hezbollah and in the Lebanese resistance see that secular fighters in Venezuela or in any place in the world, secular or Christian, are nearer to us than the Muslims or Arabs who cooperate with imperialism.
Try to imagine, if you can, the chill that would overcome you, reading those words, if you happened to be a liberal or progressive or a gay Muslim living within the police-state confines of Hezbollah's illegal Lebanon statelet.
The Canadian participants in the Cairo conference will be boasting of their escapades tomorrow night at the Steelworkers Hall in Toronto. If you're anywhere near the neighbourhood, by all means, go and take it in. And be sure to ask Ali Mallah about his Hezbollah-guided side trip to Beirut. It appears to have been very illuminating for him.
Meanwhile, I've touched on a lot of this in my Georgia Straight column today (most of what I submitted appeared in the column, anyway). It begins this way:

During the Israel-Hezbollah war last summer, this column examined Canada's so-called antiwar movement, and concluded that its conduct was squalid, and its "peace" was really about opposing Israel.

I expressed support for the struggles of the Palestinian people, but I pointed out that there's another, much larger, war going on. It's a war against modernity, against the emancipation of women, against the Jews, and against everything any self-respecting liberal or socialist or democrat has ever stood for.

This time, I'm here to say Canada's main "antiwar" groups have finally, fully, and openly exposed themselves to be active participants in that war. And they're on the side of the enemy.

For those of my readers who will continue to insist after reading this that that they are "shocked" and "appalled" that I write disparagingly about the key leadership of this country's "anti-war" movement, I'm afraid we no longer have anything to discuss.

For the last time, I am not "smearing the anti-war movement." The anti-war movement has disgraced itself. It is Eric Walberg who has disgraced Peace Magazine and the magazine's fine and decent editor, Metta Spencer. I haven't smeared her. Walberg has, by his mere association with her. And I expect there are many sincere peace activists who will be disgusted by what I've had to point out here.

Well, to them I say, now's your chance. Denounce these frauds. Disown them. Stand up and be counted, and started acting like grown-ups. If you don't, you're no better than them.

As for me, I'm outta here. You won't be reading anything more from me in either the Georgia Straight or the Tyee for some while. I have a life to get on with.

Slainte,

TG

15 Comments:

Blogger Wet Coaster said...

Wow! What a great article in the Straight and here! For years now I have been preaching (to the deaf) that the peace movement is riddled with those so anxious to condemn anything anti-American or anti-Israeli that they have leaped into bed with the far right Islamists etc.

Sorry to hear you are leaving the Tyee and Straight. Hope you still are going to write somewhere (here maybe?). You're common sense POV is sure needed!

6:54 PM  
Blogger Left Boot of Imperialism said...

Al-Ahram also had an interview with the multi-hatted John Rees of the Stop the War Coalition, Respect and the SWP who had this to say of the Cairo gathering:

‘Where else can you sit down in a single evening and listen to senior people from Hamas, Hizbullah, the Muslim Brotherhood, people from the revolutionary left and people from the anti-war movement around the globe?’

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/839/sc3.htm

Where else indeed?

3:55 AM  
Blogger Dirk Buchholz said...

Good luck Terry
I hear you on having a life to get on with
talking and more talking gets real boring after a while.Nothing more boring and sterile than the chattering class...
family,friends,one children,ones passions,hobbies,etc etc brings much more satisfaction
the actions in the living...

11:25 PM  
Blogger Mikey said...

I was directed to this post from Harry's Place - a UK based blog. - What an excellent post this is. Well done on digging up that information.

Mikey

2:16 AM  
Blogger ModernityBlog said...

great article!

6:05 AM  
Blogger Blazingcatfur said...

Terry your work is necessary and valued. I respect your decision to regain your life, just keep blogging. Sorry for gettin all maudlin here, but yours is a voice of reason and intelligence that needs to be heard. Keep blogging at the least!

6:24 AM  
Blogger Andrew Ian Dodge said...

I came here via Harry's Place as well. What an enlightening piece of writing this piece is about such a vile cretin. Well done and thanks for the info. I enjoyed your reproach at the end as well.

7:19 AM  
Blogger Wet Coaster said...

Terry:
One more thing, I agree it's important to get some perspective and have a life. But I second with Blazing Cat, please keep blogging!
The truth needs to be out there!
Best of everything to ya!

11:48 AM  
Blogger Incognito said...

Great post!

I still don't get the love affair between the leftists and radical Islamists, (though I have blogged about it in the past) other than a common hatred of Israel and the Jews and their combined potentially imperialistic agenda.

11:12 PM  
Blogger SnoopyTheGoon said...

Great piece, indeed. And re that defeatist attitude to the loonies of the Tyee, I wanted to offer you a (short, don't worry) Long live lunacy post by a rather promising youngster. Hope it will inspire you not to quit.

Of course, the Elders have some more forceful ways to make a man do what a man must do. Like an option of measuring the snowfall in Greenland (don't worry, it is only once a week duty, and you get your own igloo).

Best.

7:34 AM  
Blogger W.L. Mackenzie Redux said...

Great investigative blogging!

The results and links your investigation has turned up are indeed shocking but not unexpected.

The common thread between fanatical Islam and radical dogmatic communism is a shared mythology which holds "Zionists" (roughly translated this means the Jewish mercantile class of the world) responsible for all the failings of utopian idealists to produce the social utopia promised by the dogma to their constituents.

As Islamists and paleo-communists wallow deeper in the obvious failings and human misery of outdated/errant social theory, they become more adamant to scapegoat someone/something for their falling short of utopia....as with all intellectually degenerate ideologies they trot out a scapegoat…the oldest one being the mythology of the vast conspiracy of the Joooooos. They seed it into the culture of their constituency as a placebo for dystopian mysery and a diversionary focal point for their follower's anger.

"Oh so you have no running water in your village comrade Alli?...this is because the globalist imperialism of Zionist Jewry does not want you to have it...the sons of Monkeys keep those of the true faith in bondage to their international capitalist tyranny...they are the great Satan’s financiers...Islam can only be free when the Zionist pigs are driven from our lands (the genocide of Israel) and the Zionist imperialists taste the wrath of Mohamed's sword( global Jihad)"

The “Borat” skit where he sings a Kazakistni folk song about “throwing the jews down the well so my country can bee free” is a satirical take on the backwards anti Zionist culture in the former soviet Balkan states.

Can't you just hear the paleo-commies cheering on the similar anti Zionist Islamic dogmatic perversity?...it could have been said in a Moscow rally by Stalinists during the great social purges of the absolutist soviet ascension.

Anti zionism/antisemitism and autocratic control over public morality is a tenet of Stalinist communism and Islamic extremism which is a natural ideological fit...we saw it in the Baathists and in the Syrian and Iranian regimes. Anti zionist/antisemetic culture still thrives in most of the former soviet block….it is a deeply entrenched cultural remnant of radical communist dogmatics.

So for me there is no surpise paleo-communists have found common ground with radical Islmists...what does surprise me is the size of this 5th columnist Marxist-Trotskyite-anti-semitic cabal in Canada…truly Orwellian they hide under “peace protester” banners....some one has to keep an eye on them and expose the treasonous alliances they form.

Perhaps the next alternative media investigative front is exposing the link between fist nations extremists and the domestic 5th column left -Islamic fanatic bund...we routinely see both international worker's party and Hezbolla flags at native blockades and pro native land claim protest-marches.... strange bed fellows?...things that make you go hmmmm.

Keep up the great work Terry there is a lot of unseemly garbage that lies just beneath the white blanket of snow that is Canada's Christmas card picture image. Exposure is the first step to removing the garbage. It is the job of the alternate media to melt the snow so we see the dog-do on the lawn.

9:06 AM  
Blogger Simon said...

I'm going to miss your Straight columns (although my friends might not miss having them cut out and thrust at them on a seemingly weekly basis!), so hopefully you will indeed at least keep blogging here. And I cannot believe I didn't hear about Thursday's Afghan debate until today-- curses!

9:27 PM  
Blogger Samer Sawwas said...

what is the point of this article? i was hoping to read a critique of some topic that Eric Walberg might have discussed or handled. Instead the whole post is a personal attack. which is typical from a bankrupt argument.
http://www.counterpunch.com/walberg12032007.html

someone on your comment section said : "anti zionism = anti-Semitism" thus eliminating any possibility of anyone ever criticizing or even raising an eyebrow over Israeli or Zionist aggression without being called anti-Semitic. how realistic is that? zionism does not equal Semitism. please look up Semitic definitions. Its not exclusive to jews and not all jews are zionists.

eric walberg has put forth a valid argument in this article. its educational for your chorus and commentators.

5:17 PM  
Blogger Benjamin said...

Yes, I guess Walberg is one of those obscure and irrelevant figures that folk like to get irate about, and an element in the game of join the dots, smear by association, even vague and vicarious association, a la Sean Hannity v. Barack Obama. No, no, I don’t knock it. This is indeed a fun game!

But, to take it seriously, for a moment at least, one has to ascertain the homogeneity of the movement in question (be it antiwar, the left in general, “anti-globalist”, the Cairo Conference etc) , the extent to which they are monolithic.

7:22 PM  
Blogger Che' said...

First, your writing skills are minimal, better stick with your
day job. Second, your brain is even smaller than your dick. It is offensive that your mental dribble is displayed prominently when researching the writing of eric walberg. Your android subservience to this militaristic
killing machine empire putrifies your thoughts. May God have mercy upon your soul, forgive them father for they are mindless idiots who know not what they do; meaning you and all your blogger dumb ass respondents.

6:00 PM  

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