Fighting the enemy at times means fighting your erstwhile comrades-in-arms, writes Eric Walberg

The phenomenal success the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has had since it began in 2005 has attracted attention from all corners of the political spectrum -- for better or for worse. Israel is scared. Israeli thinktanks have described BDS as a greater threat to Israel than armed Palestinian resistance. At the same time, at the forefront of the movement against what is now widely called Israeli apartheid are Jews -- Israeli and diaspora. This is not surprising, as Jews have traditionally been active in “political mobilisation and opinion formation”, according to Benjamin Ginsberg.

Interview by Jonathan Reynolds, an anthropologist who writes for spikemagazine.com and author of two books on the Maya and Guatemala

Q: For a work of geopolitical history, I found the book a real ‘page-turner’.

A: Thanks. It’s gratifying that this came across. So much of the critique of imperialism is depressing and boring, and puts the reader off. The history is fascinating, if horrifying.

Q: I was impressed by the great sweep of the argument, and how the details of the history of imperialism as you write about it are integrated so well into it.

A: Again, thanks. I couldn’t have done it without the internet. I really should have put Wikipedia in the acknowledgments, although this must be treated circumspectly – it allows you to track down hundreds of details in seconds that are essential to making a credible argument. Again, much of the literature is either too detail-heavy or too generalized. In writing both my articles over the past decade, and this (and another book) over the past four years, I developed a style where I try to include as many relevant details as possible without sinking under their weight.

Two weeks ago I published a review of Eric Walberg’s invaluable new book Postmodern Imperialism: Geopolitics and the Great Games. I was left with a few questions which Eric was kind enough to address.

Gilad Atzmon:  Hello Eric; thanks for finding the time to talk. I would like to begin if I may, with a few short questions: firstly, what is self-hatred?

Eric Walberg: Buddhism is based on the annihilation of the self. Islam – on the total submission of self. It’s at the heart of Christian beliefs too. (I don’t know about Judaism.)  Self-hatred has respectable roots.

As oil prices soar and countries think twice about expanding nuclear power, we should be careful about where to point the finger, says Eric Walberg

Japan’s trauma following the partial meltdown of nuclear reactors in Fukushima has once again brought to the world’s attention the dangers of nuclear power. From the start, it was clear that a broad advocacy of nuclear energy is bad ecology. Splitting the atom (or worse, fusing atoms) unleashes intense heat and radiation and produces poisonous waste that lasts for up to 10,000 years or more.

31/1/11

Waiting for my flight to Munich in Toronto, a voluble American my age struck up a conversation. Ed is an attorney from Atlanta with 7 kids -- 3 from his first marriage, 2 from his second wife's first marriage, and 2 from their marriage. "A typical American family these days," he said, meaning the mixed marriage rather than the number of kids. He launched unbidden into a scathing critique of the US, saying it was basically a basket case, becoming a totalitarian monster, and that he was looking for a place to move to with his family.

When I told him I was going to Cairo, he asked if Egypt was a good prospect. Considering it was in the midst of a revolution, I suggested he consider Cyprus as a better option.

2010 was a tough one overall. Public discontent with governments and economic policy brought people out on the streets to protest. US wars, occupation and threat of war in the Middle East and Asia were never far from the headlines. Elections around the world led  in most cases to further tensions. There were few outright winners and many more losers, with most developments a mixed bag.

Much is being made of North Korea’s shelling of one of 30 disputed islands, Yeonpyeong, which houses a South Korean military base, well inside what should be a demilitarised zone between the two Koreas resulting in the deaths of two South Korean marines and two civilians. The borders were unilaterally drawn by the UN at the end of the 1950-53 war and the countries are still officially in a state of war. Rumours are that the incident is connected to the possible transition of power from North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to his son Kim Jong Un, or to North Korea’s recent announcement that it is proceeding with its nuclear programme.

The skirmish began Tuesday when North Korea warned the South to halt military drills at the base, after which Seoul began firing artillery directly into disputed waters within sight of the North Korean shore. The North retaliated by shelling the Yeonpyeong military installations. Seoul responded by unleashing its own barrage of howitzers and scrambling fighter jets over the North, killing far more North Koreans though the actual number is not yet know.

The words of condemnation -- of the North -- from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and US President Barack Obama for the “provocation” flowed, as expected. Obama used the occasion to reaffirmed plans to stage joint military exercises later this week in the Yellow Sea, the latest in its own provocations of both North Korea and China this year, following the sinking of a South Korean warship in an earlier joint US-South Korean military “exercise”. Accusations that North Korea torpedoed the Cheonan, killing 46 sailors, were undermined by evidence pointing to the US itself. Pyongyang denied responsibility.

400 of the 1,700 residents of Yeonpyeong were evacuated. Instead of demilitarising the disputed islands and agreeing to mediation, the South Korean government announced it would strengthen its military forces there and halt aid to the North, while the North warned of more military strikes if the South encroaches on the maritime border by "even 0.001 millimetre."

That the provocation is from the South Korea side, with its pro-US President Lee Myung-bak, who has made his anti-communist sentiments clear in the past, is confirmed by the fact that the incident failed to scare off investors, with South Korea's stock market experiencing only a momentary ripple.

With the rise of Hitler, the Peace Prize committee finally mustered up the courage to take on Nazism, and awarded the 1935 prize to Carl von Ossietzky, a German journalist and pacifist who had spent several years in Papenburg-Esterwegen, a Nazi concentration camp, convicted of high treason and espionage in 1931 after publishing details of Germany's violation of the Treaty of Versailles by rebuilding an air force and training pilots in the Soviet Union. (Ironically, the verdict was upheld by the Federal Court of Justice in 1992.) At the time it was a highly controversial decision, with two jury members resigning, fearing a political fallout with the Nazis.

Everyone knows that Alfred Nobel created his eponymous Peace Prize partly to assuage his guilt for unleashing dynamite on an already saber-rattling world. Fewer know that he wrote at the time that if the world still needed the prize 30 years later, we would "inevitably lapse into barbarism".