Inside the cult that runs the "Mobilization Against War and Occupation"
A key organizer within the most active "anti-war" group in Vancouver has spilled the beans in an open letter that confesses to several years' worth of blackshirt behaviour and "mafia-type" depravity centred around the cult's tyrannical, messianic Ali Yerevani.
Ivan Drury's account of his time with the groupuscule behind MAWO (whose poster girl and deputy commissar is the scam artist Alison Bodine) is a litany of assault, thuggery, e-mail hacking and all-round craziness. It's a lurid tale of psychological torture, bullying, and idiocy. But I must admit I did enjoy the part where Drury confesses to masquerading as a Muslim convert around local mosques.
Told you so. So did Ian King.
Can I say that just once more? Thanks.
Told you so.
Ivan Drury's account of his time with the groupuscule behind MAWO (whose poster girl and deputy commissar is the scam artist Alison Bodine) is a litany of assault, thuggery, e-mail hacking and all-round craziness. It's a lurid tale of psychological torture, bullying, and idiocy. But I must admit I did enjoy the part where Drury confesses to masquerading as a Muslim convert around local mosques.
Told you so. So did Ian King.
Can I say that just once more? Thanks.
Told you so.
posted by Terry Glavin at 11:06 AM
16 Comments:
Well I will give Drury credit for coming clean. Not suprised but greatly amused by all this.
Good stuff Terry.
The older I get, the more I am amazed (and kinda scared) that life is becoming more like Monty Python. Just change the names and it fits...:
Reg
Listen! If you wanted to join the PFJ, you'd have to have really
hate the Romans.
Brian
I do!
Reg
Oh, yeah, how much?
Brian
A lot!
Reg
Right, you're in. Listen, the only people we hate more than the
Romans, are the fucking Judean People's Front.
All in PFJ except Brian
Yeah!
Judith
Splitters!
Rogers
And the Judean Popular People's Front!
All in PFJ except Brian
Yeah! Splitters!
Loretta
And the People's Front of Judea!
All in PFJ except Brian
Yeah! Splitters!
Reg
What?
Loretta
The People's Front of Judea. Splitters!
Reg
We are the People's Front of Judea!
Loretta
Oh. I thought we were the Popular Front.
Reg
People's Front! God...
Rogers
Whatever happened to the Popular Front, Reg?
Reg
He's over there.
All in PFJ except Brian
Splitter!
Excellent and goes to ...
My Proposition That all Liberals/Leftoids have an addicted personality.
You have to admit you have a problem before you can take the first step to deal with it!
Ivan?
Ommag.
I've been accused of being a liberal and a lefty. I'd be happy to plead guilty to worse, just to settle the argument. And my addictions are in check.
I miss cigarettes, mind you. . .
As the old joke used to go:
Q: What do you get when you put two Trotskyists in a room together?
A: Three parties.
...except in this case it's even more bizarre. Reminds me of the old days of CPC-ML members stirring up weirdness in all sorts of arenas.
Ivan Drury. Fuck me. He started going off the rails probably a little over ten years ago--I saw his band play often enough (Mike Krebs, mentioned in the linked article, was the drummer) and their shows became increasingly more like sermons and less like punk rock shows. Ivan would talk absolute nonsense from the stage, as if he was trying to prove that he was far more left-wing than everyone else in attendance. On one occasion he proclaimed that abortion should be mandatory. At another show he declared that anyone who found any woman whatsoever to be ugly was sexist. That band ended and I think the last time I saw him he was playing folk songs on an acoustic guitar and telling stories in the basement of the old Submission Hold house on East First. I heard that he'd become a full time activist, but this is still fairly surprising. He didn't have his head on straight, but he didn't seem the kind of person who would resort to bullying and abuse.
Hey. Bill.
Let's just I remember the CPCML only too well.
And Graeme: That's hilarious. Do you remember the name of the Drury-Krebs band?
They were called Manner Farm.
Hi Terry:
Way back when, a friend of mine was working on a union drive that was going well, until a CPC-ML-er who had infiltrated the organizing group went and cranked out a bunch of bizarre leaflets on his own: full of the ol' "running dog lackeys of the imperial mugwump" kind of jargon. Nine point type, thousands of words, no consultation, etc. Then he started a slugfest at a pub where the group was meeting to discuss what the hell happened.
This was a separate episode from the CPC-ML parallel farmworkers union that undermined the real CFU. I'm sure there are enough stories to fill a couple of books.
Friends from the south Asian community got bonked on the head with 2x4's by CPC-ML-er's at the infamous anti-racism rally in the park. Then faced assault charges!
And there was the firebombing of the Enver Hoxa bookstore which ended up torching Mcleod's Books (and some precious labour history material) at the time. Sigh.
Most in the left at the time considered the CPC-ML heavily infiltrated by the RCMP, since their efforts always had the effect of fragmenting legitimate movements and making activists look - to the public who didn't know who was who - like they were from Mars. (Or the PFJ!)
My personal highlight of this heady era was going out one night with my girlfriend and spray stencilling "Abuse" over the word "Defence" on as many of the 70,000 People's Front posters plastered all over Vancouver that we could - the ones that shouted "Self Defense is the Only Way!"
"Two legs good, four legs bad! Baah!"
"This was a separate episode from the CPC-ML parallel farmworkers union that undermined the real CFU. I'm sure there are enough stories to fill a couple of books."
A have a sheaf of clippings in the basement somewhere of articles and columns I wrote about that very struggle, back when I was a labour reporter.
"Friends from the south Asian community got bonked on the head with 2x4's by CPC-ML-er's at the infamous anti-racism rally in the park."
I didn't get bonked on the head, but I got bonked the left shoulder, covering the event. It was at South Memorial Park. Blood everywhere.
"And there was the firebombing of the Enver Hoxa bookstore which ended up torching Mcleod's Books. . ."
I was there the following morning with my brother Mike, helping Don Stewart, who owned McLeod's sift through the ashes. An astonishing trove of books went up in flames. Extremely rare manuscripts, some centuries old.
Small world, eh?
Yes, small world: I was one of the first on the scene at the fire, because I was working at Mcleod's at the time and my home phone number was on the store's front door, so the fire dept. called me. (But I don't recall meeting you then. I think it was another time at the RW club on Dunsmuir ;-)
Things like UMW strike bulletins had gone up in smoke; very sad. And all very stupid.
"I was working at Mcleod's at the time. . ."
Amazing. Small world, small town.
The Railway Club: Best bar in the city.
"At another show he declared that anyone who found any woman whatsoever to be ugly was sexist"
There is a kernel of truth in this statement.
Just wanted to register that.
There is a kernel of truth there, but Ivan didn't exactly do a great job of articulating it.
I just posted a response to Terry Glavin and others of his ilk. You can read it in full here: http://ivandrury.wordpress.com
Here's the excerpt on Glavin:
Terry Glavin is a regular columnist for the online progressive publication “The Tyee” and his articles appear often in Vancouver newspapers as mainstream as the Vancouver Sun. He keeps a blog where he posts most of his articles as well as posting shorter articles on a more regular basis.
In the days immediately following the release of my statement on FTT, he posted a number of times to his blog celebrating my turn, saying “I told you so”. A couple days later he expanded his attack to include the NDP’s support of the peace movement.
This blog post was expanded in an article published in the Vancouver Sun, “Taliban Jack”.
In his Vancouver Sun article Glavin doesn’t evoke my statement as proof of his thesis that the anti-war movement is made up of “countercultural narcissists” obsessed with “cultural relativism”, and a “crude anti-Americanism” that has led to the “fashionable radicalism of the liberal elites” and “the pseudo-leftism of the radical chic.” Instead, he sits comfortably where Erin Millar is headed and proves MAWO’s ‘extremism’ through the group’s own anti-war and anti-imperialist position: “[MAWO’s] position on Afghanistan goes like this: ‘Wherever Islam is fighting against imperialism, 'The Left' must join with Muslims in this fight . . . the Muslims of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine who are fighting on the front lines against imperialism.’”
Glavin represents a more destructive and poisoned trend in intellectual circles than Erin Millar currently does. He is part of the Euston Manifesto group, and the tag for this international mishmash of what some call the Cruise Missile Left is prominently displayed on his blog. Like others of the left wing of Euston, Glavin’s politics are those of a former leftist-progressive who’s been overrun by the Islamophobic propaganda machine of the imperialist war machines. His international politics are those of a rigid modernist who has zero sense of global or historic orientation. He insists that modernist bourgeois democracy must be the practical end goal for every society, if he even recognizes that there are different societies in the world with unequal relations between them. And he is completely scornful of any society, country, nation, people who do not share this goal along with him. His is an unashamed White Mans Burden armed with equally unashamed military might.
The Euston Manifesto calls for the left to stand by universal “traditions” and “values” against the “fascism” of Islam. Apparently, universal freedom is best delivered at fifty-thousand feet. Glavin carries that into context in Canada (here he applies context) by forming the “Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee” which, along with “Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan” argues that “Troops Out = Pro-War”. To stretch the mind into such contortions it is first necessary to believe that Canada is “peace” itself; a cerebral gymnastic effort of its own.
David Solway is another rightwing windbag who recently began describing himself as a "disillusioned ex-man of the Left"
He doesn't support the Euston Manifesto, but he does give lots of interviews telling us all we need to be terrified of radical Islam.
http://www.artsandopinion.com/2008_v7_n2/solway-6.htm
The funny thing: David Solway was NEVER a leftist. Why does he feel the need to lie about it?
I get the feeling there is money and fame to be had in Canada these days, for supporting the Bush agenda in Iraq. No big surprise there.
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