Unable to Avoid Criticism, U.S. Should Do the Right Thing

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

The “Marines’ Hymn” is the official song of the United States Marine Corps. Many people, even in Canada, know the first stanza:

    From the Halls of Montezuma,
    To the shores of Tripoli;
    We fight our country’s battles
    In the air, on land, and sea;
   
    First to fight for right and freedom
    And to keep our honour clean:
    We are proud to claim the title
    Of United States Marine.

“From the Halls of Montezuma” refers to the Battle of Chapultepec that took place during the mid-19th century Mexican-American War.

A force of Marines stormed Chapultepec Castle, on the outskirts of Mexico City in 1847, where before had stood the Halls of Montezuma, named after an Aztec emperor.

The line “To the shores of Tripoli” relates to the First Barbary War, launched by the United States against pirates based in modern-day Libya who were harassing shipping in the Mediterranean.

In 1801, Tripoli’s pasha, Yusuf Karamanli, turned his pirates loose on American ships. President Thomas Jefferson dispatched America’s new navy to bombard Tripoli.

The 1805 Battle of Derna, in which U.S. General William Eaton and a contingent of Marines marched

500 miles across the desert and captured the eastern Libyan city of Derna, was the first recorded land battle of the United States on foreign soil. The Barbary states were eventually defeated.

Today, however, drug dealers roam freely in Mexico, and thousands of Mexicans have been killed in Ciudad Juárez, Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa, and other cities on the U.S.-Mexican border along the Rio Grande. More than 3,100 people were murdered in Juárez last year and the murder rate has not slowed in 2011, with more than 350 homicides reported by the end of February.

In fact the United States can’t even protect its own frontier along the Sonoran Desert against human smugglers.

As for Tripoli, now the capital of Libya, President Barack Obama has looked weak, hesitant, and politically impotent, as Moammar Gadhafi butchered thousands of his own people.

“People who don’t love me don’t deserve to live,” Gadhafi told supporters.

Yet it took a full week, after television screens across the world broadcast images of protesters being mowed down by heavy weaponry, for Obama to explicitly call for the dictator’s removal.

The usually more cautious European Union was far ahead of Washington in making it clear to Gadhafi that he would face economic and judicial consequences for his crimes.

Theodore Roosevelt at the turn of the 20th century famously recommended that America should “speak softly and carry a big stick.”

Obama’s voice has barely risen above a whisper in this crisis, but while he has a military that could oust Gadhafi in a New York minute, he clearly has no plans to use it.

He opposes unilateral action – yet the UN Security Council took more than a week to even impose an

arms embargo against the Libyan government and a travel ban and asset freeze against Gadhafi, his relatives and key members of his government.

It also called for the referral to the International Criminal Court in The Hague for possible prosecution of anyone responsible for killing civilians.

Libya’s deputy ambassador to the UN had formally requested that the Security Council order a no-fly zone over his own country to stop the Libyan government from bombing and strafing its own people, but the council rejected his request.

Also, Libya has been suspended from the UN Human Rights Council, to which it was – shamefully – elected last year.

Even that took some doing, as some Latin American countries, Asian and African nations were wary of setting a precedent that can be used against them in the future.

Obama, it should be recalled, was equally tepid in his response to the Iranian reform movement, when it challenged the rigged presidential election in 2009 that allowed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to remain in power.

The president has also done little to deter modern-day Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean, who have been capturing ships and killing Americans.

After all, there’s world public opinion to consider. But the pirates have been getting bolder. More than 50 vessels are now held captive, with more than 800 hostages.

When America intervenes in a country to save lives, it’s criticized as being imperialist; when it doesn’t, it’s accused of being indifferent to human suffering.

It seems to be, damned if you do, damned if you don’t. So, might as well do what’s right, Mister President.

Otherwise, maybe the Marines’ song should be retired.

Gadhafi’s Son Reveals ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ Persona

Henry Srebrnik [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

As Libya’s mad tyrant, Moammar Gadhafi, was killings hundreds, perhaps thousands, of his own people in an attempt to hang on to power, Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, the murderer’s son, spoke on Libyan state television the evening of Feb. 20.

Dressed, unlike his father, in an expensive suit and tie, he blamed the uprising in Libya on tribal factions and Islamists acting on their own agendas. He warned that a civil war would ensue and “rivers of blood” would flow if people dared oppose the regime, because his father would “fight until the last man, the last woman, the last bullet.”

He returned to the airwaves four days later to claim that the reported death tolls had been exaggerated.

This, by the way, is the same man who was granted a PhD from the prestigious London School of Economics and Political Science in 2009. The topic of his thesis was “The Role of Civil Society in the Democratization of Global Governance Institutions: From ‘Soft Power’ to Collective Decision-Making?”

 He also gave a presentation in a prestigious lecture series at the university that year, entitled “Libya: Past, Present, and Future.”

As the semi-sanctioned internal voice for reform in his father’s dictatorship, he had pushed publicly for changing the country’s laws and freeing political prisoners. It was felt that with his support, some genuine political liberalization was possible and civil society might be able to breathe more freely.

But he showed his true colours once the Libyan people demanded an end to tyranny.

“We thought Saif was the new light,” a Libyan businessman told the British journalist Robert Fisk. “Now we realise he is crazier and more cruel than his father.”

Born on June 25, 1972 in Tripoli, Saif is the second of Gadhafi’s six sons. He lived in a $16- million home in London purchased by his father while enrolled at the university, and rubbed shoulders with American and British billionaires.

His persona became that of an urbane sophisticate who was comfortable meeting with Western businessmen and diplomats. And, perhaps not coincidentally, he was the Chairman of the Gadhafi International Foundation for Charity and Development, which gave the LSE $2.4 million to create a “virtual democracy centre,” the Centre for the Study of Global Governance.

“This donation will support us as we work to increase understanding of global problems and to encourage interaction between academics and policy makers,” Professor David Held, a well-regarded academic and co-director of the center, said. “It is a generous donation from an NGO committed to the promotion of civil society and the development of democracy.

“I have known Saif al-Islam Gadhafi for several years since he did a PhD at the LSE,” stated Held, one of Saif’s supervisors and an authority on issues of globalization and democracy. (I have used some of his books in my own courses.)

“In many discussions and meetings I encouraged the development of his reform agenda and subsequently sought to support it” through research funded by the foundation, the professor said.

“The only way I can make sense of his speech is that the speed of change in the Middle East has caught him unawares and overwhelmed him. The position he has taken compromised him in every way, and made him the enemy of ideals he once proclaimed.”

I wonder if Held really believes this. If so, he may be an authority in his field, but he clearly lacks “street smarts.”

The university, now understandably embarrassed, has returned Gadhafi’s money and said, in the wake of the massacres in Libya, it wants no more involvement with him.

This tawdry story illustrates two important points: culture usually trumps education, and universities will do almost anything for money in these cash-strapped times.

Portugal’s Jewish Diaspora and Its Lessons for Our Times

Henry Srebrnik, [Toronto] Jewish-Tribune

The Portuguese have left a very deep and wide cultural footprint around the world. Portugal’s empire was spread throughout a vast number of territories in Africa, Asia and South America. And many of its Sephardic Jews, expelled from the kingdom itself, ended up, at least temporarily, in its far-flung colonies, often as ‘Crypto-Jews,’ people who had converted to Roman Catholicism but who continued to secretly observe Jewish rituals. They created a vast trading diaspora. At the end of the 15th century, the Iberian peninsula was swept by waves of Judaophobia, as the Spanish and Portuguese kingdoms had just finished the reconquest of their territories from the Muslims and were seized with the spirit of Catholic triumphalism. Spain expelled its Jews in 1492, and Portugal followed five years later. These Jews ended up largely in the Ottoman Empire, with some later moving to Protestant countries like England and Holland. In both Iberian countries, however, ‘secret’ or Crypto-Jews, if discovered, faced certain death. Indeed, in 1506, somewhere between 2,000 and 5,000 of these ‘convertidos’ or New Christians were murdered by a mob in what became known as the Lisbon Massacre. Attracted by the greater security, as well as the economic opportunities offered, some decided to immigrate to the distant possessions of the kingdom. Migrants thought the culture would be more tolerant since the lands were overwhelmingly populated by non-Christian indigenous peoples. As well, they were farther from the reaches of the Portuguese Inquisition. Established in 1536 and lasting officially until 1821, that institution was empowered to execute those accused of ‘backsliding’ and secretly practising Judaism. Cape Verde, off Africa’s west coast, was a Portuguese colony from 1463 onwards, and Jews settled in the archipelago very early, with communities on several islands. Some of these Jews established a presence in the nearby coastal regions of present-day Senegal, Gambia and Guinea, where, in some cases, they were protected by local African Muslim rulers. However, in 1672 a branch of the Inquisition was established in Cape Verde resulting in the confiscation of Jewish trading centres. Those who wished to remain were forced to convert to Catholicism. The Portuguese followed a policy of sending convicts and exiles to Cape Verde. Many were of Jewish origin, and some Cape Verdeans trace their ancestry to Jews or Crypto-Jews who fled or were expelled from Portugal over the centuries. During the nineteenth and early 20th century additional Jews came to Cape Verde from Morocco. Further south, the islands of São Tomé e Príncipe were the scene of a particularly tragic episode. In 1493, before their expulsion from Portugal, King Manuel I, seeking funds to finance his program of colonial expansion, had imposed huge poll taxes upon the Jews. He also wished to colonize these two small islands but few Portuguese wanted to go there. When it became clear that the majority of Jews could not pay the tax demanded, the king deported some 2,000 Jewish children, aged 2 to 10, to the islands. Only 600 remained alive a year later. In 1498, the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama landed at Calicut, India, and soon thereafter Portuguese Jews, mainly involved in the spice trade, arrived in the country. When Goa, further north, was captured by Portugal in 1510, the Jewish community there flourished. But even in far-off Goa, the Inquisition was established in 1560, and the Jews were forced to convert or flee. Jews arrived in Portugal’s biggest colony, Brazil, after 1500, primarily as New Christians and established sugar plantations and mills. In Recife, the largest city in the northeast, Crypto-Jews prospered as businessmen, importers and exporters. Although the bishop of Salvador, then colonial Brazil’s capital, was given inquisitorial powers in 1579, all prisoners had to be sent to Europe for trial. However, when much of Brazil came under temporary Dutch rule after 1630, many ‘convertidos’ resumed practising Judaism, as the Dutch allowed for the open exercise of their faith. As well, Jews from Amsterdam migrated to the colony. Brazil under Dutch rule was the only region during colonial times where Jews were allowed to practise their religion openly and establish an organized community. In Recife, they built the Kahal Zur Israel Synagogue in 1636, the first erected in the western hemisphere. Upon the return of the Portuguese, the Jews fled, with some settling in Dutch-ruled New Amsterdam (later New York), in 1654 – thus establishing the first Jewish settlement in the future United States. So at least one part of this sad story had a positive outcome. But what is the relevance of this dismal history today? Whenever and wherever Jews live under an intolerant ideological system that demands total compliance, the same phenomenon occurs. Hence, in the 20th century Marxist-Leninist systems of the Soviet Union and the east European states, many Jews, fearful of being suspected as ‘disloyal’ to the Communist system or – worse – ’Zionists,’ hid, or minimized, their Jewish identity. We need only observe the large numbers of younger people in today’s Poland who are rediscovering their Jewish heritage. Like the Crypto-Jews of old, their parents tried to ‘pass’ as Gentiles. Canada is, of course, a free society, without official state-sanctioned strictures against identifying oneself as Jewish. But, more and more, especially in the more ideological realms of academia, journalism, and the arts, the very word ‘Zionism’ has become a term of vilification, something no proper person should be associated with, lest they be accused of ‘dual loyalty’ or of supporting an ‘apartheid’ state. No, we don't have Inquisitions or gulags to punish ‘bad’ Jews, but there is great pressure, in such circles, to conform to this new creed. This is leading to some, especially younger, Jews, denying their affinity with Israel. They may not convert to another faith, or hide being Jewish, but by identifying themselves as ‘non’ or ‘anti-Zionist,’ they have ceased, in some ways, being part of Klal Yisroel. Judaism is, after all, more than just a ‘religion’ or ‘faith.’ Most of the Crypto-Jews forced to convert in centuries gone by were eventually lost to the Jewish people. Will the same fate await the descendants of today’s ‘non-Zionists?’

Who Will Replace Today’s Middle Eastern Rulers?


Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Will the almost spontaneous, largely leaderless, Middle East uprisings now overtaking entrenched autocracies lead to democracy? Or will one group of autocrats simply replace another, once the smoke has cleared and the protesters return to their homes?

The jury is still out on this. But past revolutions in these countries don’t provide us with much hope. With a few exceptions, such as traditionalist Saudi Arabia, almost all of these states have previously experienced revolts and coups in the name of democracy.

Kings were sent packing in Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Libya, and Tunisia between the 1950s and 1970s, replaced by rulers promising Economic and political reforms. Revolutionaries gained control in Algeria and Syria.

Slowly but surely, though, the new governments became as autocratic and despotic as their predecessors. Indeed, in places like Iran and Iraq, they proved to be worse.

In the two countries where rulers have already been evicted this year, politics remains in flux. Tunisia’s Ben Ali and Egypt’s Mubarak may be gone, but no one knows yet what political system will emerge. In both states, the army, Islamists, and remnants of the old nomenklatura, along with pro-democracy groups, are vying for control.

Left-wing optimists hope “people’s power” will result in genuine democratic political systems, with constitutional safeguards and the rule of law. Conservatives, on the other hand, worry that anarchy will follow.

However, there is a school of political theory that would consider both predictions wrong. Gaetano Mosca (1858-1941) and Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923), two Italian social scientists, are its main representatives.

Both Mosca and Pareto, who were classical elite theorists, saw rule by elite groups as inevitable (even in democratic societies). Mosca argued that in every society an organized minority would rule over an unorganized majority. Some people always stood out from the masses because of their physical, material, intellectual, or moral qualities. They always sought to legitimize their power by appealing to an abstract principle, be it religious, democratic, or revolutionary.

Pareto saw political power in terms of a “circulation of elite groups.”  Elites come to power because of their superior internal organization, as opposed to the disorganization of the general mass of the population.

While both of them saw the public as being controlled through manipulation and propaganda, Pareto attempted to resolve the problem of political change by asserting that elites, after they achieve power, have a limited life-span. They grow decadent, decay, lose their vigour and, in turn, come to be replaced by other elite groups — hence the idea of circulating elites. This does seem to have been the case in the decay and collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe.

But even if Mosca and Pareto are correct, and one ruling class replaces another, the composition and ideology of those who assume power make all the difference in the world. Let’s hope that the political forces that eventually come out on top in the Middle East are more like those that brought Nelson Mandela to power in South Africa than the ones who gave us Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe.

Portugal’s Jewish Diaspora and Its Lessons for Our Times    

Henry Srebrnik, [Toronto] Jewish Tribune  

The Portuguese have left a very deep and wide cultural footprint around the world. Portugal’s empire was spread throughout a vast number of territories in Africa, Asia and South America.

And many of its Sephardic Jews, expelled from the kingdom itself, ended up, at least temporarily, in its far-flung colonies, often as ‘Crypto-Jews,’ people who had converted to Roman Catholicism but who continued to secretly observe Jewish rituals. They created a vast trading diaspora.

At the end of the 15th century, the Iberian peninsula was swept by waves of Judaophobia, as the Spanish and Portuguese kingdoms had just finished the reconquest of their territories from the Muslims and were seized with the spirit of Catholic triumphalism.

Spain expelled its Jews in 1492, and Portugal followed five years later. These Jews ended up largely in the Ottoman Empire, with some later moving to Protestant countries like England and Holland.

In both Iberian countries, however, ‘secret’ or Crypto-Jews, if discovered, faced certain death. Indeed, in 1506, somewhere between 2,000 and 5,000 of these ‘convertidos’ or New Christians were murdered by a mob in what became known as the Lisbon Massacre.

Attracted by the greater security, as well as the economic opportunities offered, some decided to immigrate to the distant possessions of the kingdom. Migrants thought the culture would be more tolerant since the lands were overwhelmingly populated by non-Christian indigenous peoples. As well, they were farther from the reaches of the Portuguese Inquisition. Established in 1536 and lasting officially until 1821, that institution was empowered to execute those accused of ‘backsliding’ and secretly practising Judaism.

Cape Verde, off Africa’s west coast, was a Portuguese colony from 1463 onwards, and Jews settled in the archipelago very early, with communities on several islands. Some of these Jews established a presence in the nearby coastal regions of present-day Senegal, Gambia and Guinea, where, in some cases, they were protected by local African Muslim rulers.

However, in 1672 a branch of the Inquisition was established in Cape Verde resulting in the confiscation of Jewish trading centres. Those who wished to remain were forced to convert to Catholicism.

The Portuguese followed a policy of sending convicts and exiles to Cape Verde. Many were of Jewish origin, and some Cape Verdeans trace their ancestry to Jews or Crypto-Jews who fled or were expelled from Portugal over the centuries. During the nineteenth and early 20th century additional Jews came to Cape Verde from Morocco.

Further south, the islands of São Tomé e Príncipe were the scene of a particularly tragic episode. In 1493, before their expulsion from Portugal, King Manuel I, seeking funds to finance his program of colonial expansion, had imposed huge poll taxes upon the Jews. He also wished to colonize these two small islands but few Portuguese wanted to go there.

When it became clear that the majority of Jews could not pay the tax demanded, the king deported some 2,000 Jewish children, aged 2 to 10, to the islands. Only 600 remained alive a year later.

In 1498, the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama landed at Calicut, India, and soon thereafter Portuguese Jews, mainly involved in the spice trade, arrived in the country. When Goa, further north, was captured by Portugal in 1510, the Jewish community there flourished. But even in far-off Goa, the Inquisition was established in 1560, and the Jews were forced to convert or flee.

Jews arrived in Portugal’s biggest colony, Brazil, after 1500, primarily as New Christians and established sugar plantations and mills. In Recife, the largest city in the northeast, Crypto-Jews prospered as businessmen, importers and exporters. Although the bishop of Salvador, then colonial Brazil’s capital, was given inquisitorial powers in 1579, all prisoners had to be sent to Europe for trial.

However, when much of Brazil came under temporary Dutch rule after 1630, many ‘convertidos’ resumed practising Judaism, as the Dutch allowed for the open exercise of their faith. As well, Jews from Amsterdam migrated to the colony. Brazil under Dutch rule was the only region during colonial times where Jews were allowed to practise their religion openly and establish an organized community. In Recife, they built the Kahal Zur Israel Synagogue in 1636, the first erected in the western hemisphere.

Upon the return of the Portuguese, the Jews fled, with some settling in Dutch-ruled New Amsterdam (later New York), in 1654 – thus establishing the first Jewish settlement in the future United States. So at least one part of this sad story had a positive outcome.

But what is the relevance of this dismal history today?

Whenever and wherever Jews live under an intolerant ideological system that demands total compliance, the same phenomenon occurs. Hence, in the 20th century Marxist-Leninist systems of the Soviet Union and the east European states, many Jews, fearful of being suspected as ‘disloyal’ to the Communist system or – worse – ’Zionists,’ hid, or minimized, their Jewish identity. We need only observe the large numbers of younger people in today’s Poland who are rediscovering their Jewish heritage. Like the Crypto-Jews of old, their parents tried to ‘pass’ as Gentiles.

Canada is, of course, a free society, without official state-sanctioned strictures against identifying oneself as Jewish. But, more and more, especially in the more ideological realms of academia, journalism, and the arts, the very word ‘Zionism’ has become a term of vilification, something no proper person should be associated with, lest they be accused of ‘dual loyalty’ or of supporting an ‘apartheid’ state. No, we don't have Inquisitions or gulags to punish ‘bad’ Jews, but there is great pressure, in such circles, to conform to this new creed.

This is leading to some, especially younger, Jews, denying their affinity with Israel. They may not convert to another faith, or hide being Jewish, but by identifying themselves as ‘non’ or ‘anti-Zionist,’ they have ceased, in some ways, being part of Klal Yisroel. Judaism is, after all, more than just a ‘religion’ or ‘faith.’

Most of the Crypto-Jews forced to convert in centuries gone by were eventually lost to the Jewish people. Will the same fate await the descendants of today’s ‘non-Zionists?’

Arab awakening arrives in Libya

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside] Journal Pioneer

By any measure, the North African state of Libya is one of the more bizarre countries in the world.

For the past 42 years, it has been governed by the mercurial and eccentric Moammar Gadhafi. The longest-serving ruler in the Middle East, Qaddafi has until now ruled this oil-rich desert state with little in the way of opposition.

However, the revolts sweeping the Arab world – including those in his neighbours Algeria, Egypt and Tunisia – have now caught up to him. His absolute authority is under assault.

Formally under the rule of Ottoman Turkey, Libya entered the twentieth century ridden with tribal conflicts and lacking strong central authority.

It comprised three separate entities, Tripolitania in the west, Cyrenaica in the east, and Fezzan in the southwest.

It was easily conquered by the Italians in 1912, but they lost their colony following their defeat in Second World War, when Libya was granted its independence under King Idris I.

A pro-western monarch, he was overthrown in a coup led by Colonel Gadhafi in 1969.

Libya has no formal constitution, its political system being based on the philosophy expounded in Gadhafi’s “Green Book,” published in 1975, which rejects parliamentary democracy and political parties.

In 1977, Gadhafi, now known as the “Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution,” proclaimed Libya a Jamahiriya, a state with a “government by the masses” exercising their authority through local popular councils and communes.

Its official name is the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.

In reality, though, the leader is the state. His cult of personality overshadows all other institutions, both civilian and military. 

He is, in the words of Ervand Abrahamian, a professor of history at the City University of New York, “elevated into a demigod towering above the people and embodying their historical roots, future destiny, and revolutionary martyrs.” 

The erratic Gadhafi, a proponent of pan-Arabism, has also at various times attempted to federate with Egypt, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, but these ventures failed to get off the ground.

Gadhafi has certainly displayed staying power until now.

In April 1986, the United States bombed targets in the country, following Libyan complicity in an attack on a West Berlin discotheque frequented by American military personnel. The air strike killed 45 Libyan soldiers and government officials, and 15 civilians.

For most of the 1990s, Libya endured U.S. and UN-imposed economic sanctions after two Libyans were accused of planting the bomb on Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland in December 1988, killing a total of 270 people. But UN sanctions were lifted in September 2003 after Libya accepted responsibility.

In December 2003, Libya announced it had agreed to end its programs to develop weapons of mass destruction and to renounce terrorism. In turn, the United States removed most commercial sanctions in April 2004 and rescinded Libya’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism in June 2006.

Critics charge that, despite the façade of direct democracy in Libya, Gadhafi has practised the same kind of political repression found elsewhere in the region.

For example, Libya’s Law 71 bans political activity opposed to the principles of the 1969 revolution. These opponents have been proven correct, since he is now showing an iron fist to the demonstrators.

Benghazi, Cyrenaica’s main city, which has occasionally witnessed anti-regime activity in the past, is the centre of opposition to the regime, though there have been outbreaks of violence in Tripoli and other cities. Hundreds of people have been killed.

It remains to be seen whether the “great leader and guide” will go the way of other murderous autocrats in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, we should not forget the shameful visit of then Prime Minister Paul Martin to Libya in December 2004 on behalf of Canadian firms seeking “trade and business opportunities.”

The visit “proves that between Libya and Canada there is closer collaboration in all kinds of directions,” Foreign Minister Pierre Pettigrew told Reuters at the time.

Martin paid homage to the Colonel in the latter’s tent in Tripoli, calling Gadhafi “a philosophical man with a sense of history.’’

Since we Canadians are a polite lot who dislike embarrassing people, we won’t ask Martin if he still believes that.

One Professor’s Political and Academic Journey

by Henry Srebrnik, [UPEI] Cadre

Because I lived, on and off, in Alberta between 1990 and 2007, and taught from 1990 to 1993 in the Political Science Department at the University of Calgary – the “brains trust” of the country’s conservative movement – I got to know people like Preston Manning (Reform Party founder), Ted Morton (Finance minister, and possibly the next Premier, of Alberta), Stephen Harper (Prime Minister of Canada), Ezra Levant (activist and founder of the Western Standard), Tom Flanagan (former Harper advisor), Rainer Knopff (constitutional expert), and others. I attended the Harper-Levant Christmas/Chanukah parties and Ted Morton’s events at his house; I was at David Frum’s Unite the Right conference in 1995. I saw these people numerous other times, at the university or at parties. (As they say on the street, full disclosure: Morton and Knopff wrote two of my letters of recommendation when I was hired at UPEI. The hiring committee here obviously cared more about ability than political slant.)

During this period, I did research on the Reform Party, and published (apart from many newspaper articles) “Is the Past Prologue?: The Old-New Discourse of the Reform Party of Canada,” International Social Science Review 72, 1-2, 1997; “Quebec Separatism, the 1995 Referendum, and the Future of Confederation: The Alberta Right Responds,” Prairie Forum: Journal of the Canadian Plains Research Centre 21, 2, 1996; “Multiculturalism and the Politics of Ethnicity: Jews and the Charlottetown Accord,” in John H. Simpson and Howard Adelman, eds., Multiculturalism, Jews and Identities in Canada (Jerusalem: Magnes Press of the Hebrew University, 1996); and “The Reform Party: A Rising Tide in Canada?” Viewpoints: The Canadian Jewish Periodical 20, 4, 1992. (That last piece, published a year before the 1993 extinction of the unholy Mulroney coalition, would today no longer need a question mark!) I knew the Reform tidal wave was coming before many others, including even some Calgary political science professors, realized it.

Prince Edward Island is about as far removed from Alberta as possible, in terms of political culture, certainly within the Canadian framework. The federal Conservatives here are really “Red Tory” Progressive Conservatives. Alberta was politically exciting; PEI feels like a quiet, isolated place. And so my research interests, too, became somewhat more esoteric: the study of ethnicity and nationalism in small island states and de facto states; and the role of Jewish Communists in the politics of Britain, Canada, and the United States. In terms of research, it’s been a very enjoyable experience working here.

I don’t consider myself “right wing” (or any other “wing”); I’m skeptical of all rigid political creeds. Parties and politicians, in Canada and elsewhere, should be judged on their character, membership, and program, not on preconceived ideas about whether they are “good” or “bad.” I am a populist; excessive regard for those who have power and perks should always be avoided, and indeed, nomenklaturas should be mocked. Political idolatry – the worship of human “saviours” – invariably leads to disaster. “The emperor (most often) has no clothes” is the beginning of all wisdom.

Where is Canada heading? Two decades after the Meech Lake/Charlottetown Accord disasters, the country is slowly becoming another Belgium, a country on “paper” only. We have a constitution that we are unable, politically, to amend, so important matters – such as having no real head of state and being stuck with an unelected Senate which does not represent the constituent parts of the federation -- cannot be addressed. Quebec (except for non-francophone parts of Montreal) is under the ideological hegemony of the Bloc Québécois /Parti Québécois, and the parts of English Canada that really count increasingly will vote for the “Reform” Conservatives. The Liberal “glue” that held the two parts together is drying up. Canada is basically a nation on “life support.” If the country finally dissolves, it will have been done in so “slow motion” a form that many – especially in Quebec -- will hardly notice.

 

Is History Repeating Itself?

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside,PEI] Journal-Pioneer

He fled Cairo in a hurry, taking 204 trunks with him into exile. But he left behind in his palace vaults six huge safes. As reported by Time magazine, one contained a fabulous collection of coins, another was packed tight with paper money, and a third contained a stamp collection worth millions of dollars.

A windowless hideaway between the first and second floors was the “treasury,” with box after box of diamonds, rubies, emeralds and platinum brooches.

He would often travel to Europe for grand shopping sprees, earning the ire of his subjects.Towards the end of his reign, he was widely condemned for his corrupt and ineffectual government. He was finally overthrown by a group of young military officers who named themselves the “Free Officers Movement.”

No, I’m not talking about Hosni Mubarak, nor did this take place in 2011. The man who hastily departed Egypt on July 26, 1952, was the country’s last monarch, the corpulent gambler King Farouk.

On the throne since 1936, Farouk by the early 1950s was widely resented by Egypt’s increasingly impoverished masses. He was also seen as a puppet of the British, who still retained major influence in the country and also controlled the Suez Canal.

On Jan. 25, 1952, British forces posted along the Suez Canal had a major confrontation with the police force of Ismailia, resulting in the deaths of forty Egyptian policemen. The next day, protesters roamed the streets of Cairo attacking foreign and pro-British Egyptian establishments.

Discontent continued to grow, and on July 23, 1952, Farouk’s kingdom ceased to exist, overthrown in a coup led by Colonel Gamel Abdel Nasser.

A republic was proclaimed and massive economic reforms, including distribution of land from absentee landlords to poor peasants, followed. Egypt also gained complete control over the Suez Canal after 1956.

But Egypt did not become a democracy. President Nasser died in 1970 and his successor, Anwar Sadat, was assassinated by Islamic extremists in 1981. Sadat’s vice-president and former commander of the Egyptian Air Force, Hosni Mubarak, assumed power.

During his lengthy tenure as president, Mubarak grew increasingly autocratic: fixed elections, the imprisonment of political dissidents without trial, and the use of draconian “emergency powers” to ban demonstrations and other activities deemed harmful to his rule, became standard operating procedure for his regime.

All of this has led to the present explosion. Is history repeating itself, and will the army again intervene to remove an unpopular ruler? Will the dictatorial “president-monarch” Hosni Mubarak, like Farouk 59 years ago, soon be driven out of Egypt?