Vichy France is a Cautionary Tale

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

We are coming up to the 70th anniversary of D-Day, June 6, 1944, when the liberation of France began. But four years earlier, a defeated France had effectively become a fascist state -- and it’s amazing how quick was the transformation.

Within a few weeks of the country’s invasion by Nazi Germany on May 10, 1940, the French government surrendered and signed an armistice with Adolf Hitler on June 22. (Remember, France was not conquered, the way Belgium or Poland were, so had no government-in-exile that had escaped the country.) 

The armistice gave Germany control over the north and west of the country, including Paris and all of the Atlantic coastline, but left the rest, around two-fifths of France's prewar territory, unoccupied.

And almost immediately, the country was transformed into an authoritarian state. On July 10, 1940, the French National Assembly, summoned to ratify the armistice, granted the hero of France’s success in the First World War, 84-year-old Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain, authority to promulgate a new constitution. The vote, 569 in favour, 80 against, 18 abstentions, wasn’t even close. The Third Republic ceased to exist.

Pétain was able, the very next day, to assume in his own name full legislative and executive powers in the new political order. The République Francais was replaced by l'État Francais , the republican slogan “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” (“Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood”) by “Travail, Famille, Patrie” (“Work, Family, Fatherland”). The French tricolour flag now included in the middle Pétain’s personal emblem, a stylised francisque, an axe said to have been used in the early Middle Ages by the Franks.

The national holiday, Bastille Day, became a day of mourning, and the stirring French national anthem, the “Marseillaise,” gave way to a song of praise, “Maréchal, Nous Voila !” (“Marshal, Here we Are!”) for Pétain. He was now the “Chef de l'État Francais,” his portraits soon everywhere.

The Vichy government declared neutrality in the war between Germany and Great Britain, but was committed by the armistice provisions to cooperation with Germany. The aged Pétain now had become a Nazi collaborator – even though he had briefly served as prime minister in the last democratic government. There is an infamous photo of him shaking hands with Hitler on Oct. 24, 1940, in the town of Montoire-sur-le-Loir.

The Vichy prime minister and head of day-to-day governance between April 18, 1942 and August 20, 1944, Pierre Laval, had twice served as a prime minister in the Third Republic in the 1930s.

Vichy France, as the country became known – because the collaborationist regime was located in the town of Vichy, in the southern “unoccupied zone” – remained, even in the eyes of the Allies fighting Germany, the sovereign and legitimate government of France, technically ruler over the entire country.

Vichy continued to be recognized as such by, among others, Canada and the United States, for at least two more years.

French colonial officials in the country’s overseas empire also at first were loyal to Vichy – as everyone who has seen the 1942 movie “Casablanca” knows. In one of the film’s very first scenes, the wall of a building is painted with a large picture of Marshal Pétain and a quote attributed to him.

In the first years after the 1940 defeat, much of the war-weary French population fell in behind Pétain. General Charles de Gaulle, who had fled to England after the fall of France, faced a lonely uphill battle at first, as he formed the Free French forces abroad and encouraged the anti-Nazi resistance inside France. The French flag with the Cross of Lorraine in the centre was the emblem of the Free French.

Pétain blamed the Third Republic and its endemic corruption for the French defeat. He rejected its secular and liberal traditions in favour of an authoritarian, paternalist, Catholic society. Vichy even produced a legion of volunteers to fight against Soviet Russia.

But Vichy’s so-called “Révolution Nationale” (“National Revolution”) included the passage of numerous anti-Semitic laws. When France fell, there were approximately 350,000 Jews in the country. As early as October 1940, without any request from the Germans, the Vichy government passed anti-Jewish measures.

In 1941 the regime mounted a major anti-Semitic exhibition, “le Juif et la France” (“The Jew and France”), in Paris, depicting the Jews as a criminal race responsible for all of France’s problems. It is estimated that around 200,000 people visited the exhibition.

French Jews were denaturalized, and in many cases rounded up by French (not German) police and sent to death camps. According to historian Robert Paxton, some 90.000 Jews living in France were killed in the Holocaust.

In 1995 President Jacques Chirac publicly recognized France's responsibility for deporting thousands of Jews to Nazi death camps during the German occupation. His statement put an end to decades of equivocation by successive French Governments about France’s wartime role.

The French Vichy regime remains a cautionary tale, as it demonstrates how quickly a democratic political order can be reversed.

The Caribbean is a Sea of Islands

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

The Caribbean Sea comprises more than 700 major islands. While most of the larger ones, like Cuba, Jamaica and Hispaniola (divided between Haiti and the Dominican Republic) are independent, many of the smaller ones remain non-sovereign entities.

Integral parts of France as départements d’outre-mer (overseas departments) with full rights of citizenship, the islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique are represented in the French parliament and, as part of the European Union (EU), use the euro as their currency.

They are relatively large: Guadeloupe has an area of 1,628 square kilometres and a population of 405,739 inhabitants, while Martinique is 1,128 square kilometres in size, with a population of 386,486.
 
The population of Guadeloupe is mainly of African or mixed descent, speaking French and Antillean Creole. Martinique’s demographics are similar.

France also governs Saint-Barthélemy and part of Saint-Martin; they are known as collectivités d’outre-mer (overseas collectivities) and are also part of metropolitan France and the EU.

The other half of Saint-Martin, known as Sint Maarten, is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and thetefore also in the EU. The population of the entire island is 77,741, with 40,917 living on the Dutch side, and 37,429 on the French side.

Other Dutch jurisdictions in the kingdom (and in the EU) are Aruba and Curacao, which are officially called autonomous countries and have a status equal to that of the European Netherlands itself; and Bonaire, Saba, and Sint Eustatius, known collectively as the Caribbean Netherlands, which are part of the Netherlands proper and governed as ordinary municipalities of the metropolitan country.

The collective population of Aruba and Curacao numbers 249,318; the three smaller island municipalise have 16,912 inhabitants. Dutch is an official language throughout the Dutch islands, but Papiamento, a creole language with African, Portuguese, and Spanish roots, is also recognized on Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao.

None of the non-sovereign British islands in the Caribbean are formal parts of the United Kingdom, though their residents are British citizens. Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Montserrat, and the Turks and Caicos Islands are all British Overseas Territories. As such they are members of the Commonwealth of Nations via the United Kingdom, rather than in their own right.

While defence and foreign affairs are handled by Great Britain, they otherwise have considerably autonomy, including their own governments, currencies, and economic structures. The constitutions of the British Virgin Islands and Montserrat afford greater autonomy than those of Anguilla, the Cayman Islands, and the Turks and Caicos Islands.

This has enabled Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, and the Turks and Caicos Islands, with a combined population of some 130,000 residents, mostly of African heritage, to become tax havens and offshore financial centres. The Cayman Islands have more registered businesses than people.

An exception to this is Montserrat, which has been devastated by volcanic eruptions in recent years; its population declined from 13,000 in 1994 to 5,879 today. Much of the island is now uninhabitable and its economy has yet to recover.

The United States Virgin Islands of Saint Croix, Saint John and Saint Thomas have a combined population of 106,405, mostly people of African descent. As an “unincorporated United States territory,” its residents are American citizens, but cannot vote in presidential elections. The islands are self-governing, with an elected territorial governor and legislature.

In the early 1980s, there was some support for sovereignty in both Montserrat and the Turks and Caicos Islands, while Curacao has a pro-independence party. Guadeloupe saw the most militant pro-independence action with violence occurring periodically in the 1970s and early 1980s, leading to a further devolution of powers to it and Martinique from the French government, including a “cultural right to difference.”

The vast majority of the citizens of all these small islands appear to be satisfied with their non-sovereign status. They prefer the benign relationship with their metropole (which includes monetary transfers) to the alternative of full independence, a situation in which they would be more vulnerable, and responsible for their own economic self-sufficiency and military security.

The Ukrainian Crisis as Seen from Moscow

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

The standard “CNN version” of the crisis in Ukraine goes as follows: In order to justify Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has concocted a narrative of resentment against America and NATO, seen as a purely defensive alliance and a force for peace and stability.

In actual fact, even before the present crisis, NATO has acted as a spearhead of American-West European attempts to bring most of the former eastern bloc –including parts of the old Soviet Union – under its suzerainty.

NATO now includes not just former Warsaw Pact countries but even the three Baltic states, former component republics of the Soviet Union. And American hawks like Senator John McCain, who never saw a crisis that American power might not take advantage of, has at times suggested that Ukraine, Moldova, and even Georgia, deep in the Caucasus, should be allowed into this “North Atlantic” alliance.

During the Balkan wars of the 1990s, this supposedly defensive alliance forced competing ethnic nationalists in Bosnia-Herzegovina to continue to co-exist in a shotgun marriage for reasons bordering on ideological fantasy. And it then, under false pretences, wrested Kosovo away from Serbia and handed it over to the Kosovo Liberation Army.

Jack F. Matlock, the American ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991, has stated that the effect of NATO actions in the 1990s was devastating, and turned Russian public opinion against the United States.

When it is in America’s interest, it has no trouble partitioning countries or interfering in their internal affairs – ask the Grenadans, Panamanians, and Nicaraguans, among others.

Yet for some reason, when Russia, already pushed back to pre-19th century borders, feels threatened by western moves, it is accused of aggression.

Day after day, we hear about threatening moves by Moscow – but in actual fact, most of the violence in Ukraine has been initiated by Ukrainian nationalists from the western part of the country.

A fire in Odessa on May 2 left at least 46 people dead after radicals joined by Right Sector militia blocked anti-government protesters in a trade union building and set it alight. Ethnic Russian secessionists also fought Ukrainian forces in Mariupol a week later, a battle that left more than 20 dead.

Putin is within his rights to invoke the emerging human rights norm known as “R2P” (responsibility to protect), which maintains that if a state fails to protect its nationals from severe human rights abuses, including ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, the international community assumes the responsibility of protection.

The nationalists seized power in an illegitimate coup in late February, and wish to make of the country a “pure” Ukrainian state. They don’t want any talk of decentralization or federalism, which Putin in fact has suggested.

Putin also discouraged ethnic Russians in cities like Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine from holding a referendum on May 11 on self-rule. (They went ahead anyhow, voting strongly in favour.)

The leading candidates in the Ukrainian presidential election scheduled for May 25 are all ethnic Ukrainians who support the aims of the coup leaders and are opposed to any forms of autonomy for Russian-inhabited regions.

Yet as far as CNN and the State Department are concerned, Putin remains behind the unrest!

Whereas the people who overthrew the Yanukovych regime were described in the press as “pro-democracy freedom fighters,” those ethnic Russians now wishing to protect their own interests are termed “militants” and “rebels.”

The only area that Russia has annexed is Crimea – rectifying a ridiculous decision made 60 years ago to transfer it to Ukraine, when internal borders in the USSR were largely meaningless anyhow. Crimea has a Russian majority and was Russian for centuries – including in Soviet times, when it was part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.

For Americans to suddenly become concerned about “territorial integrity,” when they wrested Kosovo away from Serbia, oversaw the partition of Sudan, and so forth, is rather rich, especially as it was clear the vast majority of Crimeans welcomed their return to Russia.

The view from Moscow is one very different from that of the American media, who seem to have forgotten, or don’t care, that Russia has been attacked by different countries over the centuries, and most recently lost 27 million lives in bearing the brunt of Hitler’s aggression in the Second World War.

This conflict with Russia is about geopolitics, not ideology. After all, NATO and the European Union now include countries like Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Romania, none of which have political systems in any way superior to Russia’s -- and neither will Ukraine, no matter who eventually controls it.

Who is a Russian?

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

In English, we sometimes differentiate between people’s ethnicity and citizenship, especially when talking about “homeland” nation-states. For instance, we may refer to someone as an “ethnic Hungarian” in Romania, or an “ethnic Croat” who is a Serbian citizen.

And we’ve certainly heard a lot lately about “ethnic Russians” in Ukraine.

The names of such countries are synonymous with the historic majority nationalities that created them, and if other peoples live in them, they are distinct minority groups and usually identified as such.

Immigrant countries that are a melange of different groups are not ethnically-based, at least no longer, so there are no “ethnic Americans” or “ethnic Brazilians.”

Multinational states often have names that don’t specify any group’s ethnicity. “Soviet” and “Yugoslav” was a state identity; no actual peoples were Soviets or Yugoslavs.

The same holds true for many polyglot African countries. There are no “Nigerians” by ethnicity, only members of groups such as the Igbo or Yoruba.

Things get more complex when a multi-national state, with territorially concentrated peoples, is named after the dominant nation within it. We speak of “Russia,” but it is in reality the “Russian Federation,” and of its 143 million people, only 81 per cent are ethnic Russians.

The country’s political divisions include 22 ethnic republics, such as Chechnya, Ingushetia, or Tatarstan, where the indigenous ethnic nationality (known as the “titular nationality”) runs its own internal affairs in its own language.

These peoples are citizens of “Russia,” but are not “Russians.” And Russians acknowledge the distinction. The Russian language distinguishes between “ethnic Russian” (“russkiy”) and “citizen of Russia, regardless of nationality” (“rossiiskiy”).

Is Russia to be a nation of Russian citizens (“rossiiskaia natsiia”) or of ethnic Russians (“russkaia natsiia”) only? Because this remains unsettled, there is no consensus on whether Russia’s present-day borders should be accepted as given. Those who subscribe to an ethnically-based Russian state might seek to annex territories with large ethnic Russian populations, such as the northern part of Kazakhstan or eastern Ukraine; the Crimea has already been absorbed.

President Vladimir Putin has taken to calling much of eastern and southern Ukraine “New Russia,” a historical term referring to territories previously controlled by Muslim entities that were conquered and settled by ethnic Russians beginning in the 18th century.

At the same time, ethnic nationalists might see the need for Russia to rid itself of certain so-called “undesirable” territories that are currently part of the country, such as the Muslim areas in the north Caucasus.

In official, “politically correct” language “rossiiskaia natsiia” is considered the norm. But this is not always the case in everyday speech, where people see Russia in ethnic terms, or even religious ones, in which Orthodox Christianity becomes a component part of Russian identity.

A civic Russian nation, one whose identity is not simply ethnic, can only be a “rossiiskaia” nation. But Russian history is not very encouraging for those who see this as a necessity if the country is to become a modern pluralistic and democratic entity.

Critics of the old tsarist empire referred to it as a “prison house of nations,” and the Soviet Union was a totalitarian state. Under Vladimir Putin, Russia retains many elements of autocracy. So there’s still a long way to go.

Saudi Arabia a Politically Unique Country

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Saudi Arabia is a very unique country.

It’s the only state in the world named after a large royal family. It is home to Mecca and Medina, the holiest cities in Islam, and its religion is a severe – its supporters would call it pure – form of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism. 

And it sits on the world’s second largest oil reserves, estimated to be at 267 billion barrels. The Ghawar oil field, the world’s largest, has estimated reserves of 70 billion barrels.

Saudi Arabia regards itself as the spiritual leader of the world’s Muslims – and sees Shi’a Iran as a religious as well as political rival. It is a founding member of the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council), an organization created to provide collective security against Tehran. Its other members are Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

Most of the Arabian peninsula’s independent states, including Nejd and Hejaz, were conquered by the Saudi royal family between 1902 and 1927, and the consolidated kingdom was named Saudi Arabia in 1932. 

A few years later, the king, Abdulaziz al Saud, authorized a team of American engineers from Standard Oil of California to explore the desert bordering the Persian Gulf. In 1938 they discovered what would turn out to be the largest supply of crude oil in the world.

After the king’s death in 1953, five of his sons in succession have ruled Saudi Arabia as an absolute monarchy. The current monarch, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al Saud, ascended to the throne in 2005.

A founding member of OPEC (the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries), Saudi Arabia remains the world’s largest oil exporter, producing about nine million barrels per day. Its economy is largely backed by its oil industry, which accounts for more than 95 per cent of exports and 70 per cent of government revenues.

Thanks to the Internet, the young know all about life in more open Arab societies and in the West. As unrest spread throughout the Arab world in 2011, the Saudi state faced mounting pressure to introduce reforms. King Abdullah granted more rights to women, including the right to vote and run in municipal elections, and to be appointed to the consultative Shura Council.

He also announced increased welfare spending and a promise to build 500,000 homes for the poor, as well as opening the public sphere to quasi-independent civil society associations.

But at the same time public protests were banned, after small demonstrations in the mainly Shi’a Eastern Province along the Persian Gulf, where 90 per cent of the country’s oil reserves are located. The king warned that threats to the nation’s security and stability would not be tolerated.

Saudi troops also participated in a crackdown in 2011 on unrest in neighbouring Bahrain, whose Sunni royal family was under threat from its predominantly Shi’s population.

When U.S. president Barack Obama visited Riyadh in March, Saudi leaders expressed alarm at his diplomatic initiative with Iran, which it suspects is continuing its program to develop nuclear weapons. Saudi Arabia fears an American-Iranian accommodation at the expense of the Arab world and has threatened to acquire its own nuclear arsenal should Iran acquire these.

Yet all the GCC states except Saudi Arabia and Bahrain approved the interim nuclear agreement reached by the U.S. and Iran in November 2013. And Qatar has backed the Muslim Brotherhood, which the Saudis consider a “terrorist organisation.”

The Saudis also provide aid to the Sunni rebels in Syria, who have been trying to overthrow Bashar al-Assad’s Shi’a regime, which happens to be Iran’s main ally in the region.

Aware that the Saudi kingdom cannot forever rely on oil revenues, Abdullah wants to diversify the economy and reduce the underproductive public sector. So now about a quarter of each yearly budget goes toward education and vocational training. The Ministry of Higher Education has placed its emphasis on technical, engineering, science and medical programs.

But all of this takes time. Meanwhile, as Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Karen Elliott House, who has been visiting the kingdom for more than 30 years, writes in her 2012 book “On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines -- and Future,” the country remains a maze “in which Saudis endlessly maneuver through winding paths between high walls of religious rules, government restrictions and cultural traditions.”

Syria's Past is Being Obliterated

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

A crossroads in the fertile crescent of the Middle East, Syria has been the site of one civilization following a previous one. The country’s monuments and artifacts are, so to speak, piled one layer atop another. But all these treasures are now at risk, as the country’s civil war drags on, and its history is in danger of being obliterated.

Last August, the Director General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, called on all parties involved in the conflict in Syria to safeguard the country’s cultural heritage and take all possible measures to avoid further damage. 

The United Nations agency that works to protect historic places, UNESCO has classified as endangered all six of Syria’s World Heritage sites. But the destruction continues, some as the result of warfare, others due to intentional looting.

An oasis in the Syrian desert northeast of Damascus, the ancient city of Palmyra was one of the most important cultural centres of the ancient world. It was a wealthy caravan centre from 44 BC to 272 AD, on the trade route linking Persia, India and China, alternately independent from and under the rule of the Roman Empire. Its culture was largely Greek.

One of its rulers, Zenobia, who became queen of Palmyra in 267 AD, overran much of the Roman Middle East, even conquering Egypt, until defeated and taken as a hostage to Rome.

Palmyra’s art and architecture, standing at the crossroads of several civilizations, married Greco-Roman techniques with local traditions and Persian influences.

Its major public monuments include the Temple of the Semitic god Bel, the Agora (the centre of spiritual and political life), and the theatre, along with other temples and urban quarters. Outside the city walls are the remains of a Roman aqueduct and immense necropolises (cemeteries).

At first occupied by rebels, now it is the Syrian Army using the ruins for military purposes and artillery pieces and tanks have been positioned at the site.

Illegal digging has also accelerated. Grave robbers have stolen numerous objects from Palmyra’s tombs and smuggled them to Beirut. “I feel as if I’m dead,” Khalil al-Hariri, an archaeologist and the director of the Palmyra Museum, told the New York Times.

Another heritage site, the Old City of Aleppo, has been a battleground since the summer of 2012. Shelling gutted medieval covered markets after insurgents took refuge there, and government troops are now positioned in its 13th-century Citadel, a fortified palace in the centre of the old city. Last year the minaret of the Umayyad Mosque of Aleppo, built in 1090, was reduced to rubble during an exchange of heavy weapons fire between government forces and rebels.

Fighting has also damaged the Krac des Chevaliers, built by the Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem from 1142 to 1271. One of the world’s best-preserved Crusader castles, it was occupied by insurgents but recently recaptured by government troops. An air raid damaged one of its towers.

Syria’s past as well as its present and future are being destroyed.

Argentina Attacks: No Punishment

Henry Srebrnik, [Toronto] Jewish Tribune

Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai is planning a documentary about the July 18, 1994 AMIA Jewish community centre bombing in Buenos Aires that left 85 dead and 300 wounded.

It was the worst terrorist attack ever in Argentina, which has Latin America’s largest Jewish community, and one of the deadliest anti-Semitic attacks since the Holocaust. Two years earlier, a bombing at Israeli Embassy murdered 29 people and injured a further 242.

In 2006 prosecutors Alberto Nisman and Marcelo Martínez Burgos formally accused the Iranian authorities of directing Hezbollah to carry out the attack and last year Nisman published a 502-page indictment accusing Iran of establishing terrorist networks throughout Latin America.

Yet Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in January 2013 signed a memorandum with the Iranian government that would set up a “truth commission” of international legal experts to analyze evidence from the bombings.

Argentina’s Jewish community, international Jewish groups, Israel, and the United States protested the agreement and Argentinian Foreign Minister Hector Timerman this past February confessed in an interview that negotiations between Argentina and Iran over the AMIA bombing had made little headway.

Kirchner now says she is ready to abrogate the country’s memorandum with Iran and has asked Jewish leaders to prepare an alternative proposal, “one that is different than the current Memorandum of Understanding, but within the margins of international law and due process that will allow the investigation to move forward.”

As of now no one has ever been arrested, and Iranian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham even accused Israel of framing the country for the suicide attack, and called Nisman “a Zionist.”

One venue for Gitai’s film will be the Paraguayan city of Ciudad del Este, which shares a border with Argentina and Brazil, an area known as the “Triple Frontier.” The region, a crossroads of drug and arms trafficking, money laundering, counterfeiting and smuggling, has become a haven for terrorists, according to American intelligence.

In 1997, Argentina’s minister of the interior, Carlos Corach, described the region as “a sanctuary” for crime and terrorism; it has been a primary source of support for Hezbollah, Hamas and other extremist groups.

Argentina has always been a fertile field for anti-Semitism. Juan Peron, Argentina’s long time dictator, was an admirer of Italy’s fascist leader Benito Mussolini. After World War II many Nazi war criminals found refuge in Argentina, the notorious Adolf Eichmann being the best-known example.

Several generations of army officers were trained and modeled after the German army and the military junta that ran the country from 1976 to 1982 considered Jews an “alien” people, corrupting the nation’s “Christian soul” and disproportionately involved in left-wing activities. Jews were a prime target of the military government, with some generals being obsessed with the “Jewish question.’’

During this period, an estimated 15,000 political prisoners were “disappeared” (that is, killed). Despite comprising less than one per cent of the country’s population, Jews made up around 12 per cent of the victims of the military regime.

In his book Prisoner Without A Name, Cell Without a Number, journalist Jacobo Timerman, who was imprisoned by the junta for reporting the atrocities of the military regime’s “dirty war,” described the anti-Semitism of his jailers.

They repeatedly questioned him about Israeli schemes to send military forces to Argentina in order to implement the “Andinia Plan,” a supposed Zionist conspiracy to occupy a broad section of southern Argentina and establish a second Jewish state there.

His son Hector is now Argentina’s foreign minister, so things have taken a turn for the better.