Henry Srebrnik, [Halifax] Chronicle Herald
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is running scared.
Clearly, the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) is nipping at her
heels. She is now shifting to the right in an attempt to win next
September’s German federal election.
The AfD is the first populist party likely to clear the five-per-cent
threshold required to land seats in the Bundestag. In recent state
elections, it has siphoned votes from Merkel’s Christian Democratic
Union (CDU) after capitalising on anger in parts of the German
electorate over her liberal refugee policy.
It now has seats in 10 of Germany’s 16 states.
Though Merkel’s party remains the frontrunner, the AfD is currently polling at about 12 per cent nationally.
At the recent CDU party conference in Essen, Merkel, who has led
Germany for 11 years, confirmed she would run for a fourth term. But she
acknowledged the election would be more difficult than any other she
has contested.
Merkel’s decision, in the summer of 2015, following the escalation in
the Syrian civil war, to suspend all external border controls and the
usual rules on refugees, resulted in a record influx of nearly 1.1
million refugees and migrants, mostly from predominantly Muslim
countries.
Merkel’s opponents have blamed the policy for the mass sexual assaults
last New Year’s Eve in Cologne and two recent terror attacks by ISIS
supporters. So her government is now addressing public fears surrounding
the issue.
In an about-face, Merkel has now called for a public ban on the Muslim
full-face veil in some areas of public life — such as courts, schools
and universities, as well as in road traffic and during police checks.
A full ban is considered incompatible with Germany’s basic laws.
To the applause of about 1,000 delegates, she called the burqa and niqab not compatible with German culture.
“Here we say ‘show your face,’ ” she said. “So full veiling is not
appropriate here. It should be prohibited wherever legally possible.”
A year ago, the CDU had rejected such a ban.
She also promised that honour codes or Islamic Shariah law would never
replace German justice. “That has to be expressed very clearly.”
Merkel told the party conference that last year’s large influx of
refugees would not happen again. A situation like that of 2015 “should
not be repeated.”
She stated that refugees had found protection in Germany against war
and persecution in their troubled homelands. But, she added, “not every
refugee can stay.”
She also stressed it was legitimate for Germany to expect newcomers to integrate.
Her government has moved to toughen asylum rules and to declare several
countries “safe” — meaning people from there cannot expect to receive
protection in Germany.
Thomas de Maiziere, the German interior minister and one of Merkel’s
closest allies in the CDU, had already proposed a partial burqa ban last
August. He called the veils “contrary to integration.”
He said the law would apply in “places where it is necessary for our society’s coexistence.”
All this is taking place within the context of rising populist and
anti-immigrant sentiment throughout much of the continent. Politicians
who play on nationalism and worries about economic disenfranchisement
are on the rise.
Is the current flow of Europe’s politics now also working against Merkel?
Professor Henry Srebrnik
Tuesday, December 27, 2016
Only Clinton Responsible for Her Defeat
Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
Hillary Clinton has blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s alleged cyber attack of the Democratic National Committee’s e-mail server and FBI director James Comey’s investigation of her own e-mails for losing the presidential election.
Speaking to campaign donors in New York Dec. 15, she said Putin’s actions were “an attack against our country.”
The American political and media establishment has for weeks been in a state of hysteria over Russian interference in the presidential election in favor of Donald Trump – as if Clinton would otherwise have certainly won.
Let’s assume that the Russians hacked the DNC e-mails and had them leaked. First off, remember this: Putin didn’t actually fix the election, in the sense of electronically “stuffing” ballot boxes long-distance and creating a false victory for Trump.
The Russians simply released true information to WikiLeaks. They didn’t spread “false news” – the e-mails were not forgeries.
They revealed the corruption and collusion by those running the DNC, such as Florida Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, in order to defeat Bernie Sanders.
What the Democrats are now saying is that the American electorate should not have known about these shenanigans -- because they then voted for the “wrong” candidate.
It’s hard to believe unemployed rust belt voters who helped elect Trump paid much heed to any of this anyhow, or that they were swayed by Putin.
As for those Americans who did bother to read them, they certainly, as American journalist Doug Henwood wrote Dec. 13 in of the London-based Guardian, “discovered precisely how cynical and empty the Clinton operation was.”
It’s also easy to blame James Comey, the director of the FBI, for the trouble that the private e-mail server scandal caused, but the decision to set that up was hers. Had she used the State Department’s own system, there would have been nothing to investigate.
Maybe Clinton should look in a mirror if she wants to lay blame. She lost because she failed to engage the millennial and the minorities Barack Obama won in 2008 and 2012. She spent most of August with the elites in Hollywood, the Hamptons and Martha’s Vineyard fundraising instead of meeting with the working class across the country.
Her refusal to hold press conferences, her dismissal of the Goldman Sachs speeches, her assumption that identity politics would suffice, her high-handed comments about Trump supporters being a “basket of deplorables,” and her assumption that the presidency should be hers by “divine right” – all these were far more important matters.
Anyhow, if foreign hacking is tantamount to an attack on the nation, maybe there should also be an investigation to determine whether foreign nations curried favor with the Clintons with their multi-million dollar donations to the Clinton Foundation, and what they expected in return when Clinton was supposed to become president.
The election wasn’t an exam, where the voters gave the “wrong” answer. In a democracy, regardless of what the Russians or the FBI did, Americans had the right to vote for Trump and not for Clinton.
Now the mainstream press has taken to running endless articles warning their readers about Trump’s subservience to Putin, his anti-democratic tendencies, and his existential threat to their liberty.
Two typical examples in the Dec. 18 New York Times: Nicholas Kristof, “Trump: The Russian Poodle,” and Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, “Is Our Democracy in Danger?”
They make Trump sound like a cross between the Nazi collaborators and puppets like Marshal Philippe Pétain in Vichy France and Vidkun Quisling in occupied Norway. It’s not even very subtle as propaganda.
Hillary Clinton has blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s alleged cyber attack of the Democratic National Committee’s e-mail server and FBI director James Comey’s investigation of her own e-mails for losing the presidential election.
Speaking to campaign donors in New York Dec. 15, she said Putin’s actions were “an attack against our country.”
The American political and media establishment has for weeks been in a state of hysteria over Russian interference in the presidential election in favor of Donald Trump – as if Clinton would otherwise have certainly won.
Let’s assume that the Russians hacked the DNC e-mails and had them leaked. First off, remember this: Putin didn’t actually fix the election, in the sense of electronically “stuffing” ballot boxes long-distance and creating a false victory for Trump.
The Russians simply released true information to WikiLeaks. They didn’t spread “false news” – the e-mails were not forgeries.
They revealed the corruption and collusion by those running the DNC, such as Florida Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, in order to defeat Bernie Sanders.
What the Democrats are now saying is that the American electorate should not have known about these shenanigans -- because they then voted for the “wrong” candidate.
It’s hard to believe unemployed rust belt voters who helped elect Trump paid much heed to any of this anyhow, or that they were swayed by Putin.
As for those Americans who did bother to read them, they certainly, as American journalist Doug Henwood wrote Dec. 13 in of the London-based Guardian, “discovered precisely how cynical and empty the Clinton operation was.”
It’s also easy to blame James Comey, the director of the FBI, for the trouble that the private e-mail server scandal caused, but the decision to set that up was hers. Had she used the State Department’s own system, there would have been nothing to investigate.
Maybe Clinton should look in a mirror if she wants to lay blame. She lost because she failed to engage the millennial and the minorities Barack Obama won in 2008 and 2012. She spent most of August with the elites in Hollywood, the Hamptons and Martha’s Vineyard fundraising instead of meeting with the working class across the country.
Her refusal to hold press conferences, her dismissal of the Goldman Sachs speeches, her assumption that identity politics would suffice, her high-handed comments about Trump supporters being a “basket of deplorables,” and her assumption that the presidency should be hers by “divine right” – all these were far more important matters.
Anyhow, if foreign hacking is tantamount to an attack on the nation, maybe there should also be an investigation to determine whether foreign nations curried favor with the Clintons with their multi-million dollar donations to the Clinton Foundation, and what they expected in return when Clinton was supposed to become president.
The election wasn’t an exam, where the voters gave the “wrong” answer. In a democracy, regardless of what the Russians or the FBI did, Americans had the right to vote for Trump and not for Clinton.
Now the mainstream press has taken to running endless articles warning their readers about Trump’s subservience to Putin, his anti-democratic tendencies, and his existential threat to their liberty.
Two typical examples in the Dec. 18 New York Times: Nicholas Kristof, “Trump: The Russian Poodle,” and Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, “Is Our Democracy in Danger?”
They make Trump sound like a cross between the Nazi collaborators and puppets like Marshal Philippe Pétain in Vichy France and Vidkun Quisling in occupied Norway. It’s not even very subtle as propaganda.
Dutch Politician Convicted of Inciting Hatred
Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
Whatever one may think of his politics, one thing is certain: Geert Wilders certainly has the courage of his convictions.
A populist Dutch politician who is the founder of the nationalist right-wing Party for Freedom (PVV), he is its leader in the House of Representatives, the lower assembly of the nation’s bicameral parliament.
An agent provocateur par excellence, Wilders in 2008 caused protests in the Muslim world for a short, online film which showed verses of the Qu’ran next to images of extreme violence and terrorism.
In 2011 Wilders was acquitted of hate speech, but he was less lucky this year. On Dec. 9 he was convicted of inciting hatred by a Dutch court. However, he received no penalty or punishment.
The charge stemmed from a March 2014 incident during the country’s municipal elections in which Wilders urged his supporters to chant that they wanted fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands. Members of the Dutch Moroccan community pressed charges.
Wilders denied any wrongdoing, saying the comments he made are protected as free speech.
But the three-judge judge disagreed, finding that Wilders had overstepped the limits by specifically targeting Moroccans.
“For the first time, Wilders has been condemned for racism and discrimination,” said Abdou Menebhi, one of the people who registered a complaint.
“Today, I was convicted in a political trial which, shortly before the elections, attempts to neutralise the leader of the largest and most popular opposition party,” Wilders responded. “They will not succeed.”
Regardless of the verdict, “no one will be able to silence me.” He mocked the court, tweeting that it had convicted “half of the Netherlands.” He intends to appeal.
His anti-Islam, anti-immigration rhetoric has propelled him to the top of Dutch polls. Some of them suggest the PVV is today the most popular party in the Netherlands, on track to win some 36 seats in the 150-seat lower house if elections were held now. It currently occupies 12 seats in parliament.
On the other hand, Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s centrist People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) would get 23 seats compared with the 41 seats it won in the 2012 elections. Labour (PvdA) would get 10 seats against the 38 it won then. The two parties currently govern the country in coalition.
Last August the PVV released its one-page manifesto ahead of the March 2017 legislative elections.
Under the PVV proposals, mosques, Islamic schools and asylum centres would be closed; the borders would be shut down with a blanket ban on migrants from Islamic countries; women would be forbidden from wearing a headscarf in public; and the Qu’ran would be banned.
The party also pledged to withdraw from the European Union and has called for a vote on it as soon as possible.
Pressure from people like Wilders has had an effect. In November the Dutch government agreed to a partial ban of the wearing of full-face veils in public places such as schools, hospitals and on public transport.
The motion was approved by 132 members in the 150-seat house, including Rutte’s ruling VVD- PvdA coalition.
However, this doesn’t go far enough as far as Wilders is concerned, because it does not ban wearing full-face coverings on the street. He remains a man who continues to attack the country’s liberal political culture.
Whatever one may think of his politics, one thing is certain: Geert Wilders certainly has the courage of his convictions.
A populist Dutch politician who is the founder of the nationalist right-wing Party for Freedom (PVV), he is its leader in the House of Representatives, the lower assembly of the nation’s bicameral parliament.
An agent provocateur par excellence, Wilders in 2008 caused protests in the Muslim world for a short, online film which showed verses of the Qu’ran next to images of extreme violence and terrorism.
In 2011 Wilders was acquitted of hate speech, but he was less lucky this year. On Dec. 9 he was convicted of inciting hatred by a Dutch court. However, he received no penalty or punishment.
The charge stemmed from a March 2014 incident during the country’s municipal elections in which Wilders urged his supporters to chant that they wanted fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands. Members of the Dutch Moroccan community pressed charges.
Wilders denied any wrongdoing, saying the comments he made are protected as free speech.
But the three-judge judge disagreed, finding that Wilders had overstepped the limits by specifically targeting Moroccans.
“For the first time, Wilders has been condemned for racism and discrimination,” said Abdou Menebhi, one of the people who registered a complaint.
“Today, I was convicted in a political trial which, shortly before the elections, attempts to neutralise the leader of the largest and most popular opposition party,” Wilders responded. “They will not succeed.”
Regardless of the verdict, “no one will be able to silence me.” He mocked the court, tweeting that it had convicted “half of the Netherlands.” He intends to appeal.
His anti-Islam, anti-immigration rhetoric has propelled him to the top of Dutch polls. Some of them suggest the PVV is today the most popular party in the Netherlands, on track to win some 36 seats in the 150-seat lower house if elections were held now. It currently occupies 12 seats in parliament.
On the other hand, Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s centrist People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) would get 23 seats compared with the 41 seats it won in the 2012 elections. Labour (PvdA) would get 10 seats against the 38 it won then. The two parties currently govern the country in coalition.
Last August the PVV released its one-page manifesto ahead of the March 2017 legislative elections.
Under the PVV proposals, mosques, Islamic schools and asylum centres would be closed; the borders would be shut down with a blanket ban on migrants from Islamic countries; women would be forbidden from wearing a headscarf in public; and the Qu’ran would be banned.
The party also pledged to withdraw from the European Union and has called for a vote on it as soon as possible.
Pressure from people like Wilders has had an effect. In November the Dutch government agreed to a partial ban of the wearing of full-face veils in public places such as schools, hospitals and on public transport.
The motion was approved by 132 members in the 150-seat house, including Rutte’s ruling VVD- PvdA coalition.
However, this doesn’t go far enough as far as Wilders is concerned, because it does not ban wearing full-face coverings on the street. He remains a man who continues to attack the country’s liberal political culture.
Monday, December 19, 2016
Empires Often Decay from Within
Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Pioneer Journal
Empires, after a long period of international reverses and inner political decay, often expire, as T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Hollow Men” may suggest, “not with a bang but a whimper.”
This was the case with two of the mightiest imperiums on earth, separated by more than 1,500 years – Rome and the Soviet Union.
On Sept. 4, 476, the last day of the Roman Empire in the west, Odoacer, a member of the Germanic tribe Siri and former commander in the Roman Army, who had entered the city unopposed, easily dethroned the sixteen-year-old emperor Romulus Augustulus.
The one time military and financial power of the Mediterranean was unable to resist and disappeared.
Fast forward more than 15 centuries to Moscow on Dec. 25, 1991, when the last Communist president of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, dissolved the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which, like Rome, had been one of the mightiest powers on earth.
By then, most of its 15 constituent republics had effectively seceded from the federation.
Even its core, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, had declared its independence under its leader Boris Yeltsin, who had assumed its presidency on June 12, and it would emerge as the Russian Federation.
In a nationally televised speech, Gorbachev announced his resignation as president. He declared the office extinct and handed over its functions, including control of the Soviet nuclear codes, to Yeltsin.
A state whose Communist Party had for more than seven decades exercised totalitarian control over the economy, administering all industrial activity and collective farms, and which controlled every aspect of political and social life, was no more.
Gorbachev had come to power in 1985, following decades of rule by old apparatchiks. He inherited a stagnant economy, an onerous arms race with the United States, a debilitating war in Afghanistan, and a restive group of Soviet satellite states in eastern Europe, in particular Poland, whose fierce sense of nationalism had grown in the wake of the election of a Polish pope, John Paul II.
Gorbachev introduced two sets of policies that he hoped would help the USSR become a more prosperous, productive nation. The first of these was known as glasnost, or political openness.
Glasnost gave new freedoms to Soviet citizens. Political prisoners were released. Newspapers could print criticisms of the government. For the first time, parties other than the Communist Party could participate in elections.
The second set of reforms was known as perestroika, or economic restructuring. The best way to revive the Soviet economy, Gorbachev thought, was to loosen the government’s grip on it. Individuals and cooperatives were allowed to own businesses for the first time since the 1920s. Workers were given the right to strike for better wages and conditions.
However, these reforms were slow to bear fruit. Perestroika had torpedoed the “command economy” that had kept the Soviet state afloat, but the market economy took time to mature.
In his farewell address, Gorbachev summed up the problem: “The old system collapsed before the new one had time to begin working.”
He also withdrew Soviet troops from Afghanistan, and declared a policy of non-intervention in the Warsaw Pact states. The first revolution of 1989 took place in Poland, soon followed by others.
Not surprisingly, the desire for sovereignty spread to the Soviet republics themselves. It was a tsunami that swept away one of the world’s largest empires by the end of 1991.
The USSR committed many crimes, especially against its own citizens, and no one should mourn its passing. But no one should forget what it stood for, however imperfectly, either.
Its values included altruism, self-sacrifice, the elevation of group over individual concerns, and the rejection of materialism. This bound people together and gave them a sense of meaning.
That this became intertwined with the cruelty and mass murder that eventually destroyed it was a twentieth-century tragedy.
Empires, after a long period of international reverses and inner political decay, often expire, as T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Hollow Men” may suggest, “not with a bang but a whimper.”
This was the case with two of the mightiest imperiums on earth, separated by more than 1,500 years – Rome and the Soviet Union.
On Sept. 4, 476, the last day of the Roman Empire in the west, Odoacer, a member of the Germanic tribe Siri and former commander in the Roman Army, who had entered the city unopposed, easily dethroned the sixteen-year-old emperor Romulus Augustulus.
The one time military and financial power of the Mediterranean was unable to resist and disappeared.
Fast forward more than 15 centuries to Moscow on Dec. 25, 1991, when the last Communist president of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, dissolved the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which, like Rome, had been one of the mightiest powers on earth.
By then, most of its 15 constituent republics had effectively seceded from the federation.
Even its core, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, had declared its independence under its leader Boris Yeltsin, who had assumed its presidency on June 12, and it would emerge as the Russian Federation.
In a nationally televised speech, Gorbachev announced his resignation as president. He declared the office extinct and handed over its functions, including control of the Soviet nuclear codes, to Yeltsin.
A state whose Communist Party had for more than seven decades exercised totalitarian control over the economy, administering all industrial activity and collective farms, and which controlled every aspect of political and social life, was no more.
Gorbachev had come to power in 1985, following decades of rule by old apparatchiks. He inherited a stagnant economy, an onerous arms race with the United States, a debilitating war in Afghanistan, and a restive group of Soviet satellite states in eastern Europe, in particular Poland, whose fierce sense of nationalism had grown in the wake of the election of a Polish pope, John Paul II.
Gorbachev introduced two sets of policies that he hoped would help the USSR become a more prosperous, productive nation. The first of these was known as glasnost, or political openness.
Glasnost gave new freedoms to Soviet citizens. Political prisoners were released. Newspapers could print criticisms of the government. For the first time, parties other than the Communist Party could participate in elections.
The second set of reforms was known as perestroika, or economic restructuring. The best way to revive the Soviet economy, Gorbachev thought, was to loosen the government’s grip on it. Individuals and cooperatives were allowed to own businesses for the first time since the 1920s. Workers were given the right to strike for better wages and conditions.
However, these reforms were slow to bear fruit. Perestroika had torpedoed the “command economy” that had kept the Soviet state afloat, but the market economy took time to mature.
In his farewell address, Gorbachev summed up the problem: “The old system collapsed before the new one had time to begin working.”
He also withdrew Soviet troops from Afghanistan, and declared a policy of non-intervention in the Warsaw Pact states. The first revolution of 1989 took place in Poland, soon followed by others.
Not surprisingly, the desire for sovereignty spread to the Soviet republics themselves. It was a tsunami that swept away one of the world’s largest empires by the end of 1991.
The USSR committed many crimes, especially against its own citizens, and no one should mourn its passing. But no one should forget what it stood for, however imperfectly, either.
Its values included altruism, self-sacrifice, the elevation of group over individual concerns, and the rejection of materialism. This bound people together and gave them a sense of meaning.
That this became intertwined with the cruelty and mass murder that eventually destroyed it was a twentieth-century tragedy.
The McCarthyism of the Left
Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
From the end of the Second World War to the downfall of Senator Joe McCarthy, America was consumed by an anti-Communist “red scare.”
People on the left, mainly Democrats, were accused by Republicans of being “fellow-travellers” and “fifth columnists” on behalf of the Soviet Union and its dictator, Joseph Stalin.
There were blacklists that led to people being fired from their jobs and ostracized, and many lives were ruined.
In 1948, right-wingers insisted that presidential hopeful Henry Wallace was just a Communist puppet. Today, it seems, the tables are turned.
With the election of Donald Trump, it is now Democrats whipping up anti-Russian hysteria by claiming that Vladimir Putin helped the Republican candidate defeat Hillary Clinton by interfering in the presidential election.
The charge of being a tool of the Kremlin, levelled against Trump and his supporters, is part of the left’s campaign to de-legitimize the incoming president. Might we call it McCarthyism 2.0?
During the presidential campaign, the Democrats and the mainstream media (especially the Washington Post) repeatedly warned of the supposed endangerment to the country’s national interest by the apparent ideological affinity between Trump and Putin.
Stories also regularly appeared in the press regarding Trump’s business interests overseas, as well as those of his associates, implying that he would be “soft” on Russia due to his ties there.
In late October NBC News reported that the FBI was looking into business dealings between ex-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and Russian politicians and businessmen. He denied any business relationship with the Kremlin, calling the charge “Democratic propaganda.”
Then there were the stories alleging that Russians had hacked into the communications of the Democratic National Committee and the private emails of influential individuals, notably Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, and then leaked the contents onto the internet.
By the end of August, several leading Democratic lawmakers had asked the FBI to investigate senior Trump campaign advisers for collusion in the suspected Russian hacking. Clinton campaign spokesman Glen Caplin said the Trump campaign had multiple advisers with deep ties to Russia.
“The prospect of individuals tied to Trump, Wikileaks and the Russian government coordinating to influence our election raises concerns of the utmost gravity and merits full examination,” wrote Harry Reid, the Democratic Minority leader in the Senate, to FBI director James Comey.
In early September, Defence Secretary Ashton Carter warned Moscow that Washington “will not ignore attempts to interfere with our democratic processes.”
Trump’s victory has only made things worse. On Dec. 9 President Obama ordered a “full review” of Russian hacking during the presidential campaign, after intelligence officials reported that the CIA concluded that Putin was not just trying to undermine the election, but had also acted to give Trump an advantage.
Eric Schultz, the deputy White House press secretary, told reporters that the president wanted this done under his watch because “he takes it very seriously.”
And Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee are pushing for a broad investigation. Do they hope to lay the groundwork for future impeachment proceedings?
The Democrats will also pounce on the fact that Trump’s pick for Secretary of State, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, has struck several major deals with the Russian state-run corporation Rosneft and has a personal relationship with Putin.
This frenzy remains part of America’s enduring Russophobia. Twenty-five years after the collapse of Communism, why do people still assume Russia is capable of nothing but evil?
Now that Obama has himself become a McCarthyite, “Tail-gunner Joe” must be laughing in his grave.
Actually, with Trump’s ascendancy, maybe Americans can liberate themselves from their Cold War discourse. The world doesn’t need a new period of American-Russian enmity.
From the end of the Second World War to the downfall of Senator Joe McCarthy, America was consumed by an anti-Communist “red scare.”
People on the left, mainly Democrats, were accused by Republicans of being “fellow-travellers” and “fifth columnists” on behalf of the Soviet Union and its dictator, Joseph Stalin.
There were blacklists that led to people being fired from their jobs and ostracized, and many lives were ruined.
In 1948, right-wingers insisted that presidential hopeful Henry Wallace was just a Communist puppet. Today, it seems, the tables are turned.
With the election of Donald Trump, it is now Democrats whipping up anti-Russian hysteria by claiming that Vladimir Putin helped the Republican candidate defeat Hillary Clinton by interfering in the presidential election.
The charge of being a tool of the Kremlin, levelled against Trump and his supporters, is part of the left’s campaign to de-legitimize the incoming president. Might we call it McCarthyism 2.0?
During the presidential campaign, the Democrats and the mainstream media (especially the Washington Post) repeatedly warned of the supposed endangerment to the country’s national interest by the apparent ideological affinity between Trump and Putin.
Stories also regularly appeared in the press regarding Trump’s business interests overseas, as well as those of his associates, implying that he would be “soft” on Russia due to his ties there.
In late October NBC News reported that the FBI was looking into business dealings between ex-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and Russian politicians and businessmen. He denied any business relationship with the Kremlin, calling the charge “Democratic propaganda.”
Then there were the stories alleging that Russians had hacked into the communications of the Democratic National Committee and the private emails of influential individuals, notably Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, and then leaked the contents onto the internet.
By the end of August, several leading Democratic lawmakers had asked the FBI to investigate senior Trump campaign advisers for collusion in the suspected Russian hacking. Clinton campaign spokesman Glen Caplin said the Trump campaign had multiple advisers with deep ties to Russia.
“The prospect of individuals tied to Trump, Wikileaks and the Russian government coordinating to influence our election raises concerns of the utmost gravity and merits full examination,” wrote Harry Reid, the Democratic Minority leader in the Senate, to FBI director James Comey.
In early September, Defence Secretary Ashton Carter warned Moscow that Washington “will not ignore attempts to interfere with our democratic processes.”
Trump’s victory has only made things worse. On Dec. 9 President Obama ordered a “full review” of Russian hacking during the presidential campaign, after intelligence officials reported that the CIA concluded that Putin was not just trying to undermine the election, but had also acted to give Trump an advantage.
Eric Schultz, the deputy White House press secretary, told reporters that the president wanted this done under his watch because “he takes it very seriously.”
And Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee are pushing for a broad investigation. Do they hope to lay the groundwork for future impeachment proceedings?
The Democrats will also pounce on the fact that Trump’s pick for Secretary of State, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, has struck several major deals with the Russian state-run corporation Rosneft and has a personal relationship with Putin.
This frenzy remains part of America’s enduring Russophobia. Twenty-five years after the collapse of Communism, why do people still assume Russia is capable of nothing but evil?
Now that Obama has himself become a McCarthyite, “Tail-gunner Joe” must be laughing in his grave.
Actually, with Trump’s ascendancy, maybe Americans can liberate themselves from their Cold War discourse. The world doesn’t need a new period of American-Russian enmity.
Friday, December 16, 2016
India and Israel Forge a Growing Partnership
Henry Srebrnik, [Calgary] Jewish Free Press
The Israeli-American relationship, already
under strain during the Obama presidency, enters a new period
of uncertainty with the election of Donald Trump. Jerusalem’s
ties with Europe have also deteriorated.
As a consequence, Israel seeks closer bonds
with other major powers. One of these is India.
Twenty-first
century
geopolitics are bringing Israel and India closer together.
The force driving this is Islamism, from which both these
democracies are under attack.
As well, India faces a hostile
nuclear-armed state, Pakistan, next door, which it accuses of
supporting jihadis and fomenting violence in Muslim-majority
Kashmir, while Israel is concerned that its main adversary,
Iran, may be in the process of acquiring a nuclear capability.
As
a reaction to these external threats, the secular political
left, once led, respectively, by the Congress Party in India
and the Labour Party in Israel, has been displaced in
government by the hard-line nationalists in the Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP) and Likud.
India formally established full diplomatic
relations with Israel in January 1992, but under the
leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in office since
2014, ties between the two nations have greatly expanded. His
election elicited an enthusiastic response from Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
India has begun denouncing Palestinian
suicide bombings and other terrorist acts in Israel, and is no
longer initiating anti-Israel resolutions at the United
Nations.
In 2015 it abstained from voting on the UN
Human Rights Council’s condemnation of Israel’s actions during
its conflict with Hamas in Gaza a year earlier; all the
European countries on the Council voted in favour. It was the
first time in decades that India abstained from a decision
against Israel in an international forum.
After all, India’s historically pro-Arab
stance in the Middle East has not been adequately reciprocated
and rewarded by the Arab world. It has received no backing
from Arab countries in the resolution of problems it faces in
Kashmir. On the contrary, Arab nations have firmly stood by
Pakistan.
This flourishing friendship was highlighted
with the eight-day visit to India in mid-November by Israeli
President Reuven Rivlin.
“We noted the strength of our growing
defence partnership and agreed on the need to make it more
broad-based through production and manufacturing
partnerships,” Prime Minister Modi said at a joint press
conference in New Delhi.
“Our people are constantly threatened by
forces of terrorism and extremism. We recognize that terrorism
is a global challenge, knows no boundaries and has extensive
links with other forms of organized crime.”
When the Soviet Union collapsed, India
found itself with outdated military hardware and equipment
that were unsuitable for combat. At the same time, the Israeli
defence industry was developing electronic upgrades to improve
the capabilities and extend the life cycle of military
platforms such as planes, ships, and tanks. So India has now
become Israeli defence companies’ largest customer.
But the commercial ties between the two
nations also include
water treatment, telecom products, optics, metals, aviation,
agriculture, diamonds, chemicals and medical equipment.
India is Israel’s third
largest trading partner in Asia, just after China and Hong
Kong.
Bilateral
non-defence trade stands at about $5 billion. Shraga Brosh,
the president of the Manufacturers Association of Israel,
has said that he and his Indian counterpart have agreed to
work “to triple trade and cooperation between our two
countries in the coming years.”
In
a speech before the Israel-India Innovation Partnership,
Rivlin told listeners that “India is a top trading partner
for Israel today. Together, we have built a powerful and
strong market. And together we must work to make this market
even stronger.
“I
express here today an official Israeli hope that this visit
to India will open the way to a full free trade agreement
between our countries.” Rivlin’s assertion could
provide fresh momentum to the conclusion of the agreement,
which has remained elusive despite negotiations having begun
more than six years ago.
During
Rivlin’s stay in India, the two countries signed cooperation
agreements in agriculture and the management of water
resources. Rivlin observed that there are already programs
that bring thousands of Indian farmers to Israel, and that
expanding these initiatives would greatly improve their
quality of life.
He added that India can leverage Israel’s
expertise in water management through technological solutions
and “greatly benefit” from it.
Israel
also signed more than 20 education collaboration agreements
with India and its institutions of higher learning. “Ten
percent of all foreign students and scholars in Israel today
are from India, and 40 joint research projects were
supported by both governments,” Rivlin said. “I truly
believe that the academic cooperation between India and
Israel is a top priority for both nations, both people.”
Hindu-majority
India has no history of anti-Semitism, and the country is a
favorite destination for Israeli tourists, especially young
Israelis taking time off after completing their army
service.
The Israeli president laid a wreath at the
tomb of Mahatma Gandhi, and visited the sites of the November
2008 Mumbai terror attacks by Pakistani-based Islamists, which
killed 195 people, including nine Israelis.
“Nearly eight years
ago, this wonderful city was the victim of one of the most
terrifying, brutal and murderous terror attacks. Indians are
no strangers to the threat and to the reality of modern
global terrorism,” Rivlin said.
An anticipated visit by Modi to Israel next
year would demonstrate that a new era of Indian-Israeli
relations has truly begun.
Monday, December 12, 2016
The Rise of European Populism
Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer:
Throughout Europe, as issues revolving around economic stagnation and national identity become ever more salient, populist parties are becoming stronger.
Though their specific policies may differ, they all share a rejection of the established liberal order, and demand strong governments to carry the fight against immigration.
The most visible is the National Front (FN), which some analysts think may even be poised to win power in the French presidential election next spring.
Marine Le Pen, the daughter of co-founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, has been the head of her party for almost six years.
Her followers insist that Islam constitutes a threat to the country’s very future. And like most of her fellow populists, Le Pen blames membership in the European Union, already weakened by the Brexit vote in Britain last June, for its troubles. “We want to destroy this EU,” she has declared.
If Le Pen becomes president, she will push for a referendum based on the British model. “I want to regain control over our currency,” she insists, “and our borders.” Le Pen is an economic nationalist who believes in a strong role for the state within the capitalist system.
Remarked Florian Philippot, one of Le Pen’s main advisers, “Their world is collapsing. Ours is being built.”
Another player in the populist surge has been Nigel Farage, the former leader of Britain’s UK Independence Party (UKIP), one of the main supporters of Brexit. “Our life has changed,” he boasts. “There are plenty more shocks to come.”
Some of these “shocks” are already potentially on the horizon. Parliamentary elections are scheduled for March in the Netherlands, where Geert Wilders of the radical anti-Islamist Freedom Party (PVV) is ahead in the polls, while Germans will vote in the fall of 2017 for the next Bundestag.
Frauke Petry of the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) is planning to announce her candidacy for chancellor in the election, which is likely to see the AfD win seats in the federal parliament for the first time.
Even Czech President Milo Zeman, a social democrat, wants his government to pursue a “foreign policy based on our own interests” rather than kowtowing “to pressure from the United States and the EU.” He is also critical of what he considers to be the “organized invasion” of the continent by Muslims.
In neighboring Slovakia, the Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) party came second in the March parliamentary election.
SaS leader Richard Sulik told Slovaks that he did “not want to live in a Europe where more Muslims are born than Christians -- and I’m an atheist.”
Meanwhile, Austria held a rerun of its 2016 presidential election on Dec. 4. Last May’s result was declared invalid after irregularities in the counting of postal votes.
Norbert Hofer, the candidate of the Freedom Party (FPO), the far-right nationalist movement originally formed in the 1950s by former Nazis, had seen his support surge due to worries over immigration as well as weak economic growth.
Hofer, who campaigned on an “Austria First!” slogan, asserted that he wanted to lead a country that was secure “for our children and grandchildren.” But he lost to a former Green Party politician, Alexander Van der Bellen, by 53.6 to 46.4 per cent.
Italy held a constitutional referendum the same day, with a different outcome.
There, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) asked voters to approve a constitutional law that would streamline Italy’s government, including slashing the size of the Senate from 315 members to 100.
It was opposed by the anti-establishment, anti-globalist and Euroskeptic parties: the Five Star Movement (M5S), founded in 2009 by Beppe Grillo, and the Northern League (LN), led by Metteo Salvini.
The referendum lost by some 20 per cent, and Renzi resigned. Salvini called it a victory against “the bankers, the financiers,” while Grillo claimed that now “Sovereignty belongs to the people.” Both parties will be major factors when the country elects a new parliament.
American journalist John Judis, in his recently published book The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics, contends that these European populists are benefitting from the current rage against their financial and political establishments.
Throughout Europe, as issues revolving around economic stagnation and national identity become ever more salient, populist parties are becoming stronger.
Though their specific policies may differ, they all share a rejection of the established liberal order, and demand strong governments to carry the fight against immigration.
The most visible is the National Front (FN), which some analysts think may even be poised to win power in the French presidential election next spring.
Marine Le Pen, the daughter of co-founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, has been the head of her party for almost six years.
Her followers insist that Islam constitutes a threat to the country’s very future. And like most of her fellow populists, Le Pen blames membership in the European Union, already weakened by the Brexit vote in Britain last June, for its troubles. “We want to destroy this EU,” she has declared.
If Le Pen becomes president, she will push for a referendum based on the British model. “I want to regain control over our currency,” she insists, “and our borders.” Le Pen is an economic nationalist who believes in a strong role for the state within the capitalist system.
Remarked Florian Philippot, one of Le Pen’s main advisers, “Their world is collapsing. Ours is being built.”
Another player in the populist surge has been Nigel Farage, the former leader of Britain’s UK Independence Party (UKIP), one of the main supporters of Brexit. “Our life has changed,” he boasts. “There are plenty more shocks to come.”
Some of these “shocks” are already potentially on the horizon. Parliamentary elections are scheduled for March in the Netherlands, where Geert Wilders of the radical anti-Islamist Freedom Party (PVV) is ahead in the polls, while Germans will vote in the fall of 2017 for the next Bundestag.
Frauke Petry of the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) is planning to announce her candidacy for chancellor in the election, which is likely to see the AfD win seats in the federal parliament for the first time.
Even Czech President Milo Zeman, a social democrat, wants his government to pursue a “foreign policy based on our own interests” rather than kowtowing “to pressure from the United States and the EU.” He is also critical of what he considers to be the “organized invasion” of the continent by Muslims.
In neighboring Slovakia, the Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) party came second in the March parliamentary election.
SaS leader Richard Sulik told Slovaks that he did “not want to live in a Europe where more Muslims are born than Christians -- and I’m an atheist.”
Meanwhile, Austria held a rerun of its 2016 presidential election on Dec. 4. Last May’s result was declared invalid after irregularities in the counting of postal votes.
Norbert Hofer, the candidate of the Freedom Party (FPO), the far-right nationalist movement originally formed in the 1950s by former Nazis, had seen his support surge due to worries over immigration as well as weak economic growth.
Hofer, who campaigned on an “Austria First!” slogan, asserted that he wanted to lead a country that was secure “for our children and grandchildren.” But he lost to a former Green Party politician, Alexander Van der Bellen, by 53.6 to 46.4 per cent.
Italy held a constitutional referendum the same day, with a different outcome.
There, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) asked voters to approve a constitutional law that would streamline Italy’s government, including slashing the size of the Senate from 315 members to 100.
It was opposed by the anti-establishment, anti-globalist and Euroskeptic parties: the Five Star Movement (M5S), founded in 2009 by Beppe Grillo, and the Northern League (LN), led by Metteo Salvini.
The referendum lost by some 20 per cent, and Renzi resigned. Salvini called it a victory against “the bankers, the financiers,” while Grillo claimed that now “Sovereignty belongs to the people.” Both parties will be major factors when the country elects a new parliament.
American journalist John Judis, in his recently published book The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics, contends that these European populists are benefitting from the current rage against their financial and political establishments.
Far-Right Populist Party Loses Election
Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
Austria may have dodged a right-wing bullet on Dec. 4. The country held a rerun of last spring’s presidential contest, after that result was declared invalid by Austria’s constitutional court after irregularities in the counting of postal votes.
Norbert Hofer, the candidate of the Freedom Party (FPO), the far-right nationalist movement originally formed in the 1950s by former Nazis, was beaten by a former Greens politician, Alexander Van der Bellen, by 53.6 to 46.4 per cent.
Hofer had garnered some support from mainstream conservatives in the People’s Party, one of the country’s two mainstream parties, which declined to throw its weight behind Van der Bellen. The Social Democrats, the other major party, did back the winner.
The FPO is anti-foreigner, anti-Islam and anti-globalization. The party saw its support surge due to worries over immigration as well as weak economic growth.
Memories of last year’s Europe’s migration crisis, in which nearly one million people passed through Austria, a country of 8.4 million, are still fresh.
Hofer promised to “put Austria first” by introducing strict border controls and banning the burqa. “Islam is not a part of Austria,” Hofer said recently. “The kind of politics that is permitting a changing face of Austria and Europe has to be opposed.” He wanted, he asserted, to lead a country that was secure “for our children and grandchildren.”
Johann Tschurtz, the FPO’s deputy governor of Burgenland, a border region next to Hungary, also attributed the party’s popularity with a rejection of “elites” in Vienna, the Austrian capital.
“All the actors, the artists in Vienna are against Norbert Hofer -- and, yes, the comics, too. The ordinary voters don’t like that,” he maintained.
Hofer’s election would have sent shockwaves through Europe, as it would have made him Europe’s first far-right head of state since the Second World War.
He had made clear that he wanted to be an interventionist head of state, threatening to dismiss a government if it raises taxes and calling for referendums on a range of issues.
Hofer is also an irredentist, who in 2015 indicated that he’d like to incorporate South Tyrol, the German-speaking province in northern Italy that was once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, into the Austrian state.
He has since proposed offering dual nationality to citizens of the autonomous province.
The claim was made on the basis of ethnicity and history. The region, known as Alto Adige by Italy, was annexed by Rome in 1918, following the Austrian defeat in the First World War.
Yet despite dictator Benito Mussolini’s attempt to “Italianise” the area by forbidding German and pushing through Italian vocabulary and culture, the population remained German-speaking.
After the Second World War, despite the region being granted autonomy, the locals continued to fight, sometimes even with violence.
They are Italian citizens but simply don’t feel Italian; German is spoken the vast majority of the 510,000 inhabitants of the region. Polls conducted in 2013 noted that 46 per cent of South Tyrol’s population would favor their secession from Italy.
Any attempt by Austria to reopen the issue would have led to yet more friction in an already fragile European Union.
Austria may have dodged a right-wing bullet on Dec. 4. The country held a rerun of last spring’s presidential contest, after that result was declared invalid by Austria’s constitutional court after irregularities in the counting of postal votes.
Norbert Hofer, the candidate of the Freedom Party (FPO), the far-right nationalist movement originally formed in the 1950s by former Nazis, was beaten by a former Greens politician, Alexander Van der Bellen, by 53.6 to 46.4 per cent.
Hofer had garnered some support from mainstream conservatives in the People’s Party, one of the country’s two mainstream parties, which declined to throw its weight behind Van der Bellen. The Social Democrats, the other major party, did back the winner.
The FPO is anti-foreigner, anti-Islam and anti-globalization. The party saw its support surge due to worries over immigration as well as weak economic growth.
Memories of last year’s Europe’s migration crisis, in which nearly one million people passed through Austria, a country of 8.4 million, are still fresh.
Hofer promised to “put Austria first” by introducing strict border controls and banning the burqa. “Islam is not a part of Austria,” Hofer said recently. “The kind of politics that is permitting a changing face of Austria and Europe has to be opposed.” He wanted, he asserted, to lead a country that was secure “for our children and grandchildren.”
Johann Tschurtz, the FPO’s deputy governor of Burgenland, a border region next to Hungary, also attributed the party’s popularity with a rejection of “elites” in Vienna, the Austrian capital.
“All the actors, the artists in Vienna are against Norbert Hofer -- and, yes, the comics, too. The ordinary voters don’t like that,” he maintained.
Hofer’s election would have sent shockwaves through Europe, as it would have made him Europe’s first far-right head of state since the Second World War.
He had made clear that he wanted to be an interventionist head of state, threatening to dismiss a government if it raises taxes and calling for referendums on a range of issues.
Hofer is also an irredentist, who in 2015 indicated that he’d like to incorporate South Tyrol, the German-speaking province in northern Italy that was once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, into the Austrian state.
He has since proposed offering dual nationality to citizens of the autonomous province.
The claim was made on the basis of ethnicity and history. The region, known as Alto Adige by Italy, was annexed by Rome in 1918, following the Austrian defeat in the First World War.
Yet despite dictator Benito Mussolini’s attempt to “Italianise” the area by forbidding German and pushing through Italian vocabulary and culture, the population remained German-speaking.
After the Second World War, despite the region being granted autonomy, the locals continued to fight, sometimes even with violence.
They are Italian citizens but simply don’t feel Italian; German is spoken the vast majority of the 510,000 inhabitants of the region. Polls conducted in 2013 noted that 46 per cent of South Tyrol’s population would favor their secession from Italy.
Any attempt by Austria to reopen the issue would have led to yet more friction in an already fragile European Union.
Monday, December 05, 2016
The 'No-Go' Bastions Inside European Cities
Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
The year 2016 has seen a spare of major terrorist attacks, as well as lesser crimes of violence, across Europe.
Most of the perpetrators of these crimes live in so-called no-go zones, enclaves that are almost exclusively populated by Muslims in otherwise prosperous cities.
Some are now becoming separate Islamic societies where sharia, the Islamic legal and moral code, is effectively replacing the country’s own legal system.
These are areas of high unemployment, especially high youth unemployment. Young people in these places, marginalized and with few prospects, feel like victims.
They are fertile ground for radical Islamic preachers and they become prime targets for jihadist propaganda, often after a stint in jail for petty crimes.
In the streets of Saint-Denis on the outskirts of Paris, extremists are recruiting extensively. Philippe Galli, Saint-Denis’s most powerful French official, has admitted that the police are too frightened to enter alone most areas under his control.
“The children of immigrants don’t recognise as their values those values that attracted their parents to France,” he added.
Cities like Strasbourg have similar areas, such as the neighbourhoods of Meinau and Neuhof. There are now 572 no-go zones in the country, officially defined as “sensitive urban areas.”
The German towns of Dinslaken, Duisburg, and Wuppertal in North Rhine-Westphalia have also become hotbeds of Islamist radicalization. The adherents are younger than they used to be, and their radicalization happens over a shorter period of time, according to the Federal Criminal Office.
In Duisburg there are neighborhoods where the police hardly dare to stop a car, because they know that they'll be surrounded by 40 or 50 men. These attacks amount to a “deliberate challenge to the authority of the state -- attacks in which the perpetrators are expressing their contempt for our society,” reported Rainer Wendt, President of the German Police Union.
In effect, the no-go zones -- Saint-Denis in France, Maalbeek in Belgium, Norrebro in Denmark, Tensta in Sweden, Duisburg in Germany, among many others -- are states within a state that provide shelter for radicals who may become terrorists.
A study released in September by the liberal Montaigne Institute in Paris reported that 60 per cent of French Muslims support the right to wear the hijab headscarf in schools and other public institutions, while 29 per cent said sharia should be more important than French national law.
These findings are very troubling to most people in the country, a nation proud of its secular republican identity.
“But restricting such practices causes wounds that go much deeper than the prohibitions themselves: It allows Islamists to exaggerate the implications and accuse France of Islamophobia,” according to Farhad Khosrokhavar, a sociologist at the Ecole des hautes études en Sciences Sociales in Paris.
In Denmark, the Immigration Ministry has sought to avoid what it calls “parallel societies” of migrants living in “vicious circles of bad image, social problems and a high rate of unemployment.”
Muslims do not assimilate as easily as Europeans or some Asians, asserted Denmark’s culture minister, Bertel Haarder, partly because their patriarchal culture frowns on women working outside the home and often constrains freedom of speech.
In a book written with journalist Thomas Larsen, Danish Queen Margrethe suggested that some immigrants and refugees have failed to properly integrate into society.
“It’s not a law of nature that one becomes Danish by living in Denmark. It doesn’t necessarily happen.”
As Leon Hadar, senior analyst at Wikistrat, a geostrategic consulting group, wrote in the National Interest in September, Western secular liberals seem ideologically unable to confront this problem, so the reaction has been the growth of xenophobic anti-immigrant parties such as the French National Front and the Alternative for Germany.
Pessimists wonder whether Europe’s secular cultures will survive.
The year 2016 has seen a spare of major terrorist attacks, as well as lesser crimes of violence, across Europe.
Most of the perpetrators of these crimes live in so-called no-go zones, enclaves that are almost exclusively populated by Muslims in otherwise prosperous cities.
Some are now becoming separate Islamic societies where sharia, the Islamic legal and moral code, is effectively replacing the country’s own legal system.
These are areas of high unemployment, especially high youth unemployment. Young people in these places, marginalized and with few prospects, feel like victims.
They are fertile ground for radical Islamic preachers and they become prime targets for jihadist propaganda, often after a stint in jail for petty crimes.
In the streets of Saint-Denis on the outskirts of Paris, extremists are recruiting extensively. Philippe Galli, Saint-Denis’s most powerful French official, has admitted that the police are too frightened to enter alone most areas under his control.
“The children of immigrants don’t recognise as their values those values that attracted their parents to France,” he added.
Cities like Strasbourg have similar areas, such as the neighbourhoods of Meinau and Neuhof. There are now 572 no-go zones in the country, officially defined as “sensitive urban areas.”
The German towns of Dinslaken, Duisburg, and Wuppertal in North Rhine-Westphalia have also become hotbeds of Islamist radicalization. The adherents are younger than they used to be, and their radicalization happens over a shorter period of time, according to the Federal Criminal Office.
In Duisburg there are neighborhoods where the police hardly dare to stop a car, because they know that they'll be surrounded by 40 or 50 men. These attacks amount to a “deliberate challenge to the authority of the state -- attacks in which the perpetrators are expressing their contempt for our society,” reported Rainer Wendt, President of the German Police Union.
In effect, the no-go zones -- Saint-Denis in France, Maalbeek in Belgium, Norrebro in Denmark, Tensta in Sweden, Duisburg in Germany, among many others -- are states within a state that provide shelter for radicals who may become terrorists.
A study released in September by the liberal Montaigne Institute in Paris reported that 60 per cent of French Muslims support the right to wear the hijab headscarf in schools and other public institutions, while 29 per cent said sharia should be more important than French national law.
These findings are very troubling to most people in the country, a nation proud of its secular republican identity.
“But restricting such practices causes wounds that go much deeper than the prohibitions themselves: It allows Islamists to exaggerate the implications and accuse France of Islamophobia,” according to Farhad Khosrokhavar, a sociologist at the Ecole des hautes études en Sciences Sociales in Paris.
In Denmark, the Immigration Ministry has sought to avoid what it calls “parallel societies” of migrants living in “vicious circles of bad image, social problems and a high rate of unemployment.”
Muslims do not assimilate as easily as Europeans or some Asians, asserted Denmark’s culture minister, Bertel Haarder, partly because their patriarchal culture frowns on women working outside the home and often constrains freedom of speech.
In a book written with journalist Thomas Larsen, Danish Queen Margrethe suggested that some immigrants and refugees have failed to properly integrate into society.
“It’s not a law of nature that one becomes Danish by living in Denmark. It doesn’t necessarily happen.”
As Leon Hadar, senior analyst at Wikistrat, a geostrategic consulting group, wrote in the National Interest in September, Western secular liberals seem ideologically unable to confront this problem, so the reaction has been the growth of xenophobic anti-immigrant parties such as the French National Front and the Alternative for Germany.
Pessimists wonder whether Europe’s secular cultures will survive.
The Arab Spring and the Fall of Communism
Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
It’s been five years from the time when the series of uprisings known as the “Arab Spring” began in the Middle East, while a full 27 years have gone by since the regimes in the Soviet-bloc states in eastern Europe began to crumble.
Why was one set of revolutions largely a failure, while the other, despite occasional setbacks, largely succeeded?
The similarities between them are clear. The degree of corruption and political sclerosis in both sets of countries meant their regimes all lacked legitimacy, so change was indeed “over-determined.”
Their respective ideologies -- in the one case, Marxism-Leninism, in the other, pan-Arabism and anti-imperialism -- had become empty shells.
When such hollow regimes are revealed for what they truly are, any event in any one of them might begin a succession of revolutions across all those countries that shared the same pattern of political erosion.
The uprisings were, nonetheless, largely spontaneous and without prior planning, with little organized leadership at first.
Both were triggered by a specific event: in one, the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, a street vendor in Ben Arous, Tunisia who set himself on fire in protest of the corruption and harassment from the authorities Dec. 17, 2010.
In the other, the mistaken rumor that a student demonstrator, Martin Smid, had been beaten to death by riot police during a demonstration in Prague, Czechoslovakia, Nov. 17, 1989.
In eastern Europe, liberal capitalist systems replaced the totalitarian regimes and power structures in almost all of the states quickly and peacefully. They almost literally evaporated within weeks.
The exceptions were Romania, where a “strongman” refused to give up power, and Yugoslavia, a multi-national state that fell victim to ethnic war.
Not so in North Africa and the Middle East. There, states had differing organizations of power, so their adaptability, resistance to change and willingness to use force caused them to have different outcomes.
In Egypt, the fall of the dictator initially brought to power a Muslim Brotherhood government, soon overthrown by the military.
In Libya, an autocratic regime led by a psychopath and based on fear was only dispatched after much bloodshed, and has left a power vacuum.
Syria has been engulfed in a horrific many-sided ideological and ethno-religious civil war, with hundreds of thousands dead. A smaller version of the same sectarian strife has also affected Yemen.
Finally, Tunisia, where it all began, did escape the terrible outcomes in the other countries, but its democracy remains shaky at best.
Outside interference in the case of eastern Europe was minimal. The Soviet Union stepped aside and signaled it would not use force to retain control, and the United States also kept its distance.
In the Middle East, though, the implosion led to a power struggle between Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia, with each providing arms and money to the warring factions.
Another major difference was the role of religion. Other than in Poland, where the Roman Catholic Church was a major factor in the demise of the Communist system, religion played a minor role in the fall of Communism in eastern Europe, and continues to be relatively marginal in the post-Communist era.
As well, the newly emancipated eastern European states sought, and received, guidance from their western European neighbours as they transitioned away from totalitarianism.
With the Arab states the reverse has been the case. Islam in this region is a strong ideological alternative to liberal capitalism, with aspirations to become a dominant political force.
Islamist groups have taken advantage of the uncertainty and insecurity that followed the collapse of the old order, and have proposed theocratic alternatives to the people.
They are now a power to be reckoned with throughout the region and a counterweight to those advocating liberal democracy.
It’s been five years from the time when the series of uprisings known as the “Arab Spring” began in the Middle East, while a full 27 years have gone by since the regimes in the Soviet-bloc states in eastern Europe began to crumble.
Why was one set of revolutions largely a failure, while the other, despite occasional setbacks, largely succeeded?
The similarities between them are clear. The degree of corruption and political sclerosis in both sets of countries meant their regimes all lacked legitimacy, so change was indeed “over-determined.”
Their respective ideologies -- in the one case, Marxism-Leninism, in the other, pan-Arabism and anti-imperialism -- had become empty shells.
When such hollow regimes are revealed for what they truly are, any event in any one of them might begin a succession of revolutions across all those countries that shared the same pattern of political erosion.
The uprisings were, nonetheless, largely spontaneous and without prior planning, with little organized leadership at first.
Both were triggered by a specific event: in one, the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, a street vendor in Ben Arous, Tunisia who set himself on fire in protest of the corruption and harassment from the authorities Dec. 17, 2010.
In the other, the mistaken rumor that a student demonstrator, Martin Smid, had been beaten to death by riot police during a demonstration in Prague, Czechoslovakia, Nov. 17, 1989.
In eastern Europe, liberal capitalist systems replaced the totalitarian regimes and power structures in almost all of the states quickly and peacefully. They almost literally evaporated within weeks.
The exceptions were Romania, where a “strongman” refused to give up power, and Yugoslavia, a multi-national state that fell victim to ethnic war.
Not so in North Africa and the Middle East. There, states had differing organizations of power, so their adaptability, resistance to change and willingness to use force caused them to have different outcomes.
In Egypt, the fall of the dictator initially brought to power a Muslim Brotherhood government, soon overthrown by the military.
In Libya, an autocratic regime led by a psychopath and based on fear was only dispatched after much bloodshed, and has left a power vacuum.
Syria has been engulfed in a horrific many-sided ideological and ethno-religious civil war, with hundreds of thousands dead. A smaller version of the same sectarian strife has also affected Yemen.
Finally, Tunisia, where it all began, did escape the terrible outcomes in the other countries, but its democracy remains shaky at best.
Outside interference in the case of eastern Europe was minimal. The Soviet Union stepped aside and signaled it would not use force to retain control, and the United States also kept its distance.
In the Middle East, though, the implosion led to a power struggle between Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia, with each providing arms and money to the warring factions.
Another major difference was the role of religion. Other than in Poland, where the Roman Catholic Church was a major factor in the demise of the Communist system, religion played a minor role in the fall of Communism in eastern Europe, and continues to be relatively marginal in the post-Communist era.
As well, the newly emancipated eastern European states sought, and received, guidance from their western European neighbours as they transitioned away from totalitarianism.
With the Arab states the reverse has been the case. Islam in this region is a strong ideological alternative to liberal capitalism, with aspirations to become a dominant political force.
Islamist groups have taken advantage of the uncertainty and insecurity that followed the collapse of the old order, and have proposed theocratic alternatives to the people.
They are now a power to be reckoned with throughout the region and a counterweight to those advocating liberal democracy.
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