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

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Otherwise, maybe the Marines’ song should be retired.

Gadhafi’s Son Reveals ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ Persona

Henry Srebrnik [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Portugal’s Jewish Diaspora and Its Lessons for Our Times

Henry Srebrnik, [Toronto] Jewish-Tribune

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

Who Will Replace Today’s Middle Eastern Rulers?


Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Portugal’s Jewish Diaspora and Its Lessons for Our Times    

Henry Srebrnik, [Toronto] Jewish Tribune  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But what is the relevance of this dismal history today?

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

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

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

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

Arab awakening arrives in Libya

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside] Journal Pioneer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gadhafi has certainly displayed staying power until now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One Professor’s Political and Academic Journey

by Henry Srebrnik, [UPEI] Cadre

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

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

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

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

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

 

Is History Repeating Itself?

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside,PEI] Journal-Pioneer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Little Portugal Created a Lusophone World

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

People are usually surprised to hear that in the western hemisphere, Portuguese is a more important language than French.

While French is spoken in parts of Canada, French Guiana, the French islands of St. Pierre et Miquelon, Guadeloupe, and Martinique, as well as the former French colony of Haiti, Portuguese is the official language of Brazil, a country almost the size of Canada and, with a population of more than 190 million, the fifth largest in the world.

Apart from Brazil, the Portuguese have left a very deep and wide cultural footprint around the world. Of all the European countries involved in colonial acquisitions from the 15^th to the 19^th century, this little Iberian kingdom “punched above its weight” more than any other.

Portugal’s empire lasted almost six centuries, and was spread throughout a vast number of territories.

How did this happen? Little Portugal was first off the mark in imperial expansion. Even before Columbus set off across the Atlantic in 1492, Portuguese sailors under the sponsorship of Prince Henry the Navigator had rounded the coasts of Africa. By 1498 they had reached India, and soon thereafter present-day Indonesia.

Though Portugal would later lose much of its empire to stronger powers such as Britain, France, and the Netherlands, its legacy remains impressive.

Brazil, the crowning jewel in the empire, acquired its independence in 1822. It was by then far bigger and wealthier than the mother country. But the rest of the empire remained intact for another 150 years or so.

There are a number of important former Portuguese colonies in Africa. Angola and Mozambique are two large southern African states, with populations of 18.5 million and 23 million respectively; also on the mainland is Guinea-Bissau.

As well, there are two island republics off west Africa, originally “stepping stones” for Portuguese exploration of the continent and trans-Atlantic trade: Cape Verde, and São Tomé e Príncipe.

In Asia, the Portuguese enclave of Goa on the west coast of India and the island of Macau in southern China were acquired by those two Asian states in 1961 and 1999, respectively.

But the eastern part of the island of Timor, conquered by the Indonesians in 1975 after the Portuguese left, fought a war to liberate itself from that Muslim-majority country and in 2002 became the independent state of Timór-Leste.

While the rest of what had become the Dutch East Indies remained Muslim, East Timor, after four centuries of Portuguese rule, was now predominantly Roman Catholic.

Though Portugal divested itself of its empire (except Macau) by 1975, its former colonies continue to exhibit both cultural and political affinities and in 1996 formed the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.

These Lusophone (Portuguese-speaking) nations are home to almost 250 million people located across the globe, with a combined area of about 10,742,000 square kilometres. The seventh CPLC summit was held in Luanda, Angola, last year.

While the British, French and Spanish empires eventually overshadowed that of Portugal, this country of 11 million people has certainly left its mark in the world.

Will Islamist Parties Vie for Power in Tunisia?

Henry Srebrnik, [Toronto] Jewish Tribune

Authoritarian states may appear powerful and stable when viewed from afar, but since they have little legitimacy, they are built on sand. We have just witnessed another example of this in the North African state of Tunisia, where president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali has been toppled after 23 years in power.

Many observers were taken by surprise by this spontaneous uprising, perhaps because Ben Ali was more circumspect than neighbouring autocrats such as Libya’s mercurial Muammar Qaddafi (a supporter of Ben Ali’s, by the way). 

Ben Ali’s regime was viewed as “friendly” towards the West, and he was in the good graces of the former colonial power, France. He also sought to curb Islamist extremism.

But Ben Ali ran a kleptocracy. He and his wife, Leila Trabelsi, along with their families, amassed untold wealth, while Tunisia’s youth, including university students, found themselves without jobs or hope. 

It all began to unravel on Dec. 17, when a university graduate set himself on fire in Sidi Bouzid over the lack of jobs, sparking protests. Within a month, Ben Ali’s hold on power collapsed, with many of his cronies now arrested or killed. 

Jews have lived in Tunisia for more than 2,000 years. Though the country was once home to a sizable Jewish community – in 1948 the Jewish population was an estimated 105,000 -- only about 1,000 now remain, in a population that numbers 10.5 million.

Most Jews left after independence in 1956, and by 1967 only 20,000 remained. During the Six Day War, there was a wave of anti-Jewish sentiment. Jews were attacked in riots and almost all the rest emigrated, mainly to France and Israel.

Tunisia served as the HQ of the Arab League between 1979 and 1989. It also was home to Yasser Arafat’s PLO between 1982 and 1993. The PLO’s headquarters were bombed by the Israeli air force in October 1985, in retaliation for the murder of Israelis in Cyprus.

Today most of the remaining Jews live on the island of Djerba, which is home to the El Ghriba Synagogue. It has been attacked twice, in 1985 (following the Israeli raid on the PLO offices) and 2002. There were anti-Israeli demonstrations in the country during March and April 2002, and on April 11, a truck fitted with explosives drove past security and detonated at the front of the synagogue, killing 21 people. Al Qaeda claimed responsibility.

Despite the current turmoil in Tunisia, there has so far been no sign of large scale emigration by the country’s remaining Jews. 

Though a Muslim Arab state, Tunisia’s political culture has been largely secular. However, since the 1980s, there has been a rise in Islamic fundamentalism. The Islamic Tendency Movement (MTI), founded by Sheikh Rached Ghannouchi, a philosophy professor, began to flourish despite attempts at suppression by the government. Ghannouchi was jailed between 1981 and 1984, and went into exile in Britain in 1989. The party was banned under the Ben Ali regime.

In the past, Ghannouchi has condemned Zionism and westernization, and dedicated a book he published in 1993 to Iran’s late Ayatollah Khomeini. However, in more recent years, he has pledged his adherence to democracy and the electoral process. “Islam recognizes as a fact of life the diversity of peoples and cultures,” he told an audience in London.

The current “jasmine revolution” was not the work of clerics; Tunisian Islamists had a minimal role in overthrowing Ben Ali. But Ghannouchi, now the leader of the Tunisian Islamic Hizb al-Nahda Party (successor to the MTI), has stated that he plans to return to Tunisia shortly.

Ali Larayedh, another leader of the party, was imprisoned and tortured for 14 years by Ben Ali’s regime. He too claims that the party has enlarged its views to “encompass Western values.” But it still opposes what he terms American interference in Arab countries.

Tunisia’s new rulers have pledged to release all political prisoners and to recognize the outlawed Communist and Islamic parties. 

“The Islamist movement was the most oppressed of all the opposition movements under Ben Ali. Its followers are also much greater in number than those of the secular opposition,” remarked Salah ad-Din al-Jourchi, a Tunisian journalist and expert on Islamic movements. The elite for its part has neither the knowledge nor the experience it needs to deal with Islamists. “Its effect could be large,” he concluded.

The political outcome in the country remains far from certain.

A Power Structure Built on Sand

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Pioneer-Journal

Authoritarian states may appear powerful and stable when viewed from afar, but since they have little legitimacy, they are built on sand.

Their rulers rely on repression and naked force, and when these no longer work, their downfall is swift. We have just witnessed another example of this in the North African state of Tunisia, where president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali has been toppled after 23 years in power.

Many observers were taken by surprise by this spontaneous uprising, perhaps because Ben Ali and the nomenklatura that ruled the country were more circumspect than neighbouring autocrats such as Libya’s mercurial Muammar Qaddafi (a supporter of Ben Ali’s, by the way).

Ben Ali’s regime was viewed as “friendly” towards the West, and he was in the good graces of the former colonial power, France. He also sought to curb Islamist extremism.

For many, that was enough; they thought it prudent to overlook some of the less savoury aspects of the regime, including the torture of political opponents by the security forces and the stifling of all dissent. As long as there was a veneer of political competition, including fixed elections, things were fine.

This is a country that has had only two presidents since independence in 1956. Habib Bourguiba, a westernized intellectual and leader of the nationalist movement against France, ruled until 1987, when, deemed too old and incapable of governing, he was toppled by Ben Ali.

But Ben Ali ran a kleptocracy. He and his wife, Leila Trabelsi, along with their families, amassed untold wealth, while Tunisia’s youth, including university students, found themselves without jobs or hope. It was only a matter of time until this would blow up in their faces.

It all began to unravel on Dec. 17, when a university graduate set himself on fire in Sidi Bouzid over the lack of jobs, sparking protests. Within a month, Ben Ali’s hold on power collapsed, with many of his cronies now arrested or killed.

This “jasmine revolution” was not the work of clerics; Tunisian Islamists had a minimal role in overthrowing Ben Ali. But Sheikh Rached Ghannouchi, the exiled leader of the Tunisian opposition Islamic Hizb al-NahdaParty, who is based in London, has stated that he plans to return to Tunisia shortly. The party was banned under the Ben Ali regime.

Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi has taken over as interim leader and pledged to release all political prisoners and to recognize the outlawed Communist and Islamic parties, as well as hold free, internationally monitored elections within six months, but, as a former member of the hated regime, it is unclear how much power he really wields.

The political situation in the country is in such a state of flux at the moment that all we know for sure is that the president has departed to Saudi Arabia and his wife to Dubai – though even as she was getting ready to leave the country, Trabelsi managed to get hold of 1.5 tons of gold ingots, worth $59 million, from the central bank.

Numerous groups in civil society and in the military are vying for control of the nation and the outcome remains far from certain.

From Mugabe to Mubarak, Many African Dictators Still Reign

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
 
From Robert Mugabe in the south to Hosni Mubarak in the north, Africa still has its share of “big men,” as its dictators are often called.

Even when they hold elections, the results are known in advance, thanks to intimidation of opposition candidates and their supporters; lack of media coverage for opponents; and, finally, ballot rigging.

The most recent example was last fall’s presidential election in the Ivory Coast, where the incumbent, Laurent Gbagbo, actually lost to rival Alassane Ouattara, yet has refused to step down, despite calls from ECOWAS -- the Economic Community of West African States -- and the United Nations to do so.

The UN was invited to certify the election results in Ivory Coast as part of a peace agreement signed by all parties after a 2002-2003 civil war divided the country in two.

It endorsed the findings of the country’s electoral commission, but the constitutional council subsequently declared Gbagbo president after throwing out more than half a million votes from Ouattara strongholds.

The result may be a resumption of the civil war pitting the largely Muslim north, which supported Ouattara, against the Christianized south, where Gbagbo was the favourite.

Egypt’s Mubarak, who intends to have his son Gamal succeed him as president, himself fixed a legislative election last year.

Claims of fraud and bullying marred the vote, in which the main opposition Muslim Brotherhood, whose candidates were forced to run as independents, was all but wiped out. Mubarak’s National Democratic Party won 420 of the 444 contested seats.

A presidential election is scheduled for later this year in Egypt. Many leading political figures in Egypt, fearing a fix, have already announced that they will refuse to take part.

Zimbabwe too plans a presidential election later in 2011. Mugabe seems fed up with sharing power with his decade-long rival, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change. They were forced into a coalition government after a rigged 2008 election which had exacerbated a severe economic crisis.

But Tsvangirai has stated that before polls can be held this year there must be a referendum on a revised constitution which will include electoral reforms, and an end to violence perpetrated by members of Mugabe’s ZANU-PF Party.

“When the police, army, militia, war veterans are used to intimidate, coerce, and cause torture and death to the people, that is the kind of violence we need to contain,” he declared.

Neighbouring Zambia will see Rupiah Banda of the Movement for Multiparty Democracy running for his first full term as president. Banda narrowly beat his main challenger, the Patriotic Front’s Michael Sata, in a vote in 2008 after the death of president Levy Mwanawasa.

There was considerable violence following the 2008 election and many fear a repeat this year, as both men will again be running for the top job.

In Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, President Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian Ijaw from the southern part of Nigeria, plans to contest the 2011 election in his own right. The former vice-president, he became head of state in 2010 following the death of President Umaru Yar’Adua, a northern Fulani Muslim who had won the presidency in a highly controversial election in 2007.

However, many Nigerian Muslims feel that it should now be the turn of a Muslim to sit in the presidential palace in Abuja. So the presidential contest might feature one or more northern Muslim candidates opposing Jonathan, against a backdrop of ongoing ethnic and religious violence and an insurrection in the oil-rich Niger Delta.

The election “could lead to post-election sectarian violence, paralysis of the executive branch, and even a coup,” according to John Campbell, a former American ambassador to Nigeria.

Apart from these countries, 14 other African states will be holding presidential contests. In many of them, challenges to those in power will be met by harassment, electoral manipulation, and the withholding of resources from those who support competitors. This promises to be a year of high political drama in Africa.

The Gulf War of 1991 and its Aftermath

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

It has now been 20 years since the start of the 1991 Gulf War. Overshadowed by the more recent war in Iraq, it should nonetheless be remembered as an event with far‑reaching ramifications.

Saddam Hussein’s invasion and occupation of Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990 led to the American-organized coalition, which included Canada, to force him out of the oil-rich emirate. From Jan. 16, 1991 to the end of February, most of the Persian Gulf region was drawn into war.

The victory over Iraq did not end conflict in the region; it was followed by unsuccessful armed rebellions against Saddam Hussein by Kurds in the north and Shi’ite Muslim Arabs in the south. Hundreds of thousands of refugees fled into neighbouring countries.

Why did Iraq lay claim to Kuwait?

The states of the Middle East are not national entities in the sense that most European countries are. Lines on maps are often a relic of the imperial age and have little to do with a sense of identity. 

Only since the end of World War I has the Middle East been divided into a large number of small states, rather than being governed by one or another large empire. And for many, this is an unnatural state of affairs which resulted in the independence of small, weak, and rich states such as Kuwait.

Before 1914, Kuwait was technically part of the Ottoman Empire, as was present-day Iraq. Turkey’s defeat in World War I allowed the British to carved Iraq out of its Mesopotamian holdings. 

At the Uqair conference, held in 1922, the borders between Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait were drawn by Sir Percy Cox, the British high commissioner then stationed in Baghdad. The states involved had little say in the matter. 

So pan-Arab nationalists came to look upon Kuwait and some of the other tiny sheikdoms as products of European imperialism, artificial states of dubious legitimacy.

The new state of Iraq wanted to incorporate Kuwait, even when it was itself largely under British domination. In 1961, when Kuwait became independent, the revolutionary regime in power in Baghdad, massed troops on the Kuwaiti border, and only pulled back after British, and then Arab League, troops were dispatched to protect Kuwait. Iraq massed troops on the border again in 1967 and 1973. 

Saddam Hussein, ruler of Iraq after 1979, wanted to make Iraq the dominant player in the region. He also blamed Kuwait for a fall in oil prices in the late 1980s, because the emirate was ignoring OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) production quotas. 

As well, Kuwait in the summer of 1990 asked Iraq to repay the $17.6 billion it had lent Saddam Hussein during his 1980s war with Iran.

Angered by this request, on Aug. 2, 1990 Iraq again massed forces against Kuwait, but this time conquered the entire country. Saddam decreed Kuwait Iraq’s 19th province, declaring, a few days after the invasion that “the branch has been returned to the tree.” 

 The UN Security Council on Nov. 29 passed a resolution authorizing member states to use “all means necessary” against Iraq unless it withdrew from Kuwait by Jan. 15, 1991. A day later, coalition forces invaded Kuwait. By Feb. 26 Iraqi troops had been chased out of Kuwait, but Saddam’s regime in Iraq survived.

How did the Gulf war affect the region in the long run? Iraq lost some degree of sovereignty within its own territory -- Washington declared an area north of the 36th parallel in northern Iraq a refuge for Kurds who fled Saddam Hussein’s armies, and UN sanctions against Baghdad were put in place.

Though Saddam never threatened Kuwait again, the lingering animosity between Baghdad and Washington would eventually lead to renewed conflict in March 2003, and the final overthrow of Iraq’s Ba’athist regime.

This second war lasted much longer and its outcome remains murky. Despite the immense amount of money expended and casualties incurred by the United States, the main beneficiary of Saddam’s removal may yet prove to be Iran.

Should Ideology of Human Rights Trump Nationalism?

Henry Srebrnik, (Summerside, PEI) Journal-Pioneer

In the last few decades, a consensus has emerged among our political elites, in government, the media, and academia, regarding the proper character of the state.

They increasingly have come to regard as illegitimate states which are founded on the basis of ethnic or religious nationhood, as opposed to the civic-territorial or multicultural model found in present-day Canada or the United States.

Increasingly critical of the classical nation-state, they reject the notion that each self-defined group is entitled, as part of its patrimony and place in the world, a particular space it can call its own homeland.

Indeed, they have come to define nationalism itself as a variant of racist intolerance, a political pathology that leads inexorably to the narrowest of so-called “tribalism.”

The older paradigm of nationhood, one grounded in an exclusionary ethno-nationalism, has in their eyes been largely discredited. In its stead has arisen the paradigm of a state with a universalist vision based on international human rights ideology.

That is why the Turks of Northern Cyprus, the Maronites of Lebanon, the Kurds in the Arab world and the Chechens in the Russian Federation, among many others, have been unable to obtain recognition as identifiable national groups, though they are no less deserving of statehood than the Japanese, Finns or Bulgarians, or even the Slovenes or Estonians, all of whom were fortunate enough to have developed as recognizable states or at least as units within a federation, with recognizable boundaries -- and hence “made it” before the doors were shut on further self-determination based on the principle of nationality.

Our modern leaders, it would seem, are nostalgic for such failed testaments to multinationalism as the old Austro-Hungarian, tsarist Russian and Turkish empires!

The western elevation of human rights has led to the privileging of individual values over those of nations, denigrating states and disparaging nationalism.

People support the notion that the rights of the individual and of minorities take moral precedence over the rights of majorities and the state.

And if safeguarding those rights impinges on the sovereignty of a state, so be it.

Multilateral intervention against a sovereign state deemed to be in violation of human rights is now considered permissible.

“Human-rights abuse” has replaced the “red menace” of cold war days as the enemy of civilised values.

Nazi Germany Fought Many Different Wars in WW II

Henry Srebrnik, [Toronto] Jewish Tribune

A recently published book Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, by Timothy Snyder, is a new account of the horrors inflicted on the populations of eastern Europe during World War II. It reinforces my view that the 1939-1945 war in Europe was two, perhaps even three, separate conflicts, with Hitler’s Germany the state involved in all of them.

In the east, especially after Hitler’s 1941 attack on the Soviet Union, the conflict was ideologically driven by the very bedrock tenets of Nazism. It was a genocidal “race” war, with social Darwinism applied to its fullest. Hitler’s racial doctrines were so important to him that it led him to abrogate the pact he had opportunistically signed with Joseph Stalin two years earlier – and one from which he was benefitting.

Poland and the various component parts of the European Soviet Union were to be simply wiped out, not just as states, but even as peoples, to make room for German lebensraum. These peoples were considered “sub-humans.” The war was total – and so, of course, would be the Soviet and partisan reaction.

This was ground zero of the Holocaust: the mass murder of Jews and other civilians by German firing squads, and the construction of the gigantic extermination centres in occupied Poland: Auschwitz-Birkenau , Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Treblinka, to which Jews, Roma, Soviet soldiers, Communists, and other “undesirables” were deported from all parts of Europe and asphyxiated by the millions.

In central Europe, though, there was, so to speak, more nuance in the way Hitler treated various ethnic nations. The Czech lands, considered historically German, became the “Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia,” but were not totally absorbed into the German Reich. Slovakia and Croatia (including Bosnia and Herzegovina) were created as new states with the demise of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia– ironically, here Hitler served as the midwife of ultra-nationalist aspirations. 

As for Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria, Hitler played the diplomat in attempting to referee all of their competing irredentist claims so as to keep them all on side as German allies.
 

For example, in the interest of maintaining close political ties with both Budapest and Bucharest, Berlin retained the Banat region of northern Serbia following the defeat of Yugoslavia, as a potential bargaining chip with these countries, both of which desired to annex the area.

In 1940-1941, Hungary had much of Transylvania returned to it, as well as parts of Slovakia and the former Yugoslavia, recreating the Greater Hungary of pre-World War I.

The Romanians, who had now lost part of Transylvania to Hungary, were compensated by Hitler with Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina (taken from Romania by Stalin in 1940), as well as lands further east, which they named Transnistria. 

The Bulgarians grabbed a piece of Romania known as Southern Dobruja (which had once belonged to Bulgaria), most of Yugoslav Macedonia, and Greek Thrace.

In cooperation with Hitler’s ally Italy, a Greater Albania was also formed, including Kosovo and parts of western Macedonia.

In all of these various diplomatic machinations, Hitler played the role of a “benign” chess master, creating his “New Order” in Europe.

Hitler was even more solicitous of the feelings of the “racially acceptable” peoples of western Europe, mostly conquered by 1940. 

He regarded the Dutch as part of the Aryan Herrenvolk and Holland was controlled by a civilian German governor. Even after Denmark’s defeat, Hitler continued to regard the country as a sovereign state and allowed the Danish Government to continue to function under the close supervision of the German Foreign Ministry. The Nazis even allowed free and open parliamentary elections there in 1943! 

And though France was vanquished in a matter of weeks in May-June 1940, the armistice which was signed with Nazi Germany by the new pro-fascist Vichy regime was respected. Germany treated it as a sovereign state, allowing it limited military and naval forces. 

Most French citizens went about their normal business, though German troops occupied the northern half of the country. Indeed, Vichy was recognized even by the Allied powers; Canada only terminated diplomatic relations in November 1942.

So in the west the war, certainly until 1943-1944, was largely something that was taking place thousands of miles to the east.

What Hitler demanded of all these various subservient entities was that they subscribe to his two main aims: vanquishing Bolshevism and the “Jewish race.” This was, for him, the litmus test of their loyalty. In that sense, the total war being waged in the east impacted Jews, Communists, and other “enemies” of the Reich even in central and western Europe. 

Most of these governments – often on their own volition, as in France – deported Jews to the killing centres the Nazis had set up in devastated Poland; Bulgaria and Denmark were, unfortunately, the only exceptions. As well, pro-Nazi volunteers in these countries formed SS divisions to support the race war in the east. Even fascist Spain, officially neutral, helped in this endeavour.

Finally, there were two powers that throughout the war remained unconquered and, along with the Soviet Union, would eventually defeat the madman: Great Britain and the United States.

In terms of Hitler’s hierarchy of races, the British were “Aryans” and he admired them. From his point of view, it was they, not Germany, who were responsible for not “coming to their senses” and joining his struggle in the east. During the 1939-1940 “phony war” period, there were many peace overtures made to Britain. It was Winston Churchill, not Hitler, who refused to “see reason,” as far as the Nazis were concerned.

As for the United States, Hitler, basically a Eurocentric, had paid them little attention until 1941 and was in effect dragged into war with America because of the foolish behaviour of his Japanese allies.

In a sense, Hitler saw the war with Britain and America as almost a distraction, something that got in the way of his ideological master plan: the elimination of the Jews, Roma, and a large part of the Slavic population in the east.

For the Nazis, the war that really counted and would be pursued with the utmost genocidal ferocity until the very end in May 1945 was the one against the Judaeo-Bolshevik “bacillus” that had threatened to destroy “European civilization” – as Hitler defined it, of course.

The Nazi madness would lead to the Communist takeover of eastern Europe after the war. So the horrors that befell that part of the continent did not really end until 1989-1991.

China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region is Really the Sixth “Stan”

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

In 1991, when the Soviet Union fell apart, the five central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, sometimes called the “five stans,” became sovereign states.

They were all part of a largely Turkic Muslim civilization that had flourished in the region for hundreds of years, until conquered by tsarist Russia in the 18th-19th centuries. They had acquired their current borders as Soviet republics.

However, there is a sixth “stan” that has proved less fortunate, because it ended up as part of China rather than Russia.

The Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in the far west of the People’s Republic of China is more than 1.6 million square kilometres in area and borders Russia, Mongolia, Pakistan, India, and the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. An arid region that historically was called East Turkestan, it has oil reserves and is China’s largest natural gas-producing region.

The region is the historic homeland of the Uighurs, a Turkic Muslim people. While the Russians were conquering western Turkistan, the Chinese Empire gained control over eastern Turkestan as the culmination of a long struggle that began in the seventeenth century.

The Uighurs, not pleased to find themselves subservient to Imperial Han Chinese rule from far-off Beijing, in 1864 rebelled in various Xinjiang cities. They were quashed with incredible cruelty.

In the 1930s, the weak Chinese Republic faced another rebellion, when a short-lived Islamic Republic of East Turkestan was declared in 1933. It was crushed a year later.

In 1944, as China was fighting Japan, factions within Xinjiang again declared independence, this time under the auspices of the Soviet Union, and created the second East Turkistan Republic. But in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party took over the territory and declared it a Chinese province. In October 1955, Xinjiang became classified as an autonomous region.

In recent decades, as the area developed economically, Han Chinese moved in and took the better jobs and housing. Around 90 percent of Xinjiang’s population were Uighurs in 1949; now it is estimated that they make up only about 45 per cent of its 21,590,000 people, though they remain a majority in western Xinjiang.

This has sparked resentment and calls for independence. In the 1990s, separatist groups in Xinjiang began frequent attacks against the Chinese government. The most prominent of these groups is the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, founded in 1993. Other factions want to create a secular Uighurstan state.

In July 2009, ethnic tension between the Han and Uighur led to severe riots in the capital city of Urumqi. According to Chinese state media, at least 150 people were killed, and more than 800  injured. The riots were reportedly sparked by a Uighur protest over the ethnically motivated killing of two Uighur workers in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong.

World attention has tended to focus on another oppressed ethnic group under Chinese rule, the Tibetans. Their spiritual and political leader, the Dalai Lama, has generated international awareness for their cause. But the plight of the Uighurs should command equal attention.

Elections Not Always the Answer for Troubled Countries

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

This past Sunday, November 28, three countries with little in the way of democratic political culture held elections, with all too predictable results. One is in the Middle East, another in the Caribbean, and the third in west Africa.

In all three, the ruling group sought to make sure, through various forms of fraud and intimidation, that it would win. In all three, the losers cried foul and claimed there were widespread irregularities.

In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak, now in power for almost 30 years, arranged to have his National Democratic Party win parliamentary elections. 

Mubarak had begun cracking down on the Muslim Brotherhood, the outlawed Islamist group that represents Egypt’s only substantial opposition, earlier this year. At least 1,200 supporters had been arrested, and in the weeks leading up to the vote, rallies by Brotherhood candidates, running as independents, were broken up and some were barred from running altogether. Their supporters were beaten up as they arrived at the polls to vote.

In Haiti, outgoing president René Préval wanted to make sure that his chosen successor, Unity Party candidate Jude Célestin, would triumph. There was considerable pre-election violence in this tragic country, already struggling with the aftermath of a horrific earthquake and a more recent outbreak of cholera. 

The populist Lavalas Party had already been barred from running in the election. Of the 18 other candidates in the race, 12 rejected the process as fraudulent and described ballot boxes stuffed and voters opposing Célestin turned away. This was no surprise-- elections in Haiti have frequently been marked by chaos. Riots have followed the voting.

In the ethnically torn Ivory Coast, the presidential vote was marred by bloodshed that left at least seven people dead amid accusations of cheating on both sides. 

The vote was a close-fought contest between Laurent Gbagbo, a southern Christian who has held on to power since his term expired in 2005, and ex-prime minister Alassane Ouattara, from the largely Muslim north.

Gbagbo’s supporters consider Ouattara responsible for a 2002 revolt that divided the country, while Ouattara’s backers maintain that they attempted to seize power because northerners were treated as second-class citizens.

The rivals accused each other of irregularities at polling stations; both sides claimed their followers were barred from casting their votes.

Columbia University political scientist Jack Snyder, in his book From Voting to Violence, challenges the American dogma that voting is a political panacea regardless of conditions or circumstances. He argues that promoting elections often produces serious conflict in places where critical preconditions, such as the rule of law and a free press, are not present. 

Oxford University economist Paul Collier, in Wars, Guns, and Votes, agrees: without a system of checks and balances, he writes, elections have led to widespread corruption and nations mired in ethnic politics. Democracy in such places is simply a façade, he concludes.

Violence often follows such elections, just as it does before the voting. Sometimes things become so polarized that the military steps in -- so an election becomes the prelude to a coup!

Instead of providing a mandate, and political legitimacy for the winners, these so-called elections only exacerbate the deep ethnic, religious and ideological hatreds in these countries.

Isn't it time we stopped making a fetish out of elections in corrupt oligarchies or ethnic tinderboxes, from Honduras to Sri Lanka, from Afghanistan to Nigeria? The dictators and strong-men only pay lip service to elections as a way of placating western countries.

Of course, this poses a far more difficult problem: how can true democracy ever take root in such states?

End of Trudeauism


Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian


The 10th anniversary of Pierre Trudeau’s death on September 28 passed almost unnoticed in this country. That’s because the pan-Canadian ideology of Trudeauism, which destroyed the Meech Lake (1987-1990) and Charlottetown (1992) Accords, is now only a memory, as is the former prime minister himself.


Had they become part of the Canadian Constitution, the proposed amendments would have recognized Quebec as a “distinct society.” This was, for Trudeau, anathema, and he became their chief critic and opponent, along with Preston Manning’s old Reform Party. The accords went down to defeat, the second time in a national plebiscite.


Even the Ignatieff Liberals today barely mention Trudeau as a “role model.” After all, they’ve themselves signed on to the idea of the Québécois being a nation, as has Stephen Harper, himself another former opponent of Meech Lake and Charlottetown.


Since 1984, when Trudeau left office, his Liberal Party, which used to “own” Quebec, has not won a majority of seats in that province, despite having had two French Canadian leaders in Jean Chrétien and Stéphane Dion.


In fact, following its formation in 1990 -- a consequence of the failure to pass Meech -- the separatist Bloc Québécois has won a majority of Quebec’s 75 federal ridings in six straight elections. Polls indicate that they are on track to do so again the next time Canadians go to the polls.


Francophone nationalists refuse to support a Liberal Party that, under Trudeau, thwarted their collective aspirations. And, while they may no longer be religious in the old Roman Catholic sense of the word, they also won’t give their votes to a Conservative Party which feels too “English” for their tastes.


Stephen Harper is not only an Albertan by residence, but a Protestant evangelical. He’s the first prime minister since Lester Pearson to be neither Catholic – as were Trudeau, Joe Clark, John Turner, Brian Mulroney, Chrétien and Paul Martin -- nor Anglican (Kim Campbell).


Do memories of the old anti-Catholic Orange Order still lurk in the subconscious minds of many in Quebec?


Old antagonisms seem to have been in play in the recent New Brunswick provincial election as well, where the Liberals were turfed out after one term in office, something unprecedented in the electoral history of the province.


The underlying reason? Their abortive attempt to sell New Brunswick Power Corp. to Hydro-Québec.


For many anglophones in the province, ethnic descendants of the United Empire Loyalists and political descendants of the anti-francophone Confederation of Regions Party, which had its brief period of fame as the official opposition between 1991 and 1995, this smacked of letting a Québécois stalking horse into their collective homes. They voted for the Progressive Conservatives.


New Brunswick’s ethnic and linguistic cleavages run deep, nor have they been papered over by the province being officially bilingual – another legacy, by the way, of Trudeau’s.   


On the federal level, thanks to the Bloc, Canada seems to have settled into a pattern of perpetual minority government. The Conservatives win seats in the “old,” especially rural, English Canada, while the Liberals are a permanent majority in the multicultural big cities (along with the non-francophone parts of Montreal).


The New Democrats chip away at the strongholds of both these parties, but are never able to break down the ideological barriers that keep them a minority party.


As Quebec and the rest of the country drift apart, emotionally and politically, is Canada on the road to becoming another Belgium, a country whose two component parts, Flanders and Wallonia, have become virtual nations, leaving the central state institutions a hollowed-out shell?

California Dreaming ... or is it Just a Nightmare?

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

I’ve just returned from a two-week stay in southern California.

When you’re sitting at a table sipping latté and looking out at the ocean on a bright sunny day at one of the many cafés along the beaches between Santa Barbara and Laguna Beach, it’s hard to believe there’s anything wrong with the world – or the state.

Coastal towns along the scenic Pacific Coast Highway such as Manhattan Beach, Huntington Beach, and Newport Beach are breathtakingly beautiful.

Their citizens are also incredibly affluent – even modest homes near the water start at over one million dollars, with many in the five to ten million dollar range.

And as for the Los Angeles megalopolis itself, almost everyone in the world has heard about “hip” and wealthy towns like Beverley Hills, Pasadena, Santa Monica, Venice and West Hollywood, home to famous actors and multi-millionaires.

The city was of course built on the business of making films—“the industry,” as people in L.A. call it.

Even I have come to know someone who was intimately involved with “Hollywood”: Millicent Wise, widow of the famed Oscar-winning director Robert Wise, who made, among many other memorable films, “The Sound of Music” and “West Side Story.”

Millie Wise is the sister of a close friend of ours, and lives in an apartment full of mementos of her late husband’s career, near the appropriately named Avenue of the Stars.

But don’t be fooled by the glitter and the glamour, the surfers and the sunshine. California is hurting badly.

The current state unemployment rate stands at 12.3 percent. Thousands of civil servants and teachers have been laid off, and many more thousands of families are losing their homes through foreclosure.

They watch helplessly as so-called “trash-out men” come to their houses, remove those belongings the homeowners cannot afford to keep, and drive off to landfills with the possessions.

In the L.A. area there are, according to some estimates, some 88,000 homeless people. Many can be seen on the streets panhandling and rummaging through outdoor garbage bins at fast food restaurants in strip malls.

While Los Angeles boasts of world-class universities such as the California Institute of Technology, the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), and the University of Southern California, inner-city neighbourhoods such as Compton are saddled with failing public schools and high drop-out rates, and rife with juvenile gangs.

This coming November, Californians will be electing their governor and one member of the U.S. Senate.

The Republicans have nominated two women, former eBay president and billionaire Meg Whitman, and former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina, respectively, for the two positions. (Term limits make Arnold Schwarzenegger ineligible to run again for governor.)

They will face off against the Democratic candidates, former governor Jerry Brown and current U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer.

Both races promise to be nasty. But no matter who wins, the disparity between rich and poor in California keeps getting bigger. The Golden State has never before been this tarnished.