Who Will Control the ‘World Island’?

Henry Srebrnik [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

In a seminal article, ‘The Geographical Pivot of History', published in 1904, the British geographer Sir Halford Mackinder, one of the prominent theoreticians of geopolitics, wrote that a country that gained control over the Eurasian heartland - what he referred to as the "pivot area" - would eventually gain hegemony over the entire globe.

Mackinder succinctly summarized his theory thus: "Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island controls the world."

At the time, the vast and strategically important central regions of Asia were governed by the Russians in the north and the British further south.

The British had gained control over much of India by the end of the 18th century, and extinguished Muslim rule altogether when in 1857 they eliminated the Mughal Empire, which for more than three centuries had dominated most of the subcontinent.

Meanwhile, the Russian Empire had expanded into the Muslim regions of central Asia, inhabited mainly by Turkic peoples, in the mid-19th century.

Fabled centres of Islamic culture such as Samarkand and Tashkent fell to the Russians as the Emirate of Bukhara and the Khanates of Khiva and Kokand came under Russian suzerainty.

The British, fearful of Russian expansionism and seeking to protect their Indian empire, fought three wars in Afghanistan. The first war, from 1839 to 1842, led to a massive defeat of the British forces by Afghan warriors and a retreat back to India.

The Russians continued their advances in central Asia, prompting a second Anglo-Afghan war from 1878 to 1880, in which Britain gained assurances that the Russians would not be allowed to bring Afghanistan under its control. In 1887 Russia and Great Britain delineated the northern border of Afghanistan.

The final war, in 1919, settled the border between Afghanistan and British India. The British propped up Afghanistan as a buffer state, and the country, with no sense of national consciousness, would retain this role for decades.

But everything began to change after the Second World War.

By 1947, British India was no more, divided between the two new states of India, predominantly Hindu, and Muslim Pakistan, which bordered Afghanistan to its northwest.

Russia, meanwhile, had become a Communist state after the First World War and the new Soviet Union reorganized its central Asian holdings into five ethnically-based socialist republics: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, the last three bordering Afghanistan.

By the late 1970s, though, Moscow's control over its central Asian republics was weakening, as local peoples became more assertive. In Afghanistan, meanwhile, increasing political turmoil led to concerns that a Soviet-friendly regime might collapse, prompting a Soviet invasion of that country in 1979.

It proved to be a disastrous decision. After a decade and more than 15,000 soldiers killed, the Soviets retreated, leaving Afghanistan to the mercy of the Taliban. Soon afterwards, the Soviet Union itself fell apart, giving birth to five new sovereign Muslim states in central Asia in 1991.

The United States became the latest major power to get involved in the region's politics. Afghanistan, which had become a haven and source of support for al-Qaida under the protection of the Taliban, was invaded by American and other NATO forces following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

But after a decade of war, the American public is weary of the blood and treasure that has been spent in Afghanistan, with seemingly little effect. It's doubtful that U.S. forces will remain in the country for much longer.

And Afghanistan will probably devolve into civil war, as it did after 1989, with the Taliban again gaining control of the Pashtun-majority regions of the country.

Three great powers — the Americans, British, and Russians — will have abandoned central Asia. Might some other major state, such as China or India, move into the vacuum? Mackinder's question — who will control the Eurasian heartland? — for the moment remains unanswered.

When Will Afghanistan War End?

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

The vast majority of Americans are sick and tired of the war in Afghanistan.

A recent New York Times/CBS News survey found that 69 percent of those polled indicated that the United States should end the 11 year old war sooner than the projected 2014 withdrawal of American forces.

This drop in support follows a number of incidents, including the inadvertent burning of Korans by American troops and the killing of 17 Afghan civilians in a village earlier this month by Robert Bales, an American staff sergeant.

The poll also follows a number of killings of American troops by their Afghan partners -- a trend that General John R. Allen, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, told the New York Times was likely to continue.

The same day Allen made his comments, three NATO soldiers were shot to death in two separate confrontations involving Afghan security forces.

As well, Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, has become increasingly erratic and is also suspected of trying to broker a power-sharing deal with the Taliban, behind NATO’s back. He even demanded that NATO troops leave the villages and confine themselves to major bases.

Those of us old enough to remember the Vietnam War sense a déjà vu quality to all this. Indeed, it brings to mind the satirical song, “Talking Vietnam Blues,” penned by the late anti-war activist Phil Ochs in 1964:

    Well they put me in a barracks house
    Just across the way from Laos.
    They said you’re pretty safe when the troops deploy
    But don’t turn your back on your house boy
    When they ring the gong, watch out for the Viet Cong.

The Afghanistan war has not seen the same groundswell of anti-war activism that was a hallmark of the 1960s, for two reasons:

Americans considered ridding the country of the Taliban, whose leaders had offered Al-Qaeda a base of operations, justified, in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the world Trade Center and Pentagon.

And the U.S. military is today a volunteer force, so most Americans do not feel any personal    loss from the war; their sons and daughters have not been drafted to fight in a far-off land, as was the case with Vietnam.

Even so, Americans sense that by this point, there’s nothing more to be done in Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda is long gone and Osama bin Laden is dead. And the attempts at democratization and nation-building have been abandoned as utopian dreams.

The war in Vietnam went on far too long, after it was clear that there would be no clear-cut victory over the Communists. President Obama should heed this lesson in regards to Afghanistan. Realpolitik dictates that it’s time to leave.

Were We Once the Stepchildren in the Canadian Family?

Henry Srebrnik, [Toronto] Jewish Tribune

Jewish immigration to Canada is the story, not only of the arrival and settlement of Jews in this country, but also of the way they were treated while attempting to adapt to their new home.

Negative attitudes towards Jews and Judaism, ranging from mild distaste to intense and pathological antisemitism, have shaped the contours of Canadian Jewish life, particularly in the periods of mass Jewish immigration and extending through the end of World War II and even into the 1950s.

Most Jewish immigration to this country occurred after 1881, and consisted, until the 1950s, primarily of east European Ashkenazim. In 1881, there were just 2,443 Jews in Canada; 40 years later Canada's Jews numbered 126,196.

Clearly, such a large influx of Jews elicited a variety of responses. While many welcomed Jews as hard-working immigrants, for others this immigration had created a "Jewish problem" on Canadian soil.

In the Anglo-Canadian world, Canada was seen as an outpost of British civility; for French Canadians, the upholding of the Catholic faith was a religious imperative. For both, therefore, Jewish immigrants threatened the very fabric of society. Jews were perceived as ethnic and religious undesirables with little economic utility and stood in direct conflict with the social and economic assumptions on which Canadian immigration policy was built.

Wrote Henri Bourassa, the French Canadian intellectual and journalist, in 1906: "The experience of every civilized country is that the Jews are the most undesirable class of people any country can have."

In 1923, the Canadian government closed the door to all unsponsored immigrants from central and eastern Europe except farmers. And then it moved to control those described as belonging "to races that cannot be assimilated without social or economic loss to Canada."

Jews were lumped into a Special Permit group. The only ones permitted into Canada would be those who could obtain special permits exempting them from the new regulations - and this required formal cabinet approval in each individual case.

Not surprisingly, only a trickle of individual Jews entered Canada annually during the next quarter-century. Immigration officials such as F.C. Blair, assistant deputy minister of immigration after 1924 and deputy minister after 1936, would see to that. Even German Jewish doctors willing to serve in Newfoundland's outports were refused admission.

The opposition to Jewish immigration in the '30s and '40s included Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King himself; he worried in private that letting in too many Jews would cause riots and undermine Canadian unity. And in this he reflected prevailing public opinion in this country: polls taken in the years before 1945 showed that, along with Asians, Jews were the least-wanted immigrants.

Quebec had a long and dishonourable tradition of antisemitism, which intensified with the rise of fascism in the 1930s. In June 1934, Samuel Rabinovitch, a Jewish medical student who had graduated first in his class at the Université de Montréal, was offered an internship at Notre Dame Hospital. All 14 other interns there walked out in protest, supported by interns from five other Montreal-area Catholic hospitals.

Who could blame them, asked the French-language Le Devoir? It would be repugnant to be treated - even touched - by a Jewish physician.

In the Laurentians, Jews were harassed, taunted and assaulted; hotels and other establishment proudly sported 'Gentiles Only' signs. The Achat chez Nous movement urged French Canadians to buy only from co-religionists and stay away from Jewish shopkeepers who, noted Le Devoir, "have cheating and corruption in their bloodstream."

Not surprisingly, Québécois politicians and clergy led the agitation against further Jewish immigration to Canada. As one Toronto rabbi, Maurice Eisendrath, said in June 1938: "In Quebec antisemitism is a way of life."

Maurice Duplessis, premier of Quebec after 1936, vigorously opposed the admission of Jewish refugees to Canada. During the 1944 provincial election, he spread stories about a supposed "international Zionist" plot to spirit 100,000 Jews into the province at the end of the war if the provincial Liberals would be returned to power.

Though Quebec was particularly bad, the rest of Canada was not free of anti-Jewish prejudice either.

Social Credit, the Orange Order, the Ku Klux Klan - these and many other groups were rife with antisemitic feeling. Three weeks after winning power in Alberta in 1935, new Social Credit Premier William Aberhart travelled to Detroit to discuss economics with Father Charles Coughlin, an antisemitic Catholic priest whose weekly radio broadcasts attracted millions of listeners.

Other Social Crediters spouted nonsense about "Jewish High Finance." Especially notorious was Norman Jaques, federal MP for Wetaskiwin from 1935 to 1949. He propounded Jewish conspiracy theories and in 1943 attempted to read from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the House of Commons.

Throughout Canada, quotas and restrictions were a way of life, and anti-Jewish bigotry sanctioned in press and pulpit. A Canadian Jewish Congress study commissioned in the late 1930s showed few Jewish teachers, and no principals, in Canadian schools. There was not a single Jewish university professor in the country.

Banks, insurance companies, and large industrial and commercial enterprises excluded Jews from employment. Jews were refused work even as salespeople in department stores. Restrictive covenants kept Jews out of "desirable" neighbourhoods as either tenants or homeowners.

And unlike today, the legal system provided little in the way of redress. There were few laws against discrimination, hatemongering or the like.

Redress had to await more enlightened times. Only in the 1960s could Canadian Jews consider themselves, and be considered by others, to be part of the Canadian family.

A Cautionary Tale of Ethnic Nationalism

By Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

Sometimes you shouldn’t give in to someone who might, according to the political zeitgeist of the time, be technically in the right – because you know they have evil motives and aggressive intentions and this will only make them stronger.

I’m referring to one of the tragedies that led up to the Second World War – Hitler’s dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, the only democratic state in eastern Europe between the two world wars.

It’s been twenty years since Czechoslovakia peacefully dissolved into two states, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, a few years after the end of Communist rule. The Czechs and Slovaks went their separate ways following the decision in July 1992 to disband the country; their “velvet divorce” was easy.

But things were very different in 1938-1939, the first time the country disintegrated .

When the multi-national Austro-Hungarian Empire or “Dual Monarchy” collapsed at the end of the First World War, most of the German areas became part of the new republic of Austria.

However, many Germans were incorporated into a newly formed country, Czechoslovakia, which comprised the lands of the former Habsburg-ruled Bohemian Crown -- Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia-- and the Slovak and Ruthenian parts of the old Kingdom of Hungary.

The population consisted of Czechs (51 per cent), Germans (23 per cent), Slovaks (16 per cent), Hungarians (5 per cent), Ruthenians (4 per cent), and Jews (1 per cent).

These Germans, living in the border regions of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, were included in the new country against their will by the victorious Allies who carved up the old Habsburg Empire.

Some had lived in these areas – which became known as the Sudetenland -- since the 12th century and they even set up a short-lived entity known as German Bohemia.

This became a recipe for disaster once Adolf Hitler took power in Germany in 1933 and created his “Third Reich.”

Using the nationalist argument that people with a common language and ethnicity should belong to the same political state, Hitler, who paraded as the champion of pan-German nationalism and a “Greater Reich,” had already grabbed Austria in March of 1938, in an enforced union known as the “Anschluss.”

Now he turned his sights on the Sudetenland. At the infamous Munich conference of September 1938, Hitler got his way and incorporated the region into Nazi Germany. And indeed, the vast majority of Sudeten Germans welcomed Hitler’s takeover.

In March of 1939, Hitler grabbed the rest of the old Crown lands of Bohemia and Moravia, turning it into a Nazi-ruled “protectorate,” while Slovakia became a German puppet state.

Czechoslovakia, reconstituted after Germany’s defeat in 1945, “solved” the problem of its Sudeten German minority through “ethnic cleansing.” About three million Germans were expelled, thousands more were killed or died, and the Czech lands became ethnically homogeneous.

The Slovaks, though, still have a restive minority to deal with to this day – the ethnic Hungarians, 8.5% of Slovakia’s population, and concentrated mostly in the southern part of the country, next to the border with Hungary.

Will this become a future Sudetenland-style crisis? Only time will tell.

A Tale of Two Capitals

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

Ottawa is a fairly nice city, but as a national capital, does it really express, through its public buildings and monuments, the historical, social and cultural values that make up Canada?

Yes, there are the National Gallery of Canada, the Canadian War Museum and, across the Ottawa River in Gatineau, the Canadian Museum of Civilization.

Confederation Square is the site of Canada’s National War Memorial. And nearby, of course, is Parliament Hill, the home of our federal legislative branch. There is also Rideau Hall, home of the governor general.

Yet the parts remain greater than the sum. These discrete landmarks don’t form a cohesive whole.

The Unimagined Canadian Capital: Challenges for the Federal Capital Region is the title of a collection of essays about the National Capital Region that grew from a conference in 2011.

Editors Rupak Chattopadhyay and Gilles Paquet, along with the various authors, maintain that too many stakeholders have neglected their duty of imagining an inspiring federal capital region.

Many of the essays blame the fragmented governance of the area. There are too many cooks spoiling the broth: two cities, Ottawa and Gatineau; two provinces, Ontario and Quebec; and the National Capital Commission, which administers the federally owned lands and buildings, all have a say in how our capital should look.

As Globe and Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson recently wrote, “various federal governments have done little, being fearful of acting lest they be accused by Canadians elsewhere of ‘squandering taxpayers’ money’ or favouring a city already grown rich on taxpayers’ largesse.” Do Canadians, he wonders, really care about their capital?

Compare this to the grandeur of the National Mall in Washington. While Ottawa, then known as Bytown, already existed when it became Canada’s capital in 1867, Washington was a planned city. President George Washington appointed the French architect Pierre L’Enfant in 1791 to design the new capital city in the square of federal territory between Maryland and Virginia that would later become the District of Columbia.

The Mall spans three kilometres between the U.S. Capitol in the east to the Lincoln Memorial at the other end. Bisecting the area vertically are the White House to the north and the Jefferson Memorial to the south. The center of the Mall is marked by the towering Washington Monument.

The National Park Service states that the purposes of the National Mall are to “provide a monumental, dignified, and symbolic setting for the governmental structures, museums and national memorials; maintain and provide for the use of the National Mall with its public promenades as a completed work of civic art, a designed historic landscape providing extraordinary vistas to symbols of the nation; and maintain the National Mall in the heart of the nation’s capital as a stage for national events and a preeminent national civic space for public gatherings.” (One notable example is the 1963 March on Washington, where Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.)

The Mall does all these things. Along its perimeters there are more than 15 museums and galleries, including the National Museum of American History, the National Gallery of Art; the National Air and Space Museum; the National Museum of the American Indian; the Smithsonian Institution; and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

Structures bordering the Mall include the Library of Congress and the United States Supreme Court Building; the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial; the Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial; the Vietnam Veterans Memorial; and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The Mall is the place where the nation conserves its past, simultaneously recollecting it, honouring it, and practicing it (in the White House and Capitol), observed Charles L. Griswold and Stephen S. Griswold in their article “The Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Washington Mall,” published in the journal Critical Inquiry in 1986.

“The area possesses an extraordinary cohesiveness from the standpoint of its symbolism,” they concluded. Through its iconography, it is a concrete and living lesson in American history.

It certainly makes Ottawa pale by comparison.

A Vanished Ideology: Jewish Communism 1917-1956    

Henry Srebrnik,  [Toronto] Jewish Tribune
  
In May, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York will host a conference on Jews and the Left, which will include presentations on Jews and Communism in the 20th Century.
Few people now recall how significant a role that ideology once played among a segment of the community. But it would come to an abrupt end.

On Feb. 25, 1956, Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Union, delivered a four-hour speech to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party in which he denounced the crimes committed by Joseph Stalin and his associates.

Stalin's antisemitic campaigns, which had intensified after 1948, were also finally acknowledged. The Warsaw Yiddish Communist newspaper Folkshtime in April 1956 published articles about the extent and virulence of Stalin's antisemitism. 

All of this came as a shock to Jewish Communists in the western countries, and the Jewish Communist movement, which had flourished since the Russian Revolution in 1917, virtually vanished.

The movement had its origins in east European traditions of political radicalism, and sought to improve the condition of working-class Jews by adding ideas of Jewish renewal to Marxist-Leninist ideology.

It constituted a response to the economic, political, social and cultural problems facing the mainly Yiddish-speaking immigrant Jewish populations and gained a fair number of adherents and some measure of success between 1917 and 1956. Though officially part of the larger world Communist movement, in reality the Jewish Communists developed their own specific ideology, which was infused as much by Jewish sources, including the literature of such Yiddish poets and writers as I.L. Peretz and Sholem Asch, as it was inspired by the Bolshevik revolution.

The Jewish Communist movement created its own fraternal organizations - in Canada, the United Jewish People's Order; in the United States, the Jewish People's Fraternal Order; in Britain, branches of the Workers' Circle - as well as publications, schools, and camps. The Yiddish-language groups, especially, were interconnected through the YKUF, the World Jewish Cultural Union.

Indeed, through YKUF, which operated mainly in Yiddish, they had access to a great variety of newspapers and theoretical and literary journals. Hence, Jewish Communists were able to communicate, disseminate information, and debate issues such as Jewish nationality and statehood independently of other Communists.

In much the same way as Zionist organizations considered themselves support groups for the building of a Jewish nation in Eretz Israel, so did the Jewish Communists propagandize on behalf of the Yiddish-language Jewish Autonomous Region in Birobidzhan, in the Soviet Far East.

During World War II, they took their political cue from the Moscow-based Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, and helped sponsor the 1943 tour of the Soviet Jewish emissaries Itzik Feffer and Shloime Mikhoels to Canada, the United States, Mexico and Britain.

The period during and immediately following World War II proved to be the historical "moment" for the Jewish Communists. They had been involved in a decade of "popular front" campaigns on behalf of anti-fascist struggles in Spain and elsewhere. They were in the forefront of support for the Soviet Union in its struggle against Hitler.

By 1945, most were also favourably disposed towards a Jewish state, and were instrumental in moving the world Communist movement in that direction.

This relatively short-lived but favourable conjuncture of ethnic and class forces enabled Jewish Communists in several countries to post a number of electoral and ideological victories in constituencies with significant Jewish populations.

In the July 1945 British general election, Phil Piratin, a Communist candidate, was elected to Parliament from the predominantly Jewish constituency of Mile End, Stepney. In the Cartier riding of Montreal, Fred Rose, running for the Labour Progressive (Communist) Party, won election to the House of Commons in 1943 and 1945; two LPP candidates, including J.B. Salsberg, won seats in the 1945 Ontario provincial election.

In the United States, Leo Isacson, running on behalf of the Communist-dominated American Labor Party, won election in 1948 to the House of Representatives from the largely Jewish 24th Congressional District in the Bronx. And South Africa witnessed the election, in January 1949, of Sam Kahn, a leading Communist Party theoretician.

The movement was also very active in the Jewish communities of Argentina, Australia, France, Mexico and Uruguay.

It remained a force in Jewish life until the mid-1950s. But it was already becoming ideologically marginalized after the establishment of the state of Israel.

The disillusionment with the Soviet Union that followed the revelations of Stalin's crimes and antisemitic repression was for most of its members the last straw.

Soviet-Style Disproportion

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

In his State of the Union speech last month, Barack Obama warned that America is becoming “a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by.”

The United States has gone from being a comparatively egalitarian society to one of the most unequal democracies in the world. The richest fifth of the population controls about 85 per cent of the country’s wealth.

Income inequality stands at its highest rate since the Great Depression. Chief executives now make roughly 200 to 300 times as much as their average employees’ salary.

The incomes of most Americans began to flatten or decline after 1980 -- they now enjoy less economic mobility than their counterparts in Canada and much of Western Europe.

The economic meltdown since 2007 has created further damage, asserts the well-regarded Columbia University economist Joseph Stiglitz. “Unemployed young people are alienated. It will be harder and harder to get some large proportion of them onto a productive track. They will be scarred for life by what is happening today,” he wrote last December in a Vanity Fair article.

But the problem is not simply that a small number of people are very rich or pay less than their fair share of taxes. It also lies in the way many of them got rich.

They are all too often bankers, hedge fund managers, and Wall Street traders who manipulate immense sums of money for their own benefit, and give themselves multi-million dollar bonuses – regardless of whether their activities actually benefit the economy as a whole.

Very often it’s actually the reverse, as companies are downsized, manufacturing jobs outsourced to other countries, workers laid off, and homes foreclosed.

Yet financiers and corporate leaders have managed to grab more and more of the country’s income for themselves -- even when their corporation’s performance has been disappointing.

These are not the “captains of industry” of yesteryear.

The political class has also done well for itself. Roughly 11 per cent of members of Congress have a net worth of more than $9 million, according to an analysis of 2010 financial disclosures compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. That puts these politicians in the top one per cent of Americans in terms of wealth.

Has America developed a Soviet-style “nomenklatura,” an elite that appropriates a disproportionate share of the nation’s wealth, by virtue of its position in society? After all, many of these people don’t “make” (as in produce) anything, they just make money.

In the Soviet Union, while the economy stagnated, the Communist party elite enjoyed a standard of living far greater than that of ordinary Russians. The system provided them with ample high quality goods, while those less privileged might wait months or years for basic necessities.

And when the Soviet command economy finally collapsed, and people could buy state-owned industries and property, it was these privileged Communist apparatchiks, with strong connections to Soviet power structures and access to the monetary funds, who snapped them up at bargain-basement prices, becoming a class of ultra-rich oligarchs.

Is America, with its growing gap between the privileged few and a declining middle and working class, beginning to resemble the Soviet Union after the 1970s?

"Mister One Per Cent" Loses South Carolina Primary

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Newt Gingrich came from behind to beat Mitt Romney handily in the Republican South Carolina primary last week.

Romney is a casualty of the ‘Occupy' movement, which has highlighted the growing gap between rich and poor in America - the so-called "99 per cent" of the population versus the ultra-rich "one per cent."

Romney has played into the hands of populists with flat-footed statements that demonstrate how out of touch he is in a country where millions are unemployed or having their homes foreclosed.

When asked during the primary contest about his income, this was his answer:

"For the past 10 years, my income comes overwhelmingly from investments made in the past, rather than ordinary income or earned annual income," he responded. "Then, I get speaker's fees from time to time, but not very much."

Not very much? From February 2010 to February 2011, Romney earned $374,327.62 in speaking fees - 10 times what an average worker in South Carolina makes in a year.

But even that is small potatoes. His fortune of about $250 million comes from his time as a "venture capitalist" with Bain Capital.

Romney has now released tax returns indicating that he and his wife, Ann, paid a tax rate of 13.9 per cent in 2010. He is among the top one per cent of taxpayers.

Romney's tax rate is below that of most wage-earning Americans, who may pay as high as 35 per cent, because most of his income flows from capital gains on investments. His holdings include an undisclosed amount in funds based in the Grand Cayman Islands, although his aides say he never used the location as a tax haven.

Romney wasn't a "capitalist" in the classical sense of the term - someone like Henry Ford or Thomas Edison, a businessman who founds a successful manufacturing company.

Following graduation from Harvard with law and business degrees, Romney joined Bain & Co., a global management consulting firm in Boston.

He then co-founded, with rich friends, the spin-off company Bain Capital, a private equity investment firm that became highly profitable by taking over companies and downsizing them in order to make greater profits. This often involved laying off workers, of course.

In other words, Romney simply got friends to pool money in order to buy (and in many cases destroy) companies. He's a child of privilege - how many readers of this article could get rich by first having access to millions of dollars?

Romney has defended Bain's practices by referring to the theory, first popularized by the economist Joseph Schumpeter in his book Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, of "creative destruction." But Romney deliberately misinterprets the term.

Destroying firms to enrich investors isn't what Schumpeter meant by creative destruction. It refers to the fact that innovative or improved technologies, which create new products, can lead to the demise of firms producing things no longer in demand. They change the capitalist playing field.

When Xerox invented the photocopier, it was the end of the road for producers of carbon paper. The word processor finished off typewriters. And thanks to the digital camera, which doesn't require film, Eastman Kodak has just filed for bankruptcy.

Texas governor Rick Perry (of all people) called what Romney did "vulture capitalism." Even if Romney wins the nomination, given today's economic climate, there's little chance he can become president of the United States.

Can Romney Win the Presidency?

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

This coming Saturday, South Carolina will hold its Republican Party primary. The candidates include Mitt Romney, who was victorious in Iowa and New Hampshire; Rick Santorum and Rick Perry, two social conservative Christians, and the more secular Newt Gingrich.

Last week, more than 100 evangelical Christian conservatives gathered in Texas and voted overwhelmingly to rally behind Santorum, to create a united front against Romney. Their problem? Romney's Mormon faith.

Romney is a sixth-generation member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, as the denomination founded in the 19th century by Joseph Smith is officially known.

Mormons consider themselves Christians. However, the theological differences between Mormonism and traditional Christianity are so fundamental, experts say, that they encompass the very understanding of God and Jesus, what counts as Scripture, and what happens when people die.

The Mormon Church maintains that in the early 1800s, its first prophet, Joseph Smith, had revelations that restored Christianity to its true path. He bequeathed to his church volumes of revelations, including the sacred Book of Mormon, which includes an appearance by Jesus in the Americas shortly after his resurrection.

But no other Christian denomination has ever accepted divine revelations that go beyond the two Biblical testaments. After all, Muslims, too, recognize the entire Christian and Jewish Bible as divinely inspired, but also consider the Quran to be the final word of God as revealed to the prophet Muhammad.

Persecuted by other Americans - Smith himself was lynched by a mob in 1844 - the Mormons trekked across the American Great Plains under the leadership of Brigham Young in 1847, and created their own "Zion" by the Great Salt Lake in today's Utah (then still Mexican territory).

Romney's mother comes from Utah, but his father was born in a Mormon colony in Mexico. He is descended from Mormons who came to the Chihuahua desert in 1885 seeking refuge from American anti-polygamy laws.

Polygamy continued in the Mexican colonies after church elders officially banned it in the U.S. in 1890. It was the only way Utah was able to attain statehood six years later.

When it comes to the matter of his faith, Romney's time as a young missionary during his two and a half years in France was apparently pivotal. In a new book, "The Real Romney," Boston Globe journalists Michael Kranish and Scott Helman write that, "Having begun his mission with what he called thin ties to the faith, he became a stalwart believer."

In South Carolina, where about 60 per cent of Republican voters are evangelical Christian Protestants, Romney, a former bishop in the church, faces an electorate that, in many cases, considers Romney's faith apostasy.

It's possible that Romney will overcome this and other hurdles and become the Republican nominee in next November's presidential election. But unless the U.S. economy is at that time in a deep depression, he will lose to President Obama.

Secular people who don't care about any of this are more likely to be Democrats anyhow, whereas the evangelical backbone of much of the Republican Party will, in large numbers, find Romney's faith too hard to ignore.

They won't vote for Obama either, but they'll stay home in large numbers. (Of course African-American evangelicals will vote for Obama.)

In a sense, for many voters, bigotry (objecting to Romney due to his religion) will trump racism (opposing Obama because he is African-American) when they go to the polls.

To Name is to Claim

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

People of a certain age might remember the rather silly song “Istanbul (Not Constantinople),” first recorded by the Four Lads in 1953. One verse goes like this:

    Istanbul was Constantinople
    Now it’s Istanbul, not Constantinople
    Been a long time gone, Constantinople
    Why did Constantinople get the works?
    That’s nobody’s business but the Turks

The city of Constantinople, situated between the Black and Mediterranean seas, had been the capital of the Greek Byzantine Empire for more than a thousand years, and is still the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church. It was conquered by the Ottoman Turks, who were Muslims, in 1453. They would rename it Istanbul and it became the capital of their vast empire.

And despite what the song lyrics say, it may still also be part of the Greeks’ “business.” Peoples have long memories.

The song by the way, also noted that New Amsterdam became New York. That name change occurred in 1664, when the British ousted the Dutch from their colony.

To name, or rename, is to demonstrate hegemony and possession. Such changes have occurred throughout history. The biblical Canaan, for instance, became the land of Israel, which in later centuries was called, by succeeding rulers, Palestine. Part of it is again the modern state of Israel.

Some name changes are the result of decolonization, especially in Africa. The British colony of Gold Coast became Ghana, the name of an ancient empire, when it acquired independence in 1957.  Mali, the former French Sudan, was also named for an ancient empire, three years later.

Rhodesia, created by the British imperialist Cecil Rhodes, would clearly have to alter its name upon independence: It became Zimbabwe in 1980, and its capital, Salisbury, became Harare.

In the Congo, Belgian place names were also replaced after 1960. The capital, Leopoldville, named for King Leopold II, became Kinshasa -- and none too soon. Leopold’s harsh regime in the Congo between 1885 and 1908 had been directly or indirectly responsible for the death of millions of people.

In Europe, name changes have often reflected territorial or ideological transformations.

After World War II, when Poland acquired former German territory, the cities of Danzig and Breslau became, respectively, Gdan'sk and Wroc?aw. The Italian city of Fiume, ceded to Yugoslavia, was renamed Rijeka. It is now part of Croatia.

In Canada, the former Berlin, in southwestern Ontario, became Kitchener during World War I. There were similar anti-German name changes elsewhere in Canada and the United States.

Marxist ideology in the new Soviet Union created after the Russian Revolution resulted in many changes, as cities were renamed for Communist heroes: St. Petersburg became Leningrad, Nizhny Novgorod became Gorky, Yekaterinburg was called Sverdlovsk, Tsaritsyn became Stalingrad, and so on.

Ironically, in most cases, the post-Soviet Russian Federation has restored the old tsarist names, though Stalingrad is now Volgograd. For obvious reasons, the Russians have kept the name Kaliningrad, named after a Soviet president, for the Prussian city of Königsberg, captured from the Germans in World War II and annexed to the Soviet Union.

In the former Communist East Germany, the city known from 1953 to 1990 as Karl-Marx-Stadt is once again Chemnitz.  However, in Communist Vietnam, the old Saigon is still Ho Chi Minh City.

Even a different way of spelling the same word can indicate a change of status. The city of Montreal, when spelled with an e-acute, as Montréal, changes the sound of the word from “Munt-reeyol” to “Mon-reyal.” This also reflects shifts in political power in Quebec.

Prince Edward Island has had – and maybe still has? – at least three names. To the Mi’kmaq nation it is Abegweit or Epekwitk; when it was ruled by France, it was called Île Saint-Jean; and the British named it for Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, a son of King George III, in 1798.

To name is to claim.
       

Four Divided Cities, Then and Now

Henry Srebnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

Four major cities were divided due to war in the 20^th century. Two are completely reunited, one may someday again face partition, and one remains split in two.

At the end of World War II, Germany and Austria were each divided into four occupation zones controlled by one of the four occupying Allied powers: the United States, the United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union.

The capitals of Berlin and Vienna were also split into four sectors, though each city was within that country’s Soviet zone.

The American, British, and French zones soon united as West Berlin, while East Berlin became the capital of Communist East Germany.

At first, the border between the Western and Eastern sectors of Berlin remained open, but in August 1961 the Communists built the infamous Berlin Wall, to prevent people escaping the east.

Checkpoint Charlie was the name given to the best-known crossing point and became a symbol of the separation of east and west.

The number of people who died trying to cross the wall during its 29 year existence was well above 200.

The wall was finally opened in November 1989. East and West Berlin were merged one year later with German reunification.

The four-power occupation of Vienna differed in one key respect from that of Berlin: the central area of the city constituted an international zone in which the four powers alternated control on a monthly basis.

During the 10 years of the four-power occupation, Vienna became a hot-bed for international espionage between the Western and Eastern blocs.The four-power control of Vienna lasted until the  Austrian State Treaty was signed in 1955, when Austria regained full sovereignty and the city was reunited.

The 1947 United Nations resolution to partition Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state stipulated the establishment of Jerusalem as a third, internationally administered, separate political body. It was to be a corpus separatum, under a UN‑appointed Governor.

But this never happened. When Israel declared its independence, on May 15, 1948, warfare with its Arab neighbours ensued. While the Jordanian attempt to take West Jerusalem failed, the Arab Legion held on to East Jerusalem, including the walled Old City, which includes the Temple Mount, with the al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock; the Western Wall of the Second Jewish Temple; and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

A no-man's land between East and West Jerusalem came into being in November 1948. Barbed wire and concrete barriers ran down the center of the city, and a crossing point was established at the Mandelbaum Gate.

In 1967, during the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War, Israel captured East Jerusalem, along with the entire West Bank. East Jerusalem was subsequently annexed.

But Jerusalem remains a deeply divided city of two thoroughly antagonistic and mutually hostile communities who hardly set foot in each other's areas, who hardly communicate with each other, and who live very separate lives, mentally and culturally divided. 

However, a repartition of Jerusalem that would involve a return to the 1967 armistice lines would be difficult, as it would necessitate the eviction of some 200,000 Jewish residents of East Jerusalem from their homes.

An alternative to a territorial partition might be a partition of sovereignty, with an open city, so that the existing Arab populated parts of the city would be part of Palestine, and the existing Jewish populated parts of the city would be under Israeli sovereignty. Another version of this “condominium” solution might involve a form of joint sovereignty only over the Old City.

After all, the Jewish and Muslim holy sites (the Western Wall and the Temple Mount) are conjoined, nor can they be surgically separated. In any case, as the Israeli writer Avishai Margalit has asked, how does one divide a symbol?

Nicosia (Lefkosia in Turkish), the largest city in Cyprus, as well as its main business center, is the only divided capital in the world.

The southern section is the capital and seat of government of the Greek-run Republic of Cyprus. The northern part functions as the capital of the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.

During the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, Turkish troops occupied northern Nicosia (as well as the northern part of Cyprus). A buffer zone, the Green Line, controlled by UN peacekeepers, was established across the island to separate the northern Turkish controlled part of the island from the Greek south.

After many failed attempts on reaching agreement between the two communities, the barrier at Ledra Street was re-opened in April 2008. It became the sixth crossing point between the southern and northern parts of Cyprus.

But the island remains partitioned and with no prospects of political union in the offing, so does Nicosia.

Questioning Civic and Ethnic Nationalism

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

Political thinkers over the past two centuries have grappled with the question of what constitutes a nation, and who belongs – or doesn’t belong – to it.

Civic or territorial nationalists define the nation as an association of people with equal and shared political rights, and an allegiance to similar political procedures. The nation is a political entity, inclusive and liberal. Anyone can, so to speak, join through becoming a citizen.

Ethnic nationalists define the nation in terms of a shared heritage, which usually includes a common language, faith, and ancestry. They base membership on descent or heredity. It is clearly a more restrictive form of nationalism.

Let’s use one illustration to d

emonstrate the confusion that can occur when we try to pigeonhole people based on their differing identities.

We’ll take three families: the Rahmans are Muslim Bengalis from Bangladesh, the former East Pakistan. The Barkatis are Muslim Bengalis, but from the Indian state of West Bengal and therefore citizens of India. The Banerjees, who are Hindus, are also West Bengalis from India.

All three families move to Glasgow, Scotland. While it does have its own assembly and legal system, Scotland is not a sovereign state, but a devolved part of the United Kingdom.

Are the three families now Scots? In terms of ethnicity, no. But for civic or territorial nationalists, the answer is yes, they are Scottish. But are they then Indo-Scots, Bengali Scots, or, in the case of the Rahmans, Bangladeshi Scots?

Or, for that matter, since Scotland remains part of the British state, are they – at least once they acquire citizenship – simply British, thereby bypassing the tricky business of whether they are Scottish or not? That would work for some.

However, since Scottish ethno-nationalists, especially those who wish to create an independent Scotland, see the inhabitants of Great Britain as English, Scottish, and Welsh, the term British means little to them. It is merely a matter of legal citizenship.

So if nationalists were victorious and Scotland became a sovereign country, would the three families now be defined as Scottish, given that they are already UK citizens living in Glasgow?

For civic and territorial nationalists, the answer would be yes. But for some Scottish ethnic nationalists, the families would still not be Scots, even though citizens of a new Scotland -- though perhaps through assimilation, their descendants might become Scottish. (Racists, an extreme subgroup of ethnic nationalists, would deny that they could ever be Scots.)

What of the reverse? If the MacGregor family, ethnically Scottish, decide to leave Glasgow and move to London, would they cease being Scots? Not to ethnic nationalists, they wouldn’t – they’d become part of a Scottish diaspora.

Yet should the United Kingdom dissolve, and England, like Scotland, become – as it was for centuries – a country on its own, the MacGregors would become citizens of England.

And then perhaps they would become “Scots English” in terms of ethnic identity, despite the oxymoronic sound of that definition.

Is it a wonder these issues are never resolved?

Political Culture More Important Than Formal Structures

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian       

Rio de Janeiro and Charlottetown both have traffic lights at major intersections. However, in Rio there are often police officers at the intersections as well, something Charlottetown manages without.

Why? Because otherwise - as I noticed when I was in Brazil years ago -- many drivers in Rio would, after looking to see no oncoming traffic on the cross street, continue driving right through the intersection.

In Charlottetown, not many people would do that, even in the dead of night and with no traffic on either the cross street or on the one on which they were travelling.

It all boils down to culture, and driving habits are a part of culture, of course.

People's attitudes and values regarding their political system are what we term political culture.

It's often the most volatile countries, ones with little sense of overarching national consciousness or a democratic political culture, that have the most stringent rules and regulations on the books.

Their political structures usually include intricate power-sharing arrangements between identifiable ethnic, linguistic, and religious communities or rival regions, including broad governing coalitions.

Their electoral procedures are designed to be as ‘fair' and ‘inclusive' as possible, through the crafting of complex formulas, such as the alternative vote, single-transferable vote, two-round runoff, proportional representation, and mixed-member-proportional systems.

This ensures that most political parties on the ballot - and there are always many -- gain seats in their legislatures, allowing disparate groups a voice in governance.

Some countries also reserve places or implement quotas for women, minorities, and even occupational and social groups in their parliaments.

They may also allow communities a large measure of control over culture and education.

On the other hand, some countries that are troubled by very deep political divisions only sanction parties that have a ‘national' character.

Such parties must demonstrate support in more than a few regions in order to run in national elections. Groups that are overtly the vehicles of particular sub-national entities are banned as being "divisive" and a danger to the unity of the state.

Yet despite their elaborate constitutional architecture and political safeguards, many of these countries still dissolve into civil strife or end up governed by brutal authoritarian regimes.

This happens because they are, typically, artificial states within whose borders live peoples who may be historic enemies or, at the least, have no interest in inhabiting the same polity with their fellow citizens. Patriotism and loyalty towards the nation, in such places, is clearly in short supply.

These unstable countries sometimes implode altogether and become failed states. And all their fancy structural designs do not save them.

In old and consolidated democracies such as Canada, we manage to muddle along with a patently ‘unfair' first-past-the-post winner-take-all system for electing MPs.

This usually allows a party to win a majority in the House of Commons with only a plurality of the vote. Even when a party fails to do so, we frown upon coalition government.

We also permit an openly separatist party like the Bloc Québécois to run in federal elections. And we tolerate an unelected senate.

Why are we not more incensed about this? Because we have a democratic political culture and don't think the country is in danger of falling apart or becoming a dictatorship.

Does this make us less ‘democratic'? Of course not. How many Canadians would prefer to live in some of the countries I've described, entities such as Bosnia-Herzegovina, Lebanon, Nepal or Uganda?

What counts is the underlying political culture, something that can't simply be constructed through clever political engineering.

Canada is not as polarized, nor suffers from the same kind of political violence, as do many of these other countries.

We trust our politicians not to cross certain lines, such as fixing elections, bribing voters, jailing opponents, revoking civil liberties, or using the military to suppress dissent.

Our governments don't have the same level of control over our day-to-day lives. An independent judiciary serves as a check on their actions. So elections, for us, are not a matter of life and death, as is - literally - the case in other places. We can therefore afford to be more nonchalant about our democratic shortcomings.

It's like legislation concerning alcohol: the strict regulation of liquor (or its outright prohibition) is a society's response to rampant alcoholism. In places where this is not a major issue, laws regulating the sale and consumption of spirits are less stringent, because less necessary.

The same holds true for a country's political system. Where democracy already exists, there's less zeal to create a "perfect" version of it among the citizenry.   

Palestinians Are a Nation

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

Speaking to an audience at the Republican Jewish Coalition in Washington recently, Newt Gingrich, now the front-runner in the race to become the Republican nominee for president of the United States, declared the Palestinians are an “invented” people.

He later elaborated on his remarks. “Remember there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire,” Gingrich told a television interviewer. “We’ve had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs, and were historically part of the Arab community.”

For this he has been criticized by the Arab League, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, and even Republican opponents Mitt Romney and Ron Paul. He has been especially denounced by people on the left, who see in his remarks a “hard line” pro-Israel position.

Actually, anti-Zionists do the same thing, insisting that Jews are simply members of a religion and are not an ethnic group, and hence have no right to part of Palestine. Indeed, an Israeli academic, Shlomo Sand, recently published a controversial book entitled “The Invention of the Jewish People.”

The whole thing is somewhat ironic, given that the critics don’t seem to know that left-wing theoreticians like the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawn claim that all nations are “constructed” by clever elites and are thus “inventions.”

Back when Golda Meir was prime minister of Israel, she famously said that there are no such people as the Palestinians. She meant that until the 1960s they had no separate consciousness as “Palestinians” (a simple geographic term, and a fuzzy one, at that).

They were called “Arabs” when they revolted against British rule in the Palestine Mandate in 1936-39 and when the 1947 partition plan, which called for “Arab” and “Jewish” states, was passed by the UN.

It was the “Arab Higher Committee,” led by the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, which opposed the creation of Israel by the Jews (who of course weren't yet “Israelis,” either).

Prior to 1948, Jews used the term Palestinian more than the Arabs did. The Jerusalem Post newspaper used to be called the Palestine Post. And during the Second World War, more than 5,000 Jewish volunteers from Palestine were organized into three battalions of the Palestine Regiment.

But never mind all that. People who say they’re a nation are one, it’s that simple. They define themselves, and don’t get defined by others. So of course the Palestinians are now a nation. Like every other nation, they have, so to speak, invented themselves – just the way Americans, Canadians, and others did before them.

Whether invented or not, there are now two nations within the old Palestine Mandate – Israelis and Palestinians. Each should have a state.

Arguing for Real Gender Equality

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

Our society is obsessed by numbers. Statistics hold us spellbound. Everything is reduced to percentages, sometimes to the exclusion of more meaningful measures. But figures can mislead, especially in politics.

For instance, statistics regarding the composition of assemblies by gender in themselves tell us little about democracy or the empowerment of women.

In our own 2011 federal election, 25 per cent of the seats were won by women. That number has, in fact, been increasing, and that’s good.

But in Ecuador the National Assembly, after their 2009 election, included 40 women out of 124 members, 32 per cent, thanks to gender quotas.

In the recent balloting in Tunisia, won by an Islamic party, women took 29 per cent of the seats, again, because of a quota system.

And in Rwanda, the election of 2008 saw 45 of 80 seats in the Chamber of Deputies occupied by women, a full 56 per cent – because 24 women, two from each province and from the city of Kigali, were elected on women-only ballots.

Yet who would honestly say that women are better off in those less fortunate and less democratic countries than here?

Former Communist states also made sure that women were well represented in their parliaments. Why not? It’s not as if the women could wrest power from the Communist apparatchiks – almost all men – who actually ran the state.

In fact, many of the women legislators in today’s sham democracies are mere pawns, their names placed on proportional representation lists to do the bidding of the male “bosses” who run the political parties and to make the countries these men govern “look good” to the outside world.

These women haven’t really been elected as individuals in their own right. And the parliaments in which they sit, in any case, exercise little power.

It’s more façade than reality, often propagandistic and superficial window dressing.

We may have fewer women in our Canadian legislatures, but we know that they have actually been selected to run for office in a party’s open nomination meeting and have then won a competitive race within their riding.

They can exercise the same degree of power, and represent their constituents just as competently, as any of their male colleagues.

And as time moves on and prejudices lessen, women will indeed reach gender parity – for real.

Is the Middle East Edging Towards War?

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

Current events in the Middle East don’t give us much hope that democracy is the new zeitgeist in the region.

Early results from the first round of the ongoing Egyptian parliamentary election indicate that the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party is winning about 40 per cent of the vote.

Founded in 1928, the Brotherhood is the largest Islamic party in the Middle East, with branches and allies in many countries (including Hamas in Gaza). It was officially banned in Egypt until the ouster of former president Hosni Mubarak.

And the Al-Nour Party, organized by ultra-conservative Islamists called Salafis, who are more extreme than the Brotherhood, appears to be gaining a further 25 per cent of the ballots cast.

These figures might even increase, because the results now tabulated came from the more liberal urban areas, including Cairo itself and Port Said. The second and third stages of voting will take place in more conservative rural areas in the coming months.

Should these numbers hold, the two groups might control at least 65 percent of the parliamentary seats, enough to gain power – should the Egyptian army permit it. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces remains the ultimate power in the land.

“It means that, if the Brotherhood chooses, Parliament can be an Islamists affair -- a debate between liberal Islamists, moderate Islamists and conservatives Islamists, and that is it,” Michael Wahid Hanna, an Egyptian-born researcher at the Century Foundation in Cairo, told the New York Times.

This is a worry for Israel, since the Islamists in Egypt have always opposed the 1979 peace treaty with Israel and would like to abrogate it. An Israeli official acknowledged concerns: “Obviously, it is hard to see in this result good news for Israel.”

Israel has begun building a fence along its long border with Egypt along the Sinai Peninsula desert. It fears that radical Islamic groups will use the Sinai for attacks on Israel.

Also, maintains Geneive Abdo, author of No God but God: Egypt and the Triumph of Islam, no matter which party picks up the most seats in parliament, the new Egypt will be less compliant to American demands and cultivate warmer relations with Iran.

Islamic parties calling themselves moderates have now formed governments in Tunisia and Morocco and will no doubt play a role in Libya as well, with the mercurial Muammar Gadhafi gone. The Libyan dictator was clearly a sociopath, but not particularly devout.

Meanwhile, Iran has been covertly developing nuclear weapons. A Nov. 8 report from the International Atomic Energy Agency was a wake-up call, even for those who have refused to see the danger. The report noted that “Iran has not suspended its enrichment-related activities” and is also working to develop long-range missiles.

Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence, asserted recently that Iran has enough material for four or five nuclear bombs; all that is required is a decision to proceed.

The Islamic Republic proceeds from strength to strength, thumbing its nose at western sanctions. Two months ago the Iranians were accused of hatching a brazen plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington.

And last week the British Embassy compound in Tehran was trashed by a mob of militants, mostly members of Iran’s paramilitary Basiji brigades loyal to Iran’s ruling clerics.

Britain’s ambassador to Iran, Dominick Chilcott, described it as a mix of “mindless vandalism” and “sinister targeted theft.”

British historian Michael Burleigh, author of Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism, has stated that “Unless the international community acts in concert to neutralise this danger, there will sooner or later be an Israeli strike to frustrate Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. If that happened, the world really would be in a new dark age.”

Israel must feel as if the noose is tightening around its neck and wonders whether its only real major ally, the United States, would be willing to defend it, should war break out.

U.S. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta recently asserted that Israel is partly responsible for its increasing isolation and that it now must take diplomatic “bold action” to mend ties with its Arab neighbours and come to a settlement with the Palestinians. It is understood that Panetta’s comments are widely shared by U.S. officials.

“Stuck in the Middle With You” was a rock song released by Stealers Wheel in 1972. The refrain went like this:

“Clowns to the left of me,

Jokers to the right, here I am,

Stuck in the middle with you.”

Today’s Israeli version might sound like this:

Egypt to the left of me,

Iran to the right, here I am

 Stuck in the middle with USA.

A Student Newspaper Best Indicator of Intellectual Vibrancy on Campus

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

There are many ways to gauge the excellence of a university, and ranking them has become a major growth industry. But my favourite is one that seems never to be used as an indicator: the excellence of the student newspaper.

I write as someone who has over the years become familiar with many student publications. I obtained degrees from universities in Britain, Canada and the United States, and I taught at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, a liberal arts school, and the University of Calgary, a big research institution, before coming to the University of Prince Edward Island.

A friend who lives in Montreal has been sending me copies of the McGill Daily, McGill University's main student paper. (There is more than one.)

And in reading the wide variety of news articles and opinion pieces, as well as the in-depth coverage of the arts and sciences, I find that the paper is, professionally and intellectually, the equal of any college paper - or, for that matter, most daily newspapers. (Full disclosure: four decades ago, I was a student at McGill and also a contributor to the Daily.)

The Daily has a storied history: this year marks the centenary of its founding, and through the decades many famous names have appeared on its masthead and in its by-lines. During the 1960s and 1970s, it was in the forefront of student activism and radical politics. That tradition continues: it is still far to the left of most Canadian newspapers, including those published at universities.

If the Daily is a reflection of McGill's student body, then the university remains a vibrant academic institution, where "critical thinking" is a reality and not merely a PR platitude.

And this relates to my main point: Naturally, McGill and similar world-class universities have a more outstanding faculty than a smaller school such as UPEI - though I can think of some professors here who would not be out of place teaching there.

But the real difference probably lies in the student body itself. At UPEI, we have many excellent, even outstanding, students, but not the same "critical mass" found at larger places like McGill. And so we do not have the same climate of intellectual inquiry.

Much of real learning goes on outside the classroom, in lounges, the union, the library, and elsewhere, places where students interact, issues are debated, and heated arguments may ensue about matters that are not just "on the exam" or related to grades.

Of course, it helps that students at McGill, the University of Toronto, and similar big-city Canadian schools are exposed to more in the way of culture than those studying in smaller towns.

Obviously, Charlottetown can never match that.

In the U.S., many large universities are located in college towns which serve the same function: they provide the cultural and political milieu of an urban centre without, so to speak, the rest of the city.

So it's unfair to compare a small school like UPEI - which in any case has offsetting advantages, such as smaller classroom sizes and better faculty-student ratios - to big research universities.

But it never hurts to aim higher. And we are indeed doing just that.

What’s to Become of Mideast’s Christians?

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside. PEI] Journal-Pioneer

The Arab awaking has been, at best, a mixed blessing for the Middle East’s Christian Arab minorities. The uprisings in Libya and Tunisia have had little impact on the region’s Christians, as these two countries are almost entirely Sunni Muslim in religion.

But Egypt and Syria are a different story. The fall of Egypt’s president Hosni Mubarak earlier this year, and the ongoing rebellion against Bashar al-Assad, the authoritarian president of Syria, has exposed these minorities to violence and persecution by extremists.

The upheavals have prompted concerns that regimes that were seen as guarantors of Arab Christian survival, whatever their other faults, may be replaced by ideological Islamists.

In fact, Christian Arabs have been leaving the Middle East for decades, fearing the growth of fundamentalist Islamic groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood.

It is estimated that about half of Iraq’s 1.4-million Christians have fled the country since the American invasion in 2003, and even in Lebanon, which once had a Christian majority, the 1.7-million Christians are now only about one third of the country’s population.

They are now a negligible presence in the Palestinian territories – even in places such as Bethlehem. In Israel some two per cent of Arab citizens are Christian. And in Jordan Christians comprise about three per cent of the population.

Egypt has some 10-million Christians, the largest remaining non-Muslim population in the Middle East by far. The ancient Coptic Orthodox Church is the main Christian denomination in Egypt, led by Pope Shenouda III. They represent more than 10 per cent of the total population.

Mubarak allowed them religious freedoms and punished Islamists who persecuted them. That protection is now gone.

A car bomb exploded in front of a Coptic Church in Alexandria last New Year’s Eve, killing 23 people and injuring at least 79. There was further sectarian violence in the country between Christians and Muslims in March and April.

The destruction at a Coptic church in southern Egypt on Sept. 30 further heightened tensions. When liberal Muslims joined Coptic Christians as they marched through Cairo’s Maspero area on Oct. 9 in protest, they were attacked.

Egyptian security forces then rammed their armed vehicles into the crowd and fired live ammunition indiscriminately. At least 36 people were killed and 272 injured.

The first stage of staggered parliamentary elections will begin on Nov. 28 amidst continuing turmoil and many Copts fear a strong showing by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Given these conditions, large numbers are leaving the country. “If emigration of Christians continues at the present rate,” said Naguib Gabriel, director of the Cairo-based Egyptian Union of Human Rights Organizations, “it may reach 250,000 by the end of 2011.”

Syria’s Christian population, once more than 30 per cent of the country’s total, is now down to 10 per cent. The 2.5-million Christians in Syria belong to various eastern rite Orthodox, Catholic and Assyrian churches.

The Assad regime in Syria is dominated by the Alawite minority, itself just 10 percent of the population. They came to political power in the 1960s by dominating the army and the Ba’ath Party.

A Shi’a sect, they are viewed by many Sunni Arabs – who are the vast majority of Syrians -- as heretics.

Many Christians fear that Assad’s downfall would deprive them of the semblance of protection the Assad family has provided for four decades. (Bashar’s father Hafez ruled the country from 1970 until 2000.) They might be subjected to reprisals at the hands of a conservative Sunni leadership that has long been out of power.

The Damascus regime has claimed that it is being challenged by Islamic radicals. The demonstrators deny that, but many Christians appear to believe it.

Hence there have been interventions from bishops and priests, Orthodox and Catholic, on behalf of the government. As the Apostolic Nuncio, Archbishop Mario Zenari recently stated, Syria has been a country that has been “exemplary in terms of harmony between different religious confessions, for mutual respect between the Muslim majority and Christian minority.”

But the Assad regime is probably living on borrowed time. Syria has already been suspended from the 22-member Arab League. Its only Middle Eastern ally is fellow Shi’a Iran, while most Sunnis in the region, including the Egyptians, Jordanians, Saudis, and non-Arab Turks, would shed few tears if it disappeared.

As Syria edges ever closer to civil war, Christians could well find themselves on the losing side. And should the regime fall, Syria might witness a bloodbath far worse than what we saw in Libya.

Reflections on the Demise of the So-Called "King of Kings"


Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

There has been no end of commentary about Moammar Gadhafi's bizarre reign of chaos and terror in Libya.

His grisly death at the hands of fighters from the city of Misrata, which had suffered so grievously during the long civil war that finally led to his ouster, was captured by video cameras and broadcast around the world.

The essence of his rule was one almost unique for a 20th-21st-century ruler. The so-called ‘King of Kings' was truly an absolute monarch, a modern-day Egyptian pharaoh or Roman emperor.

Monsters such as Hitler, Mao, Kim Il-Sung, Saddam Hussein, and Stalin were, after all, to some extent bound by their own ideological formulations and political parties.

Saudi kings, even when absolute rulers, must govern within the strictures of Wahabi Islam.

But Gadhafi was literally able to do whatever he felt like doing; he was, after all, his own creation, a deity, and not beholden to any ideologues, dead or alive.

His "Green Book," a treatise that spelled out his "third universal theory" that would supplant both capitalism and communism - could it have been just an elaborate cruel joke, mocking his own people? - allowed him, in effect, to crown himself a philosopher-king. No popes or ayatollahs or caliphs stood in his way.

His idiosyncrasies were legendary and his every whim carried out: at one point he had decided that camels on roads near Tripoli made the city look "backward." They were immediately shot by his compliant military.

For all his buffoonery and comic-opera outfits, Gadhafi was a brutal tyrant, ordering the deaths of people at home and abroad with absolutely no qualms. He was a sociopath without a conscience.

And his family used the country's oil wealth to live in untold luxury. Libyans visiting their various compounds since Gadhafi's downfall have come away astounded by the affluence. The humble Bedouin persona Gadhafi affected was nothing but a pose.

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." Lord Acton's warning remains as relevant today as it did when he expressed it in 1887.

Gadhafi left behind no institutions, not even the kind other dictatorships have allowed, such as tame parliaments, compliant political cabinets, or political parties that had been hollowed out. Libya is starting from scratch. It is a political as well as a physical desert.

Still Trying to Figure out why Quebec Chose the NDP

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer 
 
Almost six months after last May’s federal election, I’m still trying to figure out why the francophones of Quebec, en masse, suddenly switched from the Bloc Quebecois to the New Democratic Party, in the process decimating the former.

It had nothing to do with the NDP itself, or its charismatic standard-bearer, Jack Layton. It wasn’t as if the NDP had a new leader Quebecois could suddenly relate to.

After all, Layton had already fought two previous elections, in 2004 and 2006, as head of the party, and had not a single measly seat in the province to show for his efforts. (Thomas Mulcair, the only NDP member from Quebec before 2011, was elected MP for Outremont in a by-election in 2007.)

The NDP had no base in Quebec – they had virtually no party members nor any historic support in the province. The party had in its entire existence, in fact, elected only two Quebec MPs. Insofar as it had any loyalists at all, it was in anglophone parts of Montreal.

Nor was the “Orange Crush” due to the quality of the local NDP candidates, most of whom were unknowns or sacrificial lambs who had little presence in their ridings – one was in Las Vegas during the campaign and had never even visited her constituency!

As well, the electorate’s move away from the Bloc was not a result of that party’s miscues. Gilles Duceppe ran his usual decent campaign, made no gaffes, nor did any scandals attach to the party.

So what happened?

Clearly, Quebecois en masse decided they still needed to continue punishing the Liberals, thanks to the sponsorship scandal, and simply couldn’t countenance voting for the Conservatives, whom they perceive to be an anglophone, western-based party, the successor to the Reform Party, and home to many whose ancestors may have been members of the ultra-Protestant Orange Order. But why not, then, continue sending Blocistes back to Ottawa?

As a minority within Canada, in federal elections Quebecois vote, first and foremost, on the basis of protecting their culture and powers within Confederation.

The Bloc and NDP had platforms that were, as usual, fairly similar. Both are left-of-centre parties whose domestic agendas are not all that different.

And while the Bloc is sovereigntist, the NDP’s attitude towards Quebec nationalism is far more friendly than that of the Conservatives and Liberals.

The party, for example, supports legislation that would extend Quebec’s French Language Charter to employees in the province who work in sectors covered under federal law.

And their interim leader, Nycole Turmel, is a former member of the Bloc.

Fearing the continued advances of the Harper Conservatives, Quebecois felt the need to seek allies outside Quebec who could oppose the Tories.

The Bloc could not provide that, but the NDP, as a national party, fit the bill – this time around, anyhow.

Locked in Ethnic and Territorial Disputes

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

The collapse of Soviet power in the southern Caucasus and central Asia in the 1990s opened up a political space for the re-emergence of the nationalist ideology known as pan-Turkism.

This political movement, which originated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, had as its goal the political union of all Turkic-speaking peoples in the Ottoman lands, the Crimea and other parts of tsarist Russia, eastern Turkestan in western China, and parts of Iran and Afghanistan.

Some 170 million people speak a Turkic language, with the largest, Turkish, used by about 85 million people.

The Turkic world encompasses a huge portion of southeastern Europe and central Asia. Today there are six independent Turkic countries: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, as well as Turkey itself.

There are also several Turkic national entities in the Russian Federation, including the Altai Republic, Bashkortostan, Chuvashia, Tatarstan, and Tuva.

The Crimean Tatars inhabit the Ukrainian peninsula that borders the Black Sea, and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of western China is home to the Uighurs, another Turkic people.

A main "fault line" between the Turkic Muslim and pro-Russian Christian peoples has always run through the southern Caucasus.

The nation of Armenia has been at odds with its Muslim Turkic neighbours for centuries and hence welcomed Russian rule in the region.

It has suffered whenever the Russians and Turks were at war.

During World War I, the Armenians within the Turkish Ottoman Empire were accused of aiding Russia, and in 1915 upwards of one million of them were massacred.

Between 1918 and 1920, Armenia and neighbouring Azerbaijan were sovereign countries, and fought an indecisive war over territory. But both soon became part of the new Communist-ruled Soviet Union.

During the Soviet period, Armenia and Azerbaijan were full Soviet republics. But the 4,400-square- kilometre area known as Nagorno-Karabakh, though inhabited mainly by Armenians, became an autonomous oblast (region) within the borders of Azerbaijan, cut off from Armenia proper.

By the late 1980s, as Soviet rule in the Caucasus disintegrated, and the two countries once again became independent states, old enmities resurfaced.

There were massacres of Armenians in the Azeri capital, Baku, and killings of Azeris in Yerevan in Armenia.

In 1991, Azerbaijan unilaterally abolished the autonomous status of Nagorno-Karabakh. In response, the Armenians in the enclave declared their independence.

Full-scale fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan ensued, and by the time a cease-fire ended major hostilities in 1994, the Armenians were in control of almost all of Nagorno-Karabakh as well as a considerable amount of Azerbaijani territory outside the enclave.

More than 30,000 people were killed in the fighting from 1992 to 1994. As many as 230,000 Armenians from Azerbaijan and 800,000 Azeris from Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh were displaced as a result of the conflict.

The war also drew in the two major powers in the region, Russia and Turkey. In 1993, as Armenia's forces were routing the Azeris, Turkey demanded that the Armenians pull out of Azerbaijani territory, and thousands of Turkish troops were sent to the border between Turkey and Armenia. Russian in response warned Turkey against any military involvement.

Though there has been little fighting since 1994, Armenia and Azerbaijan are still technically at war and the two countries have no formal diplomatic relations.

Turkey imposed a blockade on Armenia in 1993, resulting in a total shutdown of land and air communications between the two countries; they also have no formal diplomatic relations.

In May 2009 Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told the Azeri parliament that Turkey and Azerbaijan were "one nation with two states." He added that there would be no normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations unless "the occupation of Azerbaijani territory ends."

Armenia's Defence Minister Seyran Ohanian in turn stated in January 2010 that defence fortifications have been beefed up significantly in recent years. "We are maintaining the balance of forces vis-à-vis the Azerbaijani armed forces."

The Nagorno-Karabakh dispute is one of several "frozen" conflicts in the cultural zone separating the Turkic peoples of the Caucasus from their neighbours, and Nagorno-Karabakh remains a de facto independent republic of some 140,000 people, protected by Armenia.

Cypress Could Be New Flashpoint

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

The island of Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean has been a bone of contention between Greece and Turkey for decades.

Independent from Great Britain since 1960, for the past 37 years it has been divided between a self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, a state recognized only by its patron Turkey, and a southern Republic of Cyprus, governed by Greek Cypriots, which claims sovereignty over the entire island.

The capital, Nicosia, is also partitioned between the two entities. But as far as the United Nations and other international bodies are concerned, the Greek Cypriot government is the legitimate ruler of the island.

Indeed, the Greek Cypriot state has since 2004 been a member of the European Union, despite its unwillingness to grant concessions to the Turkish population in the north, and so keeping the island split in two.

Now, thanks to Turkey’s new assertiveness, the already troubled island is being dragged into the Middle East conflict.

The Greek Cypriot government has licensed U.S.-based Noble Energy Inc. to search for oil and gas near recently-discovered Israeli offshore fields that contain more than 450 billion cubic metres of natural gas. The distance by sea between Cyprus and Israel is about 200 kilometres.

Israel and the Republic of Cyprus last December signed an agreement defining their maritime border, thus allowing them both to search for energy sources in the eastern Mediterranean. Noble Energy began exploratory drilling for offshore oil and gas deposits off Cyprus in mid-September.

In response, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Dervis Eroglu, the president of the Turkish Cypriot state, describing this as a “provocation,” in late September signed a deal paving the way for their own offshore drilling.

Turkey maintains the Greek Cypriots are disregarding Turkish Cypriot rights and it sent a warship-escorted research vessel, the Koka Piri Reis, to also look for gas off Cyprus. Ankara claims the natural resources around Cyprus belong to both the Turkish and Greek parts of the island.

But President Dimitris Christofias of the Republic of Cyprus in the south has insisted that exploration will continue despite Turkey’s strong opposition.

He asserted the right to search for potential deposits inside the Republic’s exclusive economic zone is non-negotiable and any foreign meddling is unacceptable. (His government does not, of course, recognize any such rights for the Turkish Republic in the north.)

Greece and Israel, too, argue the Turkish vessel has no business being in the area.

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou urged “restraint” by all countries in the region, but added Greece supports the Greek Cypriot activities.

Greece also hopes Israel will want to export its own natural gas resources to European markets via a pipeline running through Greek Cyprus to Greece, and that the Turks will not interfere.

Just to make sure, Athens and Jerusalem signed a mutual defence pact in September.

Still, Israeli diplomats worry the Turkish threat could prove dangerous.

“Israel and Cyprus reached agreement dividing the water between the two of them for gas drilling,” Alon Liel, a former ambassador to Turkey remarked.

He worried that things could escalate.

“If Israel and Turkey come to face each other in the Eastern Mediterranean,” it may even require direct American involvement, according to Sinan Ulgen, director of EDAM, a center for economics and foreign policy studies in Istanbul. Then what?
 

Positioning to be Major Player 

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian


Apart from becoming a significant force in the Middle East, Turkey is trying to extend its sphere of influence in the former Soviet republics of the Caucasus and central Asia. These are nations that have ethnic, historical, linguistic and religious bonds with Turkey.

Turkey has very close ties to Azerbaijan, with which it shares a border. Trade between the two countries has increased significantly and Turkish companies are the largest investors in Azerbaijan. Turkey's trade with the country amounted to about $2.5 billion last year.

Azerbaijan is an oil-producing country, and Turkey would like to become a key energy hub for the transportation of energy resources to Europe.

In 2005 the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, which connects the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli oil field in the Caspian Sea to Ceyhan, a port on the south-eastern Mediterranean coast of Turkey, was completed. Turkey is now the main outlet for westbound Azeri oil.

In December 2010, Turkey and Azerbaijan signed a strategically important mutual defence treaty.

Kazakhstan, too, is an important economic partner of Turkey and Turkish companies have been investing in areas such as food, beverages, oil industries, banking, retailing and tourism. Trade between Kazakhstan and Turkey amounted to $2 billion in 2010.

Turkey's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has stated that Kazakhstan is Turkey's most important political and economic partner in Central Asia: "Our bilateral relations continue to develop in a stable course, driven by the momentum arising from the mutual strong will of both countries."

During Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev's visit to Turkey in October 2009, a Strategic Partnership Treaty was signed between the two.

Turkmenistan's President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow has reaffirmed Turkey's crucial place in the shaping of his country's foreign policy. He has stated that Turkmenistan and Turkey were united through historical and cultural ties.

Turkmenistan has one of the world's largest natural gas reserves and Turkey is interested in transporting the country's gas to Europe. Some 100 agreements and protocols have been concluded between Ankara and Ashgabat, and a joint Turkish-Turkmen commission for economic cooperation was formed in 2008. Turkish trade with Turkmenistan amounted to $2 billion last year.

Earlier this year, Turkmenistan held an international forum in Ashgabat where the cultural heritage of the Turkic peoples was celebrated with an extensive program that included scientific conferences, concerts, films, demonstrations and exhibitions.

Turkish relations with Uzbekistan, the most populous of the central Asian states, have been more rocky, due to Ankara's concern over human rights abuses and a less favourable economic climate in that country.

The Tashkent government was angry at Turkey for supporting the call for an international investigation of a massacre in the city of Andijan, when troops fired into a crowd of protestors in May 2005, killing at least several hundred.

Still, Turkey is the one of the most important direct investors in Uzbekistan, and trade between the two nations amounted to $1 billion in 2010.

Prime Minister Erdogan visited Tajikistan in 2003 and trade and political relations have increased since then. Turkey has provided assistance for the development and democratization of Tajikistan, a very poor and fragile country, but its role remains limited. Two-way trade in 2010 amounted to $360 million.

Another central Asian state in trouble is Kyrgyzstan, where violence in the south of the country in April 2010 left up to 2,000 dead and forced 400,000 from their homes.

Earlier this year, though, Kyrgyz Prime Minister Almazbek Sharshenovich Atambayev met with top officials while attending the Turkey-Kyrgyzstan Trade and Investment Forum organised by Turkish Confederation of Businessmen and Industrialists in Ankara.

"This is exactly the time to invest," Atambayev told them. "We are brothers and friends. We have a history we are proud of. Our future will also be common and glorious." But trade between Turkey and Kyrgyzstan remains relatively small, amounting to $160 million in 2010.

In January 2010 Turkey hosted a "Summit of Friendship and Cooperation in the Heart of Asia," held in Istanbul, and attended by numerous diplomats from countries around the world. Turkey is clearly staking out its claim to becoming a major power.

Is Turkey Creating an ‘Ottosphere’ in Middle East?

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

Turkey is becoming a major player in the Middle East, as the Arab world, once mainly ruled by Ottoman emperors, continues to be convulsed by political earthquakes.

In recent weeks, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who heads the moderately Islamic Adalet ve Kalk?nma Partisi (Justice and Development Party), has come out in favour of full Palestinian UN membership and warned Israel against any further attacks on Hamas-ruled Gaza.

He recently told Arab leaders that recognition of a Palestinian state was “not an option, but an obligation.”

The Turkish leader said that Israel’s raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in May 2010, which killed eight Turks and a Turkish American on board a Turkish ship, occurred in international waters and was “cause for war,” but added that his country had showed “patience” and refrained from taking any action.

After Israel refused to apologize, Erdogan withdrew Turkey’s ambassador, suspended military co-operation with Israel, and froze all trade ties with the Jewish state.

He described Israel as “the main threat to regional peace.”

Erdogan told al-Jazeera television that “my brothers in Gaza are waiting for me. I too long for Gaza. Sooner or later, if God allows it, I will go to Gaza.”

He also vowed to send the Turkish navy to escort Gaza-bound aid ships in the future.

“Israel will no longer be able to do what it wants in the Mediterranean,” he told an audience in Tunis earlier this month, “and you’ll be seeing Turkish warships in this sea.”

He stated that Israel would be prevented from exploiting the eastern Mediterranean’s oil and gas reserves on its own.

Erdogan received a tumultuous welcome when he visited Egypt, Tunisia and Libya in support of their new and still shaky post-dictatorial political systems.

“These countries are trying to transform into democratic system from autocratic systems,” he declared.

“We have to lend them a helping hand in their efforts.”

He hailed the advent of democracy in Libya and the “memory of martyrs who sacrificed themselves for their country and their religion.”

Turkey hopes to encourage cooperation, investments, and trade with these countries as well.

Erdogan has also warned Bashar al-Assad’s repressive Syrian government in Damascus “that there is no regime that can go against the will of the people. This is what those who oppress the people of Syria should realize.”

A century ago, almost the entire Middle East was ruled by the Ottoman Empire, and the Turks were a major force in the world.

Some analysts are calling Erdogan’s policies an attempt to create a new “Ottosphere” in the region.

There’s no doubt that he’s trying to do just that.