The Ukrainian Crisis as Seen from Moscow

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who is a Russian?

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Saudi Arabia a Politically Unique Country

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Saudi Arabia is a very unique country.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Syria's Past is Being Obliterated

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Argentina Attacks: No Punishment

Henry Srebrnik, [Toronto] Jewish Tribune

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Armenian Genocide Remains Issue a Century Later

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

The slaughter of some 1.5 million Armenian civilians in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War was one of the major atrocities of the 20th century. The starting date of the genocide is conventionally held to be April 24, 1915, the day Ottoman authorities rounded up and arrested some 250 Armenian intellectuals, followed by the arrest of a further 2,000.

At present 23 countries, including Canada, have officially declared that the events of 1915-1918 were a genocide. The 2006 recognition of the Armenian genocide by the federal government had its basis in earlier actions, including a 2004 motion in the House of Commons and a Senate resolution in 2002.

The Turkish government still insists that the deaths were caused by the hardships and violence of the war, and not by government-directed mass killings or death marches. In the past, people in Turkey who expressed any disagreement with the official line could be jailed for up to two years.

However, on April 23, the office of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan posted a lengthy statement on its website, translated into nine languages, including Armenian, which, while not admitting that the slaughters amounted to genocide, expressed regret, adding that “we wish that the Armenians who lost their lives in the context of the early 20th century rest in peace, and we convey our condolences to their grandchildren.”

The genocide was the culmination of centuries of discord in the Caucasus, part of a larger civilisational conflict between Christian and Muslim peoples dating back to the Middle Ages. And it remains a deep source of animosity between Armenia and Turkey.

In the 19th century, the Russian tsarist empire, upholders of Orthodox Christianity, were intent on pushing the Muslims Turks out of the Balkans, the Caucasus, and parts of Anatolia itself. The Armenian people, who had been converted to Christianity back in the fourth century, and had found themselves in continuing struggles against the Turks and other Muslim peoples, looked to Russia for protection.

In 1829, the eastern parts of Armenia were incorporated into the Russian Empire, but the greater part of Armenia remained within the Ottoman lands. At the turn of the 20th century, there were some two million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire, 10 per cent of the total population.

There had already been a series of major massacres of Armenians between 1894 and 1896, resulting in some 100,000 deaths. On Oct. 29, 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered the war on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary against Russia and its Western allies, Great Britain and France, and launched a disastrous military campaign against Russian forces in the Caucasus. It blamed defeat there on the Armenians, claiming they had colluded with the Russians.

The Ottoman government put together “Special Organisation” units, consisting of armed gangs, to massacre Armenians. Over the next three years, the Armenian people in the empire were subjected to deportation, massacre, and starvation, and epidemics which ravaged the concentration camps where they were interned.

The great bulk of the Armenian population was forcibly removed from Turkish Armenia and Anatolia to Syria and Lebanon. Today there are only between 50 and 70 thousand Armenians left in Turkey, out of a population of over 76 million.

After the Russian Revolution, the small Russian part of Armenia was incorporated into the Soviet Union. It became a sovereign state after the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, but it is a rump state of three million people, since most of historic Armenia remains within the boundaries of Turkey, including two geographic symbols of the Armenian people, Lake Van and Mount Ararat.

Both were within the territory of the large Armenian kingdoms of the past. Mount Ararat has been revered by the Armenians as symbolizing their national identity and is the national symbol of the Republic of Armenia, featured in its coat of arms.

Given the relative strength of the two countries, it is unlikely Armenia will ever regain these.

The Strange Political Situation of Taiwan

Henry Srebrnik, (Summerside, PEI) Journal Pioneer

Is Taiwan part of China? In fact, should its government be considered the only legitimate authority over the entire country, not just the island? What about the reverse: does mainland China have the right to unite the island with the mainline – even by force?

Or – a third possibility -- is Taiwan a separate entity altogether that should declare its own independence?

Actually, despite their ideological difference and historical hostility, there is one thing the mainland government in Beijing, and the island government in Taipei, both agree on: Taiwan is a province of China.

Yet the island has not always been governed from China. From 1624 to1662 Dutch soldiers and traders maintained a colony in southwestern Taiwan, and the Spanish also maintained a colony in northern Taiwan between 1626 and 1642.

The Europeans were driven out and from 1683 to 1894 both Taiwan and mainland China were ruled by the Qing dynasty, the last one before China became a republic in 1912.

Following an 1895 war with Japan, however, Taiwan was ceded by the Qing government to Japan. In 1945, in the wake of Japan’s defeat in the Second World War, China regained Taiwan.

But rule from the mainland lasted a brief four years. Chiang Kai-Shek’s Kuomintang (KMT) nationalist forces, in power in China since 1912, were ousted by Mao Zedong’s Communists in the civil war that followed Japan’s surrender. In 1949 Mao proclaimed the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in Beijing.

Chiang’s army retreated to Taiwan, where his government, which continued to call itself the Republic of China (ROC), remained intent on retaking mainland China and reunifying the country.

Chiang died in 1975, and under his son and successor, Chiang Ching-kuo, the KMT continued to rule the island with an iron hand. Until 1987 martial law was in place and any discussion of Taiwanese independence was banned.

Since his death, Taiwan’s political system has evolved into a multi-party democracy. While the KMT continued to govern, a new grouping, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), was formed, and became increasingly identified with independence for Taiwan, as a sovereign jurisdiction no longer associated with China.

The DPP won the presidency in 2000 with the election of Chen Shui-bian, who was born on the island. The party asserts that its efforts to promote a Taiwanese national identity are an effort to normalize a Taiwanese distinctiveness repressed during years of authoritarian KMT rule (most of whose politicians were mainland refugees).

In 2008 the KMT regained power, under the Hong Kong-born Ma Ying-jeou. His policies have been seen as part of a long-run effort to steer Taiwan towards closer ties to the PRC. Ma has stated that “for our party, the eventual goal is reunification, but we don't have a timetable.”

Following his election, Taiwan and the Chinese mainland resumed direct sea, air, and mail links. He has allowed mainland Chinese tourists to visit Taiwan and lifted restrictions on the financial sector to invest in mainland China.

Since 1971, Communist China has held the United Nations seat for China. It is also recognized as the official government of the country by most other states, including Canada. As of 2013, the ROC maintains official diplomatic relations with only 21 UN member states, although informal relations are maintained with nearly all others.

“Chinese Taipei” is the name used by the island when participating in some international organizations and almost all sporting events. Both the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China agree to the use of the name because it is ambiguous about the island’s political status.

While most residents of Taiwan are ethnically Han Chinese, about half a million people (some two per cent of the population) are Taiwanese aboriginals, people related to Austronesian ethnic groups in Malaysia, the Philippines, Madagascar and the Pacific islands. These native Taiwanese inhabited the island prior to the mainland migration that began in the 17th century.

They chafed under the repressive rule of the Japanese during the 1895-1945 period and mounted several rebellions, which were severely repressed. The autocratic KMT regime that followed was not much kinder.

The movement for indigenous cultural and political resurgence in Taiwan gained momentum in 1984 when a group of aboriginal political activists established the Alliance of Taiwan Aborigines.

Beginning in 1998, the official curriculum in Taiwan schools has been changed to contain more frequent and favorable mention of aboriginals. Their issues have now also become part of the discourse regarding the future political status of Taiwan.

Gray Served Jewish Community and Nation

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Canada’s first Jewish federal cabinet minister, Herb Gray, has died at the age of 82. In a way, his career is the story of the coming of age of the Canadian Jewish community in the political life of the country.

Many Jewish politicians have been more exciting and flamboyant – David Lewis, long time leader of the New Democratic Party, comes to mind. Gray, by contrast, was less in the Jewish tradition of prophetic charisma, but rather in the mold of the type of Jewish politicians and bureaucrats who go about their work more quietly, serving their community and nation.

He was also from an era when most Canadian Jews supported the Liberal Party in an almost unquestioning fashion, and when Jews on the political right, in particular, were an almost unknown political species.

Gray was not from one of the major Canadian cities where Jews lived, but rather from Windsor, Ont. Still, his family’s odyssey is very similar to those in the major Jewish communities of the time, in Montreal, Toronto and Winnipeg.

His father had arrived penniless in Canada from what is now Belarus in the 1920s and adopted the name Harry Gray. Speaking barely a word of English, he landed a job at a Windsor grocery.

He later married Fannie Lifitz, a nurse from across the border in Detroit who also hailed from Russia, and eventually established his own department store on Windsor’s Ottawa Street.

Herb Gray worked in the family department store, studied Yiddish language and culture, and became an accomplished classical pianist. In a working-class city like Windsor a political career could only be had by joining the socialist NDP or the establishment Liberals. A careful man, Gray chose the latter.

He also caught the eye of the political “boss” of Windsor, Paul Martin Sr. (father of the future prime minister) and in the June 18, 1962 federal election was elected a Liberal MP from Essex West. He would go on to win re-election 13 more times.

In 1967 he married Sharon Sholzberg, a law student from McGill University who was very active in student politics on campus and went on to a career of her own. (I was a student at McGill at the time and remember her as quite a commanding presence.)

Gray was first named to cabinet by Pierre Trudeau as a minister without portfolio in 1969 and became minister of national revenue in 1970 and minister of consumer and corporate affairs in 1974.

Gray’s rise mirrored the entrée of the Jewish community as full-fledged members of the the country. Trudeau had been elected MP from Mount Royal, the Montreal riding with the largest concentration of Jews in Canada, and Montreal’s Jews were among his most fervent supporters. So it was no coincidence that it was under Trudeau the country got its first (and long-overdue) federal minister.

Trudeau’s Liberals lost the 1979 election to Joe Clark’s Conservatives, but when Trudeau was returned to power a year later, Gray, by now a seasoned political veteran, assumed the position of minister of industry, trade and commerce – a position of critical importance for an MP from an auto manufacturing city like Windsor.

The Liberals were forced into opposition during the nine years Brian Mulroney ran the country, but when Jean Chrétien became prime minister in 1993, he named Gray both government House leader and solicitor general. By the time he left office Gray would have served in eleven different cabinet portfolios.

Yet his career ended on a rather sour note. On Jan. 15, 2002, the prime minister rather unceremoniously dumped him from cabinet, causing Gray to leave parliament at age 70 – after having represented his constituents for 39 years and nearly seven months.

There were many at the time who criticized Chrétien for forcing Gray out just short of what would have been four decades of service to his party and the country. Some said that it was because Chrétien didn’t want Gray to attain this milestone before the prime minister himself could reach it. (Chrétien was elected to parliament in the April 8, 1963 federal election, a year after Gray.) 

Gray voiced no complaints, at least not in public. But he should have been treated with more respect.

The New York World's Fair, 50 Years Later

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

It had no fewer than three official themes, “Man’s Achievements on a Shrinking Globe in an Expanding Universe,” “Peace Through Understanding,” and “A Millennium of Progress.” Its symbol was a 12-story high, stainless-steel model of the earth, the Unisphere, which still can be seen in Queens, New York, where it was held.

The New York World’s Fair ran for two six-month seasons, April 22- October 18, 1964 and April 21- October 17, 1965. Admission price for adults was $2 in 1964.

The Bureau of International Exhibitions, headquartered in Paris, never sanctioned the fair, so there were only 36 foreign pavilions, most of them hosted by small nations.

The highlight of the fair, however, was the exhibits of American corporations. Most American companies had a major presence. Among those participating were General Electric, Ford, General Motors, Chrysler, IBM, U.S. Steel, Pepsi Cola, DuPont, RCA, and Westinghouse.

The General Motors pavilion showcased a “Futurama,” where visitors seated in moving chairs glided past elaborately detailed miniature 3-D model scenery showing what life might be like in the world of 2064.

For many visitors, it was their first introduction to computers – those gigantic monsters only huge organizations could afford.

Those were indeed optimistic times, when the future seemed limitless, and no one worried about the effect humans were having on the environment.

In 1964 I was an 18-year-old student at McGill University in Montreal and, in those long-ago pre-internet days, kept an old-fashioned diary, written in ordinary school notebooks. I’ve fished out the one for the spring of 1964, when two friends and I took a Greyhound bus from Montreal to New York, to see the World’s Fair.

We arrived the evening of Thursday, May 7 and checked in at Sloane House, the YMCA residence at 34th St. and Ninth Ave. in Manhattan – cost, $2.50 a night for a single room. After we settled in, we immediately went off to see the sights of the Big City (to which even Montreal couldn’t compare)! At Macy’s Department store on 34th St., we saw a model of the World’s Fair.

We spent the next day seeing the sights, and that evening took the subway to Queens. The newly opened Shea Stadium, home of the baseball New York Mets, while not part of the fairgrounds proper, was listed in the fair’s maps and was served by the same subway line. The three of us took in a night game, with the Mets playing the St. Louis Cardinals. “For $1.30 each we got general grandstand seats,” I recorded. “The scoreboard is huge, even has a screen on top showing slides of all the Mets players up at bat.” I took note of the presence of the great Casey Stengel, manager of the home team. “The crowd was very uninhibited,” I wrote. “Real New Yorkers!”

On Saturday, May 9 we went to the fair. Touring the various exhibits, we were (according to my notes) very impressed with the DuPont, General Electric and IBM exhibits, considered Ford’s the best one (Ford introduced the Mustang at the fair), but found Kodak’s only “so-so.”

At the Missouri Pavilion, we saw the Mercury Friendship 7 spaceship, on which John Glenn had orbited the earth two years earlier. The Science Pavilion had “real Atlas rockets.” The Vatican one exhibited coins and stamps from the collection of New York’s Francis Cardinal Spellman. Even more impressive, the Illinois pavilion had “the actual handwritten document of the Gettysburg Address” (this was so exciting that I underlined the sentence in the diary).

It was announced that President Lyndon Johnson was visiting the Venezuelan Pavilion. “We ran over quickly” as he “shook hands with people. He looked well, just as in his pictures.” (Of course, the debacle of Vietnam, which would ruin him, was only just beginning.)

As we left New York a few days later, the three of us agreed that the fair was “an amazing extravaganza, a dream world.” Maybe that’s all it was, since the world has turned out very differently. But the 1964 World’s Fair certainly epitomised an exuberant spirit now sadly lacking. Or do we remember it that way because we were young?

The Innovative Political System of the Netherlands

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

It was one of the world’s foremost political scientists, Arend Lijphart of the University of California, San Diego, who first developed the concept of consociationalism as a method of governing states that are deeply divided by ethnicity, language or religion.

Not surprisingly, Lijphart, who specializes in comparative politics, elections, and electoral systems, was Dutch by birth -- because it was in the Netherlands where this idea, then called pillarisation (“verzuiling” in Dutch), was first put into practice.

His first major work, “The Politics of Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands,” was published in 1968, and he developed his arguments further in his 1977 book “Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration.”

The goals of consociationalism are governmental stability and the avoidance of violence. A consociational, or power-sharing, system, acknowledges bedrock, permanent difference between the constituent communities.

Each officially recognized group has a say in the governing institutions of the country, and their interests are safeguarded by various political mechanisms, including autonomy in the cultural sector, separate voting rolls or proportionality in the electoral system, guaranteed representation in a legislature, the right to veto legislation which might affect them adversely, a set number of positions in the executive branch of government and in public sector employment, and so forth.

Hence, they all participate in decision-making at the central level of government and, unlike in a majoritarian political system, no ethnic or religious majority cannot ride roughshod over the interests of another group just because the latter has fewer members.

While such mechanisms are today in place (or have failed) in such fragile polities as Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cyprus, Fiji, Lebanon, and Northern Ireland, they were pioneered in the Netherlands, where the system was in operation between1917 until the late 1960s.

The Dutch system of pillarisation or “confessional pluralism” was the creation of the politician and theologian Abraham Kuyper, who served as prime minister from 1901 to 1905. In 1917 the constitution was changed in order to resolve the ongoing conflict between religious and secular parties. It implemented both proportional representation and equal funding for secular and religious schools.

This “pacification,” as it was called, had by the1920s divided Dutch society into four ideological communities: Catholics, orthodox Protestants (Calvinists), socialists, and liberals.

These were self-sufficient subcultures that rarely interacted. The Catholics and Calvinists had their own parties, unions, farmers’ associations, radio stations, and newspapers; socialists too belonged to socialist trade unions, listened to socialist radio, read socialist newspapers, and interacted mainly with other socialists.

Kuyper’s vision for keeping the peace among different ideological communities broke down in the 1960s as Dutch society changed and became more integrated; the old identities became less salient.

Still, even today some institutions in the Netherlands revolve around the old cleavages. For instance, public television is divided by several pillarised organisations, instead of being one organisation. The education system, too, is split between public and religious schools.

For the past century, the political system has been dominated by three political party “families”: the Christian Democrats, currently represented by the Christian Democratic Appeal (Christen-Democratisch Appel, or CDA); the social democrats, now in the Labour Party (Partij van de Arbeid, or PvdA); and the liberals, of which the right of centre People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie, or VVD) is the main grouping today.

And despite the growth of more extreme parties, especially the right-wing populist Party for Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid, or PVV) led by Geert Wilders, Dutch politics and governance remains characterised by a common striving for broad consensus on important issues.

All Dutch governments are coalitions. The current one, led by Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the VVD, comprises his party and the PvdA.

Quebec Turns its Back on the Parti Québécois

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

The April 7 Quebec provincial election saw Pauline Marois’ Parti Québécois suffer a shellacking.

After 19 months running a minority government, the sovereigntist PQ fell to 30 seats, a full forty below the Liberals, who won 70 of the 125 seats in the National Assembly. Liberal leader Philippe Couillard will become the next premier of the province with a majority government.

The Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) took 22 seats and Québec Solidaire (QS) three.

The Liberals gained 20 seats over their 2012 showing, the CAQ three, and QS one. The PQ was down by 24.

In the popular vote, the Liberals won 41.5 per cent, a gain of 10 percentage points over 2012. The PQ took 25.4 per cent, a drop of seven from 2012. The CAQ captured about 23 per cent, down four points, and the left-wing QS took 7.6 per cent, up one point from the last election.

Marois, who lost her own seat in her Charlevoix–Côte-de-Beaupré riding, stepped down as party leader. However, PQ star candidate Pierre Karl Péladeau, one of Quebec’s most prominent business leaders, won his seat in the riding of Saint-Jérome, beating the incumbent CAQ member.

Along with Couillard, CAQ Leader François Legault and QS co-spokesperson Françoise David were both re-elected.

What went wrong for the PQ, which at the start of the campaign looked headed for a majority in the National Assembly?

For one thing, the entry of Péladeau, the former president and CEO of Quebecor Media and Sun Media, as a PQ candidate proved to be a turning point – and it wasn’t in the PQ’s favour.

He announced his candidacy for the PQ by proclaiming his desire for a sovereign Quebec, bringing the issue of an independent Quebec front and centre. “My connection to the PQ is a connection rooted in my deepest, most intimate values, and that is making Quebec a country,” he declared.

Marois brought Péladeau in to demonstrate that the PQ was a responsible steward of Quebec’s economy. But that backfired, since historically the PQ has been a left-of-centre party that relied on lower-income and working-class votes. 

When his candidacy was announced, many in the province’s strong union movement were appalled. “The PQ has made room for a fierce union-buster; one of the most determined,” QS MNA Amir Khadir, said. “He tried repeatedly over the years to break the union movement.” Referring to Péladeau as “one of the richest men in Quebec,” Khadir warned that “the PQ is giving him the steering wheel of government.” The QS, which won all three of its seats in Montreal, clearly took votes away from the PQ.

But there were other issues at stake, even part from the separatist desire to hold an eventual referendum on the issue of sovereignty. Identity politics has always been at the heart of the nationalist party, and the Marois last fall had introduced Bill 60, the so-called Charter of Values, which proved to be a polarizing issue.

The “secularist” Charter would have prohibited public sector employees from wearing or displaying “conspicuous” religious symbols. It would apply only to public-sector workplaces such as schools, daycares, hospitals and universities -- but Marois said later that the private sector could take “inspiration” from the proposed law.

In the last week of campaigning, Marois defended the Charter, maintaining that it would “permit us to establish protections against fundamentalism and to ensure peace.” She also said that, should the Charter be struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada, she would use the “notwithstanding” clause of the constitution to enshrine it in law.

Some of her supporters went even further: well-known feminist Janette Bertrand used the example of an apartment swimming pool to warn of the dangers of religious accommodation. Imagine, she said, if two men come to a swimming pool in a Montreal apartment, and the sight of women in the water upsets them.

“Well, suppose they leave, and go see the owner,” said Bertrand. “Then they ask, ‘Well, can we have a day,’ and they will pay.”  Soon, she warned, “it’s them who have all the pool time. That’s what will happen if there is no Charter.”

Not surprisingly, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh minorities, who mostly live in the multicultural Montreal region, were strongly opposed to the proposed legislation, though polls had shown that a majority of francophones liked it.

The PQ kept only four of the island’s 28 ridings, down from six in 2012, and only one more than the QS, while the Liberals won 21.

But the Charter is now a dead letter, the PQ itself is back in opposition, and the dream of a sovereign Quebec has been shelved, at least for the immediate future.

Hungarian Minorities Remain Issue in Eastern Europe

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

In the April 6 parliamentary elections in Hungary, Viktor Orban’s Fidesz (Hungarian Civic Alliance) right-of-centre government was returned to power, with 44.5 per cent of the popular vote, good for 133 of 199 seats in the Hungarian parliament.

Gabor Vona’s ultra-nationalist party Jobbik (Movement for a Better Hungary), with its anti-Roma and anti-Semitic views, increased its strength, winning 24 seats on almost 21 per cent of the vote.

The left-wing five-party Unity Alliance received 26 per cent of the vote, and 37 seats.

Fidesz and Jobbik are irredentist parties. What does that mean? It goes all the way back to the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of the First World War, when Hungary lost more than two-thirds of its territory and population. Right-wing Hungarians have been trying to get some of it back ever since.

The Hungarians and Austrian Germans, the two ruling nations within the multinational state, ended up on the losing side in the First World War, and the Habsburg-ruled empire was dismantled. A host of new states emerged, carved out of the defeated dual monarchy.

By the Treaty of Trianon, signed on June 4, 1920, the peace agreement forced upon the defeated Hungarians, much of their part of the empire was parceled out to Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia.

It left Hungary with 93,073 square kilometres, only a little more than 30 per cent of the 325,411 square kilometres that had constituted the pre-war Kingdom of Hungary within Austria-Hungary.

As well, 3.2 million of the ethnically Magyar (Hungarian) population of 10.7 million would find themselves outside its shrunken borders.

Every territory lost by Hungary did have a majority of non-Hungarians, but almost one-third of the population in these regions remained Hungarians -- a significant minority.

They now faced a difficult situation because they were instantly converted from being a ruling elite to a “minority” in a new country-- and now ruled over by peoples not too fond of their former masters.

Transylvania, which was part of the Hungarian homeland but which had been settled by large numbers of Romanian immigrants in recent centuries, was turned over in its entirety to Romania, despite the fact that it contained 1.6 million Magyar inhabitants.

Between the two world wars, an aggrieved Hungary harbored designs on its neighbours, seeking to regain its former lands. The country’s flag flew permanently at half-mast to remind its citizens of the loss of territory.

In the Second World War, Hungary joined the Nazi-led Axis powers to regain its lost territories, and it did temporarily acquire parts of Slovakia, Yugoslavia and, most importantly, northern Transylvania. But the war was lost and these territories reverted to their previous rulers.

Because of Hungary’s past behavior, its neighbors perceive any act of concern over the fate of its diaspora as a sign of nascent irredentism.

In 2010 Orban’s government passed a law declaring June 4 a “Day of National Unity” of Hungarians all over the world, in remembrance of the Treaty of Trianon, while Jobbik dreams of a Greater Hungary.

Hungary’s decision in 2010 to allow ethnic Hungarians living abroad to apply for dual citizenship sparked an angry response from neighbouring Slovakia, home to roughly 500,000 ethnic Hungarians, about a tenth of the country's population.

A Hungarian Coalition Party (MKP) has asked for the creation of an ethnic Hungarian-majority county there.

In August 2013 Romania’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned a statement made by Jobbik’s Vona, who asserted that Hungary should seek autonomy for the Hungarian-populated Székely Land in Transylvanian Romania.

Altogether there are 1,227,623 ethnic Hungarians in Romania, most of them in Transylvania, where they constitute 18 per cent of the population.

Serbia is home to some 300,000 Hungarians, mainly in the northern Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, where they make up 15 per cent of the population.

The Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians (VMSZ) has proposed the creation of a new administrative unit in the northern part of the province, the Hungarian Regional Autonomy, which would have a Hungarian majority.

Though Hungarian irredentists remain an ideological force, most of Hungary’s 9.8 million people understand that, as members of both the European Union and NATO, altering borders is a non-starter.

The War Against Israel on American University Campuses

Henry Srebrnik, [Toronto] Jewish Tribune

In the 1960s, American college students marched against the Vietnam War. In the 1980s, activists protested against apartheid in white-ruled South Africa.

Now, the cause du jour is the attempt to delegitimize Israel.

The BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) Movement is gaining strength on campuses across the United States. At many schools, it has become the main issue uniting otherwise disparate groups of students.

Its objective is to force Israel through various boycotts to comply with its goals, which, though somewhat opaque, would arguably lead to the end of Israel as a Jewish state.

The BDS message has started to resonate with many trade unions, churches, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and universities, who see Israel as oppressing Palestinians and violating their human rights.

Jewish student groups, often aided by local Jewish organizations, have sought to curtail these initiatives by appealing to university administrations, in a manner reminiscent of medieval Jewish communities who sought the protection of monarchs against anti-Semitic mobs.

In some cases, they succeed, in others they don’t.

In November, San Francisco State University President Les Wong condemned placards at a Palestinian campus event that said, “My heroes have always killed colonizers.”

Stencils allowing attendees to paint the slogan on placards were available at an event celebrating the sixth anniversary of the creation of a campus mural honoring the late Palestinian-American academic Edward Said. It was organized by the General Union of Palestinian Students and the school’s Cesar Chavez Student Center, as well as the university’s Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative.

A conference organized by the American Studies program at New York University, held from Feb. 28 to March 1, entitled “Circuits of Influence: U.S., Israel and Palestine,” noted approvingly the American Studies Association’s decision in December to boycott Israeli educational institutions.

This was followed by a statement from NYU President John Sexton condemning the boycott movement. “Our provost and I have made our opposition to boycotts of Israeli academics and universities clear, both in response to the recent American Studies Association vote and in the past,” Sexton said.

A similar event was held at the City University of New York, co-sponsored by the Critical Palestine Studies Association, Middle East Studies Organization, and Post-Colonial Studies Group.

Last month, Northeastern University in Boston suspended its campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. On Feb. 24, during this year’s Israeli Apartheid Week, Northeastern students had eviction notices slipped under their dorm doors. The notices, clearly marked as fake, copied the eviction orders the group says the Israeli government posts regularly on Palestinian homes in the West Bank.

The university asserted that the notices alarmed and intimidated students, and Northeastern President Joseph Aoun made a campus-wide announcement that antisemitism would not be tolerated.

Also in March, at Loyola University of Chicago, Pedro Guerrero, the president of the Loyola United Student Government Association (USGA), vetoed a resolution that called on the university to remove its holdings from eight companies that provide equipment or services to Israel for use in the West Bank.

The veto came a day after the USGA had passed the resolution, proposed by the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, by a vote of 12-10 with nine abstentions. However, the student senate can still override the veto with a two-thirds majority vote.

At the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, the Central Student Government (CGS) had on March 18 voted 21-15 with one abstention to “table, indefinitely” a divestment bill presented by student representatives of the campus group Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE).

The next night SAFE and its supporters launched an indefinite sit-in at the CSG chambers, demanding that the student government consider their proposal. A poster hanging on the door to the CSG chambers renamed the room the “Edward Said Lounge.”

Finally, on March 25, a vote was held on the resolution. The atmosphere, according to those in attendance, was tense. All 375 chairs in the venue were filled and hundreds more students were refused entry because of fire code restrictions. About 200 students were placed in an adjacent screening room where they and over 2,000 others at home tuned in to a live-stream of the event.

On the back wall, a few students held up a 20-foot-long Palestinian flag, and the room erupted in cheers. The vote was by secret ballot, as some CGS members said they felt intimidated by the crowd. In the end, the student government’s 25-9 vote, with five abstentions, defeated their proposal.

But these might be temporary victories. The BDS and pro-Palestinian movement is energising students in ways not seen since the 1960s and it is especially strong among those who originate in third world countries, and who see Israel as a colonial, settler state.

Israel is losing the next generation of activist students, many of them possible future leaders, in the very country that it depends on for political and military assistance.

Income Inequality a Growing Problem in America

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI]  Journal Pioneer

The French economist Thomas Piketty, who teaches at the Paris School of Economics, has published a book which is generating a lot of attention. In this latest work, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” Piketty puts forward a theory of capitalism that tries to explain its uneven distribution of rewards in the United States and elsewhere.

An article Piketty co-authored with University of California at Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez in 2003, “Income Inequality in the United States, 1913–1998,” detailed how the share of U.S. national income taken by households at the top of the income distribution had risen sharply during the early decades of the twentieth century, then fallen back during and after the Second World War, but began to escalate again beginning in the 1980s.

Their findings are backed by other research. “Fiscal Policy and Income Inequality,” a report prepared by the International Monetary Fund earlier this year, revealed that in the U.S., the share of market income captured by the richest 10 per cent surged from around 30 percent in 1980 to 48 percent by 2012, while the share of the richest one per cent increased from eight per cent to 19 per cent.

 “One observes in the recent period an unprecedented rise of top managerial compensation in the United States” as well, Piketty told the New York Times in an interview last month. “This is a new form of inequality, which I attempt to explain in terms of the particular U.S. history of the social and fiscal norms over the past century.”

While the average American chief executive was paid about twenty times as much as the typical employee of his firm in the 1950s, today the pay ratio at major corporations is more than two hundred to one, and many executives do even better.

According to Deborah Hargreaves, director of the campaign group the High Pay Centre, the compensation received by chief executives of companies in the S&P 500 index in 2012 was 354 times that of rank-and-file staff.

Last year, the 10 highest-paid chief executives in the U.S. received more than $100 million in compensation, according to the Governance Metrics International Ratings annual poll of executive compensation.

A typical worker at Walmart earns less than twenty-five thousand dollars a year; Michael Duke, the retailer’s former chief executive, was paid more than $23 million in 2012.We see soaring profits and bonuses even as employment and wages stagnate.

Nor do these oligarchs have to give much of it back to society. The single most scandalous tax loophole in America, which allows people with the highest earnings to pay an insignificant amount in taxes, is the one on capital gains, because that carries a lower tax rate (a maximum of 23.8 per cent) than that on earned income (with a maximum of 39.6 per cent).

As billionaire Warren Buffet has famously remarked, his tax rate is lower than that of his secretary.

The result?  The richest 10 per cent of American households now own some 70 per cent of all the country’s wealth while the entire bottom half of households own just five per cent. And the gap keeps widening.

A Gallup Poll conducted last September reported that 20 per cent of American said that they had, at times, lacked enough money to buy the food that they or their families needed during the year.

How will this inequality affect the very future of the American political system? Most people have assumed that capitalism and democracy are bound together in a symbiotic relationship. Is this no longer the case? Might there come to be a divergence between capitalism and democracy?

The poor won’t get much help from Congress – more than half of its members have an average net worth of $1 million or more.

A 2012 poll released by the Pew Research Center, “Rising Share of Americans See Conflict Between Rich and Poor,” is not encouraging. It revealed that young Americans were 14 per cent more likely than older Americans to say that the wealthy in America got there mainly because “they know the right people or were born into wealthy families” rather than because of their “hard work, ambition, and education.”

Is social mobility, the heart of the “American Dream,” becoming a thing of the past? President Barack Obama has called rising income inequality and lack of economic mobility “the defining challenge of our time.” He’s right.

Baltic States Cast Wary Eye on their Former Russian Masters

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

The only countries once part of the Soviet Union to have attained membership in both the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. They all joined in 2004.

They had been forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940, as part of the division of eastern Europe between Hitler and Stalin. Never reconciled to Soviet domination, they were the first among the 15 Soviet republics to proclaim their independence from the USSR in 1990, and they gained it the following year.

In 2004 they were admitted into both the EU and NATO, and they are culturally, economically, and politically now part of Europe.

Both Latvia and Estonia have unsettled disputes with Russia along their eastern borders. But apart from their continued wariness about Russian ambitions, particularly following the events in Ukraine, they also are faced with the challenge of dealing with large internal Russian-speaking minorities, the legacy of decades of Soviet subjugation.

The Baltic states are very small in both territory and population. Estonia has 1.3 million people, Latvia about two million, and the biggest, Lithuania, has three million.

Estonians and Latvians were historically Lutherans, having been influenced by the Germans and the Swedes, whereas Lithuanians were traditionally Roman Catholics, because of a close political alliance with Poland over much of their medieval history.

In fact the current capital, Vilnius, was part of Poland between the two world wars, when the capital was in Kaunas. 

After the Second World War, immigrants from the Soviet Russian republic soon became a dominant minority in Estonia and Latvia, though less so in Lithuania.

Today the Russian minorities range in population from six per cent in Lithuania, to 25 per cent in Estonia, all the way to 27 per cent in Latvia.

Some 94 per cent of the current population of Narva, Estonia’s third-largest city, next to Russia, are Russian-speakers. In some Latvian cities, too, ethnic Latvians constitute a minority, and even in the capital of Riga, they make up slightly less than half of the total population.

The newly sovereign Baltic nations regarded those Soviets who had arrived while their countries had been forcibly incorporated into the USSR not as immigrants or fellow nationals but as illegitimate occupiers, not even entitled to real inclusion within the polity.

So Estonia and Latvia enacted restrictive citizenship laws soon after independence; these entitled Russians to citizenship only after stringent tests. (Lithuania, with its small minority, did not see the need for this.)

Knowledge of the respective national language and history was set as a condition for obtaining citizenship through naturalisation. However, the purported difficulty of the initial language tests became a point of international contention, human rights organizations claiming that they made it impossible for many older Russians who grew up in the Baltic region to gain citizenship.

This problem was compounded by the fact that application for EU and NATO membership became directly linked to democratic requirements, including protection of minority rights.

Consequently, the Estonian and Latvian governments modified their strict citizenship legislation -- but this was not accompanied by an equivalent liberalization of their attitudes.

In their heart of hearts, the Baltic peoples would love to see the Russians leave. Their very presence reminds Estonians and Latvians, in particular, of their decades-long condition of Soviet oppression, which included mass murders, expulsions, and exile to gulags.

Today, though, the majority of ethnic Russians in Estonia and Latvia (as well as Lithuania) have attained citizenship. In fact, specific political parties voicing the rights and demands of the Russian minority are active. In Estonia, the Centre Party is supported by much of the ethnic Russian population. The Latvian equivalent, the Harmony Centre Party, has gained a strong voice in national politics.

Yet Moscow continues to demand better treatment of the Russian-speaking minorities in Estonia and Latvia, and some Estonians and Latvians fear that their Russian populations could be potentially manipulated by Russian President Vladimir Putin to destabilise the region.

The Baltic States are engaged in talks with their NATO partners to step up security in the region. “For us it is a very important issue that NATO is capable of acting,” said Urmas Reinsalu, the Estonian Minister of Defence.

Israel Watches Warily As Assad Gains Ground in the Syrian Civil War

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

Thanks to Russian support and American indecision, the Bashar al-Assad regime is now gaining the upper hand in the Syrian civil war. In towns near the Lebanese border, the Syrian army and its Hezbollah allies are methodically making progress in the struggle against the Sunni rebels.

With Russia holding veto power at the Security Council, there is nothing the United Nations can do, to the frustration of Washington.

Israel has tried to steer clear of the Syrian civil war, but it did launch a series of airstrikes into Syria near the town of Quneitra on March 19 in retaliation for injuries sustained by four of its soldiers along the border in the Golan Heights – though the perpetrators were probably Hezbollah operatives. “We hold the Assad regime responsible for what happens in its territory,” Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Ya’alon explained.

But Israel does not want an escalation of tensions with Damascus. It remains concerned that an ouster of Assad could see power in Syria fall to Islamic militants there, particularly al-Qaeda-linked groups such as the Jabhat al-Nusra, and further destabilize the region.

Founded in January 2012, al-Nusra has been described as one of the most aggressive and successful rebel forces in Syria.

A chaotic collapse of the Syrian state and disintegration of government troops could provide such extremists with a safe haven to launch operations into Israel itself. In that scenario, the Israeli army could be facing a permanent low-intensity war with various militant groups in the Golan Heights, similar to the situation in the Gaza Strip.

On the other hand, if the regime loses in Syria that will weaken Iran, the only country posing a potential existential threat to Israel. The fall of Assad’s regime would remove Syria as a conduit for weapons flowing from Iran to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

And if Iran loses Syria as an ally, it would mean the end of the Iranian bid for Arab hegemony, because the majority Sunnis will have nothing to do with the Shi’a theocrats in Tehran.

The Iranian Kayhan newspaper, which usually reflects the views of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, wrote that Iran should draw lessons from the Crimean crisis and learn from Russia’s conduct:

“From a national perspective, Russia is helped by Iran in addressing most of its security and diplomatic concerns, and in return Iran is helped by Russia’s support on the Syrian, Lebanese, Iraqi, Afghan, nuclear, and other issues. Furthermore, in this affair Russia is in conflict with our enemies, that is, the West. That in itself means we must be pleased with the defeat of our enemies, even if we have criticism of the Russian side.”

Still, Russia and the United States are continuing to cooperate in pressuring Syria to comply with its pledges on chemical weapons. Under a United Nations Security Council resolution that was supported by both Russia and the United States, the entire Syrian chemical arsenal must be destroyed by June 30.

Nearly half of Syria’s chemical stockpile for weapons use has now been removed from the country. “The latest movements increased the portion of chemicals that have now been removed from Syria for destruction outside the country to more than 45 percent,” said the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the group that is collaborating with the United Nations to ensure the arsenal’s destruction.

Germany Again a European Colossus

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

By the spring of 1941, Germany was master of Europe. Hitler’s New Order included conquered countries, such as France and Poland; allies, such as Hungary and Italy: and states with an affinity to its ideology, like Portugal and Spain.

When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union that June, Moscow had no allies on the continent save Great Britain, which remained at war with Hitler.

Today, a reunited and resurgent Germany is the economic driver of the 28-member European Union – which includes Britain. And the EU keeps expanding eastwards, with another half-dozen countries vying for membership. Germany is also the most important nation in NATO after the United States.

France and the United Kingdom may have permanent seats on the UN Security Council, but if one were to reconfigure that body today, at least one of them would be replaced by Germany.

Someone just arrived from Mars could be forgiven for assuming that it was Germany that had won the Second World War.

Russia, on the other hand, has since 1989 lost not only its old Warsaw Pact buffer zone, but also the non-Russian Soviet republics, including the Baltic States, Ukraine, the Caucasian countries, and central Asia. NATO expanded eastward and Russia became more isolated. Belarus is now its only ally in Europe.

To add a dollop of irony, the current German chancellor, Angela Merkel, grew up in the old East Germany, then a vassal state of Moscow’s, and a country where Russian President Vladimir Putin had served as a KGB officer.

From Hitler’s “Gotterdammerung” of 1945, which left Germany in ruins and occupied by the victors of the war, including the Soviets, to the reunification in 1990, two generations of Germans were careful not to throw their political weight around.

Those who had supported Hitler were basically in a type of political purgatory, while their children’s generation was consumed by the evils inflicted upon the world by their parents.

Today, though, a new German generation is no longer wracked by shame or guilt; they no longer feel the need to atone for Germany’s war crimes. So Germany is today a “normal” – and indeed, much admired – country.

This has had profound implications for the Russians, who have moved in the opposite direction – much weakened and increasingly reviled by liberals in Europe and North America.

Merkel told the German parliament on March 13 that Putin’s obsessions with “spheres of influence and territorial claims” were throwbacks to an era “that we thought we had transcended.”  She declared that the Group of 8, a forum of major industrial nations in which Russia was originally included as a means of nudging it toward democracy and free enterprise, had ceased to exist.

By the standards of German foreign policy towards Russia, such a tough tone is new. Unless Putin stops, Merkel added, Germany and its allies will step up their resistance, though only through economic means. The country has very close business relations with Russia and has the greatest capacity to exert pressure.

Last year, trade between Germany and Russia amounted to almost close to 77 billion euros ($107 billion). Russia primarily supplies petroleum and natural gas to Germany. Germany, on the other hand, exports mechanical engineering products, medicines, trains and automobiles to Russia.

Sigmar Gabriel, the German Minister of Economics and Energy, has halted a major Russian military contract for the Rheinmetall defence technology group, at least temporarily. “The German government considers the export of the combat training center to Russia unjustifiable in the current situation,” he said, as he cancelled delivery of the120 million euro ($165 million) battle simulation facility.

Such moves might also backfire. Russia supplies 36 percent and 35 percent of Germany’s imports of natural gas and oil, respectively. Russia might react to economic sanctions by reducing those exports.

But the German economy is a powerhouse and would manage to acquire other sources. In any case, when asked about the consequences for German companies of an economic war with Russia, many Germans have replied that political principles are more important than profits.

Colonialism Was Part of a Now Discredited Zeitgeist

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

Incredible as it seems to us today, until the end of the Second World War, the colonial empires of European powers plus the United States were considered “normal,” and even beneficial to the non-western peoples under their domination.

Imperial rule was justified and supported by most of the citizens in the imperial countries. The notion of rule over tropical lands commanded widespread acceptance, even among those who associated imperial colonization with oppression and exploitation.

For example, the 1904 Congress of the Socialist International concluded that the colonial peoples should be taken in hand by future European socialist governments and led by them into eventual independence.

One of the biggest motivations behind imperialism was the idea of “civilizing” people in underdeveloped places. This was a religious motive for many Christian missionaries, in their attempts to “save the souls” of non-Christian people. Other Europeans claimed that they were only in these areas because they wanted to protect the weaker tribal groups they conquered.

Virtually all of Africa, the Caribbean and South Pacific islands, and much of Asia and the Middle East, were run from capitals in Europe and America. Even such populous and large areas as today’s India, Indonesia and Indochina (Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam) were under British, Dutch, and French control, respectively.

Until 1945, no colonial power had given up a single colony, save to another empire. Germany lost all its colonies after the First World War to the victorious Allies, but in the 1930s Hitler kept demanding their return. And a latecomer to the imperial game, Italy, conquered Ethiopia, one of the only two independent countries in Africa, in 1935-36.

Yet four decades later, virtually all these places had become sovereign states, and only a few specks on the map -- mostly tiny islands -- remained under foreign rule.

So what changed? Why was colonialism suddenly discredited? A number of factors came together as a result of the 1939-1945 war.

Fascism, which glorified conquest, and Nazism, which divided humanity into “superior” and “inferior” so-called “races,” made the philosophical underpinnings of imperialism illegitimate. As well, the European countries were all devastated by the war: Belgium, France and the Netherlands had all been defeated by Germany, and even Britain emerged in a much weakened state.

Most of their Asian colonies, meanwhile, had been occupied by Japan, a non-European state, and the subject peoples there were in no mood to allow their colonial masters to return.

Finally, one of the victors in the war, the Soviet Union, set itself up as a champion of “national liberation.” After 1949, a newly established Communist China, itself a non-western country, followed suit.

Both provided economic, military and political aid to independence movements. (The Chinese and Soviets wouldn’t acknowledge that they were themselves land-based empires, with millions of non-Russian and non-Han Chinese inhabitants.)

So as the Cold War began, the western powers were forced onto the defensive. The Philippines were granted independence by Washington in 1946, India and Pakistan by London, in 1947, and Indonesia by Amsterdam in 1949. The remaining Asian colonies soon followed.

In Africa, fighting began in 1954 against French rule in Algeria and soon all of North Africa was self-governing. In sub-Saharan Africa, Ghana’s independence in 1957 was followed by most of the continent attaining freedom from European rule by 1980. Caribbean and South Pacific islands also gained their independence during that time.

A map of the pre-1939 world looks to us today like that of a different planet. That’s what happens when one zeitgeist replaces another.

How Will Worsening American-Russian Relationship Impact the Middle East?

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

The ideological rivalry between the western world and the Communist bloc may have ended a quarter-century ago, but national interests and realpolitik are with us still.

Indeed, the antagonistic relationship between U.S. President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, is arguably more intense these days than that between President George H.W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, in the waning days of the Cold War.

Following Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the sanctions put in place by western countries in response, an angry and defiant Putin on March 18 denounced what he called a history of dishonesty and cheating by the West.

This belligerent attitude will undoubtedly affect the way Putin feels when it comes to the ever-volatile Middle East.

If you think the Russian leader has been dragging his feet when it comes to the international community trying to frame a robust response to Bashar al-Assad’s murderous regime in Syria or Iran’s ongoing nuclear program, then, as they say on the street, “you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

Emile Hokayem, a Senior Fellow for Regional Security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies based in Manama, Bahrain, remarked in the New York Times that “to irritate the West, Russia can do a lot more to augment Assad’s power over the rebels; the political and material support Russia has extended from Day 1 has already proven crucial to his survival and recovery.”

Assad, grateful for Moscow’s support, has described the Russian stance over the situation in Ukraine as a “wise policy” in the face of “coup attempts against legitimacy and democracy in favor of the terrorist extremists.” He reiterated Syria’s commitment to Putin’s “rational approach” and applauded Russia for “saving the world from dangerous events.”

And Assad is now gaining the upper hand in the civil war. With Russia holding veto power at the Security Council, there is nothing the United Nations can do, to the frustration of Washington.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal on March 18, Syrian deputy foreign minister Faisal al-Mekdad said that he sees no point in further peace talks in Geneva if the opposition and its Western backers keep insisting that Assad relinquish power, and indicated his regime had the backing of Russia in its stance.

Nuclear negotiations with Iran could get more complicated as well, if Moscow breaks ranks with Western powers and Tehran manages to play on these divisions. “Iran may feel sufficiently supported by Moscow that it backtracks on its recent conciliatory actions and rhetoric and continues to develop its nuclear program,” stated Paul de Quenoy, an associate professor of history at the American University of Beirut.

“If you’re Putin and you think you’re going to be a target of sanctions, the most obvious leverage is in the Iranian file, where Russian cooperation is so important,” remarked Mark Dubowitz, the executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based group.

Meanwhile, Egyptian Field Marshal Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi seems likely to revert to his predecessors’ Cold War roles of playing the U.S. and Russia off of each other to secure maximum concessions from both sides while making minimal commitments of their own.

Sisi, who now rules Egypt, visited Russia in February to negotiate a deal to buy as much as $2 billion worth of Russian weapons. Egypt’s main arms supplier, the United States, has suspended certain shipments in response to the ouster of former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi.

“Our visit offers a new start to the development of military and technological cooperation between Egypt and Russia,” Sisi told Putin. “We hope to speed up the cooperation.”

The only thing certain about the Middle East is the uncertainty generated by its shifting political sands.