Hillary wins Pennsylvania - but why?

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Hillary Clinton beat Barack Obama by a 10 per cent margin in the Pennsylvania primary on April 22, even though he outspent her massively in the state. Why?

An exit poll conducted at 40 precincts across Pennsylvania for the Associated Press on election day found 16 per cent of white voters said that race mattered in deciding whom they voted for, and just 54 per cent of those voters would support Obama in a general election were he the nominee.

In fact, 27 per cent of them said that in that case they would vote for John McCain, while 16 per cent said they would not vote at all.

It's also interesting to note that barely more than a third of Clinton voters in Pennsylvania said they would be happy with Obama atop the Democratic ticket, whereas more than half of those backing Obama said they would be satisfied with Clinton as the nominee.

This is another sign that racism trumps chauvinism and misogyny in this race. Much of this contest has had nothing to do with "message" or "personality"- it is simply the colour of Obama's skin.

Since almost all African Americans in Pennsylvania voted for Obama - he won black-majority Philadelphia 65-35 per cent - and two-thirds of white women supported Clinton, the 'swing' vote that decided the race came down to white men, who went strongly for Clinton.

Clinton did particularly well among rural whites, traditionally less receptive to black politicians. She also got 70 per cent of whites who never went to college and 72 per cent of Catholics, many of whom are blue-collar workers of Irish, Italian and east European descent.

These are all people who have competed with African-Americans for jobs and housing in the big cities and sometimes see them as rivals.

Of course there are many reasons why all these groups might prefer Clinton to Obama apart from ethnic and gender issues. But in actual fact little separates the two candidates in terms of their overall ideology and platforms.

So if we discount these minute differences, what can we conclude? That many voters were saying, in effect, "better the white woman than the black man."

This is, needless to say, an oversimplification, but it's probably the "Occam's razor" answer. (This is the famous principle that states that the simplest explanation for some phenomenon is more likely to be accurate than more complicated ones, as propounded by the fourteenth century English friar William of Occam.)

And Hillary Clinton, while certainly no racist herself, is nonetheless making sure the super-delegates, who in the end will decide who gets the nomination, are made aware of this. Not above demagoguery, and using code language, she whispers to them that, despite having more delegates and a lead in the popular vote, Obama will be "unelectable" in the general election.

How different is this from a shopkeeper, in the days before there were laws against discrimination in hiring, justifying not employing blacks because "the customers wouldn't come into my store?"

This contest reminds me of those elections that take place in deeply divided societies.

How many Albanians would have voted for Slobodan Milosevic, or Serbs for the Kosovo Liberation Army, in pre-war Kosovo, had such an election been held?

How many Kikuyu in Kenya voted for Raila Odinga, a Luo, in last December's presidential election? And how many Luo voted for Mwai Kibaki, an ethnic Kikuyu?

How many Turks on Cyprus voted for Greek parties, or vice versa, before that island was partitioned in 1974? How many Israeli Arabs vote for far-right Zionist parties, and how many Israeli Jews would vote for Hamas or the PLO (were that an option)?

We know the answer.

In other words, such elections are merely "census counts" - you pretty much know the result in advance simply by looking at the population breakdown. In Pennsylvania, all of Obama's money couldn't change that.

Has Running for the U.S. Presidency Become a Wrestling Match?

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

As we know, Hillary Clinton has done just about everything to Barack Obama but physically assault him. And she’s proud of it. She is gleeful that he apparently can’t take a punch.

Clinton ridiculed Obama for lacking “toughness” as she campaigned in Pennsylvania in the days before that state’s April 22 primary contest. “Who do you think has what it takes?” asked one of her television ads.

Claiming the Obama was not up to the task of adequately protecting America, Clinton quoted the famous line from Harry Truman, “If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”

Maybe that’s why an MSNBC poll taken a day before the vote showed hunters and gun owners favoring Clinton over Obama.

A few weeks earlier, the New York Times had quoted Bill Clinton telling listeners at a rally in West Virginia that “if a politician doesn’t want to get beat up, he shouldn’t run for office.” He called politics “a contact sport.”

But wouldn’t Obama’s so-called lack of toughness also apply to kids being attacked by bullies in schoolyards? Is this what Senator Clinton meant when she asserted, years ago, that “it takes a village to raise a child?”

Pummeling Obama through innuendo and guilt-by-association – Obama has crossed paths with a Chicago professor who forty years ago was a New Left radical; his former pastor has made controversial statements about America – has become the Clintons’ version of “scrutiny” and “vetting.”

I’d be more inclined to call them the kinds of smears once employed by the infamous Senator Joseph McCarthy.

Though it worked in Pennsylvania, where she won the primary, many Democrats can’t stand these scorched-earth tactics anymore. Obama has now been endorsed by Robert Reich, Bill Clinton’s first Secretary of Labour. Reich became the fifth former Clinton cabinet member to endorse the Illinois senator.

“I did not plan to endorse. But my conscience wouldn’t let me stay silent after this latest round of mudslinging,” Reich told the Los Angeles Times on April 18.

“The negative ads coming out of the Clinton camp were just appalling at a time when our nation is facing such huge challenges,” he said. “Those ads are nothing but Republicanism. It’s old politics at its worst -- and old Republican politics, not even old Democratic politics. It’s just so deeply cynical.”

Anyhow, why has running for office become like boxing or wrestling? Do we really want politicians to be street-hardened thugs, or people with inspiring ideas and well-crafted political programs?

And shouldn’t feminists, who have long argued against such a macho approach to politics, be the first to criticize Clinton’s approach? Should a woman – any woman – be supported, no matter what she says and does? Why aren’t people like Gloria Steinem, who earlier this year came out in support of Clinton, speaking up?

The next major contests are in Indiana and North Carolina on May 6. They should post a “mud alert” in both states.

The Democratic Party Race: The Beat Goes On...and On...and On

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

The next big primary in the ongoing Democratic Party race is on April 22. The Pennsylvania contest will apportion 158 delegates and is the biggest single state left in the fight between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Though Obama has won the endorsement of Bob Casey, one of the state’s senators, Clinton has the support of Governor Ed Rendell and most of the party establishment there. She leads Obama in the polls and is predicted to win.

Despite that, many pundits and politicians think that Clinton’s fight to gain the Democratic Party nomination is all but hopeless. Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont said in an interview carried by National Public Radio March 27 that Clinton should quit the race because she has hurt Obama “more than anything John McCain has said.”

Of course this assumes she feels bound to play by the rules. But what if her sense of entitlement is so strong that she is willing to break them if necessary? In an e-mail she sent out at the end of March, and quoted by the Washington Post, Clinton declared she would not be “bullied out” of the race by the “big boys.”

In an interview with the same paper during a campaign stop in India on March 29, she declared that “I have no intention of stopping until we finish what we started and until we see what happens in the next 10 contests.”

In fact, she went further. Clinton told Time magazine that even pledged delegates are not legally bound to support the candidate to whom they are pledged: “Every delegate is expected to exercise independent judgment.” Which translates as, my delegates are mine, but his are mine to poach.

As well, 20 well-heeled backers of Clinton’s have sent a letter to Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, chastising Pelosi for declaring that the super-delegates should support the winner of the pledged delegate count. Clinton’s backers went so far as to threaten to cut off their financial contributions to the party.

Many of the extremely wealthy people who signed the letter benefitted from legislation passed during Bill Clinton’s presidency, and are happy in return to scratch the Clintons’ backs.

The Clintons’ 28 year old daughter Chelsea, for example, in 2006 took a job analyzing investments at Avenue Capital Group, a hedge fund run by banker Marc Lasry, a loyal donor to Clinton-related Democratic causes. Her salary is in the high six figure range. Lasry was one of the 20 signatories to the letter.

When another prominent Democrat, New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, endorsed Obama, he was denounced as a “Judas” by one of Clinton’s political operatives, James Carville.

Carville told the New York Times on Good Friday that the endorsement was an “act of betrayal” that “came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out (Jesus) for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic.”

Carville seems to regard the Democratic Party as a Clinton family enterprise, much as the Pakistan Peoples Party belongs to the Bhuttos. No doubt he’ll be expecting loyalists to support Chelsea Clinton when she seeks office in the future.

If you compare Obama’s endorsements with Clinton’s, one thing becomes evident: one side consists primarily of people with integrity, while the other side is dominated by ethics-challenged hacks.

As she grows ever more frenzied in her pursuit of the nomination, Hillary Clinton is fast becoming the Mwai Kibaki of American politics. (Kibaki is the Kenyan leader who stole the presidential election from a rival last December.)

What’s next, a coup d’état if Barack Obama wins the nomination?

Carville and the J-Word

Henry Srebrnik, [Toronto] Jewish Tribune

Jewish defense organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League and the Simon Wiesenthal Center in the United States, and the Canadian Jewish Congress and the League for Human Rights here in Canada, are always on the alert for even the slightest whiff of anti-Semitism. And rightly so.

To pick a somewhat minor example recently in the news, Congress wrote to the Kirkland Lake, Ontario, town council, inquiring as to why a street in the town was named Swastika Ave. It turns out this name dates back to 1911 and long predated Nazism -- the swastika was, after all, a Hindu symbol that Hitler appropriated as an “Aryan” emblem.

Frankly, I’d feel better were the street given some other name; after the Holocaust, the swastika, I’m afraid, can never lose its sinister connotations. Still, it turns out to have been an innocent misunderstanding.

We know that Jewish groups will sometimes censure people or groups for remarks that seem only tangentially to have anti-Jewish implications. So why has there been relative silence from American Jewish organizations when political operative and Hillary Clinton supporter James Carville called New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, once a member of President Bill Clinton’s Cabinet, a “Judas”?

Carville made the remark after Richardson endorsed Barack Obama for the Democratic Party’s nomination in the U.S. presidential race. Carville called it an “act of betrayal” that “came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out (Jesus) for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic.”

In much of western culture, Judas became the stereotype of the greedy, traitorous Jew, the man responsible for deicide. His very name and image has been used to incite violence against Jews over the centuries. How many of us have been murdered in pogroms due to this libel?

Hitler, among many others, certainly knew the power of the “J-word.”

No doubt Carville did not intend to malign Jews – but could he not have used a different example, one less offensive to Jewish ears? The traitor Benedict Arnold, the American general who switched sides and sold out to the British during the American Revolution, comes to mind.

Were an evangelical Protestant to have made a similar statement – say, while accusing some Republican of turning against John McCain – my guess is we’d have heard more of an outcry.

But most American Jews are fairly secular and a majority support the Democratic Party. Hillary Clinton is a U.S. senator from New York state and has many Jewish supporters.

So is there a double standard at work here? Judge for yourself.

The Year 1968: Where Did the Time Go?

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

What a different world it was in that spring and summer of 1968. I had begun a masters degree in political science at McGill University; my thesis topic was the Cuban Revolution and the Cuban-American relationship.

Castro was a young firebrand then, had only been in power nine years, and we all admired him.

The university was a hothouse of student activism and the student union was always crowded, full of people arguing passionately about politics.

Martin Luther King, Jr. had been killed in Memphis on April 4, and riots had broken out almost immediately in more than 110 cities across the United States. I recall watching the TV coverage of the Liberal party's leadership convention - won by Pierre Trudeau - being interspersed with footage of the mayhem in American streets.

Thanks to the unpopular Vietnam War, President Lyndon Johnson had announced he would not be running for re-election. The two Democratic challengers on the left were Robert F. Kennedy, brother of the slain president, and Eugene McCarthy, the idealistic Minnesotan senator.

But Kennedy was murdered on June 5, following his victory in the California Democratic Party primary. I have memories of hitchhiking down from Montreal to New York with a friend as Kennedy's body was being brought back from California to New York, to lie in state at St. Patrick's Cathedral, before burial at Arlington National Cemetery.

At the acrimonious Chicago convention that August, marred by street riots and mass arrests, the ineffectual Hubert Humphrey would win the Democratic nomination. Six years of Republican rule under Richard Nixon would follow.

In Canada, Trudeaumania broke out that spring. In the federal election that had been called for June 25, I worked for Professor Charles Taylor.

Then a young academic at McGill, Taylor was running for the NDP in a Montreal riding.

On the evening before the vote, I was at Parc Lafontaine in Montreal, when radical Quebec separatists clashed with police following the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day parade. Trudeau was there, and stood his ground on a balcony of the city's library across the street as he was pelted with bottles and rocks.

Many of the rioters were arrested - one of my friends was forced to run the gauntlet at a police station. Beaten with truncheons, he had a fat lip for months afterwards.

The next day, people flocked to the polls to vote Liberal, and Taylor lost. Maybe it was for the best, as he would go on to become a world-famous philosopher.

Right after the election, I was again hitchhiking down to the U.S. from Montreal with another friend who, in the sartorial style of the time, had unkempt long hair and a wild untrimmed beard. Despite that, we got rides all the way to Washington.

We went into a black neighbourhood to drop in, unannounced, at the offices (if such they could be called) of the radical Black Panthers.

There had been major urban violence in the city three months earlier, following King's assassination, and the area looked like a war zone.

Somehow, I managed to spend some time at the Library of Congress, researching my MA.

Later that summer, I became part of a cabal of McGill students - we called it a vanguard! - plotting a student strike against our political science department. We were all part of that amorphous entity known as the New Left.

We did indeed get our strike that fall, and shut down classes for about two weeks, until we won our demands for greater "student power." Most of us are today on the other side of the barricades.

In 1968, the entire social system seemed in flux, and we felt we were on the verge of creating a new and better world. As Peter, Paul and Mary sang, "Wasn't that a time!"

March 25, 2008

John McCain: A Political Resurrection?

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

John McCain, last year given up as politically dead, has made a surprising comeback this spring. Not only has he defeated his Republican rivals for the nomination of his party, but he is getting plenty of help from an unexpected source: Democrats.

The American finance company LendingTree runs a TV ad that says “When banks compete, you win.” Well, when identity politics dominate the Democratic primaries, perhaps old white men win.

A recent editorial cartoon in the Washington Post by Pulitzer Prize-winning illustrator Tom Toles depicts Hillary Clinton serving as an unpaid “volunteer” for McCain’s campaign. It’s not too far off the mark.

New York Times writer Frank Rich in his March 23 column remarked that Clinton is no longer trying to overcome Barack Obama’s lead “by making bold statements about Iraq or any other issue. Instead of enhancing her own case for the presidency, she’s going to tear him down.”

In the past few weeks, Clinton has stated that only she and McCain have the kind of foreign policy experience necessary to serve as commander-in-chief, while husband Bill has questioned Obama’s patriotism.

Clinton stated at a press conference in Washington on March 6 that only she and the Arizona senator have the credentials to be president. “Senator McCain will bring a lifetime of experience to the campaign; I will bring a lifetime of experience; and Senator Obama will bring a speech that he gave in 2002,”she declared.

“I think it’s imperative that each of us be able to demonstrate we can cross the commander-in-chief threshold,” she added. “I believe that I've done that. Certainly, Senator McCain has done that and you’ll have to ask Senator Obama with respect to his candidacy.”

Among Clinton’s foreign policy accomplishments, apparently, were her visits to Northern Ireland, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia while First Lady. She claims that she helped broker peace agreements there and gave comfort to refugees.

Her detractors have laughed this off as hyperbole. I’m inclined to agree: I’ve been teaching a course on power-sharing this term, and three chapters in our text deal with these very three entities. Her name, I’m afraid, appears nowhere in the book.

As for Bill Clinton, he called John McCain “an honorable man” and spoke of McCain’s friendship with his wife in a March 21 speech to voters in Charlotte, North Carolina. The state will hold its primary on May 6.

“It would be a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country,” added the former president. Obama’s camp in turn accused him of “McCarthyism.”

Never before has a Democratic presidential candidate suggested that his or her Democratic rival was less qualified to serve as president than a prospective Republican opponent.

So where is all this heading? An increasing number of Obama supporters say they will not vote for Clinton should she win the nomination, and vice versa.

Picture this scene as a metaphor: an older man opens his front door and sees, in the schoolyard across the street, two groups of unruly children fighting with each other, one gang composed mainly of girls, the other mainly of Black kids. The neighbours want him to do something to stop it.

See what I mean? That’s why, despite the war in Iraq and the recession, McCain might win in November.

A Caustic Look at the Never-Ending Primary War

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

Having won the Ohio and Texas primaries, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign has regained its momentum. She continues to pummel Barack Obama with her “kitchen sink” strategy, throwing everything from accusations of plagiarism to mendacity at him.

Though she held no elective office until winning a seat as a senator from New York in 2000, she insists she is “ready on day one” to be president. At a recent press conference, Clinton was flanked by some top American military brass, part of her campaign to demonstrate that she’d make a better commander-in-chief than Barack Obama.

Having recently marked International Women’s Day, we might wonder whether this is what feminism has come to – a woman making the case she can play with guns just as well as any of the boys.

Clinton also wants to change the rules to allow new primary elections in Florida and Michigan, two states whose delegates were disqualified by the Democratic National Committee, because they defied the party by holding their primaries too early. They account for 366 pledged delegates.

As it happens, she won both – indeed, in Michigan, Obama’s name wasn’t even on the ballot. She believes she can beat him in both.

Clinton also hopes to win over a majority of the 796 so-called superdelegates, Democratic Party officials who are free to vote for either contender. They account for approximately one fifth of all votes at the convention. (A candidate needs a total of 2,025 delegates to win the nomination.)

This is another reason she wants Florida and Michigan to count, as their 53 superdelegates, currently “frozen” too, would be back in play as well. Clinton thinks she would acquire a large number of those, because she stuck by the two states in their feud with the DNC.

But with Obama holding an advantage of about 140 pledged convention delegates over Clinton, his allies argue that the outcome of the contest should be determined by delegates awarded to winners of primaries or caucuses.

Former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, a co-chair of the Obama campaign, said on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press” that it would be a travesty if Obama maintains his lead among pledged delegates, but an advantage among superdelegates allows Clinton to win the nomination.

"I don't see how we could possibly do anything other than respect the will of the people who have voted in caucus and primary states all over the country,” he insisted.

Obama also finds it incredibly patronizing that the Clinton camp has sent out trial balloons suggesting he might become her vice-presidential running mate on a “dream ticket.” Calling it an example of “chutzpah,” or audacity, his camp noted that he is at the moment leading her in the race!

He has won 29 contests, including the recent victory in Mississippi, to her 17, and a larger share of the overall popular vote.

Clinton’s defenders in the women’s movement insist she has been treated more harshly than she deserves because of her gender. On the other hand, Obama’s allies felt offended when an icon of the women’s movement, Geraldine Ferraro, who has endorsed Clinton and raised money for her campaign, suggested that Obama has only achieved his status in the presidential race because he's African-American.

This is a rather strange statement to make in a country where within living memory many Blacks couldn’t even vote or run for office. Clinton called Ferraro’s remarks regrettable.

Ever since Mwai Kibaki, a Kikuyu, stole the recent Kenyan presidential election from Raila Odinga, a member of the rival Luo ethnic group, a joke circulating in that African country has it that “it’s easier for a Luo to become president of the United States than of Kenya.” (Barack Obama’s father was a Kenyan Luo.)

However, this may no longer be the case.

Hillary Clinton’s mud sticks to Obama

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Can Hillary Clinton, despite trailing Barack Obama in pledged delegates, still win the Democratic Party nomination? Of course.

I think her attacks on him are bearing fruit. And her primary wins in the big states of Ohio and Texas last week prove it.

Ever since her “Shame on you, Barack Obama!” rant a few weeks ago, during a campaign stop in Cincinnati, in which she sounded like a schoolmarm disciplining a student who had disappointed her, Clinton’s negative campaigning has worked. (Would Mrs. Clinton give Barack a detention and make him stand in a corner, I wondered?)

The issue which so infuriated her involved their respective health-care proposals — although in reality there is not much difference between the two. Still, it made for good political theatre.

It amazes me how so many people can be misled by propaganda. Prior to the Ohio and Texas primaries, Clinton ran a television ad showing a telephone ringing at 3 a.m., while children slept nearby. It was meant to suggest that she, rather than Obama, would make a better president in the event of a national emergency.

Actually, she has no more foreign policy experience than Obama does.

Since when have ‘first ladies’ sat by the ‘hot line’ telephone? Clinton didn’t have security clearance while husband Bill served as president, nor did she attend National Security Council meetings. She wasn’t even given a copy of the president’s daily intelligence briefing.

Insofar as she participated in shaping Bill Clinton’s agenda, it was on domestic matters such as health care, welfare reform, and other ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ issues. She has about as much credibility as a ‘commander-in-chief’ as I do, yet this TV ad apparently was very effective.

Clinton also slammed Obama on the North American Free Trade Agreement, especially in economically hard-hit Ohio, though it was ‘her’ administration — remember, she claims to have “35 years of experience” — that signed it into law. She now insists that she always opposed NAFTA — though we never heard a word about this until recently.

Obama, on the other hand, was portrayed as “two-faced” on the issue — a minor discussion between one of his economic policy advisers and a Canadian consular official in Chicago was blown up by Clinton into an earth-shattering event.

The Clinton campaign made very effective use of a memo obtained by the press, in which Canadian consulate staffer Joseph DeMora noted that Obama’s people said that the threat to withdraw from NAFTA should be viewed as simply “political positioning.”

Obama responded in a dignified manner, trying to set the record straight, by stating that this was blown out of all proportion. It didn’t work.

But wait — it gets worse. It turns out that Clinton’s camp tried to deliver the very same message about NAFTA to Canada, a report her campaign at the time denied.

Clearly, many voters are reluctant to cast their ballots for “nice guys” who aren’t “tough enough” to be as underhanded as Clinton appears to be. They have no respect for people who “fight fair.” A sad commentary on the American electorate.

Clinton and Obama: Who’s Been More Oppressed?

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

I dislike the politics of “comparative victimology,” in which different ethnic, racial, gender, and sexual groups vie to demonstrate that they have been more oppressed than others.

The contest for the Democratic nomination for presidency of the United States has brought this to the fore. Supporters of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama square off, each trying to make the case that a victory for their candidate would be a radical departure from the bad old days for America. Both groups are, of course, correct. But which has the better argument?

All discrimination and prejudice is abhorrent, be it against aboriginal peoples, blacks, gays, Jews, Latinos, Muslims, women, or any other groups that have been stigmatized for one or another reason. But if we really wish to compare the way African Americans and women have been treated, historically, in the U.S., it’s really no contest.

Clinton is indeed the first viable female candidate for president – forget for a moment that she’s been riding on her husband’s coat tails for decades – and women have had to fight hard to reach this point. Her victory would definitely transform American politics – but not as much as a win by Obama.

Yes, women have had to contend with career roadblocks and the “glass ceiling,” but how many have been lynched from actual ceilings, as were thousands of American blacks? How many white women were terrorized by groups such as the Ku Klux Klan? How many were not able to vote, in many American states, within living memory?

How many women were refused entry, not just to exclusive all-male clubs run by reactionary buffoons, but to ordinary hotels, restaurants, indeed entire neighbourhoods, because of their gender? How many were in the recent past not allowed to enroll in ordinary state colleges and universities? How many couldn’t even drink from a water fountain reserved for whites?

If Hillary Clinton were a man, her candidacy would elicit little more than a polite yawn – she’s a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, an upper middle class Chicagoan from an affluent suburb who attended elite colleges and had little trouble becoming a successful lawyer.

She is little different, in fact, from male Democratic counterparts such as former vice-president Al Gore, Governor Ted Strickland of Ohio, Senator Jim Webb of Virginia – or for that matter, George W. Bush. In fact she comes from a far more privileged background than does her own husband Bill.

If Clinton goes on to win, it would make history, sure – but many other places have already been there, done that.

We’ve seen women leaders elected in Germany (Angela Merkel), Great Britain (Margaret Thatcher), India (Indira Gandhi), Israel (Golda Meir), the Philippines (Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo), and many other places. Our own PEI had premier Catherine Callbeck. But all of these people were products of their own majority cultures.

Obama, on the other hand, had a Kenyan father and a white mother. His parents were ostracized by many people, including some in their respective families, for the “sin” of intermarriage. He has had to chart his own remarkable path in America. No one has paved his way.

His spouse Michelle is an African American woman born in the black “ghetto” on the south side of Chicago. She comes from a working class home – her father was a blue-collar city water plant employee and her mother a secretary.

Unlike the privileged Hillary, she couldn’t count on the same sort of “cultural capital” when growing up. Yet she managed to graduate from Princeton University and Harvard Law School. She too is a trail-blazer.

The United States had to suffer through a bloody civil war in order to abolish chattel slavery, and years of upheaval until blacks acquired full civil rights. If an African American is elected president, it will astound the world.

Is Hillary Clinton a Democrat?

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

You're the person who deserves - indeed, is absolutely entitled - to be the Democratic Party's nominee for president of the United States.

You've worked for decades to reach this point, kept your eyes on the prize, suffered through the travails of being married to a philanderer, and taken abuse from misogynists and "the great right-wing conspiracy."

Most importantly, America needs you to clean up the mess following eight years of George W. Bush!

Then along comes this young, charismatic African American, seemingly out of nowhere, and you're in danger of seeing it all slip away. You have run a rather uninspiring campaign and have now lost eight contests in a row. You are behind in both the popular vote and the pledged delegate count.

You've already forfeited the black vote, thanks in part to the rants of your husband, the ex-president, whom you've allowed to campaign on your behalf. And now even core support groups such as Latinos, working-class whites, and women are beginning to desert you.

What to do? Well, if you're Hillary Clinton, it's simple: just circumvent the democratic process.

It requires a total of 2,025 delegates out of 4,049 to win the nomination. But almost one-fifth of the delegates, 796 people, are "unpledged" so-called "superdelegates," ex officio Democrats who hold various elected offices or other positions within the party. They are not bound by any rules and can back whomever they choose.

Clinton has made it clear that, even if Barack Obama ends up with more pledged delegates going into the Denver convention in August, she sees nothing wrong with having this "back-room nomenklatura" make up the difference and crown her the victor.

Not everyone is happy with her tactics. Donna Brazile, a commentator and superdelegate herself, told CNN that "if 795 of my colleagues decide this election, I will quit the Democratic Party."

As well, Clinton is now shamelessly demanding that the results of the Michigan and Florida primaries, which were held in January in defiance of the party's rule, be counted and their delegates seated at the convention.

The Democratic National Committee stripped the two states of their delegates - 156 for Michigan and 210 for Florida - because they held their primaries prior to the "Super Tuesday" Feb. 5 schedule.

All of the candidates agreed to this and none of them campaigned in these two primaries. In the case of Michigan, Clinton's chief rivals, Obama and Jonathan Edwards, even removed their names from the ballot.

As the only major candidate on the Michigan ballot, she got 55 per cent of the vote. She also won in Florida, and thus would gain the lion's share of the delegates from these two states. In other words, Clinton is demanding that the party treat as legitimate, elections in which she had virtually no opposition.

The prospect of a fight over seating the two delegations will gravely wound the party. As the Rev. Al Sharpton, a prominent black activist, pointed out, this is like trying to change the rules of a football game when you're behind in the third quarter.

He also said that many people in those two states did not go the polls because they assumed their votes would not count.

Clinton's role models seem to be the old party bosses who used to run the big-city Democratic Party machines, dispensing favours and patronage.

They became known collectively as "Tammany Hall" politicians, named for the building in Manhattan out of which the New York politicos operated.

Hillary Clinton may be a Democrat, but it's clear she's no democrat.

Should she get away with these shenanigans, the party's left wing will argue that the nomination was "stolen from a black," many African Americans and other progressives will sit out the general election in November, and the nearly impossible may happen: the Republicans under John McCain might actually win the presidency.

“Banal” Nationalism: America, Canada and Quebec

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Why has the United States been able to inculcate a sense of nationhood in its citizenry in ways that Canadians can only envy?

I’d like to address this by comparing two songs, written at about the same time: “The City of New Orleans,” by Steve Goodman, and “Canadian Railroad Trilogy,” by Gordon Lightfoot. Both deal with the important role railways have played in shaping the two countries.

The American song, composed in 1972, is about “the train they call The City of New Orleans,” as it travels down through the heart of the country from Chicago to the Gulf of Mexico.

It is rather sad, because it laments the passing of passenger rail travel: “This train's got the disappearing railroad blues.” But this somewhat melancholy and nostalgic song resonates with Americans and reminds them of their history.

Lightfoot’s song, by contrast, is upbeat: written for Canada’s centennial in 1967, it describes the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway in the late 19th century.

“For there was a time in this fair land when the railroad did not run,” sings Lightfoot. But those who would build “this mighty land” were not daunted: “For they looked in the future and what did they see. They saw an iron road running from sea to the sea.”

So why do Lightfoot’s lyrics not have the same ability as do Goodman’s to inculcate a spirit of nationhood? They are certainly just as well written, the melody just as beautiful.

The answer is simple. The song speaks only to English Canada, and might as well be a foreign tune to most francophone Québécois. And therein lies the problem.

Apropos Quebec nationalism: I drove from Charlottetown to Montreal and then on to Toronto last spring, taking the route through New Brunswick and then along the Saint Lawrence River.

Quebec is truly its own nation. Most highway numbers are distinct to the province. For example, the main east-west artery, route 20, becomes the 401 as it enters Ontario. (American interstates retain the same number from one end to the other.) As one nears Quebec City, one is informed that this is the “national capital region.”

Also interesting are the weather maps in many of the smaller provincial French-language newspapers: they show only Quebec, rather than Canada. In the rest of Canada, the illustrations are of the entire country, at the very least, and sometimes even all of North America.

Another thing that struck me: on downtown office buildings, hotels, and other major sites in Montreal, there are usually three flags flying side by side, with the Quebec one in the middle, and the Canadian and American ones on either side of it -- even though protocol dictates that a national flag, not that of a sub-jurisdiction, should be placed in the centre.

Also, by having the Canadian and American flags on each side of the fleur-de-lis, Quebec announces, in a subtle way, that these are two friendly (but equally foreign?) neighbours.

You would never see an Ontario flag on the middle pole, with a Canadian maple leaf and an American stars and stripes on either side, in Toronto.

Also, since to name is to claim, many streets that once honoured British officials now pay tribute to francophone politicians – for example, Dorchester Blvd., a main downtown artery, was renamed Blvd. René-Lévesque.

All of these things may seem unimportant on the surface, but they are “signifiers,” elements of what the British social psychologist Michael Billig refers to as “everyday” nationalism.

The thesis of his 1995 study “Banal Nationalism” is that there is a continual “flagging” of nationhood all around us that helps “locate” us politically. This is “so familiar, so continual,” he asserts, “that it is not consciously registered as reminding” and so often goes unnoticed.

The image of banal nationalism “is not a flag which is being consciously waved with fervent passion; it is the flag hanging unnoticed on the public building.”

It is such everyday symbols that socially construct a sense of collective identity – and in Quebec, they are mostly those of the Québécois “homeland,” rather than of the larger federation.

I drove back to Prince Edward Island via Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine – and of course the little towns along the way in most cases flew only the U.S. flag. If a state flag was present, it was on the same flagpole, but smaller and below the American one. The national flag always had pride of place.

No issues of nationhood there!

Back to the future in a consociational Palestine?

Henry Srebrnik, [Toronto] Jewish Tribune

Imagine a country with two communities so deeply divided along ethnic or religious lines that it can only maintain democratic institutions within the framework of a unified state if the leaders of each ethnic group cooperate in power-sharing provisions to govern the country.

These arrangements, which political scientists refer to as consociationalism, often mandate a precise numerical ratio of parliamentary seats, governmental positions, and other offices, between the two groups. The groups often vote in separate, ethnically-based constituencies, rather than on a common electoral roll.

The very intricate constitution may also reserve certain important executive positions – say, the offices of president, vice-president, or prime minister – for one or the other community. It usually also specifies that the armed forces and police be composed of members of both groups. Finally, there are mutual vetoes in matters regarding the preservation of the culture and security of each community.

In such states, the groups in question are subject to both their internal ethnic leadership and that of the very weak state, and such dual authority politics, with overlapping fields of authority, creates a conflict between ethnic loyalty and state loyalty. The former almost invariably predominates. After all, the groups have little in common other than economic and political relationships, which tend to be antagonistic in nature.

Not surprisingly, such states are usually mere facades, the sovereign equivalents of Potemkin villages, often only held together due to pressure from outside forces who for one reason or another are unwilling to let such Humpty-Dumpty entities break into smaller pieces.

Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Lebanon, and perhaps Northern Ireland, are among many that spring immediately to mind. States such as Fiji, Nigeria and Sudan might join the list. And since there is no common sense of nationality, but rather competing nationalisms and jockeying for power, these artificial constructs often do finally splinter into partitioned entities: Cyprus after 1974 is a typical example, as were India and Palestine in 1947-48.

Today, though, we hear voices calling for the dissolution of Israel as a Jewish state, to be replaced by a “secular” entity – Palestine? – of Arabs and Jews.

No doubt, given the decades of mistrust and strife, this state too would soon enough manifest a politics revolving around the competing demands of the two constituent communities.

Communal violence would be an almost certain outcome, with a de facto geographical separation of the two groups within the state, as has been the case with the examples cited above.

Sooner or later, assuming one group did not eliminate the other through expulsion or massacre, there would be calls to partition the country – and we’d have come full circle, right back to UN General Assembly Resolution 181 of November 1947, the original plan to partition Palestine.

So why rewind and replay the tape? Political realism requires the acknowledgment of a fact that might be inconvenient to maximalists on either side: the final recognition of Israeli and Palestinian states within mutually recognized boundaries between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

The American Presidential Race – So Far

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

The next presidential election in the United States is still more than 10 months away. Indeed, not a single primary or caucus has been held.

The Democrats and Republicans still have, between them, 17 hopefuls in the race.

But it really will boil down to these seven candidates: among the Republicans, Rudolph Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, and Mitt Romney; on the Democratic side, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards.

There are some truly history-making possibilities: should Clinton win, she would be the first female president; Obama would be the first African-American; Romney would become the first challenger to overcome the stigma that still attaches to Mormonism; and, though this has gone largely unnoticed in the media, Giuliani would become only the second Catholic, and the first person not of Anglo-Celtic stock, to become head of state. (Dwight Eisenhower’s mother was of British descent.)

The Republicans would be foolish to nominate anyone but Giuliani. Why?

McCain is a tired face and carries the weight of the Iraq war on his shoulders. Romney’s Mormonism would indeed turn off many evangelical Protestants, still a powerful voting block for the GOP; and Huckabee, while appealing to that very base, would drive away many neo-conservative voters who yearn for less religious fervor with their politics.

On the other hand, the former New York mayor, hawkish on foreign policy but very liberal on social issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion rights, would attract many independents and even some Democrats.

Now for the Democrats: As erudite, and well-versed in the art of politics as Joe Biden, John Edwards, and Bill Richardson are, they stand no chance to win the nomination. That leaves the two front-runners: Clinton and Obama.

Going into this campaign, Clinton, with the Democratic Party establishment behind her, seemed unbeatable. And, should she gain the nomination, she would be a formidable opponent for any Republican next November.

But she has many “negatives”: their names are Bill Clinton and his “friends” Monica Lewinsky, Paula Jones, and Linda Tripp (among many others). Hillary Clinton claims to have the experience Obama lacks, but what is she referring to exactly? Being “first lady” while her husband dallied with other women? Deciding not to divorce him because she felt she needed him for her own run for the top job?

Other woman chafe at the “glass ceiling,” but Hillary piggy-backed on Bill’s shoulders for decades. She then ran for, and won, a U.S. Senate seat from New York state – no working your way up from town councillor or school board trustee for her!

This calculated behavior makes her appear simply too power-hungry and amoral for the average American. Should she win the nomination, we might have to sit through endless Republican attack ads featuring the former president, husband Bill, along with the aforementioned women, and reruns of him lying on television about his behaviour.

Finally, Hillary Clinton would also succumb to the discomfort that many American have begun to share: that American politics are becoming too dynastic. Since 1988, either a Bush or a Clinton has occupied the White House. Do they need another eight years of that?

As well, they are uncomfortable with the idea of having a former president living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue alongside the newly-chosen one. How would that affect the governing of the country? How much influence would the unelected ex-president have on policy?

It’s not so much that Hillary Clinton is a woman that bothers them, it’s that she’s the spouse of a previous incumbent. Were the roles reversed – a man running for president who had been preceded by his wife – I think there would be the same level of unease.

Finally, we have Barack Obama. A young African-American who seems to have transcended issues of race and gender thus far, he is, at age 46, certainly the most appealing and cosmopolitan candidate in the Democratic field, and the only one among them who can inspire a newer generation of voters.

So here’s the bottom line: Rudy Giuliani would beat Hillary Clinton, but Barack Obama would defeat him. No other Republican would be able to win next year, no matter whom the Democrats nominate.

The Loonie versus the U.S. dollar

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Though Canadian retail prices are starting to reflect the impact of our stronger dollar, many economists think they will always remain higher than their American counterparts.

Why? It's due to the higher cost of doing business in this country. Our different tax structures, tariffs, higher wages, more regulations, plus some minor costs, such as bilingual packaging requirements, all make goods here more expensive.

Also, Canadian retailers pay more because the market is one-tenth the size of the United States, according to Diane Brisebois, president of the Retail Council of Canada.

"We don't suspect that the price differentiation will disappear ever, and that is simply based on economies of scale," she said recently. "If you buy a dozen doughnuts you get a better price than if you're buying a single."

Therefore, identical items are often priced at least 20 per cent higher in Canada than in the U.S. - and in many cases, a lot more than that.

So, ironically, our high-flying loonie, now trading at over US$1.03, can buy more in the U.S. than here, and Canadians have to cross the border to get a better price on the same products that are available at home.

That's because a Canadian dollar cannot buy as much in real goods and services in Canada as a U.S. dollar can in the United States. As opposed to the exchange rate, where the two currencies are now about equal, in terms of what is known as purchasing power parity (PPP), the loonie probably will buy only the equivalent of about 85 American cents.

In other words, we need to spend one Canadian dollar here to buy the same bundle of goods that cost Americans 85 cents in their country.

(By the way, when our dollar was in the low 70 cents US range, it was undervalued, because then, too, the two currencies were much closer in terms of PPP than was true of the exchange rate at that time.)

Also, not only are prices lower in the United States, but the typical Canadian does not earn as much income as the typical American, and gives more of it away in taxes. Canadian governments collect C$17,300 per capita from us, while American ones collect US$13,500 from theirs.

So why is the loonie 'punching above its weight'? The dramatic rise of the currency is due mainly to world commodity prices, in particular oil; our resource sector accounts for more than one-third of Canada's exports.

But the standard of living of average Canadians remains lower than that of our neighbours. Perhaps a new definition of a Canadian is someone who spends $10,000 more on a car than does an American, so they can wait two years for a hip replacement.

A strong dollar, but where are the savings?

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

Now that the loonie has reached virtual parity with the American dollar, isn't it time for prices in Canada to reflect that fact? After all, it's been gaining ground for a few years now.

A recent study conducted by Douglas Porter, deputy chief economist at BMO Capital Markets, indicated that Canadian-dollar prices are on average 24 per cent higher than U.S.-dollar prices on the same items.

The biggest gaps are in electronics, books, and cars.

Said Porter to the Globe and Mail, "It may be only a matter of time before the cross-border shopping dam bursts again. It may already be happening on-line."

Indeed, there has been an 11.08 per cent growth in items bought in U.S. dollars by Canadian on-line shoppers over the past year.

Ian Donker, general manager of Book City, in Toronto, told the Globe and Mail that most prices of books in his store are set in the United States. "But someone who last year was paying $19 for a book, this year doesn't want to pay $19 for a book," when the U.S. price listed alongside the Canadian one is much less. "And it is difficult for the book seller and the Canadian publisher to do much about it." And smaller items, such as books, are easiest to purchase via internet shopping.

Why, asked one Toronto businessman who bought a Subaru Tribeca for US $32,122.50 in Buffalo, NY, should the same car cost Cdn $41,995 in this country? Such price differentials are ridiculous.

"Some people are making a fortune out of this and they're reluctant to give up this very lucrative windfall," declared Bruce Cran, president of the Consumers' Association of Canada, in the Calgary Herald.

So Canadian retailers will face increased pressure to lower their prices accordingly. Already shopping malls in American border towns are packed with Canadians buying products that sell for no more than two thirds of what they cost in Canada.

Yet Diane J. Brisebois, the president of the Retail Council of Canada, has suggested that Canadian shoppers should be patient. Economies of scale, different tax and cost structures, and exchange rates with third countries all play a role.

"For Canadians to believe that our prices will be at par with American prices under any circumstances is not realistic," she remarked in a New York Times article. "Americans have 10 times the purchasing power. That's the reality."

But that's also the problem. It is clear that we all pay too much for goods, and all the various excuses made by retailers won't cut it anymore -- after all, we don't make 24 per cent more in wages and salaries than Americans do.

Despite the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Canada sometimes seems little more than a protection racket for those who control our economy. Unless prices come down more quickly, the U.S. will become the equivalent of a "black market," especially for high-ticket items.

The Endless American Vote

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian:

Here we are, a full fourteen months before Americans cast their ballots for their next president, and already the race is in full swing. Why?

It’s the result of the law of unintended consequences.

In the “bad old days,” candidates were selected by party delegates at their respective national conventions, held during the summer preceding the November election.

Rarely did one aspirant have the necessary 50 per cent needed to win coming into the convention, and so there was drama and uncertainty, politicking and horsetrading.

But the American primary system has changed all that.

A primary election allows each party’s supporters in a state to select delegates committed to one or another candidate running for the nomination of their party. These delegates must vote, on the first ballot, for that candidate at the party’s convention.

Primary elections were introduced by political reformers as a way to lessen the influence of political “bosses” making deals in “smoke-filled back rooms.” In 1910, Oregon became the first state to establish a presidential primary in which delegates were required to support the winner of the primary at their convention. By 1920 there were 20 states with primaries.

Today, all 50 states hold primaries (or, in a few cases such as Iowa, caucuses, which are similar). If no candidate wins a majority of delegates during the primary season, the nominee is chosen by the convention. But this has not occurred since the Republican convention of 1976, when incumbent president Gerald Ford narrowly defeated Ronald Reagan.

States now vie for earlier primaries in order to claim greater influence in the nomination process, since candidates can ignore primaries which fall after the nomination has already been effectively won. So most primaries now take place in a compressed time frame.

As states continue to compete with each other to see who can hold their presidential primary first, by next February 5 – called “Tsunami Tuesday” because 19 states will be holding primaries that day – probably more than half the delegates to both major parties’ conventions will have been chosen. (In fact, six states will have held primaries or caucuses even before that date.)

This compressed calendar obviously favours front-runners with financial backing. It limits the ability of lesser-known candidates to raise money for advertising to increase their visibility among voters.

It also means that no last-minute entrants can join the race – unless they decide to run as third-party candidates, an onerous and fruitless task. No third party candidate has won a presidential election since 1912.

The Democrats and Republicans having to all intents and purposes picked their candidates by early February, the actual conventions will be little more than exercises in public relations and advertising on behalf of each party’s selection.

So the Democratic and Republican parties will in effect be running nine-month presidential campaigns. How absurd is that?

Instead of “front-loading” the primaries, states should consider moving them back to, say, May and June. Isn’t a five or six month campaign long enough?

August 25, 2007

Israel only state to be singled out

Henry Srebrnik, The Calgary Herald

Back in the 1970s, China, then a Maoist state, trumpeted a revolutionary slogan, "Unite the Many, Defeat the Few."

Since at that time they were also vehement supporters of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which was committed to the destruction of Israel, I joked that what they were really saying was, "Unite the Many, Defeat the Jews."

China's attitude towards Israel today is much more nuanced. However, there is now an increasing tendency, in some western academic and intellectual circles, to question Israel's very right to exist.

For these critics, the right of national self-determination for Jews in a state of their own is morally reprehensible, its very foundation a crime, an "original sin."

In 2003, New York University history professor Tony Judt wrote an article for the influential New York Review of Books entitled "Israel: The Alternative," in which he suggested that Israel was an anachronism that had historically "arrived too late."

Judt defined Israel as "a state in which Jews and the Jewish religion have exclusive privileges from which non-Jewish citizens are forever excluded."

Wrote Judt: "To convert Israel from a Jewish state to a binational one would not be easy, though not quite as impossible as it sounds: the process has already begun de facto. But it would cause far less disruption to most Jews and Arabs than its religious and nationalist foes will claim."

The British academic Jacqueline Rose, a professor of English at Queen Mary College, University of London, considers the Zionist movement of national liberation a betrayal of Jewish history and the Jewish heritage.

"I have never understood why the historic, biblical claim of the Jewish people, even when seared by the horror of the Holocaust, should usurp the rights of the Arabs who had lived there for hundreds of years," she wrote in an article in The Observer in 2002.

In her book, The Question of Zion, published in 2005, she declared that the formation of Israel in 1948 had not only brought "injustice" to the Palestinians, but put at risk the Jewish nation's own "safety and sanity." Israel, she decided, was "bad for the Jewish people" as well as its neighbours.

Rose concluded that only a renunciation of Zionism could alleviate the "terrible consequences" that had flowed from the creation of a state for the Jews.

Michael Neumann, a professor of philosophy at Trent University in Peterborough, is the author of The Case Against Israel, released in 2006. Zionism was the attempt to establish exclusive Jewish sovereignty over Palestine and therefore "Israel is the illegitimate child of ethnic nationalism," he asserted.

For him, not even the sufferings of Jews in the Nazi era could serve to justify it.

An even harsher tone was provided by Joel Kovel, a professor of social studies at Bard College, Annandale, N.Y. His book, Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine, published this year, sees nationalism as evil, and Zionism as a particularly bad kind of nationalism. Israel is, for him, a "monstrous venture" of "state-structured racism."

Kovel argues that the inner contradictions of Zionism have led Israel down a path fully as wicked as that of apartheid South Africa and deserving of the same resolution.

Only a single-state secular democracy can provide the justice essential to healing the wounds of the Middle East.

These are four examples of academics, in the United States, Britain and Canada, who question the right of Israel to exist and prefer a "one-state solution"-- in other words, a Palestine that is "a state of all its citizens," Arabs, Jews and others. There are many others, and the list is growing.

Rarely, however, do Israel's detractors also demand that the many states that are officially, not merely demographically, Buddhist, Christian and Islamic also become "states of all their citizens."

After all, if Jews have no right to a state, then why do some 100 other ethnic groups have proprietary rights to theirs? Their countries too are the products of conquest at some stage in their formation, and they also include minority groups.

And there are many others, including Chechens, Kosovar Albanians, Tibetans and Palestinians themselves, demanding their own national independence.

Are they also not "privileged" within their own countries? Are not their symbols and laws reflective of their religious and cultural systems, past and present?

Do their flags not display crosses and crescents? Even if the critics of Israel have a point, to fixate on just one country is clearly a case of a double standard.

August 16, 2007

Does Israel Have a Right to Exist?

Henry Srebrnik, [Toronto] Jewish Tribune

The future of the state of Israel is politically and ideologically now more uncertain than at any time since its inception in 1948.

I speak not of the threat of attack from Iran, or the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians, but rather of the increasing tendency, in some western academic and intellectual circles, to question Israel’s very right to exist.

For these critics, the right of national self-determination for Jews in a state of their own is morally reprehensible, its very foundation a crime, an “original sin.”

They demand that this illegitimate state be dismantled, or at the very least “de-Judaized,” in terms of its laws and symbols, in order for it to become “a state of all its citizens” -- by which they refer to the 1.5 million people, about 20 per cent of Israel’s population, who are Arabs and Druze.

In fact, this Arab population has full citizenship, with legal protections and political rights: currently, 12 of the 120 members of the Israeli Knesset (parliament) are Israeli Arabs, most representing Arab political parties. One of Israel’s Supreme Court judges is an Israeli Arab.

But this is not good enough for Israel’s opponents. They want to eliminate the “Zionist” (read: Jewish) nature of the state altogether.

One bone of contention is Israel’s “Law of Return,” which allows speedy immigration to the country by Jews, but not by others. (Israel was founded, after all, in order to be a Jewish state.) But rarely do these detractors of the state acknowledge that many other countries have similar policies.

Germany, for instance, allows ethnic Germans from elsewhere, even if they have no family connection with the country, to “return” to Germany.

But others do not have a similar right. Turks from Turkey cannot simply come to Germany under such arrangements, even if they have relatives among the large population of ethnic Turks in the country.

An Israel that became a “state of all its citizens” in terms of its public face would simply revert to being pre-1948 Palestine. The national flag and anthem, both Jewish, would need replacement. Extra-national bodies such as the Jewish Agency would disappear. The country would no longer be Jewish, so why would Jews have bothered creating it at all?

As well, in a non-Jewish Israel (or, to give it its proper name, Palestine), Jews would quickly become a minority, since we can assume that former Arab Palestinian refugees and their descendants would be allowed back under their own “law of return.” They would quickly assume the reins of power, and Jews would live under their governance.

In that case, Jews might just as well live in California or South Africa; Los Angeles or Capetown are just as pleasant as Tel Aviv. And they are in better neighborhoods!

Do Israel’s detractors also demand that the many states that are officially, not merely demographically, Islamic – Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and many more – also become “states of all their citizens?” Not that I’ve noticed.

Of course most of those countries have very few or no non-Muslim citizens, not even second class ones, since, unlike in Israel, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu and Jewish minorities are, to put it mildly, made to feel less than welcome.

If there are Jews who can only conceive of Israel as a state in which they are inherently superior, legally and socially, they have only themselves to blame if people regard that kind of Israel as a state that has no right to exist in its current form, warns one writer.

Really? No right to exist? But why then do the Albanians, the Bulgarians, the Croats, the Czechs, the Finns, the Greeks, the Latvians, the Japanese, the Swedes, the Ukrainians, the Vietnamese, and some 100 other ethnic groups have proprietary rights to their own states? And there are many others, including Chechens, Kosovar Albanians, Tibetans, and Palestinians themselves, demanding their own national independence.

Are they also not “privileged” within their own countries? Are not their symbols and laws reflective of their religious and cultural systems, past and present? Do their flags not display crosses and crescents?

Finally, what about all the artificial countries, the relics of colonialism – the Congos and Nigerias and Sudans? I see few people calling for the elimination of these polities.

Given the amount of ink spilled in attacks on Israel, a recently landed Martian might assume this nation to be the hub of a huge empire, comparable to some of the giants of the past, states that ruled over hundreds of millions of subjects.

The visitor might think Israel comparable to ancient Rome; 16th century Spain; the Ottoman and Mughal empires; Napoleonic France; the Victorian British Empire, with its worldwide reach; the Chinese empires, imperial and Communist; and for that matter the old Soviet Union, that “prison house of nationalities,” together with its east European satellites states.

But Israel is in fact tiny: fewer than seven million people in an area (pre-1967) of 22,072 square kilometres, or 8,522 square miles. This is not even twice the size, and with about half the population, of Greater Los Angeles!

The occupied West Bank (and Gaza) add another 6,335 square kilometres (2,446 square miles), with a population of 3.8 million.

And Israel is surrounded by states, far larger than itself, which have been less than pleased to see it come into existence. Some empire.

So how to account for the fixation on, and obsession with, this little Jewish country? I leave it to the readers’ imaginations – or better yet, their reading of history. I think we know the answer.

August 4, 2007

A strong dollar, and short memory

Henry Srebrnik, The Calgary Herald

Canada has to be the country with the shortest collective memory in the world. As we know, the loonie is now worth about 95 cents US – fuelled, to a large extent, by the economic boom in Alberta. Some economists think it may even reach parity with the American dollar soon. Five years ago, it hovered at around 65 cents US.

Statistics Canada now says the surging currency is giving consumers purchasing power far greater than simple economic growth figures suggest.

Between 2002 and 2005, Canada’s economic output expanded by 8.3 per cent in real terms. But the purchasing power of the country's earnings increased by 13.4 per cent. Why? Because while the volume of exports rose, the price paid for those exports rose even more.

John Baldwin, director of microeconomic analysis at Statscan, explained that the large increase in the value of the Canadian dollar “is benefitting everyone across Canada.” And it has also led, he added, to an employment boom that has pushed Canada's jobless rate down to lows not seen since the 1960s.

Now, here’s my point: for years, under the Jean Chretien/Paul Martin regime, we were constantly being told that our low dollar was good for Canada. It allowed us to export cheaply, despite the fact that, as a corollary, our imported goods were expensive and Canadians had little purchasing power when abroad.

I remember being in Montana in July 2001 and seeing almost no Canadian license plates as soon as we crossed into the state from Alberta. We were the “east Germans” of North America, economically locked in behind our borders.

Now we can actually travel to the U.S. or Europe without going bankrupt. And retirees can again afford to buy sunbelt condos in places like Arizona and Florida.

Cross-border shopping is again, as it was in the early 1990s, all the rage. People are even buying cars in the U.S. and shipping them home. After all, such items typically cost a good 30 percent more in Canada – but if our loonie is worth close to a greenback, clearly they are cheaper in border towns anywhere between Bellingham and Buffalo.

Of course, since prices, like water, seek their own level, this will have the effect of eventually lowering the cost of goods in Canada – and so giving all of us more purchasing power.

But it turns out that the Chretien trade-off – a cheap currency that benefitted our exporters at the expense of higher priced goods at home – wasn’t even necessary. According to economist Stephen Poloz of Export Development Canada, the belief that a strong dollar hurts exporters is a myth. He asserted last year that Canadian exports actually declined during that period.

So why don’t we “call” the Liberals on this? Clearly they all flunked Economics 101 when at university. Does being our “natural governing party” mean never having to say you’re sorry – or wrong?

Here’s a suggestion: the next time our two former prime ministers visit the U.S., they should ask the bank to give them 65 cents US for every one of their loonies.

August 3, 2007

Barack Obama: Trailblazer for Black Americans

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

There are many reasons why it would be nice to see the junior senator from Illinois in the United States Senate, Barack Hussein Obama, become the Democratic Party’s nominee for the U.S. presidency in 2008 and go on to win the general election.

But here’s a particularly good one for those of us here in Canada tired of the constant America-bashing we have to put up with from the liberal and left wing of our political spectrum:

Not only is Obama black, he is the son of an African Muslim from Kenya who came to the United States as a student, and he has a decidedly non-Anglo-Saxon name. (His mother is a white American from Kansas.)

Yet he is being taken more seriously than any previous black candidates, including Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

Our Canadian leftists harp incessantly about American racism and xenophobia. But with all of our vaunted multicultural policies, I haven’t noticed anyone like Obama leading any of our political parties.

Born in Honolulu, with its culturally heterogeneous mix of indigenous Hawaiians, other Pacific Islanders, Asians, and whites, for much of his youth Obama lived outside the U.S.

His parents divorced when he was a child and his father, a member of Kenya’s second-largest ethnic group, the Luo, returned to Kenya and remarried. Obama has a number of half-siblings there.

Obama’s mother later married an Indonesian student and the family moved to the world’s largest Muslim country, where Obama attended school in Jakarta for four years. Obama is today a member of the United Church of Christ.

Barack Obama represents the new diversity among black Americans, who now number about 37 million people.

Traditionally, African-American identity was built on an ancestral connection to slavery. American blacks were, by definition, people whose ancestors had arrived in America prior to the abolition of the slave trade in the nineteenth century.

They had lost their African cultures and languages – most native-born blacks don’t know their specific ethnic heritage. They were, in that sense, despite the legacy of slavery, racism and segregation, quintessential Americans.

After all, given racist American immigration laws, their numbers were not augmented by new waves of immigration from Africa. Until the twentieth century, most lived in rural areas of the old slave states of the U.S. South. They were a very homogeneous group.

In 1965, however, the U.S. liberalized its immigration laws, and removed quotas based on national origin. The Immigration and Naturalization Act now allowed more non-Europeans to enter the country and this has led to profound demographic changes in America.

In the past 30 years, one million people have come from Africa to the United States, from countries as different as Ghana and Nigeria, Senegal and Somalia.

Another 1.5 million blacks claim Caribbean ancestry; they have arrived from Haiti, Jamaica, and many other islands in the West Indies.

Nearly 25 percent of the growth in the black population between 1990 and 2000 was due to immigration and this pattern is accelerating. There is now a large African and Afro-Caribbean diaspora population in the United States.

All these new black immigrants have brought their own cultures with them, and they have remained distinct from the native African-American population. Many are Muslims, whereas most of the historic black community in the U.S. has been devoutly Protestant.

Like other recent newcomers, they settle in the large cities, mainly in the north and west. Many have become successful entrepreneurs and their children have attained high educational levels.

A disproportionate percentage of black students at elite universities are African or the children of African immigrants. (Obama’s father obtained a PhD from Harvard University and Obama attended Harvard Law School.)

Some African-Americans complain that Obama is “not black enough” because of his heritage. But many others realize that the old criteria by which they identify themselves don’t fit this new reality, which Barack Obama personifies.