The Centennial of the Great War, August 1914-2014

Today on 1 August 1914 the Great War started for Canada, we entered the war on the side of Britain and the Empire. Canada sent 10% of its population to war, some 620,000 men, poorly equipped and trained. At the end of the war some 61,000 Canadian soldier will be dead and another 18,000 will be missing never to be found buried in the mud of the Western Front.

Rightly so the Canadian people would ask ''For What ?'' a question the Conservative government of Sir Robert Borden had no answer.

Look at this map of Europe in August 1918 and note how the old Continent looked then. Four great Empires would collapse, Germany, the Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman Turk. Britain despite the armistice in November 1918 very nearly collapsed. This war would change the world and Canada.

In 1919 Europe would see new countries emerge which did not exist previously, created from nationalistic grievances. The Paris Conference would create many new problems and the final Treaty of Versailles will plant the seeds for a new war even more devastating some 20 years later.

Canada would emerge as a great power and would become an independent country, leading to renewed prosperity until the great economic depression of 1929.

Who knew that August one hundred years ago what was about to happen to the old order.

Europe today looks again very different since 1989 and the fall of the Iron Curtain and Communism.

The ceramic poppies planted around the Tower of London and on show now until November.

Some 888,000 poppies represent the sea of blood this war provoked, no one won, ending in an armistice, a war that cause much misery and no resolution.

Dedicated to our Athletes in Sochi

On the eve of the Opening of the Olympic games in the old USSR, I mean Russia, I really don't see much difference.  I dedicate this song to the athletes in the hope that despite the controversy even before the opening, not to mention the sites are not really ready, some good might come of this orgy of  money 51 Billion $ to make a point, n'est ce pas Vladimir.

Here is Beatrice Lillie, Lady Peel from Toronto to sing There are Fairies at the bottom of the Garden.

In Ottawa our Mayor Jim Watson has announced that at City Hall the Gay Pride Flag will be flying during the length of the Olympic Games in Sochi. 

On China

Just finished reading the 2011 book by Henry Kissinger, titled On China. Since I lived in China I wanted to read it to see what he had to say. Kissinger is a great believer in China and has many friends in the leadership of China. Whenever he travels there he gets the Head of State treatment with all that it entails. Kissinger had a great deal of influence many years ago in the original opening of the USA to the People's Republic of China. First secret meeting between himself and Premier Zhou En Lai in 1971, followed by the Official visit of President Nixon in 1973. Formal recognition did not come before 1979 for various reasons of internal USA politics and because of the War with Vietnam and the official recognition the USA government had granted Taiwan back in 1949.

Kissinger gives a lot of details on the personalities and character of each person he met, Mao Tse Tung, Zhou En Lai, Deng Xiao Ping and others. Mao the philosopher king, Zhou the cultured Mandarin and skilled diplomat and administrator, Deng the rough pragmatist. He described how the meetings went and how they were received and many more details on how the entire relationship evolved. For history all these details are important as a first person account. Kissinger stresses how the Chinese are master of the detail and are fully prepared with great seriousness for each encounter, nothing is left to chance or haphazard. He does not say it but the reader guess that the other side is not as well prepared and this is the Chinese advantage in any encounter.

Kissinger also looks at historical precedent in China and how Confucius influences the way of thinking of the Chinese leadership through the ages, he does spend some time in his book guiding the reader through the various phases of thinking which guide Chinese reaction to events. He also goes into what were the expectations and fears of the USA in the first meetings in the context of domestic American politics of the late 1960's. Past events like the victory of the Communist in China in 1949 against the Nationalist, the Korean war, the toll of the Vietnam war on the American public opinion, the Cold War and the difficult relations with the USSR. Though Kissinger never criticize past US Administrations he served and treats his Chinese counterparts with much courtesy in his book,  he does point out several times how many American thinkers made mistakes in their evaluation of China and its leadership, in the process delaying or impeding the relation between the USA and the PRC.  Kissinger gives the impression that he had to fight several battles with an entrenched bureaucracy at the State Department correcting what he considered wrong evaluations based on misunderstandings of history and events. What he considered to be too many assumptions, confusing Communism in general as an ideology and then believing that the way it was practiced in the USSR was the same in the PRC or that the new giants worked hand in hand against the West.

Kissinger also explains the concerns of the Chinese Leadership and their own problems with the USSR in border disputes which went back centuries to the time of the Emperors in both China and Russia. Of the rivalry between Stalin and Mao and then successive Soviet leaders who often failed to understand that the Chinese did not want to be dominated by them or even guided. The reader understand how the USA came to play a balancing act between the two great Communist powers in the world.

Then Kissinger guides us through the post-Mao period and the great changes brought about by Deng Xiao Ping. The internal fights within the Chinese leadership with two camps, one, the gang of four, for continuing the Mao doctrine and Deng's approach to go down a different path. It is clear that China today remains a Communist dictatorship and a police State but has a commercial, capitalistic components important to improve the material conditions of the people if the Communist party is to survive in power. Kissinger points out the great realizations under Deng, such as the eradication of hunger for the first time in China. Providing for basic health care, schooling and housing for all and most important quadrupling in a matter of a just a few years the wealth of individual Chinese who could see a net benefit under Communist rule.

In the last paragraph and epilogue, the books meanders as if Kissinger was at a lost on how to conclude his book and that part is less interesting, probably because the writer himself is retired and does not travel as much now as he did in the past.

A good read.

Death of .....

This week the dramatic events of the death of Muammar Ghaddafi on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, beaten to death and shot by angry Libyans, shocked many in the world. It was not totally unexpected, the hatred he generated amongst ordinary Libyans was such that any other outcome dictated that he flee the country quickly to a friendly nation like Zimbabwe. The airspace closed by NATO planes only left him a desert road to Niger.  With his death he is the most recent Pan-Arabic leader to fall signalling the end of a generation of leaders who came to power following the example of Gamal Abdel-Nasser of Egypt, the man who in 1953 overthrew the Egyptian Monarchy and asserted that the Arabs would govern themselves. Nasser was against the old Arab Aristocracy, the princes who had ruled for centuries, the old colonial powers, Britain, France, Germany, the corrupt ruling class who abused ordinary citizens.  The Nasser revolution in July 1953 was a genteel affair, King Farouk was given 3 days to pack his things including part of the National Treasure and leave, he went into exile sailing to Rome on his yacht. In Irak a few years later it was a less genteel affair, the Royal family was massacred by the high military command in their beds. Jordan was to be next and Nasser and Assad of Syria tried for years, even paying Yasser Arafat at one point in 1970 to try to overthrow the Hachemite king, to no avail the Bedu tribes came to the rescue.

Nasser never liked Ghaddafi much, he had taken over Libya in a bloodless coup while King Idriss was away on an Official trip abroad. Nasser would say that he found Ghaddafi untrustworthy and a little strange. Pan-Arabism as an ideology sought to be a Socialist Arab movement devoid of religion, it never achieved its aims. The ideology quickly turned into whatever each dictator wanted it to be in his country, in all cases a police state, a dictatorship style of government and like many Fascist movement exalted the leader in a huge personality cult with the national army as the enforcer. Egypt, Syria, Irak, Yemen, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria all fell into the same morass. Because they were all semi-agrarian or with semi-nomadic people or fierce tribal groups, rapidly growing, largely illiterate poor populations, they became pawns of the Cold War games between the USSR and the USA, having been pawns of the colonial powers, Britain and France previously. Each dictator needed lots of cash to pay off the elites and weapons to keep their armies happy, both the USSR and USA were happy to oblige in return for political allegiance.

Nasser died of a heart attack in 1970 realizing that his ideas of one pan-arabic government by the masses was nothing but half baked ideology. Assad died of old age a few years ago in Syria to be replaced by his inept son, who may meet the same fate as Ghaddafi if he does not flee in time to Iran his ally. Yemen is into a civil war with President Saleh hanging on barely having survived an assassination attempt. Egypt is in chaos and Libya well it all remains to be seen what is going to happen next. As for Irak turmoil continues in this ravaged country, divided by political tensions along religious lines.

Tunisia is the only one so far who seems to have been able to pull it off with an free and open election this weekend. So bye-bye Pan-Arabic leadership and hello uncertainty. It is really not clear what is going to happen next, certainly not western style democracy, getting rid of a dictator does not mean that everyone understands what democracy means or how it works in everyday life, if Irak is an example of what can go wrong when you have no tradition of dissent or open plural society. I am sure that many outsiders will certainly try to make helpful suggestions on how to go about it, but often suggestions are not welcomed and are seen as nothing more than interference.

As for a trial for Ghadaffi at the International Court in The Hague, as much as this follows the idea of a society based on rule of law and international recognized standards of Justice, this was never going to happen. Ghadaffi knew too much and he had become a bothersome figure, he could have embarrassed more than one leader. The trial would also have been yet another platform for him to spin out his ideas of the world, it would also would have made him a martyr to some. In a cynical world his death closes a chapter.  Looking back on it, when on Christmas day 1989 Ceausescu and his wife were summarily executed in front of a firing squad in Romania, after a trial which lasted 30 minutes, I do not recall the same call for an investigation. He had been the President of Romania for years and a thorn on the side of many countries but the good ally of others. But then again this was another time in history.