Lots to do today

Tags

Acadia, Canada, Capitol, France, life, Maritimes, Revolution, USA

I had to get up early today at 07:30am which is somewhat like the middle of the night for me. Usually I am a Crack of Noon riser which is the civilized time for retired folks like me.

So at 9:30am I had to be at the Club for the Thursday morning Coffee and Conversation program, today we had an Acadian historian Georges Arsenault, O.C., O.P.E.I whose family has been living on PEI since 1700. He is also an author and has written much about Acadian life and history on the Island. He also has a voluminous collection of old photos of Acadian Life on the Island dating back to 1860. He showed us many old photos of Acadian families and explained traditions in the period 1860 to 1950. It was fascinating, he had wedding photos dating from prior to 1946. How the common people lived if compared to high society, there was a stark difference. Brides has no wedding dress, they simply wore their Sunday best and so did the groom. Only people with money did the fashionable weddings the way we think of them today. The food prepared and served at weddings was also very different from today. Essentially the wedding would take place in Church at 7:30am and then the family would return home for breakfast at 9:00am. Back then Roman Catholics, Acadians are all R.C. , were not allowed to have food before Mass. Everyone was in their Sunday best and all of it took place in the Kitchen including the square dancing. What Acadians call in French souper (Supper) took place at Noon and both meals were offered by the Bride and her parents in their home. The Dinner at night around 6pm moved to the Groom’s parents home for more square dancing and food and of course Whiskey and Island Gin at 50 proof. That’s the Gin I buy for my Island friends, they do not want the English stuff at 40 Proof. The most important element of a successful wedding meal during the day was the desserts and sweets, some families could offer over 30 different types of sweets not including the Wedding Cake which was white and baked usually in the village by a woman who was known for her cakes and hired for that day. Which reminded me of my great Aunt Marie-Ange in Charlesbourg near Quebec City who was known at Christmas for her desserts and sweets.

The family photos are also interesting, most taken outdoors for the light in an age when no flash existed. Women in Acadian fashion have their heads covered by a bonnet or large scarf, custom being that only unmarried maidens could show their hair. Families were also large on average 12 kids and many upwards of 19 kids, all living under one roof in small farm houses. One wonders how they did it. It is only again after 1946 that people start having small families of 2 or 3 children.

After the talk, I went to my barber Jared who is a very nice person and great to chat with, we talked about what had happened the previous day in Washington D.C. at the Capitol building. He was working so could not watch television and was being told by his customers what was happening, he was in disbelief like I was and many other people. Though he remarked and I agree, we could see all this coming and were bracing for it. How come the Capitol Police did not prepare, were they over confident? I watch it all and was sickened by it, how can the symbol of a democracy be attacked like that by a mob which looked like Duck Dynasty. Ignorance on parade, truly sad. I was wondering if the Ceausescu solution could not be applied to Trump and his family, worked in Romania in 1989. What I fear like a lot of people is a possible return of another Trump type in 4 years, populist but more intelligent and cunning. Is the USA sliding into authoritarianism, it could happen after all 75 million Americans voted for him, hopefully not and the world will move on.

Afterwards I went to the Service Canada Office which provides info and registration for all Federal Government Programs, one stop shopping. This was instituted some 8 years ago by the Canadian Government. I was having some problem online with an application and could not get anyone at their 1-800 number unless you are willing to wait an hour or more on hold. So I simply went down to the Office and saw an Officer in 5 minutes. She answered my questions and all appears all right, I am much relieved.

Today is 19 November

Tags

Canada, Christmas, Covid 19, Holiday, life, Music, PEI, politicians, USA

I had to go to an early appointment today and then to the pharmacy. Everyone as mandated by the Provincial Government of PEI is wearing their face mask, no fuss, no must. Happy to see that degree of cooperation.

While waiting to speak with the pharmacist I heard that music, you know it is mandatory to play that music at this time of the year to apparently get us in the mood. Bing Crosby and Burl Ives, yes Christmas music from the 1940 and 1950’s, it is nice of course if for no other reason that it is historical and belongs to a long ago age when things in retrospect appear more genteel.

The music expresses a more relaxed happier time none of the stress of post-modern living and other concerns like identity politics, erase culture, PC speak in our unraveling ultra consumer society, split in two by extreme partisan views in Canada like in the USA.

Was the world ever like that? Not really, other times, other worries. The media is already painting as they do each year the Holiday Season as extremely stressful and full of danger including of course this year the pandemic concerns and people behaving like spoiled kids who can’t control themselves and be mature. Horror of horrors there will be NO Santa this year in shopping malls, the world is coming to an end. The solution, Virtual Santa and you can schedule a visit via Zoom. I honestly have to say I cannot remember as a child going to sit on Old Santa’s knee, maybe once at Eaton’s in Montreal when I was 4 or 5 years old. Santa for us was more a mythical person, you did not see him, he simply came in the night when you were sleeping.

In the last 5 years or so of living here, one point of discussion that comes back daily is mental health, if you listen to the media you would be forgiven if you believed every one on the Island suffered from some kind of mental health problem. It is a non stop discussion, not enough support. There is a real split between the Capital and the countryside, yes there is more services in Charlottetown and less so out in rural areas which represent 98% of the Island, however being a small Island the further away from a medical centre is about 45 minutes. We have 2 psychologists for 150K population, we have social workers and counselling services but it seems that it is insufficient.

A troubling statistic, PEI has 50% more drunk drivers than the entire National Canadian average, given that you have to drive everywhere on the Island, since there is no public transport, the police cannot explain the spike in the last 9 months of the pandemic. We also consume a lot of drugs on the Island more so than anywhere else in Canada by a country mile. Which leads to a lot of serious accidents. A darker side of PEI not mentioned in the tourism brochures.

Finally one statistic that truly shocked me yesterday, listening to the PBS NewsHour, I have been listening to it for at least 40 years, love the presentation and the reporting. It was mentioned that 250,000 Americans had died of Covid 19, an extremely sad statistic, another 11 million are sick, it did not need to happen, it could have been prevented but politicians clearly dropped the ball on this one. In comparison the events in NYC at the World Trade Centre in September 11, 2001 seem despite the horror of that day, pale. I cannot understand how this can be and how some State Governors, Republican Senators and the out-going President wash their hands of it all, call it criminal stupidity.

In Canada 11,000 Canadians have died so far and 300k are sick and this in the most populous Provinces like Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and now Manitoba. Here conservative politicians are far more concerned with businesses than average citizens. As someone pointed out, you cannot have a business with dead customers, unless of course you are in the Funeral business.

A new book

Tags

Biden, biography, Enlightenment, Frederick the Great, President, Prussia, Rousseau, USA

First I want to show you this photo published on a friend’s account of President Elect Joe Biden and his spouse and their 2 dogs Champ and Major who is a rescue dog. I really liked Biden as VP during the Obama Presidency. It is also good for Canada to have such a neighbour. PM Trudeau already has a good relationship with Biden and we think of it as the third Obama term.

I am always looking for new titles and new books that might be interesting to read. I always like to have a look first, read a few pages so I can have a feel for the book. The current book I am reading now I first heard of it by going to the Princeton Press where it was advertised as coming out in the Fall. The Writings of Frederick II the Great is edited by Avi Lifschitz and translated by Angela Scholar,

Frederick II The Great of Prussia, 1712-1786. Born in Berlin, died at Sans Souci, Potsdam.

I do love to read historical research and biographies it can be somewhat erudite at times but I enjoy it, always have. To give an example a few years ago I spotted a book on Roman Aqueducts and Water Supply in the ancient world. Since some of these aqueducts still work today and give excellent clean drinking water, I wanted to learn more about how they were built and maintained. I also read the book of Giles MacDonogh, Frederick the Great, published in 1999.

This current book is entitled Frederick the great’s Philosophical Writings, covering a range of topics he wrote about. As a young Prince age 16 and then as King of Prussia he wrote a lot on philosophy, he also wrote poetry, entertained a lively correspondence with many Enlightenment Age philosophers, Rousseau, Voltaire, D’Alembert and he also wrote 100 music compositions and performed at his Court for his friends. The simple fact that as a head of State he wrote by his own hand and did not ask an eminent person to ghost write for him was in 18 century Europe a eyebrow raising novelty, no other prince or King did that and many other Heads of State thought this very peculiar. Thing is that Frederick’s mother Sophia Dorothea of Hanover encouraged him and he received a very good education for his time. On the other hand his father King Frederick Wilhelm I, was alarmed by this type of enlightened education.

Some of the concepts he developed was based on his own personal beliefs. He wrote on the limits of the powers of the State in an age of absolute monarchies. He abolished torture and reform the bureaucracy, he allowed non-nobles to rise up to senior positions, implemented basic education for all. He loved sciences and invited many scientists to come and work in Prussia. He favoured religious tolerance, unlike his father who was a strict Calvinist, Frederick was a sceptic on religion. He invited persecuted French Huguenots to come to Prussia. He also believed in trade and what we call today globalism, to him this was a way to achieve ‘‘luxury’‘ for the people or a higher standard of living. Many of his ideas would be adopted by the Founding Fathers of the USA. He was amongst the first King in Europe to recognize the new Republic and in 1783 signed a treaty with the USA, one clause was about the humane treatment of war prisoners, again a first for the age.

Frederick died aged 74 in 1786 and his reputation as philosopher King started to change after 1860 for political reasons and to advance the new political reality under Chancellor Bismarck. Instead of Frederick the enlighten ruler, we get Frederick the war monger. His reputation is further tarnished by the Nazis and Hitler who offer a completely different narrative more fiction than reality, based entirely on the various conflicts during his reign. It is true that Frederick was a brilliant strategist and had a very well trained army. In Prussia the ratio was one soldier for 4 citizens in a Kingdom with a population of 2.5 million people. French statesman Count Mirabeau, famously said that Prussia was not a country with an army but an army with a country.

Books I have been reading

Tags

Family, life, Russia, Stalin, USA, USSR

Well it is  time for another instalment about books I am reading. The latest is the new Biography written by fellow Montrealer Rosemary Sullivan, winner of several prestigious literary awards, on the life of Svetlana Iosifovna Stalina (1926-2011) know later in life by the family name of her late mother, Alliluyeva and when she became an American citizen as Lana Peters. The book is entitled Stalin’s Daughter.

She had brothers, one, Yakov Dzhugashvili (1907-1943) died at Sachsenhausen during the Second World War in a POW camp for famous prisoners. He was the first born son of Stalin and his first wife. Yakov spoke more Georgian than Russian and it is said that Stalin did not like him much. Her other brother was Vasili Stalin (1921-1962) Lieutenant General in the Soviet Air Force, a drunk who died of acute alcoholism. She also had another brother  by adoption Artyom Fyodorovich Sergeyev ( 1921-2008) the adopted son of Joseph Stalin. He became a major general in the Soviet military. Sergeyev’s biological father, Fyodor Sergeyev, a close friend of Stalin, died in a train crash in 1921.

Svetlana had a strange and sad life, she was known in Soviet Elite Circles as the Princess of the Kremlin. When her mother Nadezhda Sergeevna Alliluyeva committed suicide by gunshot at the age of 31 after a party in the Kremlin in 1932, Svetlana was a child of 6 yrs old. Her world went from a carefree childhood to one of harrowing unexplained events punctuated by the disappearance of uncles and aunts and other relatives. Svetlana was physically isolated within the Kremlin and saw her father only occasionally and being followed and guarded by the Secret Police. Because of her isolation she was unaware of the cruelty of her father’s regime. Only at the age of 11 she noticed that schoolmates also disappeared or heard of their parents being arrested by the Secret Police. Later at the age of 14 while learning English and having access to American and British magazine she discovered by accident an article claiming that her mother had shot herself and not died of acute appendicitis as claimed in Official Soviet version of her death. This caused her severe emotional distress. At the age of 16 she started to understand that those who had disappeared in her family had been shot on her father’s orders because he blamed them for his wife’s suicide instead of looking at his own sordid behaviour.

Stalin was cruel, vindictive, a misogynist  and distrusted everyone, always seeing conspiracies against him, always testing people, one wrong word could be a death sentence. Svetlana became afraid and careful of what she said around her father when she saw him. He in turn could be nasty, as he had been with his late wife, full of put downs and negative criticism.

The book also gives us a description of how the elite who all lived together in the old Imperial Senate building of the Kremlin, lived on a daily basis. Children had governesses, tutors, private health care and the best of everything. Wives of party officials and the family members of Stalin had access to all manners of foreign luxury goods, even in times of famine everywhere in the Soviet Union, they had access to the best food and wines. Their lives where like that of the Bourgeoisie before the Revolution.  There was also the Datcha’s ( luxury homes) outside Moscow and other old Tsarist Palaces in the Crimea on the Black Sea. Chauffeured limousine, private trains and planes. Still her life was restricted to Moscow and the surrounding countryside. She would not visit Leningrad (St-Petersburg) until adulthood after her father’s death.

A series of fresh crisis erupted with the death of her father in March 1953, the power struggle and the physical elimination of people like Lavrenti Beria who was the head of the Secret Service and managed the million of executions of so called enemies of the people. Svetlana finds herself in a difficult situation, the Central committee declares that as the daughter of the late Stalin, she is State Property and her life is managed by the new leadership. She withdraws from public view and in March 1956 with the widespread publication of Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev speech on Stalin’s crimes, she no longer dares go out in public, so afraid of the people’s loathing. She decides to change her name to her late’s mother family name, but this creates more problems for her. This is how kafkaesque the world of the Soviet Union was.

The book goes through her marriages both in the USSR and in the USA where she became an American citizen. Her famous defection in 1967 to the USA while in India to bury her husband Brajesh Singh. The publication of her first book Twenty letters to a Friend. Her 3 children, Joseph (1945-2008) Katya (1950) and Olga Peters (1971), two who are still alive live in Russia and in the USA. Olga does not speak Russian and was born in California.

Svetlana died in 2011 age 85 of cancer in Wisconsin, she also had a home in Portland. She never found peace nor did she ever get away from the ghost of her father or be reconcile with the death of her mother and became estranged from her children Josef and Katya, only Olga the American born daughter grew close to her. You feel sorry for Svetlana who like all children do not chose her parents and the accident of birth which haunted her life.

Svetlana Alliluyeva Stalina

Vacations

Tags

China, institutions, Law, Rule of Law, Russia, Trump, USA

So we are scheduled to leave for Portugal and spend about 10 days there, it will be a pleasant change all around. We have never been and I heard plenty of good things about the country.  We are also thinking of going to the Galapagos Island next year with friends, that also will be a first.

In the meantime I am worried about the USA and how your system of government is unraveling, no longer the example of democracy and in the firm grip of a President who is keen on ignoring the rules of your Constitution. The bizarre incident with the CNN reporter and his being banned because the President did not like the question. The new threats made by Trump on the new majority Democrat Congress, it will be war if they look into his finances and his family holdings. I think that he has now admitted to wrongdoing by simply making this threat, he is very obviously worried Congress will find out the truth.  This should be an incentive for Congress to act quickly. The firing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his replacement by his Chief of Staff who penned an opinion this past Summer calling into question the legitimacy of Courts and the Supreme Court in particular. This new fellow could also limit the Mueller investigation and even refuse to publish the findings. This new Attorney General sounds like someone who again would do just about anything to ensure Trump stays in power no matter what happens. This is worrisome for any country with institutions and the principle of Law and Order.

Too many countries like China, Russia, North Korea control the Courts to ensure that the leadership can persecute its perceived enemies and hand down judgements it likes. If the USA goes down this road then all pretence of being a democracy founded on the principle of the rule of Law is gone and you are nothing more than a tin pot republic. It could happen in the USA because no one wants to believe that it could. This is what happened in Germany in 1933 no one believed that the parliament (Reichstag) and the Courts would allow Chancellor Hitler to take over, after all Germany was a country founded on the rule of Law, and in one night it was all gone.

Hopefully President Trump can be removed from Office before it is too late. Hopefully Congress will take charge. It shows how checks and balances is a fragile thing and not fail proof.

Then there is China, in the last few months dangerous close encounters between the Chinese Navy and the USA Navy have taken place in disputed areas at sea where China now claims total control. Would Trump declare war on China if a USA Naval ship was rammed or attacked or sunk? It could very well happen if Trump becomes desperate to cling to power.

What about Trump’s promise to do away with the Nuclear Treaty with Russia, this is pure madness and even Putin is worried, all of it moves to destabilize the world and push us towards war or the destruction of institutions in the USA.  I cannot remember any President being so callous.

All the signals are there, something needs to give to avoid a disaster. Canadians are dismayed and worried.

 

168:01 Installation

Tags

2003, art., Baghdad, books, Iraq, library, University, USA, Wafaa Bilal, war

I was at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery today to have a good look at the new Winter Show. Several artists are presenting their works. One artist is Wafaa Bilal  b. 1966 in Najaf, Iraq, he is an Iraqi American artist, a former professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and currently an associate professor at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.  Wafaa Bilal fled Iraq in 1991 and spent 2 years in a refugee camp in Saudi Arabia. Many members of his family where killed during this period.

The exhibit is entitled 168:01 

The title of the installation, 168:01, refers to the 13th-century destruction of the historic House of Wisdom library – then the largest in the world – at the hands of Mongol invaders. “Legend has it that they dumped its entire contents into the Tigris river to create a bridge to cross over, and that the pages bled for seven days – 168 hours,” Bilal said. “The extra 1 is that second when I imagine the books turned white and drained of knowledge.”

Aimed at restoring the roughly 70,000 books lost to looting and fire during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Wafaa Bilal’s 168:01 mourns the loss of the College of Fine Arts Library at the University of Baghdad. The site-specific installation, organized and circulated by the Art Gallery of Windsor, positions viewers as potential participants who can choose to donate educational texts to the Fine Arts Library.

The installation becomes a system of exchange where art objects are traded for academic texts. Visitors are encouraged to donate books from the university’s wish list to help rebuild the library collection. Each participant who donates a book to the exhibition receives a white book in return — a symbol of the void that they have helped to fill and as a reminder of their contribution.

Wafaa Bilal’s powerful suite of photographs titled “The Ashes Series” brings the viewer closer to images of violence and war in the Middle East. In an effort to foster empathy and humanize the onslaught of violent images that inundate Western media during wartime, Bilal has reconstructed journalistic images of the destruction caused by the Iraq War. He writes, “Reconstructing the destructed spaces is a way to exist in them, to share them with an audience, and to provide a layer of distance, as the original photographs are too violent and run the risk of alienating the viewer. It represents an attempt to make sense of the destruction and to preserve the moment of serenity after the dust has settled, to give the ephemeral moment extended life in a mix of beauty and violence.” In the photograph “Al-Mutanabbi Street” from “The Ashes Series”, the viewer encounters dilapidated historic and modern buildings on a street covered with layers upon layers of rubble and fragments of torn books. Bilal’s images emanate a slowness that deepens engagement between the viewer and the image, thereby inviting them to share the burden of obliterated societies and reimagine a world built on the values of peace and hope.

September 1

Tags

climate change, elections, Food, harvest, tourism, USA, Weather

This is the long Labour Day Weekend, the tourism season is drawing to a close, though the cruise ships are still coming until end October and more tourist restaurants are staying open until either Thanksgiving weekend on 8 October some until mid-December.

We certainly did not have the crowds of last year for the 150th Anniversary of Confederation and I was happy that the numbers were more manageable. Charlottetown is a small capital of 36,000. people and when a cruise ship disgorges 1000+ passengers you really feel it. The weather also was far more humid and well above normal range for the Summer at 35C usually the temperatures are more around 25C in the day time and around 18C at night. So this Summer climate change was very apparent and many felt it was a bit weird, get use to it people this is the future. Some days in fact it was too hot to go to the beach and even the sea water bath water warmish.

There are 65 days left before the Municipal election and I can’t wait for the campaigning to end. At the moment things remain very fluid, tonight one candidate withdrew and another one came into the race. Just in my Ward 1 we are 4 candidates for Councillor. In the other 9 Wards there is either the incumbent or one challenger or no one. Ward 1 attracts a lot of attention because it is the original footprint of the City, the old downtown with all the attractions and activity. It is also a very mix neighbourhood in terms of population. Lots of businesses, government offices, historical sites and the harbour.

We have been promised or I should say the predictions are for a warm Winter, last year we got a lot of rain instead of snow and it made for a miserable gray Winter, more like Northern Europe.

What is nice about this time of the year is the harvest of vegetables and potatoes, prices tend to be good.

Now this coming week we will find out about the results of the NAFTA negotiations with Washington DC. Now that Trump has said he is not negotiating in good faith and does not care if Canada does not accept his terms, many Canadians are starting to think that maybe we should pull out of NAFTA. There was life before this trade agreement and as our Prime Minister said ”better to say no to a bad deal than having to live with it”.

I am afraid that after all the insults of the past year from Trump many Canadians including myself will never be able to see the USA in a favourable light again. It appears that Trump believes that the USA can live without Canada, well let him believe that, eventually he will find out it’s not that simple.

 

Caro Amici

Tags

Canada., July, NAFTA, tariffs, Trade, Trump, USA, World

Today is the second day of the Dog days of Summer and it really feels like it, hot and humid with a light breeze at 28C. I am glad we live by the river and the entrance to the Sea which keeps things reasonably cool.

I am thinking of decades ago the 1960’s, 70’s, 80’s when relations with our Southern neighbour was far more friendly and casual than they are today. The world changes and if once you were on speaking terms with your neighbour well today it is a different story.  I speak here of Government to Government bilateral relations which have soured considerably over the NAFTA negotiations and tactics of the US Administration to exploit its position.

I miss the days of yore when we could travel to the USA for fun and cross the border without a fuss, a simple smile and a hello. It has become so complicated now to cross the border by car or plane that frankly why bother. You do not know what agent you will get if he will be some paranoid wrap in the flag idiot seeing enemies in every Canadian or if he will be business as usual. At any rate those guys do all they can to make you fell as un-welcomed as possible, I am sure the US tourism industry does not need that kind of help from its government.

Now that Canada has been declared an enemy country causing harm to the National Security of the USA, why should I visit or buy American products for that matter. Canadians are looking for Canadian made or made in other countries products. Here in Charlottetown where we receive a lot of American tourist, the tone is still friendly as long as no one display Trump paraphernalia or MAGA hats.

However today as I was presenting the Shame and Prejudice by Canadian Artist Kent Monkman, our new Summer exhibit at the Art Gallery, I met with several American visitors, they were passengers on the cruise ship in port and were spending the day in town.  I met quite a few very nice people who reminded me that Americans are people with whom you can have good conversations. It is the old saying; do not confuse the citizens with their government, the two are quite different. Many Americans have to live with the fact that at the moment they have a President who is embarrassing them around the world. Like all people they have to live with the government they have and with the obtuse and stupid views of so many in Congress, Senate and White House.

The policies of the Trump Administration are doing harm to the Canadian Economy, Canada being the first trading partner of the USA, our economies are closely intertwined  especially in the auto sector. Damage is also being done to the economies of other countries in Europe, in Asia and Mexico. Next week the NATO meeting will most probably not go well at all and then Trump meets Putin. The USA new friends the former Soviet Union and North Korea, we live in a very strange time.

Many in Canada now understand that it is time to abandon US markets and concentrate on the European Union and the Trans-Pacific region. Once this shift starts it will not revert and lasting damage will have been done to the US economy. Canada is also imposing strategic tariffs against goods produced in States controlled by Republicans who support Trump.

So given this grim picture, one can only hope that Americans will wake up in November and get rid of the GOP members in Congress and Senate for the sake of the USA if you do not want to become another failed State.  Maybe the 40 million Americans who did not vote in the last Presidential election will feel remorse and be running to the poles, let’s hope so.

Happy 4th of July.

Public Library in Detroit, Michigan

Canada G7

Tags

Canada., Chabrier, G7, Music, Politics, threath, USA, World

Now that Canada has been declared a National Security Threat to the USA by none other than Prez Trump, let us look at others who have been declared such in the past by other Presidents and see if Canada fits in with this description.

Measures taken to ensure U.S. national security include:

• Using diplomacy to rally allies and isolate threats.
• Marshaling economic power to elicit cooperation.
• Maintaining effective armed forces.
• Implementing civil defense and emergency preparedness policies (including anti-terrorism legislation)
• Ensuring the resilience and redundancy of critical infrastructure.
• Using intelligence services to detect and defeat or avoid threats and espionage, and to protect classified information.
• Tasking counterintelligence services or secret police to protect the nation from internal threats.

I am sure being a retired diplomat that President Trump has already directed the US Government to take such action against Canada, it goes well beyond tariffs on steel and aluminium.

As the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael G. Mullen, was fond of saying, US national debt has become perhaps our top national security threat. The United States has been running trillion-dollar deficits, resulting in a huge explosion in the country’s indebtedness. Publicly held debt now equals 70% of gross domestic product, a threshold many economists consider significant and highly worrisome. Making matters worse, half of our current deficit financing is being provided by foreigners.

Others threats to the security of the USA are:  unstable Middle-East with no peace in sight, Climate change, Cyber terrorism, President Putin, the energy future, South Asia (Afghanistan and Pakistan), the next space challenge, unstable Africa in the face of epidemics like Ebola. With President Trump’s unpredictable behaviour he may by himself create instability for the USA and create new unnecessary crisis.

This weekend in Charlevoix, Quebec the G7 is meeting and the attitude and tweeting of President Trump and his early departure from the conference simply isolates the USA in the world and angers is most trusted and long term allies. Prime Minister Trudeau is correct is stating that the declaration of Trump is illogical and insulting for Canadians. But the President does not seem to care and believes he can bully Canada and other nations. We will have to bow to his demands, however now Canadians are more united than ever in the face of this aggression by the American administration.

So I chose to listen to music instead by Emmanuel Chabrier 1841-1894. When confronted by fools take the high road, this is what I am doing.

The future is History

Tags

Alt-Right, China, history, Masha Gessen, Putin, Russia, Trump, USA, USSR

A strange title for a book, The Future is History, remember in 1989 we were told that history had ended because the Cold War had ended and Communism was defeated. Rather naive to believe that then, it was merely a re-ordering of politics. In this book, the author attracts our attention to her thesis or her reality that Russian history today is a simple repetition of what happened in the XXth Century Soviet Union with a hiatus between 1989-1999.

This is the latest book I am reading, the author Masha Gessen, a Russian citizen, journalist and author, born in Moscow in 1967 and living now in New York City.

In The Future is History Masha Gessen follows the lives of four Russians, born as the Soviet Union crumbled, at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children or grandchildren of the very architects of the new Russia, each with newfound aspirations of their own – as entrepreneurs, activists, thinkers and writers, sexual and social beings. Gessen charts their paths not only against the machinations of the regime that would seek to crush them all (censorship, intimidation, violence) but also against the war it waged on understanding itself, ensuring the unobstructed emergence of the old Soviet order in the form of today’s terrifying and seemingly unstoppable mafia state under Vladimir Putin.

She makes the distinction in her book between Authoritarianism and Totalitarianism, the two words are different in political terms.  The first is about the rule of one person through personal authority (dictatorship) but devoid of ideology, i.e. Chile under Pinochet, Spain under Franco, Greece under the Colonels, Germany under Hitler, the dictator rules using terror and violence on the masses to enforce compliance. In the case of the Nazi dictatorship, Gessen explains that Nazism was not so much an ideology it was terror used to silence anyone opposing the regime, a regime which borrowed its ideas from the writings of the dictator like the one on racial superiority but overall maintained itself in power by terror and nothing else.  Where Totalitarianism is dominated by Ideology, the Bolcheviks and Lenin used terror but justified it with the ideology of class warfare as described by Karl Marx an ideology which proclaimed world revolution by the workers against other classes. The Communist party then constantly tweaked the ideology to maintain itself in power.  Stalin and Mao proclaimed the exclusive authority of the Communist Party as the only correct ideological source for their society. Stalin then tried to impose this model on other countries after 1945 in Eastern Europe and Mao did the same in Asia in Tibet, Cambodia, Mongolia, North Korea etc. it continues today in China.  Gessen tells us in her book that since 1999 under Putin, Russia is returning to the good old ways of the Soviet Union but under a new guise. It would be too crude now to reimpose a Soviet model, so Putin instead has married the nostalgia for the Czarist regime, the Supremacy of the Orthodox Church with the Totalitarian ideal of the Soviet regime which gives stability Russians crave. Giving us a new Czar Putin who unites factions within his authority and glorifies the exceptional nature of Russia in an ideology of nationalism which echoes the old glories of Imperial Russia. What Gessen is also showing us is how Russia never was a democracy and had no democratic institutions, the Russian knew Imperial orthodoxy under an absolute ruler with the Russian Orthodox Church as co-ruler then they simply moved into a new system aping the old with the Bolchevik and then Communism.

It’s a fascinating book, a great read and explains a lot about Russia and Putin today. With the gradual withdrawal of the USA from the World stage, an inept President who is too intellectually lazy to understand how the USA is simply being eclipsed, Russia is stepping into the void like China is doing and they are not losing time.

But Gessen in her book also shows us the danger of a population who is willing to give up on a more inclusive open form of society and government for the security of stability at all cost. In a way she is saying that we in the West are also at risk. Countries like Poland and Hungary are falling back into the old ways. The rise of the Alt-Right and Christian-Conservative movements in the USA with a President who shows openly his contempt for the Constitution puts the USA on a similar path. A good read and one that makes you think about what is going on around us.