It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Saturday, March 12, 2022
WAR IS FAMINE & PROFITEERING Rising food prices shake North Africa as Ukraine war rages Tunisia imports almost half of its soft wheat, which is used to make bread, from Ukraine. Authorities say the North African country has enough supplies to last three months (AFP/Anis MILI)
Francoise Kadri with AFP bureaus Sat, March 12, 2022,
Households across North Africa are rushing to stock up on flour, semolina and other staples as food prices rise following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, both key wheat exporters to the region.
The scramble is worse coming just weeks before the start of the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims traditionally break a dawn-to-dusk fast with lavish family meals.
Tunisia, Morocco and Libya, along with several other Arab countries, import much of their wheat from Ukraine and Russia.
Some fear the Russian invasion could lead to hunger and unrest, with memories of how rising food prices played a role in several Arab uprisings last decade.
In one supermarket in the Tunisian capital, the shelves were bare of flour or semolina, and only three packs of sugar sat on a shelf near a sign that read: "One kilo per customer, please".
Store managers said the problem was "panic buying", not shortages.
Shopper Houda Hjeij, who said she hadn't been able to find rice or flour for two weeks, blamed the authorities.
"With the war in Ukraine, they did not think ahead," the 52-year-old housewife in Tunis said.
Bulk-buying ahead of Ramadan, which is expected to start in early April this year, is common in Muslim countries.
But some say the war in Ukraine has sparked a shopping frenzy.
- Fear of war -
Hedi Baccour, of Tunisia's union of supermarket owners, said daily sales of semolina -- a staple across North Africa used in dishes of couscous -- have jumped by "700 percent" in recent days.
Sugar sales are up threefold as Tunisians stockpile basic foodstuffs, said Baccour, who insisted there were no food shortages.
Each day pensioner Hedi Bouallegue, 66, makes the round of grocery shops in his Tunis neighbourhood to stock up on products like cooking oil and semolina.
"I am even ready to pay double the price," he told AFP.
Baker Slim Talbi said he had been paying three times as much for flour than in the past, "although the real effects of the (Russia-Ukraine) war have not hit us yet".
"I am worried" about the future, Talbi added, citing Tunisia's dependence on Ukrainian wheat.
Tunisia imports almost half of the soft wheat used to make bread from Ukraine. Authorities say the North African country has enough supplies to last three months.
Oil-rich Libya gets about 75 percent of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine. Morocco also relies heavily on the same source for supplies.
Algeria -- Africa's second-largest wheat consumer after Egypt -- does not import any from the two warring eastern European countries, instead sourcing it from Argentina or France, according to the bureau of cereals.
"There won't be any shortages -- wheat shipments regularly arrive at Algiers port," said harbour official Mustapha, who declined to give his full name.
"War in Ukraine and all the semolina warehouses have been stormed," Mouh Benameur, who lives in the area, posted on Facebook.
- Recession, pandemic, recovery -
Food prices were on the rise in North Africa before Russia invaded Ukraine more than two weeks ago.
Moroccan official Fouzi Lekjaa pointed to a global economic pick-up following a pandemic-induced slump.
"With the recovery, the market price of cereals and oil products rose," he said.
Mourad, 37, a shopper in the Moroccan capital Rabat, said climate change and drought -- the worst in his country in decades -- were also to blame.
To keep prices affordable and avoid a repeat of bread riots that erupted in the 1980s, Tunisia subsidises staples like sugar, semolina and pasta.
For the past decade, it has set the price of a baguette loaf of bread at six US cents.
Algeria plans to scrap subsidies on basic goods, but has not yet done so.
After a truck drivers' strike this week, Morocco said it was mulling fuel subsidies for the sector "to protect citizens' purchasing power and keep prices at a reasonable level," according to government spokesman Mustapha Baitas.
In Libya, which found itself with two rival prime ministers this month, sparking fears of renewed violence, food prices are also hitting the roof.
At a Tripoli wholesale market, shopper Saleh Mosbah blamed "unscrupulous merchants".
"They always want to take advantage when there is a conflict," he said.
Summaya, a shopper in her 30s who declined to give her full name, blamed the government.
"They reassure people by saying there is enough wheat," she said, carrying two five-kilo (11-pound) bags of flour. "I don't believe them."
bur-fka/hkb/lg/pjm
Roman Abramovich has been disqualified as a director of Chelsea
Charlotte Mclaughlin and Martin Robinson Chief Reporter and Sami Mokbel and Matt Hughes and Mike Keegan For Mailonline
South Korean car giant Hyundai has become the latest high profile sponsor to pull the plug on their existing deal with Chelsea after the club's oligarch owner Roman Abramovich was today disqualified as a director by the Premier League.
Chelsea's current sleeve sponsors, who were in the final year of their £50million deal, released a statement on Saturday in which they confirmed they had suspended 'marketing and communications activities' with the west London club.
A Hyundai spokesperson said in a statement: 'In the current circumstances, we have taken the decision to suspend our marketing and communication activities with the Club until further notice.
The news broke just days after mobile phone company Three demanded their name was removed from the team's first team kits and stadium. Delivery start-up Zapp also confirmed it had temporarily paused activities with the Blues on Saturday.
The developments come as the Premier League today disqualified Mr Abramovich from running Chelsea after the Russian was sanctioned by the British government over Vladimir Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine.
'The board's decision does not impact on the club's ability to train and play its fixtures, as set out under the terms of a licence issued by the Government which expires on 31 May 2022,' the league said.
The Government claims the Russian oligarch, who has owned Chelsea since 2003, received financial benefits from the Kremlin - including tax breaks for his companies, the buying and selling of shares from and to the state at favourable rates and contracts in the run up to the 2018 World Cup in Russia, it was claimed.
The New York Merchant Bank the Raine Group has also agreed to Chelsea's sale proceeding with Government approval, it's understood.
Chelsea's current sleeve sponsors, who were in the final year of their £50million deal, released a statement on Saturday in which they confirmed they had suspended 'marketing and communications activities' with the west London clubNext Slide Full Screen
Chelsea's current sleeve sponsors, who were in the final year of their £50million deal, released a statement on Saturday in which they confirmed they had suspended 'marketing and communications activities' with the west London club
What Chelsea now can and can't do following sanctions on Abramovich
CAN
CAN'T
On Friday, Chelsea asked the Government to ease sanctions to save them from going bust in 17 days as ministers consider forcing through the club's £3billion sale without Roman Abramovich giving permission or getting any of the cash.
The premier league club have now been handed a new licence to continue operations and the European champions are still locked in negotiations with the Government to ease restrictions.
Under the new agreement, Chelsea spend of £500,000 increases to £900,000 on costs for home games, the BBC reported.
Costs of travel, allowable, remain at £20,000 per game.
The Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) welcomed his disqualification.
The body said: 'The government has made clear that we need to hold to account those who have enabled the Putin regime.'
In light of the news BBC sports commentator, Gary Lineker, said a 'fit and proper person test' is long overdue in football.
He added: 'An independent regulator is probably the only way to do this.'
New York merchant bank the Raine Group has now assessed the terms of the licence, the PA news agency understands, and agreed a route forward for the Chelsea sale with the Government.
The Premier League board's decision to disqualify Mr Abramovich is unlikely to have any real impact given the sale process was already under way.
It also does not affect Chelsea's ability to play matches.
Technology minister Chris Philp told Times Radio on Friday that anyone who wants to buy the club can 'approach the Government'.
He said: 'No proposal would be accepted which saw the money, the proceeds of any sale, ending up in an unrestricted bank account owned by Abramovich. He can't benefit from the proceeds of any sale.'
EXCLUSIVE: Chelsea fan and British tycoon Nick Candy confirms he is still interested in making a bid to takeover the Blues with the sanctioning of owner Roman Abramovich expected to quicken the sale process of the club
British billionaire Nick Candy has confirmed he is still pursuing a bid for Chelsea, with the sanctioning of owner Roman Abramovich expected to quicken the sale process once the confusion created by the extraordinary events has been clarified.
The 49-year-old property developer is a Chelsea fan, who is planning to attend Sunday's Premier League home match against Newcastle and has pledged to put supporters at the centre of his plans for the club that will be jointly-funded with American investors.
'We are examining the details of the announcement and we are still interested in making a bid,' a spokesperson for Candy told Sportsmail. 'Clearly this is a time of great uncertainty for all Chelsea fans.'
Candy is in talks with several potential investors over a joint venture, with the fact that the sale now has to be officially approved by the government doing little to dampen interest.
The Russian-born oligarch owner was told he can no longer press ahead with getting rid of the club for £3billion after 20 years in charge after he had £3.2billion of UK assets frozen.
Money from the club's sale could go instead to benefit Ukrainians and Russians, ministers think, through the Disasters Emergency Committee but not the charity the 55-year-old wanted to set up.
The Raine Group's progression of the sale means Chelsea's suitors can again push forward with their bids to take control of the European and world champions of the club game.
Mr Abramovich was understood to have been ready to work with Government oversight on the sale and, now the Raine Group has completed suitable checks, the interested parties can press on.
LA Dodgers part-owner Todd Boehly remains well-placed for a purchase, with Chicago Cubs owner Tom Ricketts also understood to be in the running.
British property tycoon Nick Candy has also confirmed his strong interest in buying the Blues and is in the process of building a consortium.
Chelsea saw several credit cards temporarily frozen on Friday amid a frenzied day of negotiations with the Government over the terms of their new operating licence.
The Premier League club also cannot sell any new tickets, leaving fans who have not got season tickets or pre-purchased tickets unable to attend future matches.
The Blues also cannot sell any merchandise, including new match programmes, meaning vendors will not be able to work their shifts in Sunday's Premier League clash against Newcastle at Stamford Bridge.
Mr Abramovich also moved his £430m superyacht to Montenegro after hurriedly leaving Barcelona on Tuesday – two days before he was sanctioned by the UK government.
Its believed he docked it in the eastern European country, which is not yet part of the European Union, over fears that the EU bloc would sanction him.
The luxury 460ft vessel, called the Solaris, which boasts its own helipad and missile detection system, arrived just before 8am UK-time in the port of Tivat.
Mr Abramovich is worth £10.4bn ($12.5bn), according to Forbes, and owns a £150m Kensington mansion, a £22m penthouse, and more than £1.2bn of yachts, private jets, helicopters and supercars based in Britain and around the world had wanted to sell his assets.
However, the oligarch no longer will be able sell any of them in Britain.
Abramovich's superyacht cruises in to Montenegro marina
Roman Abramovich's 140-metre-long (460-feet-long) Solaris cruised into the Porto Montenegro marina on the Balkan country's Adriatic coastline on Saturday
(AFP/SAVO PRELEVIC)
Sat, March 12, 2022
A superyacht belonging to the Russian billionaire owner of Chelsea football club sanctioned over Russia's invasion of Ukraine anchored off Montenegro Saturday, an AFP photographer said.
Roman Abramovich's 140-metre-long (460-feet-long) Solaris cruised into the Porto Montenegro marina on the Balkan country's Adriatic coastline.
Local media who have been monitoring the ship's movements over recent days on maritime tracking websites said the boat left the Spanish Mediterranean port of Barcelona on March 8.
The United Kingdom on Thursday hit Abramovich with an assets freeze and travel ban as part of new sanctions against seven Russian oligarchs it described as part of Russian President Vladimir Putin's inner circle. The football club owner has denied any association. Canada followed suit the next day, saying he and four other individuals would "be prevented from dealings in Canada and their assets will be frozen".
HE OWNS A STEEL COMPANY OPERATING IN SASKATCHEWAN
The 55-year-old businessman, who has often been reported to be cruising off Montenegro and neighbouring Croatia, is rumoured to own half a dozen yachts.
The UK sanctions also targeted Russian tycoon Oleg Deripaska.
Montenegro media have reported that one of Deripaska's boats, Sputnik, was spotted leaving Porto Montenegro on Friday. The vessel is often seen accompanying his own superyacht, Clio.
Abramovich had already announced his intention to sell Chelsea before the UK sanctions, with a host of potential buyers declaring their interest in a club that have won 19 major trophies since he bought it in 2003.
The UK government is still open to a sale but would have to approve a new licence, on the condition no profit would go to the Russian.
str-rus/blb/ah/har
WAR IS RAPE Russia-Ukraine conflict: Concerns grow over traffickers targeting Ukrainian refugees
Concerns are growing over how to protect the most vulnerable refugees from being targeted
Refugees wait for further transport at the Medyka border crossing at the Polish-Ukrainian border, southeastern Poland on March 12, 2022.Image Credit: AFP
Siret, Romania: One man was detained in Poland suspected of raping a 19-year-old refugee he'd lured with offers of shelter after she fled war-torn Ukraine. Another was overheard promising work and a room to a 16-year-old girl before authorities intervened.
Another case inside a refugee camp at Poland's Medyka border, raised suspicions when a man was offering help only to women and children. When questioned by police, he changed his story.
As millions of women and children flee across Ukraine's borders in the face of Russian aggression, concerns are growing over how to protect the most vulnerable refugees from being targeted by human traffickers or becoming victims of other forms of exploitation.
"Obviously all the refugees are women and children," said Joung-ah Ghedini-Williams, the UNHCR's head of global communications, who has visited borders in Romania, Poland and Moldova.
"You have to worry about any potential risks for trafficking - but also exploitation, and sexual exploitation and abuse. These are the kinds of situations that people like traffickers . look to take advantage of," she said.
Unprecedented humanitarian crisis FOR EUROPE
The UN refugee agency says more than 2.5 million people, including more than a million children, have already fled war-torn Ukraine in what has become an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in Europe and its fastest exodus since World War II.
In countries throughout Europe, including the border nations of Romania, Poland, Hungary, Moldova and Slovakia, private citizens and volunteers have been greeting and offering help to those whose lives have been affected by war. From free shelter to free transport to work opportunities and other forms of assistance - help isn't far away.
But neither are the risks.
A child reacts as refugees rest in a temporary shelter at a gym of a primary school in Przemysl, near the Polish-Ukrainian border on March 12, 2022
.Image Credit: AFP
Police in Wroclaw, Poland, said Thursday they detained a 49-year-old suspect on rape charges after he allegedly assaulted a 19-year-old Ukrainian refugee he lured with offers of help over the internet. The suspect could face up to 12 years in prison for the "brutal crime," authorities said.
"He met the girl by offering his help via an internet portal," police said in a statement. "She escaped from war-torn Ukraine, did not speak Polish. She trusted a man who promised to help and shelter her. Unfortunately, all this turned out to be deceitful manipulation."
Police warn women and children
Police in Berlin warned women and children in a post on social media in Ukrainian and Russian against accepting offers of overnight stays, and urged them to report anything suspicious.
Tamara Barnett, director of operations at the Human Trafficking Foundation, a U.K.-based charity which grew out of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Human Trafficking, said that such a rapid, mass displacement of people could be a "recipe for disaster."
"When you've suddenly got a huge cohort of really vulnerable people who need money and assistance immediately," she said, "it's sort of a breeding ground for exploitative situations and sexual exploitation. When I saw all these volunteers offering their houses . that flagged a worry in my head."
The Migration Data Portal notes that humanitarian crises such as those associated with conflicts "can exacerbate pre-existing trafficking trends and give rise to new ones" and that traffickers can thrive on "the inability of families and communities to protect themselves and their children." A grave human rights violation
Security officials in Romania and Poland told The Associated Press that plain-clothed intelligence officers were on the lookout for criminal elements. In the Romanian border town of Siret, authorities said men offering free rides to women have been sent away.
Human trafficking is a grave human rights violation and can involve a wide range of exploitative roles. From sexual exploitation - such as prostitution - to forced labor, from domestic slavery to organ removal, and forced criminality, it is often inflicted by traffickers through coercion and abuse of power.
Romanian firefighters help refugees fleeing the conflict from neighbouring Ukraine after crossing the border, at the Romanian-Ukrainian border, in Siret, Romania.
Image Credit: AP
A 2020 human trafficking report by the European Commission, the EU's executive branch, estimates the annual global profit from the crime is 29.4 billion euros ($32 billion). It says that sexual exploitation is the most common form of human trafficking in the 27-nation bloc and that nearly three-quarters of all victims are female, with almost every fourth victim a child.
Madalina Mocan, committee director at ProTECT, an organization that brings together 21 anti-trafficking groups, said there are "already worrying signs," with some refugees being offered shelter in exchange for services such as cleaning and babysitting, which could lead to exploitation.
"There will be attempts of traffickers trying to take victims from Ukraine across the border. Women and children are vulnerable, especially those that do not have connections - family, friends, other networks of support," she said, adding that continued conflict will mean "more and more vulnerable people" reaching the borders.
At the train station in the Hungarian border town of Zahony, 25-year-old Dayrina Kneziva arrived from Kyiv with her childhood friend. Fleeing a war zone, Kneziva said, left them little time to consider other potential dangers.
"When you compare ... you just choose what will be less dangerous," said Kneziva, who hopes to make it to Slovakia's capital of Bratislava with her friend. "When you leave in a hurry, you just don't think about other things."
Risk of abduction and rape
A large proportion of the refugees arriving in the border countries want to move on to friends or family elsewhere in Europe and many are relying on strangers to reach their destinations.
"The people who are leaving Ukraine are under emotional stress, trauma, fear, confusion," said Cristina Minculescu, a psychologist at Next Steps Romania who provides support to trafficking victims. "It's not just human trafficking, there is a risk of abduction, rape ... their vulnerabilities being exploited in different forms."
At Romania's Siret border after a five-day car journey from the bombed historical city of Chernihiv, 44-year-old Iryna Pypypenko waited inside a tent with her two children, sheltering from the cold. She said a friend in Berlin who is looking for accommodation for her has warned her to beware of possibly nefarious offers.
"She told me there are many, very dangerous propositions," said Pypypenko, whose husband and parents stayed behind in Ukraine. "She told me that I have to communicate only with official people and believe only the information they give me."
Ionut Epureanu, the chief police commissioner of Suceava county, told the AP at the Siret border that police are working closely with the country's national agency against human trafficking and other law enforcement to try to prevent crimes.
"We are trying to make a control for every vehicle leaving the area," he said. "A hundred people making transport have good intentions, but it's enough to be one that isn't . and tragedy can come."
Vlad Gheorghe, a Romanian member of the European Parliament who launched a Facebook group called United for Ukraine that has more than 250,000 members and pools resources to help refugees, including accommodation, says he is working closely with the authorities to prevent any abuses.
"No offer for volunteering or stay or anything goes unchecked, we check every offer," he said. "We call back, we ask some questions, we have a minimal check before any offer for help is accepted."
At Poland's Medyka border, seven former members of the French Foreign Legion, an elite military force, are voluntarily providing their own security to refugees and are on the lookout for traffickers.
"This morning we found three men who were trying to get a bunch of women into a van," said one of the former legionnaires, a South African who gave only his first name, Mornay. "I can't 100% say they were trying to recruit them for sex trafficking, but when we started talking to them and approached them - they got nervous and just left immediately."
"We just want to try and get women and kids to safety," he added. "The risk is very high because there are so many people you just don't know who is doing what."
Back at her tent on the Siret border, Pypypenko said people were offering help - but she wasn't sure who she could trust.
"People just enter and tell us that they can take us for free to France," she said. "Today we are for three hours here . and we had two or three propositions like that. I couldn't even imagine such a situation, that such a big tragedy could be the field of crime."
Police warn female Ukrainian refugees about harassment, luring at Berlin train station By Calley Hair Passengers move on a platform after the arrival of a train from Przemysl carrying refugees of the Ukrainian-Polish border at Berlin central station Hauptbahnhof in Berlin, Germany on Friday.
Photo by Clemens Bilan/EPA-EFE
March 12 (UPI) -- German police are warning female refugees arriving from Ukraine via train to stay vigilant after receiving several reports of men harassing or luring young women upon arrival at Berlin Central Station.
Women arriving at Hauptbahnhof station alone or with young children have been approached by men offering rides or a place to stay, According to German public news outlet Deutsche Welle.
Some men reportedly posed as volunteers, capitalizing on the chaos of thousands of refugees arriving at once.
The men tend to be "conspicuous" and legitimate volunteers have been instructed to keep an eye out, a federal police spokesman told the outlet.
He added that the department had seen no evidence that kidnapping, sexual assault or human trafficking had actually been carried out.
In one complaint, a woman said a man tried to lure her with aid upon arrival at the train station, police said.
"We currently have a huge number of people who want to help with honest intentions and, on the other hand, people who want to use this situation for their own purposes," the spokesman told DW.
Berlin's Federal Police confirmed in a post to Twitter that it had been receiving reports of suspicious behavior at the station.
"Please contact the police immediately if you are offered money for accommodation or observe people doing so," the tweet said in German.
Monika Cissek-Evans, a woman who runs a counseling center for victims of human trafficking, told DW that her organization is working on a flyer to post at Berlin Central Station and other train stations across the country.
"Don't let go of your passport. Keep your phone with you at all times. Take a picture of the license plate before you get into a car. Ask to see an ID when you are offered an apartment or room. Write down the name and address. Be wary if someone promises you a lot of money quickly," the flyer states.
The German government has offered to provide free short-term living arrangements for up to 300,000 Ukrainian refugees, including accommodations for 100,000 people through a partnership with vacation rental company AirBnb.
Data from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees shows that nearly 2.6 million refugees have fled the country since the invasion began Feb. 24. More than 1.5 million have fled to Poland alone.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday for more than an hour to call for a cease-fire in Ukraine and a diplomatic end to the invasion.
One of the key ideas underlying Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and his recognition of the break-away regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine has been the need to protect ethnic Russians on post-Soviet lands that Russia is reclaiming as essentially, historically and culturally, Russian. Unsurprisingly, the argument has now partly fed into a wider political narrative involving not only the rebel areas of the Donbas region, but the whole of Ukraine.
As in the case of Crimea, Putin’s latest justification of military intervention remains unsupported by evidence of a genuine pattern of abuse, or even ‘genocide’, against ethnic Russians in the Donbas region or Ukrainians themselves in Ukraine as a whole. For its part, Ukraine is seeking a pronouncement by the International Court of Justice on what it considers to be a false claim of genocide made by Russia in the context of the 1948 Genocide Convention, to which both states are signatories.
However, Putin’s ‘genocide’ claim doesn’t raise merely an issue of evidence. It speaks to deeper views of secession and ethnicity
Multi-ethnic coexistence at home, ethnic chauvinism abroad?
On the one hand, Putin’s ‘ethnic’ card, the same card that he played in earlier crises to fuel secessionism in post-Soviet states (e.g., in Abkhazia and South Ossetia in 2008), seems to contradict the tightly guarded no-secession-friendly policy upheld by Russian institutions at home. Reflecting a model of ethnic federalism inherited by the Soviet Union, the Russian Constitution nevertheless does not recognise a right of secession for the (largely ethnically defined) federal republics. Article 3(1) of the Russian Constitution states that sovereignty in the Federation resides in its ‘multinational people’, not a distinct ethnic segment of Russian society. Both the Russian Constitutional Court and the Russian government itself have repeatedly affirmed (directly or indirectly) their commitment to preserving the territorial integrity of the country. Instead of secession, they have openly endorsed the concept of self-determination within the institutional and territorial framework of Russia through autonomy and federalism.
On the other hand, when stepping back from matters of legal and institutional detail, this clash between ethnic and territorial paradigms appears to project an equally contradictory role of Russia, one that pursues multi-ethnic coexistence at home while actively fuelling ethnic chauvinism within the post-Soviet space.
On closer inspection, Putin’s line of thinking effectively ties up with Russia’s view of the parameters of secession and his own view of the role of Russian ethnicity in the former Russian empire. Though opposing Kosovo’s independence from Serbia and ruling out a freestanding right to secession in international law, Russia has upheld the notion of ‘remedial secession’ on human rights grounds, including forms of oppression by the central government against a particular ethnic group. In Donbas and elsewhere, the Russian thesis manifestly fails on account of evidence, but more than that, it remains legally inconclusive from the point of view of positive international law.
Legal technicalities aside, why is Putin appealing to ethnic Russians abroad to fuel unilateral ethnic secessionism and irredentism, the very things Russia is opposed to within its own borders?
As clearly suggested by the Russian Constitution, the breakup of the Soviet Union did not change the civic idea of a multi-ethnic people who identify with the state and its institutions – the ‘Soviet people’ was replaced by a similarly diverse conception of Russian national identity within the borders of the new state. Putin has never renounced that civic vision but has increasingly recognised an ethnically/culturally Russian core at the heart of his state-centred understanding of national identity, one that still respects (nominally at least) the rights of non-ethnic Russians within.
It is this blend of civic (non-ethnic) and ethnic nationalism that over time has enabled Putin to cast himself as protector of what he believes is an ethnically Russian core within the former Soviet space. Unrealistic and blatantly illegal under international law as they are, his expansionist territorial claims across the region can be explained by Putin’s attempt to recreate a wider and quasi-imperial civic space (in the image of past imperial set-ups) in which ethnic Russians – all Russians of historic Russia (as he understands it) – play a culturally dominant role across the wider range of nationalities. In this sense, Putin’s war in Ukraine is as much a ‘cultural’ war as it is one built around specific military and geopolitical objectives. As a viral post erroneously published and subsequently removed by Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti so clearly reveals, Putin’s hybrid brand of nationalism ultimately speaks to deep resentments towards the West and a world order that Russia largely perceives to be the offshoot of ‘Anglo-Saxon globalization’.
Russia should stick to the facts, withdraw its forces from Ukrainian territory, return to the Minsk agreements and enable a process of constructive multi-ethnic coexistence to take roots in the post- Soviet space just as Russia claims to be doing at home. For its part, the international community has the responsibility to respond to Russia’s gross illegalities by staunchly defending the right of the people of Ukraine to self-determination free of any external coercive interference. More than that, states need collectively to double down on containing Russia’s aggressive expansionism in the name of a credible rule-based international system, as resoundingly voiced this week by the United Nations General Assembly.
Gaetano Pentassuglia is Professor of International Law, Liverpool John Moores University, Centre for the Study of Law in Theory and Practice, School of Law, UK; Honorary Senior Fellow, University of Liverpool, UK. He sits on the Steering Committee of the OSCE Network of Think Tanks and Academic Institutions.
Cover Photo: Servicemen of the People’s Militia of the Donetsk People’s Republic hold flags in Nikolaevka, Donetsk, February 27, 2022 (Sergey Averin / Sputnik / Sputnik via AFP)
*WORD OF THE DAY irredentism [ˌi(r)rəˈdenˌtizəm]
NOUN a policy of advocating the restoration to a country of any territory formerly belonging to it.
historical (in 19th-century Italian politics) a policy of advocating the return to Italy of all Italian-speaking districts subject to other countries.
Sovereignty and Interdependence. China’s Dilemmas in the Face of Russia’s War
The new world order being precipitated by the Putin regime’s invasion of Ukraine and the NATO-led response is not the new world order that China hoped for, even though China has been promoting an alternative model to the existing world order. A geoeconomic power shift has occurred and the global landscape emerging from it represented the end of five hundred years of “Western” dominance, but the US and EU response to the war in Ukraine seems to be offering the US, through NATO, an opportunity to re-forge a world order subordinated to US leadership and interests, even though uncertainty about the constancy and reliability of the US as a world leader (NATO’s point of view) or a hegemonic power (the point of view of Russia and China and developing countries) have eroded America’s moral authority in world affairs. “America First” and neo-isolationism could return to power and the current opposition party flirts with and even endorses populist nationalism and white supremacy, defending a right-wing insurrection as “normal political discourse”.
History and geography give more perspective on these matters. Russia has always craved access to warm water ports without impediments. The Crimea and southern Ukraine give access to the Black Sea, but Turkey, a NATO member, controls the Bosporus. Kaliningrad gives access to the Baltic Sea but is isolated from Russia inside EU and NATO territory. From Putin’s point of view, this was not a problem when Belarus and the Baltic States were Soviet territory, but it is now. The Arctic is melting, and an open Arctic Ocean may become a new focus of conflict.
Russia has historically considered itself to be European, even though most of its territory is in Asia. China wants to construct a Euroasiatic order through its Belt and Road Initiative. Europeans and Asians seemed to be converging across the Eurasian land mass for which the BRI promises an inevitable flood of investment that will create a flourishing Eurasian commercial system, but the war in Ukraine and the sanctions that the US proposes against Russia will impede this process, to the annoyance of potential beneficiaries.
For China, economic integration is a more effective motor of long-term political change than is a short-term policy of sanctions, or war. Russia is nervous about China, but isolation of Russia will force a closer alliance between the two countries. It is curious that the US under Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon could see the possibility of cultivating cooperation with China s a means to offsetting the USSR, but current US strategists do not. Despite their joint statements of “limitless friendship”, relations between Russia and China have historically been difficult. China will not take kindly to attempts to enforce sanctions on Russian raw materials that are crucial to China’s development. Although the joint statement goes out of its way to criticise attempts by “certain States” to “impose their own ‘democratic standards’ on other countries”, to “monopolize the right to assess the level of compliance with democratic criteria”, and to “draw dividing lines based on the grounds of ideology … by establishing exclusive blocs and alliances of convenience”, China wants to maintain a rules-based world order conducive to trade. This is another reason why China cannot endorse Russia’s actions: they are provoking global economic shocks that are highly unwelcome. The joint statement concludes, “Such attempts at hegemony pose serious threats to global and regional peace and stability and undermine the stability of the world order”. Ironically, it is Russia that has taken steps that undermine the stability of world order, and Russia may have thought it could count on Chinese support.
The hybrid warfare of the twenty-first century “weaponises” almost all aspects of ordinary social life, from trade to the internet. The war in Ukraine could bring about a major shift in the direction of supply chains that may come to be called hostile as well. Russia preferred to sell its natural gas to Europe but could just as well sell it to China, Japan and South Korea, though not as easily; the necessary infrastructure is lacking at present because Russia prioritised Europe. The US calls upon Europe to boycott Russian gas because it creates dependency, offering instead dependency on US liquefied gas. China’s Euroasiatic initiative opts for trade and commerce as the means to maintain a peaceful and stable world order, rather than expansionism and military dominance. China offers a win-win situation, the creation of an economic interdependence based on equality, mutual respect and mutual profit. China wins in this situation, but so do its partners.
A joint statement issued by China and Russia before the invasion proposed to “strongly uphold the outcomes of the Second World War and the existing post-war world order”. The Cold War froze in place one aspect of that outcome — the Yalta agreement. The fall of the USSR eroded that example of Realpolitik. The Warsaw Pact disappeared but NATO expanded. China is a nervous observer of this process. NATO’s perception of its sphere of interest runs from Vancouver to Vladivostok and it contemplates the accession of Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea to a North Atlantic pact that has intervened in wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. It is not hard to see in the development of NATO post-Cold War an ambition to create a worldwide alliance dominated by the USA. It is also not hard to see that such an alliance would contain rather than include Russia or China, giving both countries reason for concern. The presence of US missile systems in Eastern Europe and East Asia, as well as the AUKUS agreement between Australia, the US and the UK, and US withdrawal from disarmament treaties, all lend credence to this concern. None of this justifies the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but it does help to contextualise China’s response to the invasion.
The joint statement also proposes to “resist attempts to deny, distort, and falsify the history of the Second World War”, to “protect the United Nations-driven international architecture and the international law-based world order, seek genuine multipolarity” and to “promote more democratic international relations, and ensure peace, stability and sustainable development across the world”. Implicit in this catalogue is a criticism of a world order dominated in the voting systems of the Bretton Woods institutions by the USA and Western Europe, and the elevation of the losing WWII enemies — Germany and Japan — to the status of NATO allies at the cost of the winning allies — then the USSR and the Republic of China, now Russia and the PRC. More important is the insistence on “genuine multipolarity”, “more democratic international relations” and the right to “sustainable development”, a right claimed by the rest of the developing world as well.
China cannot endorse what Russia has done because sovereignty and territorial integrity are primordial in Chinese foreign policy and Ukraine is a strategic partner for China in terms of raw materials. China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity were repeatedly violated by imperialist aggression from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries by powers that were jealous of their own sovereignty at home. From the point of view of the PRC, sovereignty will not be fully restored, nor can China truly be equal to the former imperialist powers in the concert of nations until Taiwan is reintegrated into China, with no new loss of territory. Russia has acted militarily with impunity in Chechnya, Georgia and the Crimea in recent times, all in the name of “historical” sovereignty and territorial integrity. Such impunity might encourage Chinese strategists to think that Taiwan could also be “recovered” militarily with impunity, a right that China has reserved for itself in law, but not yet acted upon.
The invasion of Ukraine is a different matter. It is a clear violation of sovereignty and territorial integrity that China cannot justify nor defend. Nor can China align itself with a US-dominated NATO that it sees as an instrument of US hegemony. The situation is fluid, but China is trying to maintain an equidistant stance and would prefer a return to a pacific rules-based world order founded on a balance of power that favours neither NATO nor Russia. Hence China’s agreement with Russian opposition to NATO’s expansion, but not with Russia’s actions. China has abstained on UN resolutions critical of Russia that it could have vetoed and has offered to act as a mediator in the conflict. Such a stance is probably more in tune with the attitude of the rest of what was once called the Third World, that is to say, the largest part of the world’s population — as long as China itself does not exhibit hegemonic tendencies.
China advocates a different world order, a “China Model” that would return China to the pre-eminent position it held in the world before succumbing to Western aggression in the nineteenth century. It would improve the people’s standard of living and allow China to take centre stage in world affairs, all under an efficient technocratic enlightened or “benevolent” Party-State. This model would be an alternative to neo-liberalism in the emerging world order as well as a political alternative to the liberal democracy of “the West”. China’s successful development model resists the neoliberal Washington Consensus, and both the success and the resistance lend China soft power in the eyes of “the Rest”. For the time being, China advocates a diverse and multipolar world as an alternative to US/NATO hegemony —a balance of power among large regional blocks that would prevent any single one of them from dominating the emerging world order.
In an emerging world order with liberal democracy in crisis due to its failure to guarantee equality, China’s technocratic efficiency in promoting social equity, as well as China’s defence of multipolarity, might have been gaining ground as competitive alternative paradigms — seriously challenging the premise that liberal representative democracy is necessarily the final step in the evolution of the governance of complex societies on a global scale. It remains to be seen whether Putin’s short-range brutality in Ukraine gives an impetus to America’s attempt to marshal a unified response by the world’s “democracies” against “authoritarianism” that can short circuit China’s long-range plan to pacifically re-orientate the existing world order.
Golden, Seán (2018) ‘New Paradigms for the New Silk Road’, in Carmen Mendes (ed.), China’s New Silk Road. An Emerging World Order, London: Routledge, 2018, 7-20.
Cover Photo: Chinese President Xi Jinping holds talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin ahead of the Winter Olympics opening – Beijing, 4 February 2022 (Li Tao / Xinhua via AFP).
China and QAnon embrace Russian disinformation justifying war in Ukraine
AFP/RFI/FRANCE24 Russia convened a special UN Security Council meeting on Friday to discuss what the Kremlin said were "secret" research laboratories the US allegedly has in Ukraine to develop biological weapons. The Russian allegations are rooted in an unlikely conspiracy theory that has been promoted by both China and the pro-Trump conspiracy movement QAnon.
As Russia's attack on Ukraine enters a third week, Russia's deputy ambassador to the UN, Dmitri Polianski, convened the Security Council on Friday to raise the issue of the "biological activities” of the US military in Ukraine.
Polianski accused Washington of developing biological weapons in research laboratories throughout the country. Earlier this week, Russia's defense ministry said there was a network of US-funded biolaboratories in Ukraine working on establishing a mechanism "for the covert transmission of deadly pathogens" and conducting experiments with bat coronavirus samples. Russia claimed this was being done under the auspices of the US Department of Defense and was part of a US biological weapons programme.
On unregulated social media platforms – including Telegram and 8chan – this conspiracy theory has become incredibly popular, racking up hundreds of thousands of hits each day.
This is not the first time since the beginning of the war in Ukraine that Moscow has put this far-fetched theory on the table. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in early March that he had proof that "the Pentagon has developed pathogens in two military laboratories in Ukraine".
Russia’s permanent UN representative, Vasily Nebenzya, described the alleged biological weapons plot in detail on Friday, warning that bats, birds and even insects could soon be spreading “dangerous pathogens” across Europe.
Washington, Kyiv as well as the United Nations have denied the existence of biological weapons laboratories in the country.
Britain’s ambassador to the UN, Barbara Woodward, said Russia had used the Security Council to utter "a series of wild, completely baseless and irresponsible conspiracy theories".
As early as January, the US Department of Defense felt it necessary to post a video on YouTube in response to a flood of rumours about alleged US military experiments in "secret" laboratories on the border between Russia and Ukraine.
The US has openly admitted to having helped establish dozens of research laboratories in former Soviet bloc countries. The facilities, which were intended to help destroy the remnants of the USSR's nuclear and chemical arsenal, are currently being used to monitor the emergence of new epidemics.
But there is nothing “secret” about the facilities, which appear on public lists giving their locations. They are also 100 percent run by the governments of the countries in which they are located. The United States only partly finances the equipment.
Nevertheless, the conspiracy theory continues to gain traction and is finding new adherents outside of Russian borders.
A useful conspiracy for China
China called on the US last month to be open, transparent and responsible in reporting its overseas military biological activities. Beijing also stressed the importance of being able to visit with "complete transparency" the scientific facilities in Ukraine "where the United States is conducting its research for military purposes". Since then, major Chinese media such as the Global Times have not missed an opportunity to offer a platform to Russian officials who promote the conspiracy theory.
Yevgeniy Golovchenko, a specialist in Russian disinformation campaigns at the University of Copenhagen, is not surprised by China encouraging these rumours about secret US biolabs in Ukraine. "We should not forget that there have already been heated exchanges between Beijing and Washington about secret laboratories during the Covid-19 pandemic," he told FRANCE 24, referring to the controversy surrounding the origin of the Sars-Cov-2 virus. While some Western conspiracy theorists believe it was manufactured in a laboratory in Wuhan, China has accused the US army of being behind its emergence.
For Beijing, this new conspiracy theory has arrived at the right time. It allows China to show support for its ally Vladimir Putin without committing too openly to the invasion of Ukraine, explained Golovchenko.
At the same time, the Russian rhetoric is in line with Chinese propaganda about the coronavirus. Beijing hopes to demonstrate that if Washington is able to develop biological weapons secretly under the Russians' nose, why wouldn't the United States have developed a dangerous virus in another of their "secret labs"?
But the Russian disinformation theory has also found supporters in the heart of the United States. Followers of QAnon, a conspiracy theory that alleges Trump is saving the United States from a satanic group of paedophiles, were among the first to justify the invasion of Ukraine as a Russian attempt to destroy dangerous military laboratories.
People close to Trump, such as former strategist Steve Bannon and Republican Senator Marco Rubio, have officially asked the White House for explanations about the activity in these Ukrainian laboratories.
From the Colorado potato beetle to AIDS
For decades, Moscow has consistently accused Washington of secretly developing biological weapons. This has been a common thread of Russian propaganda since the beginning of the Cold War in 1949, explained Milton Leitenberg, an American expert on weapons of mass destruction, in a 2021 study on the history of the subject. Moscow suggested in 1950 that the United States was sending Colorado potato beetles that had been infected with a new virus to poison potato crops in East Germany.
Russia has been particularly effective in promoting the idea that the US weaponises viruses for use against its enemies. Golovchenko noted that a particularly effective disinformation campaign along these lines ran from 1985 to the end of the 2000s, when the Kremlin claimed that Washington “was the source of the AIDS virus and was using it to target African and African-American populations".
The AIDS conspiracy theory appeared in "2,000 newspapers across 25 countries” since 1985, noted Leitenberg. In his study he pointed out that well-known personalities from the African-American community publicly expressed varying levels of support for this conspiracy theory, including "Will Smith, Bill Cosby and Spike Lee".
Muddying the waters ahead of an attack?
This latest biological-weapons conspiracy theory allows Moscow to characterise the United States as the real enemy in the war. For the Russian government, it is a way of justifying the invasion to a domestic population that considers Ukraine to be friendly to Russia.
"This theory presents Ukraine as simply the territory on which Russia is fighting to put an end to dangerous American activities," said Golovchenko.
The Biden administration fears that the frequent repetition of the bioweapons claims might be an indication that Moscow is planning to use such weapons itself and wants to muddy the waters beforehand. The next step could be for Moscow to mount a “false flag” operation in Ukraine.
Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, called the Russian accusations “preposterous” in a tweet last Wednesday and said the United States “does not develop or possess such weapons anywhere”.
“Now that Russia has made these false claims, and China has seemingly endorsed this propaganda, we should all be on the lookout for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, or to create a false flag operation using them,” she wrote on Twitter on March 9, adding: “It’s a clear pattern.”
While it is impossible to know what the Kremlin has in mind, such a move would makes sense from a propaganda perspective, said Golovchenko.
"For the time being, the Russian government continues to claim that this is only a limited military operation in Ukraine and it is forbidden to talk about the ‘war’ in Russia. But the longer the fighting goes on, the harder it will be for the authorities to maintain this line,” Golovchenko observed.
“They will have to find a justification to switch to full-scale war.”
This article was translated from the original in French.
WHITE SUPREMACIST AMERIKA I’m Not Celebrating Long-Overdue Legislation Banning Lynching
National Memorial for Peace and Justice (Photo: Guy Nave)
On Monday, March 7, Congress approved legislation banning lynching and making it a federal hate crime. It has only taken 200 attempts to approve such legislation. The bill now goes to President Biden to sign into law.
On April 26, 2018, I attended the opening of the Equal Justice Initiative’s (EJI) Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice.
The 11,000-square-foot Legacy Museum is built on the site of a former warehouse where enslaved black people were imprisoned. It is located midway between a historic slave market and the main river dock and train station. Slavers trafficked tens of thousands of enslaved black people there during the height of the domestic slave trade.
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice is a memorial to the victims of “racial terror lynchings.” The site includes a memorial square with 800 six-foot columns that include the names of victims and the counties and states where racial terror lynchings took place.
The columns are suspended from above, representing public lynchings that happened in town squares across America. The hanging columns evoke the image of hanging brown bodies. They force visitors to grapple with the vast number of lynching victims in America.
Photo by Guy Nave
The memorial had a profound impact on me during my visit.
As I found myself surrounded by 800 hanging columns, I was reminded that in 1959 — just four years after 14-year-old Emmett Till was lynched in Money, MS — a 17-year-old boy, who would later become my father, was sent from his home in Mississippi to live with his mother’s sister in east central Indiana.
My grandparents feared their eldest son would become another victim of racial terror lynching. White men came to their home one evening accusing my not-yet father of speaking “disrespectfully” to white men earlier. Knowing the repercussions of such accusations and certain the men would return later, my grandparents sent their son away.
A memorial plaque
Walking through the memorial, I thought about the suffering Emmet Till experienced. White men abducted Till from his great-uncle’s house and savagely beat him. They mutilated his body, lynched him, and shot him in the head before tossing his body into the Tallahatchie River.
As a student of history, I had read about the brutality inflicted upon Emmet Till. I had often wondered about the severity of his suffering.
The severity of the brutality and suffering, however, became much more palpable to me as I walked through the memorial. I imagined the fate that awaited my father had my grandparents not sent him away to Indiana.
Emmet Till
It’s estimated that more than six million black people fled the South as refugees and exiles as a result of racial terror lynchings.
As a 57-year old African American college professor with graduate degrees from Princeton Theological Seminary and Yale University, I often think about who Emmett Till’s children might have become.
I think about the sheer volume of surviving and unborn descendants of the more than 4,400 black men, women, boys, and girls lynched in America. I think about the legacy of American impoverishment resulting from the barbaric atrocity of lynching.
How many brilliant black people has our nation been denied as a result of lynchings?
Had my grandparents not protected my father from a lynching 63 years ago, I would have never been born.
He would have never brought his nine brothers and sisters out of Mississippi. They may have never provided America with the several dozen children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren who have helped make America a better nation.
Lynchings have not only terrorized black Americans, they have impoverished America as a nation.
We will never be able to imagine the contributions made by the hundreds of thousands of black Americans denied an opportunity to impact the world because of lynchings.
While making plans four years ago to attend the opening of the museum and memorial, several white people asked me, “What is the benefit of a museum and a memorial dedicated to the victims of slavery and lynching?”
As someone who teaches about the ongoing legacy of racism, I’ve often had white people ask me, “Why do black people insist on living in the past and remembering slavery when we have come so far as a nation?”
Americans are extremely selective regarding the past we teach and reflect upon. Many Americans invoke a selective past in order to buttress a racist self-serving present.
Much of the recent rhetoric and legislation banning the teaching of critical race theory has nothing to do with CRT. It’s about allowing for a teaching of history that denies the realities and legacies of racial oppression in America.
A history of racial injustice must be acknowledged, and mass atrocities and abuse must be recognized and remembered, before a society can recover from mass violence.
I learned very little during my public school education about the history of slavery, racism, and lynching in America.
The concerted efforts to ban public school teaching about systemic racism and the consequences of slavery ensure students continue to learn very little about this history.
I am glad the U.S. Congress has finally passed legislation banning lynching in America. Welcome to the 21st century!
While I expect President Biden to sign the bill into law, I’m not celebrating the legislation.
In many ways the passage of this legislation has more symbolic significance than practical significance.
Passing long-overdue legislation banning lynching rings hollow when we are passing legislation banning teaching about lynching in public schools.
Current and future generations of Americans need to know why the passage of this legislation is important.
Promoting teaching about racism, slavery, and lynchings in public schools might help ensure the importance of this legislation is understood.
It also might help pave the way for the passage of legislation addressing current acts of systemic racial violence and injustice. It could even possibly prevent having to wait 150 years before passing the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.
Lover of life, professor, speaker, author, blogger, social activist, founder of www.ClamoringforChange.com. Committed to promoting civil dialogue and engagement
In terms of public engagement, the American war in Vietnam defined the focus of US higher education in the 1960s and early 1970s. In undergraduate dorms, graduate student seminars, administrative offices, and faculty meetings, there was virtually no place to get away from the war and its effects. A fundamental reason for this was the fact that the vast majority of male students were potentially eligible for the draft. Indeed, many college men were only a few grade points away from being reclassified as 1-A, which meant their induction was often only weeks or months away. It was the draft that motivated students to begin looking critically at the war and it was the draft that compelled antiwar faculty to take actions designed to protect their male students from the draft and the war. One such action was giving all students A’s in order to lift their grade point averages to a number that maintained a classification keeping them out of the military.
However, even at its peak, the number of faculty participating in this and other actions designed to protest the war were in the minority. Much more common in US academia was either a tacit acceptance of the way things were or an active defense of the policies Washington was engaged in. As historian Ellen Schrecker makes clear in her book The Lost Promise: American Universities in the 1960s, part of this defense stemmed from institutional and individual connections to the government and corporate America via research and teaching grants and relationships. Neither the universities’ administrations or their faculty so tethered were willing to bite the hand that fed them, so to speak. Ultimately, their inaction and even defense of US policy in Vietnam and elsewhere were no different than that found in mainstream media and the general population.
Consequently, when individuals employed in academia began to publicly oppose the war in Vietnam, they were met with a venom previously reserved for traitors and communists (which are often synonymous in the American mind). Besides the pillorying in the media, those professors and researchers who spoke out faced discipline, loss of funding, and threats to their jobs, even if they had tenure. Schrecker discusses a few of these cases; Michael Parenti’s dismissal from the University of Vermont is one such case and Bruce Franklin’s from Stanford is two of them. Cursorily, Noam Chomsky, who may be the best known of all leftist US academics and wrote the seminal essay titled The Responsibility of the Intellectuals in 1967 calling on this demographic to act against the US war, never lost his job at MIT. Some college administrations respect the concept of academic freedom more than they do the money represented by trustees, regents, and donors, apparently. Or maybe their financial situations are pretty much impenetrable.
On the other hand, as the movement against the war became more and more radical in its analysis and students realized that the war was not just a mistake, but a necessary manifestation of imperialism, right-wing faculty began to feel those students’ wrath. Schrecker describes the harassment rendered to certain particularly right-wing faculty. One such professor—the economist Milton Friedman—saw his class frequently disrupted by radicals because of his opposition to the protests and the politics behind them. Given his primary role in the establishment of the fascist Chilean president Pinochet’s economic plan after the coup in 1973, one might say Friedman got off easy.
The Lost Promise is a distinctive history. By keeping her focus on university and college campuses and those who lived, studied and worked there the author has created a panoramic narrative that connects the upsurge in campus political activity with the fast-changing world of the 1960s and early 1970s. She seamlessly weaves the politics and culture of the period into the fabric of upheaval and change experienced in academia. The text chronicles the transition on campus from a naive belief that the powers that be would change policy in Vietnam once they understood its negative impact to an increasingly radical understanding that it was imperialism at work. Likewise, the liberation struggle of Black Americans is discussed in the context of the period. Even though the number of Black students was considerably less than Black Americans’ representation in society, their efforts to expand the curriculum to include the history of Blacks and other non-white US residents provoked some of the most disruptive protests of the time. Indeed, not only were those protests some of the most disruptive—from the Third World strikes at San Francisco State and UC Berkeley to the Chicano protests in Los Angeles and the Black Student Union building occupation at Cornell—they were also some of the most violent thanks to the brutality of the police and vigilantes.
In what can only be described as a sad truth by this reviewer, too many of the changes that took place in US higher education because of these years of protests have disappeared. Instead, too many universities and colleges are nowadays little more than training schools for particular strata of the capitalist managerial elite. While this was certainly quite true in the long Sixties, the fact there was a sizable number of politically engaged and radical students led to a questioning of that role. The democratization of higher education that was due in part to the GI Bill was further enhanced by the genuine affordability of a college education for working-class youth. For many potential students nowadays, paying for a college education requires the mortgaging of one’s future. The decades of right-wing attacks on secondary education that began in the 1960s in response to the radicalization taking place on campus have produced the effect they hoped for. This is despite the fact that a fair number of those radical students ended up becoming professors in the university.
The German student radical Daniel Cohn-Bendit once told Jean Paul Sartre: “We do not hope to make some kind of socialist university in our society, for we know that the function of the university will stay the same so long as the system is unchanged as a whole. But we believe that there can be moments of rupture in the system’s cohesion and that is possible to profit by them to open breaches in it.” The period examined and discussed by Ellen Schrecker in her book The Lost Promise was such a moment. One hopes that another with even greater effect is in the offing. God knows it is sorely needed.
National Memorial for Peace and Justice (Photo: Guy Nave)
