Going Against the Grain – in Bolivia and elsewhere

Re-engineered clock, Congress Bldg, La Paz, Bolivia

Anti-clockwise running clocks have appealed to me since I first saw one years ago on the wall of a colleague’s restaurant back in New Zealand. A year or two later I found the source – a shop in London’s West End specializing in scissors, pens, corkscrews and other equipment designed for perhaps the world’s last unrepresented minority, left-handers.

Maybe there is something about being left-handed that makes one sympathetic to misfits and rebels in general. Possibly that’s why some societies, overtly or covertly, have attempted to discourage left-handedness in children, and why the English word sinister derives from the Latin word for left-handed.

I have to tell you, this awareness dawned upon me slowly. Learning to write in the days of fountain pens, I developed a characteristic ‘left-hander’s hook’ to avoid producing lines of smudged ink. At an early age I must have made the pragmatic decision to use scissors with my right hand, just as, after coming to Turkey, I learnt to make Turkish coffee with the standard cezve[1]. Since, however, I took the decision to ‘come out’ as a left-hander, I find myself applauding every small victory for my cack-handed brothers and sisters.

So, I felt a sense of camaraderie when I read a news item reporting that the government of Bolivia has made the bold decision to re-engineer the nation’s clocks so they run counter-clockwise. I’m quoting from an article that appeared in The Guardian last week:

“Bolivia turns back the clock in bid to rediscover identity and 'southernness'

“In the latest – and by far the most literal – sign that times are changing in Bolivia, the numerals on the clock that adorns the congress building in La Paz have been reversed and the hands set to run anticlockwise in proud affirmation of the Andean nation's "southernness". According to Bolivia's foreign minister, David Choquehuanca, the horological initiative is intended to help Bolivians rediscover their indigenous roots.

" ’We're in the south and, as we're trying to recover our identity, the Bolivian government is also recovering its sarawi, which means 'way' in Aymara," he said. "In keeping with our sarawi – or Nan, in Quechua – our clocks should turn to the left.’

“Clocks are an evolution of the sundial, and in the northern hemisphere a sundial's shadow runs clockwise, while in the southern hemisphere it moves counter clockwise – making the modern clock a representation of light in the northern hemisphere.

“The clock face volte-face is not the first time a left-wing Latin American nation has played with time in recent years. In 2007, the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez put Venezuela's clocks back half an hour in an attempt to get Venezuelans biologically more in tune with the sun. The previous year, Chávez decided that the white horse on the country's coat of arms ought to gallop to the left instead of the right to better express the aspirations of his Bolivarian revolution.”

Well, I have documented previously my appreciation of Chavez and his Ecuadorean brother-in-arms, Rafael Correa. It’s pleasing to see Chavez’s successor carrying on the good work. One of the new President’s first acts was to establish a Ministry of Happiness charged with boosting programs for alleviating poverty, disability and social inequality. The article I read reported that Venezuela was ranked the happiest country in Latin America (according to the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network’s World Happiness Report for 2013), and 20^th happiest in the world, placing ahead of the UK, France and Germany. Such news items make me happy too, and I am happier still to have occasion to learn a little more South American history.

Christchurch wizard avoids census, 1981

Before delving into that subject, however, I would like to pay brief tribute to another revolutionary figure. Not many countries have an official wizard these days – at least not in the developed world – so I take some pride in the fact that we in New Zealand do. Our wizard, born in England as Ian Brackenbury Channell, has filled the role since 1990, having been promoted by the Prime Minister of the day from his previous position as Wizard of the South Island city of Christchurch which he had held since 1974. Prior to that he had served as Official Wizard at Sydney’s University of New South Wales since 1967. Well, that’s quite a career, isn’t it! Check the link above if you want to learn more, but one of his early feats of wizardry was producing a world map using the Hobo-Dyer Projection which placed the South Pole at the top. The purpose was, amongst other things, to illustrate the point that much of our received knowledge is arbitrary, and based on assumptions forced upon us by Western/Americo-European predominantly Northern Hemisphere political and economic systems.

Wizardly world map - rightside up

But to return to South America. Evo Morales has been President of Bolivia since 2006 when he won an absolute majority (53.7%) in a democratic election – two events which have been pretty rare in that country since it gained independence from Spain in 1809. As with most post-colonial states, government seems to have remained in the hands of the economic and social elite, with little of the country’s mineral wealth trickling down to the indigenous poor, until a widely supported revolution in 1952 brought the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement to power. Their policies of universal suffrage, land reform, rural education and nationalisation of the lucrative tin mines kept them there until, surprise, surprise, they were ousted by a military coup in 1964 – with, if we can believe Wikipedia, the assistance of America’s very own CIA, who were also instrumental soon after in the killing of legendary Bolivian revolutionary Che Guevara in 1967.

The remaining years of the 20^th century seem to have been filled with a procession of military juntas and weak coalition governments characterized by corruption charges, violent suppression of opposition, free-market economic policies and privatization of state assets. Large-scale protest action increased from 1999, prompted especially by the transfer of water supply to private ownership and the consequent doubling of prices. Another key issue was the development of Bolivia’s huge reserves of natural gas – who would do it, where they would do it and who would benefit?

Street protests and general chaos continued for the first years of the new century, possibly explaining in part why a majority of Bolivian voters gave their support to Morales. His identity as a cocalero supporter, footballer, trade union activist, and his indigenous Aymara family background are perhaps also relevant. According to 2010 figures, 55 percent of Bolivia’s ten million people are Amerindian, and a further 30 percent Mestizo[2]. The Wikipedia entry claims that the country has 34 official languages – which may account for some of the difficulty in electing a representative government, and certainly adds lustre to Morales’s achievement in gaining a clear majority of votes.

One of Morales’s first acts as President was to reduce his own salary and those of his ministers by 57%. Undoubtedly, his government’s leftist policies of agrarian reform, combatting the influence of United States and trans-national corporations, increasing taxation on the hydrocarbons industry, and aligning the country with other ‘rebellious’ South American states like Ecuador and Venezuela, have provoked serious opposition from conservative groups within Bolivia, as well as upsetting those influential foreign corporations. At the same time, their attempts to compromise a little with the opposition have led to accusations from the left that they are forsaking their socialist agenda. Hard to please everyone.

Still, Morales’s football skills help to offset some of the criticism in a football-mad country – he is said to be the world’s oldest active professional soccer player! And the cocalero label is an interesting one too. Coca is a plant native to western South America whose leaves have been used for millennia by indigenous peoples. When chewed, they act as a mild stimulant while also suppressing hunger, thirst, pain and fatigue. ‘Addiction or other deleterious effects from the consumption of the leaf in its natural form have not been documented in over a 5,000 year time span, thus leading to the logical conclusion that coca left in its natural form causes no addictive properties at all.’

Interestingly, when I googled coca, I got 360 million results – all ten on the first page and 7 out of 10 on the second page referring to Coca Cola! The big problem with coca, of course, is that its active ingredient can be extracted and sold, as cocaine, to serious drug-users, especially in the United States. Isolation of the crucial molecule in 1898 is attributed to a German scientist, Richard Willstatter, who was subsequently awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. While having some limited medical value as an anaesthetic, cocaine’s major use in those early years was apparently to increase the productivity of African American workers, giving them increased stamina and a resistance to extremes of heat and cold.

These days, however, usage has spread to wealthier sectors of Western societies. It is the second most popular illegal recreational substance in the USA, having acquired a reputation as a rich man’s drug – the business is said to have a street value exceeding the revenue of Starbucks. Understandably, then, the United States government is keen to cut off the trade at its source. Unfortunately, with the collapse of the Bolivian economy in the 1980s and the consequent rise in unemployment, profits to be made in exporting the product led to the establishment of coca as an important cash crop. Another example of unintended consequences resulting from meddling in the affairs of foreign states.

So, what is a Bolivian President to do? Clearly the chewing of coca leaf is a relatively innocuous cultural tradition of many of his voters. Equally clearly, imposing a total ban on growing the stuff will have undesirable economic and political consequences. The only long-term solution would seem to be controlling the local market, and developing the country’s economy to improve the conditions of the 53 percent of the population currently subsisting below the poverty line. Probably we should all be wishing him luck – but I suspect not everyone is. Nevertheless, from what I’ve been reading, Bolivia has a longish history of producing nationalist leaders capable of giving foreign interests a run for their money.

Original Tupac Amaru

Rap music arrived in the world too late to get much of a hold on my musical taste buds – but as a teacher of young adults I’ve had some very peripheral contact – at least enough to have heard of Tupac Shakur, if only as a bad boy who was killed in a drive-by shooting in 1996. I was surprised to learn, then, that he is one of the best-selling music artists of all time – and that he took his name from the 18^th century leader of an indigenous uprising against Spanish rule in what later became Bolivia. At that time, the rebellion was unsuccessful, and the Spanish took their revenge in the brutal manner popular with colonial powers.

That original Tupac, however, undoubtedly paved the way for the successful struggle, a few years later, of Simon Bolivar, whose triumph over Spanish forces led to the first union of independent nations in South America. At that time most of the present Latin American countries did not exist as separate entities, so Bolivar is seen as a key figure in the emergence of Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Ecuador, Peru, as well as Bolivia itself.

I wrote a previous post on the subject of benevolent dictators where I examined the legacy of Turkey’s Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. A key theme of that post was the esteem bordering on idolatry that citizens of modern Turkey hold for the founder of their republic – leading to the question of what other leaders occupy a comparable place in the hearts of their people. Well, according to Wikipedia, busts or statues of Simon Bolivar are about as preponderant in towns and cities of Latin America as are those of Atatürk in Turkey. Bolivia, of course, and, news to me, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela are named after him, as are the currencies of both countries. More surprisingly, there are also statues to be found in Paris, New York City, Ottawa and two small towns in Missouri and Italy. At least four towns in the United States are apparently named for Bolivar, as was a ballistic missile submarine of the US Navy. Ankara, New Delhi and Cairo have, respectively, a street, a road and a square named after him. Even Spain, despite losing the jewels in their imperial crown as a result of his activities, boasts a couple of monuments in his honour – and an extra-terrestrial rock in the asteroid belt is officially known as 712 Boliviana.

So go for it, Señor Morales. Left-handers of the world are with you!

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[1] These coffee pots are now available in a left-handed version

[2] of mixed native American and European descent – not highly thought of by the 15% white minority

Turkey’s Mining Disaster 2014 – and keeping up with the Joneses

Families of Turkish coal miners in Soma

The words of an old song have been running through my head for the last few days. Maybe you remember the Bee Gees. I guess they had a little something for everyone, since their musical career spanned five decades. The song I’m remembering, though, was their first major hit, released in 1967. It’s a fictional monologue by a coal-miner trapped underground, showing a picture of his wife to his mate while they wait and hope for rescuers to arrive:

In the event of something happening to me,

there is something I would like you all to see.

It's just a photograph of someone that I knew.

Have you seen my wife, Mr Jones?

Do you know what it's like on the outside?

Don't go talking too loud, you'll cause a landslide, Mr Jones.

I keep straining my ears to hear a sound.

Maybe someone is digging underground,

or have they given up and all gone home to bed,

thinking those who once existed must be dead.

Despite the song’s title, Wikipedia assures me there was no mining disaster in New York in 1941 – though there apparently was one in Pennsylvania that year, and there had been one in New York State two years earlier. The Bee Gees were perhaps inspired by a tragic accident in the Welsh coal-mining town of Aberfan. In 1966, 144 people including 116 children were killed when a mountain of debris from the mine collapsed, burying a village primary school under 40,000 cubic metres of rock and shale. Very definitely, however, a mining disaster has taken place in Turkey in the town of Soma, Manisa, where almost 800 miners were underground when an explosion occurred. So far 300 have been confirmed killed – with that death toll likely to rise.

Unlike the Bee Gees’ miners, who had some hope of survival, so long as rescuers arrived before their pocket of air was exhausted, the Turkish miners were mostly doomed from the beginning. Some of them were working 420 metres below ground when the explosion occurred. The horror of what happened down there in a hell of pitch blackness, burning coal and an atmosphere of deadly poisonous methane gas can scarcely be imagined by those of us for whom an electricity outage above ground is a scary experience.

The other aspect of the tragedy, of course, is the shocking bereavement for hundreds, perhaps thousands of Soma townspeople who have, at one blow, lost husbands, fathers, sons, neighbours, friends and workmates. What makes it worse is that miners and union representatives had apparently been expressing concerns about safety in the mine for some time – with little response from company management.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan reportedly cancelled a trip to Albania to visit the stricken town and express his sympathy. He also apparently urged people to refrain from using the tragedy as a political football. Some hope! Already there have been demonstrations across the country, adding fuel to the fire of political unrest that has been growing against the government for the past year, with some protesters adding ‘murderer’ to the list of accusations they are levelling against Mr Erdoğan.

How fair is it to blame the AK Party government for the disaster in Soma? First of all, it must be accepted that the Soma mine is operated by a private company, not the Turkish state. On the other hand, say opponents, that is the heart of the problem – the privatization of former state activities results in the application of bottom-line accounting and principles of short-term profit such that worker safety and conditions of employment figure very low on a list of management priorities.

Well, I have no personal experience of coal mining, thank God, but I have been working in the private education sector in this country for some years, and I have seen how owners and managers of educational institutions treat teachers. With no union or professional organisation to represent their interests, teachers often work in a state of fear, knowing that their employment can be terminated without redress, and that any comments they make about pay or working conditions can be a reason for termination. If employers can treat university-educated professionals in this way, it is easy to imagine that the lot of a coal-miner will be little removed from servitude. Clearly, whatever social and economic gains have been made in Turkey in the first years of the 21^st century, there is a crying need for improvement in workplace conditions, and the right of employees to collective bargaining is fundamental to this.

To be fair, however, these problems are not confined to Turkey. In 2010, 29 coal miners died in a similar tragedy in New Zealand, again in a mine operated by a private company. A Royal Commission found that government oversight of safety regulations had been inadequate and that company management had been aware of dangers such as high levels of methane gas. As a result, the company was ordered to pay compensation to the bereaved families, but it was unable to do so, since it went bankrupt. The CEO was absolved of blame on the grounds of insufficient evidence. I would have thought that, in these days of grossly overpaid CEOs, one of the few justifications for their obscene pay-packets would be strict liability in such circumstances – but who am I?

Anyway, I thought it was a little unfair that reports in NZ news media on the Soma disaster concluded with the words, ‘Mining accidents are common in Turkey, which is plagued by poor safety conditions.’ There is a website called the Coal Mining History Resource Centre which publishes a list of recent fatal mining disasters. According to CMHRC, apart from the New Zealand explosions, three of the worst in the past ten years occurred in the United States.

The fact is that coal mining is an extremely nasty business that few would willingly undertake if they had alternative means of making a living for themselves and their families. According to CMHRC, at the peak of coal mining in the United Kingdom, between 1900 and 1950, there were 84,331 injuries and deaths in mine accidents. In the same period in the United States, according to the Mine Safety and Health Administration of the US Dept of Labour, there were 452 accidents in coalmines involving injury and death. It is, of course, technologically possible these days to make conditions underground safer. Reports in the Turkish media are saying that there are safe-room installations available for miners to take refuge in in the event of high gas levels or explosions – but they are so expensive that mining companies do not consider them economically feasible.

Open-cast coal mine in Alabama, USA

I recently came across the fascinating story of a coal-mining town in Pennsylvania called Centralia. Apparently, back in 1962, a fire started in an exposed vein of anthracite coal which then began to burn underground. All attempts to extinguish the fire proved unsuccessful and the town eventually had to be abandoned because of noxious gases emerging at the surface. Reports say that the fire could burn for another two hundred and fifty years before the 12 km coal seam is exhausted. In the mean time, the ghost town of Centralia has been erased from maps, and roads that used to pass through it have been diverted.

Now, I understand, when regulations are passed obliging companies to spend money on health and safety, they either close their mines, or do what seems to be the norm in developed countries – revert to open-cast or strip mining. The method here is to use massive digging machines to excavate down to the seam and load the coal on to trucks without the need for a large labour force of subterranean workers. Admittedly this process does create a significant amount of environmental damage – but as yet governments are less responsive to that cost. In the case of the New Zealand Pike River mine, however, the fact that coal extraction was taking place in a national park means that strip mining has so far not been approved.

One report I read about the current issue said that Turkey meets 40% of its current electricity needs from coal-burning plants. I’m sure the government recognises that this is undesirable, and in fact, they are planning to build at least two nuclear power plants to reduce dependence on coal and imported natural gas. Nuclear energy itself, of course, has its down side, as Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima have shown us. So what’s the government of a developing economy to do when its industrial base is expanding and its middle class is growing and demanding higher living standards (read ‘energy consumption’)? Out of curiosity I checked how the US and the UK meet their electricity needs and the results were surprising, to me at least:

In the US, the largest source of electricity is coal-burning plants (37%), followed by natural gas (30%) and nuclear energy (19%). In the UK, natural gas (40.4%) nudges out coal (32.3%) as the major source, with nuclear power supplying 17.6%. According to Wikipedia, coal-fired power plants are still far and away the largest provider of electricity in the world. So what’s the answer? If you really feel sorry for those coal miners, reduce your electricity consumption – but be aware that those guys will then need alternative means of employment.

Clearly this whole business is not merely a problem that Turkey alone is facing. In developed and developing countries alike, the pressure is on to privatise activities that were once considered the primary responsibility of the state, from education and health, to public transport, telecommunications and energy supply. I will readily admit that some of these services are more effectively and efficiently supplied by private sector owners and managers. I well remember, for example, how long we used to wait for a telephone connection in days gone by. On the other hand, I question whether private enterprise can provide satisfactory health and education to the majority when its first responsibility is always to its shareholders, and turning a profit is inevitably the number one priority. Short-term employment contracts, out-sourcing of functions formerly carried out in-house (such as cleaning and catering), as well as the tendency to look for cheaper labour in countries with lower standards of living and less stringent labour protection laws, have created a global environment where concern for human dignity and rights are given scant attention.

I really would like to think that things are getting better, but I have serious doubts. I recently had reason to look up statistics on car ownership around the world. As you would expect, the USA ranks pretty high, though its rate of 80% puts it in 3^rd place behind billionaire playgrounds San Marino and Monaco. New Zealand and Australia also feature pretty well up the list, with 71 and 72%. Northern Europe, again as we might expect, is less dependent on the private car. Denmark, for example, where the bicycle is a lifestyle choice, has a 48% rate of car ownership. City-dwelling Turks, suffering for hours in the gridlock of Istanbul traffic, will perhaps be surprised to learn that their nation’s rate is a mere twenty percent. If Turks and the Chinese (current ownership rate 10%) approach even the proportion of cars owned by Danes, never mind Americans, what hope is there for planet Earth?

So I say to my Turkish neighbours (and American and New Zealand friends across the oceans could set an example here) – if you really care for those coal miners, get yourself a bicycle and an Akbil[1], start using the Metro and the Metrobus, and give serious thought to reducing the size of your carbon footprint.

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[1] Intelligent ticket – usable on most forms of public transport in Istanbul

Social Networks are not always about Democracy

I don't read Time Magazine much these days. My subscription ran out and they forgot to remind me, so after I shudder to think how many years, I no longer have that venerable weekly delivered to my letterbox. Fortunately, I assume from gratitude for my long years of loyalty, they send me regularly a brief summary of what's going on in the world (according to them at least). 

That was then - this is now

I had seen this one reported in our local Turkish daily, but you may like to check the English version:

Report: U.S. Officials Created a ‘Cuban Twitter’ to Overthrow Castro

Washington covertly made ZunZuneo, Cuban slang for a hummingbird's tweet, to woo mobile users with news stories. Once the platform's audience would balloon, the supposed—and failed—goal was to flood it with “content aimed at inspiring Cubans to organize ‘smart mobs'

Fifty-three years after the C.I.A. failed to overthrow Fidel Castro’s government with a group of armed Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs, the U.S. government is still trying to dislodge the Caribbean island’s communist regime, according to a new report.

The Associated Press, citing documents and people involved in the project, reports the U.S. government has been working covert backchannels with aid agencies funneling money through front companies for years to create a social media platform designed to “renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society.” Read more

Into the Valley of Death – Another Crimean War?

What a strange education I had, or so I think now on looking back. When I was a lad in New Zealand there were still people referring to England (or Britain) as ‘Home’. My first primary school headmaster used to visit classes occasionally to brandish a leather strap he referred to as his ‘medicine’, and get us kids piping ‘Rule Britannia’ in our reedy little antipodean voices. Having pupils memorise chunks of poetry was a popular pedagogical technique. Alfred Lord Tennyson’s ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ added to our sense of belonging to an empire on which the sun was still struggling to set, defended by men, any one of whom was worth ten or twenty of any other race on earth, and capable, when the chips were down, of staggering out into an Antarctic blizzard uttering a self-sacrificing epigram in ringing tones.

British lion defends Ottoman 'turkey' against
imperialist Russian bear

Well, there was one line in that immortal poem suggesting that ‘someone had blundered’, but most of it was clearly written to perpetuate the myth of men committed to facing, if necessary, overwhelming odds, and fighting or dying in defence of Empire. I have checked again and found one reference to the opposition – ‘Cossack and Russian’ – but no explanation of what those noble Light Brigade horsemen actually hoped to gain by charging into ‘the mouth of Hell’, other than death and/or glory.

In fact, the famous charge was little more than a futile sideshow in the Battle of Balaklava, the first major engagement in the Crimean War (1853-56). One might even think the whole war itself was a pretty questionable venture. I have no special reason to love Russians, but I have some sympathy for their plight, locked up in the largest, coldest most inhospitable and inaccessible land mass in the world. As the state of Russia (centred on Moscow) expanded from 1500 CE, one of its main driving forces was the need for access to warm water ports for shipping, trade and military purposes – and sandy beaches for summer holidays. Check your atlas. What would you have done if you were a Peter or a Catherine with Great ambitions?

For the Russians, it was pretty obvious that they had to have access to the Black Sea and if possible, a direct route to the Aegean or the Mediterranean. This involved fighting and conquering, or otherwise neutralising whoever was in the way – mostly Muslim Crimean Tatars, Ottomans and Circassians. An important tool in the Russians’ box of strategies was the Orthodox Christian religion which they used to enlist the support of allies, justify expansion and clear out unfriendly resistance.

Expansion as far as the Black Sea was pretty much accomplished during the 18^th century, culminating in a victorious war against the Ottomans (1768-74). The Russian government formally annexed Crimea (not just the peninsula in those days) in 1783.

Again, however, a glance at the map will show that even possessing ports on the northern Black Sea coast doesn’t circumvent all your problems from a Russian point-of-view. Your ships still have to negotiate the Istanbul Bosporus and the Dardanelle Straits past the hostile eyes and guns of your resentful Ottoman neighbours. Wouldn’t it be nice to possess Constantinople/Istanbul itself, or drive a corridor through eastern Anatolia, emerging down in the northeast corner of the Mediterranean around the port of Alexandretta/Iskenderun? Of course both of these will involve further wars with those pesky Ottomans – though by now, the middle of the 19^th century, they are not the fearsome military power they once were.

Still, you need a pretext for picking a fight, and what better than religion? How can good Christians allow those heathen Turks to control the holy places where Christ suffered and died? And there are Christian communities all through the region, Armenians and Syrian Orthodox for example, clearly in need of protection from the oppression and persecution of their Muslim overlords, never mind that they had all been co-existing in relative peace and harmony for centuries. Well, that protection idea caught on in Europe later, but at this stage, France and especially Britain were not about to let the Russians control the eastern Mediterranean and endanger their interests in that region and further afield in India. Hence the Crimean War. Let’s get over there, was the plan, and help our dear Muslim Ottoman friends defeat those dastardly Cossacks and Russians and keep them bottled up in their frozen wastes.

Well, international treaties and alliances make fragile bonds, and it wasn’t too many years before Britain and France were joining forces to finally erase the Ottoman Empire from the geo-political scene. Previously, however, in the 1850s and 60s, their sympathies lay more with Muslim populations suffering genocide and expulsion as a result of Russian expansion.

EGO | European History Online has this to say: ‘Taking advantage of the favourable anti-Turkish sentiment, the Tzarist army conducted a military offensive against the Ottoman Empire in 1877/1878 which ended with the defeat of the Ottomans in the Balkans and the re-establishment of Russia in the Black Sea. In the Russo-Turkish War, Russian and Bulgarian soldiers and francs-tireurs killed 200,000–300,000 Muslims and about one million people were displaced.  After the war, more than half a million Muslim refugees from the Russian Caucasus and the areas south of the Danube, which were under Russian protection, were settled in the Ottoman Empire.’ (Paragraph 3, 2014.03.10)

But who remembers that now? Apart from the Crimean Tatars and the Circassians themselves, that is. As far as I am aware, the XXII Winter Olympic Games in Sochi went off with little disruption despite hopes held by the ex-patriate Circassian community of using the occasion as a stage to draw the world’s attention to the above-mentioned  ‘resettlement’. ‘The world’, sadly, for the most part, doesn’t want to know. It's got enough problems of its own, and anyway it’s hard to know which plaintive cries of genocide to take seriously these days. Add to that the fact that most First World countries have ethnic cleansing skeletons in their own historical closets, and you can see why they are reluctant to risk their glass houses by throwing stones at each other.

Of course there has to be a certain amount of posturing. Our local Istanbul newspaper published pictures of the US destroyer Truxton steaming through the Bosphorus on its way to wave the Stars and Stripes in the Black Sea. President Obama, according to reports, has been having stern words over the phone with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin; and Republican Presidential hopeful, Senator Rand Paul says that ‘if he were President, he would take a harder stance against the Russian President for his actions.’

The sad fact of the matter is that it is extremely unlikely Russia will let Ukraine and Crimea go their own independent way. About as likely as the United States handing Hawaii back to the native Polynesians, or Texas back to Mexico. Probably the best Crimean nationalists can hope for is more conciliatory gestures from Mother Russia along the lines of renaming Stalingrad as Volgograd, recognising that the earlier name had bad associations for locals who remember the mass expulsion of Crimean Tatars to Siberia in 1944.