Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - February 22, 2014, Winnipeg, Manitoba C M Y K PAGE A17 Winnipeg Free Press Saturday, February 22, 2014 A 17 POLL �� TODAY'S QUESTION How do you plan on enjoying Sunday's men's gold- medal hockey game? �� Vote online at winnipegfreepress. com �� PREVIOUS QUESTION What was your favourite moment during Canada's golden day at the Olympics Thursday? TOTAL RESPONSES 6,195 Winnipeg Free Press est 1872 / Winnipeg Tribune est 1890 VOL 142 NO 102 2014 Winnipeg Free Press, a division of FP Canadian Newspapers Limited Partnership. Published seven days a week at 1355 Mountain Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba R2X 3B6, PH: 204- 697- 7000 BOB COX / Publisher PAUL SAMYN / Editor WFP JULIE CARL / Deputy Editor SCAN TO VOTE ON TODAY'S QUESTION Play hardball, not softball, U with Putin NIVERSITIES in China are home to a strange mix of political emotions. To the Communist Party's deep concern, many young lecturers have little enthusiasm for Marx, whose ideas are still officially supposed to " guide" intellectual life on campuses. Many students, by contrast, are desperate to join the Communist Party. Recruitment levels are at an all- time high, but ideology plays little part. In 1989, after the Chinese army crushed studentled protests in Tiananmen Square, enthusiasm on campus for joining the party plunged, as did the party's eagerness to recruit there. In the following year only 26,000 swore the oath of admission: to keep the party's secrets, to spend a lifetime fighting for communism and to " never betray the party." That was one- quarter of the number who had joined three years earlier and a mere two per cent of total recruitment. The days of anger and recrimination have been forgotten, however. In 2010, more than 1.2 million students joined, about 40 per cent of the total. The increase is partly the result of a surging overall number of students. In 1989 there were only about two million of them in higher education. By 2010, the number had risen more than tenfold, thanks to a huge expansion in admissions to universities and technical colleges since the beginning of the century. Recruitment to the party has outpaced this growth, however. In 1997, slightly more than four per cent of undergraduates were party members. Within a decade the proportion had doubled. In some colleges more than 80 per cent of upper- year students now apply for membership, according to a report by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. " In some classes nearly every student submits an application letter," it said. This has little to do with communist zeal. The interest in membership is a byproduct of the expansion of college enrolment, which has created a glut of graduates in the job market. Public- sector employers usually prefer party members and often require membership for better positions. Demand for government- linked jobs has been growing, thanks to the relatively generous benefits and security they offer. The academy says that it is not necessarily the case, however, that party members have better employment prospects. In a survey of graduates from 12 universities, it found the employment rate within two months of graduation was 85 per cent for non- members and about 80 per cent for members. At elite universities the proportions were roughly even, while at ordinary ones nonmembers appeared to fare far better, 82 per cent versus 73 per cent. Only at vocational colleges did the party members appear to have an advantage, with 96 per cent gaining work within two months, compared with 90 per cent of non- members. The report did not say how academic performance might have affected these outcomes. In theory, party members are supposed to get at least average grades. In competition for jobs at state- owned enterprises, which are among the most coveted of all, a lack of party membership appears to be no bar. More than 21 per cent of non- members surveyed got work at such companies, compared with slightly less than 20 per cent of party members. That could be a recognition by S. O. E. s that ability trumps political loyalty for entry- level jobs. Meritocracy extends only so far, however: The party still keeps the top slots for its own. D UBAI, United Arab Emirates - There is something surreal about Dubai right from the moment you land and find yourself in a long line at passport control, one of many such lines each leading to a counter with an official in a flowing white robe and keffiyeh, looking as if he just strode in from the desert or from another era entirely. Viewing the graceful, timeless, Arabic dress of the locals, however, might prove to be your only encounter with history. Almost everything else in Dubai is new - even the population. At last count, Emiratis composed 17 per cent of Dubai's two million plus population. The rest are ex- pats, mainly from India, who've come on work visas. Add an estimated one million " daily visitors" or tourists, and you have this citystate that stretches some 70 kilometres along the Persian Gulf. Forty years ago Dubai was a minor trading port, one of seven states in the newly- formed United Arab Emirates. Then came oil. Then came the Sheikh of Dubai's decision to develop his emirate as a hub of aviation, tourism, and finance. Dubai now has more buildings greater than 300 metres tall than any other city in the world, the vast majority of them built since 1999, and many more are under construction. Architects have had a heyday here. Whether it's clusters of condos and office towers or the signature Burj Khalifa ( the world's tallest building at 163 stories), all the new buildings are stunning. My husband's son has worked in the financial sector in Dubai for the last five years. He and his wife live on the 21st floor of a posh tower. From their living- room, dining- room and balcony, you can see the top of the needle- like Burj Khalifa without straining your neck. They love living in Dubai. Life is easy compared to life in India. Traffic is orderly and all sorts of goods and services are available without much hassle. Granted, everything is imported and nothing is cheap ( rents are comparable to London), but with a good salary and no income or sales taxes, they live very well. If you talk to lower- end foreigner workers, you get a different story. On the flight from Mumbai, I sat beside a man who works in middle- management and sees his family once a year. At the apartment pool, the Filipino lifeguard works 12 hours a day, seven days a week. He has worked in Dubai off and on since 2005, but hopes not to stay much longer. By April, with temperatures over 30C, outdoor work is exhausting. He visits his wife and children every second year. For tourists, the main attractions, apart from celebrity tournaments ( both Tiger Woods and Roger Federer popped in this February) are the beaches and the shopping malls. With winter temperature in the low 20s, we skipped the beaches, enjoyed a few boozy lunches by the sea, explored the Dubai Mall ( the world's largest), rode the new metro system from end to end, and explored the Creek, a broad inlet that served as Dubai's original port. In one mall we watched children skating, and in another, skiing and tobogganing down a long snowy hill. But in all our meanderings, the most memorable sight ( apart from the flowing robes and towering buildings) were the old wooden dows tied up along Dubai Creek, ships that had plied the waters of the Persian Gulf year after year, and are still making the trip to Iran and back. Finally, some history. A few days later we took a three- hour flight back to Mumbai, and after spending an hour in a taxi caught in heavy traffic, we reached Dadar railway station for our train to Pune. It was rush hour. Day trains arrived every three minutes, but still they were packed to bursting, people hanging out the doors. A man standing beside me commented, " Too many people in India." We began to talk, first about the new Mumbai metro ( which will have doors that close), and then about his daughter who lives in Boston. And somehow, despite the rush, it felt good to be back in India. I had spent a whole day riding the metro in Dubai and no one had said boo. Winnipeg writer Faith Johnston lives in Pune, India, during winter months with her India- born husband. I HAVE this recurring dream where - have you stopped reading yet? If you're a guy, I bet you have. If you're a woman, I bet you're saying, " Oh, please, just wait until you hear my recurring dream! I've had it since I was six. It only happens if I'm stressed plus I've eaten cilantro. Fresh cilantro. The dried stuff doesn't do anything and it's never really as good; I don't care what they say. But tell me about yours first because my dream takes a long time." If there are any men still left in the room, by this point they're tying ropes to lighting fixtures because they're planning to hang themselves. They're thinking that death might well be quicker and probably significantly more pleasant than waiting for these two to stop talking about what happened when they were asleep. Haven't you found men to be less than fascinated by the detailed recollections of the unconscious and haphazard experiences that constitute dreams? For a few years, I had a male shrink. Even he didn't want to hear my dreams. And when recurring dreams happen over, say, 10, 20 or even 30 years of marriage and are ritually recited over breakfast as if they were somehow " breaking news," I've known men to get downright irritated and take their coffee to another room. ( That's where he is now: the other room. I told my husband what I was writing about and he decided to go to an entirely different section of the house. It's not as if I was reading out loud or sounding out my words. I wasn't asking him how to spell " labyrinth" or " polyp" - although both appear regularly in the dream, in case you're interested.) Men don't want to hear about dreams. When somebody says, " I was playing Barbies with Madeleine Albright and we were either in a circus or a brothel when suddenly I started to cut my hair with manicure scissors and Albright says, ' Shouldn't a priest read you your rights before he hears your confession?' which is what she always says in the dream but this time I answered, ' These are not my walls, but my paintings are on them,'" the natural question is, " What do you think it means?" And a lot of men don't like to analyze things. I've rarely encountered that problem with women: We crave the kind of weird details dreams deliver. We want to hear when old boyfriends and dead relatives show up; we want to decipher possible prognostications and omens. Maybe this reflects my Sicilian and French- Canadian background - maybe WASPs haven't done this kind of thing since Hawthorne was writing - but my aunts used to gather over morning coffee and talk over their nocturnal visions the way Wall Street financiers talk about the market forecasts. In part, they also did it for the same reason: They would play any combination of numbers that appeared in somebody's dream. Aunt Rose would start, " Last night, I was back at 3072 Emmons Avenue..." and before she could get in another word, Aunt Clara would yell, " I'm playing those numbers! They're mine!" Since most of the family lived in walk- up tenements, I don't think dreams turned out to be as reliable an economic indicator as either, say, the Dow Jones or the price of copper futures ( which the aunts measured by use of the penny jar), but that didn't undermine the seriousness or regularity of the daily review. It also didn't prevent them from regarding any information they received from the " other side" as entirely reliable. Somebody dreamt a toddler died in a car accident? That poor kid didn't leave the house for a month. The fact he didn't die was then used as proof - proof you could not dispute - that the dream saved his life. I used to think that was hilarious. Now, if I have a dream about falling down the stairs, I hold onto banisters. Perhaps the dreams that come to us even while we're on this mortal coil should at least occasionally give us pause - if only just long enough to write down the numbers. ( Look who's come back into the room. Hi, honey! Column's done!) Gina Barreca is an English professor at the University of Connecticut, a feminist scholar who has written eight books, and a columnist for the Hartford Courant. www. ginabarreca. com. GINA BARRECA FAITH JOHNSTON The sexual roots of shared dreams The Economist Tiananmen losing its grip on China's students Dubai - where history goes to die FAITH JOHNSTON / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS View of Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building, taken from Faith Johnston's hotel room. Jennifer Jones' team winning gold 12% Canada's women's hockey team winning gold 27% Both were thrilling 53% I wasn't cheering for Canada 2% I'm boycotting the Olympics 6% T O understand why U. S. President Barack Obama's Syria policy has failed so badly, look no further than the brutal regime crackdown on political protesters in Ukraine. The link is Vladimir Putin. U. S. officials foolishly banked on the Russian leader to squeeze Syria's dictator into a political compromise at Geneva peace talks. But Putin - who prides himself on displays of bare- chested machismo - disdains political compromise. He prefers strongmen, whether in Syria, Ukraine or elsewhere, and will back Bashar al- Assad, no matter his war crimes. Similarly, Putin encouraged Ukraine's president, Viktor Yanukovych, to unleash carnage on civilian protesters this week. By so doing, he has sent a message the Obama administration can't ignore as it tries to find a new strategy for Syria: Putin plays hardball. He will only temper his support for dictatorial allies if he's made to believe the cost is too high. Putin's modus operandi is clear in Ukraine. The current crisis began when the Ukrainian government seemed poised to sign an association agreement with the European Union in November. The accord appealed to citizens who hoped tighter ties to Europe would put brakes on a corrupt, nearly bankrupt government that was rushing toward dictatorial rule. Putin, however, has dreams of creating a Eurasian Union, a vast political and economic bloc that relinks former Soviet states - including Ukraine. He offered Yanukovych a $ 15 billion bailout and cheap gas in return for spurning the EU offer. That sparked peaceful protests in Kyiv calling for Yanukovych's resignation and early elections. The Ukrainian leader promised not to use force against demonstrators, but shifted gears after meeting with Putin in Sochi. On Monday, Russia gave Ukraine a $ 2 billion down payment, and Putin conversed by phone with Yanukovych. The next day came the crackdown. Yanukovych appears to be going for " the full Assad" says the Brookings Institution's Fiona Hill, co- author of Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin . " The idea is to have no compromise, even though there could have been a way out with the demonstrators." A team of Russian " crowd control" experts is said to be aiding the Ukrainian Interior Ministry. Russian government spokesmen are demonizing the Ukrainian opposition with the same language they applied to once- peaceful Syrian demonstrators, calling them " extremists" and " terrorists." They also insist the protesters are tools of the West. Ukraine is not Syria: Despite Putin's blessings, Yanukovych can't drop barrel bombs on Kyiv. If no truce is accepted by both sides, he risks driving Ukraine toward civil war, as protesters from the pro- Europe west and centre of the country resist efforts to draw it back into Moscow's grasp. Indeed, says Adrian Karatnycky, a Ukraine expert and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, there are still ways to pressure Putin into recognizing the risks of backing Yanukovych. Prime among them: If the EU ( with strong U. S. support) finally approves targeted sanctions against Ukrainian officials and its so- called oligarchs, super- rich businessmen who still support the regime. Deprived of assets abroad, and visas to Europe and America, these key players might turn against their president. Fear of offending Putin has previously inhibited EU officials from imposing such sanctions, which might have prevented the current tragedy in Kyiv. But the Russian leader's open disdain for Europe may finally have goaded them to act. Meantime, says Karatnycky, harsher crackdowns will only accelerate protests around the country; the safety of pipelines carrying Russian gas to Europe could be at risk. Ukraine could soon become a drain on Russian resources. Putin's dream of economic integration with Ukraine could " go by the boards, if Kyiv becomes a quasi- Beirut." As the costs of his neo- imperialism rise, Putin might consider an alternative candidate to lead Ukraine. Forcing Putin to consider a compromise in Syria will be much harder after the administration's feckless policy of the past three years. When he was Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, John Kerry understood what was needed. " Assad won't ( change) unless the on- the- ground calculations change," he said in May 2012. In other words: Neither Assad nor his Russian backers will bargain at the negotiating table unless they fear he might lose on the battlefield. But the White House has refused for two years to provide military aid to vetted and moderate rebels, even as Islamist groups flourished with aid from private Arab sources. Meantime Putin ( and Iran) shovelled funds, guns, and manpower to Assad, who is winning on the ground. As Obama reconsiders whether to help vetted Syrian rebels, he should recognize the lesson from Kyiv: The only way to dissuade Putin from backing dictators, whether in Syria or Ukraine, is to make the cost higher than he is willing to bear. Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial- board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer. TRUDY RUBIN A_ 17_ Feb- 22- 14_ FP_ 01. indd A17 2/ 21/ 14 10: 03: 50 PM ;