Tag: Ukraine

The Book “Red Notice” by Bill Browder Brought up Memories

January 28, 2024

Published in 2015, Red Notice is a memoir spanning the period of Russia’s privatization of state assets during President Yeltsin’s time (1991 to 1999) and the rise of the oligarchs during President Putin’s time (from 2000). Browder noticed business opportunities spawned by privatization and took advantage of them but then ran afoul of the Russian political system, and the government deported him from Russia in 2005.

He returned home to London, but upon learning that his lawyer and friend Sergei Magnitsky died of a beating in Moscow on November 16, 2009, he became a human rights activist. The book describes his advocacy that resulted in the Magnitsky Act in the US, signed by President Obama in 2012.

Born into an intellectual and leftist Jewish family where science and mathematics were the only career choices, Bill rebelled and decided to become a capitalist.

Bill’s grandfather, Earl Browder, was a union organizer in the US. Russia invited him to live in Moscow, where he married and had three sons. When Earl came back to the US with his family, he became the head of the US Communist Party and ran for President in 1936 and 1940, becoming subject to the McCarthy witchhunts of real and perceived communists and jailed for sixteen months.

All of Earl’s sons became noted mathematicians in the US. Bill’s father, Felix, a child prodigy in maths, earned his Ph.D. from Princeton at age 20. He had trouble landing a job because of his father’s communist background. However, Eleanor Roosevelt, then Chair of the Board of Governors at Brandeis University, overruled the Board and hired Felix in 1955. Subsequently, Felix taught at the University of Chicago, Yale, and Princeton

Bill studied economics at the University of Chicago and earned an MBA from Stanford to pursue his career goals. The typical career ladder for MBAs led Bill to join investment banks, but he was not happy until he found an opportunity to go to Eastern Europe. He describes in his book that he longed for some experience that reminded him of his grandfather’s stay in Russia.

Bill describes in his book how the Yeltsin regime privatized state assets. Each Russian citizen received one share to buy any company’s share. Some people realized that accumulating shares cheaply was advantageous; most had no idea what the shares meant and sold them cheaply or for a drink.

Bill had the business training to value Russian companies, and by comparing them to similar companies in the West, he quickly realized that the Russian companies were way undervalued. And he thought he could make a fortune buying into the Russian oil and other companies.

But he needed money to invest, and the first part of the memoir describes his talent in raising capital by cold-calling, networking, and directly asking rich people to trust him to invest their money in Russia. The book reads like the who is who of people with millions of dollars in Europe, the Middle East, and the US.

Studying Russian companies, Bill discovered that the oligarchs, who controlled the enormous Russian companies with their accumulated shares, stole from their companies by splitting off parts of them and selling them to their friends and family at discounted prices. When President Putin came into power in 2000, he took advantage of Bill’s work exposing the corrupt oligarchs. Putin put some of them in jail – the prime example was Khodorkovsky of GasProm – and others agreed to Putin taking a portion of their profits to avoid prison. But when Putin took control of the oligarchs, he had no use for Bill anymore and kicked him out of Russia.

Bill moved back to London and published material on the corrupt business practices of the oligarchs, irritating Putin. In response to the bad publicity, the Russian police arrested Bill’s lawyer, Magnitsky, while other members of Bill’s Moscow staff escaped to London. Attempts to free Magnitsky failed despite newspaper articles and YouTube videos exposing the corruption in Russia. The bad publicity caused international condemnation, and Magnitsky’s jail conditions worsened, culminating in a deadly beating.

Learning of Magnitsky’s death, Bill had become depressed and swore revenge. Instead of focusing on his company, he spent most of this time trying to avenge his friend’s death. As a first step, he collected information on those who contributed to Magnitsky’s death.

Armed with this information, Bill lobbied Senators Durbin and McCain to sponsor a bill to sanction all those responsible for Magnitsky’s death. There is a detailed description of how Bill lobbied, working with the US government and Congress to advocate for the bill. The ultimate result was that Senators Durbin and McCain pushed the Magnitsky Act through Congress, subsequently signed by President Obama in 2012.

Browder has an eye for detail, and I found it fascinating to learn of the people Bill has known. For example, Bill worked with Crysthia Freeland in Moscow when she was the bureau head for the Financial Times. Freeland is the Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister in Canada today. He also talks about lunches in specific locations with dates. Maybe he journaled, or he has a fantastic memory.

The book reminded me of my early life living in Hungary under Russian rule in the 1950s. At that time, the state owned most of the property in Hungary, and there was no tax since the government employed all the people and provided all services. There was no private industry. And the secret police were all over. People disappeared overnight, and nobody asked any questions for fear of being the next one to disappear. The socialist system resulted in poverty, much like the situation Browder describes in Russia.

Further enhancing my interest in the book, Felix Browder, Bill’s father, was my brother Peter’s advisor at Yale University for his doctoral dissertation in mathematics in 1964.

Advice for Seniors

December 20, 2023

Most people look forward to retirement as a time when they think that they can do whatever they wish to do, whenever they want to do it. I am retired and reflected on whether it is true. What I found is that I settled into a routine that expands the time available in a day for doing just sustaining activities, having less time for many things I’d like to do. Why? 

Perhaps I take longer to do things than I used to. For example: I may be less efficient when going grocery shopping. Or, perhaps, I enjoy shopping more now than before and spend more time in the stores. The adage about activities expand to fill the time available is true. Let me describe a typical day. 

Since I have no daily obligations or commitments, the first thing that crosses my mind when waking up is, why get up today? I need a purpose or task to motivate me to roll out of bed. Once I identify what I am going to do, I feel ready to get up. But first, I need to loosen up my joints, the calf muscles are tight, so I begin to rotate my foot around my ankle and then pull up my knees to my chest to loosen up the hamstrings. Still sleepy, I roll out of bed and stumble into the kitchen to make coffee, decaf, a slow start is fine in the morning.

I remember friends who used to reach for a cigarette waking up; I reach for my cellphone. While I do not get newsprint papers anymore, I subscribe to many online news sources.

With coffee in hand, I must catch up on the news, right? I want to know what is going on at home and around the world. Often, the headlines of myonline sourcesprovide sufficient info for me while other times I immerse myself in a detailed account of a news item such as the article on how Hamas accumulated an $11 billion war chest.

In other repetitive news, I learn that: the Ukraine war is still on, the Hamas/Israeli war is still on, COP28 produced an agreement, Congress is still stumbling around with the new Speaker and the Canadian Prime Minister, who prefers to globetrot than stay home, is out of the country again on some worldwide trip.

I prefer reading news that upsets me, such as about the woman, pregnant with her third child and facing death without an abortion, having to leave the State of Texas to get an abortion in another state where abortion is allowed. I get upset at the Attorney General of Texas who brought in the legislation making abortion illegal for any reason.

Or I read about the Premier of Quebec bashing the Anglos again via French language policies, trying to bolster his low political standing in the province, an always sure-winning strategy in Quebec. Disgusting. The Premier raised university fees for out-of-province students at Montreal’s English language universities creating serious financial hardship for their survival. And by centralizing healthcare, services in English may be reduced in the future. French language policies in Quebec have always upset me: when will Quebecors realize that outside Quebec, most Canadians do not give a fig about French?

Now that upsetting news woke me up and got my adrenalin flowing, it is time for breakfast. An important activity: fix eggs, sunny side up, to perfection, with toast and jam on the side and more coffee, this time full-strength. 

Following breakfast, my routine is to make the bed and do bathroom duties that have increased in complexity with the arrival of a Waterpik. I thought the Pik would replace the toothbrush, but I discovered that it is a flossing device only and brushing teeth is still a go, followed up with the Waterpik.

It could be 10 am by now and it is time to start exercising. Do not miss exercises; as you age, it is important to keep fit and I have a variety of options: get on the floor and do my yoga poses I learned from attending classes and from TV yoga gurus; or I can turn on the TV and follow walking exercises, Pilates, or warmups. The ten-minute warmup I like is with music by the BeeGees, which gets me sweaty.

Some days, when I feel energetic (or when Kathy “encourages” me), I follow up my in-house exercise routine by going to the gym as well where I mostly use the machines.  On occasion, I have even signed up for a private lesson where they have encouraged me to use more free weights. But, honestly, I am quite happy with the treadmill, stair climber, bicycle, and various machines challenging my leg muscles. even though I know that the free weights would be useful for my upper body.

You see by now where I am going with this?

After the gym, it is time for lunch, which I never miss.  And, of course, after all the exercise, I take a siesta after lunch, followed by coffee to wake me up.  That makes the afternoon short with little time for chores if I am to leave time for my blogging before dinner.

I could go on describing how I spend my timeeating, having coffee, exercising, and napping. I  think I am quite wasteful with my time just to sustain my existence. Although my days are enjoyable, and relaxing, I am convinced that retired people, including myself, need a goal, a project, a mission, or a purpose such as authoring a book, traveling to far-flung places, working at a soup kitchen, or taking courses on subjects of interest. Otherwise, life is meaningless.

Where to Ukrainian Refugees?

April 30, 2023

Ukraine is preparing for a major attempt to recover some of the territory lost to the Russians. It is over a year ago that Russia initiated an unprovoked war on Ukraine, calling it a “special operation”, a euphemism by any stretch of the imagination for what it is, a war. This “special operation” displaced over fifteen million people in Ukraine, and over eight million people left the country.

Under the Canada Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel (CUAET) program, Canada offered to take in an unlimited number of Ukrainians seeking shelter from the war. To date, close to a million applications have been received under this program, of which two-thirds have been approved, and 150,000 have already arrived in Canada.

This new immigration program  (CUAET) was developed for, and with, Ukrainians, and it provides temporary residence status for three years for successful applicants, with $3,000 for each adult and $1,500 for each child. After three years, those Ukrainians who want to stay in Canada can apply for permanent residence.

A major benefit of CUAET is that the newcomers can work immediately in Canada. A major disadvantage of the program is that people arriving under the CUAET do not receive many of the social adjustment programs that refugees receive, such as housing assistance.

The Ukrainians prefer this new program to the refugee program because it allows them to work immediately while the latter takes much longer to gain resident status that permits work. And many Ukrainians want to go home, hoping for an end to the war in less than three years. Many left families at home, including husbands, who could not leave because of their obligation to serve in the military.

Thinking about the Russian invasion, which started during the Covid pandemic, I wondered how the virus affected Ukrainians. Only thirty-five percent of Ukrainians were vaccinated against Covid in 2022 (compared to the eighty percent vaccination rate in Canada). War is tough during a pandemic; people escape to refugee camps where the crowding provides the perfect environment for the spread of the airborne virus.

The numbers bear out the damage Covid wrought on Ukraine; five million people got infected and 100,000 people died out of their population of thirty-two million (compared to Canada where also five million people got infected, and fifty-one thousand people died out of a population of forty-eight million people).  

The adversities faced by Ukrainians forced many to leave their country, and it reminded me of my experience escaping from Hungary during the 1956 Hungarian uprising.

Hungary was under Russian occupation from 1944 when the Russians defeated Germany. The spontaneous uprising of 1956 provided a window to escape the prison-like existence in Hungary. Many people left their families behind but those who left had no intention of returning home, in contrast to the recent Ukrainian exodus.  

We came to Canada as refugees, which was a new program developed for the Hungarians by then Prime Minister John Diefenbaker. Over 35,000 Hungarians arrived in Canada following the uprising in 1956.

I remember what we had to do to adjust to Canadian life: learn  English, acquire usable skills, go back to school, and secure a job to make a living. It took a few years to start a modest life in an apartment and a few more years to buy our first car. Father had to redo his university coursework in medicine and certification for a medical license, including residency with twenty-four-hour shifts at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver. My older brother and I attended university and worked part-time as well as full-time during the summers to cover university costs. Mother worked at a store. Immigrants go through multi-year adjustments to settle in a country new to them.   The first few years were not easy, but my parents were determined they would not return to Hungary.

Many of the recently arrived Ukrainians have a different goal; they hope to return home after the war. A worthwhile wish but is it reasonable? Negotiations between the two warring parties have not been initiated and are unlikely to be successful since both sides have firm and non-negotiable positions. Militarily, the two sides are at a standstill, Ukraine assisted by NATO and Russia assisted by North Korea, and other countries with weaponry. A resolution seems elusive. It may take years. 

And in time, immigrants embrace the new country they settle in and get to like it. I remember a handful of Hungarian refugees who decided to go home after a few years.  They could not acquire a workable knowledge of the English language mostly because of sticking with family members and speaking Hungarian all the time. They could not get used to Canadian culture, especially gender equality in Canada. They also missed their family back home. And they were all older. But the great majority of the Hungarian refugees stayed and prospered in Canada.

I do not believe you ever go home and feel at home in the old country you left. You have changed and your old country has changed and going home is a disappointing experience. And this will be especially true of Ukraine with the devastation of its cities by the Russian bombing. Reconstruction will take years.

I think most Ukrainians who have come to Canada over the past year will stay and prosper here.

America Triggered the Ukraine War?

June 23, 2022

I thought I could get a balanced view of news by listening to TV anchors and reading columnists from both the left and the right. I wrote a blog on this a few months ago. That was my thinking until I received an article from my cousin Tamas, who is in Vienna. He sent me an article presenting a scholarly view of the origin of the Ukraine war. The argument floored me.

You thought Russia started the war, right? Russia was massing its military for months on the Ukraine border before attacking. And remember, Russia occupied Crimea in 2014, so this war was a continuation of their aim to gain more territory. But no. Hungarian economist Karoly Lorant explains in an article in the conservative Hungarian daily Magyar Hirlap, that the war started way back in 1998 when the Americans passed a resolution to expand NATO, which President Clinton called a major foreign policy victory.

Going further back, Secretary of State James Baker told Gorbachev that if Germany as a whole could be a member of NATO, “NATO forces would not be extended as much as an inch to the east.” This was at a meeting at the Kremlin on February 9, 1990.

The world situation changed entirely when the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, and fifteen independent states emerged. According to Lorant, one result was the Americans had begun to support the expansion of NATO and talked about a unipolar world, with the US being the global force.

Lorant cites events supporting the expansion of NATO via the “Partnership for Peace Program” to cooperate with and encourage the democratization of Eastern European countries (many belonged to the former Soviet Union).

National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote a book “The Gand Chessboard” (1997) in which he explained that Belorussia and Ukraine were an important part of Russia, without which Russia was a weak country. Lorant’s thesis is that, with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia has lost its power, particularly considering the loss of Belorussia and Ukraine. While the Russians were losing ground, the Americans were intent on expanding NATO.

According to Lorant, the Russians have been pushed back since the 1990s and, from their point of view, the situation had become untenable. No surprise that in January 2022, in Geneva, the Russians wanted the Americans to guarantee that Ukraine does not become a member of NATO. The Americans refused the request. So Lorant concludes that the continuous squeezing of Russia since the 1990s has created the condition for the war and the primary culprit is the US.

Although the facts may be true, I do not buy for a minute the conclusions Lorant draws from them. Russia is the transgressor in the Ukraine war; it is an unprovoked war (even Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, the right-wing leader of Hungary called Russia the aggressor in his speech on May 16, 2022). Ukraine did not invite the Russians to come in to help, unlike in the Cuban missile crisis (which, some people think, is comparable to the Ukraine situation), when Fidel Castro invited the Russians. Zelenski, the President of Ukraine, was elected democratically, and he did not invite the Russians to come into the country.

Second, the concept of territorial influence, that Russia has influence by right over Ukraine, or that historically Ukraine belongs to Russia, is not convincing today. That doctrine may have held water in the past, but now independent countries have the right to self-determination. In contrast to the Russian aim to recover lost territories, European countries have not gone back to their colonies trying to recover their lost territories.

Third, I think influence shows through technology and industrialization today and less via military action. The last time we visited Hungary, I expressed my surprise to Tamas at the high level of foreign ownership of grocery stores and banks. He explained foreign countries took over Hungary without a single life being lost by taking ownership of industry after Hungary declared independence in 1989 and the Soviets left the country in 1991.

For example, the spread of the iconic iPhone and Facebook has probably created more sustainable influence in countries where they are used than military action could ever provide. That is why brute military might with tanks appears old-fashioned to me and a losing idea in the long run. I thought that by using their natural resources and closer cooperation with the old Soviet satellite states, Russia could have established a successful industrial block. But, no; instead, they invaded a country with brute force.

And now I gather from Mr. Lorant’s scholarship that it was the US that triggered the war after continuous attempts to promote NATO and squeeze Russia until Russia saw no option but to invade Ukraine to regain its former territory.

So I learned that besides reading the full spectrum of left-to-right opinions in the west, which I thought would give me a balanced view, I should also read pro-Russian views, such as Lorant’s article, (based on excellent scholarship), that may substantially differ from our western view. That does not mean that Mr. Lorant changed my mind; he outlined a historical context that is interesting but irrelevant today. Just my opinion.

Free Bus Passes for Refugees in Ottawa

May 4, 2022

Ukrainian refugees arriving in Ottawa provided moving stories in the local newspaper, and discussions with friends centered on the ongoing war in Ukraine.

These discussions moved on from the war and focussed on how to help the refugees arriving in Ottawa. It was encouraging to learn the City councillor from Kanata suggested that free transit passes be provided to the refugees for six months upon arrival. Another Councillor expanded the motion to include all refugees, to be fair. The City Council passed the motion.

A friend of mine suggested that with the free passes, the refugees may get to know the city. I asked, “are you saying that they should sight-see?” And I immediately followed up by: “come on! Refugees try to establish themselves and their lives in a new country and new city, and sightseeing is the last thing they are interested in.”

I was a refugee and my first task, beyond feeding myself and finding a place to sleep, was to learn the English language. Being a refugee is a traumatic experience and just getting used to the local scene compared to the old country: the architecture, the people, the way people dress, the food, and the smell of the ocean gave me more than enough to absorb. Sightseeing was a concept perhaps in my dreams in the long run, but certainly not in my first few months upon arrival.

Here is my story: my hostess, a nurse, who had an old, big house in the Kitsilano area of Vancouver, found out that volunteers gave English lessons to Hungarians at the YMCA in downtown Vancouver. My brother and I hustled down there to learn the language a few days after our arrival. Our host gave us some bus tickets to get to the YMCA. We learned English during the day and practiced grammar at night. We did not take or have time to sightsee. It took us a few months to converse in English sufficiently well to give us the confidence to look for a job, which was our next priority.

A few blocks from where we lived was Dueck on Broadway, a large car dealership, and cars intrigued my brother, coming from Hungary where there were few. He approached Dueck and offered to wash cars. They said that would be fine, but he also had to jockey the cars for the wash. So my brother walked to the licensing bureau and in forty-eight hours got his driver’s license. He was happy with his first job in Canada and felt like he was on top of the world.

I followed the job ads in the local paper, the Vancouver Sun, every day. In a week, I found a job with a furrier dragging animal skins to show buyers for their appraisal, hundreds of skins each day. My first huge cultural learning curve was when the appraiser gave me a huge cash tip at the end of his work, which I refused to accept, saying I was just doing my job.

In Hungary, there was no tipping, all people worked for the government (under the communist system), and there was no incentive to work hard for the possibility of additional income. The appraiser looked at me with a questioning eye, but perhaps figured me out by listening to my strange accent and probably improper English. I thought I just did what they hired me for. And this experience was an initial step in my acculturation in Canada.

I worked there until it was time to think about going back to further my education. My brother did the same and eight months after arriving in Canada, we both enrolled at the University of British Columbia.

I remembered my refugee experience when talking with my friend, and it shocked me people have so little understanding of, or empathy for, what refugees go through when they arrive in a country new to them. But why should they? It is totally outside their frame of reference.

Even if sightseeing is an option with free bus tickets, where would you go in Ottawa on a bus? Would you go to the east or west of the city, get off, and walk around? The endpoints of bus routes are not tourist spots. And the bus stops in Ottawa are not within reasonable walking distance of many homes. It could be a tough slog in the middle of a cold winter to walk to a bus stop for people arriving from tropical climates.

And the local people who host refugees have cars and take the refugees to get their health and social insurance cards and take them to medical facilities if needed. Would the refugees ever use the free bus passes?

The provision of free bus passes to recent refugee arrivals made a nice headline in the newspaper and surely, some refugees would use them. But the priority for recent refugee arrivals is to find a place to live; learn the language; get a job and gain a career via schooling or retraining.

Perhaps free bus passes for all the poor would be a better option?