With the exception of the American South, Americans are not good at sulking. We do not base our foreign policy on historic events that injured our pride—but this is not the case around the world. We need to understand this phenomenon and carefully confront it, not be blindsided by it, as we were with Russia.

• Germany, after World War I and the reparations imposed on it by the vindictive French, never got over it. Hitler’s success was built upon milking that national resentment—and providing the Germans with targets of hatred. Resentful cultures never look inward for explanations of failure; they look outward. This mode of thinking is no longer German, with the exception of skinheads in Eastern Germany, who bitterly resent their region’s backwardness when unified with West Germany in 1991.

• Russia has not recovered from the humiliation of their collapsing empire when the USSR crumbled. Their most unwilling colonies (the Baltic states) quickly declared their independence when Russia was too weak to intimidate them. The Central Asian string of Muslim colonies did the same. Soviet era industry was dead; rule of law was replaced by jungle values; Communist party officials morphed into the criminal mafias that they already resembled; and for the first time in centuries, Russia found itself without a buffer of captive states to protect them from the much more progressive and powerful west.

For the first time in ages, Russia has a leader who is not an alcoholic and is very smart—and vindictive. His country is flush with money from oil and gas revenues, little of it being reinvested into something more useful. The population of Russians and other Slavic people is in meltdown, whereas the Muslims who are still part of Russia are increasing. Russia is having difficulty in keeping a primarily Slavic military, and although trying to rebuild their crumbling defense forces, they are a long way from western standards.

Russia is playing on the resentment card throughout the former Soviet states. Even if they cannot demolish those governments, they can subvert their Russian minorities into revolt and return to the motherland. They are desperate for numbers.

• The Muslim world is also in the grip of injured pride. Rather than make the best of their enormous oil wealth to join the developed world, they focus on an imaginary great past that they want to bring back from the grave. Resentment (and oil money) fuels such terrorists as Al Qaeda and its subsidiaries, as well as the notoriously unsuccessful Palestinians, who should have been resettled and flourishing long ago.

• Iran, once the great Persian Empire, is a posterchild for resentment and injured pride. Their problems are compounded by their form of Islam, Shia, which enshrines resentment over an election lost in the 7th century, with an undertow of resentment against Arabs, who invaded them. They have a long history of accusing outside powers for their miseries—finding even internal enemies “in the pocket of” (insert here Americans, British, and Israeli powers). This sort of resentment combined with nuclear power makes them potentially dangerous to their neighbors.

• The former Yugoslavia suffered from an extreme form of resentment. The region was a toxic mix of populations that were ethnically the same, but had different historic masters. Part had been under the Ottoman Turks, with bitter Christian Orthodox subjects (Serbia); part was under Austrian (or Venetian) Catholic rule (Slovenia, Croatia); and one area, once Christian, converted to Islam (Bosnia, Kosovo). These old historic antipathies went underground under Communist rule, but emerged again after the death of Tito. For the bitter, events of 500 years ago are as if yesterday.

For Americans, ignorant of the “history poisoning” of so much of the world, attend a Civil War Reenactment, an entertainment very popular in the American south. But even these events are relatively good-humored, not the nasty stuff of habitual resentment. Yet it might help us understand that the bitterness of the world’s losers is something we must confront and not be taken unaware.

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Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman is a historian, lecturer, and author. You may contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or www.globalthink.net.

On August 8, during China’s big Olympic debut, Russia invaded Georgia, ostensibly to protect Georgia’s breakaway state, South Ossetia. “Peacekeeping,” they said. Could this be another “Guns of August” that launched World Wars I and II? Maybe not, but Russia appears willing to pay plenty to regain the “respect” (fear) of its former colonies and notice of the world.

Georgia, an ancient principality, broke from the Soviet Union in 1992. When empires break up, new nations emerge--ready or not. From the beginning, Russia has meddled with two pieces of Georgia, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, creating breakaway provinces. South Ossetia is said to be run by old Russian KGB thugs and a criminal underworld. Georgia, of course, does not want their country fragmented and has foolishly fallen for Russian provocation.

The US has a mixed history on fragmentation and breakaways. We fought a civil war to keep our south from breaking away, but then aided Texas (and all the southwest that came with it) when they broke away from Mexico. Since the 20th century, we always side with breakaways.

With presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and the Bush father and son, American foreign policy has promoted the spread of democracy around the world. Unfortunately, democracy is not just voting, but depends upon a solid base of civil custom, education, and rule of law. We need to reconsider the folly of this well-intentioned but deeply flawed policy.

The breakup of Yugoslavia, a multiethnic state, brought the west nose-to-nose with the Russians—who hated the breakup and supported their once co-religionists, the Serbs, who dominated it. Russia lost that argument, and the country not only fragmented, but the independence of Kosovo, once part of Serbia, enraged them. They bear a big grudge and they still smart from the collapse of their own empire, which they enormously resent.

China and Russia don’t like each other, but do agree on national sovereignty and they oppose any sort of interference in even the worst of states, such as Sudan and Zimbabwe. Russia’s position on dismantling any country is the same as China’s (think Tibet) and human rights abuses do not matter to them. Although Russia seems to be defending states breaking away from Georgia, look harder—they are trying to reenstate the sovereignty of their own lost empire.

So here is the mess: Georgia had become a client of the US (its only protection against Russia) and desperately wants admission to NATO. The Russians were offended with this, considering Georgia in their sphere of influence and none of our business. The Russians don’t forget; we crossed them in Yugoslavia—so they are crossing us in Georgia. “Invading a sovereign country is wrong,” we say. “Oh,” they reply, “and what about Iraq and Serbia?” And how about “regime change!” They want to do it too with Georgia and they certainly tried with Ukraine. The difference, of course, is intent; we extend freedom; they smash it.

What makes the Georgia issue urgent is its geography—where oil and gas pipelines will go to bring energy resources to Europe and the world. The Russians want the pipelines to go only through Russia—and we (and the Europeans) most emphatically do not. If Iran were more trustworthy, that would have been the logical (and shortest route) for that pipeline. But nobody trusts Iran. If Russia can dismantle Georgia, there goes the alternate pipeline.

This may not be another Guns of August, but it could be if we fail to mend it. The US and Europe must have a unified energy policy, and Russian paranoia must be addressed. There is a price that they may pay for their brutal actions—but we should also try to refocus them on the real dangers to us all if there is hostility between us. The only beneficiaries of a new Cold War are the Islamists, who are the real enemy of both. It would be stupid to forget that.

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Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman is a historian, lecturer, and author. You may contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or www.globalthink.net.

I am not a sports fan, but when it comes to the Olympics, I am hooked. To see so much focused excellence is as thrilling to me as hearing the excellence of symphony orchestras and watching ballet. All of these human endeavors require years of practice, dedication, and talent that reminds us of the incredible abilities of the human mind and body.

The other aspect of the Olympics is its connection to antiquity. Every great culture has had circuses. The Greek Olympic Games that began in the 6th century BC, however, went beyond circuses. It was an international gathering, a religious celebration that would enable all Greek states to gather without war. Conflict would take the form of competition, not bloodshed. Along with athletics, the Olympics hosted theatrical competitions as well, from which we have inherited the masterpieces of Greek theater. How wonderful to have this heritage revived, as it was a century ago after millennia of neglect. It is even more important today to have a forum where every country, whether virtuous or troublesome, may gather to compete in peace.

I would suggest that anybody (and in particular, former President Jimmy Carter and his Secretary of State, Zbigniew Brzezinski) who suggests that we use the Olympics to “punish” a host have their mouth washed out with soap. This is a terrible idea that does nothing but punish young athletes and make us look petulant. Let us resolve our distaste another way.

During the Olympics, I also went to see a briefly-shown documentary called Man on Wire. This film was about French wirewalker Philippe Petit, who in 1973 broke into the World Trade Center and staged an illegal wire walk between the twin towers.

Philippe Petit, a young tightrope walker and Paris street entertainer (he buzzed all around Paris on a unicycle, dressed as a Dickensonian chimneysweep) had already done his wire-walking stunt between the towers of Notre Dame cathedral and the opera house in Sydney, Australia, and by pure chance, in his dentist’s office, he read a magazine story about the to-be-built World Trade Center. He immediately knew that he would walk between the two towers. This is indeed obsession, talent, and the quest for excellence that characterizes the Olympic athletes too.

Apparently tightrope walking evolved in the 18th century out of acrobatics (always part of European circuses) and chimney-sweeping, a job that requires balance and no fear of heights. The ultimate form of this skill is sky-walking—walking on a thick cable stretched high over a dangerous drop—as walking across Niagara Falls or hundreds of feet in the air between buildings. It is impressive enough to watch young Olympic gymnasts walking on a narrow beam and doing a backward summersault without falling off; but to walk where a fall will kill one, to lie down on the wire, or perform ballet moves is something else. This takes courage that few of us have.

The enthusiasm of the now older Petit, recounting his story, which is illustrated by mostly black and white films taken at the time, is infectious. I could never figure out how he paid for his capers (these were expensive operations that required a team, materials, and unlimited daring). But somehow, he attracted friends who were perfectly willing to support his dream, crazy as it was. One of his team worries about being held responsible if Petit were to fall and die, which might be so; aiding and abetting madness may count as criminal indifference when disaster is the result. Nonetheless, they all support him. Even the New York police were impressed, despite the merry chase he led them on. And the court was no different, giving him not much of a punishment. He touched everyone, apparently, who found his mischief delightful.

The film, which is also a memorial for the wonderful World Trade Center, had me laughing and simultaneously sad. Petit was in love with those towers; he defied to law to embrace his love. And yes, he broke the law, but ultimately did nobody harm and provided great delight to his audience. Osama bin Laden and his young suicide-murderers were motivated by hate, an their caper left behind 3,000 dead and the destruction of a wonderful New York treasure.

We human beings sometimes reach for the stars; this is when we are at our best; but some are enmeshed in hatred and fanaticism and ultimately detest mankind—an ancient and very evil aspect of the human condition. See this film and rejoice in the former, and watch out for the latter.

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Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman is a historian, lecturer, and author. You may contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or www.globalthink.net.

As the eyes of the world were on the Chinese 2008 Olympic Games, Russia made a nasty incursion into Georgia. Could this be the first step in a multi-polar world in which Russia and China will ally against the US?

Peter Zeihan, an analyst for Stratfor (July 22), has provided a brilliant overview of the relationship between Russia and China:

• Geography. As Jared Diamond has told us in Guns, Germs, and Steel, history is not independent of geography. With Russia and China, geography is a big player. Russia east of the Urals and China west of its coastal provinces is vast, empty, and forbidding. Not much trade goes between them either. The ancient Silk Road that once ran along what are now the borderlands between them was a trade route for luxury goods. Last week I wrote about that Chinese/Persian trade long before Russia existed. It is apparent that China and Russia are not going to have much of a trade relationship. Luxury goods come by sea.

• Fruits of Empire. The Russians were creating empire across Siberia and its southern belt of Muslim states throughout the 19th century, at the same time that Americans were moving toward the Pacific. The Chinese were not able to defend pieces of China (such as Manchuria) that the Russians took. But in 1904-5, Russia’s success was challenged by little Japan, which took Manchuria away from them, a major humiliation. Today, although Russia still holds Siberia all the way to the Pacific, they only hold it until the Chinese decide to take it. Both sides know this.

• Burgeoning Wealth. Both Russia and China are flush with money today, but there is a difference. The Chinese are building an industrial society at breathtaking speed; the Russians make nothing that anybody wants. Instead, their current wealth, which has produced more billionaires living in one place than any place in the world, is the result of natural resources—primarily petroleum and natural gas—much in demand today. When that demand goes-- and it will--Russia (and Saudi Arabia and all the other oil-tyrannies) will be back to their former squalor.

• Demographics. China has a population of 1.3 billion; Russia has 141 million. Even under the Soviet Union, all the little countries that they had absorbed did not have large populations. Even more serious is the population crash facing Russia—a combination of low fertility rate and declining longevity due to excessive alcohol and cigarette consumption. Russia has always been nervous about this difference with China. A land war between them, considering geographic distances and difficulties, would not be in Russia’s favor.

• China’s Problems. As well as they are doing today, China too walks on a tightrope. All those foreign athletes arriving in Beijing wearing breathing masks are experiencing what the Chinese put up with every day. Environmental degradation in China—air, water, and soil—is major, and the Chinese know it. They need to do three things to continue to thrive: the first is maintain their good relationship with the US, not only as trading partner, but as protector of sea routes upon which China depends. Second, embrace green technology to replace coal and oil. And third, as their abuse of their rivers (contamination and drying up) makes agriculture impossible, you can be sure they will be moving into Siberia, which has plenty of fertile soil and water, and which, if global warming continues, will be a prime region for them.

China currently has too many people, but their draconian one-child policy and the traditional preference for boys are starting to cut that population down. We are not even looking at the social ramifications of these policies, but they will have an effect on China’s future.

The only areas in which Russia and China agree are national sovereignty (theirs) and no outside interference in internal affairs.

It doesn't seem that China and Russia will be ganging up on us in the near future, if ever.

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Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman is a historian, lecturer, and author. You may contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or www.globalthink.net.

After a slow start, there are some better summer movies to see. It is so nice to have the shoot-‘em-up movies out of the way. There are domestic and foreign movies worth your time.

• The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2. Yes, this is a sequel, which usually means a warmed over version of the original. However, I found this film charming and engrossing. The theatre was full of mothers and teen-age daughters, enjoying it enormously, and again, I was sorry that boys don’t have this chance. The films designed for them are so violent, as if they don’t have the same personal relationship issues that girls do.

The four teenage friends of Traveling Pants 1 are seen this time as college students who have just finished their first year and have travel and work plans for the summer. The magical thrift-store dungarees that fit them all, regardless of size and shape, gave them luck in the first film, as they sent them to each other as needed. In this film, the pants are now more of an afterthought as these young women encounter coming-of-age issues, often painful, that they do not share with each other until they remember how important their friendships still are.

In this film, you can enjoy a similar Greek island that was in Mama Mia, with much less silliness. And these young women are better role models than those in Mama Mia.

• Swing Vote. In an election year, there has to be at least one film that will address the national passion; Swing Vote pleased me far more than Wag the Dog, a cynical film of a past election. Kevin Costner plays one of the best character roles in his career: an absolutely worthless oaf who can scarcely find a reason to get out of bed in the morning, particularly because of the inevitable beer hangover.

He is a single father of a very bright, very earnest young daughter (my favorite age of 10) who is compelled to be the grownup in that family because neither her father nor her abandoning mother could be. She is earnest about school, about what she learns from her dedicated teacher, and about the civic duty of voting. Her doltish father, who was too drunk and indifferent to vote, did not know that his little girl had voted for him. An electronic glitch invalidates that vote—and now the entire presidential election hangs upon finding the one person who, when voting again, will break the dead heat.

It is fascinating to watch this unfold—with neither the incumbent president nor his rival being particularly admirable. But it is wonderful—and hopeful—to see all these losers rise to the challenge.

• Brideshead Revisited. How well I remember the 11-hour TV movie of many years ago as one of the most delicious that PBS produced. But it has been long ago enough that this new two-hour film does service to the story. It is an epic, infinitely romantic, and provides us with a glimpse of the very insular British Catholic aristocracy. Catholic families of wealth and power who resisted the Queen Elizabeth I pressure for adherence to the Protestant Church of England had to have very strong faith indeed. It was not easy to be a Catholic in England after 1600.

The story follows a young Oxford student, Charles Rider, from a middle class background (and a convinced Atheist) who is befriended by a fellow student who is a Catholic aristocrat and an obvious—although charming—alcoholic. Charles, who has no family other than a very distant father, falls in love with his schoolmate, his schoolmate’s sister, and the entire eccentric family—as well as their beautiful, ancient country home. The love comes at a price as he learns just how enmeshed these people are in their Catholicism—with love, hate, and ultimate surrender to their religion. Have some tea and crumpets and enjoy this film.

• Tell No One. This is the best French film I have seen in years, and as gratifying and engrossing as a Hitchcock film. Based on a mystery novel by an American, Harlan Coben, the story is about a young French pediatrician whose wife was murdered eight years before. Although originally suspected and then cleared, the discovery of two new bodies at the crime scene reopens the case. To make things worse, the doctor has been receiving e-mails that appear to be from his lost wife. Paris and the countryside are as always beautiful, and particularly interesting is a glimpse of the banlieus, where Algerians and African migrants live. Policework is shown as it often is—a mixed bag of intuition and corruption among its agents—which plays a role in the plot.

This independent film is being publicized largely by word of mouth. I recommend it. You will be reminded how good this type of thriller can be.

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Laina Farhat-Holzman is a historian, lecturer, and author. You may contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or www.globalthink.net.

The Olympic games are on and everybody is looking at China. Journalists are falling over each other in an attempt to provide the world with some sort of understanding of this remarkable country.

China wants nothing more than to shine before a world that it has only recently decided to rejoin. They are astonished—and hurt—at the spiteful rhetoric they hear. I don’t think we would carp as much if we understood what China is and how their present relates to their past.

Everything that can be said about China and its history can also be said about its counterpart at the other end of the Silk Road, Persia (Iran). They share amazing similarities in nature and experience that it behooves us to understand:

• Antiquity. Both are old civilizations, old empires that enjoyed a number of renaissances. Both also suffered devastating invasions, one of which, the Mongol invasion, did them enormous damage from which neither completely recovered.

• Empires. China became imperial by absorption. They never marched their armies to distant places nor did they acquire overseas empires. They have extended their influence much more through trade than conquest, which they are doing again. Persia, however, was an imperial power that conquered vast territories from 500 BC through 531 AD, after which they never acquired empire again. But like the Chinese, they have always extended their influence through trade and culture. China and Persia have never made war with each other; instead, they opened the Silk Road and for centuries exchanged goods, gifts, and culture.

• Governance. Both China and Persia had periods of great wealth when their central governments were powerful, pervasive, and intelligent. Both were lucky in some of their kings. However, brilliant monarchs rarely have brilliant offspring, and the best of empires fall apart when the center cannot hold. Warlords or barbarians then make life hellish for the people until another strong leader emerges. Both the Chinese and Persians know this—and this is why they prefer the devil they know to the one they do not. Chaos for them is not “creative” as it can be for us; it means famine, violence, and death.

• Injured Pride. It is difficult for countries with distinguished histories to see themselves weak, insignificant, and targets of outside interference. When events turn sour, the public looks for someone to blame—and the obvious target, the Emperor or Shah--must deflect that anger onto someone else. An internal “enemy” is often available—but better yet is an outside foreign power. Neither country has learned that evil events are more often self-created than from outside. China is beginning to acknowledge this—but Iran is far from such understanding yet.

• Talented Populations. China, with its always large population, has contributed more than its share to the world in high culture. They have been experts in literature and philosophy, art and architecture, agronomy, printing, cookery, rice cultivation, metallurgy, gunpowder, silk manufacture, and a system of civil service. Persia, with its much smaller population, was a master of military arts, imperial governance, agronomy, irrigation systems, medicine, literature, and fine arts (architecture, carpets, textiles). The so-called “Golden Age of Islam” which people think of as Arab culture was not at all; it was largely the culture of Islam’s most distinguished conquest, the Persians.

• Four Hundred Bad Years. These two great civilizations declined from 1500-1900 into a backwardness and xenophobia that left them vulnerable to the energetic forces of the modern west. Neither became a colony, but both were exploited by their own terrible elites and those from outside. Both are on the rise today, but China is hampered by feudal ignorance and traditional stubbornness in its vast hinterland and Iran is smothered by a backward and feudal Islam.

Watch the Olympics, and cut China a little slack. They are running as fast as they can, considering from how far they have come.

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Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman is a historian, lecturer, and author. You may contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or www.globalthink.net.

Appropriate to the opening of the Olympic games in China, we have been treated to several summer art films on or about China and a couple of big American films to help us escape from all that.

• Up the Yangtze is a Canadian film directed by Yung Chang, is a documentary that lets us go along on a cruise ship trip up China’s ancient Yangtze River, which is being transformed by the world’s biggest dam project, the Three Gorges Dam. This is a fascinating film and well worth seeing.

When environmentalists carp about every sort of enterprise in the western world that may affect ecology, what can they say about China, which considers it more important to provide sufficient electric power for their growing middle class urban population than to worry about ecology. In China, political correctness is not an issue; the government has much bigger problems.

Without comment, we will meet the poorest of the poor, eking out a living as the dammed waters inundate their former land and village. City after city is being evacuated as the waters rise and new towns are being built overnight for the evacuees. Yes, the squalor is gone, but so is community. However, we also meet Chinese who are enormously impressed with a government capable of turning a fabled river into a lake rising behind the dam.

This is what we should all know about China. This country has raised more people out of poverty more quickly than any society in history—yet there are still so many others living in ancient squalor—not surprising with a population of more than 1 billion people. The transformation of China since it rejoined the world in the 1970s is breathtaking.

• Tuya’s Marriage is a Chinese movie that is filmed in Inner Mongolia, part of China. This is an interesting film to see after seeing Mongol (my last review), the story of the childhood and youth of Genghis Khan. The Mongols created one of the world’s largest empires in the 13th century—a rather remarkable feat considering that they were horsemen with nothing resembling a civilization. Quick learners after they conquered Persia and China, they adopted civilization and ran an amazingly efficient, but brief empire. Now five centuries later, we see some of them back to square one, living a grim, difficult herding life in one of the bleakest, most inhospitable region of central Asia.

The story is about a young woman herder whose husband has become disabled while trying to dig a water well for them. She, her young son, and her husband are having a very hard time surviving, despite her efforts. We see what passes for food in that culture and the prodigious quantities of alcohol consumed to blunt the pain of work and climate. A friend advises her to divorce her husband and marry again, which she finally agrees to do provided that her next husband will accept supporting her handicapped husband too.

Word gets out that she is available for marriage and the suitors come from all over, but none of them are willing to accept her conditions. Finally, two suitors do—one of them a wealthy former schoolmate and the other a neighbor who has always loved her. Her dilemma is which to choose.

What is fascinating is the persistence of indigenous people living very difficult lives (be it Mongolia, the Himalayas, or Alaska) to stay rather than move to much more comfortable modern cities which are available to them. I find it hard to understand but respect it anyway.

• Mama Mia! If you love funky Greek Islands and enjoy seeing Meryl Streep, perhaps the best actress of her generation, singing and dancing in a very goofy movie, you will like this one. I sat through it and wondered how much better this film would have been if it were a comedy of manners rather than a silly musical.

It is fun to consider a young woman getting married who, after reading her mother’s diaries, invites three possible candidates for being her father to the wedding. That would have been enough for me. “Dancing Queen” with the most silly choreography just did not make it better.

• Batman: The Dark Knight. This summer blockbuster can be viewed several ways: as one more comic book hero to amuse the primarily youth audience; as an important film for Hollywood regulars with interest in Academy Award nominations (posthumously for Heath Ledger as The Joker); or—as it was for me—an exploration of anarchy and anarchic evil.

For those who will see this film beyond its comic book appeal, this is a fascinating film about anarchy, democracy, and hero-worship—all issues that face us around the world today. If the writers didn’t intend this, they certainly fooled me.

Heath Ledger, a wonderful Australian actor who first appeared as a 20 year old in a film in 1999 and died of prescription drug overdose this year, played the Joker, a monster modeled after Sid Vicious, a British punk rocker with an ugly history. Ledger’s Joker was very scary indeed—a passionate believer in anarchy who not only created anarchy himself, but wanted to validate his belief by proving that anarchy, not order, was one inch under the skins of the civilized.

He managed to play this horrible creature in such a way that one could see the damaged child under his monstrousness. Like all monsters in the world, he was able to fabricate a rationale that justified his actions. He was not crazy; he was evil.

The other element of this movie that made me uncomfortable was the notion that the people need a hero. Batman, of course, was that hero, fighting crime and disorder because the police were inadequate to the task. This is, of course, a very dangerous role because the line between hero and monster is thin. Another character with this dilemma was a Golden Boy district attorney, newly promoted from Internal Affairs (much hated by most police). Here is a hero who, like Batman, is challenged by that line between virtue and vice.

It is a question that always turns up in a fight against very bad forces: in fighting them, does one become them? America ran into that problem during World War II in fighting the Nazis and Japanese. We did, in the end, become almost as violent as our enemies—but as soon as the war ended, our normal decency returned. Had our enemies won, there would have been no decency. So I think the Joker was mistaken. We are not all like him. 1,100 words

Laina Farhat-Holzman is a historian, lecturer, and author. You may contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or www.globalthink.net.