Michael Vick: Lock Him Up and Throw Away the Key?

As many people know, Michael Vick was a star quarterback in the National Football League, even leading the Atlanta Falcons to the Super Bowl in 2002. Then he was arrested by the FBI for participating in a dog-fighting ring. After a trial, he was convicted and sentenced to three years in a federal prison.

Upon his release from prison, Vick served a year's suspension before being reinstated in the NFL. He was signed to a contract by the Philadelphia Eagles before the state of the 2010 football season and is now playing professional football. His dog-fighting days seem to be behind him.

Here in the state of Michigan (and in probably every other state), politicians talk about getting tough on crime, but nobody wants to spend the money to build more prisons or hire more police officers. And if somebody in the department of corrections says, "Hey, let's build a prison in this community," the people of that community scream, "Not in MY town!"

There are people who would like to line up all the criminals and shoot them, but nobody wants to pay for the bullets. Because of magical thinking on the part of the average American taxpayer, the bullets are supposed to materialize from nowhere. But it doesn't work that way.

As of now, any punk in Detroit sent to Dickerson knows that he or she won't serve the whole 90 days of his or her sentence because prisoners obtain early release because of overcrowding. Only the most incorrible serve the entire sentence.

Now some of you might want to stuff small jail cells with 20 to a cell like people used to stuff Volkswagens back in the 60s, but if you were arrested for drunk driving because you were involved in an accident that wasn't your fault and the cop smelled alcohol on your breath, your tune might change, even if your blood alcohol content was over the legal limit and you were guilty of drunk driving.

Not everybody who is legally drunk is drunk. Some people can handle a Molson Canadian (roughly 6% alcohol) better than others, but one Molson in an hour will make you legally impaired while two will make you legally drunk.

The conviction rate in this country is over 99%. What's more, 99% of all cases never even go to trial because the defendant usually pleads guilty at the arraignment. I have spent entire days in court just watching people line up before the judge, and I have seen only person ask for a trial.

The defendant was a 19-year-old woman whose home had been raided by a combined SWAT team from Ecorse, Lincoln Park, and River Rouge, Michigan. The individual that the police really wanted to arrest was the woman's boyfriend, a suspected drug dealer. The police knew that he wasn't home that day, but they conducted the raid anyway because you have to go through a lengthy process to get approval for a police raid on a drug house. Naturally, the police didn't want to go through the process all over again.

I don't know outcome of the case, but the defendant was probably convicted. The advantage is almost always in favour of the prosecution because the prosecutor almost always has access to the evidence, like police reports, while the counsel for the defence may not have such access. Sometimes, a public attorney can't even get a copy of the police report.

People who commit violent crimes are seldom in their right minds when they commit them. A man from Toronto has just been arrested in Jamaica for slashing his wife's throat after he caught her texting another man; he clearly wasn't thinking when he did it.

Most criminals are ordinary people; criminals like Charles Manson or Michael Vick are rare. Many are young people who haven't acquired the wisdom to learn from their mistakes or the self-control to keep from making them.

The problem is not with the courts and the police being too leniant on crime, nor is it with liberals who "want to help the criminals." The problem is that there is simply too much crime, and the case load has become too much for our criminal justice system to handle.

The conservatives say, "Lock 'em up and throw away the key!" The Liberals say, "Let's try to rehabilitate those that can change their behaviour, like petty criminals and drug addicts."

Both approaches have failed, or we wouldn't be having this debate. We think in terms of rehabilitation when the hard-nosed approach is seen as a failure, and then we swing back in the opposite direction when rehabilitation is seen as a failure as well.

Therefore, we should celebrate Michael Vick's return to the NFL as a success story, if he has learned from his mistakes and doesn't repeat them.

In a country where the recidivism rate is about 85%, at least one ex-convict has managed to stay out of trouble, so far.

Nailing the Boston Tea Party

What movements like the Boston Tea Party movement generally have in common is that they hearken back to a time when things were “simpler” and “less complicated.” These movements are generally popular among people who are fed up with “business as usual.” Therefore, they want “a real change” rather than merely “a cosmetic change.”

The first Boston Tea Party took place in 1775, when angry white men disguised as Mohawk Indians climbed on board an English ship in Boston Harbor and threw its cargo, black tea from the East Indies, into the harbour. This act of vandalism was an elaborate protest against a tax on tea that the British authorities had levied to pay for the French-Indian War, which had ended in 1763 with France losing Canada to the British Empire. The British had sent troops to North America and expected the Americans to pay the bill.

I call this an act of vandalism because we all know what would happen if a group of Americans disguised as Seminole Indians dumped a cargo of Colombian coffee into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida to protest a tax on Colombian coffee. First, anybody caught dumping a ship’s cargo would be arrested for malicious destruction of property and face charges in criminal court. The owners, perhaps Folger’s Coffee, could also sue the prepetrators in civil court to recoup their losses. The environmentalists would all howl about what the coffee in the water would do to the habitat of marine animals like the manitee, and the perpetrators would probably be fined by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Then there’s the real Seminoles. If they object to the idea of a college football team calling themselves the Seminoles, you know they’re not going to like the idea of a group of Florida rednecks dumping coffee into the water while disguised as Seminoles. They’re like: “You take our land and you gotta take our identity too?”

I am not so naive as to believe that the Tea Partiers in the United States care if they offend environmentalists or racial minorities. If they’re not committing acts of vandalism like dumping cargoes of Colombian coffee into the water, it’s because their handlers, the Central Committee of the Republican Party, is well-financed by business interests like Folger’s and Juan Valdes.

Then there are people like Glenn Beck, who held a little revival in front of the Washington Monument. Would a country trying to “get right with God” allow its citizens to dump coffee off the coast of Florida? Not when business owners make generous contributions to church collection plates on Sundays.

Let’s take a look at what these Boston Tea Partiers really are. They have been brainwashed from day-one into believing that the War for Independence was fought over “taxation without representation.”

Clearly, that wasn’t so. Otherwise, the very first bill that George Washington signed into law wouldn’t have been an excise tax bill. When Daniel Shays led a revolt in New England over a government attempt to collect a tax on his whiskey operation, George Washington showed them the real definition of “taxation without representation” by sending in the troops. Most of Shays’ followers couldn’t vote because they didn’t meet property qualifications. They had to pay taxes because they weren’t represented.

If you look at the line of descent from the first Boston Tea Party to the present Boston Tea Party movement, it goes through radical fringe movements like the Know-Nothing Party, the Knights of the White Camelia, the Ku Klux Klan, the Militia Movement, the Minutemen, etc. These groups are all united by one thing: their resistance to change.

Anybody who has ever tried to institute any real change in this country has always faced resistance. Abraham Lincoln had to fight a civil war to abolish slavery. When Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to push the New Deal through Congress, he faced resistance not only from Republicans but also from Democrats. Three years after the Supreme Court declared racial segration in schools to be unconstitutional in 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower had to send troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, to escort four black students to Central High.

All change is made in spite of some very entrenched interests, not because of them. Slavery was abolished in spite of the slaveholding class in the South, not because of it. The federal income tax was instituted in spite of the very powerful business interests that opposed it, not because of them. The immigration laws that we have today banning “illegal immigration” are merely a compromise, because we have always had people who opposed immigration of any kind.

We shouldn’t be surprised that President Barack Obama has faced resistance to his national health care plan. We should expect it.

The Tea Party movement is a small but very vocal minority that knows how to get attention. Some of their grievances may be legitimate. Like all Americans, they have faced hard times living in a slow economy. Many of them have lost their jobs and face the loss of unemployment benefits. Some of them draw social security and fear that their benefits are threatened by those who, they think, don’t really “deserve it.”

However, they’re not going to roll back the federal income tax. They won’t roll back the Civil Rights Act of 1965 like senatorial candidate Rand Paul seems to want. They won’t repeal Brown v. Board of Education either. Nor will they see the abolition of the Department of Education and the EPA. The longer that this country has “Obama Care,” the less likely it is that we will see a repeal of that.

Any extremist who decides to wear an Indian costume in the commission of a felony had better wait till he gets home before he takes it off. Otherwise, he’ll get nailed.

Diversity Wins the World Cup

What kind of Spanish name is Carles Puyol? It seems that, on the day he first entered this world kicking and screaming, whoever wrote out his birth certificate misspelled his first name. It should have been “Carlos” rather than “Carles,” right? But maybe his mother wanted something different, like those women who would rather name their daughters after some flower that only a botanist would know, like “Bougainvillea,” rather than “Rose.”

Carles Puyol, who scored the winning goal against Germany on a header off a corner kick by Xavi Alonso, allowing Spain to advance to the World Cup final, is from Barcelona. While any Spaniard might hotly deny it, the people around Barcelona would hasten to tell you that they aren’t really Spanish. They speak their own language, Catalan, and they probably consider themselves to be occupied by a foreign power, Spain. Therefore, you don’t ask for agua in a Barcelona restaurant unless the Spanish and Catalan words for “water” are the same.

Probably most of the people who saw Spain upset Germany are thrilled that Spain advanced to the final while Germany didn’t. Pulling for the heavily favoured Mannschaft is sort of like hoping that Nazi Germany would successfully invade Poland at the start of World War II in 1939. While you might be an admirer of “German efficiency,” you seldom want the Germans to win at anything, any more than you want the French to win. It probably has something to do with the War.

For those in the know about soccer, this is the first time in a long time that the World Cup will be contested by two teams that have never won it, since the Netherlands (who beat Uruguay 3-2 on Tuesday) have never won it either.

Only eight countries have won the World Cup since its first tournament in 1930. World Cup soccer has been dominated by a few countries: Germany, Italy, Argentina, and, of course, Brazil. With the exception of Argentina, who has only won the World Cup twice, Germany, Italy and Brazil have won it at least three times. In any given tournament (which comes only once every four years) all of these countries are almost guarantied to qualify after two years of elimination rounds.

I can’t help but ask where World Cup soccer would be without the imperialism of the nineteenth century. The hero for France in the 1998 World Cup finals (and the goat of the 2006 finals) was Zinadine Zidane, whose parents were born in Algeria. If you look at some of the faces on the French roster in any given year, a lot of them don’t look very French. Thierry Henry, the captain of Les Bleus until just before the finals in South Africa, has a face as black as the night, but he has as much right to claim France as his country as Zidane because he was born there.

But let's look at the German roster in 2010: with names like Miroslav Klose and Lukas Podolski, you would think that the Nazis held onto Poland after World War II. And how did Germany get players like Musil Özil, Sami Khedira, and Jerome Boateng, who are of Turkish, Moroccan, and Ghanaian origin respectively? Must be, Hitler conquered the world, right?

The truth is that the roster of any European team in any World Cup tournament will reflect the ethnic diversity of that country. Apartheid never won South Africa the World Cup, you know.

The Spanish roster is almost as ethnically diverse as the German and French rosters. Carles Puyol, Xavi Alonso, Andrés Iniestra, Gerard Piqué and Pedro are all Catalan, not Spanish.

Diversity wins games. Don’t think that the United States team wouldn’t be ecstatic to have any players as talented as Spain’s David Villa (who actually failed to score a goal against Germany) or Argentina’s Lionel Messi (who didn’t score a goal against anybody), regardless of race, creed, or national origin.

It’s all about winning. The Catalan midfielder, Carles Puyol, is the toast of Spain as well as Barcelona.

Viva España, and all its ethnic groups. And long live diversity.

The Mavi Marmara Affair

When Israeli commandos stormed the Mavi Marmara, Israel marched right into a public relations minefield. What everybody forgets is that the commandos initially assaulted the Turkish vessel with paint guns, but then had to turn to Uzis with live ammo when they found out that the people on board the Mavi Marmara were armed with machetes and possibly even guns rather than paint brushes. Except for people in Israel, the world also forgets that an Israeli member of the Knesset, the Right Honourable Hanin Zoabi (who is an Arab) was also aboard, though she says that she was down in the hold at the time the commanders assaulted the ship and therefore wasn’t wielding a machete. Not everybody on board the Mavi Marmara had time to grab a machete.

What the world remembers is that the Mavi Marmara was trying to break the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip. Ms. Zoabi says that she was on aboard to dramatize the plight of the people in Gaza. Under the terms of the military embargo, it seems that Israel has a very board definition of what is “contraband.” For instance, PCV pipes are usually used for indoor plumbing in houses, apartment buildings and office buildings, but they can also be used to make pipe bombs. The members of Hamas have proved that they can effectively launch pipe bombs into Israel with rocket launchers. Therefore, the Israeli Defence Force considers PVC pipes to be contraband.

Nobody denies that the embargo has been catastrophic for the people of Gaza. Though food is getting into the Gaza Strip, an estimated 83 per cent of the people (according to a recent Time Magazine article) are on some form of public assistance. Stores are stocked with food stuffs, but most Gazans are unemployed and can’t afford to shop at these stores. People who give money for the people of Gaza risk being accused of giving money to a terrorist organization, since Hamas has been declared a terrorist organization by the United States State Department and undoubtedly has been involved in charity. (As Muslims, the members of Hamas have to pay what is called zakat, or a “poor tax.”)

There’s the danger of a cholera outbreak, since Gaza has become an open sewer. People have had to deal with bathtubs, toilets and sinks backing up. That’s where the pipes come in. In some cases, you can deal with sewage and plumbing problems by replacing the pipes. But if plumbing materials have been declared contraband by an enemy that is blockading your cities, chances are that you will be unable to deal with raw sewage in the streets and bathtubs overflowing at home.

All of this calls into question the morality of blockading civilian populations in time of war. Here, Ms. Zoabi deserves credit for drawing attention to this crisis by exposing it to the light of public opinion throughout the world. As well, she has shown the world that Israel is a functioning democracy that has at least some respect for minority rights, since she is an Arab serving in the parliament of a country that is predominantly Jewish. In most Arab countries, she probably would have been executed for giving aid and comfort to the enemy, but she has been allowed to hold onto her seat in the Knesset, at least so far.

However, blockades have been proven to be an effective military tactic. Ideally, you would like to defeat the enemy on the battlefield badly enough so that he will raise a little white flag and surrender. However, wars usually don’t end until one side has been crippled so badly that it no longer has the capacity to fight. That’s why military planes bomb factories, bridges and railroads. That’s why naval vessels blockade the enemy’s ports and turn back nonbelligerent ships trying to enter and sink enemy ships trying to leave. If you can destroy a few strategically placed dams in an area that is prone to draught in the summer and make agriculture impossible, so much the better, even though famine may result.

In war, all casualties, both military and civilian, are collateral damage. The purpose of warfare is not to kill soldiers or civilians but to destroy the enemy and cripple his capacity to fight so that he will sue for peace. Because of the very brutal nature of war, only the immature or the religious fanatic think that it’s something glorious. However, there are lots of immature people and religious fanatics about. The members of Hamas see themselves as brave mujahidin waging war against the infidel. They don’t seem to care that people are suffering in the Gaza Strip in large part because of their religious fanaticism.

The United States and other friends of Israel can try to broker a peace in that region, but President Barak Obama will probably conclude that neither side is serious about peace and decide to go on to other more pressing issues in the region, like Iraq and Afghanistan. Therefore, it’s up to the Israelis and the Palestinians to show the world that they are serious about peace before it becomes worth while for the rest of the world to involve itself in the peace process (sic).

I have a suggestion for the leaders of Hamas like Ishmael Haniyeh. If you want to end the suffering of your people, why don’t you admit that you are defeated, raise the white flag, and surrender? If you want the conflict to continue, keep launching rockets into Israel and sending suicide bombers to discotheques and Jewish delicatessens. Then, when the Israelis eventually retaliate, more people in the Gaza Strip will die outright due to the bombings, and thousands more will die due to disease and starvation because of the blockade. If this seems inhumane, Mr. Haniyeh, please remember that this is war and this is what you and your followers wanted. If you expected Israel to give up, your tactics are not working.

Meanwhile, Turkish prime minister Recap Tayyip Erdoğan has been having a field day. Because of his expressions of outrage over the storming of the Mavi Marmara, he has probably never been more popular at home. Turkey has long been Israel’s most reliable ally in the region; the two countries’ air forces have even conducted training exercises together over Turkey until now. But why shouldn’t Mr. Erdoğan be outraged? Most of the 28 people killed were Turkish citizens. Over 99 per cent of all Turks are Muslims, like the people in Gaza.

Mr. Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party is Islamist rather than Kemalist or secularist in ideology. While they might not want to bring back Sharia, they don’t mind their daughters wearing the head scarf either. The head scarf is a compromise between a black table cloth and full frontal nudity in that part of the world. To the horror of the U.S. State Department, Mr. Erdoğan has even sought a rapprochement with Iran. Together with President Luis Lula Mendes of Brazil, Mr. Erdoğan sought but failed to prevent nuclear sanctions against Iran before the United Nations Security Council.

However, Ishmael Haniyeh and Hamas should not count on Israel being dragged down by the public relations disaster that is the Mavi Marmara for too long. The hawks and the doves will stage protest rallies and shout at each other in the Knesset, and some will even call Hanin Zoabi a traitor. There may even be a commission of inquiry. But within six months, only the families of the slain Turkish sailors aboard the Mavi Marmara will remember this incident. People will have forgotten about Ms. Zoabi and Mr. Erdoğan.

It will be same old shit, just a different day.

The Choygan Incident: a Prelude to War?

So far, it has been a very quiet year in the Korean peninsula. In March of 2010, a North Korean submarine torpedoed the South Korean destroyer Choygan, killing 46 South Korean sailors. The torpedo hit the destroyer in the middle of the hull, breaking the destroyer in half and sinking it almost immediately. Because many North Koreans lack carotene in their diets and probably have bad eyesight, due to the near-famine conditions that have existed for more than a decade, you might think it was a lucky hit. But no, my friends, it was skill. Unlike your average man on the street in North Korea, sailors on North Korean submarines can eat all the carrots they want so that they don’t mutiny, sack the storehouses full of grain that might go to feed their beloved communist commissars, and overthrow the government. That’s because North Korea is a military dictatorship under the King Dynasty, despite its pretenses of being a “people’s republic.” Soldiers always have adequate food and enough ammo for their weapons, or they mutiny.

As you can probably imagine, the South Koreans are hopping mad about the Choygan incident. Any talks of unity between the two Koreas (as if anybody ever realistically thought that would happen) have been put off even further into the future. The South Korean government is calling for U.N. sanctions against North Korea and has resumed its propaganda barrage at the North after having suspended its leaflet war in lieu of peace talks. Since the United States has been trying to get North Korea to cancel its nuclear program, the U.S. has been willing to back South Korea to the hilt. However, China is likely to exercise its veto on the U.N. Security Council because it doesn’t want to exacerbate the problem that it already has with North Korean refugees sneaking into China to escape the poverty back home. Communist North Korea has always been a protégée of the People’s Republic of China. Mao Zedong sent in a tidal wave of Red Army and Red Guards into Korea in 1951, after the United States was on the verge of overrunning North Korea during the Korean War.

North Korea is a problem that keeps coming back like a boomerang into the hand of its thrower. North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-il, or “Kim 2” (like his father before him, Kim Il-sung, or “Kim 1”) has seen the prosperity that “socialism with a Chinese face” has created for China, but he wants none of that for North Korea. It isn’t that he has anything against the accoutrements of capitalism (at least for himself and his cronies), like gluttonous steaks, champagne and caviar. It’s just that leaders like him rely on isolation to keep themselves in power. That’s why leaders like Kim 2 (and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Saddam Hussein before he was hung) will always say to the U.N.: “Hit me with your best shot! My people can take it!” What do they care, as long as their steady supply of steaks and caviar continues?

Note: the beginning of the end for dictators like Hitler and Saddam Hussein is usually when they emerge from isolation and leap onto the world stage. When they can circulate among a crowd either at home or abroad, it means that they are popular at home and not taken seriously abroad. Any of the Kims could easily blend in with the crowd on New Year’s Day in Times Square; their own families probably can’t tell them apart.

What would the Israelis do if they were in South Korea’s position? If an Egyptian or Lebanese submarine sank an Israeli ship, Mossad hit teams would be put into action to eliminate the individuals responsible. The problem with that scenario in Korea, however, is that the North has a head start on their nuclear program over the South. The Korean CIA probably has a lot less intelligence on the North than the Israelis have on any of their Arab neighours. Nobody even knows for sure why the North Koreans sank the Choygan, though it is suspected that it was in retaliation for a warship that the South Koreans sank last year.

One thing is certain: if North Korea went to war against South Korea, it would be a disaster for the Kim Dynasty. When you look at the conditions that the people in North Korea face every day, there’s no way that North Korea could survive a war of attrition. The people of North Korea face famine conditions right now; nobody thinks that a war would improve the food situation. The North Korean Army would probably inflict thousands of military and civilian casualties in South Korea, but even the North Koreans understand that the South Koreans have long been prepared for war; otherwise, the North would have attacked a long time ago. Then there’s the United States: U.S. troops have never left the Demilitarized Zone that divides the two countries. Any war between North and South Korea will involve the United States, unless the U.S. turns and runs. Not even the North Koreans think that will happen.

Probably the best thing that could happen would be if the North Koreans launched an undeclared war like they did at the start of the Korean War in 1950, a renewal of the Korean War would mean the end of North Korea. However, it would be better if North Korea attacked before it amassed a huge nuclear arsenal, not after. Otherwise, the Kims would probably make due on their threat to nuke Los Angeles and Tokyo, as well as Seoul. What’s it to them if their country got nuked in retaliation? Reports say that Kim 2 has just had a stroke; he isn’t expected to live long anyway.

So here’s the scenario: the Korean CIA sends hit teams to assassinate key officers in North Korea’s military hierarchy; understandably, the North Koreans are furious. Since Kim 2 supposedly has had a stroke, the North Korean Army forces his successor, Kim 2‘s son, Kim Il-jong or Kim 3, to make war on South Korea as wave upon wave of demented North Korean avengers pour across the DMZ into South Korea. With ground and air support from the United States, however, the South Koreans successfully reverse the invasion as U.S. Stealth Bombers blast Pyongyang into a rock pile. Within a few weeks, North Korea resembles Haiti after the earthquake that hit that unfortunate island last January, with millions of North Koreans spending the winter of 2010-11 in tent villages.

The United States and South Korea might decide not to invade North Korea like they did in 1951, because nobody really knows what the Chinese would do if North Korea were invaded a second time. China has always treated North Korea like its prized bitch. However, the Chinese really don’t want to go to war against their biggest trade partner, the United States, either.

Like I said before, North Korea is a problem that leaves everybody clueless. China and South Korea have tried to bribe the North Koreans with food in the past, but that solution has had only limited success. China wants to host a six-party conference with the United States, the two Koreas, Japan and Russia. However, North Korea’s word isn't worth much. Kim 2 has promised to halt his country’s nuclear program before, but North Korea has started making nuclear weapons again. Even if his son, Kim 3 promised to stop the manufacture of nuclear weapons, it's likely that he would change his mind yet again. Those Kims have always been very changeable. Besides, you have to be able to use atoms for war before you can use them for peace, right?

Probably, the leaders of North and South Korea will take their cue from the people in Seoul and Pyongyang. The people curse the traffic, fight with other shoppers in the queues at the department stores, and complain about the crime rate in the bustling city of Seoul. In the moribund city of Pyongyang, people wait listlessly to receive their meagre rations of the basic necessities while the traffic outside is nearly dead; only the bigwigs (and they all seem to wear wigs) have cars in Pyongyang. The people in both countries are ready to go onto something else besides the Choygan incident. Eventually, other events will overshadow the sinking of the Choygan.

Let's hope so anyway.

Peace? Who Needs It!

Let me repeat: the United States can never let Israel be destroyed by its enemies. This statement reflects the will of the American people. More important, from a geopolitical standpoint, it reflects the best interests of the United States of America. The United States cannot let a small country that is friendly to its interests be swallowed up by a larger entity that could be hostile. Therefore, the United States must support Israel, hoping that "come what may" never comes.

The average American has an image of Israel as a little David fighting for its survival against a giant Goliath. This image is only partially correct. Militarily, Israel could easily defeat its neighbours, either one-on-one or all of them at once (like it did in the Six Day War of 1967). No other country in the region is in a better state of military preparedness than Israel. Yet over 200 million Arabs live between the Rock of Gibraltar and the Persian Gulf, where Israel is lodged like a bone in the throat of a senior citizen, while Israel only has a population of about 4 million. If all the Arab World united against Israel to put a Heimlich manoeuvre on itself, the Jewish state could be in trouble.

I don’t think that Arab unity is necessarily a bad thing. It depends on a few factors. For instance, does a politically united Arab World include an Anschluss with what many Arabs call “Palestine” or “The Zionist Entity”? More importantly, would this united Arab World be radically Islamic, with designs of bringing the entire world under its bernoos? Clearly, the rest of the world cannot accept an Arab Empire bent on the destruction of Israel and the forced Islamization of the world.

What the West has to be careful about, however, is creating the very conditions under which Islamist radicals would rise to the fore. We do not strengthen so-called “moderates” by appearing servile in our relationship with Israel. Nor do we help ourselves by ignoring gross human rights violations in Arab countries that we consider to be our “friends.”

On the surface, supporting Saddam Hussein in Iraq’s war against Iran in the 1980s seemed like a good idea at the time. What better way to put those “towel heads” in Tehran back in their place, right? However, it led to Saddam’s annexation of Kuwait (what he would have called an Anschluss if he were Hitler) and two wars in the Persian Gulf. The United States failed to appreciably weaken the ayatollahs in Iran while creating a monster in Iraq. What’s more, the U.S. still hasn’t extricated itself from the “reconstruction” in Iraq. But we all know what happens to the best ideas of mice and men, right?

In Algeria, France has done the very thing that the West should not do in the Arab World. In the civil war between the governing National Liberation Front (FLN) and the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), the French have unequivocally thrown their weight behind the FLN, even though the FLN cancelled the results of elections that the Islamists had clearly won. This action did nothing to promote democracy in North Africa. What’s more, Algeria has been embroiled in a civil war since 1994. Who wins with this scenario? If anybody, it’s the radicals. But that's what you get when you leave the spread of democracy to the French.

The world would like to see three things in the Middle East: peace between Israel and its neighbours, the rise of moderation and secularism in the Arab World, and a steady flow of oil from the Persian Gulf. Clearly, these things have not been mutually exclusive so far.

In the conflict between Israel and its neighbours, there seems to be a perverse symbiosis. Members of Hamas in Gaza or Hezbollah in Lebanon launch rockets into Israel. Then, when Israel gets “fed up” and retaliates, killing civilians (which invariably happens), the Arab radicals can say, “See? I told you those Zionists want to kill women and children!” Of course, extremists in Israel play the same game. Members of groups like Gush Enunim have been building settlements in the West Bank and Gaza since the early 1970s, because this land is the “Samaria” of the Bible in their minds. Then, when members of Hamas blow themselves up in suicide bombings in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Israeli extremists jump up and say: “Hey, Israel needs our settlements! We’re Israel’s first line of defence!”

There’s a term for this behaviour: Baron von Munchhausen syndrome by proxy, or “creating a problem in order to solve it.” It should be obvious to the rest of the world by now what both sides have been saying to themselves all along: “Who needs peace? Not us!”

Now, this wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t feed into the bigger problem of Islamic radicalism. If a country like Saudi Arabia wants to be ruled by Islamic law, or Shariya, and behead people, the rest of the world shouldn’t have a problem with it. After all, the U.S. has capital punishment, too. However, it can really be a problem when Saudi Arabia exports its brand of Islamic fundamentalism (called “Wahabism”) by building schools in countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan that train young boys to be terrorists. It gets worse when you point these tykes towards targets in Israel and the West and say, “Think of Allah and pull the pin from the grenade like the imam showed you!”

Fortunately, the teachers at these madrassahs seem to know more about the Qur’an than they do about nuclear fusion. What's unfortunate, however, is that countries with a lot of oil seem to think that they have the right to tell others what to do or think.

I would not be a bold or innovative thinker if I pointed out that the West needs to wean itself from Middle Eastern oil. However, we all know that’s not going to happen until the entire Persian Gulf is as dry underneath the sand as it is above it. Until then, the oil companies will want to drill for oil on Alaska’s National Wildlife Reserve or in the Gulf of Mexico. Toyota will try to solve its problems with sudden acceleration with its Prius model so that we can all drive electric cars safely. At some point, all of our electricity will be from nuclear power plants, and Hydro-Québec will have dammed up sixteen rivers in la belle province so that it can sell power to New York State and the world will be safe for global warming. Until then, Muslim radicals will call for the destruction of Israel and the West, and try to make every woman in the world cover herself with a black table cloth in the name of “modesty.”

Some things never change, like the smell of raw sewage and the Middle East.

Steering a Middle Course in the Middle East

In his Farewell Address, George Washington urged his fellow Americans not to be too fond of one country at the expense of another. Rather, he urged his compatriots to steer a middle course between adversaries. This has been a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy ever since.

Today, Americans forget that their country was divided between those who sided with France (the Jeffersonian Democrats) and those who sided with Great Britain (the Federalists) during the Napoleonic wars. When the War of 1812 started between the U.S. and Great Britain, many Americans in the Northeast urged secession. The real enemy, these people believed, was France under Napoleon Bonaparte. How times have changed.

When the State of Israel declared its independence on May 14, 1948, U.S. President Harry S. Truman waited only eleven minutes to be the first world leader to recognize Israel’s existence. Americans overwhelmingly approved of Truman’s gesture towards the fledgling Jewish state. With revelations of Nazi death camps during World War II only a few years before, it seemed like the thing to do. Except for the Arab World, the world’s sympathy was with Israel.

Oil aside, Americans still have many valid reasons for supporting the State of Israel. For starters, Israel remains the only functional democracy in the Middle East. Though the oil sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf still refuse to sell their petroleum to Israel openly, Israel still has the most robust economy in the region. It hasn’t hurt that Turkey, through which three major pipelines run, has always been willing to deal with Israel. But it says something about the entrepreneural spirit of the Israeli people that the State of Israel has always found a way to meet its petroleum needs, whether through Iran before the Ayatollahs or South Africa’s coal-to-petroleum technology under apartheid. Capitalism has thrived better in Israel than anywhere else in the Middle East.

What unites Israelis and Americans the most is probably a common Judeo-Christian heritage. Moses is esteemed as a prophet by both Christians and Jews, and many Jews hold Jesus in high regard, though they don’t consider him to be the Messiah. What’s more, the Old Testament, the “Hebrew Bible,” is an indispensible part of the Christian Bible; Christians believe that you can’t have the New Testament without the Old Testament.

Before the Six Day War of 1967, the United States and Western Europe overwhelmingly supported Israel in its struggle against the Arabs. Not one Arab nation recognized Israel’s existence. Whenever the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations spoke, the Arab delegations often walked out. Then, after the disaster of the Six Day War, Israel occupied the West Bank, the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip, and the Sinai Peninsula. Since then, the Arab “street” has begun to see that the goal of annihilating Israel was just a fantasy; Israel has emerged as the Goliath of the region.

Since the Arab oil embargo after the Yom Kippur War, the West has been offered the alternative of putting aside its post-Holocaust sympathy for Israel in exchange for the expedient of Arab oil. Certainly, Western Europe and Japan have had to temper their support for the “Zionist Entity,” since they are almost entirely dependent on foreign oil, whereas the United States and Canada produce much of their oil domestically. However, no country can give into blackmail. President Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor Clark Clifford stated very eloquently back in the 1970s, any attempt to cut off the Middle Eastern oil supply would lead to war. Yet the Nobel Committee has yet to ask Carter to give back his Peace Prize.

Particularly since the end of the Cold War, it has been the policy of the United States and its allies to steer a middle course between their fondness for Israel and their antipathy for the Arabs. What’s more, Arab countries that border Israel, like Egypt and Jordan, have found it more prudent to temper their hostility towards the Jewish state rather than threaten its annihilation. Syria, on the other hand, either seems to have given up hope of getting back the Golan Heights or is secretly positioning itself to make war on Israel sometime in the future, since it still maintains a rejectionist front.

Militarily, Damascus is probably the biggest threat to Israel’s security in the long run. By invading Lebanon during its civil war in the 1970s and 1970s, it stood to gain by being able to open up a second front against Israel, if it could avoid being bogged down in the quagmire. If Syria could open up a second front in Lebanon, it would be a much more dangerous enemy for Israel than Hamas or Al-Fatah. While Egypt has always had more people than Syria, Syria historically has always been the greater threat. Armies that conquered Israel (with the exception of those of Alexander the Great and the Roman general Pompey) have generally come from the northeast: Damascus. Probably, George W. Bush’s biggest foreign policy accomplishment was to force Syria’s withdrawal from Lebanon after the assassination of Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri by Christian militias friendly to Damascus.

The challenge of every U.S. president since the Camp David Accord has been how to start up the peace process again without having it get bogged down by either one or both of the principal parties involved. Since Jimmy Carter, U.S. presidents have ended up having to put the peace process on a back burner. Ronald Reagan, for instance, had to deal with the aftermath of the bombing of a compound of U.S. Marines in Lebanon. George H.W. Bush had to solicit Arab cooperation for Desert Storm. It was left to Bill Clinton to enforce the “No Fly Zone” over Iraq without losing the Arab support that Bush 41 had worked so hard to achieve. After 9/11, George W. Bush had to focus on Osama Bin Ladin and Iraq.

It would be a fine feather in current President Barack Obama’s cap if he was the U.S. president that brought about a lasting peace in the Middle East. However, his primary responsibility is to pursue the interests of the United States. With wars in Iraq and Afghanistan still raging, Obama will probably have to put the conflict between Israel and Hamas on a back burner too. While Obama would like for Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Nettanyahu to put a stop to all settlement activity in the West Bank, there is probably very little that he will do about the Israeli settlers on Palestinian lands. Unlike, say, the National Guardsmen who fired on students at Kent State University in 1970, members of the Israeli Defence Force don’t seem to have the stomach to evict Israeli settles from the West Bank. No Israeli prime minister so far has wanted to deal with the possibility of rioting Israeli settlers; they seem to be afraid of an intifada from Israeli extremists.

In the end, the United States will probably have to steer a middle course between two sides who seem to want to maintain the status quo. The Israelis seem to feel safe behind the wall started by Ariel Sharon, while the “Two State Solution” for Hamas and Al-Fatah seems to be a Palestine ruled by Hamas (Gaza) and a Palestine ruled by Al-Fatah (the West Bank). The Israelis and the Palestinians seem to have a situation that they can live with.

It would be better for Americans not to be too fond of one side (Israel) and too inimical towards the other (the Palestinians). The U.S. is involved in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Rules of Thumb About Wine

Man has been drinking alcohol since the day he discovered that there is always something alcoholic out there that will make you drunk. Whereas beer is a fermented drink that comes from barley and hops, wine is what you get if you let grape juice ferment and rot. The reason why people don’t throw out rotten grape juice is because somebody discovered thousands of years ago that it will get you drunk if you drink it instead. That’s why people drink wine.

The first basic fact about wine is that there are two kinds of wine: white wine and red wine. Now, some “white” wines look yellow or a tad grey, but if it isn’t red or pink in colour, it’s a white wine. Red wines are always some shade of red, only some red wines are darker than others. Now, if you come across a bottle of white Merlot and it looks red or pink, it’s still technically a white wine. It’s called a white Merlot because it was made from the flesh of a red grape rather than the skin. So when you buy a bottle of Champaign to celebrate the New Year, what kind of wine is it? It’s a white wine. A dark red Burgundy, of course, is a red wine.

Which leads us to the second basic fact about wine: red wines are almost always made from the skin of the grape while white wines are made from the flesh. However, some white wines are made from the flesh of red grapes, which is why we have wines like “white” Merlot. You could make a wine from the skin of a white grape and have a “red” wine, but the reason why it isn’t done is because it wouldn’t taste very good.

Once upon a time, classifying wines was easy. Port was Port because it came from the Oporto region of Portugal. If it was a red wine from the Bordeaux region of France or a white wine from the Asti region of Italy, the wine was a Bordeaux or an Asti. If it was from the Mosel region of Germany, it was a Mosel. Then places like Calfornia started getting into the act of making wines. Naturally, the French didn’t like the idea of California calling its wines Bordeaux or Burgundies, so the Californians now have to call their wines Merlots, Cabernet Sauvignons, or Rieslings, depending upon what kind of soil they grow it in and how they make it, etc.

Now, if a Merlot or a Cabernet comes from the area around Bordeaux in Bordeaux, it is still a Bordeaux. A red wine from Bordeaux is a Merlot if it was grown in the loamy soil on the right bank of the Gironde River while a red wine grown in the clay soil on the left bank of the Gironde is a Cabernet Sauvignon. Cabernet Blanc is grown in the same kind of soil as Cabernet Sauvignon, except that the Blanc is a white wine. When you ask for a French wine, you must specify whether you want Bordeaux, Burgundy, Sancerre, etc., not Cabernet Sauvignon or Cabernet Blanc.

There are two basic kinds of white and red wines: table wines and dessert wines. Table wines are the kind of wines that you drink when you sit down at table to eat, whereas as dessert wines are usually what people drink after dinner. Table wines are mostly dry or semi-dry while dessert wines are usually sweet or very sweet. Now, you don’t have to drink a dessert wine with your cake and ice cream after dinner, but if you wanted some kind of wine with dessert, you would probably want something sweet, like a Moscato or a Mosel. A personal favourite of mine is Tokay, a white wine from Hungary that looks and tastes like a Riesling, though its sweetness is measured from 1 to 6 on what is called the “Puttonyos Scale.”

How do you choose a wine for dinner? The rule is that red wines generally go better with red meat while white wine goes better with fish, poultry or pork. How dry you want it generally depends on how you cook the meat. If your food is very spicy or has lots of seasoning, chances are that you won’t want something that’s very dry or has a very full body, or what they call a “big bouquet.” The Italians have a term called chiarroscurro, which means “light and dark.” If you’re eating some kind of meat that has a dark or heavy flavour, chances are that you might want to lighten up a little on the wine.

One rule of thumb that you might want to follow is this: match the region of the wine with the origin of the food that you are eating. I discovered Tokay, a Hungarian wine, while looking for something to go with chicken paprika, which is a Hungarian dish. If you like food native to the Tuscan region of Italy, like spaghetti, you probably won’t go wrong with a Tuscan wine like Chianti. Likewise, good barbecue wines often come from areas where people like barbecues in the summer, like Australia, South Africa, or northern California. If you like Greek dishes like mousaka (fried eggplant) or souvlakia (lamb on a skewer), you should be able to find a decent Greek wine.

The surest way to find a wine that’s right for you is to experiment. It also doesn’t hurt to ask for advice from people in wine stores or a sommelier at an expensive restaurant. The thing to remember, however, is that regardless of what advice anybody gives, you are still the King or Queen. The rules of thumb that I have just given you are only rules of thumb. My brother insists that Shirazes make the best barbecue wines, but I have found that Lindeman’s (a South African firm) makes a Cabernet Sauvignon that’s just fine for barbecues. I have a female friend who only likes sweet wine, so I don’t try to tell her that she should drink a dry wine or a semi-dry wine with dinner.

Whatever you do, don’t become dogmatic and start a crusade in support of your favourite wine. Let other people find for themselves what wines they like to drink. The great thing about wine is that while nobody is born an expert, anybody can become one.

Secularism and the War on Terrorism

Since September 11, 2001, the war on terror is no closer to being won than it was the day before the attacks. It has been nearly a decade since nineteen members of Al-Qaeda hijacked four airliners, flew two of them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, and crashed another into the Pentagon. The passengers on the fourth one successfully forced the hijackers to crash into a field, preventing them from hitting their target. If victory remains elusive for the United States and its allies in NATO, what does Al-Qaeda have to show for its efforts? The war has been a stalmate.


When terrorists managed to hijack four airliners, two of them from Boston’s Logan International Airport, it was a sign that airport security was lax. Not anymore. One expects to wait at least an hour to pass through metal detectors at any airport in the U.S. while removing all loose change from one’s pockets and taking off one’s shoes. It’s an inconveniance that we have been forced to accept as the price of flying the friendly skies and reaching our destination in one piece. If a terrorist is, by definition, someone whose goal is to inspire fear or terror, then the terrorists have already won the war: people are at least more afraid to fly on an airplane than before 9/11. The increased vigilance of airport security was a major concession to terrorism that had to be made.

Starting with former U.S. President George W. Bush, the United States government has tried to define the war not as a Christian crusade against Islam, but as a war against political and religious extremism originating in the Middle East. Mr. Bush conceded that we can’t brand all of Islam as the enemy when he called Islam “a great religion” along with Christianity and Judaism. He understood that we needed allies among the very people that extremists like Osama Bin Ladin wanted to recruit the most: religious Muslims.

There are Muslim allies who want to engage the West in a spirit of itjahid or "rational discourse." It is the fondest hope of the U.S. State Department that there are really Arab and other Muslim leaders who consider Christianity and Judaism to be "great religions" too.

For millions of people in the West, the war is still a conflict between rival faiths, Christianity and Islam. In this corner, wearing the crown of thorns and the red, white and blue boxing trunks, Jesus Christ. In the other corner, wearing the green boxing trunks with the white star and crescent, Muhammad. Of course, Jesus would be expected to punch and counterpunch with one hand while carrying his cross with the other hand while Muhammad would punch and counterpunch one-handed while carrying a Quran. People like Pat Robertson (who saw the earthquake in Haiti as divine retribution for the existence of voodoo in that country) would love to phrase the war on terror in those terms. There really isn’t much difference between a Christian crusader and a Muslim mujihad. Both are willing to fight and kill for God.

For this writer, Al-Qaeda’s war against the West is really a war against the Enlightenment. The West has largely gone secular since the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, with freedom of religion, and even freedom from religion, in all the countries of Europe and the Americas. While Pope Benedict XVI has expressed an interest in the revival of Catholicism, and the fear that millions of Europeans have of a hostile takeover by Muslim immigrants in Europe, those days are gone when a pope could make speech in a small village like Clairmont in France and launch a crusade.

Conditions were very different in 1095, when Pope Urban VI was able to inspire the First Crusade by shouting to thousands of peasants: “Deus volt.” God wills it. If Urban could have come back nine-hundred years later in 1995 to the same village and the same country, he wouldn’t have recognized the place. Not just because of the automobiles, airplanes, and telephone lines, but because France is ruled by a secular government where the separation of church and state has become enshrined as a sacred principle. Try to resolve that contradiction.

We have certain freedoms that we have come to take for granted. Not just freedom of religion, but also freedom of speech and freedom of the press. We also have freedom from unreasonable search and seizure and the right to a fair trial. In the war of terror, these rights have come under attack. An American Muslim convert, Colleen LaRose has recently been indicted for her role in a plot to assassinate a Swedish cartoonist for exercising his right to make fun of Muhammad in an editorial cartoon. A Dutch Member of Parliament, Theo van Gogh, was assassinated for taking a position against radical Islamism. Another Dutch politician, the Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali, has also been threatened by Islamic extremists for speaking out against female genital mutilation.

To be fair, the Islamists aren’t the only people waging war on human rights. With bills like the Patriot Act, we have granted extensive powers to governments in the war on terror. On could say that the legal principle of Habeas Corpus itself has been under attack. The United States and several European countries have measures that allow the police to hold terrorism suspects in custody longer without the right to counsel or the right to be formally charge. Many of us know about Guantanamo, where suspected members of Al-Qaida and the Taliban are still being held. Many of us also know that terrorism suspects were sent to countries like Syria and Jordan to be tortured there because they couldn’t be tortured in Europe or North America.

Few people have noted, however, that Colleen LaRose was held for months in communicado without being charged or allowed to see an attorney. She was arrested in October of 2009, but she was only formally charged in federal court on March 16, 2010. It seems that we have become used to living in a grey area where, if human rights abuses don’t run rampant, they are always just below the surface.

The degree to which Habeas Corpus has been suspended is a counterterrorist measure. Laws in Europe like France’s law against the wearing of “obstensible religious symbols,” aimed at Muslim women who wear veils, may also be construed as counterterrorist measures. While Islamist terrorism can rightly be seen as a war against freedom and secularism, counterterrorist measures, in the long run, may be just as dangerous, if not more so. Our secular civilization is under assault from both sides. If Muslims radicals in Europe had their way, all women would be forced to wear the veil, and everybody would be less free and government would be less secular. By forcing women not to wear the veil, however, the secularists would strip away more of Europeans’ rights in the name of a secularism that they want to strengthen but would be weakening. Either way, freedom and secularism lose.

Militarily, it makes sense for the U.S. and its NATO allies to take the war to the terrorists by hitting targets in Afghanistan and Yemen rather then simply waking suspects up in the middle of the night and taking them to an undisclosed location to be interrogated. However, the public in the West must keep itself current on developments that threaten its freedoms; people need to be more aware. Regardless of how we feel about terrorism suspects like Colleen LaRose, we need to ask why certain individuals are being held without being charged and without access to a lawyer. We have to protect the rights of even the people that we least want to protect.

While engaging with moderate religionists in the Middle East, we also need to keep from being too beholden to the religious extremists in the West. Contrary to what many people believe, the West is not just Christian anymore. The West is multicultural rather than just Christian or Judeo-Christian, with roots in several traditions, including Christianity and Judaism. Our laws, for instance, are based more on Greco-Roman principles or (in the case of the English-speaking world) Anglo-Saxon Common Law than on the Ten Commandments. While people’s moral and ethical behaviour are likely to be strongly influenced by religious beliefs, we must maintain a separation of church and state in political affairs.

We also need to maintain the freedoms that we hold most dear. That would be the most effective strategy against terrorism.

What is Turkey's Place in Europe?

Like the Roman god of time, Janus, Turkey sits astride two continents, Europe and Asia, looking both east and west. The city of İstanbul is the only city in the world that sits on two continents. On the west side of the Bosporus is Europe; on the other side is Asia. At the height of its power, the Ottoman Empire penetrated Europe as far north as the Danube River and as far west as the Straight of Gibraltar. Thus, Turkey has a heritage that is uniquely both European and Middle Eastern.

Kemal Atatürk’s revolution in the 1920s has led to Turkey being the most secularist country in the Middle East. Though Turkey’s population is almost all Muslim (more than 99 per cent), the Republic of Turkey has no state religion (unlike England, whose state church is the Anglican Church). What’s more, the Constitution promulgated by Atatürk outlaws such vestiges of the old Ottoman Empire as the veil, the fez, and the harem. They don't legally stone adulteresses anymore, though "honour killings" of women who bring shame to the family still take place. The Kemalists sought a secular republic modelled after those in Europe, with a complete separation of politics and religion. While Turkey has a Ministry of Religious Affairs like other Middle Eastern countries, the Turkish government uses this ministry to ensure that religious officials and religious schools are in compliance with Turkey’s secularist principals, not to further the Islamic faith or ensure religious orthodoxy.

With the formation of the European Union, the Republic of Turkey has sought admittance into this union. The reasons are several. One, most Turks consider themselves to be Europeans. Even though only 5 per cent of the country, the part called “Thrace,” lies west of the Bosporus in Europe, these people use geography to bolster their argument. As well, millions of people that one might call “Lost Turks” have been living and working in Western Europe as “guest workers” since the 1960s. Many of these guest workers have had families in countries like Germany and the Netherlands with children born in the host countries rather than in Turkey; their children tend to speak the languages of their host countries rather than Turkish. What’s more, Turkey’s economy has become more integrated with Europe’s economy since the end of World War II, even though Turkey lags far behind even the poorest countries in the EU economically in terms of productivity and standard of living.

Despite the fact that Turkey’s population is universally Muslim, Turkey has modelled itself after the West rather than the East. Though there is a minority of Islamists in Turkey who want to bring back the veil and Sharia, most Turks do not want an Islamic republic modelled after Iran’s. Rather, Turks consider their country to be a western democracy.

However, most Europeans have a problem trying to integrate a country like Turkey into the European Union. For one thing, most Europeans do not consider Turkey to be a part of Europe. Ninety-five per cent of Turkey, the part called “Asia Minor” or “Anatolia,” lies east of the Bosporus in the Middle East. If the Russians or the Greeks poured into Thrace and wrested it from Turkish control, then 100 per cent of all Turkey would be in the Levant. With Turkey’s population growing at a rate of about 2.5 per cent a year, Turkey would soon have the largest population in Europe, with over 65 million people now. What’s more, many people have a problem trying to absorb a country that is over 99 per cent Muslim, because of differences of culture and religion. As well, the European Union is reluctant to take on Turkey’s problem with its Kurdish minority and make it a European problem. There’s the problem of Cyprus, too: the Turkish army still occupies 40 per cent of that island, though Turkish Cypriots only make up 17 per cent of the population.

Then there’s the problem of Turkey’s economy: though Turkey’s economy has grown at a rate of 8 per cent a year since Recip Tayyip Erdoğan became Turkey’s prime minister in 2003, Turkey’s economy still lags far behind the rest of Europe’s economy. The donkey is still a means of transportation in Turkey. Most of the Turkish guest workers in Europe are unskilled, and Turkish membership in the EU would result in more unskilled Turkish labourers tramping about Europe in search of jobs. As well, many Europeans are afraid that high-paying jobs in Western Europe will be out-sourced to Turkey. Surely, Turkish factory workers would be willing to work for less than what Volkswagen and Renault pays workers in Germany and France, since VW and Renault could still pay Turkish workers more than what they are getting now.

What one seldom hears about, however, is the precedent that Turkey’s membership in the European Union might set. Turkey is not the only Muslim country with guest workers in Western Europe. Though Turkish guest workers form the largest ethnic minority in Germany, most of the Muslims in France, Spain, and Italy come from North Africa, while most of the Muslims in Britain come from India and Pakistan. What if Morocco, Algeria, and Libya wanted to join the EU? If Morocco, Algeria, and Libya join, why not have Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon join, too? Why not Saudi Arabia or even Israel? Just as the Mediterranean was a Roman lake in the days of the Roman Empire, surely there must be some temptation to make the Mediterranean a European lake again. The problem with that scenario, however, is that postmodern Europe's Mare Nostrum might include Muslim countries like Morocco, Algeria, and Libya as well as western countries like Spain, France, and Greece.

A big problem that Europe has with the Middle East is the human rights records of the countries there. Most Europeans don't want their governments torturing their fellow citizens. Despite the efforts of countries like Turkey, Egypt, and Jordan at establishing democracies in the Middle East, only Israel has a form of government that could truly be called democratic by western standards. Since World War II, the Turkish military has overthrown elected governments four times, most recently in 1983. When the leader of the Islamist Welfare Party, Abdullah Gul, was elected prime minister in 1993, he was unable to take his seat. The military forced the Turkish parliament to ban the Welfare Party (as well as the two major parties, the Republican People’s Party and the Democratic Party). Gul was only allowed to become president after the Welfare Party reincorporated and became the Justice Party, and Erdoğan was elected prime minister in 2003.

However, the European Union probably didn’t mind it that the Turkish military prevented an Islamist party from coming to power; few Europeans want homegrown Muslim clerics having a great influence in European affairs. What Europeans find most disturbing, however, is Turkey’s human rights abuses. Before the military coup of 1983, Turkey’s Military Intelligence Service (MİT), rivalled the Savam in Iran and Saddam Hussein’s Revolutionary Guards in brutality. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have sited the MİT for the torture of both leftist and Islamist dissidents, as well as the torture of Kurdish separatists. What’s more, Turkey has had the death penalty until recently. The majority of Europeans believe that the integration of a country with a military and a police force that might run amok would be impossible.

This is not to say that Turkey hasn’t made some movement in the area of human rights. For instance, Turkey no longer has the death penalty, and the leader of the Kurdish People’s Party, Abdullah Öcallan, has had his death sentence commuted to life imprisonment. What's more, civilian rule has been restored since the 1983 coup. However, Turkey still has a long way to go in human rights. For instance, it is still a crime to mention in a speech or in print the Armenian holocaust in Kars Province during World War I. (This is called "insulting Turkishness.") As well, Kurds are still not allowed to speak their language publically in Turkish Kurdistan. A Kurdish member of the Turkish Parliament, Leila Zama, was sentenced to fifteen years in prison in 1995 after she spoke one sentence in Kurdish while being sworn into office. While Zama has been released from prison, she still has to fight attempts on the part of the Turkish government to imprison her again.

Then there’s still Turkey’s constitutional amendment banning traditional Muslim dress. Religious Muslim girls in Turkey often have to make the choice between wearing the veil or the head scarf and continuing with their education, because Turkish institutions of higher learning are required by law to ban the scarf and the veil. However, Turkey and the rest of Europe have at least found some common ground here. France has a law banning “obstensible religious symbols,” and other European countries, like Germany, are contemplating doing the same thing. Both the secularist European Union and the secularist Republic of Turkey have the same fear of somebody establishing an Islamic republic in the heart of Europe.

We need to pay attention to what is being said here as well as to what is not being said. Though the European Union might not mind incorporating small and destitute Muslim countries like Albania or Kosovo, the EU obviously believes that Turkey would be a more difficult pill to swallow. Both the EU and Turkey have the same antipathy towards Muslim fanatics, but it is unlikely that Turkey shares the same European antipathy towards Muslims in general, because most secularists in Turkey also consider themselves to be Muslims. One might say that the march towards secularism in Turkey is far less complete, at least the way Europeans see it, because the majority of secularists in Western Europe claim to have no religious affiliation at all. While Muslims are only a minority in Western Europe, attendance at mosque is highter in Europe than church attendance.

Europe has a push-me pull-you relationship with Muslims that is defined by the desire for cheap labour and the desire to keep out as many Muslims as possible. European businesses need Muslim immigrants to work in French bakeries, squash grapes to make French and Italian wines, and work in sanitation, but any limitation or ban of Turkish immigration to Western Europe would be unacceptable after Turkey became a member of the European Union. For Turkey, Muslim supremacy even in a secularist European Union would be preferable to a Europe dominated by the Vatican.

Liberté, fraternité, and égalité are treasured European ideals, but so was apartheid. Since the end of European colonialism in the 1960s, the question facing Europe has been: how committed to democratic principle is Europe really going to be now that immigrants from the Third World are desperate to enter by any means necessary, including illegally? The question facing Europe now is: if Europe cannot be both free and white, would it rather be free or white? Is it democracy or apartheid?

And what about Turkey: Can Turkey every really be integrated into a united Europe?

Right now, Europe is the only continent that has attempted a Common Market. Maybe Turkey should look towards some kind of zollverein with other countries of the Middle East, including Israel. That is, southern Turkey imports Lebanese olives at par while Israel sells its oranges in Egypt. The problem with that scenario is that we are many years from seeing it happen, at least openly. Most of the oranges that Egyptians eat are probably from Israel, but nobody in that part of the world wants to talk about free trade or opening borders just yet. These things take time.

The Europeans don't think that Turkey is ready for prime time just yet.