Zeitgeist to Zarqawi

This is my last day for completing all the letters of the alphabet. Before I write today's entry, Zeitgeist to Zarqawi, let me wish all the mothers of the world blessings and love on this mother's day! Many of them are the unknown heroines of the world.

Zeitgeist is a German word adopted by the English language, which roughly means "the spirit of the times." Or, "the spirit of the age and society." When we talk about zeitgeist, we refer to the political, economical, cultural, social, intellectual, and moral (and ethical) climate of the age. It was German Romantics such as Herder that first identified a zeitgeist, but also Hegel in his philosophy of history. Hegel saw human history evolving towards a more advanced universal spirit. For Hegel, there was a World Spirit, but each nation also had its spirit that was part of the larger World Spirit. Nations play different roles in creating a World Spirit. Nations, insisted Hegel, rise and fall in terms of their impact on the World Spirit. Zeitgeist for Romantics like Herder often treated the past as an essence, not as a generalized description of an epoch. So sometimes the German meaning of zeitgeist is different from its English connotation. But we might think of the zeitgeist as the collective consciousness of our age.

Today I will try to identify the zeitgeist of the world. Given the diversity of nations, cultures, and political outlooks, is this possible? I will contrast this zeitgeist with my other Z word, Zarqawi. Zarqawi's full name is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (1966-2006) (top right), the Jordanian-born Islamist and former leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. He was a veteran of the Afghanistan War in 1979, which would eventually drive the atheistic, communist superpower from a Muslim country. He also led an Islamist group, Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (Group of Monotheism and Jihad), from the 1990s until his death by a US air strike in 2006. In 2004, the group made a pledge to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda and became known as al-Qaeda in Iraq. Zarqawi's group included Jordanians, Iraqis, and other radical Islamists.

Zarqawi's foes were Westerners, the United Nations, the United States, foreign forces in Muslim lands, Iraqi security forces (seen as US agents), the monarchical regime in Jordan, and Kurdish and Shi'ite militias in Iraq. Zarqawi's group follows a fundamentalist brand of Sunni Islam, which played a key role in perpetuating the de facto civil war in Iraq after the US invasion in 2003. It was an extremely ruthless organization known for beheadings of foreigners (American, South Korean, Turkish, Bulgarian, etc.), the killings of 86 Shi'ites at the Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf in 2003, bombings in Baghdad and Karbala during the Shi'ite Ashura holiday in 2004 that killed 178, as well as suicide bombings of UN personnel, Iraqi government officials, Italian and US troops, and oil pumping stations. Its operations have been spectacular, shocking, and cruel.

So Zarqawi is part of the zeitgeist of our age. He is an expression of the rising tide of Islamism, particularly militant Islamism, in the Arab and Muslim worlds. We think that al-Qaeda and Zarqawi are merely products of 9-11. Yet, historians of the Muslim world from Bernard Lewis to Edward Said (from two very different schools) pointed to the rising Islamic tide back in the 1970s.

This rising Islamist militancy, which has as its goal the creation of a pan-Islamic state following the shari'a (Islamic law) throughout the Muslim world, has both internal and external causes and key triggering events. These include the following:

1) Western or foreign presence on Muslim lands is viewed as occupation. As a result, Afghanistan and Iraq are hot Islamist hotbeds. For Islamists, violence is viewed as permissible in wars of self-defense against foreign occupiers.

2) The creation of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979. Iran became a model for Islamists all over the world because an authoritarian, US-backed regime was overthrown and the dream of national sovereignty for Muslims was restored. Note it does not matter that the Iranians are Shi'ites and Zarqawi and bin Laden are Sunnis. They unite in their desire to cleanse all Muslim lands of foreign forces, end cosy relationships with great powers, get rid of secular laws and replace them with Islamic law, and restore the Muslim world to its grandeur in the history of world politics (i.e., the period of the Islamic conquests from the 7-9th centuries, or the 500-year reign of the Ottoman Empire that officially ended after World War One with the creation of a Turkish secular republic).

3) The victory of expelling the Soviets from Afghanistan after the 1979 invasion. Bin Laden, Zarqawi, and other Islamist militants got their start here and see it as their duty to come to the defense of Muslims wherever they are threatened, whether they are in Bosnia, Palestine (Israel), Kashmir, Afghanistan, or Iraq. The victory in Afghanistan by Islamist fighers became a model for taking on the Americans, which bin Laden infamously called a "paper tiger." It inspired fighters with low technological sophistication, stealth, and religious fanaticism to challenge the United States in Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and even the US homeland. Bin Laden's logic, as well as Zarqawi's, is that the US is a superpower in name only. Once it takes losses, the public will not stomach it and ask for the return of its soldiers home. Paper tigers are made out of paper, not steel and determination. When it gets heavy, they will flee as the United States did in Somalia in 1993. This emboldens Islamists to fight to gain more victories.

4) The failure of imported, Western ideologies in the Arab and Muslim worlds: Pan-Arabism, liberalism, socialism, and communism. Islamists are viewed as more indigenous, pure, and less tainted by the temptations of power. Or, Islamists are seen as an alternative to US-backed monarchies or military regimes that block popular democracy. The rigid authoritarianism in the Arab world will continue to produce violent Islamists because it is very difficult in the region to express oneself openly.

Yet, Islamists are becoming more clever and nuanced. They won elections in Algeria in 1992, which were late annulled and in Gaza under Hamas in the new millennium. Over 100,000 Algerians died in the ensuing civil war between the military and Islamists. A de facto civil war took place between the secular Fatah and Islamist Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank. Winner takes all in the Arab world. There is no compromise with opponents, but either expulsion or annihilation of political opponents.

5) The creation of Israel in 1948. Israel is viewed as an "alien body" in the region by Islamists. It is a daily reminder of the constant losses of the Muslim world vis-a-vis the West. Israel for Islamists is seen as an extension of the West, a colonial Jewish outpost. It is also a shock for Islamists to see Israel thrive in the international community. At the same time, Arab and Islamic unity are weakened by feuding national interests. Moreover, there is a feeling of defeat among the Arabs. There is little hope of restoring the ancient glories of Muslim empires of the past. Yet, this is precisely the dream of Islamists. Iran's stated goal of annihilating Israel strikes chords in the Muslim world because Israel is seen as usurping Palestinian Muslim land and undermining preponderant control over the "abode of Islam".

6)The Islamists offer a comprehensive, total, community-based response to the ills of globalized modernity: the loss of community solidarity, the decline of Muslim political sovereignty, alienation of individuals increasingly living in urban landscapes, the loss of faith, loose morals and permissive sexuality, the onslaught of mercantilist Western and US values, the lack of social and economic development, and lack of concern for the poor and social justice. Islamists might valorize the first Islamic polity created by Muhammad in Mecca in the 7th century, but they also want what A.J. Gregor has termed a "developmental dictatorship" that will rescue Muslims from social and economic backwardness. In this respect, the Islamic Republic of Iran's quest for a nuclear bomb should be viewed in the context of a developmental dictatorship that wants to restore national sovereignty and grandeur to Islamic countries through aggressive military posturing. Islamists are not against technology, development, or modernization per se, but they must be in defense of Muslim values and nations.

Zarqawi and his ilk are certainly enemies of liberal or socialist politics of a secular type. They are fans of violence, like the extreme communists, fascists, and Nazis of the inter-war era that all sought to overturn liberal parliamentary democracies. There is no gentleness or compromise with political opponents. They are genocidal vis-a-vis Jews, Christians, Shi'ites, and Westerners. In terms of their tactics, they are indeed madmen without morality, even for their own people. And they are mostly men, seeking to restore the order of a puritanical, male-dominated Sunni Islam. But are they mad? Or, merely the guardians of the zeitgeist of our age? And what is the zeitgeist of the age? Surely it is Zarqawi and Barack Hussein Obama, the newly elected black US president.

Each epoch has its defining zeitgeist. In the 1960s, the hippie generation, flower power, Che Guevara, and peace, worker, student, and anti-war demonstrations marked the era. The feminists made their mark in the US in the 1970s. In the 1980s, Wall Street greed, Reaganism's attack on social services, and a hyper neo-liberal capitalism marked the age.

Perhaps the fall of the Berlin Wall twenty years ago and the attendant end of official communist states from the Soviet Union to East Germany marks my generation. It was a wonderful moment to see that wall of division crumble, people spontaneously crying and embracing, and the symbol of communist totalitarianism crumble like a house of cards. See one such photo above in the middle, from November 11, 1989, of Germans helping each other scale the Berlin Wall. I was touched by the opening lyrics of "Winds of Change" by German heavy metal band Scorpions, the 1990 anthem that defined freedom from communist tyranny:

I follow the Moskva
Down to Gorky Park
Listening to the wind of change.

The Scorpions had been in Moscow in 1989 and could already feel the beginning of the end for Soviet communism. We won't miss the secret police, one party dogma, the gulags that killed bodies and hopes in the millions. We won't miss Soviet tanks rolling into Budapest, Prague, and Warsaw to quell democratic reform. We won't miss the ruthless crushing of more democratic variants of bottom-up socialism. Germans paid a heavy price for supporting Nazism with the division of their country and people for almost 50 years, and in 1989 Germans were united and forgiven by the international community. We should still, however, maintain a deep memory in respect of the inglorious German past.

Yet, the fall of the Berlin Wall means very little to the students I teach today. It is for them a "point of detail in history," to paraphrase Jean-Marie Le Pe'n's awful remark about the Holocaust. They live in the age of the corporate university, Facebook and Twitter, gadgets and stars. They live in the age of show-me-the-dough and get me the job. History, even recent history, is an afterthought and luxury.

But my generation is perhaps no better. I was born in 1967, but I cannot say that my generation has defined itself. We are a generation without a dominant zeitgeist. We let history largely determine our fates, rather than determining history ourselves. And the more we do this, the more the Zarqawis of the world will define our age, both in the Muslim world and in the West. Yet, we must be proud of Obama and happy about the fall of the Berlin Wall.

What will the zeitgeist of tomorrow be? We in the West might be a little smarter and less malevolent. Do we really need to be in Muslim lands? By being in Muslim lands do we not create the seeds and soil for future Zarqawis? How do we expect to "pacify" Afghanistan when the British, Soviets, and Americans have all failed? The "surge" in Iraq might have worked, but what does not work is our imposition of a system of government on a supposedly sovereign state. How can we mediate between so many competing ethnic, cultural, religious, and tribal identities in Afghanistan and Iraq?

It is true that trying to compromise will not work with the Zarqawis of the world. The Pakistanis are learning this with the Taliban today. They are hitting the Taliban hard, as I write these words. A few months ago a deal was brokered between the Taliban and Pakistani regime in Swat. Swat could amazingly have its Islamic law. The Taliban Islamists understood that if you give us Swat, we will continue to march to the capital city in Islamabad. They began to occupy towns outside Swat. The Pakistani army had to act, particularly as they were also under US pressure in the "war on terror" with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Sadly Zarqawi is part of the zeitgeist of the age. The trick is to convince Muslims that where you have Islamists, you have more repression, suffering, authoritarianism, violence, and complete intolerance. The trick is to democratize the Muslim world. Where are the takers?

Obama (top left) is a great hope of our age. His election in 2008 might be the third defining moment of my generation after 9-11 (and Islamism) and the fall of the Berlin Wall. His politics is of a different style, which is certainly more inclusive. He provides great hope to minority groups throughout the world. He reinvigorates the liberal dream of greater participation for all cultural groups based on the principles of universal equality of opportunity and merit.

But my generation needs to dream more. What are we without our dreams? We need to dream of social justice for the huddled and poor masses of the world still yearning to be free. Billions that will not eat properly, never mind read this post. We need to dream of making peace in the Middle East, with two sovereign states (Palestinian and Israeli). We need to dream of democracy throughout the Arab world. We need to dream of more direct democracy in the West and other lands. We need to dream of people being allowed to speak out openly, from China to Myanmar, to their corrupt, despotic leaders. We need to find better ways of solving simmering national, ethnic, cultural, and religious disputes. We need to heal the earth, the depleted environment that is crying for help, but has very few real champions in key positions of power. We need to go beyond the shallow cults of money and technology towards an inclusive spirituality and politics, which puts people and the environment rather than ideology at the centre of our quest for a better world.

My generation, my generation cannot just fade away. It must enter history and dream. Dream more and bigger and better. Our zeitgeist can be truly universal and the greatest in human history. Are we up for the challenge?

Tamir Bar-On

You'll Never Walk Alone to Yazd

You'll Never Walk Alone to Yazd

The song "You'll Never Walk Alone" has been recorded by Frank Sinatra, Johnny Cash, Nina Simone, Gerry and the Pacemakers, and the Blind Boys of Alabama. Yet, You'll Never Walk Alone is a show tune from the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel. And as a great football (soccer) fan, I was first introduced to the song by the Liverpool Football Club faithful. They began to sing it in the 1960s and the song later spread to other clubs around the world. Win, lose, or draw, the Liverpool fans touchingly belt out You'll Never Walk Alone before the match begins. It creates an electric atmosphere in the stadium for players and fans alike! Here are the goose-bump, inspiring lyrics:

When you walk through a storm
Keep your chin up high
And don't be afraid of the dark.
When you walk through a storm
Keep your chin up high
And don't be afraid of the dark.

At the end of the storm
Is a golden sky
And the sweet, silver song of a lark.
Walk on through the wind,
Walk on through the rain,
Though your dreams be tossed and blown.
Walk on, walk on with hope in your heart,
And you'll never walk alone,
You'll never walk alone.

When You'll Never Walk Alone is sung by the Liverpool fans, it literally sends chills throughout my body! I am obviously a Liverpool fan! Here is a rendition of You'll Never walk Alone by the Liverpool fans, who have the motto "You'll Never Walk Alone" inscribed at the entrance to the Shankly Gates of their beloved Anfield stadium:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nfFi-_Hb2A

This particular rendition was sung in the 2005 Champion League quarter-finals against Italian club Juventus. 2005 was the year Liverpool won the Champion League. In the finals, they were down 3-0 to another Italian club, AC Milan, at half-time. They amazingly won 4-3! The spirit of You'll Never Walk Alone prevailed!

What I really appreciate about You'll Never Walk Alone is that the message is universal: Your dreams may seem distant and shattered, but keep your head held high. Walk this life with dignity. There are others that walk in your path. There are others willing to make community with you. There are others that believe and belief can sometimes make mountains move! So whether you are at a Liverpool FC match and your team is down badly, or in Yazd (Iran) in the face of an autocratic, theocratic regime, you must know that you do not walk alone. There are others like you, and your spirit is more powerful than you will ever know.

Yazd is a city in Iran with an estimated population of about 500,000. Historically, Yazd was a Zoroastrian city, before the Islamic conquest of Persia. Today Zoroastrians make up only 5 to 10 per cent of the population. Yazd is a city with a unique architectural heritage. The city is situated in an oasis between deserts. On the top left, see one example of desert architecture: A wind-catcher from Yazd. Its Zoroastrian history is alive with the Tower of Silence (top right) and Fire Temple, which has a fire blazing since 470 AD! The city also has gorgeous mosques such as the Kabir Jaame (top middle).

And Yazd has produced some interesting people too: Moshe Katsav (the former Israeli President), Mohammed Khatami (the former President of Iran), Mohammed Reza Aref (the former Vice President of Iran from 2001 to 2005), Mohammed Jafar Pouyandeh (an Iranian human rights dissident murdered by the regime in 1998), and Moe Arman (the Iranian-American scientist and inventor). What a diverse collection of figures!

So today I want to tell the people of Yazd and the people of Iran that we are with you. You'll Never Walk Alone. I am an Israeli and a Canadian, and I am with you. Your rulers are not with you, or for you. They walk against you. My rulers also sometimes walk against me, but I can speak out against their indignities. There are millions like me in Iran, Israel, Palestine, Canada, and around the globe that understand that we can walk together. That know that the clash of civilizations peddled by the mullahs is a fiction. Fundamentalist Islam is a charade because it attacks the diversity that produced all those great figures of various faiths and political outlooks from Yazd. It attacks the right of people to speak out openly in civil society and not be silenced or killed. The right of gays and lesbians to be as they are. The right of Jews not to be accused of being traitors, or Mossad agents, because they are Jews. The right to remember the painful history of the Holocaust, which is not merely a sympathy card to draw away from real Palestinian suffering. Conflicts are never so simple as we imagine them, the way the theocrats in Iran want to make us believe. Israel will not be wiped out and there must be a legitimate Palestinian state living in peace with Israel.

The people of Iran know better. They have produced a great cultural heritage for all times. They must know they will never walk alone. They must know that peace is closer than we think. And the wars and the rumours of war will, in the end, divide us, all of us, all children of the same God, whether we believe, believe sometimes, or believe not at all.

Tamir Bar-On

Xeres to Xinjiang

Xeres to Xinjiang

X is such a tough letter to find two interesting words to talk about for an entire blog entry! Yet, I have found two fascinating X words: Xeres and Xinjiang. As you might have guessed from previous entries, I march to my own drummer. I also specialize in esoteric words and subjects like Xeres and Xinjiang. With the McDonaldization of the planet, I figure we need some spice, variety, exotic locations, and hitherto unexplored subjects.

I picked Xeres and Xinjiang for another reason. Both places, the first a city in Spain, the second a region in China, have historical connections to the Muslim world. And I wanted to show, through Xeres and Xinjiang, that the Muslim world is not merely al-Qaeda, theocratic Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, and suicide bombers in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Surely I can only look with horror at these movements and regimes that not only hold the West and Israel hostage with violence and threats of violence, but also the Muslim world itself.

But the Islamic world is a vast constellation of nations, political ideologies, particular traditions, and varied interpretations of the rights and duties of Muslims in civil society and the state. The loose Islam of Bosnia can be contrasted with the fundamentalist Wahabbi Islam of Saudi Arabia. Turkey is an outgrowth of the grandeur of the Muslim Ottoman Empire, but today has a secular constitutional framework and relations with Israel. Iran, on the other hand, is theocratic and bent on Israel's annihilation. The Sufi influenced Islam in West African countries such as Mali is radically different from the puritanical, rigid Islam of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Tarik Ramadan, the major Islamic scholar in Europe, has called for a Europeanized Islam and a dialogue between civilizations, while al-Qaeda calls for a clash of civilizations.

So the Muslim world spans the globe and the umma (Muslim community of believers) is indeed variegated in its political tendencies and religious practices. These religious practices oscillate between strict adherence to what anthropologists call the Big Tradition (Qu'ran, sunna, official texts, etc.) and Little Tradition (the way Muslims actually practice Islam, whether a Persian villager, a Berber nomad in Morocco, or a teacher in Djakarta, Indonesia's capital city).

Let's now get back to our two X words. Xeres or Xerez was the old Muslim name for Jerez (Xeres) de la Frontera, a southern Spanish city of about 200,000 located in Andalusia. With its proximity to North Africa, Andaulsia was a land of Islamic conquest under the Umayyad dynasty from 711-718. Cordoba, Granada, Malaga, and Xeres were all under Muslim rule before they were regained by Catholics. In 1264, the city of Xeres was recaptured by Alfonso X of Castile. There is an 11th century Arab alcazar (castle or fortress) in Xeres, as well as beautiful Gothic churches. Half a millennium of Muslim rule left its imprint in Xeres and other Andalusian towns. Today Xeres is known not for its Muslim past, but for its world famous sherry and brandy, as well as mixed Spanish, Arab, and English horses. The coat of arm of Xeres is at the top on your left for your perusal!

Xinjiang, on the other hand, is a region in China with over 60 million Muslims. China has cracked down hard on Muslim Uyghur separatists in Xinjiang in the post-9-11 climate. The flag with the Muslim crescent above is used by Uyghurs as part of the East Turkestan independence movement in Xinjiang. It is officially banned by the Communist Chinese government. The East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) is listed as a banned terrorist group by the US and UN. There were Muslim rebellions in the area in the 19th century, but Islam came with the Turks as early as the 7th century. In 1990, 50 Uyghurs were killed in an abortive uprising. Others have been killed periodically since 1990. In 1996, a crackdown by the Chinese government began against Uyghur separatists and alleged religious extremists. It has been harsh and cruel: torture, unfair trials, arbitrary arrests, and disappearances. Just four days before the Beijing Olympics in 2008, 16 Chinese police officers were killed by ETIM.

Since 1949 the Chinese Han population has grown in Xinjiang from 6 per cent to 40 today. Like in Tibet, Uyghurs complain of this demographic transformation as a threat to the cultural well-being of non-Han ethnic groups. There are several Muslim groups in Xinjiang, including the majority Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, Tatars, Iranian-speaking Muslim groups (Pamiris, for example), and even Han Muslims. It is unlikely that the ETIM will be successful in driving Xinjiang towards independence under the current Communist rulers. Besides, 60 per cent of the region's economic output is based on oil and petrochemicals, which are critical to China's rapid growth. For China to present an image of a major world power, the secessionists in Xinjiang must be ruthlessly crushed.

From a faith that was born in the Arabian desert in 622, Islam spread to Xeres in 711 and Xinjiang a century earlier. Its reach became global, keeping with the universal monotheistic message of Islam. In 732 Muslims were at the gates of Paris. Like Christianity, Islam was spread with both the sword and the tenets of the holy book. While today Islam is more of a deep historical memory in Xeres, in Xinjiang it is still a living reality. How Islam develops in Xinjiang will depend on the success of Xinjiang's secessionists, the Communist rulers in Beijing, and the adaptation practices of ordinary Muslims in Xinjiang.

Tamir Bar-On

Waiting for Godot to Western Sahara

Waiting for Godot to Western Sahara

It is amazing that there is a United Nations (UN) member country for every letter in the alphabet except W and X. And it is a better bet that the next member state will come from the letter W rather than X! The W candidate for status as a potential internationally recognized UN state is Western Sahara. Like the characters in Samuel Becket's classic play Waiting for Godot, Western Sahara is still waiting. It is waiting for a final determination of its political status.

Western Sahara is one of those places that get very little media coverage, although lots is going on there in terms of a history of political conflict. Since the 1960s Western Sahara, formerly a Spanish colony, has been on the UN list of Non-Self Governing Territories. Its population is barely 400,000, but it is a vast territory consisting of 266,000 square kilometres in the south of Morocco. Its status is disputed between the Moroccan state and the Polisario Front independence movement in conjunction with the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). The Polisario has been involved in a war of national liberation or terrorism, depending on your perspective, against the Moroccan government since 1973. It is backed by Algeria, which is a constant sore spot between the two Maghreb neighbours.

Since 1991 there has been a ceasefire in the Western Sahara. Morocco controls most of the territory, with the rest under Polisario/SADR control. Amazingly, the Polisario is recognized by 46 states, including the African Union. Morocco has the Arab League on its side in the dispute with the Polisario and Algeria. To complicate matters, Morocco's southern neigbour, Mauritania, also has a territorial claim on the Western Sahara. Yet, Mauritania ceded its claim to a part of the Western Sahara in 1979.

Will Western Sahara be the first W nation in the UN? Or, will it wait indefinitely for its state like other stateless peoples from the Kurds to Palestinians and Tibetans to Corsicans? The new king of Morocco, Mohammed VI, is playing the waiting game of intransigence. He totally rejects any referendum on independence for Western Sahara. The monarch has made this definitive statement closing the door on independence: "We shall not give up one inch of our beloved Sahara, not a grain of its sand." Since 2007 the Polisario has threatened to resume fighting to win its independence.

The human rights situation in the Western Sahara has been bleak. Morocco's treatment and expulsion of Sahrawi civilians and forced disappearances have been condemned by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. The Polisario, in turn, has been criticized for the sequestering of the population in the Tindouf. Algeria has been criticized for continuing the conflict by funding the Polisario and expelling Moroccan civilians from Algeria.

There is speculation that Western Sahara might have oil reserves, but this has not been confirmed and exploited. In the new millennium, US and French companies began exploiting prospects for oil in the Western Sahara. Finding proven reserves could make Moroccans even less willing to hand over Western Sahara to Sahrawis. Sahrawis are largely nomadic, Berber, and Sunni Muslims, although their Islam often functions without traditional Islamic structures. Culturally, they are not very different from other Berber-Islamic constituencies in the rest of Morocco. One more reason for the Moroccans to play the waiting game.

The status of Western Sahara has been indeterminate since Spain relinquished sovereign control of the territory in 1975. The longer Sahrawis wait without a political solution, the more likely fighting will resume. If this is the case, then like in Waiting for Godot, the characters wait, waiting for what might never come, namely, independence for Western Sahara.

Tamir Bar-On

VE Day to Virtu

VE Day to Virtu

It was 64 years ago that the scourges of Nazism and Fascism were defeated on the European continent. On May 7 and 8, 1945, the Allies accepted Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender in Reims and Berlin. It was called Victory in Europe Day (VE Day). One of the most heinous regimes in human history, Hitler's Third Reich, was finally defeated. As Hitler committed suicide during the Battle of Berlin on April 30 1945, the German surrender was signed by Karl Donitz, Hitler's replacement as Germany's President. The war in the East would drag on for a number of months, before the terrible spectre of two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9 respectively.

In Germany, France, Britain, Czech Republic, and Slovakia May 8 is a public holiday to commemorate the triumph over Fascism and Nazism. The Soviet national holiday is on May 9, with its attendant painful memories of the Great Patriotic War that saw a staggering 30 million die in the fight against Nazism. Millions more Soviets perished under Stalin's gulags, forced deportations, and famines.

VE Day reminds us that we might live in a very different world had the Nazis won. It is also instructive because it showed that virtu was on the side of the Allies. Virtu is a word popularized by the Florentine political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527). It does not connote moral virtue, but rather the leadership, skills, wisdom, intelligence, guile, political realism, and willpower of rulers. In the end, VE Day was possible because Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin combined to have more virtu than Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito, Franco, and company. They also had more fortuna, the dose of fortune or luck that was necessary for these leaders to lead their peoples to victory in wars of self-defense against Nazi expansionism.

At what a horrendous cost! An estimated 70 million people paid with their lives on all sides, with a staggering 50 million civilians. 25 million soldiers died, many so young they did not even fall in love once. The Allies paid the heaviest burden: 60 million dead. It was the deadliest conflict in human history.

I once saw a Japanese movie with this epigraph, which sums up my disdain for war: "There is no such thing as a holy war." Wars can never be holy, even if the cause was righteous like the struggle against Nazism. They are not holy because in killing others we kill ourselves. In asking for soldiers to kill and be killed, they are forever filled with a valley of tears. Civilians also pay too heavy a price, as new technological innovations led to greater civilian casualties. Furthermore, honourable soldiers cannot rejoice at the site of their dead enemies because those soldiers are like them: Men with hopes and dreams, families and friends, joys and pains.

One million people celebrated VE Day on May 8, 1945 in London, New York, Paris, Ottawa, and numerous European cities. See the Ottawa celebrations above! US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died in office on April 12th and was unfortunately unable to celebrate VE Day. His successor, Harry Truman, made the fateful decision to drop two atomic bombs on Japan.

When we celebrate VE Day this week, we should bow our heads in respect to those that paid with their lives during World War Two. To all those that died, irrespective of the sides. To the victims of the Holocaust, the "crime of crimes," because people were cruelly targeted merely for who they were biologically. To the victory over the evils of Fascist ultra-nationalism and Nazi racial expansionism. To both our virtu and fortuna in winning the most terrible of wars, which has not suddenly ended the scourge of war. Machiavelli was very unambiguous in The Prince: Great leaders must possess virtu in abundance, but the flood of fortuna makes up for 50 per cent of the fate of leaders. Our fortuna was that Hitler possessed a childish, ideological racialism that was unable to compromise at all. The trinity of his enemies had to be completely subdued and exterminated: Jews, communist Slavs in the East, and the Anglo-American menaces in London and Washington. Our virtu was that we were masterful on the battlefields from the heroism of Russian troops at Stalingrad to the Allied victory in Normandy. But we should also pray for our fortune. For our white flag of hope that the dreaded swastika does not fly in Paris, London, Washington, Ottawa, or Moscow.

Tamir Bar-On

United Nations to Uruguay

United Nations to Uruguay

The United Nations is the running joke of the international community. Its name is synonymous with global indifference, the absence of moral vision and will, corruption, excessive bureaucratization, and obsessive chattering of world problems without results.

The United Nations cannot stop dictators from invading sovereign states, or sufficiently condemn non-state terrorist groups from declaring de facto war on member states. When genocides take place such as Rwanda in 1994, its top soldier Romeo Dallaire pleads with its top officials for more soldiers, equipment, and support to stop the slaughter of Tutsis and moderate Hutus. He asks for more robust shooting orders against the Interhamwe genocidal militias. Can't do it, they say! Moreover, those officials don't return phone calls because they are like caviar socialists: Too busy talking about changing the world and more interested in eating the best caviar and drinking the most expensive wines. If any other top officials did not return calls on the weekend as little boys and girls were slaughtered under their command, they would be fired and held criminally responsible under a court of law.

We have lowered our expectations for the United Nations so much that its top officials get away with murder, literally speaking. But the United Nations is a reflection of us as an international community. In "A Problem From Hell," Samantha Power competently and sadly shows how the United States, the world guardian of liberal values, stood idly as six genocides took place in the 20th century. The United Nations and the international community have followed this tune of indifference. Moreover, the United Nations participates in charade resolutions that disproportionately target one country, Israel, as the worst outlaw state in human history. Absurd charges of genocide fly at Israel, while real genocides in Darfur (Sudan) are ignored by the massive Arab and Muslim voting bloc at the United Nations.

Admittedly, the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is an independent body with an affiliation to UN member states and the Security Council, represents a hope to punish those responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Yet, numerous great powers such as the United States and China have not signed on, current cases are all in Africa (leading to the suspicion of politicized justice), and powers of enforcement are dependent on national governments that might engage in the crimes. Finally, the ICC cannot prevent genocides and only punish after the crimes were committed. The hope is that the image of major leaders and soldiers behind bars will spur a new global human rights consciousness that attacks the immunity of even the most powerful from committing crimes that "shock the conscience of humanity."

Now, United Nations to Uruguay. Well, here is the connection. Uruguay is a United Nations member. It is a small South American nation in the southeastern part of the continent, bordering only Brazil. It is also next to Argentina, across the Rio de la Plata. It is the second smallest South American country after Suriname. Its population is only about 3.5 million. It is one of the riches countries in the America, one of the most sophisticated in terms of curtailing poverty, fighting corruption, and respecting labour and political rights.

Yet, despite its small size, Uruguay, unlike the United Nations in general, is also a gift to the footballing world. If you can believe it, Uruguay has won two football (soccer) World Cups in 1930 and 1950 respectively. The inaugural World Cup was in Uruguay and the Uruguayans won it by defeating Argentina 4-2. In the 1950 World Cup in Brazil, Uruguay caused the major stir in footballing history. In front of 199,000 fans in the venerated Maracana in Brazil, they fell to Uruguay 2-1. All those that love football understand what this meant: David defeating Goliath on Goliath's home turf. It is the stuff of myths, heroism, and the story of triumph against great odds. It inspires us all.

If tiny Uruguay can win the World Cup and continue to produce glorious footballers from Forlan to Francescoli, then why might we not hope for more from the United Nations? Now we could say let's scrap it all. Get rid of this sclerotic institution. Probably not an option since member states count on the United Nations for their own existence and even legitimization. So radical changes are necessary. A robust, international force that stops genocides when they are occurring. A force that can practicably challenge the genocidal maniacs of our world. If you were in danger of dying in Rwanda or Bosnia-Herzegovina, would you not appreciate a Good Samaritan walking along the road of life helping you? Realpolitik, national interest, and economic and geopolitical considerations often win the day over the Good Samaritan. Yet, by failing to act when we can, is the United Nations and the international community not an accessory to genocide?

Small Uruguay and its football glories represent, for me, all that is beautiful, heroic, mysterious, and hopeful about the world. The United Nations with its massive resources, on the other hand, represents the pole of much with what is wrong with the world: Indifference and the lack of moral clarity. I salute Uruguay, or the Eastern Republic of Uruguay in its full incarnation, because it represents what US President Obama would call the "audacity of hope" in a world rife with hopelessness and indifference. I salute Uruguay for its stunning national motto "Liberty or Death!" Now my hope is that Uruguay returns to the glories of its footballing past and wins a third World Cup!

Tamir Bar-On

Teotihuacan to Time

Teotihuacan to Time

If I could travel back in time, or take a space voyage to another epoch, I would go to Teotihuacan. It is a giagantic architectural marvel located some forty kilometres northeast of Mexico City. In the first millennium CE, Teotihuacan was the largest city in the pre-Columbian Americas. The city was made a UNESCO world heritage site in 1987. It is unknown whether the city played a central or peripheral role in the empires of the age, but the speculation is that Teotihuacan was a multiethnic state consisting of Nahua, Otomi, Totonac, Zapotec, Mayan, Mixtec, and other groups. The height of the city's power was from 150 to 450, with perhaps as many as 250,000 people and 30 square kilometres under its territorial ambit. It is likely that the city fell around the 7th or 8th centuries, probably at the hands of the Toltecs.

Teotihuacan reminds us how old human history is, how it so rich and varied, and how once powerful civilizations have their springs of ascent and winters of decline. We live in a society based on lightning speed, the cults of money and technology, and the forgetful memory of the past. Yet, Teotihuacan is part of the history of my continent as a soul with a destiny in the Americas. The Americas is not merely North America consisting of New York, Toronto and Montreal, but also Teotihuacan, Chiapas, Buenos Aires, La Paz, San Jose, and the Iroquois Confederacy. Like Teotihuacan, the essence of the Americas is its multiracialism, its mestizo imprint, its meeting of Native, European, and other cultures from the Italian immigrants of Buenos Aires to the Jamaicans of Toronto.

Teotihuacan was dubbed by later Nahuatl-speaking Aztecs as the "birthplace of the gods." And the Pyramid of the Sun (photograph above), the Avenue of the Dead, and the Pyramid of the Moon in Teotihuacan all connote a spiritual connection to the forces of nature and the mysteries of life and death. Human sacrifice, particularly of enemy warriors, was practiced in Teotihuacan. In addition, animals such as wolves, cougars, eagles, and snakes that were thought to have mythical powers were imprisoned in cages and even buried alive.

Despite these sacrificial practices, what I find amazing about places like Teotihuacan is that people have always sought to find meaning from their existence. They are not merely satisfied with existing. We need to know more about ourselves, our communities, our histories, and the mysterious forces that govern human history and time. The people of Teotihuacan were making sense of their world. This is an eternal story of humankind throughout the ages. Time will not change this reality, even if today we might banish the old and valorise the new.

Time has given us various insights about what we are primarily as human beings. Marx insisted that we were essentially economic beings, moulded by class conflict. Darwin that were were principally governed by the laws of evolution. Freud that we are biological, sexual beings with pure, instinctual drives. We are all of these, but certainly more. The lesson of Teotihuacan and empires of times past is that we are also spiritual beings, sense-making-beings, making sense of a chaotic universe through reverence, worship, and evolving forms of veneration. Old gods die and new gods will always be born.

Tamir Bar-On