sorting out the world's problems in minutes

2005-07-19T20:24:00.000+02:00

H.M., The Author

globalisation, third-worldism and all that shit

2005-07-19T20:04:00.000+02:00

Some time ago a good friend of mine (Federica Z., whom I salute) lent me a little book, “Il Vizio Oscuro dell’Occidente” (The Dark Habit of The West, roughly translated), by an Italian journalist named Massimo Fini.
Not much of a book really, full of dogmatic bullshit about the West being sick, America being evil, 9/11 being the logical consequence of US’s supposedly arrogant attempt to impose its ways on the rest of the world.
Nevertheless, as bad as this mercifully short book is, it still gives some food for thought, and gave me the input to try to put in writing what my ideas are about globalisation and all that relates to it, which is a lot.

Well, towards the end the book does say some things that are agreeable with, for example it is true that we in the west seem to be made to live in a constant race whereby – instead of trying the enjoy a little bit the present – we are permanently launched towards the future, so that as soon as a goal has been obtained we immediately have to run to another objective so that we can never find an equilibrium and as a result we live in semi-permanent frustration, angst, lack of satisfaction and in many cases depression.
Depression – often even leading to suicide tendencies - is indeed considered a typical rich-world disease; isn’t that big enough an alarm-bell to tell us that something is seriously wrong with the way we’re living and that something fundamental ought to be changed ?

Yes, let’s face it, it is true that the West is creating a bit of a monster out of itself and that globalisation is in many ways making things worst.
Consumerism as a way of life is a monstrous idea, I dare anyone to say otherwise; still this is what governs the lives of billions of people, basically almost anyone on earth who has the means to be a consumer at all.
The idea is not longer to produce in order to consume but rather the other way around.
When I see on TV government-sponsored ads basically telling me to spend more, consume more, I just shriven: my government is telling me to go out and buy things I don’t need, to part from my hard-earned money so that I can help to get the economy going.
So the economy needs to produce more things that are actually not needed in order to prosper and nobody gives a shit that if I buy a un-needed good not only will I have to sacrifice on more useful things (like more free-time to spend as I find fit for example), not only do I contribute to pollute and consume the world resources (multiply that for billions of un-needed goods and you can see this ain’t no joke) but above all I accept to exist as a mere economic instrument, a consumer rather that a conscious man, and that is sad, very very sad.

Still, let’s try to be positive, there is no point in criticising point-blank everything the West stands for, as the above-mentioned book does.
We may not be the best of possible worlds but we certainly aren’t the worst neither, and thinking or proposing to go back to some kind of pre-industrial society is blatantly out the question. Who would want that anyway, in spite of all our current faults ?
And what I find very irritating is also the tendency of those who want to blame the West for all of the world’s ills.
Poverty in Africa ? blame the West, the aftermath of colonialism, exploitative globalisation.
Now c’mon, colonialism has ended at least 50 years ago, and how is it anyway that other countries that also were colonised in – say – Asia are now doing pretty fine ? take Hong Kong for example, or Malaysia.
And isn’t it true that it was exactly during the colonial years that so much infrastructure has been built in Africa ? the few roads, railways or solid buildings that still stand were build during that time, often at great sacrifice for the colonising countries, as having colonies had become as much a matter of prestige for the European powers indulging in it as one of resources’ exploitation.
Or take Liberia, on of the most wrecked countries in Africa and therefore in the world.
That was never nobody’s colony, on the contrary Liberia was founded by black Americans willing to go back to their roots.
Why not place responsibilities where responsibilities are due ?
Is it the West’s fault if so many pointless wars are fought in Africa ? what for exactly, what on earth is it that’s supposedly motivating us, to make money selling Africans some arms ? oh really, so evil are we ?
So the genocide in Rwanda I guess was really a conspiracy of the powerful machete lobby, given that that butchery was mainly perpetrated by men with machetes ?
Zimbabwe was richer than South Korea when it declared in independence from Great Britain, now it’s another wreck from which anybody who has the chance to do it just wants to escape.
Is it the West fault again or is it hopeless, corrupted and violent government by that idiotic leader named Mobutu ?
Nigeria has received hundreds of billions of dollars in oil revenue in the last decades, still its population is barely richer than 20 years ago.
Congo has imploded, Somalia too, Kenia is effectively another failed state, the Ivory Coast is rapidly going down the drain and if it hasn’t already it’s only thanks to the presence of the French army and similar stories are the rule in Africa, successful ones being the exception (South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Mozambique, what else ?)

The fact is that we really do live in a complex society, which is only getting more and more complex by the year.
Take globalisation, again: only a fool could be against it, if you think rationally and objectively about it.
What should be done to prevent it ? put a 400% tax on air-travel, ban the internet, prevent trade with other countries, outlaw Mc Donnald’s and Burger Kings ? tempting perhaps, but on what ground ? that they are too big and successful and force out of business smaller mom-and-pop eateries ? and what about letting the consumers decide ?

I’m the first one to feel sad if a small picturesque independent business shuts down to make room for another real-estate agency (in northern Italy where I live there seem to be more of those than bakeries), fast-food/crap-food joint or soul-less fashion store but then again let’s face it, where do we go for our own shopping, most of the times, the big shopping at least, whenever we need to spend say € 50 or more ? we go where it is more convenient, cheaper and with more choice. How surprising eh ?

Still, I too have some problems with modern globalisation, certain aspects of it at least.
I can’t help thinking one of its main consequence is a race towards the bottom; the consumers gains, true, but only a fraction of the cost-saving obtained thanks to this race to the bottom is actually passed-on to consumers, the rest stays in the pockets of the big companies that are in a position to take advantage of globalisation.
To say that this makes the rich richer and the poor poorer is not correct however, not on a global level anyway; proof of this is that the world economy as a whole is rising as never before in history - by about 5% a year - and the big gainers of globalisation such as China are growing much faster than that.
Even the west gains but with the difference that in the west this race towards the bottom is effectively increasing the gap between rich and poor, and more and more people are left out.

The big question for us should be: will we have to give up our (relatively) good standard of living in order to embrace the joys of globalisation ?
Good standard of living means not having to work 10 or 12 hours a day, being paid if we are sick, taking long holidays (long my ass, 4 to 6 weeks a year ain’t nothing to me) and so forth.
Paying a DVD player € 50, a pretty Zara shirt € 15.99, toys for our kids (what kids ?) half of what we would have spent 10 years ago is all very nice and jolly but is all this an advantage big enough to offset the loss of society as we know it ?
Here I need to be careful to avoid being the real conservative scared of changes, a type of person which I abhor as they never get it right, but then again change is not always good for its own sake.
More than anything I would abhor a society whose only scope is to be ever more efficient and where ever more goods were produced for consumerism’s sake.

To get down to earth again, thinking of imposing tariffs on certain imports from certain countries and/or certain companies should be no anathema. Sorry but I can’t help thinking there is something wrong if a western firm goes to China or Vietnam to produce paying peanuts to local workers, sells back its manufactured products in the west at a huge profit (possibly putting on labels that read “designed in California, made in China, like on the Ipod I’m listening to right now) and then maybe even pays its taxes in the Cayman Islands or Bahamas or Luxemburg.
Firms should have a sense of responsibility also for the people who work for them, who are entitled to a degree of tranquillity from the fear of losing their jobs for no good reason, amongst other rights.
If they don’t have this sense of responsability then they should be made to, by the law.

I know the reality of things is rather more complex than that, as it is also true that many firms end up closing factories in high-income countries to open new plants in cheap ones often against their will just because they know that not doing it would simply put them out of the market sooner rather than later.
I am not an anti-corporate type by nature, not at all, I’ve always worked for manufacturing companies and I know very well how tough life is for them.

All I’m saying is that even a convinced pro-market, pro-free-enterprise like me has to admit that sometimes the invincible forces of the market should not be let to their own device, some form of regulation is necessary.
The invisible hand that Adam Smit used to talk about does not really make everything perfect.
Globalisation has been around for centuries, basically ever since men started trading and it’s a phenomenon that has changed skin many times over throughout history.
It offers excellent opportunities to mankind but also an excellent route for selfish and careless behaviour for people/companies who do not give a flying fuck for the well being of the communities they are inserted in (in fact they do not want any such community-bullshit anywhere near them) but are only interested in how best to optimize their profits.
Since I refuse to think that this is all a company should be concerned about, I refuse globalisation as it has taken shape in recent years.
Raise some tariffs please, let’s see what happens.
If it won’t work we’ll take them away and think of something else.

10th anniversary of Srebrenica slaughter and Terror Attacks in London

2005-07-19T19:47:00.000+02:00

These days mark the 10th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, when around 8000 men where murdered in cold blood by the serb-bosniak butchers, commanded by General Mladic and the then serb-bosniak leader, Mr. Karazdic.
These 8000 people where killed for being Muslim as they though they where safe since the town of Srebrenica was supposedly defended by UN troops, under the command of a Dutch General.
Nobody lifted a finger to defend them, since it is understood that the UN troops did not have a mandate to use weapons if not to defend themselves.
Formally speaking then these UN soldiers cannot really be blamed for having done nothing, as they would have gone beyond their mandate if they fought the ugly serb-bosniak paratroopers in order to try to avoid the carnage.
From a moral and human point of view of course things are different but the real scandal here is that nobody had the willingness to give the UN real power during the war in former Yugoslavia, which was not exactly child-play.
And that’s all got to do with politics, European politics especially, since the Yugoslav civil war was primarily a European crisis and as such should have been handled primarily at a European level.

I remember very well the usual one-way peace mongers (anime belle, as they would be called in Italian), ever ready to protest against any “undue interference” and calling for dialogue, as if dialogue was an option with the likes of Mrsr. Karazdic and Mladic, both in parliaments and in the streets, and in particular ever ready to protest against the US, always blamed for anything it does or does not do.

These people should count themselves morally responsible for much of what happened during the years of the civil war in former Yugoslavia, for much suffering could have been avoided if only Europe had had the guts to get its acts together for once.
Take the siege of Sarajevo for instance: it lasted for years and during those years God only knows the degree of suffering its inhabitants have had to go through; well, it was only after the countless anonymous bomb launched into the town centre from the surrounding hills killed a few more dozen people that finally someone – the evil Americans – did eventually do something, and used planes to attack the positions from where Sarajevo was kept under siege.
The whole thing lasted exactly 3 days, and then the siege of Sarajevo was over, from then on things finally started to improve.
And during those 3 days I remember very well the appeals of the usual “anime belle” proclaiming how wrong it was for the Americans to bomb, that we were risking to start a Third World War and that violence never solves anything and bla bla bla.
Even the Pope himself, who after each big massacre including the bomb at the market that finally triggered the Americans to intervene would make his appeals to stop this tragedy, found nothing better to say that using force was no good when the planes took off, when it was abundantly clear that diplomacy would have gone nowhere at all.

So the civil war in Yugoslavia, with the siege of Sarajevo and the butchery of Srebrenica in particular, really were the most shameful page of European politics and of the European conscience since WWII, and one would only hope that some lessons had been learned from it, but it would be in vain, nothing has been learnt.

The same “anime belle”, those who for some reason are absolutely convinced of standing on a somehow moral higher ground than the rest of us and of holding the Truth in their hands, continue to lecture us on how things really are, on how really it’s the West that has got to take the blame for all that’s wrong in the world, that Islamic terror really it’s just the consequence of what we do to the Muslims and so forth.

So it’s no wonder if they refuse to see any threat in militant Islamism neither, in spite of all evidence; the same category of people who during the cold-war years would protest loudly if the US would rid the minuscule Caribbean island of Granada of its brand-new, Soviet-backed communist government but would find nothing to say against the CCCP invading Afghanistan, just to mention one.
But clearly an Islamic threat exists and to say so it’s not being paranoiac, but denying means being either very blind or in very bad faith or a combination of both.

Just a week ago four bombs got off on London’s tube and buses, killing over 50 people and maiming hundreds.
Who did it ? British nationals in their early ‘20s of Pakistani origin and from middle class families.
Get the point ? these are second-generation Britons, their parents having emigrated into the UK some decades ago in search of a better life, which the UK duly provided.
Now let’s leave behind any consideration on the lack of gratefulness for the host country that gave these people a chance for a better life, welcomed them, did its best to assimilate them, gave them the advantages of democracy, a British passport and usually also quite a bit of welfare money; this is not the main point.
The main point is that it is once again proven that Islam cannot coexist within the (generous) cultural and political boundaries of a western democratic society and that it is very very wrong for western democratic countries to allow millions of muslims to live within them.

What to do then ? recognize once for all that not all immigrants are the same; just as insurance companies make a statistical profile of their customers to determine how risky is it to themselves to sell them an insurance contract and therefore charge according to this risk-factor, governments should do the same: welcome immigrants from countries or from national groups that pose no risk and leave the rest out; regrettably the rest means first of all the Muslims, even if this would of course be unfair to all those who have no plans to cause trouble (although their kids or grandkids might). Sometimes some kind of rough justice is unavoidable.
About those who already live legally in the EU of course there’s not much to do (but if their working and/or residence permits are due to expire they should not be renewed), but as for letting new Muslims immigrate into the EU, forget it, no way.

The sad truth of the matter is that Europe really did try hard to assimilate its immigrants, and at times it even appeared as though these efforts had succeeded; regrettably it isn’t so and it would appear that it is especially the countries that did the most in this sense that also suffer the most, namely, Holland, Spain, the UK.
I will never forget for instance the images of those masses of UK Muslims that – when was it, early ‘80s ? – were demanding in the streets of places like Bradford or Leeds the death of writer Salman Rushdie after Iman Kohmeini of Iran emitted that infamous fatwa against him after the publication of the Satanic Verses, even offering a financial reward for whomever killed him first.
How is that as a spectacle of integration, of understanding of the basic values of a democracy by our beloved Muslim immigrants ?
That was about 20 years ago, long before 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq and so on and things of course only got much worst since then.
What kind of faith or trust do these people deserve, why should we want to have them amongst us, why do we allow them to come live beside us in our own countries, in our societies which might not be perfect but are nevertheless the result of important social and cultural conquests that we have achieved throughout our history, an history that all in all we can be pretty proud of, even though there’s much room for improvement ?
In short, what good do Muslim people bring to us when we let them come live in our countries ? not much really, in the best case they just bring their rather backward ideas and ways of living and then mostly stick to their own closed communities, in the worst cases they are bloodthirsty terrorists.
Sorry, the integration dream is over, it won’t work, not with Muslims anyway so let’s start thinking about defending ourselves now, without getting hysterical, without over-reacting or resorting to senseless violence or releasing our most primitive impulses.
Let’s just keep a distance from those people that hate us, consider us infidels, our women whores and that even if they were granted the privilege to live in our countries have not loyalty whatsoever for them or respect for our ways.
Islam is a big source of instability and a social concern that we are allowing to grow stronger and stronger: we are to live with it but let’s at least keep it under close scrutiny.

Aid to Africa, how to Tackle Poverty

2005-07-07T11:43:00.000+02:00

Another big concert for Africa, Live8, just before the G8 summit of Edinburgh, Scotland, in July 2005
Great gig, no doubt, 8 gigs in fact, one for each of the G8 countries, with the immediate aim of dropping poor countries debt (one thing I didn’t quite get: even wrecked Russia is expected to give up its credits ?)
Anyway, it was great to see the Pink Floyd reunite after 22 years, and The Who and several others but really, how seriously can one take these things? listening to the appeals of many of these super stars (not all of them thankfully, but the Italian artists seemed to me particularly prone to this) was frankly embarrassing, as you would just hear the worst self-condemning (self to the western world of course, not themselves and their usually fancy ways) and naïve bullshit you would expect from a 17 year old with a very confused and partial idea of how things are.
So that’s just to say that personally I cannot quite stand the superficiality and “feel good” sense that accompanies these occasions.
Fighting poverty is a very serious issue but as for most things, the remedies to at least start doing something about it are quite obvious, and dropping the debt is definitely not one of them, quite the opposite rather.

So, what’s to be done? Easy dude, here is the recipe:

1) Terminate once for all one of the stupidest way to burn money ever invented, no more subsidies to the agriculture sector in the E.U., USA and Japan and at the same time eliminate all punitive import duties for agricultural products from abroad. As for our farmers, with a fraction of the money saved they can just be put in early retirement and anyway I’m sure that for some specific produce there would still be work for some of them.
2) Give to as many people as possible in poor countries access to land titles; once they’ll know a certain piece of land is theirs they’ll tend to it more carefully and they’d be able to use it as collateral for example to purchase tools that can help them increase their land’s productivity, or better their life.
3) Train these same people on the best techniques to tend their land over a long period of time, how best to have access to buyers, how to choose what to grow etc. In short, help them become responsible and competent farmers rather than just subsistence ones, as it is often the case now.
4) Education, give as many as possible as much schooling as possible.
5) Implement some serious demographic-control policies (again, education), disease-control policies and get rid of the worst dictators and wealth-destroyers, such as Mr. Mugabe in Zimbabwe, using force if necessary.

Would Africa be rich if this was to happen? No, but it would be much better off than now and this could be taken as an extraordinary achievement.
Being rich anyway should not be considered in itself a value; Africans for example display a remarkable joy for life even though they tend to be very poor.
This is what matters, being happy rather than rich, but that’s another matter all together, let’s not venture into this subject here.
What needs to be eliminated – also because it really does offend the conscience of anybody with a grain of heart – is the most extreme sort of poverty, that of those people who literally die of hunger and/or easy-to-cure diseases in their millions.

The measures mentioned above are of course easier said than done, try convince the French for example that their cows cannot be subsidized by the EU to the tune of € 2 a day each while most people in Africa have to do with less than half that much, or try talk about demographic control to any religious hierarchy, Christian, Muslim or whatever.
But of course I’m only referring to an ideal scenario whereas the world was ruled by reasonable people; in the meantime, talking of dropping the debt is the one thing that should not be done, except maybe in some very few cases where the countries in question have proved for real that they deserve it.

West vs Islam

2004-11-07T17:58:00.000+01:00

Relations between the West and the muslim worlds are bad, worse than they have been in all recent history.
9/11 has been the turning point, since that day the divide has grown deeper and deeper.

Many in the West think Islam has declared a war on them, many in muslim countries think the West has waged war against Islam.

This is a very typical impasse, one that feeds on itself and will continue to do so‚ 'till someone big enough breaks this vicious circle.

If creating greater hatred between the West and Islam is what Osama bin Laden and his like wanted to achieve (and it was), they are winning big time so far.

9/11 was in fact a declaration of war, and America and its allies were totally justified in wiping out the Taliban in Afganistan, as they did.

Unfortunately America went then out of its way, over-reacting and over-killing, namely in Iraq.

The link between Mr. Saddam Hussein and Al Qaida was totaly false and everyone knew this all along (except amongst american masses it would appear, as in their usual ignorance of things of the world a great deal of them though that 9/11 was the job of Saddam Hussein himself, but then again they are the same american masses who would get him confused with Mr. Qaddafi of Lybia, as I have witnessed first-hand. And all this does not say much good about the quality of the quality of media information in the US).

And the never-ending and ever-worsening crisis between Isreal and Palestine of course is not much help either, especially since the US ‚Äì the only country on earth Israel will listen to ‚Äì appears to be so uncritically bent towards Israel‚Äôs side, with President W. Bush pubblicy calling Mr. Sharon "a man of peace".

Then of course there is the terrorism of the arabs...

Let me tell you that - unlike many others - I would not define as terrorism any killing perpetrated against westerners.

If palestinians kill jewish settlers in Gaza or in the West Bank or if they kill israeli military, to me that's bad but terrorism it ain't, just as it isn't if iraqi kill occupying forces, not matter how sorry I may feel for them from a human point of view.

But terror attacks against the civilian population, in our own countries, attacks such as that which happened in Madrid on march 11th/04, on Jerusalem buses every so often or of course 9/11 in New York and Washington DC, events like these alone would justify the harshest response, such as - for example - repatriating to their own countris as many muslims as possible and admitting into our own borders as few as possible in the future.

In fact, I think too many muslim live in Europe already, and their influence is more bad than good, even leaving terrorism out.

And here I come to my main point; we can be friends but only up to a point: too deep are the cultural differences between us so we can live peacefully but without expecting to be best buddies.

Each of us at its own place.

Westerners and muslims together I'm sorry but just don't mix well.

The good news is that they don't need to, the world is big enough for both of them to mind their own business without stepping on each other shoes (or sandals).

We can and should continue to deal with each other, be on amicable terms nevertheless, trade with each other.

We'll buy your oil you'll buy our goods, we'll visit your beautiful suks you'll visit our casinos and relieve your self-inflicted religion-inspired sexual frustration with our hookers, we'll eat some cous-cous you'll eat
some pork-free hamburgers and so on.

We should forget exporting our very own idea of democracy to them, they should forget about exporting Islam to us.

Then we will continue to be disgusted by the way they treat women and the general backwardness of their societies, and they will continue to be disgusted by our supposed decadence, lack of spirituality and loss of values.

At they same time we will feel a secret fascination for their culture, they will feel a certain envy for our liberties and the dinamicity of our societies, not to mention our BMWs and Audis.e

What should the EU make of itself ? what about letting Turkey in ?

2004-11-07T17:37:00.000+01:00

What exactly does the EU stand for, what are its objectives, what is it supposed to do, how much do europeans care about it ? all very difficult questions to answer, except perhaps the last one: not very much.
This is a pity since only as a united entity can Europe hope to still count as something in the world if we look into the future.
Not only that but Europeans share a certain “way of being”, there is such a thing as a European Culture, in parallel to countless local cultures.
And, after centuries of european nation states fighting against one another, invading each other’s territories and killing each other in large numbers as recently as some 60 years ago, it is quite a satisfaction and quite an achievement to see these same countries not only getting along pretty well but actually wanting to get together.
Today the thouth of – say – Germany and France going to war is totally inconcievable, war is behind us, expect in the Balkans that is, which in fact is a bit of a black hole in our continent.

To me the EU stands for this: an achieved maturity by different people that, having gone through the horrors, cruelty and senselessness of many wars throughtout their history, have finally and definitely come to realize that they don’t want any of that anymore and that - rather than try to impose one upon the other - much better it is to take each other’s hand and try build something together.

Its objectives therefore should be to create an ever-closer union, idially a federal state where every country member and within them every separate group of people (catalans, welsh, basques etc.) would mantain their own prerogatives and – in short - their own culture, while at the same time being part of a bigger project, the creation of the United States of Europe.

It must be admitted that, unfortunately, a european identity is something not many people feel as part of their own being.
This can partly be blamed on politicians, often too easy in using the EU as a culprit and a scapegoat for anything that’s wrong and of the EU institutions themselves, way too burocratic, too politicizied, often corrupt and, in general, too little inspiring.
No one has ever really bothered to explain to us europeans what the EU could do for us, as local politicians prefer to cultivate their own local little turf.

But, somehow, the EU unifying project goes on and, usually by stealth, new steps take place every now and then that bring countries closer together.
The peoples of Europe may not be particulary excited or even interested in that but they are not against it either; on average I would say they accept it rather passively.
Evidentely somewhere in their mind they know this ain’t a bad thing, only they have more pressing issues to think about, like getting laid tonight, finish to pay the mortgage, booking the next holiday.

Now, almost 50 years after its creation, the EU I think has reached a point of impasse, or maybe you could call it a turning point: it must decide where does it want to go from here.
It has expanded as much as it could, having just absorbed 10 new countries. If anything, it has probably expanded too much already; personally I wonder what’s the point of having admitted countries like Slovakia for example, which choose to split from its other half not so long ago and whose democratic credentials are still very doubtful, or Malta, a new trouble-maker whose benefit to the EU are not very clear to me.
Expanding any further would mean admitting into the EU basket-case and/or problematical countries like Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia and – God forbid – maybe even Albania.
All this would be a self-inflicted wound for the EU from all points of view.

What the EU really needs to concentrate on now is in consolidating the unifying project rather than having an ever-increasing number of countries joining in.
The consolidation process will actually be hard enough, as many irreconcilable instances will somehow have to be accomodated.
For this there’s not magical solution to be found, the only way forward would be to create a multi-layers European Union.
It is plain and obvious to anyone that almost any single country that constitutes part of the EU has different ideas about it, and a different agenda.
If the UK does not want to give up certain sovereign powers why should it be forced to ? if other countries would be happy to move forward towards a truly unified Europe, why shouldn’t they be allowed to ?
The european sentiment is felt very differently from country to country: pretty strong in Benelux for instance, almost unexistant in the UK
If the EU does not create a system from here on whereas every single country is free and able to choose how much sovereign power it is prepared to give up and how committed to a truly unified european entity it therefore accepts to be, the impasse will just never go away, and it can only get worst.
The last thing the EU needs for the next decade at least is therefore to swallow any new entrants, let alone one like Turkey.

Once a strong and properly-working EU should have been created, a multi-layers EU that is, with an inner core of countries effectively merged into one, a second layer of countries unified more or less on the same terms as now and then a third and possibly a fourth layer whereas the last one would just be a glorified free trade area, there would be no problem for Turkey to join the last layer, so effectively getting what it most wants from Europe: foreign investments.

As for admitting Turkey into a inner european core, sorry, no.
The reasons for this are the same heard many times: Turkey is too big, too popolous, too poor, too backward and it’s muslim.
Anyone who’s really even just mildly interested in the idea of a united Europe is very unlikely to be in favour of Turkey joining in; it’s not exagerration to say that this would be the end of the ideal of a united Europe.

Those who say that a muslim country joining the EU would send a signal to the rest of the muslim world that Islam can indeed exist within a democratic and modern framework forget two things: first of all, this is all to be proved, and chances are that things wouldn’t be quite so smooth.
Second, the EU does not exist in order to make some kind of (unproven and risky) geo-political statement in order to help the islamic world to bend towards more democratic and tolerant ways. It exists for the benefit of its own member states, to create a stronger political and economic actor on the world stage, as a natural results of an historic process by countries that after having fought each other throughout their whole history have now come to the conclusion that peace and collaboraion is a far better option than war and conflict.

Turkey does not belong to Europe neither geographically nor culturally, the debate should be dropped without any need for Turkey to feel offended or rejected.
Economic partnership yes, political union no.
As economic partnership is what turkish are mostly interested in anyway, this doesn’t even need to be much of an argument in the first place.›