Beware The CyberFlame

Malicious, it is and powerful, capable of hiding itself, and altering itself on command.  And of gathering data meant to be shielded from all but those given especial access through virtue of their top secret and expert technological status in government, in the belief that their own malicious intentions can remain hidden from the world at large.

Iran's National Computer Emergency Response Team has become aware that a sleeper virus of powerful proportions and complexity has been nestled comfortably for years within their computer systems controlling their nuclear program.  Evidently some state actor with the precisely talented minds of technology specialists at their command has been able to infiltrate their innermost state secrets.

The newly-detected but long-installed Cyber weapon bears resemblance to later, powerfully effective worms that were deployed and detected far quicker, for the same purpose; to destabilize and to destroy.  Flame, which is the name of the newly-detected malware, is cousin to Stuxnet, itself a close relative of Duqu.

The Russian computer researchers on cyber security invited to investigate the incidence of the discovery of Flame have detected its conspiratorial presence in countries other than Iran; they have traced its presence in the Palestinian territories, as well as Sudan and Syria.  And, oh yes, in Israel.  In Israel.  Well, no one knows which state controls the cyber weapon.

Experts at Kaspersky Lab in Russia and Hungary's laboratory of Cryptography and System Security, after having spent considerable time and effort studying Flame, cannot quite understand its instructions and function other than, presumably, data theft.

Meanwhile, back in Israel there have been some rather interesting partial revelations.  Perhaps best left unsaid, but pride and the very human need to take ownership of the exceptional, along with issuing warnings to those who broadcast threats may be responsible for the revelations.  Which have been divulged not from a discreet, unknown source.

None other than the Vice-Prime Minister, Moshe Ya'alon is reported to have hinted that the malware in question may be a devoted creature of Israeli practical design.  "Whoever sees the Iranian threat as a meaningful threat - it is reasonable he would take various measures, including this one."

"Israel has been blessed with being a state rich in top level high-tech.  These tools that we take pride in open up various possibilities for us."  Not clearly transparent, not opaque, neither oblique.

And, as further clarification, a representative for Kaspersky in Israel added that the malware is capable of information collection in heretofore unseen methods.  "The program can transfer files, send screenshots, give keyboard typing patterns and even record audio files."  Controlled through a remote computer, it operates on instruction.  

 "That is why it is hard to detect, because it is not active all of the time.  This virus is so sophisticated that it can change [its own] characteristics and develop in accordance with instructions.  It is a masterpiece of programming, not something that a bored student or some guy, talented as he may be, could do."

Strange and mysterious occurrences.

"Appalling Crime"

These are the breathless words of dismay and desperation to solve a dreadful dilemma usually exhaled by a head of the United Nations.  This time they were expressed by Kofi Annan, the UN-Arab League envoy to Syria, and former head of the United Nations.  Who doubtless last spoke those very same words as the carnage and bloodshed in Rwanda shocked the world.


And now, it is Syria.  Which defiantly continues its campaign to destroy all those who oppose the Alawite regime of President Bashar al-Assad, industriously proving that he is his father's son, and what was good enough for his father in his relations with the very same Sunni majority who clamoured for his ignominious downfall, is most certainly good enough for him.


The technique may be different, the style is reminiscent of what went before.  And whereas his father butchered some ten thousand people, the son still has 8,500 left to go.  After the slaughter that took place in Houla, the regime withdrew its tanks and engaged in clashes elsewhere, from Idlib to Daraa, to Damascus and back again to Hama.


The Free Syrian Army is bruiting about possible retaliation-in-kind with discussions of attacks against minority Alawite villages, augmenting attacks against regime forces.  The regime speaks of foreign thugs and terrorists attacking Syrians, and the rebels speak of the regime's 'gangs'.  The main opposition group has placed its fighters on notice to "be prepared to liberate Syria from the hands of Assad's gangs."


Hezbollah fighters are known to be present in Syria, assisting the Syrian military.  And with them are Iranian troops of the Revolutionary Guard.  Ismail Gha'ani, the deputy head of the Revolutionary Guard's Quds force claimed: "If the Islamic Republic was not present in Syria, the massacre of people would have happened on a much larger scale."


Russia, which just unloaded weapons from a Russian ship at a Syrian port certainly has knowledge of all that.  And Bahrain and Saudi Arabia both of which have funnelled arms through to the rebels most certainly know all about those complexities as well.  The civil war that has engulfed Syria has no intention of giving way to reason or pleas to desist until one or the other is defeated.


And during the determination of which will succeed, it is entirely feasible that a larger confrontation could take place with the principals seeking the advantage of destroying the appetite for conquest of the other.  Saudi Arabia intent on maintaining its sphere of influence as the Arab League elder statesman, and Iran determined to take its place as the paramount nation of the Middle East.


The 49 children and 34 women among the 108 people who were slaughtered in the town of Houla on the week-end is the beginning of the end, perhaps.  Outrage having been expressed by world leaders, a concerted dismissal of diplomats from countries presage the end of patience and expectations other than ruinously black ones.


Though China and Russia both signed on to the UN Security Council's latest and greatest condemnation of the Houla massacre, Russia continues to defend Syria claiming that both sides bear responsibility.  That is true, of course, both do, but one is a state apparatus while the other represents civil opposition militias; a modicum of decency and decorum is expected of the former, far less of the latter.


Misplaced expectations, at best.

Equal Opportunity/Services Equality

The rationale behind the transfer payment from the federal government disbursing taxes obtained from the provinces to those areas of the country seen as less advantaged than those that do very well for themselves initially seemed justified and more than that, just and fair.  Canadians, wherever they live in the country should ideally have expectations that they would be entitled to the same level of benefits that accrue to all the citizens of the country.

It's a feel-good proposition; we're looking after our own, as it were.  "Our own" being the extended family.  Wherever you live in the country, east to west, north to south, from the Atlantic to the Pacific (right; the Arctic too) you were entitled as Canadians, to similar levels of opportunity and services.  And how absurd in practise that turned out to be. 

People living in geographically isolated communities could never hope to share the same living standards as people living in central Canada.

People make their choices, and they live them out.  It is possible to level the expectation field to a certain degree, but not quite possible to logically leaven it completely.  It is too nuanced, too complex, too demanding, and too damn expensive.  Making a choice means being responsible for yourself, taking the initiative to do what you can to be capable and responsive to your singular needs. 

It doesn't have to be a matter of geographic distance and isolation.  Various regions have varying priorities and even values.  Some are enterprising and self-reliant by nature of the population that the society represents.  (Or should that be the society that the population presents itself as valuing?)  There are regions of the country content to be dependents, feeling that their local government should be responsible for the well-being of the population.

Those are as much political as they are social decisions shared by a majority of the people living in disparate areas.  The more populous and popular areas of the country by their very nature and because living there is in demand, are more expensive areas of the country to live in.  Because of their heavy populations it is more costly to buy a home, and for government to provide services there because wages are higher.

Areas of fewer population numbers, less expensive living costs and different standards of  'norms' make it easier to provide basic services on a national standard of scale, priority and usefulness.  Those generalizations don't always hold, because Quebec, for example, is a populous province but it is one where the cost of living is far less, for example, than in Ontario.

Ontarians seem more self-reliant than Quebecers, less demanding of their government.  Quebec prides itself on its socialist agenda, and as such it provides more generous and wide-ranging social services to its population, from cheap day care to the funding of (IVF) assisted pregnancies, to inexpensive university tuition.  They are able to do this because those provinces who don't offer their residents those services help them to achieve that goal.

Quebec remains the largest equalization recipient in confederation, receiving almost half of the $14.8-billion federal transfer allocated to six provinces.  This is not what equalization payments were meant to achieve.  The province's overwhelming social welfare system is far more costly than what it could afford on its own, without relying on the $7.4-billion it receives from other areas of Canada, including Ontario.

It's far less expensive to live in Halifax, Charlottetown, Saint John, Quebec City, Montreal and Winnipeg than it is to buy a home in Calgary, Toronto and Vancouver.  But Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta cannot seem to afford low-to-non-existent post-secondary tuition, and dollars-a-day day care for their residents.  Equalization payments clearly do not provide for equality in living standards.

What they do is effectively remove incentive for self-improvement.  They encourage those that receive the 'equalization' payments to feel entitled to it, with little need to exert themselves to become more needfully responsible and independent.  They represent a form of welfare payment that is ill-deserved and serves the recipients ill.

And it's time they were re-thought and the issue redressed.

Poll: NDP Gains Ground

Shudder.  Now there's a scare in the 'please say it ain't so' realm of incredulity.  Canadians have a stable government in a stable social and economic environment.  While all around us there are symptoms and quite discernible symbols of how we are affected by events transpiring all over the world, with some regimes in far-off countries presenting the world with the crisis of potential disaster, others closer to home are experiencing a crumbling financial situation threatening to embroil the much larger world community.

From Iran and North Korea to Greece and Italy, and with Russia and Venezuela in between there is more than enough unrest in the world, with countries in the Middle East and Africa putting the icing on the cake with their incessant regional brutalities, tribal and religious atrocities committed against one another, impacting the world and its stability in ways not yet quite known.  And here we are, in Canada, an island of calm and security.

Or so it would seem.  Certainly there are difficulties here, but they are present on a scale not to be compared with the dread events playing out in Syria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, Sudan, and the threats maliciously posed on the world community by Iran and North Korea.  Russia and China, with their concerns about their growing power status and strengthening economies feel a 'no-interference' policy suits them best (even while Russia arms the Syrian regime).

Canada's current Conservative-led government has been doing all the right things in its approach to international situations that impact, in one way or another, on this country.  We become involved when it behooves us to as a matter of national responsibility, and stand back when it seems wiser to do so.  On the home front there are troubling decisions made such as the push for austerity to ensure the national deficit and debt don't become more of a problem than they already are.

Our unemployment figures, while high, don't represent an emergency yet.  And we can hope that as our trading partners become eventually more fiscally stable, our own situation will improve even more.  The issue of providing assured energy sources to China and permitting that octopus-like stretch to acquire holdings in Canadian resources to take place is an issue of concern.  Similarly the government's move to 'save' in its expenditures by cutting back on scientific research represents another area of grave concern.

But the wacky, intemperate and often juvenile antics of the New Democratic Party, now by a truly bizarre quirk of circumstances that brought the party, thanks to a temporary blip in Quebec politics, to become the Official Opposition, are just too absurd to take seriously.  Those who seem to gravitate to the NDP seem to lack full awareness of what they demand, they fail to observe situations from a full and responsible perspective.

They opt for quick and easy and feel-good fixes.  The electorate was always wary and soon weary of their constant accusations against the more responsible parties which have always had the opportunity to govern, turn-about, until each was eventually tossed out.  Cheap shots became their forte, never having had to actually be in a position to put their brilliant ideas of wealth distribution into actions that would diminish the capability of the country to produce jobs and access to employment.

Now, a  'wide-ranging' Forum Poll for the National Post has resulted in polling figures that some may think are amazing.   An election call of the moment would see a minority NDP party replace the current majority Conservative-led government.  Over one-third of respondents to the poll preferred the NDP while fewer than one-third favoured the Conservative Party (one-fifth for the Liberals).

Under this scenario, the NDP would occupy 138 seats in the 308-seat Parliament of Canada, increased from the 103 they currently hold, while the Conservatives whose 166 seats won in the last election, would see their holdings reduced to 123 seats.  "A lot of what we see and hear about these days is the '1% versus the 99%'", was the opinion of Forum Research Inc.'s president Lorne Bozinoff.

Resentment of those who 'get by', the majority of any population - against those who get by in a princely, most handsome fashion, becoming richer by the moment.  Perfectly normal, as a prevailing attitude.  And should the majority of Canadians think that the NDP, installed as the governing party, would have the effect of over-turning that situation, to even out the incomes across the board for all Canadians, they're dreaming of an Emerald City in the Sky.

Extreme Endurance/Ghoulishly Extreme

They're driven to succeed.  Having committed themselves to the venture, they must summit the mountain.  The window of opportunity is rare and it is slim.  They must take advantage of any and all opportunities to ascend the last, most dangerous portion of their clamber to success.  There is money, ambition, reputation and a dash of narcissistic appeal in the heady brew.

Climbers reach the Hillary Step portion of the climb to the summit of Mt Everest. Picture: AFP Source: AFP

 

And the adventurous mountaineers, with the considerable assistance of their more capable, agile, experienced and physically enduring Sherpas, plod on through vicious weather conditions and extreme geological environments to succeed at their goal.   Countless people have determined that they will conquer that mountain.  Many have.

And  then there are those who remain on the mountain, in perpetuity.  Perhaps not for an eternity, but until they may no longer remain there. They have become exhausted, incapable of thinking rationally, of defending themselves from the elements, of brain instructing body to act.  And there they sit, or remain prostate, unmoving, silent reminders to those who pass, averting their eyes.

Except for the very new deaths that have occurred in places where they cannot be ignored.  Say, for example, still clipped to those ropes that climbers must use to haul themselves into position, one after the other.  Climbers who have to clip and then unclip themselves to pass over a body hanging there on the mountain.  Carrying on, forcing their minds to concentrate on their survival, not someone else's death.

"There was another man who was almost dead.  He was sitting attached to an anchor and he was rocking and I just thought it was a dead body rocking in the wind, but as we passed he raised his arm and looked at us.  He didn't know anyone was there.  He was almost dead.  He was dead when we came back down".  These are those people so dedicated to their goal that they will pass by another human in mortal distress.

To stop and attempt to help, to form a brigade to assist, to bring that dying man down to a lower level where oxygen could be restored, where medical aid could be applied, would mean surrendering one's own goal to succeed to the summit.  Unthinkable.  Although it has been done, in the past, by those whose standards and values encompassed compassion leading to offering help in the knowledge that time will offer other opportunities to summit...

"There was a single rope attached to the mountain and you have to pass people on ridges that are only wide enough for one set of feet, and you are literally climbing over other people to get back down again", reported one adventurous young woman, a medical student at Southampton University, who found the experience more terrifying than rewarding.

This is a mountain-climbing expedition that does not benefit from countless people attempting to realize their dreams of success, creating a back-up of others behind them awaiting their ascent so that they may begin their own, over treacherous terrain, where a very narrow trail exists, and occasionally the only means of moving forward and upward is with the aid of a dangling rope that can only be accessed carefully, one-by-one.

Moreover, those crowded conditions mean that the long waits before the trails could be clear to proceed, would bring the climbers to a late-afternoon, and dangerous time lag.  When the optimum time to reach the summit is ten in the morning, so the descent can begin and conclude at an equally early time of day.  The later one waits to achieve the peak, the more dangerous the descent becomes.  And it is in the descent at the eight-thousand-metre death-zone level where death waits.

Four victims of their own ambitions died above the South Col camp, the last camp before the summit.  In the area famously recognized as the death zone.  Where extreme cold can freeze a person to death who lingers too long; where oxygen deprivation can cause the kind of irreparable mental and physical distress that will make a person linger too long, because he becomes unaware...

Shriya Shah-Klorfine, a Nepali-Canadian woman whose life's ambition was to ascend Mount Everest was so passionate about her ambition that she refused to listen to the three Sherpas whom she had hired to guide her to the mountain peak.  Too late in the day to proceed, and she was far too exhausted.  But she insisted that they struggle on, and she was rewarded by standing on the peak of Mount Everest.

Those three Sherpas, who were forced to leave the dying woman on the descent in abysmal weather conditions to save their own lives, have made an effort to return, to retrieve her body and return it to her family.  They partially succeeded, then had to surrender to inclement, dangerous conditions, determined to try again.  Her last words evidently were "Save me".

And the Sherpas will attempt to save her body from remaining forever on the slopes of the mountain in the death zone.  If they can, before the season abruptly shuts down, as it is destined to.

Slaughtered Like Sheep

"The operation started about midday, with the use of about 50 or 60 mortar shells.  Then they started to use tanks and heavy artillery for two hours.

"After that they deployed about thirteen or fourteen cars with mounted guns, and raided houses at random.  They took people out and started shooting indiscriminately."  Mousab Azzawi, Syrian Network of Human Rights

"At about 7:00 p.m. on Friday, a lot of Shabiha came from three nearby Alawite villages.  They killed some kids by knife, some by gun and some by suffocation.  I saw with my eyes dozens of bodies of women and children."  Mohammed, Houla villager

Well over a hundred people were killed in Houla after Friday prayers.  There seems to be something especially alluring about prayers on Friday, committing those who attended the prayer sessions to renewed energy in defying their tyrannical masters, and endowing the regime with additional determination to destroy that opposition commitment by any means feasible.

Major-General Robert Mood, the UN mission chief in Syria, made it clear that his staff had counted at least thirty-two children butchered, "under the age of 10".  To the international community that represents a disgusting act, a horrible and depraved atrocity beyond the understand of civilized people.  Of course, there is nothing whatever civilized about the manner in which opposing sects and tribes view one another.

Their dedication to destroying one the other bespeaks acts of consummate self-righteousness.  For if the enemy is not destroyed, he will destroy you.  There is no room for compromise in the Arab/Muslim tradition.  There is a festering resentment that must be realized at some future date through successfully restoring one's honour, impugned and blackened by an adversary. 

Either that adversary will face his punishment at the moment, or at some time hence.

Bitterness and hatred related to tribal and religious divides must be assuaged.  Honour is too integral to the tribe's view of self to be set aside in a Western-inspired imperative to seek solutions in compromise.  One controls one's enemies by force and maintains a situation where they are neutered and live in a psychical bondage, or if they rise up in protest, they must then be destroyed.

"We are calling urgently on the Friends of Syria (U.S., France, Britain, Germany and Saudi Arabia) to create a military alliance, outside of the UN Security Council, to carry out targeted strikes against Assad's gangs and the symbols of his regime", pleaded General Mustafa Ahmed al-Sheikh, head of Turkey-based Free Syrian Army military council.

"Those who may contemplate supporting any side with weapons, military training or other military assistance, must reconsider such options to enable a sustained cessation of violence", Ban Ki-moon informed the Security Council by letter.  Ever the optimist.  Presumably, that is the prime emotional ingredient for any candidate for the office of chief of the United Nations.

"We're being slaughtered like sheep here. Where are the UN observers?", the villagers bleated helplessly once the Shabiha, regime-supporting civilian militiamen, had completed their work for the day.  They had moved in with alacrity with the departure of the military tanks and heavy artillery after their two-hour pounding.

The Shabiha, armed with knives and guns, slaughtered whole families, from grandparents to infants, working zealously well into the wee hours of the morning to complete their task.


"The people begged the observers to come with them to evacuate the bodies.  They refused to help us and they said that we should negotiate with the regime, and then they left."

Tradition ... Heritage

People read the news and wonder how it could possibly be that other people, living elsewhere on the Globe, can find it possible to pick up deadly weapons and use them to deliberate effect, be they machine guns or machetes, to bloodily end the lives of other people; the elderly, women, children in particular.  It happens with grim regularity in the Middle East, in Africa.

These were, and remain, rigidly tribal societies.  Societies that imbibe loathing for other clans and tribes in their infancy through their society's cultural acceptance of suspicion and hatred for those not of their own.  Not of their own tribes, nor of their particular type of religion; or facets of worship and of symbols of a religion that has its basis in common, but not elements of its traditions.

Anything that serves to distinguish other clans and tribes from one's own and familiar rituals and values is enough to make an enemy of the despised other, always viewed as inferior, as a mortal enemy.  Each trying endlessly to gain the upper hand, by threats, intimidation, military action, and slaughter.  Children can be targeted and ruthlessly tortured and slaughtered because they are not seen as children but rather early stages of the adult that will become an enemy.

We see this happening in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Somalia, in Libya, in Ethiopia, in Sudan, in Rwanda, in Dubai, in Democratic Republic of Congo and in many other places where restive and oppressed populations rise against their tyrants to express their anger and frustration over being seen as inferior because the religion they practise is not quite right, the tribe they come from lacks authenticity.

What occurred in Norway when Hans Gustav Breivik decided to emulate the viciously violent actions of Islamist jihadists to make his wildly anxious point, was an anomaly.  Generally speaking, these are not actions that have become common fare in the countries of the West.  It is in Arab and Muslim countries where these brutal antipathies flourish, in reflection of traditions that bespeak a Bedouin society.

In the Arab and Muslim world the two main branches of Islamic devotion, the Sunni and the Shia, are stridently opposed to one another.  And they both abhor other branches of Islam, like the Ahmadiyya, the Ismaili and the B'hai, all considered by Islamists to represent unforgivable lapses in devotion to Islam, as apostate religions, insulting to Allah.


The violence in Islam, sourced from fanatical Muslims dedicated to violent jihad is endemic within that circle, determined to do honour to their faith by conquering other, lesser faiths beneath the notice of Islam, and to bring the worship of Islam to the complete international audience in a final conquest of the world order. 

In due homage to their singularly awesome and peace-loving god.



Its rabidly ferocious face can be seen in the tribal areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan, in Iran and Iraq, in Saudi Arabia and now Egypt, and in fact anywhere the "Arab Spring" materialized as a movement initiated by those in the Arab/Muslim world seeing themselves as reformers opting for freedom and democracy, giving Islamist groups like the Salafists and the Muslim Brotherhood the opening they have long awaited.


They will accomplish more, in the final analysis, than al-Qaeda and its many affiliates might ever have hoped to aspire to.

Pertinent Personal Finances

At first glance, the normal reaction is why does the public have to be informed of the fact that a politician appears to be experiencing financial problems?  Is that not a private and personal matter?  And, in fact, whose business is it to begin with? Well, perhaps a second thought is in order there. 

One that reminds itself that this is not simply any ordinary politician, but one who aspires to lead the country. And then that little nosy incursion into someone's else's finances takes on a new meaning.  Someone who is a highly visible public figure, all the more so when he makes himself visible through his visible and risible denunciations of others, may be seen as fair game.

Wishing to accomplish what Cesar did, achieving the highest office of the land, he should, like Cesar's wife, be beyond reproach.  It is no one's business and no one has the right to reproach anyone for an imputed inability to manage their own finances.  But when the individual in question aspires to manage the finances of the country at large, then things begin to open up, and greater scrutiny becomes essential.

The simple fact is New Democratic Party leader, and now leader of the Official Opposition, Thomas Mulcair, fumes and fulminates about the state of the Canadian economy, publicly denouncing one element of the economy as being gravely injurious to other elements of the economy.  Those elements are associated, as it happens, with disparate regions of the country.

Which hasn't made Mr. Mulcair very popular with the western provinces whose fossil fuel wealth he lays at the feet of central Canada's loss of manufacturing jobs, resulting from a high dollar value impacting on our international trade.  There are many economists who deny this assertion, and who also point out that what the west produces the east also uses, both in manufacturing and transportation.

In any event, the manner in which Mr. Mulcair as a responsible politician at the federal level, one of whose most important functions is to unite the country in a national coalition of purpose that benefits confederation, has proven very contentious to say the least.  A slight majority of Canadians reject his thesis.  That 42% seem to support it hints at regional jealousies something he should be loathe to spur.

Therefore, it is more than a little pertinent and perhaps instructive to see indications that his financial sense seems to be somewhat lacking when one inspects his personal economic arrangements.  Mr. Mulcair is well compensated for his political professionalism; was when he was a cabinet minister in the provincial Liberal government of Quebec, and certainly is now, as the Official Opposition leader.

Similarly, his wife, as a medical professional with a practise of her own, must surely earn a substantial income.  That they have a home which still has a mortgage on it, is somewhat of a surprise, since as high earners they are not young people just starting out to acquire capital investment.  They have chosen to re-mortgage their home's rising property value no fewer than eleven times.

Which practise does not seem to reflect the actions of a prudent, thrifty, well-planned economic decision-making couple.  Perhaps that is one indication of many that the current home they occupy should be the last that taxpayer funding pays for.

The Passion of Religious Lunacy

The frenetic dedication to Islamist jihad creating chaos and slaughter throughout those areas of the world where Islam managed to overcome the initial 7th Century resistance of populations throughout the Middle East and North Africa continues to play itself out as the vicious religious zealotry engaged in delivering the peaceful message of Islam continues to wrack the world.

From groups like Boko Haram and al-Shebaab, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and the Haqqani network, the slaughter and the fear that terrorizes Muslims and the West alike, continues apace.  The West is becoming, frankly, tired of reacting to all the bloody outrages that religiously-demented groups playing at violent jihad are imposing on populations in Mali, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and elsewhere.

NATO and ISAF forces are played out with exhaustion over trying to protect Afghanistan from its darker side.  Darker, that is, than the kind of normal, everyday Islam practised everywhere that oppresses women and considers all other religions inferior enough to have their sacred symbols held in contempt and destroyed, overlaid with Islamic symbols and mosques.

The West is dismayed that a Muslim-state ally in the mutual war against terror that has slaughtered so many Muslims who wish only to worship Islam in their own way, and to be left alone to do so, would hold one of its own for treason as reward for actually aiding in the war on terror.  But then, in Muslim societies it is held as reason for capital punishment to be applied to any who become apostates, denying Islam.

Irrationally vehement hatreds abound in the Middle East and Muslim countries where tribalism and virulently destructive violence plays out constantly between clans and sects of Islam.  African and Arab countries practising their avowed 'religion of peace' cannot seem to accept diversity and wince with distaste at the very thought of infection by Western values. 

Yet it is the West that champions the right of Muslims to live in peace.

When France's new President, Francois Hollande, made it official that France plans to withdraw shortly from any further military role in Afghanistan, he stated: "We, along with other (European) friends, came to Afghanistan to topple the Taliban.  Today we are happy to see Afghanistan standing on its feet and getting more responsibility."

Certainly responsibility is being handed over to Afghanistan, but it not becoming more responsible for itself.  The world of Islam is conflicted with itself and with its relationship with the non-Muslim world.  On the one hand it appeals to the non-Muslim world to help it solve its Muslim-dominated problems, on the other hand, it abhors intervention by Western powers in Muslim geographies and incidents.

Foreigners are viewed with dread and disgust, even while Western-based and -sourced humanitarian aid groups do their utmost to alleviate the dreadful burden of war and drought and oppression for ordinary people suffering inhumane living conditions.  The very indigenous military that NATO forces have been consigned to aid and assist and train have an increasing number of conscripts who turn deadly weapons on foreigners dedicated to their aid.

It is generally conceded by diplomats and by the western military hierarchy that not one single Afghan province has been certified as having completed its transition to full Afghan control.  Nor have the actions of any Afghan military or police given confidence to those who have been tasked with aiding them in that mission.

Countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan, Iraq and Libya, Egypt and Syria were delighted to welcome and accept financial aid to ensure their administrations' survival.  They called upon the West to deliver them from situations they could no longer control, all the while disdaining the very powers that they implore assistance from.

It is a sterile occupation, that of attempting to place band-aids on the self-inflicted wounds of countries and of people who haplessly flounder, incapable of mustering their own inner resources to aid themselves and develop themselves into socially responsible and economically advanced countries of the world.

Back To (Tahrir) Square One?

The West has good reason to look on with fascination at the spectacle of the manner in which 'democracy' plays itself out in the Middle East.  The United States in particular, and the rest of the advanced democratic states with their liberal advocacy and general content with their system of governance, insisting its spread globally will cure all the ills of the world, has reason to double-think their urgent adoption in the Middle East.

Libya deposed its stunningly tyrannical ruler and now has a dysfunctional state, completely decentralized, with tribal animosities ensuring that disparate tribal-affiliated armed militias are free to roam, where sectarian violence rears its destructive head with impunity.  Not all that very surprising, in fact, given the experience with Iraq where an American-led invasion violently removed the Iraqi tyrant from power, replacing it with a U.S.-approved 'democratic' one.

A power-sharing parliament, where the majority Shia now rules over the previously-ruling minority Sunni; an uneasy alliance between Shia, Sunni and Kurd, which, since the departure of American military power and the complete hand-over to Iraq, to rule itself fairly and justly, has resorted to the same kind of autocratic exclusion as the previous administration.  Resulting in violent flare-ups of 'suicide' bombings in reflection of the sectarian divide and the incursion of 'terrorists'.

Christians beware, everywhere in the world of Islam, where brutal dictatorships that managed to balance the antipathy of tribalism and religious divides to their own methodology creating order and a certain level of security, have succumbed to 'liberty' and ' democracy'.  The new 'democratic' order, where the populations in North African and Arab countries have displaced tyranny with 'freedoms' now are ruled by Islamists who have little use for freedom and adapt universal Sharia law.

Egypt has surprised only the revolutionaries who marched in Tahrir Square demanding the ouster of President Mubarak, calling for an end to dictatorship, and the embrace of democracy.  That democracy has gained Egypt an Islamist parliament, soon to be joined by an Islamist executive administration and with the help of Salafists, full Sharia.  Unsurprisingly, seen as a threat by Coptic Christians.

How this can surprise even the most casual onlooker is a surprise unto itself.  The first 'democratic' election took place in the Palestinian Territories, and the wisdom of the electors was to install Hamas, an self-declared Islamist terror group to share governance with a secularist former terror group, latterly refined to the guise of a responsible, uncorrupted administration for the Palestinian people.

Voting in Egypt on the week-end for a president, who along with a new constitution and a representative parliament, would make a new Egypt that would be seen as a beacon of hope, social advancement, and trust in the Arab world has resulted in a stale-mate.  The Muslim Brotherhood candidate, with 60% of the votes cast now accounted for, had a slight edge on his former-regime presidential candidate.

The future holds the prospect of either a balance between the Muslim Brotherhood with its Islamist agenda, or the Egyptian military, with its power-retaining agenda, or a unified Muslim Brotherhood/Salafist government.  In which case no one bloc in the country will be satisfied.  The revolutionary youth with their leftist ideals of fairness, freedom, employment and subsidized food shudder at the prospect of Sharia-led Egypt.

But they experience feelings akin to helpless paroxysms of rage when they envision an extension of the previous military rule, vowing that were that to occur, they would agitate anew, holding ongoing protests at Tahrir Square and throughout the country to continue delivering their message denouncing and refusing the ongoing rule of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

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An Egyptian man walks past graffiti depicting members of the military council and reading 'Down with the military rule, no to military trials for civilians' near the defense ministry in the Abbassiya district of Cairo on April 29, 2012. (Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty Images)

"Either a killer or a fundamentalist?  Thank you very much, I don't want this country anymore", said one women's advocate and Tahrir Square alumnus.  And all the while Egypt stews in its broth of anger and uncertainty, its economy has suffered, security has become fraught with problems, as the once-hated police no longer operate with the impunity they once exhibited, and crime soars...

Criminally Demented, But Legally Sane

"You are not the ones I am targeting.  I consider you as brothers.  It's a coup; I must save Norway from Islamization."  Anders Behring Breivik

The Norwegian police whose response and behaviour had been so dismal on that fateful day of July 22, 2011, have come under great scrutiny and criticism from the public.  Their pathetic handling of a dire emergency that left 69 mostly young people dead from the deliberate slaughter imposed on young leftists whom Anders Breivik accused of being traitors to their country seemed inexplicable.

It can hardly be a comfort to them now to receive fulsome praise for their professional performance, during his trial for mass murder of the man who, to make a political/ideological point, decided to bomb a government building in Oslo, killing eight people there before decamping to the island of Utoya where the Workers' Youth League had a summer camp.

The testimony given to the court in Oslo by the head of local police operations outlined the picture of  a man who was fully self-possessed, calm, and determined to carry out a plan he had practised to perfection.  He was psychically removed from the bloody carnage, fear and mayhem he had committed, feeling fully justified in his choreographed play as the Grim Reaper.

While dealing deserved death to the youth wing of the ruling Labour Party that he loathed, holding them responsible for the influx of Muslim immigrants into the country of his birth, and which process was transforming Norway from a white, Christian country to one more resembling the Middle East, he co-opted tactics he so admired that were perfected by Islamist jihadists to make his point.

His point was to startle the country into a realization that the Muslim invasion was altering Norway beyond recognition.  And he would be the one to mobilize action against the invading horde.  His actions would prompt a change of government, an insistence that Muslims be expelled from the country, and all would be well, Norway returned to 'normal'.

What he succeeded in doing was to shock and horrify normal human beings at the vileness of his actions as the entire world condemned his act of brazen, inhuman butchery as the actions of an unbridled lunatic.  In that way he utterly resembled those he both detested and admired; jihadist Islamists.  But it was also his craven self-awareness and narcissistic personality that strikes those watching his trial unfold.

His personal fears for his own secure, physical well-being even as he was brutally butchering terrified teens who attempted to flee for their lives.  And he, with the greatest of composure, in the assuring uniform of a Norwegian policeman, carefully and with great precision killed them.  Bemoaning the fact that he hadn't killed more.

He is sane, and he is demented.  He is sanely demented.

Deep Pockets

So there it is - the voters in Etobicoke Centre have been advised that their vote did not after all count.  The squeaker result was not appreciated by the losing candidate.  And his squawks of the existence of a dastardly Conservative-led campaign of corruption leading to his losing his parliamentary seat was not to be countenanced.

Quite a few losing candidates in any general election feel let down by the results that 'unfairly' leave them losers.  In comparing themselves and what they have to offer the electorate to the winners, they see themselves as having been ill done by.  And someone must have been responsible for the oversight to their sterling candidate qualities.

Obviously it was the Conservative party, in support of their candidate, Ted Optiz.  The margin of victory said it all.  There was a lot of dirty dealing to ensure that the Conservatives took the seat that the Liberals fit so comfortably in, and it was required that their corrupt practises saw the light of day.

Elections Canada had no intention of performing an investigation and a recount.

But even Thomas Mulcair, leader of the Official Opposition, was spinning the results claiming that the Conservatives were busy "playing fast and loose with the election rules".  Music to Boris Wrzesnewskyj's ears.  And so, because he could afford the $250,000 it was estimated to cost to move an official investigation, it was done.

With Justice Thomas Lederer of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice performing the rites.  And arriving at the conclusion that nothing untoward had occurred; no evidence whatever revealed that fraud of any type had occurred.  It was a clean election.  A few blips here and there because no one's perfect, of course.  The margin of error in all areas expected and accepted generally.

Not in Etobicoke Centre, though.  Because Justice Lederer found there might have been a few errors by poll workers of a clerical and record-keeping variety, such as missing registration certifications and voters lacking identification, not having been properly vouched for possibly, there existed an aura of uncertainty.

As a result, 79 votes were set aside, a minuscule proportion of the total votes.  Which had the effect of nullifying the election results in the riding.  And which doubtless made Mr. Wrzesnewskyj drunk with validating joy.  His allegations proven, his insistence justified, his money well spent.

And a by-election in the offing, unless the government seeks to oppose the ruling.

"In the course of any general election there will be errors in the record keeping required of the officials who conduct", is a reality generally conceded.  The narrow margin of victory and the unqualified, unctuous insistence of injustice due to malappropriation of expectations however, justifies the suspension of that reality.

Back to the polls.

Equal Opportunity Advocates

Now that UN observers are, however begrudgingly, permitted to be 'on the ground' in Syria, they have been doing what they were tasked with; relaying data back to headquarters, as it were.  An investigation has concluded furthermore - amazingly enough for those blissfully ignorant of the traditions of the Middle East - that both 'sides' in the Syrian conflict; government and opposition have been indulging in vile human rights abuses.


Government forces have been, as charged by the opposition, executing entire families in their homes.  For their part, the rebels have distinguished themselves by reacting on cue, and torturing before killing those soldiers and government supporters unfortunate enough to fall into their hands.  Both of which simply indicate how skilled and committed Syrians are in flaying and butchering one another.


Nothing on Earth seems to spur on the kind of incandescent hatred that the Arab mind is capable of, like the very thought of another tribe, clan or another perspective on the manner in which Islam is to be regarded and worshipped gaining the ascendancy over their own, which is incomparably superior because it is their own, and furthermore personally endorsed by God himself.


"Entire families were executed in their homes - usually the family members of those opposing the government such as the family members of Colonel Riad al-Assad", observed the UN investigation, in reference to the head of the rebel Free Syrian Army and the unfortunate yet entirely predictable end his relatives experienced in being purged of their living essence.


The rebels, increasingly well armed and better organized than previously and acquiring greater confidence, have for their part, executed or tortured soldiers and supporters of the regime.  The investigators who wrote the report for the UN did so on the basis of their interviews with victims and witnesses, interviews that did not take place on Syrian soil.


Children, according to the investigation's conclusions, were frequent casualties of attacks on protests, and marches, as well as through bombardments by state forces on towns and villages where they live.  Rebels have not been above abducting civilians to hold them as ransom for any of their members held by the regime who have not yet been murdered.


In addition to which multiple reports have surfaced pointing at incidents where the insurgents have taken to summary executions of anyone suspected of collaborating with the regime.  A like fate awaits captured members of the regime's troops.  One could say with a certainty that the livid hatred of these Syrians against one another is clearly unappeasable but by blood and the exhalation of the last breath.


The former head of the Syrian National Council has bemoaned the incendiary disaffection between the opposition secularists and its Islamists which situation adds yet another irreconcilable dimension of rejecting ideologies to the already potent mixture of tribal and sectarian hatred.  His chummy willingness to ally himself with the Muslim Brotherhood is what led to his ouster.



The Arab Spring is the band-aid that is supposed to bring these little irritations to the bargaining table of surrendering to reason, for the greater goal of achieving Arab moderation on the way to modernity and reasonableness.  And, as that famously brilliant epic saying goes: "Good luck with that."

Migrating Illegals

The RCMP has alerted Asian countries of passage to be alert to human smuggling of Sri Lankans into Canada.  Canada prefers to encourage people, from wherever they emanate, to use legal means of entry to the country by applying as emigrants from their country of origin.  Or by Canada accepting legitimate refugees, which Sri Lankans are no longer considered to represent, Tamils no longer being persecuted as they were when the Tamil Tigers were challenging the government of Sri Lanka.

The United States has an ongoing social and political debate about the huge numbers of illegal migrants entering the country from Mexico, many of whom have lived there, illegally and without working papers for decades.  Raising families, living in fear of detection, and being the recipient of ill will from Americans in general.  Germany had problems with the Turkish workers they brought in as temporary help, when they balked at returning to Turkey.

Australia has 'solved' its illegal refugee and human smuggling problem by isolating them when caught, and keeping them in prison-like areas where they can be controlled until they can be sent back to wherever they came from.  France and England continue to bicker over problems they share of illegal migrants.  And in Eastern Europe in particular, though not primarily, Roma are discriminated against, and hope to emigrate and Canada is disinterested in accepting them.

Africans are swarming desperately out of their countries in conflict, flooding into neighbouring states, hoping for refuge from drought and starvation conditions, from the depredations of violent Islamists and alternately tribal and national animosities.  The world is on the move, with refugee camps springing up everywhere, from the Middle East to Africa and beyond.  South Africans began assaulting Zimbabwean refugees whom they accused of taking their jobs when the country was flooded with them.

And Israel, that small nation of seven and a half million people that considers itself a haven for Jews worldwide, is experiencing problems with African infiltrators seeking to improve their lives and their futures.  Black populations are not unknown in Israel, since for decades black Ethiopian Jews have been brought into Israel to share citizenship with other Jews from Europe, the Middle East and North America.

But the influx of 60,000 Africans over the past six years fleeing conflict and deprivation in Sudan, South Sudan and Eritrea has created a situation of polarization and misery.  Street violence is occurring against African migrants who have flooded into Tel Aviv in such numbers that in some areas they appear more numerous than do Jews themselves.

They transit Egypt's porous borders to arrive in Israel, where they hope to be able to declare themselves refugees, be accepted, and become a part of the civil landscape.  Israel is less than happy at this for the obvious reason that it has no wish to diminish the majority-status of Jews by welcoming others to become citizens of the country; there are already one and a half million Muslims and Christians, Druze and Kurds in Israel.

"Deport the Sudanese", shouted mobs of people waving Israeli flags, in low-income neighbourhoods that have become overrun with anxious Africans.  Twenty people were arrested for assault and vandalism.  Window storefronts were smashed, and a crowd of protesters attacked a vehicle driven by an African, breaking the car's windows.

Many of the Africans are accused of criminal acts in Tel Aviv.  A young girl was recently raped while walking on the street, with three Sudanese migrants arrested for the crime.  They are in Tel Aviv because they have fled situations of poverty, authoritarian rule and militancy.  According to the mayor of Tel Aviv, 15% of city residents are "illegal foreign workers", with that number steadily growing.

Statistics released by the Ministry of the Interior indicate that 82% of the African migrants are men.  Some of them come to Israel looking for work, most for refuge.  The country is divided in opinion on how to deal with the influx of Africans; the great Israeli left has compassion for them and would consider allowing them to remain, while others would prefer they leave.

"The infiltrators are a cancer in our body", stated Likud MP Miri Regev, speaking to a rioting crowd.  Now that's exemplary behaviour on the part of an elected parliamentarian.  "We must put all these infiltrators behind bars in detention and holding centres, then send them home because they come and take work from Israelis", stated the Interior Minister.

Sounds harsh and dreadful, and it is.  And it is just what Americans do when they apprehend illegals in their country.  A Congolese migrant speaking fluid Hebrew who has been in Israel for 18 years seeking refugee status, states his concern: "The question is not if they will kill an African because he is black, but when."

"I'm ... saying this was my life"

Having said which, that life had rather skewed values. 

"I'm coming out myself and saying this was my life.  If you want to say this is a wrong way to live, fine  Let's have that conversation."  Elizabeth May

Well, here's the thing of it.  An admission that this was the way of it, of Elizabeth May's understanding that it was perfectly legitimate to plan to work a specific length of time and then regularly apply for unemployment insurance to patch into another specific length of time.  Rather neat and tidy.  A pattern emerges where the time is put in, and then it is drawn out.

You get paid for work performed for a specific length of time, known in advance.  And you know in advance equally, that this 'qualifies' you for the expectation that you will be paid for the period of time when you will not be working.  Having little intention, because of this neat pattern that fits so nicely with how one's life is allocated into working/non-working dates, of upsetting the pattern.

If someone is dedicated to a specific profession that promises only part-time work perhaps they might wish to make adjustments that would fill in those times when the other times are not compensated by paid work.  Farmers and people who are self employed in work that is seasonal such as gardeners hope to earn enough during the time they can exchange work for cash return that will last beyond the working season.

People on the East Coast of Canada have famously dedicated themselves to the part-time game of working to acquire the requisite number of hours to qualify for what is now called employment insurance.  And in the same spirit of generosity and togetherness that spawned the provincial transfer payments, the federal government chose to be over-generous to industries reliant on conditions.

Regional disparities where employment is not steady throughout the year have made people dependent on their expectations of entitlement to insurance payments to augment their lifestyle.  A search for other, alternate work to tide over until the 'seasonal' work began again made no sense under those circumstances.

Regular drawers of EI are well known to take the system for granted; for them it is their due, to their critics it is abuse of the system.  EI is meant to be a temporary stopgap, an aid and an assist to help keep people off welfare rolls, although many consider it the sister-program of welfare.  It is meant to be a temporary safety net, not a permanently reliable second-income source.

When Elizabeth May explains that she worked for her family's seasonal business in Cape Breton, then regularly called upon unemployment insurance "when I needed it", she really misidentifies the purpose of EI (now named), but she is describing a general cultural/social perception of the program that is broadly accepted in the society she inhabited.

That does not, however, make it right.  Seasonal industries should, ideally, pay their employees salaries that should stretch over the entire year, if they expect those experienced employees to return with regularity when they're needed by the industry.  Much as is done with those in the teaching profession.  Failing that, because the industries would consider it to be too financially onerous, other stop-gap jobs should be taken.

And that seems to be what the newly-introduced legislation is all about.  If there are no jobs anywhere, then EI must be drawn upon until it is exhausted for the individual.  But planning a regular, reliable lifestyle around specific short-term work to be supplemented by EI doesn't seem quite on.  It is unfair to those who cannot claim EI because they work on contract or are self-employed.

And the attitude of entitlement by those who have continued to compromise the system believing themselves to be owed that financial support by the larger society is quite simply wrong.

Cold Case Breakthrough or Mental Breakdown?

Police are not fond of unsolved cases.  Particularly cases of murder.  All the more so when children are involved.  They know they've let down public expectations.  Children should be safe in a social environment.  They generally are, but not always.  They're such easy targets, trustful and fairly often good natured about being approached by a stranger.  Taught to be polite and respectful, all the more so.


It's difficult to imagine what kind of hell parents must live through each and every day of their lives with the knowledge that their child disappeared forever on the one day they finally agreed he was 'old enough' at age 6, to walk alone, to school.  Etan Patz simply vanished, never to be seen again on the day his parents decided he could take himself off to school, in 1979.


Now police have a man in custody.  The same man who as a youth of 19, had originally been a suspect in the child's disappearance.  But now, all those years later, at age 51, Pedro Hernandez suddenly decided to confess that he had lured the little boy, strangled him, placed his body in a bag, then a box, and left it, meaning to retrieve it for disposal at a later time.  But the box, he explained had gone.


"An individual now in custody has made statements to NYPD detectives implicating himself in the disappearance and death of Etan Patz 33 years ago", announced police commissioner Raymond Kelly.  There is some possibility that some of Mr. Hernandez's relatives provided "information they knew about him", claimed a police investigator.  "...Family members pointed investigators in his direction."


It would please the public and the police to find a neat and tidy answer to a dreadful and old mystery.  It would represent little comfort to the parents of the little boy, but it would seem finally that justice would have been realized.  The condition of 'closure' said to be so important and comforting to many, would be difficult to achieve without evidence, however.


The most meaningful evidence being, of course, the location, finally, of whatever was left of Etan Patz.
Just as he vanished into thin air as far as his parents, his society and the police understood, his little body, inserted into a bag, and then a box, conveniently also 'vanished'. 

And then it was disclosed by Mr. Hernandez's lawyer, that his quiet, subdued client has a history of mental illness.  Mental illness that includes hallucinations.  People admit to strange things.  They seek to incriminate themselves, to blame themselves, to hold themselves accountable and guilty for all manner of peculiar things.

Being mentally ill means that people do behave peculiarly.  If someone who is mentally ill makes a declaration can it be taken seriously?  It can, to a certain degree, but under the circumstances it can not possibly be seen as definitive.  There must be something substantiating.  And evidence would help a great deal.  There is no evidence.

 There is no discernible motive for Mr. Hernandez as a young man of 19 to have taken the life of a child.  Without motivation, without evidence, with simply the self-implicating admission of a man with a sick mind, precisely what have the police got?  Can Mr. Hernandez be prosecuted in a court of law for a dreadful act he claims to have committed so many years ago with nothing to back his claim?


Tellingly enough, he has been taken to Bellevue Hospital where he has been placed on a suicide watch.
There are now questions being bandied about respecting the alacrity with which police acted in the absence of evidence.  "There was no way we could release the man who had just confessed to having killed Etan Patz", the police department's chief spokesman said.


"It would be unusual, to say the least, to release someone who confessed to a murder."  Such a confession, however, under the peculiar circumstances that have presented themselves, should be taken cautiously, and an appropriate investigation embarked upon.  Due diligence was not observed here, and it does not appear as though there is much to build a case of guilt upon.

US Senate Redefines 'Palestinian Refugee'

by Gabe Kahn & Rachel Hirshfeld

The US State Department and Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan are trying to block a Senate bill that would require an accurate accounting of how many 'Palestinian refugees' receive American aid dollars.

The push came after the US Senate Appropriations Committee approved on Thursday language that would distinguish between Arabs who fled Israel in 1948 and their descendants.

The new language, introduced by Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), seeks to distinguish between those "whose place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948 and who were displaced as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict; and who are descendants" of those people.

Using the new language, the US definition of who is a 'Palestinian refugee' would drop from 5 million to 30,000, which could directly impact the 1.2 billion in aid dollars the US pumps into the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) agency each year.

UNRWA, the main body assisting 'Palestinians refugees,' unlike other UN agencies, assigns refugee status to descendants of Arabs who fled the area during the 1948-1949 war, although in its definition it is careful to distinguish between the two populations.

Globally, all other refugees receive assistance from the UN High Commission for Refugees, which conforms to international conventions and does not confer refugee status on the descendants of refugees.

Nonetheless, the State Department formally expressed concerns about the language in the amendment, but Kirk prevailed.

“The amendment simply demands basic transparency with regard to who receives U.S. taxpayer assistance," he said.

But now, Jordan – where large portions of UNRWA expenditures go to the so-called refugee camps in Jordan – is also lobbying the Senate not to amend the appropriations bill.

For Jordan – of whose 5.9 million residents 1.9 million are formally defined as 'Palestinian refugees' by UNRWA –  the amendment poses a daunting fiscal, legal and political problem.

Like other Arab nations, Amman has elected to define the children and grandchildren of Arabs who fled Israel in 1948 despite their having been born on Jordanian soil.

Arab leaders claim they refuse to grant citizenship to the descendants of Arabs who fled Israel in 1948 "to avoid dissolution of their identity and protect their right to return to their homeland."

However, Tashbih Sayyed, a fellow of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, has written the end result is that millions of native born residents in Arab countries are treated as second class citizens.

They "cling to the illusion that defeating the Jews will restore their dignity," he wrote of the justification Arab leaders employ in order ignore UN conventions that seek to reduce statelessness.

Were the US to effectively defund UNRWA, it would realign US policy with Israeli policy and provide Jerusalem with diplomatic leverage with which to nullify the so-called 'right of return' in peace talks.

"This will have major implications for future negotiations over final status issues with regard to refugees," said a senior Senate aide.

The so-called 'right of Return is a 'right' many claim had been contrived to further the 'Palestinian cause' and de-legitimize the State of Israel, is one of the thorniest issues with regard to the conflict and continually results in a stalemate in negotiations.

It has long been asserted that if Israel were to concede to Palestinian Authority demands, it would no longer be able to retain its Jewish character and would thus be stripped of the very ideals upon which the state was established.

While the landmark bill is expected to draw the wrath of the Arab world and ‘Palestinian’ liberation movements, it is also expected to be a step in restoring the fundamental, but long overlooked, truths behind the Mideast conflict.

Palestinian Authority negotiators have previously suggested they would concede the 'right of return' in exchange for a final status package.

Tags: US State Department ,US Senate ,Jordan ,UNRWA ,Israel

More on this topic

• Navi Pillay Receives New Term as UN Rights Chief
• Lawyer: Israel Offered $6 Million to Victims of Turkish Flotilla
• Poll: 59% of Germans Believe Israel is 'Aggressive'
• Did Iran Use Israel as Cover to Kill Its Own Nuclear Scientist?
• UK Press Commission Rules: Tel Aviv is Capital of Israel
• Arabic Translation of Talmud Permeated with Anti-Semitism

As published online at ArutzSheva, 25 May 2012

Casting Ballots

A free and presumably fair election finally for Egypt.  Jimmy Carter and his hundreds of scrutineers are there to ensure that he can give a vote of confidence that the election indeed was free and fair.  The question is what will change.  Will, in fact, anything change?  Some people on the street, fed up with insecurity, chaos, growing crime rates and soaring food prices along with unappetizing levels of unemployment have begun to look back on the previous administration with regret at its passing.

But the way forward is assumed to be with the growing momentum to challenge both the military's stubborn grip on power, and now, increasingly the Muslim Brotherhood's obvious ambition to rule both  parliament where it has a clear majority, and the as-yet-undefined position of president.  Voters are angry with the Freedom and Justice Party of the Brotherhood for not having passed any useful legislation in the six months since they won 50% of the seats.  Angry too that despite their promise they would not field a candidate for the executive position, they've done so, revealing their true intentions.

• 

Egyptian men wait outside a polling center to cast their votes in Imbaba neighborhood in Giza, Egypt, Wednesday, May 23. More than 15 months since the uprising that pushed Hosni Mubarak from power, Egyptians streamed to polling stations Wednesday to freely choose a president for the first time in generations.

Ahmed Ali/AP

It was estimated that 60% of the eligible voters of this country of 82-million people have turned out to vote.  Because Egypt is a country of young people, of that number 50-million are eligible to vote.  The two days of balloting has concluded and the business of counting votes has begun.  Not many have yet been counted, but already the Muslim Brotherhood has stated that, according to their calculations, their candidate is in the lead.  If no one of the thirteen candidates in contention for the presidency succeeds in garnering 50% of the vote, the two leading candidates will have a run-off in July. Tensions and expectations are high because the electorate is truly polarized.  Long lines stretched from polling stations across the country as eligible voters took this opportunity to actually cast a ballot as seriously as it was meant to be taken.  Voting was quiet and orderly, with polls kept open an additional hour to handle the press of eager voters. The writing of the country's new constitution has been delayed.  And with the swearing in of a new president it can be anticipated that it will proceed to completion, with the powers given to the president spelled out clearly.  Despite that the military has signalled that it plans an amendment to ensure that it continues to exert power, and perhaps even extend the amount of power beyond what it now exercises. With the ascension of the new president and the new constitution verified and accepted Egypt should be in a position of facing the challenges of governing itself in a manner to reflect in part what the challenge to the old rule had succeeded in doing; calling for a new system of government where the public can feel it has been given the right to express itself and be heard. There will have been and continue to be disagreements between the military, the leader to follow, and the Islamist-controlled parliament.  It remains to be seen just how much of a departure from the old government the incoming one will represent.  If the Muslim Brotherhood does prevail and exert not only influence from parliament with the support of the Salafists, but also through the position of president, the change will reflect an aura unpleasing to those who took to Tahrir Square in their revolutionary zeal. But this is the Middle East, with all its tribal, ideological, sectarian animosities.  Egypt's Christians will most certainly begin to filter out of their homeland in final numbers with the ascension to office of a Muslim Brotherhood candidate.  Sharia will become the law of the land with strict adherence to the Brotherhood/Salafist version of Islam. How this will influence the other Muslim states in the region is a given.  The rise of Islamism has taken decades to achieve, and it has swept the world of Islam.  It has produced, as an offshoot of its fanaticism, violent jihad with competing and vicious non-governmental militias seeking the downfall of governments throughout North Africa and the Middle East. The Arab Spring seemed a counter to the Islamist agenda; now the outcome of the push for greater freedoms begins to resemble a counterpart to it.

Appeasement Brings No Results?

Unsurprisingly, Iran behaved as though the permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany were somehow indebted to Tehran for deigning to meet with the P5+1.  Iranian diplomats are as capable, even more so, as any of beaming sweetness and light and reasonableness.  In so doing, hoping to disarm any who might wish to think of them as behaving in an obdurate manner when evidence before them suggests that Iran is a country they can do business with.

Trouble is, sanctions mean Iran is a country than none wish to do business with.  And that is the obstacle that Iran's nuclear negotiator was tasked with rising above.  (It being imperative that the country's oil be shipped out to paying customers.)  In the past such situations led interlocutors to trust what Iran said and to lower their suspicion levels, despite that time and again the Republic chose in the final analysis to withdraw from honouring its promises. 

Which turned out to be stalling tactics, surprise!

And this latest meeting where a package of proposals from the P5+1 was unveiled for Iran's inspection, they were held by a very particular Iran, behaving as though it holds all the winning poker cards, as 'unbalanced'.  It had its own agenda of a proposal of five steps that should be accepted by China, France, Britain, Russia, the United States and Germany.  Principal among them that sanctions be lifted.

And, furthermore, once lifted, not to be reinstalled should matters not proceed as reasonably anticipated.

For their part, the P5+1 recommended to Tehran that they would breathe easier if Iran surrendered its 20%-enriched uranium to a third-party country for safe-keeping.  In exchange, uranium enriched sufficiently for the production of medical radioisotopes would be released to Iran.  And as a further concession, badly-needed aircraft parts would be allowed to be imported, and possibly a ban on insurance on ships carrying Iranian oil lifted.

Tehran was rather miffed at the lack of generosity of the offerings.  And it would never resign its sovereignty to the extent of surrendering its stockpiles of enriched uranium.  "A possible swap of uranium enriched by Iran for fuel isn't very interesting for us because we are already producing our own fuel", one official complained.

It is entirely possible that Iran feels supremely confident in no small part as a result of who is represented by the U.S. administration; a president who once famously offered to extended an open hand, should Tehran see fit to respond by an "unclenched fist".  Tehran spurned that offer rather belligerently and haughtily, although it is more polite now, now that it is on the proverbial ropes.

And, interestingly, enough the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency is preparing to issue yet another report on Iran, releasing fascinating new findings.  Western diplomats have quietly revealed that the IAEA has reached the conclusion that Iran, starting back in February, installed 350 new centrifuges at the Fordow underground facility.

That would be the same Fordow facility that the chief of the IAEA urged Iran to agree to destroy, to settle the insecurity of the West with respect to Iran's future plans on acquiring nuclear weaponry.  After that additional increase in the installation of new centrifuges it appears highly unlikely that this recommendation would be given anything but short shrift.

The IAEA report, to be issued on Friday, will no doubt not be required to suggest expansively that this further installation of centrifuges in the underground mountainside stronghold - immune to any possible air attacks - has the purpose of increasing the Islamic Republic of Iran's uranium enrichment potential and output.




Tsk, tsk.

A Unionized Cause Celebre

"Maybe it's time to get into the streets of Ontario and start the same kind of movement that they have in Quebec to demand that tuition be lowered and that we start working towards free university."  Sid Ryan, President, Ontario Federation of Labour

And out he went to march along with the university student demonstrators on Tuesday.  Urging that Ontario students also become involved.  He's in support of what the students are doing, but he's not advocating for violence.  He just wants his iced cake served with tea. 

The students, albeit representing a minority among the minority that have been out marching on the streets of the province's cities, have been demonstrating their unconcern with the law. Beyond the fact that many of them have lobbed rocks and bricks at police, have smashed shop windows, have illegally blocked traffic and created havoc, they have gone out en masse to defy the law. 

After having defied court injunctions whose purpose was to have them cease harassing those majority students in the province who wished to attend their university classes, and obstructing their way into those classes.

These are, of course, the students who claim that the provincial legislature in increasing their tuition fees over a seven-year-period to eventually represent about 17% of the cost of their education (the government that has done this in view of its massive provincial debt and increasing deficit) is an undemocratic one. 

The students have their rights in a democratic society and they mean to exercise those rights.Which most definitely do not include intimidation, harassment, violence, threats, public mischief and criminal behaviour.  All of which they feel they are entitled to commit, because they are, quite simply, entitled. 

And they have the support of many of their university instructors.  Whose own unions have quietly encouraged the students and proffered funding to mount legal challenges.  And now unions in Ontario have become involved in support of the 'striking' students, funding them as well.

After all, the current union leaders recognize the emerging human material from which their future leaders will emanate, and these students require encouragement, they feel. 

Although they are perfectly capable of their own volition of challenging democratically elected lawmakers, and breaking the law in the process, proving without a doubt they are fully capable of taking their place as future union leaders.

Coming To A Theatre Near You

"What Dr. Afridi did is the furthest thing from treason.  It was a courageous, heroic and patriotic act which helped to locate the most wanted terrorist in the world, a mass murderer who had the blood of many innocent Pakistanis on his hands.  Dr. Afridi's continuing imprisonment and treatment as a criminal will only do further harm to U.S.-Pakistani relations, including diminishing Congress's willingness to provide financial assistance to Pakistan."  Carl Levin, John McCain

The death of Osama bin Laden, arguably the world's most feared outlaw and certainly the United States's most wanted fugitive was a matter of celebration in the United States and among its allies, all of whom had good reason to want the man destroyed.  Unfortunately, the fire he lit, bringing to a raging blaze the Islamist vision of violent jihad in response to the West's purported war on Islam, is not dead, its offshoots are alive and well, from the Middle East to North Africa and beyond.

Slaying the Terrorist Dragon was no mean feat; it required careful aerial reconnaissance, split-second timing, and human intelligence to achieve.  What represented a triumph to the free world, spelled a raging insult to the world that Pakistan inhabits.  The jailing of Pakistani surgeon Shakeel Afridi shortly after the raid on Osama bin Laden's Abbottabad compound - situated close to an elite military installation, because it became known that he had been extremely useful to the CIA planners of the raid - has in its turn enraged America.

While Pakistan's military and secret intelligence service was livid with fury over the lightning-strike that succeeded in eluding detection as it entered Pakistani airspace and completed its mission without informing Islamabad of its intention, as a purported ally of the United States it appeared baffling to the uninitiated that this reaction occurred at all.  Embarrassment yes, at being caught out in a series of flagrant lies respecting lack of knowledge of the al-Qaeda leader's whereabouts.

Rage that a mission to detect his presence, verify it, and then proceed to dispatch him, questionable.  But succeeding, in fact, in persuading the American Congress that the pretense of partnership between their country and Pakistan is blatant and absurd nonsense.  Leading one Congressman to describe Islamabad as an adversary to the United States: "This is decisive proof Pakistan sees itself as being at war with us."

Pakistan's humiliation by the successful night-time raid by U.S. Navy SEALs led to a search for someone to blame and to hold accountable, and that someone was, of course, Shakeel Afridi.  "He was a spy who betrayed his country", fumed a spokesman of Pakistan's military establishment.  And just to demonstrate that they've done their homework, the additional poke in the eye: "Has the U.S. released Jonathan Pollard after 20 years?"

They haven't, but they most certainly should, since although Mr. Pollard is an American citizen, the data he released was to Israel, a reliable and long-time ally of the United States.  That represents an unfortunate failure of diplomatic action, since Mr. Pollard has been penalized more than long enough, and the U.S. administration simply keeps ignoring reasonable requests for his release.  Another failure on the part of the U.S. is not having acted swiftly to remove Dr. Afridi and his family from Pakistan, to give him haven in the United States.

Shakil Afridi could end up spending 33 years in prison

His wife, Mona Afridi heartily resents the situation her husband finds himself in, as a result of his having been helpful to the United States as a useful undercover recruit.  That's what human intelligence is all about, and it is invaluable, but with it comes a certain level of responsibility.  She has not seen her husband for a year.  And he will serve out his 33-year-sentence in one of Pakistan's most notorious prisons, one that also houses senior Taliban commanders. 

How secure will his life be there?

But some in the U.S. aren't exactly sitting on their hands over this, either.  A U.S. Senate panel has taken steps to cut $33-million in aid to Pakistan.  The Senate Appropriations Committee has stated it plans to cut U.S. aid by one million for each year of Dr. Afridi's sentence for treason.


And, as an interesting endnote, Hollywood has prepared a film, titled Zero Dark Thirty, about the Abbottabad raid, scheduled for release in mid-December.

The Crucial 20% Threshhold

Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, I'm the fool. 

The Islamic Republic of Iran has no shame, feels no shame, sees no reason to apportion shame.  It knows what it wants and it intends to succeed.  Under duress it struggles but persists and schemes to find a way.  That way has generally been to throw around a few demonstrably ill-conceived accusations, then resort to promises it has no intention of honouring for the greater advantage of deceiving an adversary to its eventual advantage.

And so it is with the diplomacy that Iran practises, hinting at its willingness to compromise - but only if those insisting that it do so, are themselves prepared to surrender to certain of Iran's dictates.  Perhaps in Yukia Amano, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, palavering with the Republic's lead negotiator for the nuclear file represents a wise head unwilling to be forestalled by protestations of innocence.  Hoping they will prevail. 

But then, perhaps not.

Iran insists it is prepared to alter its plans to some degree.  Never to the extent that it would agree to completely give up its plans for nuclear attainment.  For strictly civil, peaceful purposes, to be sure.  In which case its enrichment of uranium to 20% is completely unnecessary.  And its secretive and illegal installations where such enrichment is taking place would be entirely redundant to its 'true' purpose.

The meeting between Yukia Aman and Iran's Saeed Jalili was no doubt provocatively redolent of promises that could be made and met if certain provisions were guaranteed.  In which case IAEA inspectors could and might be permitted to investigate and interview certain scientists and facilities, including military ones (Iran's Republican Guard is completely in charge of the nuclear installations) in exchange for which concessions favouring Iran must be immediately launched in reciprocation.

And this was the significant breakthrough harbouring potentials sought in agreement that Yukia Amano was able to convey to the P5+1; the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany. 



Alas, the plan that the P5+1 presented to Iran was not entirely - not remotely - to its liking.  "What you are asking for is ... not what we agreed to in Instanbul", was the response from Iran, according to an Iranian diplomat.  In reference to the demands proffered by the six world negotiators insisting that Iran cap its uranium enrichment to the 5% level; and scrap its Fordow enrichment facility.

Matters did not at all proceed as Iran felt they should.  Instead of appearing "reciprocal, simultaneous, and ... balanced", complained the Iranian diplomat, the negotiators informed Mr. Jalili that there would eventually result "consideration" in the easing of sanctions at a "later" date, much after Iran agreed to making the concessions demanded of it.

 Iran appears to have been disconcertingly surprised at the turn of events, since things looked so hopeful from their perspective.  Oily assurances of co-operation appear to have netted them nothing like what confident expectations led them to believe.  Mr. Jalili's frequent requests to Catherine Ashton to ease sanctions evidently did not result in a sympathetic hearing that would translate to a more open and useful mode of concessions in Iran's favour.

Yet.