Impelled to Intervene

"There's at least two really tough things about this [case]."
"Philosophers are really comfortable taking for granted complete knowledge and certainty about a situation. In some ways, this case touches on literally everything I've ever studied."
"Imagine what an enormous difference it would make in this case if what had really been happening was a bunch of high school students had been filming a 'make-it-yourself' horror movie and across the street hidden was someone with a camera."
"In Massachusetts you'd be getting a ticket and maybe a point off your license. I'd be getting two-and-a-half to 15 years in prison."
Fiery Cushman, assistant professor of moral psychology, Harvard University 

"If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it."
Peter Singer, Australian philosopher

"Usually I will go and stay in the shelter, but this time something told me ‘no, stand at the bus stop don’t go to the shelter'."
"When I see this gentleman coming towards me, I don’t think [anything] because I meet all kinds of people in the morning."
"I’m screaming and I see cars passing by, nobody stopped. I was calling for help."
"And I hear this thing, ‘boom!’ behind me. I just crossed my arms, and I said ‘I’m dead, I’m not going to see my grandchildren and my kids'."
"A few seconds later I open up my eyes and I can feel that I was in a lot of pain. I have no idea what had happened."
"You’re my angel, you saved me! [she remembered shouting]. He’s the only one who put his family on the side to save me, to do something for me."
"I’m 59, I feel like 80 now. I have sweats, I wake up sweating, I have to have someone around 24/7."
"I owe my life to him He has four children, and it’s not fair to charge this man."
Alicia Aquino, Toronto

Alicia Aquino says she was attacked at a TTC bus stop last month and only the intervention of a passing driver saved her.   (Steve Russell / Toronto Star)

With a name like Anthony James Kiss, how could any individual, as an onlooker to a violent crime taking place, fail to act? Mr. Kiss rose to the occasion. But in so doing it cannot be claimed that he was not conflicted; should he, or shouldn't he? What he was witnessing was a man suddenly attacking a woman, violently and with obvious vicious intent. He was himself driving by, so he was in possession of a lethal weapon, one he aimed squarely at the attacker.

In that moment of action when he was propelled by his conscience to save a life, he killed a man. For which act he was charged with manslaughter. Oh, and impaired driving causing death. He had been drinking, and he was returning home and he passed a bus shelter. Beside the shelter was a woman. The scene caught his attention as he drove by, that something sinister was about to happen.

And it did. He saw a man suddenly attack the woman at the bus stop and when she ran screaming, the man chased her, brandishing a knife. Mr. Kiss stepped on the accelerator and hit the rampaging man and did so because  he was convinced he was watching a murder taking place, that a woman was in mortal danger and if he, the only other person present did nothing, he would be morally responsible for her death.

So he did what his conscience propelled him to do. Under interrogation he denied he had been impaired, despite several beers. This occurred in downtown Toronto on June 7, 2017, when Anthony James Kiss deliberately struck and killed Dario Romero, on Eglinton Avenue, a major thoroughfare, at 4 a.m. And this incident led, naturally, to a criminal court case, since charges of manslaughter and impaired driving causing death are not trifles.

It might be  held that Mr. Kiss's reaction saved a woman's life, and the life that he saved was that of Alicia Aquino for whom Anthony Kiss is an "angel" because he saved her life. The man who set out without warning to attack and stab her was a family man with mental illness issues whom his family described as loving and generous.

What was not at all in Mr. Kiss's favour was the fact that he failed to remain at the scene. After hitting Mr. Romero, he sped off. He drove away instead of waiting for the arrival of police, and was later arrested on his way home, driving north of Toronto. So, is he a killer, or is he a hero? When is it permissible for such an intervention? The devil is in the details. Mr. Kiss is firm in his conviction he had no choice; he saved a life and in the process took one.

A week ago the Crown dropped the most serious of the charges brought against Mr. Kiss, including manslaughter. The court was informed that the prosecutor felt there was no reasonable chance of a conviction on these counts. The other charges; impaired driving, dangerous driving and failing to remain at the scene of an accident remain. Of course, however things turn out, he will always have it on his conscience that he killed a man.

A crown prosecutor felt it should be known shortly whether the case will proceed to trial, or would be resolved, possibly through a plea. This entire incident presents as a dilemma. How would and should anyone similarly witnessing such a scene of frightening violence react?

Bernard Weil / Torstar News Service 

Anthony James Kiss stands outside Finch court during a hearing on his hit and run case.

The "Values" of Big Game Hunting

"I think people need to really take the time to educate themselves about the values of big game hunting."
"The government should be using science and not emotions to make these decisions."
"President Trump is probably not using science and listening to emotions."
Jason St.Michael, operations manager, Safari Club International in Canada

"[Canada voted against moving all elephants to Appendix I because the four countries affected] did not meet the CITES criteria for listing on Appendix I."
"Canada adheres to a strict set of principles in the CITES fora and believes decisions regarding trade controls should be founded on best available science, support sustainable use of well-managed populations, and the conservation needs of species."
Environment Canada

Canada represents one among four countries refusing to ban domestic trade in ivory; the others being Japan, Namibia and South Africa. Canada's ivory trade includes Inuit hunters traditionally trading in ivory obtained from narwhals and walruses. In the view of Elephanatics, a Vancouver-based elephant conservation group, any trading of ivory permitted gives a leg up to illegally obtained ivory from poachers slaughtering elephants for their tusks.

The conservation group has been petitioning the Government of Canada for its support in moving all elephants to the Appendix I list; elephants from Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana and South Africa included. Canada, ingloriously, was among a number of countries voting against just such an initiative in 2016.

Canadians have legally imported over 2,600 trophy animals listed internationally as endangered species in the last decade. Also included in those imports were thousands of animal skins, skulls, feet, ears, tusks, horns and tails of species ranging from antelope to zebras sourced across the globe. The American Fish and Wildlife Service reversed a 2014 ban on elephant imports from Zimbabwe and Zambia in a surprise move last month.

Leading President Trump to halt that reversal as he tweeted his belief that elephant hunting represents a "horror show", one that he would not be amenable to believing otherwise about should any source make the effort to convince him that hunting such wild animals was a positive for conservation efforts to sustain the herds in the wild.



Canada had never banned such importation to begin with. The Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), keeps track of three lists of animals based on the perceived level of protection required, and it holds that permits must be issued before the animals or any of their parts can be traded across international borders.

Between 2007 and 2015, according to the database, Canada permitted the legal importation of 2,647 mammals representing hunting trophies. Included among them were 83 elephants, 256 lions, 134 zebras, 765 hippos and 19 rhinoceroses. How rational and reasonable debate can conclude that this practise represents a positive for animal welfare and the conduct of intelligent human beings is beyond belief.

Animals imported in an intact state other than being dead and stuffed included another 280 mammals comprised of antelope, oryx, monkeys and lions. The list goes on to include 434 skulls, 260 feet from elephants, zebras, hippos and rhinos; 87 elephant ears; 1,156 elephant trunks; and 17 rhinoceros horns. An inventory that resounds with demented obsessions of conquest and souvenirs of the most ghastly type imaginable to civilized human beings.

No permit of any kind is required for other animals brought back as trophies not on any endangered list. Elephants, however, represent some of the most endangered species on the globe. A census taken in 2016 verified  a diminishing of populations by 30 percent between 2007 and 2014.

In all countries except four: Botswana, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe, elephants are listed on the most-endangered list of CITES. And of the elephant trophies imported into Canada in that same time frame, sixty-one came from those four countries with fifteen from the most endangered list.

This photo shows an African elephant  pictured in Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe.  (MARTIN BUREAU / AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

North Korean Refugees : Canada

"If I go back [to South Korea], the adults, me and my husband, will survive somehow."
"But the kids who were born here and the oldest, it's not their fault that they ended up as my kids. I'm really sorry that we've told false stories [in 2010] but it was only for our survival and I hope the Canadian government gives us an opportunity to stay."
"Please give hope to my kids."
Hyekyung Jo, North Korean defector, Toronto

Hyekyung Jo admitted she and her husband misled Canadian officials when they arrived in Toronto as asylum seekers, but says her family's prospects are bleak if they are forced to return to South Korea, where they lived briefly after defecting from the North.   Torstar News Service

"It's almost impossible to get a good job [for North Koreans living in South Korea]. That's the reality."
"[North Koreans are] brainwashed by [immigration] brokers to tell lies [to Canadian officials that they arrived in Canada directly from China]."
"They [North Koreans seeking immigrant status] think it [changing names, dates of birth, etc.] is the only way to get into Canada. ... They just don't know any better."
Conservative MPP Raymond Cho, immigration critic

Clearly, living as oppressed and fearful citizens under a tyrannical regime such as North Korea's where its dynastic ruler sacrifices the peoples' well-being for his ambitions to achieve long-range ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads to enable him to foment global destabilization through threats doesn't represent reason enough for the Liberal-led Government of Canada to instruct the Immigration Department to view North Koreans defecting from their dysfunctionally dangerous country as suitable to become landed immigrants in Canada.

How the government differentiates in favour of Syrian families fleeing the tyranny of the Syrian regime's Bashar al-Assad's horrendous attacks on his Sunni majority population in a bloody sectarian war, preferring to re-victimize North Koreans by abandoning their need, is a strange conundrum. One of the elected Members of Parliament that Justin Trudeau had elevated to a ministerial position, Afghanistan-heritage Maryam Monsef was discovered to have incorrectly listed her place of birth as Afghanistan when she was born in Iran.

An error she claims was revealed to her only recently by her mother who had identified Afghanistan not Iran on her refugee application. Belief can be suspended, given that Maryam arrived in Canada at age 11 with her mother and siblings, but they had been living in Iran, not Afghanistan where her mother had fled to escape Taliban rule, so the explanation that she did not know seems rather ingenuous. Is Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada prepared to send a letter to this Member of Parliament that she will be deported to Iran?

Just such a letter had been received by a number of North Koreans, up to fifty families living around the greater Toronto area. They were formally informed that their requests for permanent residency are on the verge of being revoked, with deportation to South Korea to follow. What concerns these North Koreans who have settled in Canada and have lived there for years is that North Korean nationals face outright social hostility in South Korea.

The October 30 advisement from Immigration Canada is based on the belief that the South Korean government grants automatic citizenship to North Koreans, and South Korea is recognized by Canada as a safe haven for refugees Hyekyung Jo and her husband in seeking asylum in 2010 informed refugee board authorities they had arrived in Canada directly from China, not from South Korea where they had lived for several years after escaping their country of birth.

Her husband had been under investigation for espionage in South Korea, making their return doubly problematical. Their oldest child was two when they arrived in Canada. Their six year-old and 9 month-old were both born in Canada, over the seven years they have lived in the country, where her husband, Kang works as a sushi chef. The Federation of North Korean Defectors organized a news conference to highlight the plight of these North Korean families in the Toronto area.

A few provincial Parliamentarians attended the conference, all of whom expressed their support for the North Koreans facing deportation. The Federal Government had compiled a list of 35 countries in 2013 considered safe for refugees, and South Korea is one of the countries on that list. MPP David Zimmer, minister of Indigenous relations and reconciliation stated he felt "strongly" that the "federal government should find a way to allow for special circumstances for North Korean defectors", and he planned to raise the issue with  his federal counterparts.

The Numerically Significant Answer

"Gun owners who say they belong to the NRA tend to own more guns, on average, than gun owners who don’t belong to the NRA: About half (52%) say they own five or more guns, compared with 24% of non-NRA members (38% of nonmembers say they own only one gun). NRA members also hunt and shoot with more frequency than gun owners who aren’t NRA members: 50% say they go hunting often or sometimes, compared with 30% of nonmembers; 66% of NRA members go shooting often or sometimes, versus 49% of nonmembers."

Pew Research Center

National Rifle Association protestations aside, along with the great number of Americans who support the 'right to bear arms' enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, while guns may not kill, people do as they claim, the easy access to and great proliferation of guns owned by citizens is indeed responsible for the reputation the United States has earned as the killing capital of the world -- by guns, wielded by people who own them. A lot of people. A lot of guns.

A body of research exists -- and it is growing -- affirming that though Americans are not inherently violent, their accessibility to firearms results in deadly-violent incidents of unsurprising consistency and frequency of occurrences. Comprised of 4.4 percent of the global population, Americans own 42 percent of the guns circulating in the world, with over 300-million guns in the United States, averaging to one for every man, woman and child in the population.

Research shows that 31 percent of mass shooting gunmen worldwide were American, according to a 2014 study by the University of Alabama's Adam Lankford. Yemen alone among other nations has a higher rate of mass shootings among nations with over ten million people. After the United States, Yemen qualifies as the world's second largest gun ownership nation. A massively poor, undeveloped nation in comparison to the world's premier leadership nation, advanced in technology, research and commerce. 

In his research, Dr. Lankford found confirmation that the rate of gun ownership correlates unfailingly with the number of mass shootings experienced. And nor can any of this be attributed to mental health, since Americans are no more plagued with mental  health issues than any other country. Health care spending in mental health is comparable with other wealthy nations, with a 2015 study estimating 4 percent of American gun deaths attributable to mental health issues.

The gun homicide rate in America in 2009 was 33 per million in comparison to Canada's 5 per million and the  United Kingdom's 0.7 per million, numbers corresponding to differences in gun ownership. A 1999 study by Franklin Zimring and Gordon Hawkins of the University of California concluded that the U.S. is no more prone to crime than other developed countries. But U.S. crime distinguishes itself by being infinitely more lethal.

Gun-related deaths in 2013 included 21,175 suicides, 11,208 homicides and 505 deaths inadvertently caused by accidental discharge. Guns in the hands of curious and innocent children have proven to be disastrously lethal; in some instances killing other children, and in others their own parents. Accessibility is the key. In comparison, only 13 deaths attributable to guns were registered in that same year in Japan, smaller population by two-thirds aside.

The second-highest gun ownership rate of any developed country is in Switzerland where the gun homicide rate in 2004 was 7.7 per million people; a high enough number, totally reflecting the number of weapons circulating in society, yet still well under the U.S. rate. Switzerland has more stringent gun laws, with a higher bar set to secure and maintain a license and for selling guns as well as types that can be possessed by Swiss citizens.

That people have an inherent right to own guns is shared with the United States by Guatemala and Mexico, with resulting lax regulations for gun ownership. Relatively unregulated gun ownership is deemed to be a value whose cost to society in gun-related deaths is a worthwhile exchange. "In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the U.S. gun control debate", wrote British journalist Dan Hodges, of the 2012 attack where 20 children and six adults were shot to death at a Connecticut elementary school.

"Once America decided killing children was bearable, it [the debate] was over."

At least 23 weapons were found in the Las Vegas hotel suite of the gunman who targeted an outdoor concert on Sunday night, killing 59 people, including himself, and injuring more than 500 others. Authorities found 19 more firearms, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, in the home of the gunman, Stephen Paddock     A federal law enforcement official said the guns Stephen Paddock used to carry out the shooting in Las Vegas included AR-15-style rifles. Credit John Moore/Getty Images

Christians, The Endangered Middle East Minority

"They also have encountered discrimination and persecution by other refugees in United Nations camps in the region and, thus, eschew them."
"The Christians who escape ISIS depend on the Church and other private charities for their survival."
"What's going on in the Middle East, I wouldn't have though possible a short time ago, but now here we are. It's here, and it's undeniable."
"The fact that the United States is bringing aid is not going to stop the persecution."
"The greatest hope, I suppose, is that we drive ISIS out of control, the caliphate collapses, and we see a return to a Western mindset, let's say, where people of different faiths are welcome to thrive alongside one another, which is how so many of these nations were a decade or two ago."
"If we get back to that, I think everybody would be happy. But as it is now, it's a very difficult and sad case."
Professor Ronald J. Ryshlak, University of Mississippi School of Law

"[Christian minorities] today find themselves subjected to barbaric acts of violence: They are evicted from their homes and native lands, sold as slaves, killed, beheaded, crucified, or burned alive, under the shameful and complicit silence of many."
"Today, we are dismayed to see how in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world many of our brothers and sisters are persecuted, tortured, and killed for their faith in Jesus."
"This, too, needs to be denounced: In this third World War, waged piecemeal, which we are now experiencing, a form of genocide - I insist on the word -- is taking place, and it must end."
Pope Francis, 2014, European Parliament

"The U.N.'s lead agency for aiding refugees, the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, marginalizes Christians and others targeted by ISIS for eradication in two critical programs; refugee housing in the region and Syrian refugee-settlement abroad."
Nina Shea, Hudson Institute

"We will no longer rely on the United Nations alone to assist persecuted Christians and minorities in the wake of genocide and the atrocities of terrorist groups. The United States will work hand-in-hand from this day forward with faith-based groups and private organizations to help those who are persecuted for their faith."
"Yet the United Nations has too often failed to help the most vulnerable communities, especially religious minorities. The result has been that countless people continue to suffer and struggle needlessly."
U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence,  Defense of Christians summit

Christians make up about 10% of Syria's 22 million people 

No word specifically from any of these empathetic sources of the cause of the viral threat to Christians within the Middle East. Though there are references to the traditions within Muslim-majority countries of exacting jizya, a head tax from minority religions to enable them to live unmolested among Muslims under Islam as inferior and subject to the forbearance that their financing of 'protection' awards them.

When it was Jews who were being cleansed from the geographies that they had lived within for millennia little notice was taken, though historically Jews have been the prophetic 'canaries' in the minefield of racism, tribalism and religious bigotry.

The rather limp and untowardly unrealistic nostalgia of which Mr. Rychlak speaks, of a time before the onset of Salafist Islamism aggressively rooting out the presence of religions sullying Islam's sacred command of the Middle East is not likely to re-bloom. At the best of times, before the severely punishing aspect of Islam was resurrected from its glory days of conquest, others were permitted to live among Muslims on tolerance only by accepting their inferior status.

When Vice-President Pence spoke of his disappointment with the response of the United Nations to the plight of Christians in Islamic lands, the point he made was that the $1-billion earmarked to go to the aid of Syriac and Coptic Christians was directed through the United Nations, and it appears that no substantive aid ever reached the target communities it was meant for.

As for Pope Francis, he is busy sprinkling the fairy-dust of Catholic goodwill throughout the world, barely focusing on the plight of his own flock in a more meaningful, forceful way.

He visits Myanmar to speak reprovingly of the Buddhist hostility to the Rohingya minority being targeted by the Burmese military in Aung San Suu Kyi's government, when it should be the Dalai Llama visiting his religious constituents to impress upon them the benevolent goodness of mercy and the qualities of sufferance, while the Pope should be expressing his condolences to Egypt most certainly, but also recommending that Al Azhar university seriously contemplate the quality of instruction it endows its imams with as they set out into the world at large.

Accusations of religious genocide do not appear out of nowhere. In the last decade Iraqi and Syrian Christians, ancient communities established there long before the concept of Islam was ever a construct in Mohammad's febrile mind have been forcefully diminished to the vanishing point. Iraq's 1.4 million Christian population is now reduced to an estimated quarter-million, and fast shrinking; those remaining live as refugees in internally displaced camps.

As for the two million Syrian Christians once traditionally inhabiting that country, between one and 1.5 million exist now as refugees in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, countries where Christians enjoy no resettlement rights, and when they live in those camps they face persecution as well there, from among the Muslim refugees gathered there through the necessity of survival against the odds of persecution not from their sectarian regime, but the ravages of Islamic State, and other jihadi groups.

When Western countries were taken up with responding to the humanitarian needs of displaced Sunni Syrians whom the Alawite regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was slaughtering, an emphasis might have been placed on rescuing minority religious, women and children and tribal groups along with Christians, but nothing of that kind occurred. In the United States when eleven thousand Syrian refugees were resettled in 2016, only 56 Christians were among them. And the same thing happened with Syrians resettled in Canada.

Vice-President Pence himself alluded to this, that in Iraq "the majority of Christians and Yazidis remain in shelters, (while] the United Nations too often denies their funding requests. We stand with those who suffer for their faith, because that's what Americans have always done, because the common bond of our humanity demands a strong response." He might try to discuss that with  his President.

"There is a trend, a very narrowing scope, a narrowing perspective going through the Middle East that only certain people have a right to exist and we need in conscience to address that."
Bishop Angaelos, General Bishop of the Coptic Church in the United Kingdom

The first blast hit St George's Coptic church in the northern city of Tanta. Witnesses said the explosion was next to the church's altar.   BBC News

Condemning Barbarity

"Israel strongly condemned the 'painful terror attack in Egypt' and sent 'the condolences of the Israeli people to [Egyptian] President [Abdel-Fattah] Sisi and to the Egyptian people,' in a statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office."
"'There is no difference between terrorism harming Egypt and terrorism harming other countries. Terror will be beaten more quickly if all countries work against it together,' the PMO said in its statement."
The Jewish Press

A mosque seen at sunset near the border with Egypt from southern Gaza : The Jewish Press

"[The attack] will not go unpunished. [Egyptians would] derive hope and determination from such pain to triumph in the war against black terrorism."
"We will remain steadfast and will fight back with an iron fist. This attack will only add to our persistence on overcoming the tragedy and we will win the battle against the forces of evil."
"The army and police will avenge our martyrs and return security and stability with force in the coming short period."
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi

"This is a shift in the tactics of the terrorists."
"An attack on civilians at Friday prayers is not something we have been used to seeing."
Hossam El-Rifai, member of parliament, northern Sinai

"This represents the scary prospect that the list of targets they are willing to pursue is growing."
"It is hard to know, however,  if they were targeted because they were Sufis or because they were perceived to be collaborating with the government."
Timothy Kaldas, fellow, Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy

"The attack will, over the medium-term, damage el-Sissi's credibility as the figure that can protect Egypt, particularly if the security situation does not markedly improve."
"And it probably won't."
Hani Sabra, political risk analyst, Alef Advisory

Some of the casualties in Bir al-Abd, Egypt, in the country's North Sinai region on Friday. (EPA)

Witnesses to the well-planned and successfully carried-out slaughter of Egyptians living in northern Sinai praying inside the al Rawdah mosque in the area of el-Arish reported seeing the black flag of Islamic State among their attackers. This atrocity had all the hallmarks of Islamic State ferocity in manoeuvring victims toward certain death. Four off-road vehicles carried terrorists who opened fire on worshippers evacuating the mosque in panic after a bomb blasted the interior.

Care had been taken previous to the attack to block off escape routes when vehicles were blown up and the burning wrecks left to block the roads, making it impossible for victims to escape and difficult for rescuers to enter the area. As ambulances arrived they too came under deadly fire. Over three hundred people, an estimated 30 children among them, were slaughtered, and another hundred people injured in the flash firestorm.

Sufis, who practise a philosophical form of Islam instead of the more mainstream literal form, were the target, along with the many military and police who regularly attend the mosque. A committed branch of Islamic State in the Sinai has been responsible for deadly bombs targeting churches in Cairo and other Egyptian cities, killing Egyptian Coptic Christians. The deaths of 226 people from an explosive in the cargo of a Russian passenger jet in 2015 was also attributed to the Sinai Province terrorist group.

Taking its cue on publicizing its medieval era savagery the Sinai ISIL branch beheaded an elite Sufi religious figure, blind Sheikh Suleiman Abu Heraz a year ago, taping and posting photographs of the murderous event online. When the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammad Morsi was removed from the Egyptian presidency three years ago by a popular revolt led by the-then military's top general, now president of Egypt, the Sinai became a hotbed of violent revolt.

Salafist Bedouin, groups with the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and al-Qaeda and then Islamic State all targeted Egyptian military and police quarters, killing hundreds of Egyptian police, army and politicians. Villages and desert outposts teem with insurgents threatening Egyptian security forces. And while the military has succeeded in ensuring that wholesale territory has not fallen to the terrorist groups, neither have they succeeded in bringing security to the region.

The Sinai, which since the handover to Egypt by Israel in its peace agreement, had become a source of badly needed investment and tourism in a faltering economy, has seen the  tourism industry once again decline resulting from incessant insecurity. When the Sinai Province group targeted the Russian plane flying tourists in the Sinai back to Russia it pronounced the death knell of Egyptian tourism as a thriving part of the nation's economy.

The shocking death toll of this latest bloody assault, considered the largest and most deadly yet suffered in Egypt at the hands of terrorist groups led condolences o pour into Egypt with messages of support from Israel, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, Russia, France and Britain in condemnation of the unspeakable violation of humanity. Egypt's uneasy peace agreement with Israel mandates Israel's empathy, rarely reciprocated.

On the other hand, another nation in the Middle East saw the event as an opportunity for a bit of sanctimonious sectarian interpretation courtesy of a non-Arab, Muslim nation whose activities in the neighbourhood are held in suspicion as a promoter of instability regionally and terrorist attacks abroad, through a public relations display of absurd and sinister quasi-righteous sympathy:

"The ar-Rawdhah Mosque in Bir al-Abed, west of Arish city, was covered with blood and bodies – of the dead, the dying and the wounded survivors – as those fortunate to evade the bomb blast and the indiscriminate gunfire of the masked murderers shooting from four vehicles that almost surrounded the mosque, ran helter-skelter for their dear life."
"It seems this is what Egypt has to pay for its unwarranted coziness to Saudi Arabia, whose billions of dollars in aid, is not just holding the government of General Abdul-Fattah as-Sisi in ransom, but allowing Takfiri terrorists to spread their deadly tentacles in the predominantly Sunni Muslim country."
"We in the Islamic Republic of Iran, the prime victims of terrorism (sponsored by the US and the Salafis), strongly condemn this dastardly act by the Wahhabi-Zionist agents, and join our Egyptian brethren in their hour of grief."
Sheikh Ahmad at-Tayyeb, the head of al-Azhar, the famous Sunni Muslim seat of learning, who over a year ago had issued his famous verdict that the Wahhabis are not part of the Ahl as-Sunnah, denounced Friday’s massacre.
He said: "Shedding blood, desecrating houses of God and terrorizing worshippers are corrupt deeds, which must be struck hard and firmly.”
Kayhan International, Iranian News Service, "Iran Samaneh"

It's Never Over 'Till It's Over

"Detainees were forced to rape and engage in other degrading sexual acts with one another. Many Bosnian Muslim women who were unlawfully detained were raped."
"Many of these men and boys [who were murdered] were cursed, insulted, threatened, forced to sing Serb songs and beaten while awaiting their execution." 
"The chamber found that the only reasonable inference was that the accused intended to destroy the Bosnian Muslim[s] of Srebrenica as a substantial part of the protected group of Muslims in Bosnia Herzegovina."
"Accordingly, the chamber found the accused intended to carry out the Srebrenica joint criminal enterprises through the commission of the crime of genocide and was a member of the Srebrenica joint criminal enterprise."
Judge Alphons Orie, UN Tribunal for Atrocities in the Balkans, The Hague

People, including victims, protest in front of the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) prior to the verdict Photograph: John Thys/AFP/Getty Images

"This landmark verdict marks a significant moment for international justice and sends out a powerful message around the world that impunity cannot and will not be tolerated."
John Daluisen, Europe director, Amnesty International

Over 100,000 people died in this brutal conflict following the disintegration of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. Millions of people were made homeless. Bosnia saw the worst excesses of barbaric slaughter. Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic was hunted for a decade before he was finally taken into custody. His trial, after his 2011 arrest, heard from over 500 witnesses over 530 days, and close to 10,000 exhibits demonstrated the exhaustive search for justice that took place. 

Bosnian Serb forces overran Srebrenica, in an area which had been declared a UN-protected safe haven for its Muslim residents. The Serbian forces had instructions to bus women and children out of the area after they had watched as their husbands, fathers, brothers and sons were separated from the women and taken away. Concluding with the Serb forces undertaking a systematic slaughter of eight thousand Muslim men and boys.

The UN peacekeepers were incapable of intervening and were in fact held responsible, in a 2014 decision for the deaths of desperate men seeking refuge at the Dutch peacekeepers' base near Srebrenica. The Hague Appeals Court found that the peacekeepers should have been aware that the Bosnian Serb troops would murder the men forced to leave the base. The Dutch government in acknowledging the failure of its troops to protect the refugees protested that the peacekeepers had been dispatched on "mission impossible".

That characterization has echoes of Rwanda, when a UN peacekeeping force stationed in the tense atmosphere of Hutu-Tutsi poisonously threatening relations were unable to put a stop to a brief, brutal slaughter of Tutsis and moderate Hutus, even though the man tasked with overseeing the mission, Canadian General Romeo Dallaire, had pleaded with the United Nations to urgently dispatch more men to the mission, and to provide them with appropriate defensive weaponry.

During his trial, Ratko Mladic was at first offhand and relaxed. Under his orders the Serb forces showered shells and snipers' bullets on the defenceless in Sarajevo to conclude in the most horrible massacre to take place in Europe outside the Second World War. The testimony and evidence used to convict him was irrefutable. He was convicted of genocide and other crimes, his sentencing was life imprisonment.

It took 23 years to bring the Butcher of Sarajevo to justice, to account for the atrocities he had ordered to take place. His attorneys have stated they plan to appeal his convictions on ten charges from 1992 to 1995 until the conflict ended. Mladic served former Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic, himself convicted a year earlier for genocide and now serving his 40 year sentence. He too has appealed.

As for former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, his sentence was an early death in 2006 while awaiting the verdicts reached by tribunal judges following his trial. A kinder death due to health complications took his life in a UN prison cell, in comparison to the atrocities meted out to those he viewed as enemies, across the Balkans,

Justice is done, but when justice is delayed to this extent one must question how well justice has been served. International Courts of Justice have their function, but when  the president of Sudan and his elite henchmen were found guilty of war crimes in Darfur, the response was a shrug of indifference; none of them have been held to account. As Arabs they are protected by the larger Arab community of dictators and tyrants.

And if takes a quarter-century to finally bring Bashar al-Assad to trial for destroying Syria, murdering over a half-million Syrian Sunnis in a sectarian war, ruining his country's heritage infrastructure, creating millions of homeless and millions more refugees, many of them flooding Europe with their humanitarian need, what level of justice is that? Even if he were to finally be taken into custody and taken to trial.

The world that fails to respond adequately in prevention of these wholesale atrocities also fails in its responsibility to hold the perpetrators to account.

Lightning at the memorial center near Srebrenica, Dado Ruvic / Reuters

Kill Or Cosset? 

"After the humiliating defeat of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, thousands of European jihadists are set to return home; Western governments seem eager to roll out the red-carpet for them as if they were heroes, rather than turncoats. The UK has launched a program for homecoming jihadists to help them find jobs and live a "normal" life; Sweden plans to give ISIS fighters housing, employment, education and financial support, reports Gatestone's Khadija Khan."
Nina Rosenwald, President, Gatestone Institute

"It's clunky [parallel investigations carried out by Canada's federal police and intelligence agencies, CSIS and the RCMP] and it makes me worry about our nimbleness were we confronted with a fast-moving, competent adversary."
"Clearly we struggle in bringing intelligence agencies to bear in supplying evidence."
"Such specialized expertise [employing specialized terrorism prosecutors] was an Air India inquiry recommendation."
Craig Forcese, professor, national security law, University of Ottawa 

An Isis militant appearing in a propaganda video at a Russian base in the Syrian city of Palmyra on 13 December

Canada's Liberal government is smarting under the accusation by Parliament's official opposition public safety critics that the governing Liberals are weak on national security. The snarling response from the public safety Minister Ralph Goodale was that "Anyone that needs to be under surveillance is indeed under surveillance". Under, he emphasizes "very careful investigation". On the other  hand, this is not where the Liberal government's heart is, it doesn't quite reflect its 'sunny ways' nor the trusting naivete of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Lead a committed Islamist jihadist, irrespective of the experience he's had abroad as a fighting member of al-Qaeda or Islamic State, Boko Haram, Al Shabaab or the Taliban to a reasonable debate over the peaceful nature of 'true' Islam, or expose them to the gentrifying civility of regarding others worshipping a religion other than Islam as equals in a pluralistic society best suited to reflect concerns with equality and human rights, and they will without doubt acquiesce in the warm request to surrender violence and become pacified.

This is the purpose of the new Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence, in lock-step with the efforts at anti-radicalization of the Council of Canadian Imams. Who, presumably, are not the same imams who are preaching radicalization and jihad as an imperative in Islam for the faithful to engage in. As the combined forces of NATO, the United States, Russia and unfortunately, Iran, Hezbollah and Turkey supporting the limp efforts of the Iraqi and Syrian military sidelining temporarily their own sectarian-imposed violence have succeeded in shoving Islamic State out of its caliphate, European jihadi returnees have become a problem.

A man suspected of fighting for ISIS being held in Dibis, Iraq. As the caliphate disintegrates, its foreign jihadis are now seeking to return home. Photograph by Bram Janssen / AP

These Islamist heroes of Deobandist persuasion worshipping the Islam of the medieval era's conquesting brigades having tempered their steely resolve to destruction and slaughter in the fields of failed conquest in the east turn now to the option they feel entitled to as citizens of European and North American democracies. Where the social welfare systems and the kindly disposition of a different kind of justice system geared to Western sensibilities await their return with fond understanding of waywardness seeking forgiveness.

Despite Norway's forgiving attitude toward murderous malefactors it is a study by Thomas Hegghammer, a Norwegian academic that posits the recidivism rate of terrorists at one in nine, that those who do return to the countries that have given them and their families haven from conflict, poverty and oppression from their Muslim governments, having experienced the glories of jihad on return, represent more effective operators in terror than  those who practise jihad in situ without having had the practise abroad.

Syrian government soldiers captured by the Islamic State. The battles in Iraq and Syria are wars of annihilation where quarter is rarely given and where most prisoners of war are eventually killed. ISIS has also been vocal about genocidal intentions toward Shiite Muslims and Alawites.  The Middle East Quarterly

Deradicalization is the way the Government of Canada insists it must go, because it is, after all, the Liberal government. Not for them the practise of some countries like the French who ally themselves with their former colonies' militaries to hunt down and kill their own jihadi citizens. "Canada does not engage in death squads", huffed Minister Goodale righteously. While a former CSIS strategic analyst, Phil Gursky, states the working assumption for security agencies is "once a terrorist, always a terrorist". But those are just the experts, not the lawmakers.

Canada has options, other options than to hunt down and kill Canadians in Syria or Iraq, or Nigeria or Afghanistan, who have been misled to believe that Islam requires that they be killer-martyrs in support of Islamic domination of a unbelieving world. Criminal prosecution is open; a way to prove to these jihadis who have spurned Canadian values of democracy and civil equality there is punishment for psychopathy. So far two individuals have been charged over the years with leaving Canada to take part in a terrorist group, with three others charged in absentia.

The U.S., U.K., Australia, and even Norway have a much higher prosecution rate. The Public Prosecution Service of Canada will not proceed in the absence of a reasonable prospect of conviction. And that is hugely dependent on the quality of the evidence given them by Canada's security agencies. Craig Forcese points out that in the U.K. police and intelligence services work in tandem, while CSIS and the RCMP prefer to indulge in parallel investigations. And nor does Canada have the services as the U.K. does of specialized terrorism prosecution solicitors in the Crown Prosecution Service.

Above all, the current government in Canada is concerned that its Canadian Security Intelligence Service is in full compliance with the Charter of Rights. That comes first, not prosecuting those who break Canadian law in leaving the country to join a terrorist group. The thing of it is, there is a concern in this government that no agency of the government attempt to override the rights of any Canadian citizens, jihadis or not, under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Syria, Bashar al-Assad's Dynastic Imperium

"That [the scenario of the U.S. launching a military drive against Assad] requires massive escalation, restarting the war from scratch to roll back Assad's gains and creating an opposition that is both able to govern and acceptable to the international community."
"Looking at the conflict right now and how the opposition's allies are all backing away -- it's just not going to happen."
"To be sure there will be flare-ups of violence and bombings and unrest. But he [Assad] holds he centre, he holds most of the population, he's got the economy and the institutions and the UN seat."
"...He has all the stuff he needs to continue to rule."
Aron Lund, fellow, The Century Foundation, New York

"The participants agreed that the goal of the political settlement is to establish a state based on the principle of citizenship, which enables the Syrians to draft their constitution without interference and to choose their leaders through free, fair and transparent elections in which the Syrians participate inside and outside Syria under the supervision of the United Nations,"
"[The] participants agreed to form a single negotiating delegation in its structure, unified in its positions and reference, with the aim of negotiating with the representatives of the regime ..."
Syrian opposition groups, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

The Syrian opposition has struggled to unify its ranks against Assad [File: Reuters]

Syria, whose president, Bashar al-Assad is responsible for 600,000 Syrian deaths among sectarian Syrian Sunnis, of half of the entire population numbering in the millions displaced (according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 4.8 million are in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq, while 6.6 million remain internally displaced within Syria and at least a million have claimed refugee asylum in Europe), yet Syria has its champion in the UN Security Council.

A nation whose governing regime has been found to have used chemical weapons to destroy the lives of its citizens, whose president ordered the use of barrel bombs and starvation sieges to weaken and destroy its political opponents, and where tens of thousands of men, women and children were arrested, tortured and killed, and is held in obloquy, for the slaughter of its own, suddenly becomes celebrated because it plays the grand gesture of signing on to the Paris Climate Accord. Its status in the United Nations, despite its horrible human rights record, remains respected.

Syria’s surprise decision to sign the Paris climate agreement comes against the background of a brutal civil war. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

It is recognized as a terrorist-sponsoring country by the United States, just as the Islamic Republic of Iran is held to be, yet the resolve of the West insisting that Assad must surrender the presidency of Syria in light of the fact that he has destroyed much of the infrastructure of its largest cities in his campaign to destroy his opponents, and his brutally lethal treatment of Syria's Sunni majority has now been set aside thanks to Russian intervention. A year ago it was certain that the regime was losing the civil conflict against the Sunni-led opposition groups.

This, despite the presence of Lebanon-based Hezbollah militias fighting alongside the Syrian military, along with Iran's al-Quds groups of the Republican Guard Corps. And then along came Russia because Vladimir Putin saw an opportunity to regain Russian influence in the Middle East, not among its traditional sources like Egypt, and bypassing the Sunni majority, but by supporting Syria in its civil conflict through sending in Russian troops and establishing a seaport and airforce facility from which Russian bombers have been aiding Assad by punishing dissent with lethal bombing raids.

The tide was effectively turned. The gains made by the Sunni Syrian militias against Assad's Shia Alawite minority rule totally reversed. Had the United States under the Obama administration agreed to adequately train and arm the Sunni rebels and credibly lead them to an organized mission to defeat Assad, many deaths would have been spared, and fewer desperate Syrians made homeless. Russia now has the upper hand, aligning itself with Iran, Hezbollah, Shia militias and Turkey in support of the Syrian regime.

Where previously the Syrian military focused its efforts on battling the Syrian rebels and ignoring the great portions of its territory overrun and captured by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the situation now is that the rebel groups have been so battered they no longer pose the threat they once did, thanks largely to Russian intervention through its air strikes, enabling attention to turn to fighting ISIL The U.S., training rebel forces through the C.I.A. simply did not trust them enough to enable them sufficiently.

It has been the Kurdish-led forces whom the U.S. and other NATO-aligned nations have been helping to train and to equip that have done the heavy lifting in vanquishing ISIL, driving them from their 'caliphate' geography, and draining them of their massive footholds in Syria and Iraq. The International Criminal Court, which named Sudan's president Omar al-Bashir as a war criminal for his deadly assaults in Darfur, should logically be holding Assad to account for his mass slaughters of Syrians and destruction of Sunni neighbourhoods in Syrian cities.

The intention of the West to press the issue of Bashar al-Assad's stepping down from ruling Syria in the dynastic tradition of his brutal father has gone by the wayside. Even Russian efforts to placate that aspiration through allusions to a future election is in reality a sham, since Assad will see no need whatever for a Western-style, democratic election until he has succeeded in destroying possibly most of the presence of Sunni Syrians, leaving the minority Alawites in the majority to vote overwhelmingly for their hero.

 

The Resurrection of Slavery

"Slavery has no place in our world and these actions are among the most egregious abuses of human rights."
"[The perpetrators must be brought to justice; appropriate UN bodies are] to actively pursue this matter."
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres

"[I plan to establish a] commission to investigate these reports in order to apprehend and bring those responsible to justice."
Ahmed Metig, deputy prime minister Government of National Accord, Tripoli, Libya

Migrants rescued from the Mediterranean arrive at a naval base in Tripoli in October.   CNN

CNN has unleashed its findings on an active slave market in action in Libya, raising outrage in the West and the usual expressions of shock and denunciation in the United Nations, while Libyan authorities of course had no idea that anything of this nature was being carried out and they will immediately launch an investigation to get to the source of the problem. And then, of course, initiate steps to immediately resolve it to everyone's satisfaction.

There is a certain situation which has been previously addressed and that address has resulted in certain consequences. The situation being an ongoing flood of refugees and opportunity-seekers from across the Middle East and North and West Africa to enter Europe and declare themselves refugees, in expectation of being embraced by humanitarian groups and ushered into the countries of their choice which just happen to have the most generous social services available to meet their urgent needs.

But since the European Union, in understandable distress and no little amount of stress emanating from the situation from among their disparate members, many of which have had their resources strained and others which refuse to have their resources used at all, convinced the Libyan government that their coast guard should undertake a strategy to hold back the living tide of people willing to risk death at sea for the opportunity to coast into Europe.

Migrants sit in a detention centre run by the interior ministry of Libya's eastern-based government, in Benghazi Credit: Reuters

The consequences for having stemmed that tide to a sizeable degree is that Libya is stuffed with migrants and refugees. They have been warehoused, their immediate subsistence needs met with donations from the source that refuses them entry and NGOs, and a new business venture other than smuggling the foreigners out of Libya and into Europe has arisen. New opportunities always seem to present themselves, and enterprising criminal elements waste no time taking advantage.

Just think of it: Arab governments failed the needs of their people; Arab governments oppressed their people and when a popular uprising resulted, those same governments went to war against their people, and aside from slaughtering the impudent discontents, created massive numbers of dispossessed, displaced from their familiar geography, along with refugees. And now that the victims have sought alternatives for their lives, Arab traders in human lives have surfaced to gain profit.

According to testimony from the International Organization for Migration and other humanitarian agencies, for months refugees and haven seekers have been crowding the auction blocks of Libyan slave markets to be sold as working slaves throughout the region, where West Africans are advertised as "big strong boys for farm work". Bidders eyeing the migrants succeed in their purchases for as little as $400 for each slave.

The Treeq Alsika Migrant Detention Center in Tripoli, where some migrants are held by Libyan authorities before they are repatriated.   CNN

So, then, it is not Arab governments at fault for creating these teeming numbers of refugees fleeing conflict, and migrants looking to find a promising future for themselves elsewhere than in their opportunity-scarce homelands, but the West, which has failed to continue absorbing migrants/refugees by their millions. If the smugglers in Libya cannot dispatch the refugees in those unseaworthy vessels taking all their available funds to do so, then they will make their hard-earned wealth by auctioning them off as slaves.

According to Alpha Conde, president of Guinea, chairman of the African Union -- the source of many of the migrants -- an inquiry and prosecutions reflecting the "despicable trade ... from another era", must result from these revelations, while the Senegalese government spoke of the slave market as a "blight on the conscience of humanity". Not a blight on Africa, on Arab and Muslim profiteers, but on "humanity", doublespeak for the West.

The International Migration Organization says it has gathered evidence of slavery in Libya   Getty Images

The Will is There, So is the Way

"If American companies have a big market in China, they say to the Ministry of State Security, 'Come in'."
"Everyone fears retaliation. No one wants to lose the China market."
James A. Lewis, vice-president, Center for Strategic and International Studies

"When they first announced the partnership [A.M.D./Sugon] I was shocked."
"You would think intellectual property and joint ventures would belong under Cfius review."
"It should. It's surprising it isn't."
Stacy Rasgon, semiconductor analyst, Sanford Bernstein

"If Made in China 2025 achieves its goals, the U.S. and other countries would likely become just commodity exporters to China -- selling oil, gas, beef and soybeans."
Jeremie Waterman, president, China Center, U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Jen-Hsun Huang, chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp announces cloud and server hardware partnerships. Bloomberg News

Well, that's just it. The world's largest economy may be on the cusp of succumbing to the strenuous efforts of the world's second largest economy's determination to surge ahead and take that status out of the hands of the United States of America. China has, after all, succeeded in persuading the global market that it has the population, the skills, the determination to manufacture anything the world wants, and in the process manufacturers from all nations looked to that production giant for an edge up in profitability and China obliged.

In the process of obliging, China needed energy output on a gigantic scale for the production process, succeeding in polluting its atmosphere, its soil and its water and marginalizing the health of its people. Even the current President of the United States sent his brands overseas for maximum profit in cheaper production. China, while pulling steadily ahead to become the globe's premier producer now also is the globe's topmost investor in other countries' infrastructure.

But China is interested in moving on from there, toward intellectual property rights, held tight by countries that invested in advanced technologies. China foresees a time in the not-too-distant future when it has its fingers grasping cutting edge technologies not through industrial stealth which it has such skill with, but through convincing high tech generators that if they want increased ingress to the vast Chinese market they must surrender trade secrets.

Currently, China is dependent on Western technology sources for its own technology; its own sensitive systems operating government computers, banks and laboratories run on chips from Intel and Qualcomm and Microsoft or Oracle software; a situation that makes China feel vulnerable, not independent. And independence is the target for China's technology future under its Made in China 2025 plan.

That plan is an ambitious one, concerning the domination of technologies such as advanced microchips, artificial intelligence and self-driving vehicles. To achieve that end, China is romancing some of the most influential technology corporations in the world, offering access to the Chinese market in recompense for the unlocking of cutting-edge trade technologies which China could make its own.

Through partnerships or the trade for access of intellectual property, no price too steep for admission to China's huge and growing economy. Unfettered market access to China represents a mouth-watering aspiration for profit-hungry corporations prepared to surrender their property rights to China's profit-blandishments.

UK chip maker Imagination bought for £550m by China-backed tech firm

Imagination Technologies designs the graphics processors used in smartphones and other electronic devices. Photograph: Alamy    

China is skilled in purloining trade secrets through clandestine surveillance and cyber-thievery. It would like to legitimize its goals by having those trade secrets willingly made available through the option of trading and freely approved access to the world's largest population, steadily entering middle-class consumer-status.

Made in China 2025 "is going to have substantial resources and focus devoted to it, especially at the local government level" Kai-Fu Lee, a venture capitalist in Beijing prophesied, not bothering to stick his neck out on a limb to do so. The Chinese government has set aside $45-billion for its companies to loan, another $3-billion to advance manufacturing and more billions in allied financial support, according to a German think tank.

And here's the irony; China has conventionally advanced its interests through accessing by any means trade secrets on which to build its advancing technology and economic strength, and it has done the same with its 2025 plan, emulating a German government plan which was named Industrie 4.0, highlighting a drive toward more automation and "smart factories" performing advanced work with fewer workers.

Foreign auto companies, eager to sell their gas-powered vehicles in the world's largest car market are now being compelled to produce electric cars in China as a trade-off. General Motors, Volkswagen and others of the world's largest vehicle manufacturers are now prepared to form joint ventures with Chinese partners, to enable them to qualify under the Chinese government's new rules of engagement.

China is looking to develop a new generation of supercomputers more powerful than those it already has, but it foresees accomplishing this with their own chips made in China. It formed a partnership with chip manufacturer A.M.D. for $300-million in an agreement to license chip technology in China with its partner, Sugon, bypassing U.S. law in the joint venture through the fiction that A.M.D. controls the joint venture.

The hungry greed of American technology executives, as well as those from other Western sources to access the Chinese market makes them vulnerable to Chinese exploitation, but that vulnerability is not without Western corporations' willingness to accede to Chinese demands of 'sharing' trade secrets. There are no secrets that China cannot access to advance its technology into the future stepping neatly ahead of global competitors.

Too late now, to handle with care.

In July, China’s government issued a sweeping new strategy with a striking aim: draw level with the US in artificial intelligence technology within three years, and become the world leader by 2030. A call for research projects from China’s Ministry of Science and Technology posted online last month fills in some detail on the government’s plans. And it puts Silicon Valley chipmaker Nvidia, the leading supplier of silicon for machine-learning projects, in the cross hairs.  Wired

"More than 85 percent of the key electronic parts in Chinese defense and high-tech equipment are now domestically made, meaning the country has the ability to be self-sufficient in advanced electronic components, officials said on Monday."
"Over the past decade, the technological gap between China and traditional electronic powerhouses like the United States has shortened from 15 years to five years, said Diao Shijing, director of information technology at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology."
China Daily