News Worthy

• Israel is studying plans to create an artificial island along the Gaza Strip with sea and air ports to be controlled by the Palestinian Authority. The project, under development for three months by Yaakov Katz, the Transport Minister, proposes building a man-made island four kilometres long and two km wide, Israel's Channel 2 television reported. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister, backs the plan for the island, which would also contain a tourist area, a marina, hotels and a desalinization plant for sea water. It would be linked to Gaza by a 4-km bridge. The project is estimated to cost $5-billion to $10-billion and take six to 10 years to complete. The project's backers in the government would like to see the island managed by Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority, freezing out the Islamist movement Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. Agence France-Presse
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• Iraq: At least 53 people were killed Tuesday when gunmen took hostages at a provincial council headquarters in Saddam Hussein's hometown, precipitating a battle with security forces. It was one of the deadliest attacks in Tikrit since a suicide bombing killed up to 60 police recruits in January and was the first hostage incident since 52 people were killed in a Baghdad church raid by al-Qaeda-linked gunmen in October. The assailants set off car bombs, explosive belts and hand grenades as they stormed the building and grabbed hostages. Those who did not die as a result of explosions were executed by the gunmen. Sabah al-Bazee, a freelance Iraqi journalist, and three council members were among those killed. Reuters
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• Ivory Coast appeared to have succumbed to full-scale civil war on Tuesday after six key towns fell to forces opposed to the sitting president. Fighting that has already killed 460 people and forced one million from their homes had been contained to the country's far west and some suburbs of the main city Abidjan. But on Tuesday armed groups swept south of the ceasefire line drawn after the end of the last civil war in 2004, taking several towns in succession. Those fighters support Alassane Ouattara, the former World Bank executive internationally recognized as the winner of November's elections. But his rival, Laurent Gbagbo, the incumbent president, has refused to step down. The Daily Telegraph
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• Brussels: Guards blocked the sealed offices Tuesday of disgraced MEPs after a fresh resignation in a string of corruption scandals engulfing the European Parliament. Hella Ranner, an Austrian conservative, became the latest to quit after a newspaper report alleged she planned to clear a $9.8-million business debt using expenses meant for staff and office running costs. Three other lawmakers are already facing probes after a sting by Britain's Sunday Times newspaper showed them agreeing to take bribes of up to $140,000 to draft new laws. Last week, the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg ordered Dan Dover, a veteran British Conservative MEP, to repay $540,000 in unjustified expenses. Agence France-Presse
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• Pakistan has agreed to establish a counter-terrorism hotline and allow Indian detectives investigating the 2008 Mumbai terror plot to visit the country, in the most significant confidence-building measures since the massacre. After two days of talks in New Delhi, India's home secretary and Pakistan's interior secretary said Tuesday the hotline would help "facilitate real-time information sharing with respect to terrorist threats". Security analysts said the moves were a major concession by Pakistan, aimed at persuading India of its sincerity in tackling terrorism and preventing any further attacks being plotted from its territory, like the Mumbai attacks, which were planned by the hardline Islamist Lashkar-e-Taiba. The Daily Telegraph
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• Italy: A woman was paid to say she was a victim of Italy's 2009 earthquake and praise the government's reconstruction efforts. Marina Villa, 50, appeared Friday on a popular television program on Canale 5, one of the television channels owned by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. "L'Aquilla is going back to what it was before [the earthquake]. I'd like to thank, if I can, the Prime Minister", she said. "Those who are still staying in hotels, it's convenient for them. They eat, they drink and they don't do anything". Messages left by acquaintances on social networking sites revealed she was not from L'Aquila, but from a small town in the Abruzzo region. The woman admitted Monday she had been paid $420 to appear and read a statement. Reuters
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• United States: Three inmates and their loved ones have been charged with attempting to smuggle drugs into a New Jersey jail on the pages of a children's colouring book. Subozone, which is used to treat heroin addiction and classified as a controlled dangerous substance, was dissolved into a paste, then painted into the colouring book, Sheriff Gary Schaffer of Cape May county, Philadelphia said Tuesday. Pages with "To Daddy", scribbled on top were sent to the prisoners. The New Jersey drug bust was the second this month involving Suboxone smuggling behind bars. Authorities at a prison in Pennsylvania arrested 11 people in what they said was a scheme to hide the drug beneath postage stamps on letters to prisoners. Reuters
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• Tokyo: France and the United States are to help Japan in its battle to contain radiation from a crippled nuclear complex where plutonium finds have raised public alarm over the world's worst atomic crisis since Chernobyl in 1986. The high-stakes operation at the Fukushima plant has added to Japan's unprecedented humanitarian disaster, with 27,500 people dead or missing from a March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
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• Syria may be in the throes of a major power struggle as the country's Cabinet stepped down Tuesday in a last desperate bid to curb nearly two weeks of increasing unrest. The resignation of the 32-member Cabinet led by Naji al-Otari, may clear the way for President Bashar al-Assad to lift a state of emergency that has been in place since 1963 in order to introduce some of the reforms demanded by increasingly restive Syrians. For the last two weeks, while security forces gunned down anti-government demonstrators, state-owned news media have blamed the killings on "armed gangs" who have been sending and receiving more than 1 million text messages "mostly from Israel". National Post
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• A Canadian government's Integrated Threat Assessment Centre stated that "several Islamist insurgent groups" were based in eastern Libya and mosques in Benghazi were urging followers to fight in Iraq. The intelligence report, written in late 2009, called the anti-Gadhafi stronghold of eastern Libya an "epicentre of Islamist extremism", and said "extremist cells" operated in the region, now being defended by a Canadian-led NATO coalition. National Post
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• Canada: A Parti Quebecois government would not hesitate to use public funds to promote sovereignty, party leader Pauline Marois said Tuesday. Ms. Marois said a PQ government would use public money to achieve sovereignty, once in power, notably by commissioning studies on the impact of an independent Quebec. Ms. Marois also noted she would adopt a tougher language law, a citizenship law and a Quebec constitution in preparation for sovereignty before a referendum. Postmedia News
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• China is reinforcing fences and has stepped up patrols along its border with North Korea as fears mount of a catastrophic famine in the secretive state. Fences more than four metres high, topped with barbed wire, are now being erected along a 12-kilometre stretch of the Yalu river around Dandong, a popular entry point for North Korea refugees. "It's the first time such strong border fences are being erected here. It looks like it is related to the unstable situation in North Korea", a resident said of the work, which began in November. The Daily Telegraph

The Human Dimension

Canadians have no wish to welcome refugees or immigrants who will not respect officially sanctioned processes whereby this country is able to vet new prospects for landed immigrant status. We have no interest in reluctantly welcoming people whose desperation may be real and may be feigned, but which compels them to strike illegal bargains with the devils who live handsomely over the avails of human smuggling.

This country's official complaints to Thailand, the country that has been used as a transit point for Tamils seeking to escape Sri Lanka and enter Canada, a country where thousands of their compatriots have long since escaped to for the purpose of finding a welcoming berth, has resulted in that country becoming alert to the necessity to halt the traffic. Not by detaining the smugglers who are too crafty and self-preserving, but those who fall prey to their smuggling offers.

Who take thousands of dollars from desperate people, pack them into cargo ships and transport them over a long and dangerously arduous ocean voyage to the shores of Canada. That voyage is a real risk to the lives of those who choose to hazard the vicissitudes of a treacherous ocean voyage. Little realizing what they submit themselves to. And, on arriving in Canada, are sequestered in an incarceration setting until they have been cleared for discharge into the general public.

The result being that hundreds of Tamil Sri Lankans now languish in bare and miserably crowded holding cells before being eventually dispatched in some manner back to Sri Lanka from whence they fled. Men, women and children. Somehow managing to endure the confines of incarceration in dreadfully confined spaces; subsistence endurance. Not quite resembling the more humane circumstances encountered on arrival in Canada.

Sri Lankans well established in Canada have sent descriptions of their lives in this country back to their yearning relatives in Sri Lanka, anxious to escape a country and a government that has violated their human rights. They were helped not one iota in their plight by the viciously brutal Tamil Tigers who fought for a Tamil homeland. And whom a brutal civil-war-like conflict finally vanquished.

The Canadian Tamil Congress deplores the situation and the conditions under which their fellow Tamils live, anxious to have them come to Canada. It urges Canada to resettle those fleeing Sri Lanka. Among whom, indubitably, are former Tamil Tigers, members of a terrorist group. Whom no country will take for fear of their past agitating the present into the future.

One of whom in an interview begged for the mercy of kindness: "Please understand our difficult situation and please create a way for us to live peacefully and freely in whatever country it might be. Except Sri Lanka."

Where Has The Future Gone?

The Tokyo I knew when I lived there and thrived with the thrill of living in such a dynamic, exotic, historical and culturally intriguing city of huge spread and quaint custom is in dramatic suspension. Suddenly and horribly, the city that hosted millions of residents whose disposition to one another was quietly orderly and proudly confident has lost its self-confidence and is awash with insecurity.

The city where everything was available for the discriminating purchaser, where the food was always fresh and wonderfully appealing to meet the discriminating demands of a population that appreciated the importance of living well and healthfully now finds itself in need of the most basic consumables; potable water and food. The shelves of food shops are yawning empty, and people have frightening concerns about where they will find the necessities of life to sustain them.

Winston Churchill, during the Second World War and Britain's heroic battle with Nazi Germany, spoke to his people to give them confidence in themselves and their future. Japan's prime minister has been doing the very same thing, recalling them to their tradition of forbearance and determination, patience and endurance. The Japanese people have responded with trust in their government and in the future, for they are resilient and hopeful.

But hope and trust fade measurably when opportunities for survival seem to diminish, when aid becomes difficult to offer, when shelter from the winter elements, the cold, the unavailability of food and water, medical attention and rescue from dire circumstances become complicated by forces beyond the control of mere humanity. And the dread potential of a nuclear meltdown looming on the near horizon.

This is not the well-operated, confident city that I knew and lived so comfortably within. This is a dread place of fear and insecurity, where the future looks dim and shaded in dark bruised colours of desperation. And a wonder how all of this could possibly have occurred to a people that have already suffered more than its share of misery.

Buddhist Heritage

The incomprehensible tragedy that Nature has brought to Japan is beyond belief. People who are superstitious often succumb to a belief that 'bad things' happen in the order of three succeeding events, one following on the other, each event transcending the other in orders of magnitude. It's hard to see which of the three disasters newly visited on Japan, might be considered the most horrible.

The unprecedented earthquake in terms of sheer terrifying scale which wrenched an always-alert population to the understanding that this very particular quake was far different from its countless predecessors would have been confidence-eroding and difficult enough to comprehend. Followed instantly by a matching-in-degree tsunami (who knew such disturbed oceanic waves travel at the speed of a jet plane?!) seemed to trump the tremblor.

Earthquake-coded buildings seemed to weather most of the effects of the earth's terrifying movement. But the resulting tsunami - of which neither it nor the earthquake gave prior warning - wrought incalculable damage, as an immense, unstoppable watery cliff bore down, and as thousands of Japanese perished and their property dissolved under the sheer force of nature's immense totalitarian power.

And then, the nuclear power stations, those fearful installations that humankind in their arrogance feels it can tame until Nature takes the upper hand just to demonstrate what she is capable of. The outcome of the failure of the generators, the overheating of the nuclear cores, the explosions, the exposure of the fuel rods, the escaping radiation, and the exodus of desperate people.

This country of consummate courtesy, with its reverence for nature, balancing its fearful respect for nature's forces, as a societally organic coping mechanism has and will continue to aid the people to overcome this seemingly insurmountable set of disasters. The Japanese are a stoic, proud, determined people honouring their past with admirable fortitude and endurance.

Japan has endured in the past and continues to do so now. It experiences about ten percent of the world's seismic activity. The Japanese never forget how vulnerable they are in their oceanic perch. They are never permitted to forget it, since quakes of various magnitudes are felt continually. Once such a quake is experienced it is never forgotten. You wait. Certain yet uncertain that the shaking will soon stop.

It does, eventually. The number of seconds it takes before it does stretch out interminably in time. Seconds become much longer, larger elements of time. But it finishes and everything returns to normal. And normal is the expectation that it will happen again, and again and again. Elsewhere, that trite little phrase "what does not kill will strengthen" has meaning in Japan. That frail people have rigid spines.

"In the past we have overcome all kinds of hardships. Each of you should accept the responsibility to overcome this crisis and try to create a new Japan."

Will They Or Won't They?

It cannot always be up to the United States to talk tough and act tougher. Other countries must, on occasion, take the responsibility. Particularly when the U.S. is already embroiled in action in Iraq and Afghanistan that it finds itself unable to extract completely from. Involving massive treasury outlays and troop, munitions, strategic technological strikes and diplomatic investments.

Along with the simmering resentment and targeting that emanates from such mired-in situations. It has become famously unpopular in the Arab street.

Since Italy, France, Germany and Spain are the economic beneficiaries through importation of 90% of Libya's oil exports, and Britain enjoys a well-entrenched trade relationship with the country, it should logically be they who are front and centre of the situation to seize the moment and create a protective protocol in aid of the country's insurgents against their bloody dictator.

And, in point of fact, it appears that England and France are spear-heading just such a military protocol. Putting it together theoretically, mapping it out on paper. Just in case, the situation continues to escalate into something far more sinister and far-reaching than appears at the present time. Of course, formulating a plan to enact a no-fly zone is one thing, executing it is another, since neither of those two countries is prepared to act unless UN Security Council approval results.

Russia and China have already indicated they feel intervention is inappropriate. The Arab League has issued a warning not to intervene. And they most certainly have no interest in doing so themselves, since many of those same countries are facing their own inconvenient and vexing anti-regime protests. The Gulf States have indicated they would welcome the imposition of a no-fly zone in protection of Libya's civilian population. Turkey would not.

"There should be a demonstrable need that the whole world can see, there must be a clear legal basis for such a no-fly zone and there must be clear support from the region, from the Middle East region, from the North African region as well as from the people of Libya themselves." British Foreign Secretary William Hague

NATO might conceivably be persuaded to step in to promote what the UN Security Council has not. It is conducting air surveillance to determine the extent of Libya's air flights and their targets. The "gross and systematic" violations of human rights, the bombing of civilians, the employment of foreign mercenaries all present as more than adequate reason to invoke the UN's "responsibility to protect" intervention.

The Libyan rebel fighters have no wish for any foreign ground forces to come to their rescue and in the process take their thunder. They shudder at the very prospect of a foreign invasion of their country, viewing the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan with great revulsion. They would appreciate, and have invited, a no-fly zone. Commitment to which would require foreign warplanes to target Libya's arsenal of warplanes and helicopters as well as air strips to neutralize their ability to bomb rebel-held towns.

And meanwhile, even while they are not committing themselves to any action, let alone support of the initiatives already taken by members of the European Union countries, the Obama administration, after its initial stern pronouncements of its expectations, have become suddenly mute and seemingly disinterested. They may become yet, however, involved in a more distant manner; jamming radio signals, airdropping supplies and weapons to the rebels.

NATO's future plans, meanwhile may also yet include "potential military options".

Terminally Conflicted

Posing as an urbane intellectual, a reasonable man straddling two worlds, he appeared to have little trouble making influential friends at various courts. Money and power do confer a special status on those who can wield them both, and the man most certainly did. The scion of a man who ruled a kingdom, but modestly, as a benevolent despot who only occasionally permitted himself the luxury of exacting his wrath upon his unruly subjects.

Mostly, the illustrious father of this talented son contented himself with sending out his emissaries far and wide to covertly wreak havoc abroad. The father was widely feared and respected as well, but all can be forgiven for business opportunities. With wealthy societies eager to forge alliances and to come away with mutually beneficial agreements that were certain to fulsomely reward their industry and their investments in the desert sands of Libya.

The father who rose to the rank of Colonel in this corner of the Maghreb, took control in a military coup of a country comprised of nomadic tribes, of opposing Bedouin clans, and his palatial palace was in fact, a palatial tent for he was at heart a Bedouin, and proud of it. His loving son had other aspirations which the father encouraged, and he achieved a doctorate in political philosophy.

So far is the apple capable of falling from the tree under opportunistically salubrious circumstances. Saif al-Islam Gadhafi was greatly admired "as someone who looks to democracy, civil society and deep liberal values for the core of his inspiration." A mere $2.3-million of pocket change to the London School of Economics was sufficient to buy that unctuous encomium.

But he did indeed impress upon his informal academic adviser at the redoubtable London School of Economics the extent of his civilized world view, who spoke of his former pupil quite fondly: "The funny, witty man who, while always guarded about his family, was always willing to talk frankly with me about the fundamental questions about his own country and the Middle East in general."

That funny, witty man is now quite publicly speaking frankly on the fundamental questions about his country, appearing on television to warn that rivers of blood would run through Libya. "You must fight, until the last minute, until the last bullet. This is your country! We will show them what we're capable of. They can do nothing against us. They are just children."

Those 'children', the young men of Libya who are no longer willing to allow themselves and their country to be ruled by a brutal tyrant who suppresses the will of the people, who hugely benefits himself through the sales of the country's petrochemicals while the infrastructure of a civil society is denied his countrymen, have been targeted by the military that the "sword of Islam" commands.

Responding to the slaughter of protesters by the military, Saif al-Islam explained that the thousands who died were themselves responsible for the carnage. "The army was under stress, it is not used to crowd control, so they shot." So they did. One imagines that the military training specifically geared toward crowd control that Britain so graciously exposed them to simply did not take.

This man, son of the father, who displayed such a deep commitment to liberal democratic reform of his country, that he moved in highly respected, elite circles, a guest of British royalty, American social elite, celebrities, had written his thesis arguing in it against autocratic governments that are "authoritarian, abusive and unrepresentative."

Purportedly written it, that is, for which he received his doctorate. Suspicions have since arisen that it was ghost-written, plagiarized, improperly documented, alas. Not only is it likely he did not in fact write the 429-page tome, but it is also quite likely he never got around to reading it thoroughly.

No matter, the dashing desert warrior has overtaken the persona of the urbane, witty charmer.

Events, Unfolding As They Will

Strange how things have worked out. George W. Bush was considered to be a bit of a roughneck, an anti-intellectual, not too bright as evidenced presumably by his mangled syntax. The current President of the United States represents the polar opposite; a smoothly cosmopolitan academic whose lyrical rhetoric transfixed his audience who worshiped him into the White House.

When the fearfully dramatic, horribly destructive 9-11 attacks occurred, the American administration was swift to arrange for flights from the United States to the Middle East - in skies that went into immediate lock-down - to spirit Saudi royals out of the U.S. With the knowledge that most of the attackers were Saudi nationals, as was Osama bin Laden. American corporate ties with Saudi Arabia overrode all other considerations.

The Bushes, father and son, both in the oil business doing work on behalf of corporate tycoons and Saudi royals whose close personal relationship with the Bush clan was semi-public knowledge, made their accommodation somehow with the fact that those two things intersected; lucrative oil transactions, and a Wahhabist ruling class that generously funded jihad.

In the new administration, with a president who felt it was his mission to mend relationships with the Muslim world, Barack Obama addressed the Muslim world on a trip to Cairo, offering a hand of friendship to Iran. Predictably, Iran shunned any offers of conciliation. American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan did not endear the U.S. to the Arab/Muslim world, though this was a situation President Obama inherited from his predecessor.

As an American, as an American President, Barack Obama could not but be committed to the wars that were handed over to him. Just as he had of necessity to take responsibility for the financial collapse that was inherited thanks in large part to the previous administrations' (including a Democratic one) laissez faire attitude toward accountability and responsibility.

What is telling at this point is the reaction of the diplomatic/academic/statesman/world leader to the events that have suddenly exploded on the world stage, with the meltdown of long-time Arab and Muslim, Middle East and North African traditional politics, from dictatorships to tyrannies, theocracies to monarchies - and they are not all quite the same thing.

Just as the situations in each of those countries; Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Algeria, Libya, Jordan, Syria and Iran is somewhat different by degree, by their discrete populations' levels of education, wealth and expectations. And by their regimes' level of permissible openness in accountability, the news media, religious dictates.

Barack Obama's - and by extension, America's - lacklustre reaction to situations they hardly know how to parse and react to, vacillating, attempting to bide time, ending up failing the test of reliability if not outright extension of loyalty to past long-time allies in the geography has vexed and dismayed Saudi Arabia. For it now understands that should finally its own population become sufficiently fed up with the status quo, its American ally would decamp.

All the trust and support emanating from the West toward the autocratic regimes of the Middle East have suddenly gushed down the drainpipe of events washing away the despotic and fear-driven restraints of the socially and politically oppressed. Wobbling on the edge of collapse are both the moderately autocratic regimes and the savagely repressive ones.

Europe is now concerned with the prospect not only of losing a goodly portion of its energy supplies, but also of becoming overrun by migrants desperate to escape the turmoil being unleashed in their countries of origin. The United States is facing the prospect of energy shortages reminiscent of what occurred in the mid-to-late 1970s when rationing became a near reality.

Viral Epidemic

There has surfaced around the world in unexpected places an infectious new virus which infects upon contact and also through word of mouth. Who might ever have suspected that the virus of dissatisfaction was so communicable, so resolutely capable of drawing countless numbers of people toward sharing their high dudgeon in public places where such gatherings have always been forbidden?

Those who have entrusted themselves to rule over the unruly and the unpredictable shudder now at the very whisper of rebellion creeping into the infantile minds of the masses. That great unruly beast that roars until it is placated, then creeps back into its dark lair to brood upon the misfortune of their misbegotten lives until they're infected yet again with discontent.

This time the discontent is of a different variety. An unaccountable dissatisfaction. For what else have these masses known but the status quo? The static existence of privation and domination, of humiliation and powerlessness? What would they do with the freedom to exercise free will, for they know nothing of the world, and must be maintained as penitent dependents.

Promises that heretofore were sufficient to mollify the beast of public opinion no longer work however; the opiate of subsidized food and energy and the avuncular but stern admonishments for good behaviour that were so efficiently upheld by the national police, security, armed forces, no longer appear to be influencing the docile grumblers suddenly transformed into protesters.

It is those protests, those gatherings, those subliminal grievances suddenly surfacing resulting in the strength of numbers proving to be too difficult to be amenable to what was previously held to be reasonable. Necessitating that, though the eyes of the world be steadily upon the responses, force must of necessity be utilized.

The demanding hordes have no idea whatever what the fulfillment of their demands would result in. There would of necessity be chaos in place of order and good governance. Their adolescent need to feel they have a modicum of control over matters they know nothing about simply serves to prove their incompetent yearnings to achieve what they could not manage.

In all good conscience, disorder, disarray, loss of prestige, the slippage of control can not be tolerated. The orders to mount night-time raids on the unsuspecting, the orders to shoot to maintain order and structure, the orders to arrest and apply persuasive means so that suspects will admit all, are inevitable. Discipline must be achieved.

Order must, and will prevail. The prevailing order. There is none other.

The Global Schoolyard

"A Chinese attack on a satellite using a weapon launched by a ballistic missile threatens to destroy space systems that the United States and other nations use for commerce and national security. Destroying satellites endangers people.
"Any purposeful interference with U.S. space systems will be interpreted by the United States as an infringement of its rights and considered an escalation in a crisis or conflict.
"The United States reserves the right, consistent with the UN charter and international law, to defend and protect its space systems with a wide range of options, from diplomatic to military."
Former U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, 2007.

The alpha male in any society, be it human or those of other animals, has been designed by nature to dominate. All others seek to placate the alpha, are cautious not to offend the alpha, remain content to receive what the alpha rejects, and waits for the alpha to give permission to proceed. That is authority.

That is the psychological strength of power, perceived or actual. Power engenders respect - and fear. The second- and third-strings accept the left-overs.

Until such time as age enfeebles the alpha, and new young conscripts into the tribe begin to flex their muscles and perfect intimidation tactics and confront the alpha and there is a stand-off and the power grid re-aligns itself. This is as predictable an infinitely repeated protocol in animal relations as time and tradition repeat ad infinitum.

If it is not the leader of a pack of feral animals, a fiercely determined tribal chief of human origins, it is that of the head of nations which present as the most advanced, wealthy, populous, militarily armed and determined. Nature has imbued all her organisms with the will to dominate, as part and portion of our inexhaustible will to survival.

Dominating dynasties, kingdoms and hierarchies have come and gone upon the world stage. From the ancient world to the present there has always been one or two aggressively dominant nations compelled by nature to authoritatively present as the powerhouse of achievement and dominance.

Some fail, while others prevail. The failures are those like Germany and its Axis allies, like the Soviet Union and its hapless satellites whose design for world domination was flawed and no match in the final analysis for others who out-matched their determination. Each world power as it develops its status prevails along the same pattern; a period of ascendancy followed by a slow decline.

The process by which the dominant force and the challenging force for dominance circle one another and challenge one another is as familiar as the schoolyard. Children's boasts of their fathers being stronger, bigger, fiercer than the others helps them negotiate the byways of social interaction in a world of literal chess; the game of grasping life's advantages, not the board game.

Enter China to confront and challenge the world's current super power. Their game of chess plays out not on the Earth itself, for we have progressed greatly over the millennia, to successfully access the options of the upper atmosphere, sending satellites into vast space, and proving that we can unerringly point a missile to destroy them.

But there is also space and opportunity as financial fortunes flow as others' ebb, to finance new power initiatives grounded on Earth, building immense and powerful aircraft carriers, designing and building advanced jet fighters, even if those designs owe everything to the genius of those being challenged; for another genius is that of emulation.

** FILE ** The nuclear-powered U.S. aircraft carrier USS George Washington leads South Korean warships during joint military drills in the East Sea/Sea of Japan on Monday, July 26, 2010. (AP Photo)

Dissenting, Opposing Realities

The peaceful protests in Cairo, Alexandria and Suez, unopposed by the government for the first week of action, somehow managed to deteriorate from civil disobedience into unlawful destruction as government buildings were set on fire, the country's national museum was ransacked if not sacked, and private homes invaded, while shops were being looted and destroyed.

This was a peaceful demonstration, one that the international community swooned over, as an absolute sign that the Arab world was beginning finally to awake to democratic reform.

And then Egyptians who began to experience the very direct fallout from the ensuing chaos, organized their own neighbourhood protection units when the hated police were withdrawn after having been accused of brutality against the protesters. Shop owners closed their businesses, not willing to leave them open to be invaded and looted.

People were unable to travel to work, to medical appointments, and elemental necessities of life threatened to become scarce, even as gas stations closed down for lack of deliveries. Bakeries began to run out of government-provided flour, as deliveries were unable to proceed on schedule.

People became desperate for normalcy, for security, for a return to the familiar. Those who were not protesting but who had sympathy with the protesters now became impatient and just wanted the protests to stop. International news organizations excitedly reported everything they saw and heard, not from a nuanced or even perspective, but from a seemingly slanted one that matched the demands of the anti-government crowds.

And when the pro-government protesters, those who were satisfied with President Hosni Mubarak's promise to step down in September after an orderly progression to a more representative type of democratic government matching the peoples' wishes, they were labelled government stooges.

And the anti-government protesters met them with the same kind of hostility they levelled at the government. These are the people who demand a democratic government, yet they were unprepared to share the Liberation Square equally. They declared they and they alone were in possession of Tahrir Square and pro-government supporters were denied entry. Steel barricades were put up, the stone bricks that comprised the paving of the Square were pried up for ammunition to toss at political adversaries.

The national army attempted to reason with the protesters, that it was past time to clear the Square and return to normal, that the message had been heard loud and clear, and absorbed, and appropriate action could be assumed would be taken; the anti-government protesters professed, after all, to love and trust the military which had never turned against the people and vowed not to on this occasion.

But Tahrir Square was not vacated, and protesters both anti- and pro-government lustily lobbed rocks and homemade incendiary bombs over the heads of the remaining Egyptian army soldiers, there to protect the Egyptian people. People died, people were injured in their hundreds, some seriously; revolution is serious business and people professed that they were prepared to give up their lives for their ideals. Some did.

And then things turned ugly in other ways, with the anger of the administration over the reporting of the international media. No nation, no government, no people likes to be humiliated on the public stage. The international media is full of nothing but the revolutionary demands in Egypt that has taken not only the Arab and Muslim world by surprise, but all those international espionage agents who are supposed to know what's going on, but evidently do not.

The Egyptian government is being painted in the drab, darkly menacing colours of tyranny, deserved in part, but nothing equal to what other countries in the Middle East experience.

Suddenly the foreign media assumes the mantle of sinister international interference in the affairs of a proud and sovereign nation. Doing the work of the disruptive, anti-government protesters, the Islamists-in-waiting. And they have become targets of angry, humiliated and shamed Egyptians, encouraged by the anger of the administration, furious that foreign heads of state are dictating to the government of Egypt how they expect it to proceed.

Foreign reporters were writing that the pro-government protesters brought weapons with them, and there were reports of gunshots. Yet Al-Jazeera, no friend of the Egyptian government, has reported that it was members of the national army, witnessing violent clashes between the opposing sides that elicited warning fire well above the heads of the crowds.

There are incessant reports that the violence was initiated by the pro-government groups, acting at the instructions of the government. These are theories that come readily to the minds of those who report what they know their news bureaus want to hear, not proven facts. Only time will give proof to the allegations. Or not.

Meanwhile, a one-sided, not a neutral reportage is ongoing, infuriating the country, although not the anti-government protesters. Government supporters began their anti-protest intrusion waving signs and chanting pro-government slogans; it was the anti-government protesters who belligerently denied them passage to the Square and who initiated the violence.

Most Egyptians want all of the anger, the heated rhetoric, the destruction, pillaging, looting, work stoppages, food scarcity to come to an abrupt halt. They want order and security to be re-instituted. They may also wish for the government to make the transition it has promised, but they are not prepared to undergo the chaotic, anarchic, life-disturbing mess any longer. The country's economy is bleeding, and most people are aware of that, too.

There is this fear stated by a young Egyptian that encapsulates other fears and worries:

"I saw a lot of reports all over and many of the people are saying enough protests are not pro Mubarak. They just want security and life back...I don't trust that if Mubarak leaves the Muslim Brotherhood won't try to take over. We need time to elect someone like Amr Moussa (the head of the Arab League). If Mubarak leaves now, which some say he could do tomorrow, then who knows what will happen.
The Muslim Brotherhood are making interviews left and right ... I'm worried about the Islamist movement happening now in Tunisia that was once more liberal than Egypt and their leader is supporting the Brothers in Egypt. Mubarak only has a couple of months left and I want him to leave with some pride, not when the international government says he must go."

Food Scarcity, Political Instability

Poor harvests resulting from disastrous weather conditions in various parts of the world have been contributing to certain food shortages. Russia's wheat crop has been the victim of adverse weather conditions; India and Pakistan have found themselves short of root vegetables and all three have halted exports as a result.

Australia has suffered years of drought impacting deleteriously on their agriculture. Growing middle-class wealth in China has contributed to an abnormal call on meat products. China has been renting land in Africa to grow crops for home consumption. And the West's preoccupation with biofuels production has caused a shortage of corn and other agriproducts on the food market.

Recent riots in countries like Algeria, Tunisia, Yemen and Egypt have reflected those in European countries like Greece and Portugal, and African countries like Zimbabwe, Somalia and Mozambique and with people protesting scarcity and higher food prices in economies already hard pressed with people living constrained lives due to endemic poverty.

The escalating price of oil added to the equation ensures that rising production and delivery costs will also increase food prices.

The geographic and national manipulation of agricultural production by many countries from North America to the European Union and beyond also does its bit to maintain high food prices.

And while Europeans and North Americans complain at the steady rise in food prices on the grocery shelves, they can still afford those prices far better than those living impoverished lives in developing countries. In wealthy countries, capitalism and free enterprise trump everything.

The European Parliament has proposed massive stockpiling of food for the purpose of avoiding price and supply crises; making hoarding of food stockpiles a safety net for the EU, ensuring less exports to those countries whose populations are in dire need of food supplies.

Financial subsidies and regulatory interventions are to be maintained and expanded in a EU-launched we're-all-right-Jack kind of food security proactive initiative.

What is needed is the installation of initiatives that persuade producers to increase production of agricultural products, not stifle them to maintain a steady and increasing commodity issue to disrupt markets, leading to "food price shock", shortages, and an inability of people to pay for the foods that are available.

Less conversion of grains and corn to biofuels and ethanol should be another positive issue to be addressed.

"The reality is that the same speculators that caused the global economic meltdown through their illustrious trade in subprime mortgages, are betting on our food system now too." D. Doane, world Development Movement

This is a reflection on food commodities suffering inflation as a monetary phenomenon through deliberate market manipulation rather than a supply and demand problem caused by climate forces alone. The energy-intensive nature of large-scale agriculture, inclusive of the total cost of production, from fuelling farm machinery to transportation costs to fertilizer costs all relate to the rising costs of food.

A serious problem continues to be the determination to increase annual ethanol production, diverting important food grains from the food-consuming market for people, exacerbates the problem. Along with dire weather conditions now impacting major food-exporting countries across the globe, complicated by the steadily rising demand from a steadily emerging middle class from newly-emerging economies.

Rising food prices are set to continue, and they will be led also by monetary inflation with commodity prices steadily rising and various countries' currency peg policies. Unless there is a general agreement for countries to understand that full co-operation is required to ensure that steadily rising food prices do not end up pricing themselves out of the reach of the world's poor, the situation will become more desperate.

Speculators interested in rising food prices and gambling that they will continue to rise so they can continue to make a killing, and the spectre of food hoarding to help prices rise even more steeply will add to an already volatile situation world-wide. This is something the world cannot afford.

Leading inevitably to more impoverished countries, many with corrupt, inept and autocratic governments seeing their social and political stability threatened through a rising tide of hungry people and outraged sensibilities demanding their human rights.

The West Fiddles, Egypt Burns

Lefteris Pitarakis/Associated Press

President Hosni Mubarak's curfew does not appear to be making much of an impression on Egyptians determined to hold their government to account for its unrelenting stranglehold on the country's social and political progress. They do have the government to thank for keeping the Muslim Brotherhood in a state of suspended animation, although that has not resulted in a more quiescent Islamist group, but rather a more careful, yet still bold one.

One that has successfully established ties throughout the world, including Europe and North America. Where they have stealthily and successfully presented themselves as reasonable alternatives to the prevailing political (and religious/secular-oriented) governments historically and currently in place in the Middle East. Familiarity breeds acceptance in many quarters, quieting suspicion, proving that patience is a great virtue.

And whose sibling-organization in Gaza, is carrying on the fundamentalist message of Sharia and strengthening the region's ever-expanding net of Islamism whose first target is Israel. Sectarian differences may separate Shiite from Sunni, but Hamas and Hezbollah recognize certain indivisible loyalties and aspirations more achievable in a state of convenient concert than discordant divisiveness. Once the goal of destroying Israel is achieved, and Sharia more accepted, the sheathed knives of dissent can be once more drawn.

For the moment, all can bask in the happenstance of collective pan-Arab-populations' discontent with their status quo as socially backward, politically constrained, religiously restive resulting in poverty, inequality and ignorance. The Arab Street, sharing much of the fundamental message of the Islamists have, independent of that fact, awakened from their slumber of acquiescent bondage to tyrannical regimes.

Riot police walk past burning tires placed to form a barricade during clashes with protesters in Cairo.Photograph by: Goran Tomasev, REUTERS

The first-responder police, hated by the public, representing the government's implacable will that they will implement at the cost of lives and injuries, are doing their utmost to ensure the protests become becalmed, before they break out another day on the rough seas of fiercely renewed determination. The patrician former head of the UN's IAEA, Mohamed el Baradei, a long-time critic of President Mubarak, is joining with the youthful protesters, portraying himself as a potential, (albeit another elderly), compromise candidate for president.

But the estimable Dr. el Baradei, Nobel prize aside, has no political network working on his behalf. He may be esteemed for his former work as head of the IAEA, but he has been absent from Egypt for far too long to be recognized as a politician, rather than a diplomat. It remains the precinct of the Muslim Brotherhood to present as an alternative to the current government, as the single most organized and longest-existing challenge to the governing NDP party of President Mubarak.

There's a balancing act evident on the part of the United States, Egypt's generous financial supporter to the tune of one and a half billion yearly, most of which supports the country's armed forces. The status quo, while crushing the aspirations of ordinary Egyptians to overcome their desperate state of poverty and ignorance, has been one of stability. Egypt, traditionally the elder statesman of the Middle East, has supported the West's struggle to contain fundamentalist political Islam, and its peace accord with Israel is vital.

President Mubarak has the grudging respect of those who know him as a political ally, while his coercive use of the police and the army on dissidents within the country - his mock-democratic display of elections where conventionally his ruling party is elected by acclaim, and he by a margin excluding any challengers, who may post-election find themselves incarcerated on trumped-up charges - greatly perturb his Western allies.

Which, inconveniently for those who wish to uphold universal freedoms and human rights, leads to the paradox of urging democratic reforms on the country; honouring peoples' rights to free and fair and open elections which may, as was done with Hamas, end up elevating the Muslim Brotherhood to the status of elected majority and administrative rule of the country.
Yet change is manifestly in the charred air of an Egypt rent with anger at the status quo.

What and how that change will result in is a worrisome matter of much speculation. Tunisia's future is far more predictable than is Egypt's; one a small country of more educated and urbane people more given to secularity than the religious fixation of the far more populous, socially downtrodden, uneducated Egyptians. As goes Egypt will eventually go other Arab and Muslim countries teetering on the brink of social/political revolution.

The world can only wait with bated breath.

High Expectations, Absent Results

Haiti's anguish of dire straits shows no evidence of changing anytime soon. After the massive amounts of international aid pledged and the eagerness of the global community to do something positive for the ruined country's infrastructure and the misery of the displaced Haitians, the situation is at a standstill. With the massive amount of rubble left yet to be dealt with the business of getting on with construction and reconstruction cannot progress beyond vague planning without first clearing the sites.

Rubble still shatters the landscape. And there are many areas where rubble remains, covering thousands of corpses, where people were buried in the aftermath of building collapses during the devastating earthquake. The entire choir of the Roman Catholic cathedral was buried within the edifice, and remains there still, entombed in the rubble awaiting removal. There are no government agencies with the will and the equipment to launch a massive rubbish and rubble removal.

Rubbish, in fact, created each and every day through normal living even in these frenetic, frantic, miserable conditions, simply piles up alongside the rubble, with garbage strewn everywhere, a cesspool of unhygienic bacteria and viruses awaiting the opportunity to wreak more horrendous damage on the populace. The refugee camps with their squalid tents and stinking latrines where children play among the ruined landscapes sober the spirit already bruised with the assault of nature consolidating the neglect of the government.

A million people remain unhoused, although thanks to the presence of thousands of humanitarian groups representing various aid agencies, medical attention is now available where it had not been pre-earthquake. Potable water is trucked in daily to the refugee camps. Food is no longer liberally distributed and although 80% of the camp residents have no employment they must eke out sufficient resources through some miraculous fashion to find sufficient food for their families on a daily basis.

At night thugs roam everywhere and prey on women and children, violently assaulting and raping them. Hardly conducive to civilized normalcy, although violence and brutality always lurked in the shadows of the country whose government has never been capable of providing security let alone other normal civil services of a viably functioning country. The wholesale suffering of Haitians, the children languishing without opportunities to attend school, and men unable to find employment hardly fulfills the promise for a brighter future.

Haitians, after all, don't want all that much. They would like what most people in most decent and reasonable societies can count on: jobs, homes, education; above all security. Their sense of hope appears intact for the most part, since they remain loyal to their faith and attend church faithfully and joyously, praying, singing, celebrating life, as dreadfully hollow as theirs has been and continues to be. In a sense, their refusal to give up hope should serve as an inspiration. In a sense, it does.

But inspiration does not feed and clothe and educate a population. Unless it is backed by a resolute and trustful cadre of public servants dedicated to the task of making a better life for those dependent upon their governing capabilities. So far, the government of Haiti and its institutions has failed miserably on all indices of government initiative and responsibility. The international community has responded as best it can, but patience and hope wears thin there.

Which is why nine million Haitians continue to survive by some miracle of stubborn instinct to surmount all the difficulties and miseries that have blighted their lives generation after generation.

Charitable Enterprise versus Independent Initiative

How many humanitarian aid groups should it take to jump-start a country from hopelessly failed to haplessly struggling?

There are those who have witnessed the generations-long struggles of countries to overcome their state of endemic poverty and government inaction with the aid of the international community whose conscience will not permit them to sit idly by while those unfortunate misery-plagued countries fester in government graft and corruption, their populations left to fend for themselves.

The Palestinians have UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, which committed away back in 1948 to support and provide for displaced Palestinians, with the formation of the State of Israel. From 1948 to the present, without outside assistance Israel has managed to make of itself a technologically, scientifically, academically, socially, politically, agriculturally modern state.

From 1948 to the present, the Palestinian refugees who originally numbered 726,000 became entirely dependent on UNRWA to provide for them in special refugee camps where welfare entitlements like cash, housing, health care, education, credit, public works and social services were provided free, by the United Nations and the international community. The welfare syndrome, as anyone knows, deprives people of the will to provide for themselves.

Instead of focusing themselves on their own social, political, civic and economic development, the 726,000 refugees have lived on welfare. And in that perpetual state they have managed to increase their numbers to 4.8 million, all of them living on that same UNRWA welfare, effectively disincentivizing that 4.8 million from independence, from building their own working state.

What that 4.8 million have been free to do, unencumbered by the need to account for themselves and to make a living for themselves, is to brood and to mourn and to see themselves as unfortunate victims, a deranged, corrupted society whose values have been bereft of initiative and pride. They have instead taken the initiative to become bitterly and viciously aggrieved, devoting energy to violence against the country they see as their oppressor.

That's a particular misery in the Middle East, with a festering society cared for by a specially designed and delegated UN mission that has maintained them as permanent refugees unlike any other situation of refugees elsewhere, world-wide. These refugees are adamant that they will no longer be refugees only when they re-occupy the geography that the State of Israel now sits on, and UNRWA's actions are not those to disabuse them of this attitudinal certainty.

And then there's another geography, in the Americas, where no fewer than twelve thousand aid groups work tirelessly in Haiti to provide compassion, care and charity to a miserable population which has never experienced a government dedicated to their material and existential well-being. Each successive government has dabbled in corruption, free to do nothing since humanitarian groups strive mightily to provide the civic necessities that a government should for its population.

Haiti suffers through one crisis after another; from government collapse and failure to environmental and geological crises that each time brings the country to its faltering knees in collapse and despair. Haiti is yet another country that has succumbed to a culture of dependence. Potable drinking water is delivered daily to refugee camps where over a million internally displaced refugees live squalid lives a full year after a devastating earthquake hit.

Billions of dollars have been spent over the years, courtesy of the international community, attempting to manoeuvre Haiti into some semblance of responsive, responsible governance. There is no public sanitation as such in the country, hygiene is difficult to maintain, many people have little option but to drink water infected with fecal matter, and endemic illness is all too common. A class system ensures that the poor remain unemployed and poor.

The cynical claim that aid delivery is a business, nothing more nothing less. That this is a business determined to perpetuate itself, while delivering humanitarian aid. It is a business that is well funded through charitable impulse, the guilt feelings of those who have the great good fortune to live normal, comfortable lives with employment that is well remunerated, to enable the aid groups to get on with their business of alleviating poverty.

Almost all contracts for reconstruction are awarded to foreign companies, not indigenous ones. Aid groups often work in cross-purpose to one another, redundantly and wastefully. Above all, without a focus on education, health care and employment that is self-generating no country, no aspiring nation can succeed to fulfill its potential.

Recruiting For Armageddon

Well, there's a revelation. As though no one had suspected. Which is to say that North Korea's brilliant nuclear scientists have been travelling to and fro, and trading secrets with Iran. Brethren in nuclear ambitions, albeit not completely altruistic. Since Iran did dispense with some of its oil-wealth toward the economy-starved North Koreans.

Still, it's news of a sort, that Iran actively recruits for nuclear scientists to work on its program. When it would doubtless prefer to be able to boast that it has no need of foreign scientific brilliance to augment its own. It did benefit from some Russian technical nuclear know-how. And of course without recourse to Pakistani-based nuclear expertise to begin with, would any of this have been occasioned?

North Korea is happy to oblige its Iranian friends with advanced technology and its scientists. A steady flow of North Korean military and engineering staff so enthusiastically welcomed by Tehran in a wholesome exchange of long-range ballistic missile technology and uranium enrichment expertise.

Truly novel, this type of thing. Ingenious; starve the people and build bombs. Each country intent on 'securing' its security, power, prestige. For the benefit, needless to say, of the elite; the people can be left to their own desperate devices. Both countries are hard pressed economically as a result of the economic sanctions placed against them owing to their international outlier status.

Iran sees the pinnacle of its power and status attainable with the assurance of mastering nuclear bomb production, and using the resulting arsenal for its threatened purpose. Bomb Israel and that would result in an object lesson for its Arab neighbours to get their priorities straight and recognize Iran as the predominant power in the Middle East; for starters.

North Korea has amply demonstrated how it is possible and even practical for it to blackmail the West and South Korea to provide energy and food, freeing up whatever it has left over for further covert investments in nuclear installations, giving impetus and inspiration to Iran. Both countries excel at 'surprising' Western experts at the ease with which they have been able to build 'secret' advanced nuclear installations.

While Iran threatens its neighbours, (atheist) North Korea fulminates and delivers its bellicose message about prosecuting a 'sacred war' against South Korea. North Korea's Kim Jong-il has not hesitated to mount military attacks against its neighbour, something Iran has not yet done directly. Hamas and Hezbollah however, have direct access to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and await his orders.

Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has the inside track to Allah, something no one should forget. The passion with which he and Ahmadinejad await the appearance of the Hidden Imam Muhammad al Mahdi, to bring about the Apocalypse, enlighten the world and bring it out of its state of chaos into one of universal peace under the universal Caliphate, may also, many fear, explicate their lack of caution in proposing to use a nuclear device.

In the end, the chaos and destruction that would ensue would bring the hidden imam to reveal himself in all his messianic glory and save the world for Islam. Of course, Iran would be right up there, front and centre, and commanding the new world order. It might, just might, allow North Korea to dominate in its sphere of the world.

Much to China's chagrin.

Laughing Ourselves To Death

There are some people who are simply invested in fomenting hatred against others. It is not hard to imagine they are anything but malevolently psychotic in temperament as evidenced by the ferocity of their vile imprecations against those whom they have identified as their hate objects.

Not surprisingly, given the history of Jews and their place in society from time immemorial, it is most often that group of people who have been singled out as different, invested with unspeakable traits that represent the target of racists.

It is more than likely that psychopaths who spend their lives destroying what others have built, who present as the very social dregs of abysmal human behaviour are simply fulfilling their purpose as human beings bereft from birth of normal human emotions leading to empathy and compassion for others.

Society is rife with sociopaths and psychopaths whose inability to construct emotional attachments to other people is legendary. These are people for whom normalcy in human relations is utterly foreign. Such individuals burn with an entirely different kind of passion than those whose genetic endowments have not short-changed them in the balance of emotions.

They are not merely people who have lost faith in humanity. These are people who do not recognize humanity as other than a great amorphous mass of people whose existence represents a nuisance to them personally. People readily disposed of should they become too great an impediment to whatever the desires of the psychopath happen to be.

From this psychically maladaptive cauldron of failed human beings come the haters, the cruel manipulators of humankind, the tyrants and the despots incapable of, and disinterested in caring about the well-being of others. From their distorted imaginations come visions of destruction on a mass scale.

These are the genocidal murderers of innocent populations, the volatile war-mongers who lay waste to civilization. When these individuals are identified for the monsters they are they have already committed their unspeakable crimes.

Some are called to the International Criminal Court to be judged on behalf of humanity, and they laugh derisively at the human construct that would hold them to account for their monstrous behaviours. Most of these monsters consider themselves impervious to human justice and indestructible in their power-hungry appetites.

Most, like Hitler, Stalin and Mao, will become admired footnotes in history that their would-be successors make every effort to emulate. Many, like Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Mussolini, Nicolae Ceausescu, Omar al-Bashir and Osama bin Laden, damage society and eventually justice is seen to be done.

Their legions of admirers enlist in their deadly destructive games in an effort of social upheaval to reflect their chaotic values. There is nothing that society at large is able to do to extirpate their influences, to attempt to halt their progress, to limit the damage they inflict on society.

Now that the technological advances of the 20th Century gave birth to those of the 21st Century and accelerating rapidly to bring us to hitherto-unimagined levels of instant global communication, the messages that they convey and the ill deeds they promulgate appear to proliferate at lightning speed.

Web sites that declare their intention to annihilate great swaths of populations, and teach recruits how they may join in the conflagration abound. Representing in a viral way the genie that leaped out of the bottle that confined it when humankind first learned the skills of manipulating and controlling fire.

The fire that civilization is now learning to live with is that of incendiary hatred for one another. The divisions that separate us through ideology, politics, culture, religion appear to become wider, the gulf more dire between human connection than ever before.

The more readily we are able to communicate, the more incessant and dire the message: to reject and to spurn and to deride and to foster hatreds that will not be remedied by the good will of the hapless majority in fear of the unexpected that has proven to descend with no warning to stir terror in our hearts.

Nasty little viperous charlatans whose inability to adjust to societal norms strut about on the Internet in emulation of al-Qaeda's vile messaging. And the al-Qaeda offshoots take inordinate pride in their growing ability to initiate further contacts, encouraging others to promote terror.

Still there is hope.

A website that claims "Our web site does not advocate terrorism or genocide against any people. All information on this site is for informational purposes only" - when the site itself is totally given over to the hopeful destruction of Jews and the State of Israel, extending those good wishes further to include Western democracies such as Australia, Europe and North America as tools of the Jews - demonstrates that even monsters may possess a droll sense of humour.

And isn't humour both a weapon and a potentially useful emotion to be leashed for agreeable compromise? We may yet end up laughing ourselves to death.

Whose Fault Jihadist Lunacy?

Seems that everyone points fingers of blame at everyone else. The truth is no Western country knows how to react to the fact that their generous welcome of immigrants from countries, cultures and a religion so different from their own, has turned so sinister and fractious. The U.S., it would appear, argues through its diplomatic cables that the government of Britain is lacking in its approach to the issue of solving the issue of fanatical religious extremism.

A classic instance of one failure pointing to the failure of another, while failing to admit their own. But then, who could visualize, in Europe and North America, that a wholesale welcome of easterners whose devotion to a religion that dictates every facet of their lives would result in a gradual, seeping attempt at usurpation of prevailing social, cultural and political values that the West itself holds dear? The realization has finally struck, but the solution remains elusive.

One attack after another by recruits into radical Islamism, by passionately hateful young men who see the West attacking their sacred religion. In their passion they blindly accept because it suits their angry denial of reality, that the West is the primary aggressor, and that the security of what they think they hold in highest esteem can only be guaranteed with a solution of a global Caliphate and universal Sharia.

They believe themselves to be martyrs to a divine cause. That Allah and the Prophet Mohammed guide them toward their own salvation in the army of the faithful, that by destroying the kaffirs and their monuments they can hasten the triumphant ascendancy of global Islam, and defeat the enemies of Islam. Somehow bypassing the reality that their own Muslim brethren are busy massacring their own in paroxysms of sectarian rage.

Even Muslims in the majority who believe that the essential goodness of their religion will eventually persuade all others to bow to the supremacy of Islam, will not, can not, refuse to believe that there are those among them, Muslims like themselves, who reject passive patience in favour of violently impetuous atrocities. Family members of jihadists either jubilantly support the violence and celebrate their shaheeds, or they blame the West.

The family of the Stockholm suicide bomber seems convinced that Taimur Abdulwahab al-Abdaly was a normal, law-abiding Muslim while living in Sweden, but became a wild-eyed assassin due to influences he was subjected to in Britain. They may be perfectly correct in their assessment. For all who knew him attest to his character and his values having been altered alarmingly, precipitously, during his British sojourn.

Is Britain responsible for what it has permitted to breed in ghettoized towns and cities across the land, placidly encouraging the proliferation of mosques to match the numbers of Muslim immigrants, encouraging Muslim youth to transform their hallowed halls of academe? As much as is Holland and Denmark and Sweden and France, most certainly.

As much as the United States, with its tolerance and encouragement of diversity is. And which now expends energy and treasury in guarding itself and its people and its monuments to capitalism against the fury of Islamists determined to bring the Great Satan to its knees. A need which brought it to the far reaches of the world to attempt to extinguish the fiery blaze of jihad.

As much as Canada, with its official blessing known as multiculturalism, eschewing the need for new immigrants to acknowledge and value Canadian law and culture. Whose own universities and trade unions and churches have been well infiltrated by those whose loyalties are otherwise than to Canada, its freedoms and its laws and its values.

Hamstrung

"Director [Jim] Judd ascribed an 'Alice in Wonderland' world view to Canadians and their courts, whose judges have tied CSIS 'in knots', making it ever more difficult to detect and prevent terror attacks in Canada and abroad. The situation, he commented, left government security agencies on the defensive and losing public support for their effort to protect Canada and its allies."

Canadians are so invested in a vision of ourselves as meritoriously just we cannot envision the malignantly violent tumour we're permitting to invade our body politic. We are so enamoured of ourselves as an accepting, even-tempered, blase society. So prepared to view the customs and values of other cultures and religions as worthy of unquestioning acceptance and respect, even when they run counter to the verities of our social compact, our tried-and-true values.

When those whom we elect as lawmakers and those whom they entrust to guard our freedoms and security make a heroic attempt to save us from ourselves by apprehending those within who have entered the country in the guise of trustworthy future citizens while conspiring to bring to this society customs and tribal antipathies and values that insult our own, while bringing harm to others, we reproach them for over zealousness.

The newly-revealed existence of diplomatic notes indicating that the former head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Services informed his American counterparts of the difficulties facing CSIS in pursuing its assigned tasks to safeguard Canada and its citizens tells a compelling story. One that the current head of CSIS has also repeated. And which we ignore at our peril. Yet we do.

In the very real face of ongoing threats against the stability and security of the country, there are groups who assemble in support of those whose covert activities reveal a purpose that intelligence has been alerted to, intending to harm the country, yet the formidable opposition of left-liberal groups and the equally left judiciary create a quandary of miring the intelligence service in a bog of inaction.

At a time when our security agencies should be meeting serious threats with serious solutions they are constrained by the negative reaction of rights groups who align themselves with the very groups who conspire to create threats to the country. CSIS is well aware of the presence of members of groups deemed terrorist in nature and outlawed by the government, but these groups comprised of Hamas and Hezbollah members move freely within Canada.

They march in protest rallies in support of the Palestinians, shouting scurrilous accusations against Canada, the United States and Israel, and enjoy the support of church groups, academic and trade unions. The predictable outcry against the government's lack of interest in repatriating Omar Khadr, the defence of suspected terrorists by members of the public along with a number of parliamentarians, all reflect phlegmatic Canada's unwillingness to believe it is in danger.

It's almost miraculous that Momin Khawaja was eventually found guilty of conspiring to bring harm to an ally of Canada in a terror plot to bomb Britain. The guilt findings against the remaining 11 of the original Toronto 18 terror plotters resulting in sentences not quite commensurate with their plots to harm the country, along with justices permitting bail for suspected other terrorists bespeak an absurd failure of justice.

Another revelation, hardly surprising, and reflected in the current judicial proceedings in the extradition request by France to have Lebanese-born Hassan Diab stand trial there on evidence gathered implicating him in the 1980 Paris bombing of the Copernic synagogue, refers to Canadian court judgements "that threaten to undermine foreign government intelligence-and information-sharing with Canada".

"These judgements posit that Canadian authorities cannot use information that 'may have been' derived from torture, and that any Canadian public official who conveys such information may be subject to criminal prosecution. This, he [Jim Judd] commented, put the government in a reverse-onus situation whereby it would have to 'prove' the innocence of partner nations in the face of assumed wrongdoing."

And this is precisely what we see playing out in the requested extradition of Hassan Diab. The same groups that protest against CSIS leaning too heavily on terror groups openly defying Canadian government designations of such groups as having no place on Canadian soil, support and invite belligerent provocateurs like George Galloway to speak at university campuses, spouting his hatefully vindictive spiel about Zionist apartheid.

Canadians are complicit in bringing vicious aspirants to mass murder and destruction of a democratic foreign country into our midst, supporting their agenda in the guise of compassion for an 'occupied' people, in the process encouraging an escalation of bloodshed, and inviting it into the Canadian parlour as cherished guests.

"Dead Men Can Advance No Further"

Patriotism knows neither latitude nor longitude. It is a climatic. E.A. Storrs

Over the ten-year period that Canada has been actively involved with ISAF-NATO in Afghanistan, 152 Canadians have died, two-thirds of whom perished by IEDs, many more wounded through the same medium. Fewer die now because, finally, there is additional support in Taliban-rich Kandahar province, with a surge of thousands of American soldiers deployed there, and trained Afghan Army forces also taking up some slack.

Military glory - that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood, that serpent's egg that charms to destroy. Abraham Lincoln.

During the Korean War, 516 Canadians died, a number that appears to make these new sacrifices in Afghanistan appear slight by comparison. But Canadian young women and men from cities and towns all over the country are not dispensable; each one is mourned and represents a tragic end of a promising life, leaving families in deep, irreconcilable sorrow.

It is always easy to begin a war, but very difficult to stop one, since its beginning and end are not under the control of the same man. Anyone, even a coward, can commence a war, but it can be brought to an end only with the consent of the victors. Sallust

Canadians were far more comfortable when our troops were deployed at the behest of the United Nations, as peacekeepers. The peacekeeping model, not the active combat role, or parrying with an insurgency, seemed far more suitable to how Canadians saw their country's Forces employed. Despite the vaunted reputation Canadian soldiers earned through immense sacrifices during two disastrous world wars.

Military service produces moral imbecility, ferocity and cowardice, and the defence of nations must be undertaken by the civil enterprise of men enjoying all the rights and liberties of citizenship. Bernard Shaw

In the First World War, when Canada, as a Commonwealth Country, answered the call to duty and aligned itself alongside Great Britain against a tough German adversary, 60,661 Canadians died for King and Country. WWI, called the Great War, was thought to represent the last, great war. But there were those who complained when the armistice was signed: "Bloody fools. We have them on the run. This means we shall have to do it all over again in another 20 years." Prescient that most certainly was and Brigadier Andy McNaughton would lead the Canadian Army into the Second World War.

They brought the elephant of Asia to convey the artillery of Europe to dethrone one of the kings of Africa, and to hoist the standard of St.George upon the mountains of Rasselas. Benjamin Disraeli

In the Second World War, with Britain under duress to come to the aid of France, overrun by the German Army, Canada answered that call, too. The First World War ended 92 years ago, and the Second 65 years ago. There are now no longer any veterans alive representing active duty during WWI. Over a million Canadians served between 1939 and 1945. They helped to liberate Europe, and to free war victims from death camps. The world as we know it now was preserved because of their heroic sacrifices.

Every position must be held to the last man; there must be no retirement. With our backs to the wall, and believing in the justice of our cause, each one of us must fight on to the end. Field-Marshal Sir Douglas Haig; 1918

Those stalwart men and women who today represent Canada's Second World War veterans are dying at a rate of 1,700 a week. There are now 143,700 veterans remaining of Second World War vintage, with an average age of 87. Their memories are still sharp; many go out to speak to school children to give them a real sense of what war is like, why it is fought and what peace brings.

There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell. You can bear this warning voice to generations yet to come. I look upon war with horror. William Tecumseh Sherman

Veterans entering schools to bring living history to Canadian schoolchildren introduce them to some difficult-to-pronounce and-spell names like Dieppe, the Battle of the Atlantic, Juno Beach, Caen and Falaise, and the Netherlands. These elderly veterans are dedicated to their self-appointed task to teach new generations of their country's sacrifice on their behalf.

War is a biological necessity of the first importance, a regulative element in the life of mankind which cannot be dispensed with...But it is not only a biological law but a moral obligation and, as such, an indispensable factor in civilization...The inevitableness, the idealism, and the blessing of war, as an indispensable and stimulating law of development, must be repeatedly emphasized. Bernhardi, Germany and the Next War

Canadian boys, farm boys, city boys, young boys fresh out of high school, and some not yet finished tenth grade, showed up at recruiting offices, and many of these boys, aged 16 and 17, lied about their age, determined to join the Forces, to go overseas and see battle. "Crazy..." reminisces one, "it broke my mother's heart".

Terrible as is war, it yet displays the spiritual grandeur of man daring to defy his mightiest hereditary enemy - death. H. Heine

Many Canadian soldiers were taken as prisoners of war, and spent months, sometimes years, in prisoners-of-war camps in places far from home - in Burma, Java, Thailand, Poland, Hong Kong, Japan, Germany, Italy, Borneo. Many suffered grave deprivations; hunger, disease, injuries, mental breakdowns and death.

To those to whom war is necessary it is just; and a resort to arms is righteous for those to whom no other hope remains. Livy

Young men and women exposed to barbaric atrocities in the theatre of war react with horror; some never recover from their experiences, many becoming suicidal, unable to take up their civilian lives with any degree of normalcy. The mental breakdown that some soldiers experience has been named variously, from different wars: nervous exhaustion, severe depression, post traumatic stress disorder.

A really great people, proud and high-spirited, would face all the disasters of war rather than purchase that base prosperity which is bought at the price of national honour. Theodore Roosevelt

People undergoing intensive physical and psychological challenges, becoming trained to be professional soldiers, to act on command without questioning orders, to act in unison with a unit to which they have been assigned, have been programmed by the state to become war machines. On re-entering civilian life post-conflict they must turn themselves around, lay aside what they were taught, and take up a normal life again. Not as readily achieved as it is articulated.

O God, assist our side: at least, avoid assisting the enemy, and leave the rest to me. Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau before his last battle

Mechanical obedience is the hallmark of a soldier entering the fray at the command of a superior officer. The Royal Newfoundland Regiment in 1916 embarked on a mission to take German positions near a small hamlet in northern France called Beaumont Hamel. The Newfoundlanders comprising 778 officers and the ranks initiated an advance toward the German positions, marching up to a ravine. They were completely exposed and relentlessly mown down, but kept advancing until: "...it was a magnificent display of trained and disciplined valour, and its assault only failed of success because dead men can advance no further". Merciless orders representing rank stupidity. When all was done, of the 778 only 68 survived to roll call.

Hark! I hear the tramp of thousands,
And of Armed men the hum' of
Lo a nation's hosts have gathered
Round the quick alarming drum 0
Saying, "Come, Freemen, come!
Ere your heritage be wasted", said the quick
Alarming drum. Bret Harte

When, in 1917, four divisions of the Canadian Corps under the command of British Lieut.-Gen. Julian Byng, led by Canadian General Arthur Currie, stormed and captured the heavily fortified stronghold of Vimy Ridge from the well-entrenched Germans, Canada's reputation as a formidable fighting force was established.

War must be for the sake of peace, business for the sake of leisure, things necessary and useful for the sake of things noble. Aristotle

Everyone pines for peace, and abhors war. There is something in the human character that is handed down through our genetic inheritance that appears to predispose humankind to making war. And peace is the welcome interregnum between wars. If we value peace so highly, why is it that we succumb all so frequently to pursuing the war option?

War should be undertaken in such a way as to show that its only object is peace. Cicero

Obviously, if people of good will existed in sufficient numbers to stifle the initiatives taken by charismatic, entitled and brutal dictators, strife between countries could be avoided. And the sociopaths and psychopaths who take the opportunity to mount unjust wars, withholding human rights from huge swathes of any population for their personal benefit, might not occur - or so we convince ourselves.

A disadvantaged peace is better than the most jut war. Erasmus

We have not yet reached the point where war is unavoidable. Peace is preferable, but there are times when little choice is given but to counter grave injustices in the world by exerting force to attain that end. When logic and sense cannot prevail, when civil discourse fails and threats lead to violence, there must be a response, however regrettable.

Peace is better than war, because in peace the sons bury their fathers, but in war the fathers bury their sons. Bacon

There is a propensity, an unfortunate one, to find glory in battle. To conceive of war, when it is a righteous one, as a victory of good over evil. And though that might be so, there is nothing romantic about war; it represents the breakdown of civility, of humanity. It is the very last refuge of a desperate people to restore order and fairness and justice to the world; nothing less, nothing more.

Doughboys were paid a whole dollar a day and received free burial under the clay. And movie heroes are paid even more shooting one another in a Hollywood war. Alfred Kreymborg

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders Fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders Fields.

- John McCrae