Japan's Recovery
To enter the exclusion zone represented by a 20-km radius around the
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, one must wear a protective uniform made of a papery fibre called
Tyvek, consisting of gloves, mask, boot covers, and suit, all of the same protective, disposable material. Along with that protective clothing, a dosimeter is carried to register exposure to radiation.
White hot: Two fires glow like molten lava amid the devastated houses in Yamada town
Fully 78,000 people were evacuated from eight towns and villages, forced to leave their homes. People have been permitted to temporarily go back from time to time, to look for their abandoned pets, to gather personal papers, jewellery, expensive items that they would like to retrieve and take back with them to their temporary quarters.
And it's just as well that they do. Sometimes they enter their homes to discover that others have been there before them. That someone - who knows who? - has already assumed possession of things that they left behind in their desperately hasty departure, in the wake of the 9.0 magnitude earthquake
that struck Japan's northeast on March 11, 2011, and then that disastrous tsunami.
Over 100,000 homeless refugees were taken from schools and gymnasiums to temporary homes, awaiting permission to return to their towns and villages and homes. In some areas there will be no return. Looters have been busy in the absence of the usual inhabitants of those towns and villages. Smashing cash machines, emptying them of their cash.
People eager enough to enrich themselves at others' unfortunate expense that they breached the heavily radioactive fallout despite the warnings, soon after the evacuation leading from the breakdown of the nuclear power plant. Japan is known and celebrated for the overall respect for law in its population.
This is clearly a miserable anomaly in social breakdown.
Clandestine opportunity awaiting the bold opportunists willing to enrich themselves at others' misfortune. And no one will ever know. At night there is an eerie silence, and dense, darkness that envelopes the area. When the sight of crumpled buildings, washed-ashore boats and smashed vehicles cannot be seen.
Labels: Human Relations, Japan, Natural Disasters
Syria's New Constitution!
Well, that's all right then. Clearly, democracy has returned to Syria. Who could have doubted it would? President
al Assad promised a new constitution and a free vote, did he not? As good as his word, he is. And popular as ever. A large majority of eligible Syrian voters - 60% - turned out for their country's free election, and cast their ballots.
Overwhelmingly for the status
quo, actually. So who was it that said you cannot please all of the people all of the time, anyway? He was right; some Syrians are displeased, but most - over eight million voters - are extremely pleased, and they voted 89.4% approval of their president. He is assured continuity for his regime until 2028.
Stands to reason that outsiders sneer at the sheer farce of the proceedings, as they put it. Their interference is what has led to this situation of terror groups defying the government, to begin with. It is vile and despicable foreign sources who are responsible for unleashing terror in the streets of
Homs and other incidental places of unrest.
Qatar's Prime Minister
Sheikh Hamad bin
Jassim al-
Thani has a wicked agenda he has placed front and centre, as expected from a Sunni toward a Shiite regime. "I think we should do whatever is necessary to help them, including giving them weapons to defend themselves"; no not the defense of the regime, but arming the rebels in defiance of the regime.
Russia and China may have blocked the Security Council's wish to sturdily smite President
al Bashad with words of condemnation, hugely offending the Arab League and particularly Saudi Arabia, but this standoff of obvious misunderstanding of the role of the typical Arab/Muslim benevolent ruler does typify the convoluted machinations of the region.
Still, the regime remains unconcerned. It will more than adequately look to its own resources to clear up the little imbroglio that has erupted between dissatisfied Syrians and the majority that love him. To celebrate his great victory at the polls the President has instructed his troops to talk some sense and national pride into the Syrian rebels.
And his military has responded with enthusiasm and love for their fellow Syrians. Shells and rockets crashed into Sunni Muslim districts of
Homs, softening them up a little further after earlier bombardments, to the prospect of apologizing for their flagrant disregard for authority and childish demands for 'freedom' and 'justice', whatever those are.
And the opposition, still awaiting rescue from their desperate plight, by the Arab League, by NATO, deliver their messages:
"Intense shelling started on Khalidiya, Ashira, Bayada, Baba Amro and the old city at dawn. The army is firing from the main thoroughfares deep into alleyways and side streets."
Labels: Arab League, Conflict, Syria, United Nations
Advice, Freely Proffered
Top US General Grilled on Iran Strikeby Gavriel Queenann 
US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey on Tuesday told a Senate panel he did not counsel Israel against attacking Iran over its nuclear program.
“We’ve had a conversation with them about time, the issue of time," Dempsey said, referring to his visit to Israel a month ago.
Grilled during a Senate Budget Committee meeting, Dempsey also defended his comment that Iran was a rational actor from Senator Lindsey Graham.
“We can’t afford to underestimate our potential adversaries by writing them off as irrational,” Dempsey said.
Asked pointedly by Graham if a military strike by the US was off the table, Dempsey responded, “Absolutely not."
He stressed the danger of nuclear weapons reaching terrorist groups and the beginning of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East involving countries threatened by Iran.
Observers say Graham's decision to corner Dempsey in committee and on the record on Israel and Iran wasn’t surprising.
Earlier this month, Dempsey said in a CNN interview that an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities would be imprudent, destabilizing and would not achieve Israel's long-term objectives.
Those comments led Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to charge Dempsey as being "unwilling to aid Israel" in ensuring Iran does not obtain nuclear weapons.
Netanyahu said Dempsey's comments "served Iran."
Within hours Graham and fellow Senator John McCain, who had just met with Netanyahu, took Dempsey to task.
Graham told reporters that, while he respected Dempsey, “Obviously it’s not helpful if there is a well-publicized tension between the US and Israel. We would like to see the United States and Israel agree on a course of action that will lead us toward a goal we both share.”
"People are giving Israel a lot of advice here lately from America,” Graham said. “I just want to tell our Israeli friends that my advice to you is never lose control of your destiny."
"Never allow a situation to develop that would destroy the Jewish state," he added.
Standing next to Graham, McCain said, “There should be no daylight between America and Israel in our assessment of the [Iranian] threat.”
“Unfortunately there clearly is some,” added the Senator.
Over the weekend, McCain lashed out at the Obama administration’s handling of rising tensions between Israel and Iran.
McCain told CNN’s “State of the Union” that the administration intentionally leaked to the media the reason for the US national security adviser’s trip to Israel – to try to persuade the country not to attack Iran.
“The prime minister has every reason to be upset,” McCain said. “I can understand why relations are in very bad shape right now.”
In recent months Obama administration officials have leaked secret strategy meetings with Mossad chief Tamir Pardo on Iran, as well as Israel's theoretical timetable for an Iran strike.
They have also taken the unprecedented step of siding with Iran in accusing Israel of supporting the People's Mujahadeen of Iran in an assassination campaign targeting Iranian nuclear scientists.
More on this topic As published online at ArutzSheva, 29 February 2012
Labels: Iran, Israel, Technology, Terrorism, United States
WikiCodes
WikiLeaks: Russia Gave Israel Codes for Iran’s Missilesby Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu 
Russia gave Israel codes for breaking Iran’s missile defense system in return for codes of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) Israel sold to Georgia, WikiLeaks claims.
The information was among 5 million emails released this week by WikiLeaks, which said it worked in cooperation with the Anonymous hacker group. The leaked information focused on the U.S.-based Stratfor global intelligence company.
A source identified as “A” was quoted in an e-mail from a Stratfor employee as having heard from a “former Mexican cop” and military analysts that "the Georgians are frantically looking for a replacement for the Israeli UAVs that were compromised.”
The Israeli-based Elbit company had sold UAVs to Georgia since 2007, and earlier this month Georgia said it is replacing the Hermes UAVs.
“Met with my Mexican source/friend again today and dude is getting shadier by the day. We followed up on our past discussion on Russia compromising the Israeli-made Georgian UAVs prior to the August war,” said one e-mail.
“I inquired more about the compromised Israeli UAVs,” it continued. “What he explained was that Israel and Russia made a swap -- Israel gave Russia the 'data link' code for those specific UAVs; in return, Russia gave Israel the codes for Iran's Tor-M1s [missile defense system].
“I asked about the S-300 (source tracks a lot of defense deals for Jane's). He doesn't think the Russians will give it to the Iranians. Besides, he said... Israel and Turkey have been collaborating very closely on the S-300s….The gist of what he said is that Turkey has been cracking the S-300 since the Crete sale and has been sharing intel on the S-300 with the Israelis to ensure that they retain an advantage over Iran should Iran get them from the Russians.
“SOURCE DESCRIPTION: MX301 - Former Mexican cop, Latam military analyst, writes for Jane's; SOURCE RELIABILITY: A
“The Russians got the data link for the UAV (there is some suspicion that the Israelis after the war may have given this to them…. So, since the Georgian UAVs were compromised, they then tried to sell them to the Azerbaijanis. I don’t know if that deal went through.” As published online at ArutzSheva, 29 February 2012Labels: Iran, Israel, Russia, Technology, Turkey
Pakistan's People's Party
The United Nations recently issued a desperate call for assistance for last fall's victims of Pakistan's disastrous floods caused by heavy rains. Flood waters once again inundated large stretches of southern Pakistan killing hundreds, destroying or damaging millions of houses. It was estimated to have affected almost nine million people who are still living in temporary shelters, facing famine and disease.
The Pakistan People's Party, the current government, is as hopeless as its predecessor governments in caring for its people, and looks for assistance to the United Nations, its emergency and food programs. This is the same country that opted to spend its treasury - which was never exorbitant for a poverty-stricken country - to develop nuclear weaponry instead of building protective infrastructure against floods, and feeding its people.
Pakistan's burning hatred for India informs everything that it does; fomenting and inciting to violence in Kashmir against India's presence, arming and supporting the Taliban against the Government of Afghanistan, launching attacks against India. Pakistan is a net exporter of terror. Its countless
madrasses teaching Saudi-style fundamentalist
Islamism churns out eager
jihadis.
Pakistan's National Army and its Secret Services aid and support extreme and violent tribal groups whose hatred for
kuffar, for India and for the West in general ensures that the world will always be well supplied with terrorists eager to perform their sacred duty to
Islamism; political, fascist Islam, the only kind that seems to exist in Pakistan.
This is the country that convinced the United States that it should be trusted as an ally in the battle against 'terror', because it too was battling its own internal terrorists. And the United States, wanting to believe Pakistan despite abundant evidence to the contrary, dispenses billions of dollars annually in support of the Pakistan military.
None of that funding goes in any way, shape or form to alleviating the dreadful plight of the Pakistan public, that three-quarters of a million living in temporary relief camps, let alone the greater majority of the internal refugees living in the open with no shelter whatever. Over three million people are in desperate need of food assistance and medical care. They haven't even recovered from the floods of the year before.
They cannot look to their government to bring them relief, for there is none to be had from that source. So Pakistan, with its institutionalized policy of teaching its young at the schools they attend, that jihad is the duty of every Muslim, and violent jihad is a requirement of the faith, has nothing to offer to succour its people at their time of existential need.
Islam, in Pakistan, informs every second of every day. And it is the duty of every Muslim to struggle, for submission is not enough, given the world that is hostile to Islam, and which must be challenged with the supremacy of Islam and the Koran. The Koranic verse which gives command to the believer to "kill the pagans, the infidels, the unbelievers, where you find them" is beyond dispute.
Which is why the Pakistan public unanimously supports the jihad they observe occurring in Afghanistan, and fervently denounces U.S. drones targeting
jihadists in the North West Territories, and are ragingly inflamed when Navy
SEALs successfully infiltrate to visit
Osama bin Laden in
Abbottabad, a mile from an elite Army garrison.
Labels: Islamism, Pakistan, Technology, Terrorism
Lethally Fantacizing
It is more than a little puzzling to muse upon the obvious trust in rationality that U.S. President Barack Obama displayed when he ascended to the White House, confident that simply by replacing George W. Bush as president, the international community would be reassured that America had no designs on their territory, and wished only to extend the hand of friendship and co-operation.
His presidency, he felt - and he wanted everyone else to believe as he did - would usher in a new era of international relations, of diplomacy not belligerence, courtesy not arrogance, trust not defiance. Under his authority and his gentle guiding hand, countries that were hostile to the United States would suddenly become welcoming and all would be well.
It seems that enough people did believe his belief in the healing powers of rational intelligence and peaceful ideology, to bring a new era of international relations to the world scene. There was the triumphant revelation that he had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and then he was gloriously presented with that prize. For he had extended an open hand to the world.
His open hand of greeting was thwarted by a fist extended by the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, was not impressed by President Obama's address to the Muslim nations from Cairo. He had no intention of trusting any Westerners for he distrusted even his neighbours, reflecting in fact how each of the sheikhs, monarchs, dictators in the MidEast interacted among themselves.
The latest report issued by the International Atomic Energy Agency warns that Iran's increasingly active enrichment of uranium to 20% grade, when 5% is sufficient to run a domestic atomic reactor, clearly indicates Iran's intention to engineer and construct nuclear armaments. The Fordow installation, securely installed at the foot of a mountain is working overtime.
But not to worry, because the Obama administration sees a silver lining where the IAEA, the Arab League and Israel see silver lightning prepared to whoosh down on them under a mushroom cloud. Iran's belligerent rantings and threats against one of its neighbours in particular, leads that neighbour to the conclusion that it must act, with regret, not haste.
The sanctions that have bitten deep into Iran's treasury and which have embittered its population have only served to strengthen the resolve of the Ayatollahs who feel now, more than ever, theirs is a righteous and fully Islamic course of action; they seek only to take what is rightfully theirs, just as other nations have.
Other nations, with the notable exceptions of those supporting Iran, Pakistan and North Korea, who present enough of a concern to a world that is nuclear-vulnerable. What the world does not need is another lunatic theocracy drunk with its power-ideology and so infused with its belief in the end of days and their singular reward, that there is nothing to suppress its vicious determination.
Simply because there is, for Iran, no fear of a disaster that cannot be contained, for that disaster to them appears as a release for which they have eagerly and too long waited.
Labels: Iran, Middle East, Technology, United Nations
What Jewish Jerusalem Heritage?
Even 'Peace Now' Getting Fed Up With Arab Officials?by Rachel Hirshfeld 
Americans for Peace Now's Director of Policy and Government Relations Lara Friedman has expressed her discontent and dissatisfaction with the failure of Arab officials to acknowledge Jewish rights to Jerusalem.
While Friedman is vehemently against Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, military action against Iran, and advocated on behalf of freeing the Islamic Jihad terrorist Khader Adnan from Israeli administrative detention, she nonetheless laments that the Arab League’s Conference on Jerusalem in Doha on Sunday did not give voice to Jewish perspectives.
“When I was invited to this conference, I took this as a sign that the Arab League wanted to capture the full complexity of the issues related to Jerusalem, including openly pro-Israel, pro-peace voices," she wrote Monday in the Forward. "However, it seems that virtually every conversation I am having here involves me, to a greater or lesser degree, having to defend the two-state solution and having to assert and defend the Jewish stake in Jerusalem..
“[I]t seems to me that by not having more pro-two-state solution, Jewish voices here, the Arab League is doing a disservice to the cause it is ostensibly concerned with — the health and status of Jerusalem — and missing an opportunity. The Arab world, and activists around the globe concerned with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, do themselves no favors when they listen to voices that tell them only a piece of the story that is comfortable to their ears.
“Speakers at Sunday’s opening session, including Palestinian [Authority] President Mahmoud Abbas, one after another laid out laundry lists of criticisms of Israel — many of them regrettably marked with exaggerations. All also spoke a great deal about Muslim and Christian attachments to Jerusalem and the importance of defending the holy sites and communities associated with both religions. However, only one speaker, Michel Sabbah, formerly the Latin Patriarch in Jerusalem, mentioned any Jewish connection to the city,” she added.
“This is a serious problem,” Friedman proclaimed. “If President Abbas cannot acknowledge Jewish claims in Jerusalem, even as he asserts Palestinian claims (a problem Yasser Arafat suffered from), he should not be surprised if it is more difficult for Israelis and Jews, wherever they are, to believe that he can be trusted in a peace agreement that leaves Jerusalem sites precious to Jews under Palestinian control.
“If representatives of the organization that sponsored the Arab Peace Initiative cannot bring themselves to acknowledge the legitimacy of Jewish equities in Jerusalem, they should know that they discredit their own professed interest in peace.
“All throughout the day, it was unfortunately the same story. Participants talked about Jerusalem as if Jewish history did not exist or was a fraud — as if all Jewish claims in the city were just a tactic to dispossess Palestinians.”
She concluded by saying that she “regret[s] that the conference so far has not taken the issues related to Jerusalem more seriously. Much of the discourse here thus far has been personally objectionable and even painful to me, but I believe my presence here is important for the cause of peace.”
Friedman, like Norman Finkelstein, among others, seem to be disheartened and disillusioned by the liberal, leftist and anti-Israel groups which they espouse. Finkelstein recently admitted that the Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which he so closely aligned and supported in the past, is “a cult.”
Tags: Peace Now ,Arab leagueAs published online at ArutzSheva, 28 February 2012Labels: Arab League, Israel, Palestinian Authority, Political Realities, Religion
Israel's Options: Few
U.S. Official: Israel Won't Warn Us Before an Attack on Iranby Elad Benari 
Israeli officials have made it clear they won’t warn the U.S. if they decide to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, a U.S. intelligence official told The Associated Press on Monday.
The official said the pronouncement was delivered in a series of private, top-level conversations.
According to the AP report, Israeli officials said that if they eventually decide a strike is necessary, they would keep the Americans in the dark to decrease the likelihood that the U.S. would be held responsible for failing to stop Israel's potential attack.
The report said that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak delivered the message to a series of top-level U.S. visitors to the country, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey, the White House national security adviser and the director of national intelligence, and top U.S. lawmakers.
The U.S. official, who spoke to the news agency on condition of anonymity, said that Netanyahu delivered the same message to all the Americans who have traveled to Israel for talks.
According to AP, the apparent decision to keep the U.S. in the dark also stems from Israel's frustration with the White House. After a recent visit by National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, the report said, Israel became convinced the Americans would neither take military action, nor go along with unilateral action by Israel against Iran. The Israelis concluded they would have to conduct a strike unilaterally, a point they are likely to hammer home in a series of meetings over the next two weeks in Washington, the official told the news agency.
Barak will meet with top administration and congressional officials during his visit, while Netanyahu arrives in Washington on March 5 for meetings with President Barack Obama.
Netanyahu recently said publicly that sanctions against the Islamic Republic are "not working," a sentiment supported by U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency chief Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess in a testimony given to U.S. lawmakers.
Netanyahu is widely believed to back Barak, who believes a pre-emptive military strike on Iran's nuclear program must be made before Tehran enters "the immunity zone."
Barak's so-called "immunity zone" is a theoretical point of no return after which Iran's nuclear program would be so diffuse and well protected that an Israeli strike could not sufficiently delay Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Mike Rogers, who recently visited Israel and met with officials on the Iranian issue, was quoted as having told CNN on Monday, “I got the sense that Israel is incredibly serious about a strike on their nuclear weapons program.”
Rogers added, “It’s their calculus that the administration ... is not serious about a real military consequence to Iran moving forward. They believe they're going to have to make a decision on their own, given the current posture of the United States.”
The White House did not respond to AP’s requests for comment on the anonymous official’s remarks, and the Pentagon and Office of Director of National Intelligence declined to comment, as did the Israeli Embassy in Washington.
The remarks seem to back recent reports, according to which Israeli officials told Dempsey that Israel would give President Barack Obama no more than 12 hours notice if and when it attacks Iran.
The report said that the Netanyahu government also will not coordinate with the United States an attack on the Islamic Republic.
Despite the latest reports, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro insisted last week that the United States and Israel are "coordinated" on steps being taken to confront Iran's nuclear program.
As published online at ArutzSheva, 28 February 2012Labels: Conflict, Iran, Islamism, Israel, Technology, United States
The Assassin
"They called the Koran a bad book in the presence of (an Afghan colleague). After all this the guy had verbal arguments with the advisers and was threatened by them. He gets angry and shoots them. Eight rounds were fired at them. Then he sneaks out and disappears. No one knew about the incident for more than an hour because the room is soundproofed." Afghan government source
There it is, the whole story in a nutshell. Or so the enquiring are led to believe. By an Afghan government source who has it all neatly figured out. Because, of course, how else to explain it? A dishonourable deed has an honourable source. A devout Afghan defending the Koran against those who think nothing of desecrating it. They are degenerate and despicable, and his honour as a believing Muslim was challenged.
The two Americans were, according to this source, "scolding the protesters and calling them bad names", while viewing videos of protests in Kabul. Their manner irritated an Afghan colleague who happened to be present. Who, reasonably, remonstrated with them. In their turn the Americans, as Americans are wont to do, threatened the poor man. What option had he then, but to defend himself and in the process, defend the honour of Islam?
What, indeed. It has taken, let's see, about six-seven days, but President Hamid
Karzai has finally called for an end to the 'protests' against American insensitivity, brutality, and unforgivable desecration of the holy text. He feels that the message has been amply received. NATO has pulled its advisers from Afghan government ministries - advisedly, but temporarily.
France is withdrawing its civilian mentors and advisers from Afghan institutions for "safety reasons", as is Germany, and Canada. For safety reasons, in fact, no Westerners should actually be in Afghanistan. The concealed fact of the matter is that quite a number of attacks have taken place, with trusted Afghan 'colleagues' turning their weapons on foreigners purporting to be allies.
The battle against the Taliban uppermost in the allies' minds, not so much that of the Afghan National Army and Police, who know full well they will soon be back in power, controlling all. The named suspect is said to have studied in Pakistan before joining the ministry. Anyone attending a school, a
madrassa, an military academy in Pakistan has been well steeped in violent jihad and hatred of the infidels.
Not that Afghans themselves are strangers to the need of every devout Muslim to war with the enemy, the foreigners, the
kuffar. Pakistan under General Musharraf convinced the American administration that it could be relied upon as an ally in the 'war against terror', without dwelling too deeply on the fact that Pakistan created that terror, and its military and secret service trained, funded and directed terror.
Paid for, amusingly enough, with American funding to the tune of billions invested by the U.S. Treasury in the Pakistan military.
Labels: Afghanistan, Conflict, NATO, Pakistan, United States
Canada's Sacrifices in Afghanistan
In 2001, the Government of Canada committed to participating in the NATO
ISAF mission in Afghanistan. Canada would send 2,000 troops, six warships and six planes to Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf. Western allies allied with the Afghan Northern Alliance marched on Kabul and rousted the Taliban and their honoured guests,
al-
Qaeda and
Osama bin Laden.
Canada sent troops from the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry to Kandahar, in early 2002, in Canada's contribution to Operation Enduring Freedom. They joined members of Joint Task Force 2 who had arrived in the country several months earlier. And for the next ten years Canada was deeply embroiled in the ongoing conflict, as the Taliban regrouped and
resurged.
Since that time Canada lost 158 of its military, men and women, between 2001 and 2011. During that same period 636 soldiers were wounded in action, and another 1,412 injured in non-battle conditions. Eight percent of Canadian soldiers suffer now from Afghanistan-related post-traumatic stress disorder. And another 5.2% suffer from mental health issues related to their Afghanistan experience.
As additional military personnel leave the military within the next five years it is estimated that almost three thousand of those will report severe
PTSD at some juncture. There are 39,558 Canadian veterans of the Afghan war, 4,181 of whom across the country are receiving disability benefits from Veterans Affairs.
Most of the Canadian military who lost their lives in Afghanistan met their death by exploding roadside bombs,
IEDs. Canadians became adept at disarming these roadside bombs, but they were not always successful in locating their presence before they killed and maimed Canadian troops. The Taliban became ever more adept at building 'better' bombs.
The cost to NATO for prosecuting this war is held to be in the neighbourhood of $460-billion, while for Canada that cost is $22-billion, with an additional $3-billion estimated for the training mission of Afghan troops.
And the end result of all this sacrifice is ... not very much. Canadian soldiers met with village elders in Kandahar province, palavered at
loya jirgas, built school houses and medical clinics, dug wells and interacted with villagers to demonstrate their friendliness and willingness to respect the customs and devout religious beliefs.
There were some inroads made, but foreigners will always be held with huge suspicion in Afghanistan, a country that has been invaded and occupied for most of its history, and because it is a poor country it will remain a backward society wedded to a strict interpretation of Islam. And because of its location it will be a target for Pakistan as a buffer against India.
And while the Taliban patiently awaits its entrance opportunity with the withdrawal of NATO, Iran too awaits its opportunity to spread its influence as well. All of this seems inevitable. And none of it represents the expectations that were uppermost in the minds of those who occupied the country to destroy the influence of the Taliban and bring civility and human rights to the country.
Once again Afghanistan will be abandoned to itself. And the sacrifice of countries like Canada has been for nothing, nothing at all.
Labels: Afghanistan, Canada, Conflict, Human Relations
More WikiLeaks...?!?
Israel, Kurdish fighters destroyed Iran nuclear facility, email released by WikiLeaks claims
In exchange released by website, worker at Stratfor intelligence firm doubts validity of a source claiming an Israeli ground force had already wiped out Iran's nuclear infrastructure.
By Anshel Pfeffer and Ron Ben-Tovim Tags: WikiLeaks Iran nuclear Iran threat The mega-leaks website, WikiLeaks, has partnered with the hackers cooperative Anonymous, to publish internal emails of the American strategic intelligence company Stratfor. In one of the hacked emails, Stratfor officials discuss information obtained from one of their sources who reports that Israeli commandos, in cooperation with Kurdish fighters, have destroyed Iranian nuclear installations.
WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, will hold a press conference today in London where he plans to reveal new details from the Stratfor emails, including details on the company's dealings with the American government and major corporations, and its network of paid sources.
 | The base in Parchin where Iran conducted nuclear tests |
| Photo by: Google Earth, GeoEye |
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In a WikiLeaks press release last night, the group said that it had obtained over five million emails generated by the Stratfor headquarters in Texas, from 2004 until the end of 2011. Though the organization does not specify the source of the emails, it has already been published that Stratfor was a target of the Anonymous hackers.
According to the emails, among Stratfor's clients are American government agencies including the Department of Homeland Security, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Marine Corps, the Dow Chemical company, for whom Stratfor is alleged to have kept tabs on activists fighting the company for compensation over the Indian Bhopal chemical plant disaster in 1984, and defense giants Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon.
In addition, the WikiLeaks statement said Stratfor also "monitored" activists supporting the blight of the 1984 Bhopal chemical disaster on behalf of the US chemical giant Dow Chemical.
In one of the emails from November 2011, Startfor officials discuss the explosion at an Iranian missile base near Tehran and quote a source who "was asked what he thought of reports that the Israelis were preparing a military offensive against Iran. Response: I think this is a diversion. The Israelis already destroyed all the Iranian nuclear infrastructure on the ground weeks ago."
One company analyst responded dismissively to the possibility of an Israeli attack having already taken place, asking: "How and when did the Israelis destroy the infra on the ground?"
"Would anyone actually accept that this could let the Europeans forget about the Euro crisis, something they have been experiencing every day for over a year?!" the analyst added, asking: "Do we attribute any credibility to this item at all? I don't even see what possible disinfo purposes this could serve."
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Some of the Stratfor analysts expressed the opinion that Israel had sent commandos into Iran, perhaps with the assistance of Kurdish fighters or Iranian Jews who had immigrated to Israel, to carry out these operations.
The emails also mention a plan to coerce an Israeli source into updating the firm on the medical condition of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
"[Y]ou have to take control of him. Control means financial, sexual or psychological control... This is intended to start our conversation on your next phase," Stratfor CEO George Friedman is quoted of instructing one of the firm's analysts.
According to the emails, many Stratfor operatives are former employees of the U.S. government and they routinely pay sources for information in cash.
The WikiLeaks press statement also mentions "private intelligence staff who align themselves closely with U.S. government policies and channel tips to the Mossad – including through an information mule in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Yossi Melman, who conspired with Guardian journalist David Leigh to secretly, and in violation of WikiLeaks' contract with the Guardian, move WikiLeaks U.S. diplomatic cables to Israel."
Mr Melman who until recently covered intelligence affairs for Haaretz said in response that at the time "I worked for Haaretz and with the approval of my editors I obtained the WikiLeaks documents."
"Harretz published some of them. I am proud of my journalistic achievements which was praised by my editors and the readers. Julian Assang of Wikileaks tried to prevent the publication arguing that the documents belonged to him," he added, saying, "I and my editors rejected his claim and went head with the publication."
"Now [Assange] tries to take revenge on me by hinting that I was a channel to the Israeli intelligence community. This is a complete lie. He also by way of innuendo tries to create the impression that I was a source for Stratfor. This is another lie. I do not have any control whatsoever about what Stratfor personnel wrote about me in their private in house correspondence," Melman added.
In Novmber 2010, WikiLeaks published, along with a number of major media organizations, including the Guardian, Der Spiegel and the New York Times, a cache of U.S. State Department diplomatic cables. American intelligence analyst, Bradley Manning, is being court-martialed for allegedly leaking the cables to WikiLeaks.
As published online at Haaretz, 27 February 2012
Labels: Iran, Islamism, Israel, Technology, United States
Explosive Paradise
Israel has been placed on notice. For that matter, so has the world, since the world too is watching, and waiting... Iran has succeeded on so many levels, to incur the wrath of the United Nations, and the censure of the
IAEA, and unending condemnation from the United States and the European Union. It is none too beloved in the Middle East either, aside from Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
It has succeeded, despite stumbling across a number of roadblocks whose effectiveness has been temporary, inclusive of computer viruses, suddenly-dead nuclear scientists and explosive devices set for the most imaginative places, in continuing its enrichment of uranium. For peaceful purposes, of course, for Islam is a religion of peace.
Who might have imagined that the Grand Ayatollah and his Republican National Guard would become adept at mind-reading? But there you have it, another masterful milestone achieved. The deputy head of Iran's armed forces has put the world on notice - again, of course.
"We are no longer willing to wait for enemy action to be launched against us. Our strategy now is that we will make use of all means to protect our national interests. We enjoy the ability to show them all types of confrontation in case of a foolish act by the Zionist regime."
The Zionist regime, for its part, is slightly bemused with the state of preemption, presumption and advance warning. Of course the Zionist regime is of the opinion that it may just be possible that the
Islamist Republic of Iran is making an effort to provoke the Zionists into first-striking its nuclear installations.
And the Zionist regime is most certainly intrigued with that invitation. The thought had occurred to them, absent the invitation. Particularly with respect to the
Fordow installation where 700 centrifuges are in the process of refining uranium to a fissile concentration of 20% - almost, but not quite the grade for weapons production.
And time is a-wasting, that too is a concern of the Zionist regime, knowing that site to be buried deeply into mountain rock, said to be 80 metres in depth, so that's some impregnable bunker. Word from the
IAEA, furthermore, is that with the refusal of Iran to permit entry to the
Parchin military base to inspect that special explosive chamber, success is summer-nigh for weapons production.
Why wait until Iran generously shares its abundance of nuclear riches with militia-proxies like Hezbollah and
Hamas, after all? A three-pronged attack is slightly more than any small geographic area could tolerate, even a military giant like Israel. Assuming that Syria's government may succumb to the growing onslaught against the regime, its absence a relief.
Another part of the equation is how cold and hungry Iranians are, about now. And how susceptible the compassionate international community is to gut-wrenching stories of starvation and lack of medicines to save sick and dying infants in Iran while its government expends all it can on furthering its nuclear ambitions to bring itself to instant, explosive Paradise.
Labels: European Union, Iran, Israel, United Nations, United States
Provocative at Best
The
Kingdom of Qatar, under its Emir,
Sheikh Hamad bin
Khalifa Al-
Thani, seems quite the anomaly in many ways. An oil-rich
sheikdom, it is said to be the wealthiest per-
capita country in the world. Unlike so much of the Middle East, it has a zero unemployment rate, and no one, whether Qataris or its million-and-a-half foreign workers, lives under a poverty line.
It is a tiny geography, ruled by the same family since the mid-1800s, albeit as a British protectorate for generations, until 1971.
Its indigenous population is well under a million people, and most labour is performed by a large imported work force, far outnumbering the Qataris themselves. Per
capita income is twice that of the United States, at $84,000. It is the world's largest exporter of liquefied natural gas.
The Emir attended the Royal Military Academy at
Sandhurst, west of London, graduating in the year of Qatar's independence and concurrently when the first
gas field was discovered.
His father became emir in 1972, and preferred to live
extravagantly, on the French Riviera,leaving it to Sheik
Hamad to oversee the development of the country's oil and gas industry, developing an economy that would become the envy of the Middle East. Qataris can depend on free education, free health care, housing and utilities. And they pay no taxes whatever.
Foreign universities were invited to establish campuses in Qatar where the country had invested $100-billion in an Education Campus in Doha. There is no elected parliament,
it is left to the Emir to decide the disposition of the country's sovereign wealth fund of between $70-billion to $100-billion which has made the country a power to be reckoned with.
Huge sums have been invested in car manufacturing in Europe, the Agricultural Bank of China, Chinese oil refineries, French fashion, Brazilian banking, British department stores. One of the most notable investments made by the Emir though, was the encouragement and lavish funding of a free press, almost unheard of in the Muslim Middle East.
Al
Jazeera, known the world 'round, has become a broadcaster of note for its mostly neutral world news coverage with its special emphasis on the Middle East. As though mimicking the purported neutrality of Qatari-funded-and-established Al
Jazeera, the Emir maintains good relations with all Qatar's neighbours in the region, as well as globally.
Sheikh Hamad seems to be trying to achieve a balance of justice and fairness in his relations with other countries. He enrolled the Qatar military with NATO forces during the campaign to protect Libyan rebels, and he has been front and centre in the Arab League struggles to contain the damage that Syrian President
Bashar al Assad is foisting on his beleaguered country.
So does this man's ascension on the regional and global scene promise some significant changes for the better in the Middle East? Seems far too much to hope for. Despite his wealth and his influence, his Western education and international connections, allied with regional respect, no one man however powerful, is capable of altering
engrained tribal and religious customs.
Particularly when the region has always been a cauldron of boiling animosities and resentments, ready to spill over into violence at any provocation. And of late, there has been one provocation after another...
unending.
Labels: Middle East, Particularities/Peculiarities
American Academic Neutrality?
Jewish Groups Appalled at Harvard's 'New Anti-Semitism'by Rachel Hirshfeld 
Abe Foxman, the National Director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), wrote a letter to the President of Harvard University, Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust last week, condemning the “One State Conference” scheduled to take place at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government on March 3-4.
The conference, organized entirely by student groups that advocate an ideology based on the elimination of the Jewish character of the State of Israel, is scheduled to feature speakers including the Executive Director of the Electronic Intifada, avid supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and others who compare Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to the Nazi’s treatment of the Jews.
“[T]his conference is a serious break from the Kennedy School tradition of academic integrity and educational excellence. This conference links Harvard and the Kennedy School with a discredited concept having a singular outcome: the elimination of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people,” Foxman contends.
“The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is one of the nation's premier civil rights organizations,” Foxman asserts. “We work tirelessly to fight anti-Semitism, racism and all forms of bigotry and we are staunch champions of the fundamental right of free expression and the significance of that right in academia. We also recognize that offensive speech is protected, and that the appropriate response is not censorship but strong unequivocal denunciation,”
While the university did issue a statement of “non-endorsement,” he notes, it is a “barely noticeable disclaimer on the acknowledgement page of the conference website.” Furthermore, the logos of the Harvard Kennedy School Carr Center for Human Rights and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs of Harvard University “continue to appear prominently in full color on the web site.”
He continues to state, “This conference is so fundamentally flawed that ‘balance’ cannot cure it. This conference goes beyond academic discourse about the conflict by promoting the elimination of the Jewish state.”
“Although the conference organizers state that one of their goals for the conference is to ‘help to expand the range of academic debate on this issue,’ there can never be any legitimate discussion of a concept which, by its very nature, will result in the end of the Jewish character of Israel,” Foxman argues.
The letter then calls on the President of Harvard to “forcefully denounce this conference so there is no question that Harvard and its institutions are adamantly opposed to the offensive notion of a ‘one state solution.’"
In addition, students, alumni and friends of Harvard University initiated a petition stating that they are “appalled” at Harvard’s decision to “host and finance the conference.”
The conference, the petition states, “which considers the dissolution of the present State of Israel, is not an academic endeavor, but a manifestation of the face of the ‘new anti-Semitism.’”
“[T]his conference is advocating the demographic destruction of the Jewish State and thereby denying the right of the Jewish people to exercise their own sovereignty. The conference essentially calls for the dismantling of the existing State of Israel. By funding and hosting this conference, Harvard University is lending its name and providing a supportive forum to one of the most ancient racial forms of hatred.”
The petition can be signed here.As published online at ArutzSheva, 25 February 2012
Labels: Anti-Semitism, Israel, United States
Past Time to Leave
The mass hysteria in Afghanistan, now spread to the good-natured folks in Pakistan, continues its lunacy. Going a long way to demonstrating how effectively social cultures are capable of communicating with one another, when those who live in the 21st Century feel responsible for the well-being of those inhabiting the 6
th Century.
All the more so, when the tender sensibilities of the 6
th Century dwellers are so readily irked by the presence of the 21st Century elements whose presence despoils the soil sacred to a religion's divine presence. When that religion declares itself as the world's only authentic highway to heaven, the very presence of those mildly adherent to a competing religion presents as a psychological assault.
And to compound the injury beyond endurance, the arrogance of the 21st Century in assuming that no harm will come to the relationship with the desecration of the divine. No real harm did come to the relationship, concurring that the relationship was always fraught with suspicion and hatred.
What has since resulted, with the burning of the Korans at the
Bagram Air Base was a lifting of the fiction that a relationship exists.
That suspicion and hatred simply rose from a simmering state at the presence of foreigners to a fiery inferno of revenge. It hardly matters that most of the dead are Afghans themselves, for they have willingly sacrificed themselves to the protection of the divine, from the
sacrilegious depredations of the Infidels who have proven how deserving they are of death absent Paradise.
The protesting 'rallies' breaking out all over the country have completely engulfed it in a state of wild exaltation of the Koran as the spoken word of Allah, commanding them to wreak vengeance. "You have not just betrayed a nation, but you have played with the faith and sentiments of 1.7 billion Muslims worldwide, and you have trampled their holy book", thundered mullah Mohammad
Ayaz Niazi.
Ignorance is not forgivable by any measure; it is punishable by the most primitive of measures: death to the foreigner, the invader, the Infidels, the destroyers of Korans. A few oblivious and stupid people igniting an inferno of fiery monstrosity by their unthinking lack of vigilance to take note of the sensibilities of those with whom they are surrounded.
As though the NATO mission wasn't looking for an exit strategy in any event. Seeing it wrapped in the eventuality of adequately training the Afghan National Army and Police to the point where it could look after the security needs of Afghanistan. Refusing to admit that both would soon enough be under the control of the returning Taliban.
The problem of when to leave has now been more or less given its response. All of the sacrifices made in lives lost by foreign
militaries, and the huge investments made by foreign treasuries are simply another footnote in history. In particular the history of this truly benighted country stuck in human misery, ignorance and poverty.
NATO has swiftly withdrawn all personnel from Afghan ministries. In the inner, protected confines of the Afghan Interior Ministry building in Kabul, where access is confined to only those elite who have authority and access, two senior American officers were discovered, both shot directly in the head, dead. Yet more revenge to savour the victory of the Koran over the ignorant.
General Allen, who has condemned the murders, adds: "We are committed to our partnership with the government of Afghanistan to reach our common goal of a peaceful, stable and secure Afghanistan in the near future." The stress of the job has clearly overtaken the man's good sense. He is obviously in the throes of a delusion when he speaks in the same breath of Afghanistan as "peaceful, stable and secure".
Labels: Afghanistan, NATO, Political Realities, United States
A Victorious Nation
All is fair in war and politics - we'll leave love out of this equation - so whatever it takes to win either is rarely shunned by those whose principles have long since been compromised; or who had few to begin with. It has long been recognized that Vladimir Putin is one such individual on the world stage.
And here's where love does come into the equation - the love of self, that overweening egotism that imbues the self with the certain knowledge that they deserve to reign supreme and for an eternity.
Little wonder that Russia's official position in defying prospective United Nations' sanctions biting deeper into Syria in an effort to staunch the bloodshed, remains fast. Alongside China, another repressive regime fearing outside interference in the status quo, the Kremlin has a deep suspicion of the critical eye of the international community.
Its problems with Chechnya, following on the dissolution of Russia's satellites from the political binds of USSR domination, created a Russian angst relieved somewhat by its attack on Georgia.
More understated attacks on Ukraine, Poland and Estonia express more than adequately Russia's mourning of its past glory, and just why it is that Vladimir Putin has attempted to resurrect and whitewash the Communist past.
And to work toward instilling in the Russian collective an unambivalent resentment toward the remaining superpower and its Western allies that successfully courted former satrapies of the USSR, persuading them of the usefulness of installing American missile bases. Which local interference infuriated the Kremlin beyond reason. Though it is reasonable enough for them to protest the geographic incursion.
At a time when Russia is being politically wracked by the growing strength of opposition forces unwilling to allow Putin's party to continue to dominate the country's politics, and himself to return to the presidency for a third stretch of unalloyed power, that anti-government push-back has infuriated Putin. Ample reason for him not to allow Russia to join the anti-Assad campaign. Quite aside from the lucrative arms sales, and the docking facilities for its naval vessels.
He is determined to retake the presidency, and ensure his party remains installed as the driving force of Russian politics. And he uses the most egregious demagoguery in addressing potential supporters to fire them into a frenzy of resentment at the international community, his domestic critics, and to imbue them with a sense of mission toward his re-election. Despite or perhaps because of the vote-rigging at the December parliamentary polls.
"It is fitting that we have gathered here today, on February 23, Defender of the Fatherland Day, because today, together, we really are defenders of our fatherland. "We will not allow anyone to impose their will on us. We have our own will and this has always helped us be victorious. We are a victorious nation. This is in our genes. This is in our genetic code. It has been passed down to us, generation to generation."
As blatant manipulation goes, these inflammatory, incendiary, nationalistic overtures are proving highly successful, despite the shallowness of their message because they appeal to the chauvinist in the Russian psyche.
"Do we love Russia?" Why, what other response could there possibly be than a riotously uproarious
"Yes!" And will United Russia unite Russia? It most certainly will not, but the enthusiastic crowd roared its approval.
Labels: Political Realities, Russia, Security
Tolerance and Respect = Democracy
George W. Bush's vision of the glorious spread of democracy throughout the Middle East has succeeded admirably in capturing the loving attention of the Middle East which aspires to create for itself the reputation that it has embraced democracy. If it is so valued a political ideology throughout the West's advanced societies, then it must be valued for Muslim countries as well.
As though democracy and
Islamism are compatible. If Islam had a secular vision then democracy might fit into the picture. And since 'moderate' Islam is clearly on the wane - and most particularly including those Muslim countries which have been traditionally governed in a secular manner while remaining Muslim - where a form of democracy did flourish, that time has now passed, with a flagrant rampaging fundamentalist Islam taking deep root in those same countries.
Still, former President Bush lavished much attention and many expectations on the potential of exporting that precious human-rights commodity to the Muslim world. Didn't he enjoy trumpeting that democracy would take root in Iraq, thanks to the summary dismissal of Saddam Hussein, and the people, seeing how indispensable democracy was to good and accountable governance would clamour for it to take seed.
And isn't that, after all, how the international community interpreted the now-year-old phenomenon of the Arab Spring? That it represented a groundswell of popular yearning for freedom and liberty - democracy! Encouraging the West through NATO to become involved in Libya, getting its fingers burnt, but not acknowledging it, by helping
Islamism take hold there, as it did in Tunisia, in Egypt, and will do in Syria.
Meanwhile, in Iraq, freed from Saddam's iron fist, and learning all about democracy under American tutelage, held elections and celebrated itself as a government for all the people. With the departure of American troops, all the people now understand that theirs is a
Shia government and the Sunnis have responded. The Islamic State of Iraq, an
al-
Qaeda offshoot is busy contradicting the
Shia government's assurance of its place in Iraq.
But truth is, no matter who, the
Shia or the Sunni, tribal and sectarian hatred, intrepid in its vicious determination to endure and to slaughter one the other is once again on the raging move. And, as usual, any of the Middle East states point the finger of blame at foreign interference - while foreign interference has done its utmost to persuade them to have tolerance and respect for one another.
The intolerance and suspicion, rage and hatred against the presence of non-Muslims in Muslim societies has grown exponentially with the growth of political Islam into fanatical fascism, a form of Islamism. The plight of Christians became apparent in the new Iraq, the new Egypt, and now Syrian Christians are cowering in fear at the prospect of the fall of the Assad regime.
For disconcertingly enough, the tyrants and their brutish rule maintained order among the various tribes and sects and disparate religions, even while they imposed their will and elevated their own tribe and sect to elite status, oppressing all others. But maintaining civil order and ensuring that they were not at one another's throats - unless any one group posed as a threat to the regime.
Now that the tyrants have fallen in some places, all bets are off, and the resilience of hatred is resurrected with vicious attacks by suicide bombers, and other imaginative devices of destruction stalk the land.
Labels: Middle East, Political Realities, United States
Religious Relativity and Double Standards
Deep regret: "I extend to you and the Afghan people my sincere apologies. The error was inadvertent. I assure you that we will take the appropriate steps to avoid any recurrence, to include holding accountable those responsible." U.S. President Barack Obama
Damage control is difficult at the best of times. Excruciatingly so when one deals with primitive emotions. An apology is a rational response to an incident one would far rather have been able to avoid. In primitive minds an apology is taken as an admission of guilt, and blame is then further apportioned to the offending party.
So apologies, while they work to defuse situations when two adversaries face one another and each is privy of civil behaviour, not so when expressed toward those for whom it appears a further incitement to riot. And the true test of President Obama's sincere apology would only be recognized by the offended Afghans if he were to hang those responsible of the Koran-burning.
That, after all, is what Sharia law demands. The ultimate punishment for the ultimate sin. This is seen as appropriate, and under Sharia, just. Islamic values and tender feelings will not be soothed by any other course of action. For whatever justice the United States has in mind for the misfortune of having offended Muslim sensibilities, it is meaningless if it reflects American justice.
And riot they do. Blasphemous insults to the Prophet
Mohammad, or the desecration of the Holy Koran by being carelessly handled in curiosity by a non-believer causes great anguish to religious faithful who have no idea what Western civility is comprised of. On the other hand the West has little full understanding of how deeply Islam and its values are engrained in the minds of its faithful.
Indoctrination in strict Islamic codes of behaviour since infancy, with reinforcement at every juncture on the road to maturity ensures that a deep reverence for Islam has invaded every pore of a faithful Muslim's body and mind. Nothing is as deeply valued as that faith. The Koran as a priceless object of veneration has more protection and concern at every level of society than that of a child.
And so, there are no acceptable excuses that will mollify that sense of collective outrage, fury and hatred extended toward the foreign invaders that have soiled the land and deprived the people of their belief in the sanctity of all they hold dear, as long as foreigners have access to Korans and may seek to dispose of them as trash.
That one or possibly several ignorant soldiers took it upon themselves to dispose of the Korans - as trash - is an attack of immense significance. To the Muslim mind. Of no great consequence to the Western mind - other than as an unfortunate, embarrassing and troublesome oversight with startling consequences. Destroying Korans is unthinkable to Muslims, however.
It will not be tolerated, and it is not tolerated. Better that riots take place, so the undisciplined and the unlettered may scream their defiance and demand the death penalty for the sinners who have given such grave insult to Islam.
These, coincidentally, are the very same pious faithful for whom the sacred and the holy of other religions are unthinkable as genuine. Who won't blink an eye at the destruction of other religions' holy sites, let alone sacred texts. Who destroy churches and attack Christians fairly routinely, as insults to Islam, the one true religion.
Who will not countenance the appearance of Jews wishing to worship on the Temple Mount, Judaism's most sacred site. This is the religion whose adherents and clerics insist that their religion be respected and held sacred, but not necessarily others. Who have long been habituated to converting the holy sites of other religions to those of Islam.
Who build their mosques and raise their minarets wherever they settle in the West. But whose tolerance for the presence of other religious symbols and institutions in lands dedicated to Islam are simply not to be countenanced.
Labels: Christianity, Islamism, Judaism
