Hard power versus "faith-martyrdom" power in Gaza?

“Hamas has been legitimized, treated almost as a sovereign government,” says Jim Reilly, professor of history of the Arab Middle East at the University of Toronto. “Foreign ministers from the region as well as representatives of the Arab League beat a path to the door of Hamas.”
So did the American secretary of state and the secretary-general of the United Nations, to work through Egypt.
“The Arab Spring has changed the calculus,” says Reilly. “What we are seeing is the mainstreaming of Hamas. Whatever new Palestinian entity emerges, it’s going to have a very strong Hamas representation in it.” Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority and President Abbas are “the biggest losers. They are marginalized.” As for the two-state solution, “it seems to be receding further and further away.” (from Siddiqui: Hamas emerges stronger from Gaza war, Toronto Star, November 21, 2012, excerpted below)
Hamas, perceived and presented as a terrorist group in and to the west, is now a significant player in the Middle East. Islam, apparently using all available means to claim respectability, and political power, including violence, seems to be on the march and bending both the ear and the will of the world. And to our western ears and eyes, we seem confounded when Hamas leaders claim "victory" in their press conference following the announcement of the cease-fire...not a peace treaty!
There is still a canyon of difference between the capacity of the Palestinians, the military strength of all branches of the Palestine community, and the military strength of Israel. In fact, there is an easy, and somewhat glib evoking of the David and Goliath story, with Palestine as David and Goliath as Israel.
Hard power, however, is not necessarily a guarantee of either strength or victory, in the long run. Is it possible that both Israel and the United States are fast coming to the wall, in their realization that hard power, so long their security blanket and insurance against whatever threat might emerge, and having to face the irony of history that hard power no longer will suffice.
Indeed, is it now time to openly admit that hard power could serve as a deterrent to the long-term aspirations of both the people of the United States and of Israel?
If the two-state solution has slipped further from reach, out of the hands of both the U.S. and Israel, in spite of their overwheening power advantage, has not history once again proven that massive spending on military security can be undermined with low-budget, high commitment and nefarious tactics and strategies including terrorism, propaganda, suicide bombers brain-washed into  sacrificial martyrdom and epic patience. All of these ingredients have been enhanced and magnified by social media, and the ability to mobilize "instant mobs" for whatever political, propaganda purposes needed. Add to this mix, the Islamic commitment of many to martyrdom, in the cause of the Islamic "revolution" adn you can hear the voice of one Hamas leader, "We are not looking for votes (as is Netanyhu); we are looking for body bags!"
There is no way that secular "hard power" can or will ever compete on a level playing field with radical, fundamentalist commitment-including-martyrdom of the Muslim community. There may be physical victories, and cessation of the firing of rockets and missiles from Gaza into Israel, and even a brief recognition of the effectiveness of the Iron Dome, that million-dollar anti-missile capacity in Israel to bring down rockets and missiles from the air, with their own missiles.
Cyber-spying, too, is available as one of the new weapons in global conflict, and the obsession with hard power, so far, has not included the up-grading of capabilities in this arena in the west, compared with the commitment to cyber-security by countries like China.
While the Arab Spring has spawned stories and photos, protests and tear gas, those uprisings may be just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the change that is being wrought in geopolitical power, and the potential of the west being outstripped by a cadre of passionate, violent and fundamentalist religious zealots who have no boundaries between the "church and the state"....
Mr. Obama, the ball is in your court, and your wisdom, and capacity for vision and courage are needed if we are to forge a way forward that all people can live with tolerably...
Siddiqui: Hamas emerges stronger from Gaza war
By Haroon Siddiqui, Toronto Star, November 21, 2012
...
As part of the negotiated ceasefire, the Israeli offensive on Gaza has, of course, achieved promises of respite from rockets hitting Israel. But will it prove something other than previous counterproductive Israeli actions against Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinians in general?
When Hamas won the Palestinian election in 2006, Israel branded it a terrorist outfit. Crippling sanctions and a siege of Gaza followed. The idea was to turn the 1.5 million Gazans against Hamas and to delegitimize it, while propping up the Palestinian Authority, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, the more pliant interlocutor.
The opposite ensued. Hamas crushed an attempted PA coup. It kept the confidence of Gazans.
The 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon only helped strengthen Hezbollah. Today, it wields near-veto power in the government in Beirut.
The 2008-09 Israeli air and ground war on Gaza did little to weaken Hamas. It also strained, and ultimately snapped, Israel’s relations with Turkey, its long-time Muslim ally.
The latest Gaza offensive was supported by the U.S., Canada and much of Europe — Israel has a right to self-defence. But, more tellingly, they wouldn’t sanction an Israeli ground war, as in 2008-09. In fact, they actively intervened to avert it. Netanyahu’s chastened demeanour on Wednesday was telling. The tens of thousands of troops he had called up must be demobilized.
More startlingly, Hamas deployed rockets that reached Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, albeit without hitting many targets. The bombing of a bus near the military headquarters in Tel Aviv brought terror to the heart of Israel.
Hamas, shunned by Canada, the U.S. and allies for years, has just been courted by the same parties, directly or indirectly, to arrange the protocol with Israel.
If Israel had conditions, so did Hamas. Israel wanted an end to rockets from Gaza and the smuggling of arms through underground tunnels. Hamas wanted an end to Israeli attacks, an easing of the blockade, and the opening of the border crossings to allow some normalcy to what has been the world’s largest open-air prison.
“Hamas has been legitimized, treated almost as a sovereign government,” says Jim Reilly, professor of history of the Arab Middle East at the University of Toronto. “Foreign ministers from the region as well as representatives of the Arab League beat a path to the door of Hamas.”
So did the American secretary of state and the secretary-general of the United Nations, to work through Egypt.
“Hamas is now the indispensable Palestinian interlocutor. It has put itself at the centre of things.”
This has happened against the backdrop of the Arab Spring.
Egypt’s elected president did not rubber stamp Israeli actions, as Hosni Mubarak would have. Sure, Mohammed Morsi’s hands are tied. His priority is to fix Egypt’s economy, for which he needs American help. He does not want war with Israel.
But he sent his prime minister to Gaza City, where he was photographed kissing the body of a child said to be killed in an Israeli strike. Morsi mediated between Hamas, Israel and America. The man from the Muslim Brotherhood, spiritual mentor of Hamas, emerged a player.
So has Turkey, the second big power in the region and the only Muslim member of NATO. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, a thrice elected leader, stood in solidarity in Cairo with Morsi and the Gazans.
The elected government of Tunisia sent its representative. The emir of Qatar, lacking democratic legitimacy, tried to win plaudits by pledging $400 million on a trip to Gaza days before the hostilities began. In Jordan, the only other Arab nation besides Egypt with a peace treaty with Israel, King Abdullah is facing a popular revolt, mostly over high prices but also over general unease with the undemocratic order.
“The Arab Spring has changed the calculus,” says Reilly. “What we are seeing is the mainstreaming of Hamas. Whatever new Palestinian entity emerges, it’s going to have a very strong Hamas representation in it.” Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority and President Abbas are “the biggest losers. They are marginalized.” As for the two-state solution, “it seems to be receding further and further away.”
Netanyahu’s Likud has joined Yisrael Beiteinu, led by the anti-Arab Avigdor Lieberman, for the January election.
“This indicates that there isn’t a serious commitment on the part of the dominant political parties now to anything that the rest of the world would recognize as a two-state outcome. It’ll be Israel in military control of the entire country and pockets here and there of Palestinian administration that are demilitarized.”
If so, that’s a recipe for maintaining the status quo that has proven to be self-defeating for Israel, time and time again.
Will Obama — having won re-election and inserted the U.S. so unexpectedly and so forcefully in recent days, in concert with the international community, to work with Egypt and Israel — let that go unchallenged?

Hopkins trashes Oscar nomination process of "ass-kissing"

Extreme sports, extreme sycophancy, extreme bullying....extreme....anything!
We love the drama of extremes!
We hate the boredom of the reasonable, the thoughtful, the mature and the compromise...they all lack sex appeal!
There is a serious case to be made for the public discourse having devolved into bugles and drums...both very loud, both deafening and both empty of musical content.
If you want a quote to make it to the latest editions, make it venomous, make it poisonous!
Today we learn that 110,000-plus Texans have signed a petition to secede from the Union! It could be much ado about nothing, another bleet from another bugle, from another corner of the country poised between heroism and racism.
Following the presidential defeat of Romney and the Republicans, Governor Haley Barber tells his Republican governor colleagues, "The Republican party need a proctology exam....that means I think we have to look everywhere!"
Surprise! It made the twitter universe, the blogosphere, the facebook hitparade!
Anthony Hopkins, however, is a serious actor, with a fully operating intellect, and he knows that his contempt for the "sycophancy" that attends, even sustains the Oscar nominations, is as garish and without ethical or moral substance as the political operation of the United States which has been virtually bought by the lobbyists....except that, on November 6, it was the President, sustained mostly by contributions averaging $58 per person (hardly a sum that would bend presidential power in its favour!) who, like David slew the Goliath Romney/Ryan.
And, with any luck, Hopkins' view will also unravel the Oscar nomination process of "kissing the asses" of whoknowswho?
Are we complicit in raising one or more generations of "extremists" in terms of their narcissism, their fragility, their malingering, and their insatiable appetite for extremes in most of their developing "tastes" in clothes, food, sports, language, and expectations....
What a pity when they find that life is lived in the middle of the road, in the pursuit of the reasonable, in the path of forerunners, teasingly stepped just over the line of conformity...only for them the conformity line must envelop the extremes of the "act" and not the substance....
Let's hope Hopkins' words, thoughts and values penetrate this pseudo-drama!


By Lauren O'Neill, CBC Community Blog, November 20, 2012
With the Oscar race now underway, Hollywood types are working hard to secure their own Academy Award nominations, invitations, and maybe even a statue come February.

But not Sir Anthony Hopkins.
"People go out of their way to flatter the nominating body and I think it's kind of disgusting," said the legendary actor in a recent interview with Christopher Rosen for the Huffington Post.
Hopkins won an Academy Award for Best Actor for Silence of the Lambs in 1991, and this year critics are predicting he'll be nominated in the same category for playing Sir Alfred Hitchcock in Sacha Gervasi's Hitchcock, set to be released this month.
When asked for his thoughts on the film's Oscar buzz, Hopkins told Rosen he wasn't aware of any and went on to decry the process of Oscar campaigning - the organized efforts of studios, publicists, and stars themselves to influence Academy members each year.
"You know, kissing the backside of the authorities that can make or break it; I can't stand all that. I find it nauseating to watch and I think it's disgusting to behold. People groveling around and kissing the backsides of famous producers and all that. It makes me want to throw up, it really does. It's sick-making. I've seen it so many times. I saw it fairly recently, last year. Some great producer-mogul and everyone kisses this guy's backside. I think, 'What are they doing? Don't they have any self respect?' I wanted to say, "F*** off."
And Hopkins isn't alone.
Earlier this year, Joaquin Phoenix expressed similar feelings in a Q&A with Interview Magazine. The actor is widely considered to be another contender in the Best Actor category for his role in The Master.
"I don't want to be a part of it. I don't believe in it. It's a carrot, but it's the worst-tasting carrot I've ever tasted in my whole life. I don't want this carrot. It's totally subjective. Pitting people against each other ... It's the stupidest thing in the whole world," he said.
There has been much debate in recent years over the relevancy of award shows like the Academy Awards.

Israeli scholar exposes hypocrisy of Amnesty, Oxfam, Human Rights Watch and UN

Steinberg: Human rights hypocrisy in Gaza
By Gerald M. Steinberg, National Post, November 20, 2012
Gerald Steinberg is professor of political science at Bar Ilan University and president of NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based think tank.

Human rights and international law, or at least the accompanying rhetoric, are an integral part of 21st-century warfare. In Iraq, Afghanistan and whenever Israel acts to defend its citizens, a cacophony of United Nations ideologues and their allies in groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch automatically condemn the use of force as a “war crime.” In contrast, their silence is deafening in the face of mass attacks conducted by terrorists from “the Global South,” and in which the victims are from democracies.

This moral hypocrisy is on display in the “human rights discourse” during the latest round of warfare between Israel and the Hamas terror group that controls Gaza (a member in good standing of the Global South). In the first hours following the long-delayed Israeli response to rocket attacks that terrorized millions of civilians, the flood of righteous condemnations began. Without any evidence, Israel was immediately accused of “war crimes” and “human rights violations,” and these claims are often copied in the media without thought or verification, fueling the campaigns that demonize Israel.
Amnesty International — which has a history of intense anti-Israeli ideological bias hidden behind a thin façade of human rights — immediately asserted that “Israel’s assassination of Ahmad al-Jabari, the head of Hamas’ military wing has placed civilians in Gaza and southern Israel at grave risk.” The thousands of rocket attacks targeting Israeli civilians, for which Jabari was responsible, including dozens in recent days, were ignored because they did not fit the anti-Israel straightjacket worn by many Amnesty officials. Krystian Benedict, Amnesty U.K.’s “campaigns manager,” has flooded his Twitter account with snide attacks on Israel.

Amnesty’s statement on the Jabari killing also repeated the bogus legal claims used in the previous political wars against Israel, including Lebanon (2006) and Gaza (December 2008/January 2009) and then reiterated in the discredited Goldstone report and other UN frameworks. In the latest version, they claimed to have “gathered evidence” of “indiscriminate attacks … in densely-populated residential areas that will inevitably harm civilians.”
In reality, Amnesty has no ability to “gather evidence” in a war zone — instead, they simply repeat the “eyewitness testimony” from the spokespeople of the given terror groups — whether Taliban in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon or Hamas in Gaza.
And in their warped logic, it is not Hamas — which places and launches deadly rockets from homes and schools — that is guilty of war crimes, but rather the Israeli forces defending their citizens.
Similarly, an Oxfam International statement implied that Israel was not abiding by “obligations under international law.” Oxfam, which ostensibly is a humanitarian aid organization, has no credentials to make legal judgments. To make matters worse, they repeat the immoral equivalence between deliberate Palestinian terrorist attacks launched from civilian areas and directly targeting civilians with necessary Israeli self-defence. Oxfam called on Israel to halt military operations in Gaza, while offering no alternatives to protect Israel’s population.
Indeed, Amnesty, Oxfam and other NGOs have no independent means of analyzing any military activity and determining the facts or legality. In April 2002, it was an Amnesty “expert” — Derek Pounder — who appeared on the BBC and “confirmed” the “Jenin massacre” lie. This NGO human rights expert, like many others, including Goldstone, simply repeated Palestinian claims — that is the entirety of their methodology.
The strategy of using human rights claims to attack Israel was adopted in September 2001, during the infamous NGO Forum of the UN Durban conference, in which 1,500 delegations and 5,000 officials, including officials from Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, participated. (Canadian officials under the Liberal government played a central role in promoting and funding this travesty, in which “anti-racism” was used as a grounds for racist attacks.) This forum adopted a final declaration, written during a preparatory conference held in Teheran, which used the rhetoric of “apartheid,” “genocide” and “war crimes” to promote the “complete isolation” of Israel. The Durban strategy was implemented in Jenin, Lebanon (in 2006) and Gaza on many occasions, and again in the current round.
As these and other examples demonstrate, the human rights network, including once honourable groups such as Amnesty International, Oxfam and Human Rights Watch, has lost its moral compass. These organizations, in close co-operation with the thoroughly corrupted United Nations Human Rights Council, have exploited universal ethical principles and the real suffering of black South Africans under apartheid to wage political war against Israeli democracy. By abusing allegations of “war crimes” in these ideological campaigns, they are undermining the legal structures established to bring genocidal dictators to justice.
The moral foundations of universal human rights are incompatible with these anti-democratic double standards and hypocrisy.
The phrase "right to defend herself" seems incompatible with the phrase "war crimes"...Either one has the force of consensus and both legal and political opinion or the other merits that status. If the first phrase, "right to defend" is even close to the truth of the situation, then the "war crimes" denunciation cannot apply. Playing with the words will not make their opposite true, although there are many political leaders, and some literary giants like Orwell, who remind us of our culpability in permitting, even conspiring in such "newspeak".
After ten years of rockets being fired on its territory, much of the assault organized and executed by the military leader of Hamas, killed in what appears to have been a dramatic surgical strike by an Israeli missile, Israel, admittedly in the midst of an election campaign of the Prime Minister as part of his strategy to win that election as the "security prime minister," finally retaliated against the terrorist, Iran-supported Hamas, the elected government of Gaza. Is that missile, and the hundreds that followed more worthy of denunciation as a "war crime" than those frequent rocket attacks on Israel over the last decade?
If there is truth in the charge that Hamas both fires on innocent civilians in Israel, and fires rockets from homes of terrorists in Gaza, thereby endangering the residents of those homes as targets, and then cries "war crimes" against Israel, there has to be a level of discernment both in the reporting of those events and in the negotiations that bring these hostilities to a substantive end, that differentiates the propaganda from the reality.
If the language of human rights and international law is now also the language of conflict in the twenty-first century, then, we can no longer afford to have "truth" become the first casuality in any conflict, as has been the proverbial expectation in the past.
The United Nations would serve both its mandate and the people of the planet by establishing a review panel of linguistic and legal scholars, who can observe all conflicts, including their origins, histories, context, and specific actions, call the people on such panel "truth-seekers," who could and would publish their findings simultaneously with the conflict, and not a decade later when no one is listening, reading or even remembering the specific conflict. Those reports could and would provide a spine of truth from which political and legal debate, discussion and reflection, as well as preventive steps with geopolitical appplications for debate in graduate school classrooms, in editorial board rooms, and in international tribunal courtrooms, where some progress toward both an awareness and an acceptance of the facts of any situation could conceivably result.
It was the late New York Senator, Patrick Moynihan, whose quote reminds us of his legendary insight: "You are entitled to your own opinions, but you are not entitled to your own facts!"
Unless and until we establish a body of "facts" on which to base reasoned, mature and reflective points of opinion, we are likely to continue down a path to a kind of "Alice in Wonderland" where everything and everyone is upside down, leaving us all victim of our own self-obfuscations.
It will be very hard, nigh on to impossible, to arrive at peace treaties or negotiated settlements of any conflict in those (these?) circumstances.

Canada is not, never was, and never will be a "corporation"

The document makes scant mention of Canada's traditional roles as peacemakers in war zones like Afghanistan, foreign aid providers in disasters such as Haiti, and everywhere represented by a highly respected diplomatic corps.
It also drops any pretense of using trade deals to pressure countries such as China on human rights and other matters of democratic principle.
On the contrary: "To succeed we will need to pursue political relationships in tandem with economic interests even where political interests or values may not align."
Instead, the draft doctrine is mainly about money, recasting Canada's international role from aiding the world's needy to reaping its riches.
(From "Secret document details new Canadian foreign policy" by Greg Weston, CBC News website, November 19, 2012, excerpted below)
There are simplifications, and then there are Harper simplifications. If you cannot or will not attempt to comprehend and face the complex details, including the many nuances, of foreign policy, then turn the government into just another "corporation" buying and selling goods and services, as if your voters were nothing more than investors/workers/serfs to your board of directors of the corporation.
With foreign policy now an instrument for the sales department, along with immigration, and the arctic, this government will stand for little more than a balance sheet of balance of payments, with little or no thought for human rights, for peace keeping, for foreign aid and third world education. And while each of these important files needs money to spend, the "ROI" is always less than a corporate board of directors would demand, given both the long-term measurement of such indices and the much more abstract and ill-defined "benefits".
Everyone could see the writing on the wall about this government's approach to the permanent campaign, the permanent "sell themselves" with their uber-budget for self promotion. Witness the "Action Plan" ads still running years after the program was announced and presumably shelved, in order to keep the benefits of the government firmly in the voters' minds.
A valueless government, committed to maximizing profits for Canadians will neither monitor nor shape nor nudge nor influence values of individuals, groups, workers, women and children, in countries where those people are being treated most contemptuously. It will also deepen the divide between the haves and the have-nots already widening to the breaking point globally, and nationally. It will also redefine the long-term definition of being Canadian, leaving the artistic, diplomatic, historic and cultural aspects of our national life and identity off the table, as if government has no business in those spheres. It will also move to reduce first, and then potentially eliminate the safety net in order to show that this government "knows the interests of Canadians and protects them" just as they are doing with the "tough on crime" policy, spending millions to build new prisons, increasing sentences and omitting and overlooking any attempt at rehabilitation.
Encouraging only those immigrants who present with documentation for professional and technical skills, and pursuing the arctic policy in a manner dedicated to the corporation's profit and loss statement, just as in foreign policy, will turn the international reputation of Canada into a laughing stock, an embarrassment just when the world faces potential clashes of interests between various religious groups and attempts to replace what has been known as democracy and international law with sharia law and Islamic states.
We should be educating scholars in foreign affairs, international relations, international law, negotiating skills, mediation skills and community building skills....and not implementing policies that, at their core, reduce the world's complexities to the pursuit of profit, and the avoidance of loss, in purely economic terms.
Secret document details new Canadian foreign policy

By Greg Weston, CBC News website, November 19, 2012
A confidential government document obtained by CBC News warns the Harper government has been slow to open new markets in Asia, leaving Canada firmly tied to the troubled U.S. economy for a long time to come.
The document prepared by Foreign Affairs and dated Sept. 6 is a draft of a highly classified new "Canadian foreign policy plan" the Conservative government has been preparing for more than a year.
The draft briefing paper for the federal cabinet states: "We need to be frank with ourselves — our influence and credibility with some of these new and emerging powers is not as strong as it needs to be and could be.
"Canada's record over past decades has been to arrive late in some key emerging markets. We cannot do so in the future."
The Harper government itself took the slow road to China.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper didn’t visit Beijing for almost four years after first being elected in 2006.
Now the Harper government wants to focus Canada's international efforts primarily on one goal: forging new trade deals and business opportunities in the rapidly expanding markets of Asia and South America.
The draft plan for a new foreign policy states: "The situation is stark: Canada's trade and investment relations with new economies, leading with Asia, must deepen, and as a country we must become more relevant to our new partners."
The document makes scant mention of Canada's traditional roles as peacemakers in war zones like Afghanistan, foreign aid providers in disasters such as Haiti, and everywhere represented by a highly respected diplomatic corps.

It also drops any pretense of using trade deals to pressure countries such as China on human rights and other matters of democratic principle.
On the contrary: "To succeed we will need to pursue political relationships in tandem with economic interests even where political interests or values may not align."
Instead, the draft doctrine is mainly about money, recasting Canada's international role from aiding the world's needy to reaping its riches.
That's in stark contrast to Harper's views of China when he first came to office.
"I think Canadians want us to promote our trade relations worldwide and we do that," the prime minister said in November, 2006. "But I don't think Canadians want us to sell out important Canadian values, our belief in democracy, freedom, human rights. They don't want to sell that out to the almighty dollar."
Six years later, almost every aspect of the Harper government's international plan casts foreign policy as a tool to give Canada either direct economic benefit or access to China and other emerging markets.

Women no longer 'moral paragons' as they pursue affairs

“The incidents of females being accused of affairs and being caught having affairs is increasing, but it’s nothing like the reality of what’s actually going on out there,” said David Holmes, a senior psychologist at Manchester Metropolitan University in England. “If all the husbands in the world knew what their wives had just wiped out of their text history, they’d be terrified. I honestly believe that.” (From "The new adultery: Why stepping out is no longer just a man’s game" by Kathryn Blaze Carlson, National Post, November 16, 2012, below)
Since the christian church has for centuries been the "moral guide" on matters of sexuality, presumably a status it assumed for multiple motivations, not the least of them political and  fiscal, and since the church's arguments are decalogue-based, at least in its collective mind, it is only fitting that we take a brief journey over the church's difficulties in both monitoring and protecting the sacred act of sexual relationships.
There are a large number of accompanying questions to these new facts,
First, just how long is the church going to try to maintain unsustainable control of the North American male and female expression of sexuality? It used to be, not so long ago, that churches were surprised, if not shocked, that most of the couples applying for marriage ceremonies were living together. And the churches bit their lips and conducted the ceremonies. And then there was the question of marriage of gay couples, both male and female, that caused nothing short of a tidal wave of dogmatic turbulence among the faithful, and likely will continue for some time especially in what are known as 'bible-belt' circles.
Now, everyone knows that the divorce rate is hovering around 50% in North America, but not so very long ago, anyone contemplating entering the church as a potential clergy was literally despised if divorced. "How could one even contemplate entering the christian clergy, as a divorcee?" ran the gossip-interrogation of the jealous and small minded hypocrites.
And throughout all of these developments, the church treated women as the weaker gender, the victim of any relationship with a male, whether that male was married or divorced. And the church did so, based on some phantom notion of feminist "equality" that required protection from a "abusive male population"...both within the clergy and outside those ranks.
That, in itself, is a contradiction both in terms and in practice.

If women wish to be treated as equals, with  men, then both genders in a heterosexual relationship must share equal responsibility for any relationship that is characterized as consensual. And the church's failure to recognize that truth is one of the more glaring of the society's failures to adapt to the reality of gender equality. And any attempt, and there have been too many, to characterize consensual relationships as "power-driven" by the male participant, at the expense of the female, especially when the investigations of such relationships fail to include the normal "due process" of a fair and fill investigation, fail not only the religious institution but also the many people in the circle of those relationships.
And for any "maligned partner" whose marriage has not worked for decades, to then submit him or herself as another victim of the unwanted relationship, and for church officials to accept such a pitiable plea of victimhood as legitimate, is vaccuous, spineless and morally nefarious.
Men and women are complicated; the relationships into which they enter, especially at the beginning, are fraught with unknowns: for example the unknown that one partner may be a secret alcoholic, or that one partner may be escaping from a relationship with an active alcoholic, or that one partner may be a gay still in the closet, or that one partner may be involved in more than one relationship simultaneously, or,  or, or...and the list of indecipherables is endless.
And then, when the full disclosure of the previously hidden realities emerges, there is likely to be an inevitable change or even death of the relationship and that death or change occurs whether the marriage has been "sanctified" by the church wedding or not.
Divorce, like abortion, is neither capable of being legislated, nor of being morally condemned. And the christian church must integrate both gender equality and the reality that the church institution, no matter how strict the rules nor how severe the punishments, will never achieve even the slightest modicum of "control" over human sexuality.
The fact that two "vixens" both demonstrating ravenous appetites for power, attention and narcissism have pursued two high-powered and high-ranking generals is nothing new. And the social and cultural reactions, finally, are breaking against the vixen women.
But they are not the first "vixen" women to pursue men who were considered charismatic, intelligent, articulate and compassionate, for their own personal ambitions, whether legitimate or more of their attempt to mask the truth of whatever was possessing their current circumstances. And they will not be the last.
When will the society finally agree that adult women, inside or outside a marriage contract are equally, and potentially more, likely to enter into relationships with men who may or may not be married themselves, and no pontificating by any religious "authority" will not change that fact? And to see those men, also, as victims, is neither moral nor truthful in the full context of the situation, all of the details of which no one, and that includes all members of the church and the public, has no legitimate right of access.
It is time to admonish the church, the government and the gossip social media that the world "has no business in the bedrooms (nor the dates, nor the private walks through the parks, nor the phone or e-mail messages) of the nation(s).
The new adultery: Why stepping out is no longer just a man’s game

By Kathryn Blaze Carlson, National Post, November 16, 2012
Paula Broadwell, with her toned arms and perfect ponytail, is the scandal’s “other woman.” Jill Kelley, the voluptuous raven-haired Florida socialite with a rainbow of shift-dresses, is invariably cast as the “other other woman” competing for CIA director David Petraeus’ attention and perhaps even gunning romantically for the military’s top commander in Afghanistan, too.

In a love quadrangle so twisty it borders on caricature — one complicated by the fact that both Ms. Broadwell and Ms. Kelley are married — Gen. Petraeus has handily assumed the role of a military man who served his country honourably but failed his wife miserably.
Gen. Petraeus is also something else: He is the “other man.” And there are more and more men in that position than ever before.
Researchers widely agree that the rate of female infidelity is rising — that women are increasingly willing and able to risk their marriage and step out on their husbands.

“The incidents of females being accused of affairs and being caught having affairs is increasing, but it’s nothing like the reality of what’s actually going on out there,” said David Holmes, a senior psychologist at Manchester Metropolitan University in England. “If all the husbands in the world knew what their wives had just wiped out of their text history, they’d be terrified. I honestly believe that.”
The adulteress phenomenon undoubtedly colours the private experiences of husbands, wives, the “other man” and the “other man’s wife,” but the Petraeus narrative also speaks to a wider social shift. And it is an uncomfortable one: Ms. Broadwell’s transgression forces us to examine the roles that love, sex and intimacy play in the hearts and minds of today’s men and women — and, significantly, to question the virtue of monogamy at a time when traditional marriage is on the wane.
“Women in our society have been held up as the moral paragons, so the increase in female infidelity causes us to consider whether infidelity is as immoral as we believe,” said David Ley, a New Mexico psychologist and author of Insatiable Wives: Women Who Stray and the Men Who Love Them, a recently released book that documents female infidelity. “What needs to happen as a result of this scandal and every future scandal, is increased conversations — within marriages and society generally — about our expectations for sexual monogamy. … I think things are very clearly changing.”
As more and more people are touched by adultery — whether as adulterers themselves, as victims or as the “other” — the act will inevitably lose its power to surprise. And when sin loses its power to surprise, it might well lose its stigma and become normalized.
“Adultery, I think, is the new divorce — remember when divorce carried stigma?” said self-described “infidelity analyst” Sarah Symonds, a former serial mistress who once claimed restaurateur Gordon Ramsay among her Little Black Book of married men. “Nobody’s ever shocked anymore. It’s not ‘Wow,’ it’s ‘What does she look like?’”
Since the 1990s, the number of women who reported ever having an affair has risen to 19% from about 12%, compared with a stable 23% among men, according to a recent study by researchers at the Kinsey Institute, Indiana University and the University of Guelph. The study noted, too, that when romantic transgressions other than sex (kissing, for example) were taken into account, women were just as likely as men to stray.

Just as the gender divide in every other corner of society has narrowed — from the workforce, to Hollywood, to religion, to sports and education — so has the adultery gap. And some feminists are claiming victory.
“We’re finally seeing — through the last incontrovertible boundary, at least for women, that of the marriage bond — a society that is more equal than ever before,” Peggy Drexler, a psychologist and gender expert, wrote last month in a Huffington Post column titled The Scarlet Manifesto: The Rise of the Adulterous Woman. “Is this a good thing? It sure is. … She is claiming her right to feel fulfilled in relationships and sex, regardless of what society might expect of her.”
On a superficial level, Ms. Broadwell, as the attractive, younger “other woman,” is precisely what society expects. But she shatters just about every other stereotype. She is not the meek, innocent, far-younger unmarried subordinate intoxicated by a far-more powerful man; she is not intern Monica Lewinsky to charismatic former president Bill Clinton.
Far from it. Ms. Broadwell is a married woman, a published author and a respected soldier who was in August promoted to lieutenant colonel. She is very much a modern adulteress.
Once upon time, women were resigned to housewifedom. Other than the milkman or the pool boy, housewives had no opportunity to meet and mate with the “other man.” It was their husbands who worked late, travelled for business and fell into bed with their secretaries. As of three years ago, though, more Canadian women were in the workforce than men.
“They’re not stuck at home with the kids — they’re actually out, with the men, ringing home and saying they’re going to be late, just like the men could and would,” Mr. Holmes said.
With a job comes financial independence, and research shows that the more money people make, the more likely they are to cheat. In the Kinsey Institute study, 16% of impoverished or lower-income people said they had been unfaithful, compared with 24% among higher earners. As women’s economic independence rises, so does her propensity to take risks and seek out “the other man.”
“Years ago, women weren’t in the workforce and felt more tethered to their marriage than they do today,” said psychotherapist Gary Neuman, author of The New York Times best-seller The Truth About Cheating. “Women don’t feel trapped anymore. … They’ve caught up on acting based on how they feel, not what they fear.”

Israel's right to exist is non-negotiable...or is it?

“Hamas leaders are competing, but not for seats. They are competing for who dies as a martyr and gets into a coffin.” (From the Reuters piece, "Martyrs and Elections: What is the latest conflict in Gaza all about?" in National Post, November 17, 2012, below)
When one state is in conflict with another state, historically, the conflict has not been about the number of martyrs getting into a coffin, on either side. It has, rather, been about the principles being defended, the territory under fire, the tactics and strategies being deployed and apparently the purpose has been to win, and then to participate/impose/negotiate a peace process and treaty.
However, when a state, as in the situation in the current conflict in Gaza, is in conflict with a random group of terrorists, all of them committed to wiping the "state of Israel from the map" and all of them engaged in becoming martyrs ready to be thrown into a coffin, the conditions of the conflict have changed significantly.
There are no rules between the two combatants, because one of the combatants has given rise to the triumph of religious imperialism, and heavenly reward for those engaging in the battles. Now the fight has taken on a spiritual or religious or Satanic dimension. And just as with religious fundamentalists everywhere, of all faiths, there is simply no possibility of negotiation, compromise, limits to their "cause" or limits to their commitment to that "cause" because it now carries the imprimature of the "GOD" of that cause. In fact, Allah is the reason both for the fight and for the martyrdom.
And with that motivation, no secular body, no state, no court and no political negotiation can penetrate, make a mark or even stop the long-term, personal and faith commitment/addiction/brainwashing...(call it what you will)
The Islamic premise, especially among the radical terrorist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and the multiple manifestations of AlQaeda is to destroy the state of Israel, to remove it from the map of the world, and they will stop at nothing to accomplish that "holy" (in their perverted minds!) goal.
And individuals who have succumbed to that "dogma" will also stop at nothing to achieve martyr designation, in the cause....and so the world has to take immediate, long-term and sustainable political, diplomatic, economic and legal collaborative actions, in order to preserve the right to exist of the state of Israel, if this cancer is to be contained.
And it is containment, not eradication, that is the goal...because eradication is not either feasible or affordable.
Is the world ready to tell radical Islam that the goal of eliminating the state of Israel is not acceptable, in real and real-time language that has the world's states, leaders and international organizations lined up in unequivocal support?
Martyrs and elections: What is the latest conflict in Gaza all about?
By Douglas Hamilton and Nidal al-Mughrabi, Reuters in National Post, November 17, 2012
TEL AVIV/GAZA – Gaza’s Hamas movement wanted a showdown with Israel because its leaders are high on the Arab Spring and competing to become martyrs to the Palestinian cause.

Or, from another perspective, cynical Israeli politicians think a Gaza offensive will be a walkover that will assure re-election in January and at the same time provide a death-blow to Palestinian statehood moves at the United Nations.
Those are two ends of a spectrum of theories among Israelis and Palestinians about what has propelled the two sides towards their second war in four years, escalating a low-level, slap-for-slap conflict to the brink of an Israeli invasion of Gaza.
Without going back 2,000 years to the origins of the dispute, the roots of the latest high-explosive crisis can be traced in a series of “red lines” that have been crossed.

Specifically: firing a Russian Kornet anti-tank missile on Nov. 10 against Israeli soldiers; Israel’s assassination of top Hamas commander Ahmed Al-Jaabari on Nov. 14 after both sides appeared to have agreed to a tacit ceasefire deal, and then Hamas firing long-range rockets at Tel Aviv on Nov. 15.
These were big steps that wrecked a fragile status quo.
Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip seven years ago and has regularly used its airpower to deter Hamas and other Islamist groups from firing their rockets into the Jewish state. The militants do not recognise Israel’s right to exist.
In a bruising 2008-2009 three-week campaign, Israel first bombarded then briefly invaded Gaza, hoping to put a halt to the rockets for once and all. Operation Cast Lead left 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead.
For a while, there was quiet, then the round of retaliations resumed. Missiles were fired, Israel struck back, sometimes targetting empty smuggling tunnels, sometimes targetting rocket crews. Palestinian civilians were also getting killed.

Both sides speak of “the rules of the game.” And now both sides accuse the other of “stepping over the red line.”
Palestinian analysts agree Hamas has the wind in its sails since the Arab Spring swept away pro-Western autocracies and replaced them with Islamists, especially in neighbouring Egypt where the ruling Muslim Brotherhood is their spiritual mentor.
“Of course, Hamas feels empowered by the change in the Arab countries around them and many believe Israel cannot isolate it any more,” said a source close to Hamas who did not wish to be identified.
But while Hamas craves the legitimacy it needs to assume moral leadership of the Palestinian national movement from those it considers Western poodles chasing peace with Israel, it shares Gaza with armed salafist groups intent on violence.
“Hamas has been under continuous blackmail from other factions since it has been more interested in calm in order to preserve its authority in Gaza,” Hani Habib, a political analyst in Gaza told Reuters.
Trying to face both ways, Hamas abandoned efforts to stop these groups firing rockets at Israel and last month joined in, to show it was not getting soft in the chair of office.

In so doing, it tried to change “the rules of the game” but overplayed its hand, triggering a massive Israeli operation for which the military planning was sitting ready in a drawer. It came far faster and much heavier than Hamas expected.
“While they thought revolutions in Arab countries served their aims and would make them stronger, they were not looking for war with Israel, not now, despite the fact they have been preparing themselves for one since the 2009 round ended,” said the source close to Hamas.
For Israel, a security situation that had been contained and politically tolerable — zero or very infrequent rocket attacks on the south by groups other than Hamas — tilted with Hamas’ decision to start shooting again, and with new weapons.
Israel says the aim of Operation Pillar of Defence is not to re-occupy Gaza, or root out Islamists. It is to destroy long-range rockets such as the Fajr 5 from Iran that Hamas has acquired since 2009 and to disable Gaza’s rocket capacity “for a very long time”, said foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor.
Could there be ancillary motives? Alastair Newton at Nomura Global Markets writes in a note to clients that “militants in Gaza have been building up stocks of missiles…and there does appear to have been an up-tick in missile attacks.”
“However,” he adds, “an Israeli general election is now just two months away … Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party has historically benefited from pre-election security concerns, which this latest conflict is likely to exacerbate.”
Although a vast majority of Israelis supports the operation, a high body count could reduce popular backing.
Another vote is also looming — one that the secular government of President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank wants to bring in the United Nations General Assembly by the end of November to give the Palestinians a diplomatic upgrade.

Israel says this drive for UN recognition of a state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem is “diplomatic terrorism”. It has threatened to topple Abbas, who is regularly derided by Hamas for not supporting their armed resistance.
Abbas himself is convinced the Gaza campaign is designed to sink his initiative, but has vowed to plough on. “Everything that is happening is in order to block our endeavours to reach the United Nations,” he said on Friday.
Israeli columnist Uri Dromi says Israel should remember that its Palestinian neighbours in the West Bank “are still committed to a two-state solution, namely, sharing the neighbourhood”.
“If we lose them, then we are left with the others only.”
Hamas has courted Egyptian support assiduously since the election of Islamist President Mohamed Mursi in June. Mursi, however, has so far made clear that while denouncing Israeli “aggression” he will not go beyond diplomatic pressure.
The nuances of Gaza’s militant politics are fine but provide some clues as to how the showdown has escalated.

“Hamas did not claim the Kornet hitting the (Israeli army) jeep. The Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) did,” said the source close to Hamas. “It is true Hamas did not condemn it.”
He did not deny that Hamas wanted to change the rules of the game whereby Israel decides when a round of violence will end.
“But assassinating Jaabari was like giving the go-ahead to all Hamas cells to use the equipment, weapons and training they had prepared for a possible war,” he said.
Hamas official and columnist Mustafa Assawaf said Hamas was “not interested in silence forever, or a big escalation”. A shaky new truce was in place thanks to Egyptian mediation, he noted, when Jaabari ventured out fatally onto Gaza’s streets.
“Israel did not respect deals and understandings and after killing Jaabari tough reactions were inevitable even if it would lead to broader confrontation,” he said.
Hamas used greater force to “establish a new formula that Israel is not the only party that owns power and that the resistance has its own tools that can be painful to Israel.”
Assawaf rejected the suggestion that an internal leadership struggle within the movement motivated the rocket gamble.
“Hamas leaders are competing, but not for seats. They are competing for who dies as a martyr and gets into a coffin.”

Islamic terror the new "words of the prophets" in IED's and suicide bombs

Why am I so slow to see the "writing on the wall"?
Paul Simon's words, in the legendary prophetic song, Sounds of Silence, echo in my ears:
And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said, "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls"
And whispered in the sounds of silence

Neon god flashing the warning: "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls And tenement halls" may have been a prophetic warning in the sixties and seventies, but today, the words are written on the IED's and on the home-made rockets and in suicide bombers' vests, underwear, shoes, and even AK-47's, or even rifles in the hands of child soldiers shooting people as they leave their Sunday church services, for example, in Nigeria.
The words of the prophets, today, are also written on the drones falling from the skies in response to the IED's, the home-made rockets and the suicide bombers.
And as the more isolated reports that make their way out of the scenes of terrorism and into the living rooms of the rest of us, the more silent grow those detonations.
We used to hear, "those people over there are always fighting" when the subject of the endless conflict between Israel and Palestine was discussed, as if the conflict, no matter what anyone did, would never end, and that was "the way of the world".
Today, however, there is a different culture that supports that conflict, and it seems to be growing, encircling the globe. And the Muslim brotherhood president and Prime Minister of Egypt are just two of the many new faces of that conflict.
When the Prime Minister visited Gaza this week, and pronounced support for Hamas in its fight with Israel, in spite of the Egypt-Israel treaty that used to provide some protection for the Israeli's when Egypt was ruled by an admittedly autocratic ruler (Sadat or Mubarak), the words of a state leader supporting a terrorist movement seemed to be a tipping point, rendering the treaty hollow, in spite of any lingering rhetoric that might look as if Egypt still supports the treaty, coming from the mouth of Egyptian president Morsi.
And the Prime Minister's words received thunderous support in the streets of Cairo and other cities, as the people took to the streets also in support of Hamas, an openly terrorist organization, armed and supported by the state of Iran, that has been firing rockets and missiles into Israel for over a year, under the radar of the western media, until Israel finally drew that proverbial line in the sand, and fired back.
Also for years, ever since September 11, 2001, the number of Islamic terrorist hot-spots has continued to escalate around the world. Thousands of innocent people have been killed, in some co-ordinated, collaborative, wired, social-media supported, and religious extremism promoted war of terror. And the western media attempts to keep up with the non-state actors who perpetrate this violence, including the madrassahs where hatred and bigotry are the core curriculum, and where anti-semitism is the sustaining motivation for the school's existence, and terrorist training "boot-camps" in countries too numerous to mention where young men are being brain-washed into an extreme Islamic ideology and sent out to "fight for Allah" as the training tells them, targetting innocent people and institutions for death, destruction, political unrest, and inevitably, political and economic distraction and self-destruction.
There are "religious" imams preaching hatred and Islamic world domination in many large cities in the west, and the law enforcement agencies are desperately attempting to balance laws sustaining free speech and less muscular laws against  hate crimes. And the more time and money that is spent on this kind of criminal activity, the fewer resources that are available for the remaining issues of criminality.
If we were to list the countries in which Islamic terrorism has raised its ugly face, there would be very few country names off the list, from those listed in the United Nations General Assembly.
Some, like the United States, have spent billions in what is now known as Homeland Security personnel, technology, and anti-terrorism activities that rapidly pushed forward a "big-brother" culture of cameras, video-recordings, internet intelligence systems and, if the total expenditures were made public, in a way that grabbed the attention of the public, there would be marching in the streets in protest, especially when teachers, firefighters and public employees are being fired to balance state and local budgets.
Border security has replaced "the longest unarmed border in the world," along the 49th parallel separating Canada from the United States, again at considerable cost to both countries and their citizens, to protect both sides from Islamic terrorism.
And yet, in all democratic countries, the legislatures and those in government are expected to maintain the normal rights and liberties that have historically been embedded in both constitutional law and cultural expectations. Is such a tradition going to remain sustainable, as the number of terror threats and acts grows?
Are we going to see Islamic support for Hamas and Hezbollah grow in large cities around the world?
Are the  western governments, like mosquitoes, going to scratch themselves to death, encountering the insecticide dust of Islamaphobia? Is that one of the unstated, but nevertheless too obvious to be ignored, goals of the radical Islamic agenda?
Is there a time bomb ticking, not only for the existence of the state of Israel, but for all others whose history of human rights and responsibilities would provide too much cover for terrorists and extremists?
There is currently a debate over the wording used by United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice, when she appeared on the Sunday talk shows, shortly after the debacle in Benghazi that resulted in the deaths of four Americans. The word "terrorist act" was replaced by something approximating, "acts of extremists" and the Republican war-hawks are screaming "cover-up" or incompetence, on the part of Rice and/or the White House.
Let's remember that the act traumatized the US government, and that it occurred on the anniversary of September 11, 2001, and that, when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton requested $300 million for embassy security enhancement, it was the Republicans in Congress who turned down the legitimate request, long before the Benghazi terrorist incident and that for over a decade, many countries, led by the US model, have been reeling from the impact of this social, cultural, religious, and venomous scourge of Islamic terrorism, in all of its many nefarious forms, faces, weapons and peristence.
It is long overdue for the Republicans to climb down from their high horse of superiority, false and hubristic though it is, and started to include national policy and practice towards terror as an integral part of the Foreign policy budget and file of the United States, and let go of their claim to have originated the Homeland Security Department under Dubya, and thereby to "own" the file.
And it is also past time when the world bodies, like the United Nations, and the War Crimes court in the Hague, and the Human Rights Commission of the UN upped their comprehension and their working definitions of responsibilities to begin to grapple with the obvious and sabotaging conflict between human rights like free speech and the obvious hate crimes that are embedded in too much free speech.
And in such an escalation, we all have to be diligent in holding our elected representatives accountable for balancing those two competing and even mutually exclusive goals, free speech and hate-crimes, especially in a world when the laws protecting the former lend support and weight to the latter. And the Islamic terrorist imperialism will use whatever advantage and loophole they can find, like the carpenter ants that literally eat wooden structures out from under their human owners.