Forewarned Is Forearmed -- Or Is It?

"[Threats to such facilities mark a] major shift [in] Iranian ambitions to come at harder targets like military sites."

"[The suspected plot against the Royal Air Force Fairford base, on September 27 was] not unique. [There have] been other examples [of similar threats to installations] not just in the U.K. but around the world -- most particularly in Iran's own region." 

"[Iran has been forced to rely on] hiring criminals to do their bidding [in Britain and Europe]." 

"Given what we've seen in practise, [Iran has not demonstrated] anywhere near the level of capability [to launch a sophisticated attack on British military bases or other installations]."

"Since I started in this role in 2020, there has been another generational shift. We have again entered a new era of national security – requiring a new response."  

MI-5 Director-General Ken McCallum 

 

"[We will] keep threatening U.S. and Israeli interests worldwide until we've avenged every child in Gaza, Iran, Lebanon, and the resistance nations." 

"[People should] stay away from Zionist and American interests." 

Iran proxy group Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia — or The Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Righteous (IMCR)

Director General of MI5 Ken McCallum speaks at Thames House, the headquarters of the U.K.'s Security Service in London, Tuesday Oct. 13, 2026. (Jonathan Brady/PA via AP, Pool)

 

In its yearly update to dangers facing the United Kingdom and its allies, MI-5's director-general laid out his agency's most pressing concerns among which was the plot uncovered a month earlier as an example, against a British airbase, as forming a scheme plotted by the Islamic Republic of Iran to mount unattributed attacks by in situ groups infiltrating the U.K. and acting as agents for Iran. The attacks have struck high-security targets such as military sites and intelligence facilities. 

 

"The intensity and scale and shape" of the threat emanating from Iran is "shifting at the moment". The linkage reflects fallout from the U.S.-Israel war on Iran seven months earlier, motivating Iran and its Republican Islamic Guard Corps to focus on threatening and attacking American allies. The annual address on security threats included Mr. McCallum's security assessment that Russia "remains aggressor No. 1" against Britain and its allies which links to European support for Ukraine during Russia's now-five-year 'special military operation'. 

 

In recognition of the prevalence of the threats and the nature of the attacks, MI-5 saw the necessity of forming a dedicated new intelligence group linked to the agency meant to focus on potential threats that may in time become a more dire threat not only to the region, but beyond. Advances in artificial intelligence that take into account the possibility of chemical or biological weapons manufacturing guided by AI, and their potential use as instruments of warfare. 

 

Police patrol the perimeter of RAF Fairford as a U.S. Air Force Rockwell B-1 Lancer bomber lands Sept. 28.  Ben Birchall / Press Association via Getty

 

"[Iran has demonstrated that it is] keen on subcontracting its U.K. violence … using criminal proxies to try to intimidate oppositionists, Iranian media organizations, and Israeli sites."

"Sadly, much of this aggression has been aimed at British Jewish communities, with whom I want to express solidarity." 

The interrupted plot against the Fairford airbase is still under investigation by British counterterrorism police. Its occurrence saw the United States evacuate the dozen B-1 bombers it had stationed at the airbase. Recent weeks saw some seven suspects arrested, including five British citizens who were detained soon after midnight on September 27 and subsequently released on bail. The five were in three vans travelling toward the base perimeter, used by U.S. bombers in their strikes on Iran. A nearby farmer was alerted to their suspicious presence and informed police.

 

This was an apprehended incident marking a departure from more recent years' pattern where Iran has been linked to lower-level proxy attacks recruited online to engage in sabotage, arson or stabbings, many of which targeted Jewish communities. Over 50 arrests have been made in the past year in "Iran-linked operations", stated Mr. McCallum. These activities are known to have taken place as well in Canada where Iranian-linked criminals were hired to disrupt life and target Jewish institutions.   

"Many terrorists would dearly love to have some kind of capability with bio, chem or radiological weaponry."

"[If guardrails meant to safeguard the spread of AI fail to gain complete control, a risk presents that] AI could generate novel pathogens not previously seen."

"[A new MI-5] threat centre [was created this year with an aim to focus on such dangers]."

MI-5 Director-General Ken McCallum  

It seems clear enough that what cannot be predicted and what has become a publicly-aired dilemma over increasingly alarming news being released from among the Artificial Intelligence community that bots are striking out on their own -- deliberately taking steps to shield their activities from the notice of their human trainers to plot among themselves and act in swarms disrupting communications while managing to escape the guardrails meant to confine them -- is becoming an entirely new threat on its own. 

 

According to Mr. McCallum, the technology is "supercharging the cybersecurity contest between attackers and defenders". His concern and that of his agency is that AI could enable terrorist networks or state adversaries in the acquisition of  unconventional and extremely toxic and potent weapons that the world must now contemplate contending with. Much, much simpler to deal with challenges posed by state actors in their supercharged yet hard-to-pin-down efforts at world domination.

 

The world is faced with the trifecta of China's and Russia's ambitions on the world stage to prove themselves contenders for the position of superpowers, and the theist-motivated fundamentalism of Islamist conquest exemplified by the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxy terrorist groups to fundamentally alter the world's religious, cultural, social, judicial, academic and human rights normalcy from the contemporary struggling against the worldwide threat of infiltration and Muslim population density power of institutional alteration of Western democracy.  

"[Russian military and intelligence services] are once again escalating their attempts at hybrid warfare, [while being careful not to trigger NATO’s Article 5 threshold, in which other countries would be expected to defend their allies]."

"We see them scrambling to pay criminals to do their bidding. The whole aim of hybrid tactics is to try to intimidate us."

"[Within the U.K.’s] multifaceted relationship with China [— Beijing is a major trading partner to London — MI5 has been focused on efforts by the Chinese government] to conduct espionage, coercion or democratic interference."

MI-5 Director-General Ken McCallum  

Police officers at Leipzig Airport in Saxony, Germany, search for a drone Aug. 7. Sebastian Willnow / dpa via AP

 

The Ego of Self-Exoneration

"When we combine these steps [of leaking to media] in aggregate there is a very strong case to be made that the public interest was maximized and the public risk was minimized."
"Very little harm has been done."
"We're losing our way as a society. If we don't stand up, if we don't say what we think those rights should be, and if we don't protect them, we will very soon find out that we do not have them."
"[The recent] departure from the traditional models of intelligence gathering [which once involved use of] extraordinary powers only in extraordinary circumstances [speak of the erosion of privacy]."
Edward Snowden, American cyber-espionage whistleblower

Matthew Sherwood for National Post   Edward Snowden's address to a world affairs conference at Upper Canada College, just days after his revelations about a massive Canadian online surveillance program known as Levitation, showed him to be as grandiose of vision as Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder.

"The chances of you dying in a terrorist attack are infinitesimal."
"And yet your government continually hypes the threat."
Glenn Greenwald, journalist

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes   Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who has broken many Snowden stories, and who also addressed the conference via webcam.

The two individuals who have excelled in the sanctimonious denunciation of governments who, facing exterior and interior threats of violent atrocities, undertaking extraordinary vigilance and intelligence gathering in prodigious efforts to forestall Islamist jihadist attacks on their territory and their people, speak from the lofty perch of the liberal left for whom no government nor its security agents are ever considered to be examples of administrations 'by the people, for the people'.

They indulge in their right to practise freedom of speech in free, liberal societies, enjoying the art of condemning the very processes and systems that gain them the freedom to speak as they will, and generally speaking ill of governments they would never have voted for, but the majority of people with whom they share a democratic social contract, obviously have, in belief and trust.

What they have in fact accomplished is to demonstrate quite effectively that actions once deemed treasonable and thought deserving of capital punishment, now are countenanced out of necessity, even though revealing the existence of purloined files and state secrets do harm to the integrity of the protections that free states must engage in; surveillance, investigations, coalitions with like states in exchange of vital data, and the capture of mega-data.

If people living in the free world expect and wish to live their lives unmolested by the malign intentions of religiously- or ideologically-inspired mass violence, they must trust that their government is capable of formulating and acting upon plans with their security agencies to keep them safe from harm. These are not totalitarian governments, those of the United States and Canada.

And while it is human nature that when  people gain high places and are entrusted with safeguarding a country, there are temptations to overstep authority, the penalties for having been found out when such incidents occur, ensure that most people decide that corrupt policies defeat any purpose. When an electorate chooses, through the ballot box, to install political parties and their representatives we do so with some element of trust.

Investigative journalists often reveal that trust to be in small or in large part, misplaced, and then the electorate resorts once again to the ballot box. North Americans live ordered lives enhanced by laws that protect our human rights of equality, respect and freedoms. These are not fragile, but guaranteed rights in our societies.

And these are rights that must be protected against the malign intentions of terrorist groups determined to replace what we value with their idea of how societies should function; in thrall to a religion that dominates every aspect of public and private life. And Islamist jihadists are prepared to inflict pain and hardship, mass slaughter and slavery in their campaign to achieve a sharia-led caliphate.

They are dedicated to their mission of conquest through jihad.

In Canada, as in the United States and throughout Europe, cells of Islamists with violent intentions sometimes succeed in committing their crimes, and more often, thanks to the dedicated work of law enforcement and surveillance, are apprehended while their crimes are still in the planning stages. There is little comfort in Mr. Greenwald's assurances of infinitesimal chances of dying at the hands of jihadists.

That many do, is proof enough that those incidents occur and we would prefer they not.

Edward Snowden is viewed as heroic by people who commit to the leftist ideal and ideas that government that is not far-left is one that stifles freedoms in the pseudo-pursuit of state security. How heroic is he, having fled initially to an Asian regime whose human rights record is abysmal, and from there to eastern Europe where Russia welcomed him with open arms for his propaganda value?

While he accuses his own country of abusing the trust of its citizens in planning to scoop and snoop their private business, he escapes any method of lawful punishment for having stolen state secrets and revealing them to the world, in the process doing harm to his country's surveillance and law enforcement establishment, along with revealing details of the administration's espionage services, while seeking protection from a country whose government is oppressive, dictatorial and internationally acknowledged as dangerously threatening to its neighbours.

Glenn Greenwald's description of the Canadian political climate of "fear-mongering" as a justification of cyber security overreaches exemplified as far as he is concerned in a new federal bill to expand domestic security responses, is permitted him because such accusations can be made in a free and democratic country without fear of state-sponsored recrimination that could be the death of some journalists, as happens in Russia.

The Toronto private school that arranged for Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald to address a world affairs conference at Upper Canada College, a prestige academy for elite families' offspring, may have felt that they are preparing their graduates for life in the real world, a real world where a Conservative-led government is held in contempt and its values held to be degraded, but this is a spurious coup for the student body.

Matthew Sherwood for National Post

Unknown Entities

"This is a threat to our security. It is a question for every government we have had over the past decade: What are you going to do about it?"
Ghada Shahbander, human rights advocate, Cairo

"Unknown entities [were plotting] to commit such heinous acts in a systematic way to ruin Egyptians' happiness and taint the image of its democratic celebration."
"Such shameful and immoral behaviour cannot come from the honourable Egyptians."
Egyptian National Council of Women

"Of course, you saw the officers interfering and taking the woman away from the scene."
"The celebrations included large crowds that reached thousands and millions in some cases and harassment happens in these crowds."
"[But] the police confront it in a vigorous way."
Hany Abdel Latif, spokesman, Egyptian Interior Ministry

Crowd at Cairo's Tahrir Square for Sissi's inauguration, June 8, 2014. Photo by AP

Egyptians assert this is not indicative of the manner in which they perceive the place of women in their society. Not at all. On the other hand, Egypt, though an Arab country, and the most populous at that, is also part of Africa. Rape of women and girls is common throughout Africa. In a country as supposedly civilly advanced as South Africa even its president, newly re-elected, has raped a woman who trusted him, and throughout the country there is a shared common belief that raping a virgin, whatever her age, represents an assured remedy for HIV/AIDS.

In much of Africa rape is a game that both the military and rebel insurgents play at, in Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as the Central African Republic, in Sudan and in Somalia, to name but a few of the more obvious of human rights offender-regimes, where tribal and religious-sectarian wars victimize the most helpless; women and children.

Egypt has undergone a transition, actually a double-transition from a military-ruled state to a brief intermission as an Islamist-ruled state and back again to a military state, though the chief military officer has resigned from the military to 'run' as a candidate for presidency in a democratic vote whose outcome was unofficially crowned well before the votes were cast and counted. Which is not to say that the successful candidate would not be more humane, administratively capable, and able to do justice to his role of ruler in Egypt.

President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi stated his intention to "restore the sense of shame" he claimed once prevented sexual harassment among Egyptian males, as predators of women. The penal code was amended to more carefully define sexual harassment, spelling out its punishment. But the issue is still given short shrift. With more than ample incidents of sexual assaults leading up to the president's inauguration. Even the National Council of Women, backing the new president, celebrating the removal of his Islamist predecessor Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, insist Egyptian men do not resort to such disgusting tactics.

Even when, it seems, they do -- as a video made public showing a police officer, a lone, single man in uniform, gun in hand, struggling to make his way through a crowd of men to rescue a girl from mass rape. Miraculously, he managed to reach the young woman of 17 before the frenzied men surrounding her were able to demonstrate their Egyptian credentials as gentlemen, as they had done first to her mother. The video showed the girl, only a black shirt left, backside bruised purple and black, the last vestige of clothing torn away, leaving her completely stripped. Which was when the courageous lone policeman was able to carry her to a waiting vehicle.

This, in the fabled Tahrir Square. Where hundreds of such incidents have taken place, including sexual assaults on foreign female journalists. The mother of the rescued young girl, who was herself brutally sexually assaulted before the mob turned on her daughter, is now in hospital after her fearsome Monday ordeal. President al-Sissi visited her, to do her honour, visibly moved at the dishonour done her, the abhorrent physical and psychological trauma.

An Egyptian independent group calling itself I Saw Harassment stated that on Sunday night at least four attack victims required hospitalization. Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment, another group, stated it was investigating victims of "tens of assaults" that took place on Sunday night alone. Filming the inaugural celebrations, the official state television network found their work cut out for them, avoiding the prevalent sexual violence in the crowds gathered in the square.

The screams of women interrupted broadcast of a nationalistic poet attempting to perform a recitation on Sunday night onstage, with a man next to him urging, "Play a song to distract them!" As the screams grew in volume, another man seizing the microphone shouted: "Young men please move away from the girls! Men, young men, get back!"

Monday's Interior Ministry statement indicated that police had arrested seven men and boys ranging in age from 15 to 49, for 'harassment'.

Amurrikn Maverick

"Based on information about conditions on the ground and in consultation with law enforcement, we have made a decision to conclude the cattle gather because of our serious concerns about the safety of employees and members of the public."
"This is a matter of fairness and equity, and we remain disappointed that Cliven Bundy continues to not comply with the same laws that 16,000 public-lands ranchers do every year. After 20 years and multiple court orders to remove the trespass cattle, Mr. Bundy owes the American taxpayers in excess of $1-million. The BLM [Bureau of Land Management] will continue to work to resolve the matter administratively and judicially."
Neil Kornze, agency chief, federal Bureau of Land Management, United States of America

Something about the name Bundy that inspires sociopathy?

Supporters of Cliven Bundy rally against the Bureau of Land Management in Nevada. Photograph: Daniel Hernandez

"The safety of all individuals involved in this matter has been my highest priority. Given the circumstances, today's outcome is the best we could have hoped for."
Republican Nevada governor Brian Sandoval

Or is it just that good old Umarikan spirit of self-sufficiency and animus toward government interference?

Chris Shelton of Las Vegas with his one-week-old son as his mother Shelley Shelton holds his rifle during Bundy family 'Patriot Party'. Photo: Steve Marcus /Reuters

"Escalating tensions", between government authority and a southern Nevada rancher who refuses to recognize the legitimacy of a contract between cattle owners and the Bureau of Land Management in its management of public lands, permitting ranchers to graze their cattle and to be taxed for the privilege resulted in a tense showdown between the local supporters of maverick Cliven Bundy and said authorities the past Saturday.

Some of those supporting the 'rights' of Cliven Bundy to flout the law to suit his individual purpose represented right-wing militia types armed with handguns and rifles outside Mesquite in southern Nevada. They were furious in their insistence that the 400 head of cattle rounded up by federal BLM authorities to emphasize their illegal grazing on public land, be returned to their owner.

Mr. Bundy, the rancher with attitude, doesn't approve of nor give credence to federal authority on public land that he claims belongs to his state of Nevada, not the federal government. It's taken him quite a few years to fully develop his theory, and at 67 years of age he believes he speaks with the authority vested in him as a rancher whose family operated his parcel of land near the town of Bunkerville since the 1870s.

At that time slavery was no longer legal in the United States. And Mr. Bundy regrets the passing of the wretchedness of the slave trade in his country. Had the American Civil War not disrupted the natural social order of men of substance who happen to be white, using the labour of people who were enslaved who happened to be black, his glorious country would not now be languishing under the absurd direction of a black man.

Federal agencies manage or control over 80% of the land in Nevada; a point of irritable contention between the feds and the state since the 1980s, when Nevada rangeland ranchers claimed the land was theirs by right of possession. Mr. Bundy's grazing rights were lifted after he refused to continue paying grazing fees, then ignored federal court orders to remove his cattle from public lands administered by the BLM.

He vowed he would not hesitate to "do whatever it takes" in protection of his property, and during the weekend accusations and demands, resistance and threats between the Bundy family and their supporters and federal agents brought national attention to the operation to confiscate his cattle. Since the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and assembly, the BLM authority was accused of creating "an atmosphere of intimidation", according to Governor Sandoval.

In 1998 a federal judge in Las Vegas had ordered the rancher to remove his trespassing cattle. The Land Management Bureau was in the process of implementing two federal court orders of the year before to remove the cattle when repeated efforts to resolve the issue outside court had failed. Mr. Bundy had not paid grazing fees in the last two decades.

Supporters of Rancher Bundy

 
Entitled civil libertarianism, or just the wild, wild west re-visited? Revolting, is it not?

The Issue: Self-Discovery?

"What had Frank called college? An advanced degree in compromise. I thought back to the last time I had seen the old poet, a few days before I left Hawaii. We had made small talk for a while; he complained about his feet, the corns and bone spurs that he insisted were a direct result of trying to force African feet into European shoes. Finally he had asked me what it was that I expected to get out of college. I told him I didn't know. He shook his big, hoary head.

'Well' he said, 'that's the problem, isn't it? You don't know. You're just like the rest of these young cats out here. All you know is that college is the next thing you're supposed to do. And the people who are old enough to know better, who fought all those years for your right to go to college -- they're just so happy to see you in there that they won't tell you the truth. The real price of admission.'

'And what's that?'

'Leaving your race at the door', he said. 'Leaving your people behind.' He studied me over the top of his reading glasses. 'Understand something, boy. You're not going to college to get educated You're going there to get trained. They'll train you to want what you don't need. They'll train you to manipulate words so they don't mean anything anymore. They'll train you to forget what it is that you already know. They'll train you so good, you'll start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that shit. They'll give you a corner office and invite you to fancy dinners, and tell you you're a credit to your race. Until you want to actually start running things, and then they'll yank on your chain and let you know that you may be a well-trained, well-paid nigger, but you're a nigger just the same.'

'So what is it you're telling me -- that I shouldn't be going to college?'

Frank's shoulders slumped, and he fell back in his chair with a sigh. 'No. I didn't say that. You've got to go. I'm just telling you to keep your eyes open. Stay awake.'

This is a biographical memoir, complete with dialogue. A casting of the mind back to what can be recalled and creating a vivid dialogue that would have taken place through his recollection, but synthesized and invariably shaped by the thought and memory of the individual who experienced it, dredging it up from where it had been filed deep within the consciousness of someone seeking validation for what he feels from how he has experienced life.

The young man who had completed secondary education and was headed for university took the advice he was given seriously enough. He was under no illusions. He had experienced what all other young blacks did, growing up in the United States. The sharp spurs of racist bigotry digging into his flanks. The society in which he lived still harboured, after long soul-searching and a gradual turn-away from its mutual soul-searing culture of racial superiority to try to transform itself into an inclusive, mutually-accepting culture.

Easy enough for whites to do, thought the young man. They hadn't suffered. Different by far for blacks to surrender themselves to the hopeful trust that everything would be different. They would be seen as equals, as well endowed with all of nature's fine character attributes and potentials to enable them to meet civil society's expectations as much as anyone else. Their potential could be unleashed without fear of being hammered back down into its underdog's place by racist hold-outs. But it just simply didn't seem to materialize. And young blacks remain haunted by the past, seeing its ghosts in their present.

"I blew a few smoke rings, remembering those years. Pot had helped and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though -- Micky, my potential initiator, had been just a little too eager for me to go through with that. Said he could do it blindfolded, but he was shaking like a faulty engine when he said it. Maybe he was just cold; we were standing in a meat freezer in the back of the deli where he worked, and it couldn't have been more than twenty degrees in there. But he didn't look like he was shaking from the cold Looked more like he was sweating, his face shiny and tight. He had pulled out the needle and the tubing, and I'd looked at him standing there, surrounded by big slabs of salami and roast beef, and right then an image popped into my head of an air bubble, shiny and round like a pearl, rolling quietly through a vein and stopping my heart....

Junkie. Pothead. That's where I'd been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man. Except the highs hadn't been about that, me trying to prove what a down brother I was. Not by then, anyway. I got high for just the opposite effect, something that could push questions of who I was out of my mind, something that could flatten out the landscape of my heart, blur the edges of my memory. I had discovered that it didn't make any difference whether you smoked reefer in the white classmate's sparkling new van, or in the dorm room of some brother you'd met down at the gym, or on the beach with a couple of Hawaiian kids who had dropped out of school and now spent most of their time looking for an excuse to brawl. Nobody asked you whether your father was a fat-cat executive who cheated on his wife or some laid-off joe who slapped you around whenever he bothered to come home. You might just be bored, or alone. Everybody was welcome into the club of disaffection. And if the high didn't solve whatever it was that was getting you down, it could at least help you laugh at the world's ongoing folly and see through all the hypocrisy and bullshit and cheap moralism."

How's that for an introspective dose of sullen cynicism? With the crack of a realization that there is nothing all that much separating the angst of a young man from his destiny, regardless of whether he is black or white. In the case of this very particular young man, he had experienced through his early life a dose of both black and white. As a biracial child his maternal grandparents had accepted their daughter's choice of a black Kenyan mate resulting in a child inheriting the genes of both black and white. It was his white grandparents who had primarily opened their racially uncorrupted hearts to the boy that he was, loving him as only grandparents could, aiding him in his journey toward maturity.

Racist bigotry is not confined to one side alone in a two-sided morality play. Every ethnic or racialized culture believes its own lifestyle, values, beliefs, politics, religion, to be vastly superior to that of others. It represents the purpose for which biology and nature has designed the human psyche; a need to belong, to feel represented, to be part of something larger than one single, lonely soul. It's an integral part of the imperative of survival. Belonging, being a part of a group offers consolation in an otherwise-lonely world of confusing messages and circumstances beyond control. But as in all manners of human behaviour, all too often what is assumed is not the entire story.

"'I hope you don't feel resentful towards him.'

'Why would I?'

'It wasn't your father's fault that he left, you know. I divorced him. When the two of us got married, your grandparents weren't happy with the idea. But they said okay -- they probably couldn't have stopped us anyway, and they eventually came around to the idea that it was the right thing to do. Then Barack's father -- your grandfather Hussein -- wrote Gramps this long, nasty letter saying that he didn't approve of the marriage. He didn't want the Obama blood sullied by a white woman, he said. Well, you can imagine how Gramps reacted to that And then there was a problem with your father's first wife ... he had told me they were separated, but it was a village wedding, so there was no legal document that could show a divorce...'"

Torn between cultures, between heritage and the barriers that people establish to keep themselves firmly separated from possible contamination from one another. But on the other hand, opportunities beckon, and sometimes fortune plays out a really amazing hand. And the conflicted, unhappy and confused young man finds experiences that broaden him, and help him to become quite a unique character. Certainly unique enough to convince a needed majority of American voters that he could be trusted to advantage the country and them personally.

Becoming the United States of America's first black president. Calling on his genetic inheritance, his academic and streetwise social training to try his hand at solving not only the groaning problems confronting his country, but those as well that plague the world at large. On his journey to his future and that in a very real sense, that of the globe, he has achieved some notable firsts. At the time that he wrote his book Dreams From My Father, he had been the first African-American to achieve the considerable scholarly status of being elected president of the Harvard Law Review. At the time that he wrote the manuscript for the book he had also won the Democratic nomination as U.S. senator from Illinois.

Going on, famously, to become a Nobel Laureate once he became President of the United States. The jury is out, and it will be out for quite a long time. History will write the final chapter. President Barack Hussein Obama has his defenders and his detractors. He has taken the United States in directions different from his predecessors. Not radically different, but in directions painted in the shades of his social agenda, both internally and externally. Only time will tell how successful his initiatives will be in the long run - or not.

Egyptian neo-terrorism

Wednesday, 17 July 2013 -- Al Aribaya

Sonia Farid

It was 2:00 p.m. in the city where 2:00 a.m. is as safe and lively. I was driving along a road that I have been frequenting for the past ten years or so. On my rear glass was a sticker that said “go down on June 30” and which I had decided to leave there for some time in tribute to that memorable day. A young man, possibly in his twenties, spotted the sticker and quickly beckoned his comrades, who seemed to have sprouted from the ground and in no time, they were blocking my way, each brandishing a knife. They started banging on the windows while shouting and cursing. I am not sure I was able to discern the names they called me, but I knew for a fact they were related to that sticker and I only remember one sentence that they yelled in unison like a professional chorus: “let them come to your rescue now!”

I was certain they would break the window any second and it was then that I remembered the advice I have heard repeatedly about running over whoever blocks your way regardless of what the consequences would be. I was not, however, ready to take anybody’s life even if it was in self-defense, so I just pressed the gas pedal slowly hoping this would scare them away. I actually hit one of them in the leg and when he fell the others were even more provoked so one of them knelt and tried to tear the tire.

My white knight

A few seconds later a car parked next to mine and out came a man. He opened the trunk, got out a machine gun, and chased the boys while swearing to tear them to pieces and “throw their bodies to the dogs.” They magically vanished so that at a certain moment I started doubting they had actually existed. The man came to me and asked if I was alright. As far as I remembered, I stared at him and did not utter a word. He offered to stay in his car until I drove away and he did. He even followed me for a few minutes until he made sure I was able to drive which I miraculously managed to do until I got home. I did not even get the chance to thank him.

This, together with other attacks we have been hearing about lately, is part of an organized vengeance scheme that ushers a new era of terror and a new type of terrorism.

Sonia Farid

It is pointless to try to describe how I felt in those few minutes, but suffice it to say that a couple of days earlier a woman from Alexandria faced the exact same situation, but was not as lucky I was. The stabs she got were enough to end her life and there was obviously no brave and armed passerby to intervene in the last split second. This woman’s fate did not only haunt me because it might have been mine too, but I was also tormented by what felt like a survivor’s guilt as I could not help but wonder why she died and I survived. It got much worse when the initial personal agony gave way to the more general picture, for at the end of the day it was neither about me, nor about her, nor were the two of us the victims of random crimes that you can report at a police station, in the hope of having something stolen from you returned or of seeing a person who hurt you behind bars.

Organized vengeance

This, together with other attacks we have been hearing about lately, is part of an organized vengeance scheme that ushers a new era of terror and a new type of terrorism. Back in the 1990s, we all lived through the “no one is safe” nightmare, but it felt like there was a clearly defined enemy against which all the people were united, which is by no means the case at the moment.

I don’t think it matters much whether the men who attacked me and the Alexandrian woman and a whole lot of Egyptians who declared in one way or another their support for the ouster of the president are true believers in the “cause” or were hired to do the job. What matters most is the fact that civilians are assaulted, at times killed, for their political affiliations and that this is done by their fellow civilians who at a first glance do not seem to pose any kind of threat. The traditional image of extremist militants seeking refuge in the middle of mountains and chased across rugged terrains, has become confined to the Sinai Peninsula which is now replacing Upper Egypt as the hotbed of terrorism while cities are currently being infested by what can be termed “neo-terrorists.”

Neo-Nazism?

Like Neo-Nazism, this emerging trend seeks to revive an old practice in an innovative manner that is basically characterized by the absence of a direct confrontation between two conflicting parties so that the adversary remains nobody and everybody and so that all demarcation lines are too blurred to determine when and if the battle has come to an end and who has emerged victorious. It is a type of terrorism that makes of every spot an operational territory and renders precautions a matter of formality for in addition to blocking roads and attacking “opposition” motorists, there have been several incidents that involve storming houses in areas surrounding Islamist sit-ins and torturing, sometimes to death, potential “spies,” and shooting at bystanders who seem to belong to the other camp.

By virtue of being a loosely-structured group whose members do not necessarily follow a specific leadership, the neo-terrorists act with remarkable impunity and most of them have so far succeeded in getting away with their crimes. Their job is also much easier because of the apparent self-restraint lately exercised by the army and the police, both apparently keen on eschewing further accusations of human rights abuses following international criticism over excessive use of force against supporters of the ousted president as they attempted to “liberate” him from a military facility. Even when this policy changes, it will still be hard to track them down and prove their involvement in acts that are too politicized to be only criminal and too haphazard to be purely terrorist.

Unlike conventional terrorism, neo-terrorism attempts to change the balance of power in a more subtle way since its main objective is intimidation rather than killing. Even those who are actually killed are not targeted as persons, but are rather presented as examples. Unfortunately, this tactic cannot be deemed a failure. I, for one, removed the sticker right after the incident and was advised to tell this story to everyone I know so they can follow suit. I wouldn’t go as far as labeling this reaction cowardly even though I couldn’t help seeing it that way for a while, but I have to admit that they managed to rob many of us of a right as basic as a sticker on the glass of your own car.

True we don’t fight for stickers. We fight for causes. But then again what is the use of fighting for a cause if you cannot declare you are doing so!
_____
Sonia Farid, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of English Literature at Cairo University. She is a translator, editor, and political activist. Her social work focuses on political awareness and women’s rights and her writing interests include society, politics, and security in Egypt. She took part in a number of local and international conferences and published several academic papers. She can be reached at soniafarid@gmail.com.

Crown Inheritance

As unbelievable as it seems that there are so many ostensibly intelligent voters out there in Canada's towns and cities whose abilities to discriminate between empty facade and established experience resulting in realistic expectations of the discerning capabilities of a head of government are morbidly impaired, that seems to be the startling truth of the matter. What endears Justin Trudeau to the Liberal-pledged electorate defies understanding other than mass stupidity.

The man is a thespian born, an egotist, an elitist. "You cannot be half pregnant on the question of Canadian unity", he now propounds bridling at the very idea put forth by the NDP that the Clarity Act should be reborn to view a majority for separation at 50+1%. When a year ago he stated that he could readily be persuaded in support of Quebec separation, as a Quebecer, and a lawmaker, a Parliamentarian elected in Quebec, if the dastardly plans of the current governing Conservatives ever came to fruition.

The issues of gay rights and abortion accessibility set that little bombshell off, even though Prime Stephen Minister Harper has given ample indication he has no intention whatever of re-visiting or undermining those equality and social guarantees. His inept, vapid remarks and his preening self-regard are gagging to those who feel they should expect far, far more acuity of intelligence and perspective from someone grooming himself to become a future prime minister.

While a potential candidate for that office of the stature and accomplishment and obvious intelligence of Marc Garneau can barely entice the notice that flows so effortlessly and ebulliently toward Justin Trudeau. Any criticism of Trudeau's clearly unfit status to the office he aspires to, on the part of those contesting him as a candidate seems to increase his support, while having a deleterious effect on those courageous enough to point out his failings.

Even though Justin Trudeau himself by releasing details about his personal wealth and earnings has single-handedly and without intention drawn attention to his cupidity and capricious nature and his inability to understand that he lacks integrity, vision and a true spirit of service to the very communities he insists whose best interests he represents. Seeking to capitalize on his estimable family name worked very well on the speaking circuit with gracious earnings to supplement his inherited wealth.

Once he became a parliamentarian, bringing home his annual salary of just under $158,000, his family has been living in reduced financial circumstances, coffers having suffered grievously. Previously, before his election to Parliament in 2008, he had been earning far more on the lucrative speaking circuit to pad out his income. He took a cut in pay, sacrificing on behalf of the Canadian public, to best represent the interests of Canadian taxpayers and a trusting public.

In the year before his election he popped $462,000 earned through speaking engagements alone, into his bank account. Last year he was reduced to earning $72,000 on the speaking circuit, because his parliamentary and riding duties have robbed him of sufficient time to pursue public speaking full-time. As a motivational speaker, the popularly-viewed charisma of Justin Trudeau is worth a whack of money.

Justin Trudeau was named his party's youth and post-secondary school education critic, no doubt spurred on by his stint teaching drama at a private school in the Vancouver area before moving East. With those credentials behind him he charged $15,000 in 2010 from an Ontario school board to address a conference attended by federal employees. Bearing in mind that public taxes support school boards, just as taxes support the salaries of MPs and federal employees alike.

And those MP salaries are meant to reward their parliamentarian positions as well as their outreach to the community as members of Parliament.  Last year he charged Queen's University $12,000 for a speaking engagement, and Literacy for Life, the Canadian Mental Health Association, and the Grace Foundation $20,000 each to address these educational and charitable institutions. If that does not represent ample evidence that the man has no idea of service to the community and to his country what does?

At the very least they represent a conflict of interest, an interest instead in greedily assembling greater benefits for himself personally through his political, inherited and executive connections.  By charging a not-for-profit like the Learning Partnership $10,000 for graciously agreeing to deliver a speech, does this demonstrate how he is fulfilling his party role as parliamentary youth critic?

That he is not the only parliamentarian with professional backgrounds who continue to serve their profession as doctors, lawyers, accountants is little excuse, simply testament to human greed.  The work of a member of Parliament is a full-time occupation. Moon-lighting for whatever reason, whether to keep their hand in on their professional expertise, or to gain additional earnings, speaks to a misunderstanding of commitment and responsibility to their elected positions.

Not quite as critical when it happens with backbenchers perhaps, although still questionable, but utterly to the point when it represents the mind-set and interests and oblivion to realities of someone in the front-running chorus of potential party leader - and all the more so when it has become abundantly evident that the April Liberal Party Convention to elect a new leader is guaranteed to be a Crowning event.

 Peace In Our Time

"Fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges."
"While history tells us that these truths may be self-evident, they have never been self-executed." "While freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by his people here on Earth."
"No single person can train all the math and science teachers we'll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people."
U.S. President Barack Obama, Second-term Inaugural Speech

Soaring, inspirational rhetoric, to great enthusiastic applause. Americans have their noble Nobel Laureate for peace. But the world is anything but peaceful. Despite which their president called on his America to shun "perpetual war", to look instead with favour on the peacemakers, to be granted dominance in the theatre of conflict globally.

It was, after all, previous presidents who have led their country into a succession of wars, based then largely on ideology, all of which cost that great country greatly in terms of human lives, their own and those of other combatants, and state treasury which might have been used in other ways, to improve state institutions and the lives of those dependent on them.

But the thing of it is, engagement in far-off wars was always seen to be required for the advancement of the American agenda. Which included of course, arms technology and sales, for nothing seems to bolster an economy like a good old-fashioned war. It is the new-fangled wars like those fought by non-traditional adversaries like al-Qaeda and the Taliban that drains a state's treasury.

The country's reliance on foreign-derived energy sources was a compelling enough reason to go to war. While at the same time self-righteously declaiming a secondary but inflated imperative, to expand democracy across the Globe. While for a time being the war-going succeeded in protecting energy sources, the democratic quotient that did surface bore little resemblance to the familiar.

Ideas and language that complements those noble high-flown ideas come readily to the lips of those who claim to have a vision. Capitalizing neatly on the visions of their predecessors, coasting to the victory of achieving what was so searingly sought out of the pain of humiliation and misery. But this is human nature and it does speak compellingly of our better natures struggling with our inner selves.

"No one has a greater stake in a peaceful world than its most powerful nation. We must be a source of hope to the poor, the stick, the marginalized, the victims of a crisis, not out of mere charity but because peace in our time requires the constant advance of those principles that our common creed describes: tolerance and opportunity, human dignity and justice."

Truly inspired. But for the unfortunate adoption of the "peace in our time" playback to an earlier era when that declaration heralded a world turmoil of deadly proportions.

The age of Obama

Time roughs up presidents. Photos of Barack Obama on Election Night 2008 look like they were taken much longer ago. Now his face has deeper creases and crow’s feet, while his hair has turned white. “You look at the picture when they’re inaugurated and four years later, they’re visibly older,” said Connie Mariano, White House physician from 1992 to 2001. “It’s like they went in a time machine and fast-forwarded eight years in the span of four years.”

By Ned Martel, May-Ying Lam, Grace Koerber and Kat Downs

Dec. 2012  The Washington Post

Jan. 2009

Watch Obama change during his four years in office  Click play to watch a one-minute timelapse of photographs of the President

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Why presidents age quickly

Presidents face unabated, unfathomable stress. “You see it over a term,” said Ronan Factora, a physician specializing in geriatric medicine at the Cleveland Clinic. “It’s a good study of chronic stress on a person’s overall health.”

Obama and his national security team monitor the hit on Osama bin Laden. (Pete Souza/White House; Photo altered to obscure a classified document.)

Changes in skin or hair are gradual, he said. “If you do have a stressful event, nothing is going to happen right away.” Nothing visible anyway. Inside the body, the pituitary gland jolts the adrenal gland, just above the kidneys. Hormones start coursing. Adrenaline cranks up heart rates and blood pressure. Cortisol, another hormone from the same gland, causes inflammation and preps the body for converting sugars into energy. 

“It’s not intended that people would be chronically exposed to these levels,” said Sherita Golden, a physician at the Johns Hopkins Medical Bloomberg School of Public Health. Cortisol strains the circulatory system, battering artery walls. The hormone also thins the skin, makes muscles waste and bones lose mass. The immune system weakens, and viruses that cause colds and cold sores take hold. Sleep turns fitful. 

“Your cognition slows, you may feel more depressed, your ability to concentrate goes down,” Factora said. “And it just builds on itself — a real cascade.”

The only known cure

There is one known treatment: exercise. “It is the best benefit a physician can recommend,” Factora said. “There is no drug that can present as many benefits as exercise can.”

Obama plays basketball during his 2008 campaign. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Obama is a fiend for exercise. In hour-long workouts, he has been known to hit treadmills hard, weight train with arms and legs, build quickness through “plyos” or plyometrics — exercises that involve explosive movements. He also throws footballs, shoots basketballs and thwacks at golf balls.

His predecessors exercised, too, some of them fiercely. George W. Bush ran till his aging knees made cycling a better option. Presidents Carter and Bill Clinton jogged, while Ronald Reagan rode horses and split logs with such vigor, he once cut his thigh. President Gerald Ford performed a daily exercise regimen while still in his robe and PJs. 

Good exercise leads to better thinking, brain-mapping has shown. “Exercise actually brings more blood flow,” explained Linda Fried, an epidemiologist and geriatrician at Columbia University. “Parts of the brain are activated and they’re associated with complex thinking and problem-solving.” Workouts also force a president to — truly, finally, deeply — rest. Only then can the relaxed brain start to make creative associations.

Infirmity and vice

The job has compounded certain human frailties. Most famous perhaps is the lethal case of pneumonia that 68-year-old William Henry Harrison caught at his inauguration. Woodrow Wilson’s stroke certainly limited his leadership of the country, and Franklin D. Roosevelt worked around the problems related to his polio more ably than might have been expected.

But daily habits also affect presidential well-being in lesser-known ways. Dwight D. Eisenhower was so dedicated to his form of exercise that he played 800 rounds of 18 holes over eight years as president, according to Evan Thomas, the author of “Ike’s Bluff: President Eisenhower’s Secret Battle to Save the World.” Then, in 1955, Eisenhower had a heart attack, and two years later, a stroke. Intestinal surgery came in between, all as he was staving off nuclear war and realigning Southeast Asia.

“Toward the end,” Thomas said, “he was taking an extra sleeping pill at night” — the powerful, old-school kind, with barbiturates. And that was on top of a nightly scotch, never more than five ounces, except when it was, Thomas said. “A couple of times he says to his doctor, ‘Let’s get drunk.’”

To the best of the public’s knowledge, recent presidents have not exacerbated their stress through bad behaviors such as drinking. Obama, however, confirmed that he had to kick a cigarette habit of unknown intensity at some midpoint in his first term.

The side effects of smoking might show up as those lines in his face, the doctors said. While sun exposure can also make a face look withered, Obama’s darker skin has melanin to alleviate UV ray damage. That same coloring, however, can make his white hair look more pronounced.

A special lot

Obama had a fitness test on Jan. 12, and the White House said the results would be released by February. His previous physical was in October 2011; it showed that he had added one pound since his February 2010 physical (his 2011 weight: 181, very good for a man who was then 50 and 6-foot-1).

Like all presidents since 1992, Obama has been under constant medical watch: a military physician is on hand wherever a president goes. Burton Lee,whom the first President Bush brought to the White House to monitor his health, agreed with Mariano that presidents are a special lot. They push their bodies and minds, and thus they develop a greater capacity to fight off infection. They shake enough hands to fell a lesser creature, he said. 

But the mental intrusions — the sense that someone needs something from the president every moment of every day — are as insidious as the germs. “It’s just a phenomenally demanding job,” he said. “You never get one minute off.”

Despite the extraordinary stress levels, many recent presidents have lived well beyond normal life expectancy. Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford died at 93; Jimmy Carter and the George H.W. Bush are 88. Doctors are coming to understand that stress may have an upside. “Human beings need some degree of stress to keep their systems tuned,” Fried said. “Some people enjoy the stimulation of it and the excitement and couldn’t live without it.” 

Plus, human minds literally seek reasons to live. “Many people, as they get older, deeply care about future generations and the world’s survival,” Fried said. “If they have a chance to make a difference, that keeps people healthy.” 

2009

2001

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s Texas governor, George W. Bush was an avid runner, and sometimes invited journalists to pant alongside. But as president, Bush's knees literally got weak, and mountain biking became a better option, always on agent-protected terrain like his ranch in Crawford, Texas, or the Secret Service training site in Greenbelt. A teetotaler, the president went to bed early and exercised often, which helped stave off stress. Between meals, as a candidate, Bush famously chomped Cheetos, and as president, never lost his hankering for good Tex-Mex cooking.

1997

1993

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On many occasions, Bill Clinton's physician found it difficult to determine whether he was super-stressed or full-on infirm. They proved the two basic conditions of presidential life.
“We were worried about Clinton when he was being impeached,” she recalled. “He looked like he had it all together, but we worried.” All she and her colleagues could do was ask; all he would say was “I’m tired.”

Mariano could still clearly envision both the first President Bush and Clinton pushing on, with bags under their eyes, to the next campaign event. “One factor Bill Clinton had in his favor: he could power-nap,” she said. When his helicopter went up, his eyelids would go down. Then upon landing, he announce, “OK, I’m ready! Showtime!”

After a bout of heart disease, cardiac surgery and a new commitment to vegan dieting, Clinton has regained strength — if not weight. Doctors were hesitant to attribute his ailment to all that cortisol damaging his circulatory system. “We don’t have a genetic twin of President Clinton,” said Factora, and that twin would have to rest for the eight years Clinton did not in order to qualify as an experimental control.

1993

1989

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The first President Bush didn’t just work out, he worked out vigorously,” said his physician Lee, citing four-mile runs and ball games with Marines at Camp David. Once he even played tennis with Pete Sampras. “He broke the Stairmaster at Camp David, he pounded it till it didn’t work,” Lee recalled. “If I’m on it for five minutes, you have to take me out on a stretcher.”

Like appearance, endurance is highly individual; one person crumbles in circumstances where another thrives. Plus, what one person actively avoids, another embraces. “The one thing I noticed is that presidents have very unusual personalities,” Lee said. “Each is a different person, but for all, there is no easy day.”

While abstemious in an era when other statesmen chain-smoked cigars, Abraham Lincoln saw his legendary strength dwindle. At the start, the hale president was an able horseman who wrestled soldiers and challenged them to strength tests. One such test required a three-foot axe to be held out from his body with one hand, which is much harder than it sounds, said David Von Drehle, the author of “Rise to Greatness: Abraham Lincoln and America’s Most Perilous Year.”.

By the time of his death, the president had been wracked by insomnia and lost interest in food. He arrived at the White House as a sinewy 6-foot-4, 180-pound strongman. In the course of four years, he dropped 30 pounds. “He was sunken-eyed and grizzled, nothing like that bright-eyed lawyer of Springfield,” said Von Drehle. Lincoln sat for a famous series of portraits, and “by the last set of photographs, he looks 75 years old, but he’s 56.”

PHOTOS: Washington Post staff, Associated Press and AFP/Getty Images.