October 6th 1981, the day “my” dictator was shot

I don’t remember that day; I wasn’t born. My mother remembers she was 8-months-and-something pregnant of me and my father remembers he was literally panicked the delivery could happen at any moment. I am their first child, it is as unexperienced parents-to-be they lived that particular October 6th 1981.

They lived far from their homelands, in Switzerland, and it is with this strange obsession specific to the expats they were following as much as they could what was happening in Tunisia (my mother’s country) and in Egypt (my father’s). In 2011, it is difficult to imagine what means ‘following news’ at a time when there was no Internet, no twitter, no mobile phones and hardly any landlines in our families back home, no satellite TV; in fact no TV at all at my parents’ place. A bit of radio, newspapers (in some places in Switzerland you could get a few arabic newspapers with 3days delay), and mostly news from other expats were coming  back from travel, that heard something from somebody, that has a personnal story to tell. I don’t know by which of these means they knew the Egyptian dictator Anouar Al-Sadat was shot during the traditional military parade of October 6th.

All I know for being told the story thousands of times by my parents, is that my father rushed to buy a TV immediately when he heard the news of Sadat’s death.  Years later, everytime I hear the name of the dictator I imagine a younger version of my father trying to get that new TV (that now would look like an antique) working and a younger version of my mother, pregnant on the couch trying to give suggestions on how to do. I was born 10 days after Sadat’s death, on October 16th. My father never forgets to mention that October 81 brought many changes in his life: a daughter and a TV.

The world remembers Sadat with nostalgy for his peace efforts with Israel, but Egyptians don’t. This hate of Egyptians for the dictator is nothing because of Israel, but because Sadat is the synonyme for corruption, poverty, jails, arbitrary detentions, torture, expensive bread. Sadly ironic to think that a man that was so injust was awarded with a Peace Nobel Prize.

My father migrated to Switzerland because his engineering studies, in the Sadat years Egypt, were not enough to find a job and grant a decent a living for him, his two parents and his 6 sisters. Hadn’t he migrated, he wouldn’t have met my mother and I would have never “been”. Sadat, “my” dictator in a way.

October 6th 2011, 30 years later, Egypt is trialing another dictator, Hosni Mubarak. Age of blood is over for our country and we will be firmly standing to avoid it to ba back.

The Syrian Gay Girl hoax: reaching the limits of the social medias in matter of information

A couple of weeks ago, at the beginning of the Syrian uprising, a blog post went viral. It was called My father, the hero and it was the testimony of a girl living in Damascus on how she was saved by the powerful monologue of her father from being arrested by two men of the regime. The girl, Amina Arraf, also happened to be gay, and her whole blog, A Gay Girl in Damascus, was a lively and passionating diary of an atypical person in the Middle-East. The father was so eloquent, the words sounded so true, so universal that the link was widely spread in the social medias and the story even ended in professionnal news websites and papers.

A few weeks later, the cousin of Amina Arraf posted a blog post where she was announcing the blogger was kidnapped and held in a secret place. The ‘Syrian Gay Girl’ story had so much moved arund the world that when this news came out, human rights activists began to advocate her cause, to ask for her release. It is at this point where a message was published on the blog, where a certain Tom McMaster was presenting his apologies: Amina was a fictional character, invented by this American man quite familiar with the Middle East culture, a wannabe writer. Things went out of control when Amina’s story became viral, and he tried to make her ‘disappear’ by publishing the news of her abduction. But when he saw that people were trying to get her released, giving time and energy they could use to release other real people in need of assistance, he understood he went too far: he couldn’t do anything else than revealing all this was only a hoax.

This story is interesting: it is actually like a real time and large scale experience on the biggest weakness of the social medias, the vulnerability to misinformation. The story was read thousands of times and reached all parts of the world. Today, even if the writer himself revealed the truth about it, there still must be hundreds of people still believing that there exists somebody called Amina Arraf, a anti-Assad gay girl in Damascus.

Tweets and wall posts are only transient in the sense that they are within seconds replaced by other tweets and other wall posts, but they might imprint a mind for a long time. Specialists in communication know well that the first contact with a topic has a stronger impact on the brain than the following. In a passionating article a few years ago in the New Yorker, I remember a neurologist explaining why, for example, the rumor on Obama being a Muslim is essentially more influential on the mind than any of the hundreds of denials of the fact and affirmations on Obama being Christian (the recent controversy on his birth certificate shows the confusion of some part of the American people about ‘who is’ Barack Obama). Basically, it is easier to make a rumor than to dismiss it, even with the strongest and most rational proofs.

To some extent, the Gay Girl in Damascus case reminded me a juridic case in France a couple f years ago: on a trial know as the ‘Trial of Outreau‘, the prosecutor took blindly as granted all what was said by two children accusing more than 20 persons to have performed on them pedophile acts, when flagrant contradictions and absurd descriptions should have warned him on some trickery, all because this was happening in a time where there was some sort of paradigm that children cannot invent such things and lie. Later, when there was deeper expertises that led to the conclusions that all what was said by the children were in fact all lies they were told to tell by their mentally disturbed mother, we realized that we went in very few years from an epoch were children were never listened to by judges to another one where any single word they pronounce is considered as being the exact truth. The trial of Outreau was a ‘wake up call’ to more critic distance with children testimonies: they are an essential evidence but they have to be examinated and analyzed, not straightforwardly validated without any verification.

Similarely, a few years back citing a reference/source/evidence from a website was something ‘not serious’; when writing an essay, students had to give ‘real’ references in hardcopy books and online content was considered to be reliable only when it was confirmed by some offline content. But somewhere between the Iranian martyr Neda and the web 2.0 revolution, internet became the ‘mother of all informations’. Today, if something isn’t referenced by Google, it is assumed that it simply  doesn’t exist and Wikipedia became the number one source of information in the world. Blogging was, a few years ago, seen as a narcissistic activity of those who want to live some substitute of fame, today bloggers are the new opinion makers. Posting on YouTube is something ‘raw’, it can only be true: people are less keen to believe a TV news professionnal  footage than a video taken by the mobile phone of an amateur.  Somehow, like the Trial of Outreau demonstrated how we swung very quickly from an extreme denial of children’s testimony to a blind belief in their words, the Gay Girl in Damascus Hoax showed us how we went from a disdain to any form of online content to a too big confidence in bloggers words. Not that we should dismiss bloggers when it comes to information, but we should maybe try to not forget that words are not evidence. Tom McMaster blogging as Amina Arraf depicted in an extremely absurd scenery how much we wanted to believe in her story, to the point to not ask anything close to an evidence of her existence. Even journalists, NGOs and companies could not resist to the trend: the more a story is retweeted, the more it is credible.

When an information jumps from one person to the other in less than 140 characters, the speed of propagation makes it possible to reach thousands of people before anybody even has physical time to verify the information. Most of the people retransmittnig it are ‘consumers’ of information, not professionals. They not only don’t have the means to lead an investigation, they also don’t have the ‘time’ or ‘interest’.

We, social media users, certainly also propagate around us the information that not only seems valid or relevant, but also what we feel emotionnally connected to. In the context of an ‘Arab Spring’ initiated by the tragic suicide of the Tunisian fruit seller Mohammed Bouazizi, the ‘ordinary heroes’ like Wael Ghonim or Mohammed Nabbous are the living symbols of the causes we believe in, and in consequence we identify to them. In claims like ‘We are all Khaled Said‘, we all become victims of the abuse that was inflicted to the body of Khaled Said; it is like a projection. It is certainly why we all projected ourselves in the body of Amina Arraf when her father was challenging the two policemen; we didn’t need at that time any other proof of the story being true or not: do you need a proof to convince yourself when you experienced it yourself?

The sad counterpart of the propagation of a lie only because we are emotionnally connected to it is that the propagation through the social medias of the news that do not relate emotionnally to us are harder to propagate, regardless of it being verified or not, relevant or not. In perticular, news not involving ‘good characters’ like in any good story are more difficult to transmit: why the story of Manal Al-Sharif, the Saudi woman put in jail for defying the drive ban, moved all around the globe when the thousands of anonymous slave maids in Saudi Arabia never got 1% of such an interest? Because the maids didn’t put upload on YouTube a video of their work conditions? Why the fictional Amina Arraf got more audiance than other flesh and blood anti-Assad opponent caught and tortured and in dire need of a general mobilization around them? Why in Europe the citizen all know it all about DSK sex assault case while very few are aware that 2-3months ago an European country, Hungary, adopted the first autoritarian constitution in the history of the European Union?

For the Iranian Green Movement and the Arab uprisings, the social medias play an important role, in countries where individual rights are so restricted that the access to a reliable information is impossible through the official medias; the citizen doesn’t have the choice than to become himself the journalist that do not exist on the field. They upload on Youtube what they know their official TV channels will never broadcast and they post on their Facebook wall what they know they will not read in their newspapers. But it is a necessity arising from some special context: outside these ‘crisis management’ phases, most of the users would rely much more on professionnal information medias such as Al Jazeera or Euronews than on anything else. There still is a small but active fraction of the users that believe only in ‘bottom-up’ information. If this ‘civil journalism’ phenomenon is to consider as a key feature of the 21st century era of open information, the general public has to keep a bigger critical distance with the information extracted from the social networks. They give sometimes access to first hand and exclusive information, but they stay non-moderated medias and aren’t press agencies.

A worrying trend is the one that sees professionnal journalists take for granted almost blindly bloggers or viral tweets and cite them as sources. The barrier between bloggers and journalists is sometimes so dim that they more and more want to substitute to each other: almost all journalists have their blogs and twitter accounts, but also bloggers are published in professionnal information websites. The perfect illustration of this growing confusion is the Huffington Post, the daily newspaper writter by benevole bloggers. Without objecting bloggers might have very interesting and fresh views on many topics (after all, I am a blogger myself, if I blog it is because I certainly think what happens in my mind is worth being read), being a journalist is also having followed a training and having acquired technical skills to retrieve information, digest it and transmit it to the biggest number. But now we entered in a critical era where numerical information substitutes to physical information: we don’t need anymore to see the Damascus Gay Girl in person and interview her and get the testimony of eye witnesses, we just need to find the link to her blog. If opinions expressed on twitter, facebook or tumblr are certainly informative for journalists to ‘feel’ where the people stand on the acceptation or rejection of what is presented to them, a blog post or a tweet should never become a source of information in itself.

The problem finally is not the fact that the social medias and participative medias are part of the supply chain of the information; the problem consists only in giving them the right place and importance, and understanding what can we reasonnably expect from them. Our social media culture is still extremely young; maybe we just went too enthusiastic about the power of the web 2.0 after the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, and we needed to reach the limits of the social medias in matter of information to be reminded that we should always be critical and cautious about what happens behind the screens.

By dying, Ossama Ben Laden won his last battle

There is nearly nobody on the 7 billion people on our planet talking about anything else than Ben Laden’s death at the moment. When the American President Obama spoke late night, bringing the news that was already largely spread on all social networks and TV broadcasts of the killing of the most feared man on Earth after a hunt of nearly 10 years, he sounded victorious. “Justice has been done“, he argued. Really?

When one sticks to the facts, one is forced to conclude that:

1. Apparently Ossama Ben Laden was not hidden in mountains, under the ocean or on Planet Mars, but in a small cozy town of Pakistan, an ally nation of US. The trillions of dollars put in the wars against terrorism and the extravagant sums spent to supply the Intelligence failed to bring practical and efficient solutions to catch the most wanted man on the planet in a reasonable timing.
2. He was caught only after he clearly retired from his duties in Al-Qaeda. US totally failed at catching him while he was active, challenging the whole planet with his tapes recorded in Afghan mountains. Al-Qaeda legendary figure is dead, but Al-Qaeda works for now at least 3-4 years without Ossama Ben Laden. In a sense, he was more like a “Godfather”: highly valued and respected by his men for the “glorious” record, feared by his ennemies, but not being anymore the field guy.
3. The logistics and organization of the number 1 terrorist nebula won’t be affected by Ben Laden’s death. Ex-Number 2 who is now Number 1, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, is not a youngster anymore either and very unlikely to be technically leading Al-Qaeda; he’s just the other ‘Godfather’. The technical leadership, planning of operations, recruitment, are to find somewhere else. So to say, US have totally failed to disrupt Al-Qaeda as a criminal organization able to schedule operations and put them into practice.
4. Al-Qaeda’s emulators, such as Al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb or Jamaat Ansar As-Sunna, are  deeply rooted everywhere and do not depend on Al-Qaeda itself to pursue their own goals: Al-Qaeda created a template and it was successfully used to spread terrorism.
5. The release of the Wikileaks Guantanamo Files (779 detainees files, with extensive individual description, charges, medical statements) a couple of days before the “arrest” of Ossama Ben Laden are nothing but a testimony of how far had Americans to go to get very few information, with an extremely weak “return on investment”. In other words, the enigma is still unsolved. Al-Qaeda succeeded to create the most opaque organization ever (the Wikipedia pages about Al-Qaeda are among the most poorly documented), almost impossible to stop but from the inside.
6. By killing Ossama Ben Laden, any hope of a trial/instruction/interrogation is automatically suppressed, depriving anti-terrorism strategists from a number one source to key information on Al-Qaeda and depriving victims from a real justice process.
7. The war on terrorism done in Afghanistan and Iraq ruined financially America, ruined its reputation worldwide, made about a thousands times more victims than the terrorist attacks themselves, planted the seeds of the dramatic collapse of the global influence the “American Empire”: US were weakened by this decade of “shock and awe” campaign. Al-Qaeda and Ossama Ben Laden made in less than 10 years what the USSR did not achieve in 30 years of Cold War.

When in 2008 Bush administration spokesman pronounced the simple sentence “Ladies and Gentlemen – We got him.” to announce the arrest of Saddam Hussein, it did not prevent G.W. Bush from the complete failure of his policy in Iraq. Today, Ossama Ben Laden death is certainly not a victory on the battlefield, where Amrican troops can surely already prepare for an intensification of terrorist acts against Amrican interests.

Indirect consequences of a decade of Al-Qaeda threat over the world would be interesting to study. A few can be already be named: Al-Jazeera was “made” by Ben Laden tapes the same way CNN was “made” by the Gulf wars, empowering the Arab region with its first subversive towards Arab regimes and the West TV channel; virtual activism and on-line recruitment, “headless” or “structure-less” political entities constitute the jist of the method mostly developped by Al-Qaeda (some used it for terrorism, others to ask for democracy); war on terrorism weakened enough US and allies for them to lose hand and perfect control on global geostrategy (they have hard time evaluating the dangers and the appropriate answers).

At the end, they offered Ossama Ben Laden what he always wanted: to die as a “martyr”. By his political criminal acts, as incredible as it appears, he created the “post-September 11th” world he wanted, where Western nations are terrorized and violently challenged for their imperialism and let a large “heritage”: a method to aggressive resistance.

Yes, definetly, by dying, Ossama Ben Laden won his last battle.

French Football officials want racial quotas for the National Team

July 1998: France wins for the first time of History the World Cup. The whole country celebrates for nights and days the new heroes, symbols of solidarity, excellence, courage. The leitmotiv of the popular jubilation is “La France Black-Blanc-Beur” (“The Black-White-Brown France“): the multiculturality of France is proudly claimed, and the 22 young men of different color skin (black, white and brown) united under the French flag become models.

July 2010: France ends its participation to the World Cup in South Africa in the most disastrous situation ever. Not only the performances on the field were extremely weak compared to the usual standards of the team, but also the internal tension between the coach Raymond Domenech and some of the players proved how much the group was unbound. The ‘World Cup Fiasco” could have been considered to be the result of the growing pressure on players, the bad management, or even the too strong and self-centred personnalities, but it seems that some of the French Football Federation (FFF) officials want to blame it on the racial factor.

April 2011: French newspapers reveal that François Blaquart, the Technical Director of the FFF asked for the introduction of non-official racial quotas for the National Team: following his considerations, the ratio of Black and Arabs in the National Team should not exceed 30% there should be more white people in it. If not enough, it seems that the idea was accepted by some officials, including Laurent Blanc, the trainer of the National  Team. Laurent Blanc was a player during the 1998 World Cup; he was part of that “Black-Blanc-Beur” dream team, he held in his own hands this World Cup he won together with Zinedine Zidane, Thierry Henry or Lilian Thuram.

Apparently, ethnic diversity is a good thing only if the Black and Brown bring the world cups; in a difficult context, although, they are persona non grata. What is interesting here, is to point out that in the presence of players from migrant minorities has always been natural to French football and French sport scene in general. People like Luis Fernandez, Yannick Noah,  or Djamel Bourras who won competitions as French athlets were always pointed to the “Français issus de l’immigration” as being examples of successful “integration” (although there is absolutely no sense in talking about integration to the French society of somebody who is born in France and has always since then lived in France).

Nevertheless, although colored athlets are common in French Teams, one has to note that officials in Federations are almost never, never, anybody else than “white” people: colored people are accepted as bodies of the French Sport, but not as brains. Here again, the FFF proved they shared these racist views: Laurent Blanc, during this meeting on quotas, also mentionned that the team needs more “little clever white guys able to play the game smartly” and less “big, strong and athletic black guys”. For Blanc and for other officials of the FFF, the problem of the ratio of black/brown/white people in the National Team is then not only a question of “identity”, or “adequate” representation of the French society; it goes far beyond: they simply assume that the simple fact of being black/brown/white enhances some type of abilities, more intellectual for white people, and more physical for black people. These are pure racial stereotypes. They are, sadly, more and more common in a France where the nationalist anti-migration party Front National is becoming day after day more popular.

Sport was maybe the only field in French labour market where people were selected without any discrimination regarding to the skin color or origin: only durations, speed, goals, points, performances could decide. Now, it might well become the sad mirror of a desintegrating society, where gaps grow bigger every day. If the Ministry of Sports doesn’t severely condemn the behaviour of the FFF and doesn’t force the officials that pronounced racist views to resign, France would simply give to the French people the clear message that yes, they now live in a real state of apartheid.

Palestinian Spring, Israeli Winter?

A couple of days ago I was wondering how would Israel, in its current way of doing things, survive in a democratic Middle-East. At that precise moment, it was one day before the occurence a key event, that surprised most of us: the Hamas and the Fatah reconciliated. Whatever reasons lies behind the sudden “ceasefire”, the perspective of the end of the internal fight opposing parties is likely to bring enough political stability to Palestinians to be able to face the one and real challenge: negociations with Israel. The news, of course, annoyed the Zionist State, that was beneficiating since April 2006 (when Hamas enters government) of a very convenient alibi to refuse the peacebuilding process: they’d not negotiate with Hamas, a “terrorist” organization that is not recognizing Israel.

But if today Hamas and Fatah walk, let’s say hand in hand, Israel would be forced to negociation, in spite of the fact that they are currently trying to discredit the Palestinian representatives by leading an international campaign against the reconciliation. So now, the possibilities are narrowing with Israel: a coalition Hamas/Fatah would certainly recognize Israel (Hamas is apparently making concessions, for example in announcing that Ismail Haniyeh is ready to resign from his Prime Minister function), sweeping Israel’s alibi, and force them to chose between recognizing Palestinian legitimacy or face growing international isolation for refusing negociation for no valuable reason.

Another good news for Palestinians is the announcement by Egypt of the permanent opening of Rafah border between Egypt and Gaza strip, within 7 to 10 days to alleviate the blocus on Gaza by Israel. Israel blocus, supposedly aiming in limiting the inflow of weapons for Hamas, blocks also necessary supplies such as food, medication or building materials (because yes, it is well known that coriander or vineager threatens Israel’s security).

For more than 60 years, Israel prospered protected by 1) Western alliances and influences in the Middle-Eastern region 2) Arab dictatorships and divisions 3) Very strong military and Intelligence capacities. When a State has as only mean to exist and as only legitimacy the oppression, supression, terrorization of neighbouring people, one is forced to conclude that that State has no solid ground, and no solid future. Unless Israel stops to misuse everybody and everything, if they started fair negociations with the Palestinians, they might well have a future in a democratic Middle-East. And if they still carry on refusing the principle of justice and fairness as the core of their relationship to Palestinians, the Palestinian Spring that just started with unification of Hamas with Fatah might well be the Israeli Winter…

Tunisian migrants of Lampedusa: France is shivering

During the last few weeks, Lampedusa was often quoted in European newspapers headlines. After the Tunisian Jasmine Revolution, an increase in the number of Tunisian migrants reaching by boat Europe through the little Italian island at South of Sicily was observed. Reading the news, it looks almost like an invasion: how is Europe going to deal with this massive wave of migration? What is the appropriate thing to do? Issueing to the Tunisian migrants residence permits in the European Union, at the cost of encouraging more and more North Africans to cross the Mediterranean? Or send them back to their currently unstable homeland at the cost of having to face critics for treating African people without any sense of responsability or dignity after being life long partners of dictators such as Ben Ali or Gaddafi? Tunisian migrants, while waiting for the outcome of the debate over their fate, see themselves becoming a point of focus: journalists are almost as many as them in Lampedusa, protests of angry Italian are almost daily, Libyan migrants, escaping war, begin to arrive at the accomodation.

When finally Italy issued 22’000 3 months-visas to the migrants, allowing them to travel in Europe before to settle for a final destination, according to Schengen Agreement, a wave of panick sweeped all over Europe. France, where about 3/4 of the migrants plan to go, promptly reacted: first by stopping the trains between Vintimille (Italy) to France carrying migrants as well as Italian activists, then by calling for a temporary suspension of Schengen Agreement. Never in the history of European Union did one of the Member States ask for such a extraordinary measure. By acting so, France would threaten the unity of Europe, create a diplomatic conflict with another Member State, Italy, and deliberately get in the way of European economy, favorited by the open intra-European borders.

The Schengen Agreement defines itself which kind of circumstances allows a suspension of the Convention: when security of a Member State asks for it. To be able to ask for a suspension of the Schengen Agreement in order to prevent a massive migration from Tunisia, France normally should be able to demonstrate the direct link between the 22’000 migrants and security of the French territory.

As a physicist, I always felt confortable with demonstrations: in general, numbers lie much less than politicians. I tried to figure out how 22’000 people could threaten France’s security.  For the sake of the argument I assumed that 100% of the Tunisian migrants would try to settle in France; the French population would then increase by 0.03% = 3 Tunisians per 10’000 people. Each Tunisian has then to represent a significant change in the life of approximatively 3’300 people in France.

The impact of the Tunisian migrants cannot be as dramatic as depicted by politicians. Nevertheless, integrating them into national statistics is an easy way to show evaluate their contribution to France. For example, unemployment in France represents 9.6% of active population, and the 22’000 Tunisians would not even represent 0.01% of the active population, and more keen to work in the main understaffed sectors in France (catering/food industry, construction industry, etc). The median age of Tunisians in Tunisia is about 30 years in total and 29.6 years for men. The migrants of Lampedusa are in huge majority young men, perfectly healthy, so to say coming to Europe to work. Most of them speak French and come from rural regions of Tunisia, where the biggest part of the economy is provided by agriculture; it is to be noted that agriculture is the most understaffed sector in France.

So in the best case these Tunisians would be able to find a job and participate in France’s economical growth. French GDP per person was of 28’123 € in 2010. In the worst case they would not find any job and would benefit from the french social welfare (known as the Revenu de Solidarité Active, RSA). The RSA is a monthly fare of 466.99 € per person (=5’603 € per year). Meaning that a negative impact of the 22’000 Tunisian migrants in France can be possible if and only if for one finding a job and producing a substantial yearly wealth of 28’123 € worth, there should be at least 6 Tunisians not finding jobs and costing each 5’603 € in social welfare.

In other words, unless the unemployment rate of the newcomers is higher than 85% their contribution to the French economy would be positive. A realistic scenario would admit an unemployment rate for Tunisian newcomers a bit above national rate, certainly around 20% during the first year. By closing their borders to Tunisian migrants and putting in question Schengen Agreement, France is, in consequence, depriving the national economy from a very welcome help. Not only the immediate needs in workers in some sectors where French people don’t want to work would be partly fulfilled, but also in a demographic point of view, their presence can only be a good thing for the aging French population (amongst the oldest in Europe with a serious deficit of young people, only two decades before the “Baby-Boomers” reach age of retirement). History even already shown us that there is nothing to fear from this migration: after all, after the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the revolutionnary chain reaction it induced in Eastern Europe, Romanians, Hungarians or Polish massively migrated; 20 years later, it is pretty clear that no invasion or negative concequence was observed in Western Europe.

There is certainly no reason to think that French authorities are not aware of these facts: for France, as well as for the rest of Europe, blocking the migration process could be painful more than anything else. The opposition to Tunisian migration can then only be ideological: fear from the Foreigners, from the unknown and misuse of this fear for electoral reasons. By calling to the suspension of the Schengen Agreement to avoid the Tunisian migrants and insinuating a revision should be undertaken, French President Sarkozy might well open the Pandora box.  At his own risks.