5) So who set fire to the Trade Unions House?

This would be different from applying sanctions, which would risk triggering a Masada Complex that might push Israel to further extremes.

Once back in rural Afghanistan, forced into brutal marriages, many desperate women especially returnees from Iran resort to self immolation.

But it makes little sense to insist on it as long as losses by banks that remain too big to fail could trigger a renewed financial crisis.

The so called autonomous violent left wing radicals in Berlin Kreuzberg enjoy themselves by torching luxury cars, but not a single bank window has been smashed in Germany.

DURHAM In setting himself ablaze following a humiliating encounter with the police, the university educated Tunisian vegetable seller Mohamed Bouazizi triggered a wave of protests across the Arab world.

Al Qaeda s move to the Levant also threatens to spark a momentous confrontation between Sunni radicals some of whom have recently taken control of part of the Syrian Lebanese border and the Shia Hezbollah in Lebanon.

As a byproduct of globalization, crises that once burned locally and then quickly flamed out now risk sparking international conflagrations. A pandemic, flood, or cyber attack in the City of London or Wall Street could send the entire world into a financial tailspin.

Indeed, the splits today resemble those that occurred when Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, an exit that led to civil war and the Taliban s eventual capture of the capital, Kabul.