Apontamentos de uma esquerdista em vias de cura - II

Robin of Berkeley prossegue, no American Thinker, a descrição da sua nova vida como conservadora num bastião do esquerdismo radical norte-americano já aqui recomendada. No segundo destes artigos, Robin, depois de ter utilizado pela primeira vez, tanto quanto sei, a expressão "obamalatria" para descrever a atitude prevalecente nos meios ditos progressistas dos EUA perante o presidente, contribui com mais um neologismo para a caracterização dessa atitude, infelizmente não circunscrita aos ditos meios, nem ao referido país: e a palavra é "obamatomizado", palavra que nos deve merecer um carinho especial, compatriotas que somos do nobel da medicina que muito contribui para o desenvolvimento do procedimento cirúrgico que visava diminuir a inquitação de doentes mentais através da excisão cirúrgica parcial do cortex pré-frontal, e que descreve na perfeição o estado de paralisia funcional selectiva da razão nas questões que envolvem Obama, na análise das suas políticas, das suas propostas, das suas palavras, em suma, do político, que Obama é, padecimento que afecta tantas pessoas, noutros aspectos perfeitamente saudáveis e razoáveis, por todo o mundo.

Sugestão para o Dia da Criança que passou

Seguindo o espírito das crónicas de 2ª-feira do Bruno Nogueira na TSF, geralmente dedicadas a fazer sugestões para o fim-de-semana anterior, queria deixar aqui uma sugestão de presente para as crianças, por ocasião seu dia comemorado na semana passada, ao qual cheguei via American Thinker. Há que começar a moldar os tenros cérebros desde já para impedir que alguma vez venham a funcionar devidamente. Agora, resta-nos aguardar que uma editora portuguesa aproveite a ideia e crie um produto semelhante, não com o Prof. Cavaco e com a sua Maria, naturalmente, mas com o elegante engenheiro e a sua fatal companheira.

A skeptic's guide to President Obama's Cairo speech

No Occidental Soapbox, um guia crítico para o infame sermão no sopé das pirâmides, em video.

O sermão no sopé das pirâmides - II

Prosseguindo a desmontagem das imprecisões e das falsidades proferidas pelo presidente Obama no seu tão famoso como infame discurso no Cairo, iniciada com este postal, consideremos agora as seguintes afirmações:

«As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam. It was Islam – at places like Al-Azhar University – that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing; our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed.»

Esta passagem está bem recheada daquele tipo peculiar de crenças enraizadas na cultura progressista ocidental, crenças que não resistem à mais pequena análise. Quanto à suposta influência do Islão na filosofia política ocidental que viria a resultar nos iluminismos inglês, americano e francês, o presidente Obama só pode estar a referir-se à preservação dos textos gregos clássicos em traduções árabes. A este propósito, diz Robert Spencer:

«Aristotle’s work was preserved in Arabic not initially by Muslims at all, but by Christians such as the fifth century priest Probus of Antioch, who introduced Aristotle to the Arabic-speaking world. Another Christian, Huneyn ibn-Ishaq (809-873), translated many works by Aristotle, Galen, Plato and Hippocrates into Syriac. His son then translated them into Arabic. The Syrian Christian Yahya ibn ‘Adi (893-974) also translated works of philosophy into Arabic, and wrote one of his own, The Reformation of Morals. His student, another Christian named Abu ‘Ali ‘Isa ibn Zur’a (943-1008), also translated Aristotle and others from Syriac into Arabic.»

Para além disso, muitos textos gregos clássicos chegaram até nós paralelamente através dos mosteiros que conseguiram resistir às destruições bárbaras e não apenas por via árabe. (Cf. How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, de Thomas E. Woods, Jr., cap. III, pgs. 39-45)

Spencer contesta ainda a importância do papel atribuído por Obama ao Islão na história da medicina:

«The first Arabic-language medical treatise was written by a Christian priest and translated into Arabic by a Jewish doctor in 683. The first hospital was founded in Baghdad during the Abbasid caliphate -- not by a Muslim, but a Nestorian Christian. A pioneering medical school was founded at Gundeshapur in Persia — by Assyrian Christians.»

Também a respeito da história da medicina a leitura do livro de Woods, Jr. (cap IX) é esclarecedora, nomeadamente quanto às origens dos hospitais, como os conhecemos.1) Consideremos agora a atribuição aos muçulmanos por Obama de algumas invenções científicas e tecnológicas, nomeadamente instrumentos de orientação e navegação, conceitos matemáticos e mecanismos de impressão gráfica, guiados por Ed Morrissey:

«Muslims didn’t invent the magnetic compass. Credit for that usually goes to the Chinese, who experimented with needles and lodestones as far back as the second century BC. They built a complete compass by the early 12th century, and eventually Marco Polo would bring one back on his travels.

In fact, the Muslims didn’t even come in second. Europe developed the magnetic compass at the end of the 12th century, while the Arabic compass would come decades later.»

Desmascaradas as imposturas, importa considerar qual a sua origem e porque Obama lhes faz eco, com a ajuda de Frank J. Tipler:

«All modern physics descends from Galileo (1564 -1642); all modern astronomy from Copernicus (1473-1543). If you study Galileo’s works carefully, as I have, you see that he started with the achievements of the Greek mathematical physicist Archimedes of Syracuse (c. 287 BC - c. 212 BC). If you study Copernicus’ works carefully, as I have, you will see that Copernicus’ great book On the Revolutions is essentially a heliocentric re-working of the geocentric astronomy textbook by the Greek Ptolemy (c. 90 AD - 168 AD). Copernicus mostly used even Ptolemy’s data for the positions of the planets. Note the dates for Archimedes/Galileo and Ptolemy/Copernicus. It is as if the Muslim world never existed. As far as their fundamental contributions to physics and astronomy, it did not. If one reads history of science textbooks prior to about 1980, one will find very little mention of Muslim “contributions” to physics and astronomy. This is reasonable, because there weren’t any. In the past generation, however, political correctness has dictated that Muslims be given credit for discoveries they did not make.»

E um pouco mais adiante:

«The cosmology of the Qur’an is obviously geocentric, and as a consequence, Al-Azhar University, which Obama singles out for praise in his speech, still teaches Ptolemaic astronomy.»

Tipler considera ainda a efectiva impossibilidade de fazer ciência no Islão. Para os cristãos, o mundo criado por Deus comporta-se de acordo com um conjunto de regras e mecanismos físicos de Sua autoria, os quais Deus deixa funcionar livremente e só muito raramente neles interfere operando milagres. Esta ordem divinamente criada pode perfeitamente ser estudada pelo homem, na sua busca pela verdade e pelo sentido da sua existência, de acordo com a sua natureza inquisitiva da autoria do próprio Deus. Assim, a ciência prosperou no Ocidente cristão como em nenhum outro contexto cultural tendo os religiosos cristãos desempenhado um papel assinalável na ciência ocidental, e.g. Gregor Mendel, padre agostiniano e pai da genética moderna e George Lemaître, padre, autor da "hipótese do átomo primevo", hoje conhecida como teoria do Big Bang. Ora, segundo Tipler, o mesmo não se passa no Islão:

«The reason Muslims never developed fundamental physics is because the leading Muslim theologians declared the idea of fixed physical laws to be heretical. The Qur’an (verse 6:64) states: “The Jews have said, ‘God’s hand is fettered.’ Fettered are their hands, and they are cursed for what they have said. Nay, but His hands are outspread; He expends how He will.” The standard Muslim interpretation of this passage has been that there cannot be unchanging physical laws because Allah may change the laws at any moment. In 1982, the Institute for Policy Studies in Islamabad, Pakistan, criticized a chemistry textbook by saying: “There is latent poison present in the subheading Energy Causes Changes because it gives the impression that energy is the true cause rather than Allah. Similarly it is unIslamic to teach that mixing hydrogen and oxygen automatically produces water. The Islamic way is this: when atoms of hydrogen approach atoms of oxygen, then by the Will of Allah water is produced.” The implication is clear: next week, Allah may change his mind about water being a compound of hydrogen and oxygen. With this sort of worldview, how could one possibly be a scientist?»

Tipler ilustra o ambiente anti-científico do Islão descrevendo o caso do físico Mohammed Abdus Salam:

«There was one truly great “Muslim” physicist, the Nobel Prize winning Pakistani, Mohammed Abdus Salam. I put “Muslim” in quotes, because Salam belonged to the Ahmadi sect of Islam, a sect that accepts modern science. But in 1974, the Pakistani parliament declared the Ahmadi sect heretical, and its members are currently being persecuted in Pakistan. Contemporary Muslim historians generally do not list Salam as an important Muslim scientist. Had he remained in Pakistan, he quite possibly would have been killed.»

Tipler conclui o artigo considerando os antecedentes da atribuição de méritos ciêntificos a quem os não tinha, o que pode responder à pergunda acima: por que razão Obama diz estas coisas (admitindo que não o faz por ignorância, o que, sendo possível, é improvável):

«During the Cold War, it was commonplace for leftist academics to attribute many discoveries to scientists in Communist countries, discoveries that had actually been made in the West. So now leftist academics attribute to Muslims discoveries that had actually been made by others.»

Barack Obama terá proferido estas falsidades no seu sermão no Cairo - se não por mera ignorância e por uma crença ideologicamente adquirida -, por calculismo político, para agradar aos muçulmanos e conquistar a sua simpatia, na presunção de que os conflitos que se multiplicam pelo mundo fora nos quais o Islão se confronta com aqueles que se opõem ao seu domínio se resolvem com a adopção de uma posição humilde por parte do Ocidente e com muita compreensão para com os ressentimentos islâmicos face aos crimes do colonialismo. Neste processo, o presidente norte-americano faz gala de um sórdido desprezo pela verdade. 1) - Versão em português.

O sermão no sopé das pirâmides

Muito se tem escrito sobre o discurso do presidente Obama no Cairo. Aqui vou limitar-me a fazer eco daqueles que se apressaram a corrigir algumas das muitas imprecisões e falsidades que o presidente proferiu, algumas das quais já fazem parte de uma certa cultura popular, e que, caso não sejam desmentidas, se enraizarão ainda mais no fundo da nossa ignorância. Comecemos pelas primeiras palavras do presidente, pela honra que disse sentir por se encontrar na milenar Universidade Al—Azhar, segundo o presidente, um farol do ensino islâmico, a qual, em conjunto com a Universidade do Cairo, é a fonte da evolução do Egipto. Andrew Bostom sai a terreiro para dar a conhecer este farol, começando por reconhecer a importância da universidade:

«Indeed, for over a thousand years, since its founding in 792 C.E., Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, has served as the academic shrine—much as Mecca is the religious shrine—of the global Muslim community. Al Azhar University (and its mosque) represent the pinnacle of Islamic religious education. »

Prossegue dando conta dos achados feitos por alguém que lá se dirigiu para conhecer melhor os ensinamentos aí ministrados:

«John Roy Carlson traveled to the Middle East shortly after WWII to pursue his investigative reporting on Fascist/Nazi movements—he had gone undercover in the US to expose domestic Nazism during the war, and the trail lead him overseas following the war. Egypt became a major sanctuary for Nazis by the mid-1950s under Nasser, but almost a decade earlier Carlson documented widespread Nazi sympathy coupled to Islamic religious fanaticism at Al Azhar itself. Carlson provided this apt description (in his book “Cairo to Damascus”) of Al Azhar’s “tradition”—“Every year Al Azhar graduated hundreds of missionaries who preached its fanatic doctrine throughout Asia, Africa, and the islands of the Pacific…” He goes on to comment, “…though Muhammad [the Muslim prophet] died in 632, I found that Al Azhar his preachments were considered fresh and applicable today—with absolutely no modifications.” Carlson then describes his meeting with rector of Al Azhar University Sheikh Shinawi, who preached Jihad—Holy War—against Zionism, and was a friend of the Jihadist, Nazi collaborating ex-Mufti of Jerusalem and Godfather of the Palestinian movement, Hajj Amin el-Husseini, who also found sanctuary in Cairo after WWII.»

Já no século XXI, um sociólogo egípcio lamentava, num apelo publicado em Julho de 2004, o facto das ancestrais doutrinas islâmicas da jihad e da subjugação dos infiéis sob a sharia ainda serem ensinadas em Al-Azhar e perguntava:

“What kind of thinking are we teaching our next generation, that it has the right to attack other countries in order to convert them to Islam?…And we wonder where terror comes from?”

Bostom prossegue analisando algumas manifestações do proverbial anti-semitismo muçulmano permanentemente veiculado em Al-Azhar, desta feita pela pena de Tantawi:

«[The] Koran describes the Jews with their own particular degenerate characteristics, i.e. killing the prophets of Allah [Koran 2:61/ 3:112], [and see Sheikh Saqr’s Koranic citations, above] corrupting His words by putting them in the wrong places, consuming the people’s wealth frivolously, refusal to distance themselves from the evil they do, and other ugly characteristics caused by their deep-rooted lasciviousness…only a minority of the Jews keep their word…[A]ll Jews are not the same. The good ones become Muslims [Koran3:113], the bad ones do not.»

A excelência académica de Tantawi foi reconhecida com a nomeação para o posto de Grande Iman de Al-Azhar, posto que mantém desde 2006, com cuja autoridade veio a proferir mais algumas pérolas de sabedoria islâmica, nomeadamente qualificando os judeus de inimigos de Alá e filhos de macacos e porcos e defendendo a legitimidade do seu homicídio através de pia prática de ataques suicidas. Para além da sabedoria que lhe é reconhecida nesta área tão peculiar do saber humano - na qual só encontra rivais, fora do mundo islâmico, entre os socialistas (sejam internacionalistas, sejam nacionalistas) - que é o anti-semitismo, Tantawi é também um reconhecido teórico da jihad, à qual apelou, no início de 2003, contra as tropas americanas no Iraque:

«The American aggression against Iraq is not acceptable to Islamic law, and to the [Shari’a] law; The Iraqi people must defend itself, its land, and its homeland with all means of defense at its disposal, because it is a Jihad that is permitted by Islamic law. Jihad is an obligation for every Muslim when Muslim countries are subject to aggression. The gates of Jihad are open until the Day of Judgment, and he who denies this is an infidel or one who abandons his religion. This is an obligation applying to the nation now, in order to respond to the aggression.»

Ao fim e ao cabo, Bostom acaba por reconhecer a veracidade das palavras de Obama. Com efeito, Al-Azhar é um farol para o mundo islâmico, mas pelas piores razões. Addendum: num artigo publicado na National Review, Alex Alexiev faz a seguinte declaração a propósito do contributo de Al-Azhar para a cultura e progresso egípcio: «Mubarak then appointed the mullahs of Al-Azhar as the sole arbiters of what books should be published in or imported into Egypt. Predictably, anything that does not meet their medieval criteria is being censored, while books that discuss how many angels could be recruited for a war against Israel (120 million) are encouraged.»

Guantanamo ainda está aberta

O fecho das instalações americanas para a detenção de combatentes inimigos situada na ilha cubana de Guantanamo é uma das promessas de Obama mais vezes reiterada, das mais populares - dentro e fora dos EUA - a qual, por razões de fé quase religiosa na palavra do presidente americano, muitos dão como cumprida - questão já aqui abordada em, pelo menos, três postais. Na verdade, o que Obama fez, logo no início do seu mandato, foi decretar o fecho das instalações prisionais conhecidas por Gitmo para Janeiro de 2010, período necessário para encontrar soluções quanto ao destino a dar aos detidos, o que se tem revelado mais complicado do que aqueles que se convenceram de que os detidos são todos inocentes, presos por engano, terão pensado. Para perceber melhor a história de Gitmo, os antecedentes, o contexto, a evolução, as contestações, as suspeitas, os inquéritos, os processos judiciais, as libertações, as técnicas avançadas de interrogação (enhanced interrogation techniques) - que alguns não hesitam designar tortura - e os seus resultados, as condições de detenção e o futuro das instalações, da jurisprudência e dos detidos, recomenda-se a leitura integral do artigo da autoria de Arthur Herman na Commentary Magazine., do qual aqui deixo alguns destaques, que acabam por constituir um grosseiro resumo: The Gitmo Myth and the Torture Canard

«On January 21, 2009, President Barack Obama issued his first executive order: He was closing the detention center at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba and calling a halt to the military commissions created in late 2001 to try terrorist suspects detained there. (...) Dana Priest of the Washington Post took to the paper’s front page to proclaim joyously that “with the stroke of his pen,” Obama had “effectively declared an end to the ‘war on terror,’ as President George W. Bush had defined it.” Then several strange things happened. Obama’s order “closing” Gitmo actually left it open for a year, (...) though Obama admitted privately it might have to stay open longer than that. Later, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that, far from being “the Bermuda Triangle of human rights” (...), Gitmo was in full compliance with the humane-treatment provisions of the Geneva Convention. Meanwhile, the military commissions (...),were only being suspended for 120 days, and (...) will be reinstated almost exactly as they were before. (...) (...) [W]hy, exactly, the pressure to close the prison facility has been so intense and long-lasting [?] [T]ake into consideration (...) the aggressive and unending efforts of a cadre of lawyers, activists, left-leaning Democrats in Congress, and civil libertarians against the facility, its purpose, its goal, and its existence. These efforts began even before it was opened, in November 2001, and continue to this day. The anti-Gitmo forces worked tirelessly to shape the public perception that Gitmo was the red-hot center of an aggressive policy approach that led the leftist financier George Soros to declare: “The biggest terrorist in the world is George W. Bush.” WHY GITMO? In October 2001, the United States invaded Afghanistan (...). Within weeks, the U.S. military found itself holding tens of thousands of prisoners, including foreign al-Qaeda fighters who had been training in terrorist camps in the Afghan hinterland. (...) (...) [T]he military captured more than 70,000 men and put every one through a rigorous screening process. Ten thousand were released immediately. By the time the military had completed its work, only 800 remained in custody. These were the ones they had deemed hard-core trained terrorists who could not be released without running the risk they would rejoin the battle. The question was what to do with them. From the beginning, the Department of Defense and its head, Donald Rumsfeld, were deeply reluctant to take on the job of detaining these prisoners who, unlike normal POWs, fought for no country, wore no uniforms, and had systematically broken the rules of war. (...) [T]hey were not automatically covered under the Geneva Convention. Deciding how they were to treated or tried posed immense legal difficulties (...). (...) Gitmo was (...) a detention facility set up in order to prevent “enemy combatants from continuing the fight against the US.Its goals were military and tactical, not juridical or penal. Still, the conditions under which these unconventional prisoners were to be held did involve questions. (...) Its goals were military and tactical, not juridical or penal. Still, the conditions under which these unconventional prisoners were to be held did involve questions. THE MEMOS (...) The prisoners in no way fit the standard of “lawful combatant” as defined by the Geneva Convention’s Common Article 3 and therefore could not automatically be accorded the treatment the Convention required. (...) [A]lthough that did not mean they could be treated in any way the Gitmo guards and commandant saw fit. There were other practical reasons for refusing to treat the Gitmo prisoners like German or Italian POWs in World War II (...) Al-Qaeda recruits are trained in the arts of conspiracy, assassination, and murder. A system of open barracks, as in a conventional POW camp, would allow detainees to organize plots, even rebellions, within the compounds (...), and to take vengeance on their own number who were suspected of confessing or cooperating with American authorities. Detention in separate cells, as in a conventional prison, seemed the only way to overcome this logistical nightmare. The rules on Gitmo detention and on interrogation constituted a valiant attempt to deal with an unprecedented legal situation. (...) ENTER STAGE LEFT When President Bush announced in November 2001 the establishment of the detention center and plans for military commissions to try cases, Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights was furious. (...) (...) In February 2002 Ratner filed his first petition for habeas corpus for a British-born Gitmo detainee named Shafiq Rasul (...). [T]he focus of Ratner and his allies was not torture or the interrogations at Gitmo. Instead, they worked to plant the idea in the public’s mind that most, if not all, of these inmates might be innocent victims, picked up on the battlefield by mistake. The inmates themselves were happy to oblige. Shafiq Rasul, for example, told Ratner and anyone who would listen that he was no terrorist. He was an innocent tourist whom the Taliban had abducted while he was traveling in Afghanistan, and that during the American invasion he had been forced to take up an AK-47 to use in self-defense. Rasul’s story and similar ones told by two other Gitmo captives born in the English town of Tipton, Ruhal Ahmed and Afiq Iqal (later known as the Tipton Three), became the centerpiece of Ratner’s campaign to open the gates at Gitmo. (...) (...) One of the first structures in the prison camp was a trailer for the International Commission for the Red Cross, which had full access to the detainees and collected mail to be sent to their relatives. (...) (...) No one had yet properly defined how Gitmo would function as both a detention and an interrogation facility. In addition, there were no rules on how to punish inmates who attacked their guards or otherwise violated camp rules. (...) To this day prisoners are not punished for their crimes or offenses, even when they attack guards or pelt them with feces. (...) The environment had grown so stale and hermetic that it became a breeding ground of rumor about unorthodox and bizarre interrogation tactics, including inmates who claimed they were being slapped, shouted at, or subjected to loud music; interrogators pretending to defecate on the Koran; and female interrogators sitting on detainees’ laps in order to humiliate them, or splashing them with red ink pretending it was menstrual blood. Every one of these was investigated and proved false, but the rumors were passed along by FBI interrogators (...). They seemed to verify the picture painted by Ratner and others that the facility was reeling out of control. THREE CATEGORIES (...) [T]he main problem was that Gitmo was proving an ineffective facility when it came to uncovering intelligence. (...) [T]he rules were stricter even than the Army field manual’s (...). Prisoners were allowed to defy their questioners and treat them with contempt (...). ABU GHRAIB the Gitmo facilities had no hidden basements or secret dungeons. Every aspect of prison life and handling of inmates happened in the open, with a senior commissioned officer on duty on every block, and a senior non-commissioned officer on every floor of every block around the clock. Gitmo’s resident “staff judge advocate was constantly on the lookout for torture or abuse,” (...). Every allegation of abuse by a detainee had to be checked, and then checked again. Officials opened Guantánamo Bay to regular tours by the media and members of Congress. “Guantánamo is the most transparent detention facility in the world,” (...). It is also the most inspected and investigated. The staff could show visitors the new facilities for prisoners’ recreation and prayer and point out that the inmates had Qur’ans in seventeen different languages, complete access to Red Cross officials, regular mail delivery, and a daily menu that many Americans would consider lavish. The biggest health danger at Gitmo to the inmates’ health was their steady weight gain on more than 4,000 calories a day. Some inmates nearly doubled their weight after arriving at the base. An internal Defense Department document completed in 2005 that came to be called the Church Report (because it was overseen by an admiral named Albert Church) pointed out that inmates were more likely to be injured in their intramural games than in handling by the jailers. (...) [I]n terms of accommodation to religious belief and case review boards, Gitmo actually exceeds Geneva Convention rules. At the end of Ramadan in 2002, the staff actually considered sacrificing a goat for the detainees, but decided not to for fear of earning the wrath of animal-rights groups. Designated areas for prayer and religious practice are the one place in Gitmo where inmates are left unsupervised. That is a concession never contemplated by Geneva Convention rules and one that officials admit is fraught with danger. Most detainees see their incarceration as one more way to carry out jihad by other means: attacks on guards are common, including spitting and throwing urine and feces. (...) Guards who retaliate are strictly disciplined; the inmates are not. (...) THE REPORTS As for the issue of abuse, a total of twelve separate investigations over fifteen months have left no lingering doubt: Gitmo is safer and less abusive than any detention facility anywhere in the United States, military or civilian. (...) (...) The political Left had by now seized the moral high ground on the issue, thanks to the visual images from Abu Ghraib. The media were prepared to believe that any inmate complaint of abuse was automatically valid, while any official denial (or when it was pointed out that al-Qaeda training manuals instructed captured agents to complain about torture and abuse) was deemed part of a cover-up. (...) A CHANGE OF POWER Virtually no one bothered to point out that “rendition” had been invented as an interrogation ploy during the Clinton presidency in 1995 by one of Bush’s most vociferous critics, former CIA operative Michael Scheuer. Indeed, Scheuer remains unashamed of his role in pioneering a way to deal with dangerous terrorists who fall outside the normal jurisdiction of the U.S. court system but who may have vital actionable intelligence requiring harsh interrogations that Americans would prefer not to do themselves or even witness. (...) [E]veryone knew the suspects who had been subjected to “rendition” were being tortured and in far more horrific ways than waterboarding. (...) It was precisely to avoid the kind of moral dilemma posed by rendition that Gitmo had been created in the first place (...) the Gitmo myth took hold. That myth had crystallized around two assertions: First, that Bush administration rules had made torture routine at Gitmo and elsewhere; and second, that the very existence of Gitmo was counterproductive to the war on terror and undermined our image abroad. (...) NOW WHAT So what will happen if detainees enter the criminal justice system inside the United States and end up being released? The record of those who have been released from Gitmo is not an encouraging one for anyone who claims they want to protect America from terrorists. By February 2006, 240 detainees had been let go from Gitmo (...). By March 2007, the total number had risen to 390. (...) (...) The Pentagon has confirmed that 18 former detainees have returned to the battlefield, with another 43 listed as “suspected” of going back to the fight, meaning final confirmation is all but impossible. One released detainee killed a judge in Afghanistan; another took over leadership of an al-Qaeda-linked radical group in Pakistan. Al-Shihiri, formerly Prisoner 732, was released from Gitmo in November 2007 after being in the compound nearly six years. He returned to Yemen, and today is the number-two man in al Qaeda’s branch there. Abdullah Salih al-Ajmi was transferred to Kuwait in 2005, then vanished into Syria, and was killed with two accomplices in a 2008 suicide bombing in Mosul, Iraq that also claimed the lives of 13 Iraqi policemen. Another former Afghani detainee, Abdullah Muhammad, was fitted with a modern prosthesis for his missing leg during his stay at Gitmo. He convinced his annual review board that he wasn’t a terrorist fanatic, and it turned him loose. Abdullah Muhammad is now being sought for involvement in the bombing of the Islamabad Marriott in 2006, and is still walking around on the artificial leg he was given by his Gitmo captors. It is unprecedented for a nation unilaterally to release enemy combatants during wartime, as the United States has done at Gitmo, and for obvious reasons. Nearly all the remaining Gitmo detainees are trained in the use of heavy weapons, mortars, bomb making, hostage taking, and psy-ops against their captors. They will pose a serious risk wherever they finally end up. (...)(...) In the end, at least some may end up being set free here. Obama’s new National Intelligence Director, Admiral Dennis Blair, has speculated that they might have to receive civilian housing, job training, and even government checks while living here. And what of Michael Ratner’s original clients, the so-called Tipton Three? They are now free in Britain. Two of them, Shafiq Rasul and Ruhal Ahmed, appeared on the BBC television program Lie Lab. Rasul refused to take a lie detector test on whether his stories about abuse at Gitmo were true, and Ahmed allowed that his earlier story of being an innocent tourist in Afghanistan before the American invasion was false. He admitted to having attended an al-Qaeda training camp, and being trained to use an AK-47 and other heavier weapons. However, Ahmed suffered no embarrassment for his belated disclosure. He is currently a spokesman for Amnesty International in the United Kingdom. THE UNWANTED ORPHAN (...) Who (...) could have predicted that in less than eight years, an American administration would be contemplating turning unrepentant terrorists loose on the street or contemplating putting those who incarcerated them on trial?(...) (...) The careful construction of this myth caused America to turn on itself in the midst of a still desperate struggle against Islamist terrorism. The consequences of this sea change in opinion may turn out to be measured not in political gains and losses by our major parties but in a revival of the fortunes of America’s foes.»

Governar ao centro

Segundo o famigerado entertainer, Hugo Chavez - que parece ter voltado ao activo depois do cancelamento ontem aqui aludido -, a governação do presidente Obama está bem encaminhada para ultrapassar pela esquerda o autor da análise e o seu mentor, o Eterno Fidel. De facto, com a redefinição do centro do espectro político cada vez mais à esquerda, só mesmo um irredutível comunista ou socialista (pequena diferença de grau) pode afirmar que Obama governa ao centro. Via American Thinker.

O burgesso

Mais um grande momento do mais inteligente, mais brilhante presidente de sempre. A língua inglesa é muito traiçoeira.

A night at the theater

O presidente Obama e a sua esposa foram a NY jantar e ao teatro, acompanhados por uma extensa comitiva de jornalistas (ao que parece, em NY todos os jornalistas estavam de folga). Para além dos três aviões para as ligações DC-NY e dos vários helicópteros envolvidos nos transfers, cortes de trânsito perturbaram a vida dos nova-iorquinos. No que diz respeito à conta, as estimativas variam entre os 24000 e os 73000 USD. Só me ocorre uma expressão: novo-riquismo. O porta-voz da administração teve dificuldades em lidar com uma pergunta que um jornalista (provavelmente fascista, no mínimo racista) teve o atrevimento de colocar:

Boca (grande) em cabeça (semi-oca)

Em mais uma acção de campanha eleitoral com vista às eleições presidenciais, o presidente Obama deslocou-se a uma hamburgueria para almoçar, acompanhado por outros membros do seu gabinete e do inevitável séquito jornalístico. Durante o informal almoço, o presidente, em permanente exercício de funções, aproveitou para se informar sobre as funções de um dos comensais, seus subalternos, o qual, com evidente embaraço, tentou evitar explicar que trabalhava com informação mais ou menos confidencial, coisas sobre as quais não convém falar frente a câmaras de televisão. Este episódio revela o nível de amadorismo do presidente no desempenho das suas funções e os riscos que daí podem advir para a segurança dos EUA e do mundo, considerando que ameaças como a norte-coreana e, sobretudo, a iraniana são globais. Via American Thinker Blog.

Progressos também no golf

Progressos também no golf é o mínimo que se pode esperar de uma actividade que merece tanto empenho da parte do presidente Obama, ao ponto de lhe dedicar quatro horas de um dia útil, ainda para mais o dia em que a Coreia do Norte procedeu a mais um teste nuclear ao arrepio das deliberações das Nações Unidas (mostrando, aliás, o pouco valor que os estados-pária lhe reconhecem, enquanto os estados ocidentais a ela se submetem), além disso o Memorial Day, no qual os EUA recordam os seus mortos em combate, num gesto de desprezo pelos militares (depois de tentar fazer os militares pagar do seu próprio bolso, através de seguros de saúde, os cuidados necessários para a lidar com problemas de saúde adquiridos em serviço, plano que não concretizou perante uma vaga de oposição que atravessou o espectro partidário). Fiel, ainda assim, às suas obrigações, o presidente deu o exemplo cumprindo a recomendação que fizera aos seus concidadãos: às 15:00h fez uma pausa, entre duas pancadas, para um momento de oração silenciosa.

O bobo

Haverá sinal maior de decadência que entregar a governação do reino ao bobo? Via Hot Air. Addendum: também via Hot Air, outra anedota, não tão engraçada porque as suas eventuais consequências podem ser mais trágicas.

"I'm making progress on the bowling"

Ainda bem que está a progredir em alguma coisa; ficamos todos muito mais descansados. E ficamos também com uma noção do que são as prioridades: com apenas um dos 17 lugares no departamento do Tesouro preenchidos, arranja-se tempo para uma visita ao Jay Leno. E ficamos também a conhecer uma diferença: “You know what the difference is between a hockey mom and a Special Olympics hockey mom?” Via Hot Air e The Raving Theist.