A desastrada e desastrosa política de norte-americana de apaziguamento do islão

Amplify’d from pajamasmedia.com

The U.S. Government’s Failed History of Muslim Outreach Since 9/11 It is too terrible to contemplate how many more lives may eventually be sacrificed before our elected officials decide to reverse course. September 11, 2011 - 11:15 am - by Patrick Poole

When President Obama hosted his annual iftar dinner in August to commemorate Ramadan, the list of invitees published by the White House was curiously missing the names of several attendees — all of whom are top leaders of organizations known to be purveyors of jihadist ideology. But it was not like they had crashed the party. One of the unlisted, Mohamed Magid, head of the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Islamic Society of North America, was photographed by Reuters sitting at the front table only a few feet from the president as he spoke.

This was just the most recent episode in the federal government’s disastrous attempts at outreach to the Muslim community since the 9/11 attacks. With the release of President Obama’s new strategic plan to combat “violent extremism” by expanding outreach to these same terror-tied groups, the present administration seems intent on compounding the problems wrought by its predecessors.

Misguided outreach activities began long before 9/11, with the best example being the case of Abdurahman Alamoudi.

Alamoudi was the conduit through which much of the U.S. government’s outreach was pursued following the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Not only was he asked by the Clinton administration to help train and certify all Muslim military chaplains, his organization being the first to do so, but he also was appointed by the State Department in 1997 as a goodwill ambassador to the Middle East, making six taxpayer-funded trips. It is fair to say that during this period, Alamoudi was the most prominent and politically connected Muslim leader in America.

As we now know, Alamoudi was indicted in October 2003 for moving money on behalf of Libyan intelligence in an assassination plot targeting Saudi Prince (now King) Abdullah. The U.S. government has admitted that at the time he was being courted by Democrats and Republicans alike, he was a major fundraiser for al-Qaeda.

However, it is not as if the U.S. government was unaware of Alamoudi’s attachments. As far back as 1993, an informant told the FBI that Alamoudi was funneling regular payments from Osama bin Laden to Omar Abdel Rahman, the “blind sheikh” who was convicted of authorizing terror attacks against New York landmarks. In March 1996, Alamoudi’s association with Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook was exposed in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. Two years later, the State Department came under fire by the New York Post for inviting Alamoudi to official events despite his known remarks in support of terrorism and terrorist leaders.

When President Bush took office, Alamoudi was quickly courted by the new administration. In June 2001, the Jerusalem Post reported that Alamoudi was going to be part of a White House meeting with Vice President Cheney despite the fact that Alamoudi was known to have attended a terror confab in Beirut earlier that year featuring representatives from virtually every major Islamic terrorist organization in the world, including al-Qaeda.

Yet just days after the 9/11 attacks, Alamoudi was one of the Muslim leaders asked to appear with President Bush at the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C. That same week, one of Alamoudi’s close associates, Muzammil Siddiqi, was asked to deliver an Islamic prayer and to represent the entire Muslim-American community at the national prayer service mourning the fallen.

The inclusion of Alamoudi and Siddiqi at the post-9/11 events was highly criticized, especially because Alamoudi had been videotaped in October 2000, as noted by the Los Angeles Times, expressing his support for Hamas and Hezbollah at a rally held just steps from the White House. At that same demonstration, Siddiqi accused the U.S. of responsibility for the plight of the Palestinians and warned that “the wrath of God will come.” One former Secret Service agent told Fox News that “the intelligence community has known for some time the association of Dr. Muzammil Siddiqi and Mr. Alamoudi and their association with terrorist organizations.”

The decision to continue doing business with Alamoudi and others like him was just one of many blunders made by the U.S. government in its eagerness to conduct Muslim outreach in the wake of 9/11.

Most embarrassing of all, one of the first Muslim leaders to whom the government turned after the attacks was none other than Anwar al-Awlaki, the al-Qaeda cleric who was in direct contact with at least three of the 9/11 hijackers and is currently on the CIA’s kill-or-capture list. Read more at pajamasmedia.com

 

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Obama apela à denúncia orwelliana

Desespero?

Amplify’d from townhall.com

AttackWatch.com is the Administration's Latest Propaganda Arm

President Obama's official re-election campaign has set up a website ostensibly to defend him against false attacks, but its obvious purpose is to smear Republicans and propagandize. What could be more shameless??

Jim Messina, Obama's re-election campaign manager, in a fundraising email announcing the website, said: "Forming the first line of defense against a barrage of misinformation won't be easy. Our success will depend on a team of researchers and writers to stay on the lookout for false claims about the President and his record, bring you the facts, and hold our opposition accountable."?

Does any rational person believe these people anymore? They trade in lies and misinformation, and the only chance they have to re-elect Obama -- and it's still slim -- is to grossly distort Obama's record and fabricate fantasies about his opposition.?        Read more at townhall.com

 

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Egipto: jornalistas ocidentais atacados pela turba

Por que razão os jornalistas ocidentais não dão conta do ataque de turbas islâmicas aos seus colegas? Qual é a sua missão? Dar notícias ou divulgar informação que dê uma boa imagem da «primavera árabe» e reter a informação que expõe o seu lado negro e incompreensível para quem é ignorante do islão?

Amplify’d from www.amnation.com

CNN and PBS reporters mobbed, almost killed, by crowd in Cairo

Based on its url, the article was posted last Saturday, September 10, the same day as the incident. Has anyone heard about it in the major media? Seems our guardians are still keeping to a minimum the reporting of any untoward facts about Muslims and what happens when Muslims are free, free! Among the reporters who narrowly escaped serious injury or death was Margaret Warner of The News Hour. Do you believe, after the near-killing of Lara Logan last February, that Western media would send a mousy little female like Warner into the maelstrom of Muslim Egypt? Of course you believe it. Female equality uber alles. Female equality unto death. CNN reports: Angry crowd turns on journalists reporting embassy attack in Egypt Cairo--An angry crowd lingering near the Israeli embassy in Cairo after an attack on the building a day earlier turned on journalists reporting the incident Saturday, accusing at least one of being an Israeli spy. As a CNN crew filmed the embassy from across the street, another crew from American public television--led by Egyptian television producer Dina Amer--approached the building. The crew's Russian cameraman was preparing to film the embassy when a woman in the crowd began hurling insults at the TV team, Amer said. "There was this older lady who decided to follow me and rally people against me," Amer recalled. "She said 'you're a spy working with the Americans.' Then they swarmed me and I was a target." A growing crowd surrounded Amer and her colleagues, as they tried to leave the scene. Mohamed Fadel Fahmy, a producer working for CNN, rushed to help escort Amer through the angry crowd. But suddenly the two reporters were pinned against the railing of an overpass by young men who were accusing Amer of being an Israeli spy. Yelling "I'm Egyptian," Fahmy managed to pull Amer another 10 meters down the road, until the pressure from the mob overwhelmed the pair. Amer screamed as she and Fahmy were knocked to the ground and the crowd started to trample them. Other CNN journalists tried to reach in to help, but were pushed back by a wall of angry men. Fahmy lay on top of Amer, shielding her with his body. "I was thinking, how powerless I was because there was no police to save us," Fahmy said. "I was worried that they were going to rape her." At that moment, a student bystander named Mohammed el Banna called out to the journalists and pointed out a nearby car. Somehow, Fahmy managed to carry Amer to the open door of the public television crew's car, where two of her female colleagues were waiting just a few feet away. The mob pounded on the windows and tried to reach into the vehicle as the panicked reporters fumbled and struggled to get behind the steering wheel. When Margaret Warner, a correspondent with the PBS program "Newshour" managed to get the vehicle moving away from the crowd, men threw stones at the departing vehicle. Amer had few words to describe the terrifying ordeal. "They were animals," she said. Other Egyptian journalists told CNN they were also attacked Saturday while trying to report near the Israeli embassy. Ahmed Aleiba, a correspondent with Egyptian state television, said he was pursued by civilians and soldiers. "I had to run because obviously they were targeting journalists," Aleiba said in a phone call with CNN. "They attacked two other TV crews." "I was in the car getting ready to film. A soldier knocked on the window with his stick and said 'if you don't leave by midnight your car will be destroyed,"" said Farah Saafan, a video journalist with the English-language newspaper Daily News Egypt. Journalists have been targeted before in Cairo. On February 2, dozens of journalists of different nationalities were beaten and pursued around the city while trying to report on pro-Mubarak demonstrations. The day descended into one of brutal street violence, as pro-regime supporters backed by men on horses and camels attacked opposition demonstrators on what became known as the "Battle of the Camel." And CBS News correspondent Lara Logan suffered a brutal sexual assault in Tahrir Square while covering the celebrations that followed former President Hosni Mubarak's resignation on February 11. On Saturday, as some journalists ran for their lives from the Israeli Embassy, the interim government was holding crisis talks with Egypt's ruling military council and top intelligence chief. The emergency session concluded with a pledge to honor Egypt's international treaties and defend foreign embassies. The government also announced plans to re-activate the country's 30-year-old emergency law. Application of the law had lapsed since the overthrow of Mubarak, according to a senior official in the National Security Directorate, who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity. One of the five measures announced after Saturday's crisis talks calls on authorities to make "media and political powers accountable for inciting security lapses." "It's obvious that there is some sort of plan leading to military rule in this country," warned Egyptian state TV's Aleiba. "The next step will be martial law." Read more at www.amnation.com

 

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Jihad na Tailândia

A matar infiéis desde 622.

Amplify’d from www.jihadwatch.org

"Wounded troops shot dead after bomb in Thai south," from Agence France-Presse, September 15:

Five soldiers were killed after suspected insurgents opened fire on those injured in a roadside bombing in Thailand's restive deep south on Thursday, police said. The blast targeted an army truck carrying six troops in Pattani province, one of three provinces in the Muslim-majority deep south where a seven-year rebellion has claimed thousands of lives.

Police said all five of the dead had suffered injuries in the explosion, but had also been shot in the head after apparently being dragged from the wreckage. One soldier remains in a critical condition.

Around 4,800 people have been killed in near-daily attacks since shadowy rebels launched an uprising in early 2004, according to the latest figures from Deep South Watch, an independent research group that monitors the conflict.

The organisation has said it has seen a higher frequency of attacks with a greater intensity of violence in recent months, with authorities and both Buddhist and Muslim civilians targeted.

The Thai government on Tuesday extended emergency rule in the region, which borders Malaysia. Read more at www.jihadwatch.org

 

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Canadá: mulher mata filho recém-nascido e apanha 4 anos de pena suspensa

Amplify’d from pajamasmedia.com

Government-sanctioned child sacrifice returns to the Western hemisphere.

A 1996 exhibit in Washington DC featured the remains of an Incan child sacrifice.

The title isn’t fair — in Canada infanticide is a serious crime that can land you a tough five year sentence. That’s five years maximum, by the way. After all, it’s only killing a baby, nothing people need to really be punished for doing.

People in Canada who think killing an infant is the act of a morally bankrupt monster who deserves more time than the average murderer are getting another kick in the teeth, courtesy of Judge Joanne Veit. She let a woman convicted of murdering her newborn baby then throwing the body over her neighbor’s backyard fence walk out of court with a suspended sentence and probation.

According to Veit the murderess is the victim:

Queen’s Bench Justice Joanne Veit rejected the Crown’s call for a four-year prison term — which she described as “essentially” seeking the maximum five-year punishment when taking into account the time Effert has already spent behind bars and under strict bail conditions. Based on the fact infanticide has not been struck from the Criminal Code and it has no minimum penalty, Veit said she feels Canadians “understand, accept and sympathize with the onerous demands pregnancy and childbirth exact from mothers, especially mothers without support. “Naturally, Canadians are grieved by an infant’s death, especially at the hands of the infant’s mother, but Canadians also grieve for the mother,” said Veit.

I’m sure. The mother in question is Katrina Effert. In 2005, she gave birth to the child alone in her parent’s basement and when the baby started to cry, she strangled the boy with a pair of thong underwear and threw his body into her neighbor’s yard. When police investigated after finding the boy’s body, she initially claimed she was a virgin, but when caught in that lie she told cops she had given the baby to her boyfriend.

She strangled her newborn baby, threw the body into her neighbor’s yard, and then tried to frame her boyfriend for the murder. She did all this because, at 19, she was hiding her pregnancy from her mother.

During her first trial her behavior — specifically her attempts to cover up the crime and frame an innocent man — was used by prosecutors to show this wasn’t “infanticide” but murder. In Canada, infanticide is assumed to be the product of a temporary mental illness – brought on by having a baby or by that mind-searing horror we call lactation. In Canada a woman commits infanticide if she murders a newborn before she has “recovered” from the effects of child birth, a process billions of women were able to handle for millions of years without losing their sanity.

In that first trial, Effert was sentenced to life in prison. But her defense lawyers appealed and we have this ruling, in which a judge very cavalierly suggests that Canadians should be grieving for the mother as well as for the helpless child who was murdered with a pair of thong panties and dumped like a bag of garbage into some unsuspecting neighbor’s backyard. Obviously many people in the pro-life movement see this as the natural progression of a culture that wholeheartedly accepts the most liberal positions on abortion. And they may have a point:

Pro-life advocates have warned for years that widespread acceptance of abortion will open the door to greatersocietal acceptance of infanticide, beginning with the euthanizing of disabled newborns.  Infanticide proponent Peter Singer, a top ethicist at Princeton University, has said, for example, “there is no sharp distinction between the foetus and the newborn baby.” Though he once was considered to be on the radical fringe, Singer’s views are becoming more mainstream.  For example, the world’s most prestigious bioethics journal, The Hastings Center Report, published in 2008 an enthusiastic defense of the Netherlands’ practice of euthanizing newborns.

However, it is a classic case of putting the cart before the horse to assume that acceptance of abortion is the driving factor in the culture of death Canada and the United States have both developed over the years. Canada’s acceptance of late-term abortions is a symptom of a much deeper problem, one that also leads to a criminal justice system that gives women who murder newborns slaps on the wrist.

Leftism sanctions and encourages criminality by changing societal views of criminals and victims. We see this clearly when Veit speaks of the onerousness of childbirth, as if the child is a parasite erupting from the womb of some innocent victim in a scene slightly less gory than the chest bursting dinner scene in Alien. Meanwhile, Veit presumes to speak for all Canadians when she claims they grieve for Effert, the woman who strangled a baby and then tried to frame an innocent man for the murder.

Collectivist ideology sees people as essentially interchangeable; they do not accept the idea that a child’s life is more precious than an adult’s. The Western leftist tradition also sees all people as victims and criminality as an expression not of moral weakness or lack of character, but of frustration and lack of opportunity. Canada, with its much beloved welfare state and universal health care, still wasn’t doing enough for poor Katrina Effert and that’s why she killed her son. It has nothing to do with selfishness, immorality, or evil.

For the left, “income inequality” causes crime and the criminal is actually a victim of an unfair and unjust system created by the only true evil in the world: Western civilization. More than 5,000 years of philosophy and moral tradition has led to the West being (until recently) the light in a benighted world. In a little less than 200 years, Karl Marx and his spiritual heirs have overturned those traditions and now we are a people who slap the wrists of child murderers while supposedly grieving for them. Now we blame the newborn for his murder by insinuating that his birth was such an ordeal it literally drove the mother mad.

About eight years ago I took a class in Meso-American art with an archeologist who had two decades in the field under his belt. One of the things I learned was that in some of those famous pyramid temples each corner had a sacrificed infant placed under the foundation. The first Europeans to come into contact with the Aztecs were rightly disgusted by people who killed their own children in religious ceremonies. Now their descendants suspend the sentences of child killers who didn’t want to get in trouble with their parents.

Rob Taylor blogs about crime, culture and politics at Greenville Dragnet. Read more at pajamasmedia.com

 

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Palestina judenrein

Qual seria a reacção se um embaixador israelita defende-se a expulsão dos árabes de Israel, para fortalecer a identidade nacional?

Amplify’d from www.jihadwatch.org

"Palestinian ambassador reiterates call for a Jew-free Palestinian state," by Jamie Weinstein for The Daily Caller, September 13

During a breakfast briefing hosted by the Christian Science Monitor on Tuesday, Palestinian Ambassador to the United States Maen Rashid Areikat reiterated his call to create a Jew-free Palestinian state. “Well, I personally still believe that as a first step we need to be totally separated, and we can contemplate these issues in the future,” he said when asked by The Daily Caller if he could imagine a Jew being elected mayor of the Palestinian city of Ramallah in a future independent Palestinian state. “But after the experience of 44 years of military occupation and all the conflict and friction, I think it will be in the best interests of the two peoples to be separated first.” Last year, Areikat made a similar statement during an interview with Tablet magazine. Asked whether it would be neccessary to transfer and remove “every Jew” from a future Palestinian state, Areikat responded “absolutely.” “I’m not saying to transfer every Jew, I’m saying transfer Jews who, after an agreement with Israel, fall under the jurisdiction of a Palestinian state,” he said then. “I think this is a very necessary step, before we can allow the two states to somehow develop their separate national identities, and then maybe open up the doors for all kinds of cultural, social, political, economic exchanges, that freedom of movement of both citizens of Israelis and Palestinians from one area to another. You know you have to think of the day after.”... Read more at www.jihadwatch.org

 

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Começa julgamento do «Jihadista das Cuecas»

Alguém se lembra do zeloso muçulmano que tentou destruir um avião detonando explosivos escondidos nas cuecas no dia de Natal de 2009?

Amplify’d from www.jihadwatch.org

"Underwear bomber shouts 'Osama's alive' as he enters court during jury selection," by Tresa Baldas and David Ashenfelter for the Detroit Free Press, September 14:

The 24-year-old Nigerian student who is accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound jetliner on Christmas Day 2009 showed up for jury selection today in a foul mood. “Osama’s alive,” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab shouted as he entered a courtroom in Detroit this morning. “I’m forced to wear prison clothes.” Abdulmutallab, wearing khaki prison pants, a white t-shirt and black skull cap, refused to stand when U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds, who was another room with prospective jurors, asked him to stand with others in her courtroom several floors away. While Edmunds briefed jurors about the allegations against him Abdulmutallab hollered “jihad” and stared at the ceiling when she told jurors about the alleged plot to blow up the plane with a bomb in his underware [sic]. During most of the 25-minute jury instruction, Abdulmutallab sat at the defense table with his standby lawyer, Anthony Chambers, leaning back in his chair with his hands clasped under his chin. At one point, he put his foot on the defense table. Federal marshals stood over him while he misbehaved. The prospective jurors could observe his antics on a two-way closed circuit television monitor. [...] After instructing the jury and leaving them to fill out a questionnaire, Edmunds planned to return to her courtroom to hear Abdulmutallab – who is representing himself ­– argue for his release, claiming he’s being unlawfully detailed [sic] by the U.S. government, and that he’s been subjected to excessive force while being held at the federal prison in Milan. In court documents filed last month, Abdulmutallab asked the court to release him from prison, arguing that "all Muslims should only be ruled by the law of the Quran." But Edmunds denied his request.[...]

Au­thor­ities have said that Abdulmutallab is an al-Qaida op­erative who trained in Yemen for the sui­cide mis­sion, which was foiled when a pas­sen­ger subdued Abdulmutallab. He is fac­ing nu­mer­ous crim­inal charges, including con­spir­acy to commit terror­ism, and faces life in prison if convicted. In September, Abdulmutallab fired his govern­ment-ap­pointed lawyers and suggested that he wanted to plead guilty to some charges. He has said noth­ing about a plea since. Read more at www.jihadwatch.org

 

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«Sionistas responsáveis pelas duas grandes guerras»

Que pena estas iluminadoras palavras não terem sido pronunciadas na entrevista à RTP. Que orgulho sentiria a jornalista e os responsáveis da estação por serem veículo destas revelações tão esclarecedoras.

Amplify’d from www.jihadwatch.org

"Ahmadinejad: Zionists started both world wars," by Yitzhak Benhorin for YNet News, September 14: WASHINGTON – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused Israel of perpetuating terror, and blamed the "Zionist regime" for starting both the first and second world wars. "The Zionist regime is always doing the same thing. They destroy people’s homes and raze them to the ground," Ahmadinejad told the Washington Post on Tuesday. "They have created a few major wars. They continue to assassinate and terrorize people; they continue their policy of coercion against other nations, including Iran."

Dubbing Zionism "A dreadful party, a feared party," Ahmadinejad claimed that the movement "was behind the First World War and the Second World War. Whenever there is a conflict or war — this party is behind it."... Read more at www.jihadwatch.org

 

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Conclusões a tirar da tomada da embaixada israelita no Egipto

Amplify’d from www.jpost.com

We are able to consider the lessons of the weekend’s mob assault on the Israeli embassy in Cairo because the six Israeli security officers who were on the brink of being slaughtered were rescued at the last moment and spirited out of the country. If the Egyptian commandos hadn’t arrived on the scene at the last moment, the situation would have been too explosive for a sober-minded assessment of the rapidly deteriorating situation

Any assessment of the weekend’s events must begin by recounting a few key aspects of the assault. First, this was the second mob attack on the embassy in so many weeks. During the first assault, an Egyptian rioter scaled the 20-story building where the embassy is housed, tore down the Israeli flag, and threw it to the frenzied mob below which swiftly burned it. Rather than being arrested for the crime of assaulting a foreign embassy, the rioter was embraced as a hero by Egypt’s military regime. The governor of Giza awarded him an apartment and a job.

Second, for six hours after the assault on the embassy began on Friday evening, Israel’s leaders tried desperately to contact the leaders of the Egyptian military junta to request their intercession on behalf of the trapped security officers.

Field Marshal Muhammad Tantawi refused to speak with either Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu or Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

Third, Egyptians authorities refused to intervene to save the lives of the Israeli security officers until after the Americans intervened directly on their behalf.

That is, Israel’s entreaties, and Egypt’s international legal obligations were insufficient to move the Egyptian authorities to act to save the embassy personnel from the mob. Only the apparent threat of direct US action against Egypt convinced them to act.

The behavior of the Egyptian mob and military junta alike served as a wake-up call for two key constituencies.

Until last weekend, both the Israeli Left and the US foreign policy establishment believed the situation in Egypt was not significantly worse than it had been under deposed president Hosni Mubarak.

Most Israelis awoke to the fact that Israel’s border with Egypt is no longer a peaceful one three weeks ago. After the Egyptian-Palestinian terror cell infiltrated Israel from Sinai on August 18 and massacred eight Israelis on the highway to Eilat, most Israelis recognized that relations with Egypt had been ruptured.

As for the Americans, unlike Israel, American foreign policy hands from across the conservative- liberal divide supported the mob in Tahrir Square that called for Mubarak’s overthrow. The Americans hailed Mubarak’s demise as a triumph of liberal democratic forces in the Arab world. But in the aftermath of the weekend’s assault on the embassy, voices from across the political spectrum in the US are calling for a reassessment of US relations with Egypt.

For his part, Obama’s willingness to intervene on behalf of the besieged security guards at the embassy was probably not divorced from his assessment of the political fallout likely to ensue from the slaughter of Israeli embassy guards by the Egyptian mob.

In such an event, the American public would immediately equate Obama’s support for the “democratic, revolutionary” mob against longstanding US ally Mubarak with his predecessor Jimmy Carter’s support for the “democratic, revolutionary” Iranian mob against the US-allied Shah of Iran in 1979.

The fact that Obama recognizes the political significance of the developments in Egypt signals that he too may be willing to consider adopting a different policy towards Egypt in the months to come.

In the absence of a reassessment of the situation in Egypt

, the chance of anyone adopting rational policies towards the strongest Arab state would remain small.

Any rational policy must be based on an accurate assessment of the dynamics of the post- Mubarak political situation. Specifically, is the junta part of the mob or is it simply unable or unwilling to manage it? Apparently it is a bit of both.

Like its treatment of the rioter who tore the Israeli flag from the embassy building two weeks ago, the regime’s arrest in June of the dual Israeli- American citizen ` on trumped-up espionage charges is an example of the junta acting as part of the mob.

On the other hand, the regime’s decision to try Mubarak and his sons in contravention of Tantawi’s solemn pledge to Mubarak is an indication that Tantawi and his generals are led by the mob.

the US’s ultimate success in forcing the junta to rescue the Israelis trapped at the embassy demonstrates that the US still has significant leverage against Egypt. When it is sufficiently adamant, Washington can force the junta change its behavior.

It is not clear how much this leverage is dependent on continued US financial and military assistance to Egypt. Obviously, an assessment of its significance should guide any US consideration of reducing or cutting off that aid.

As for Israel, the mob’s ability to determine the course of events in Egypt and the junta’s refusal to stand up to the mob on Israel’s behalf is a strong indication that the peace treaty is doomed. After the junta stood back and allowed the mob to storm the embassy, it is impossible to believe the junta will defy the mob’s demand to abrogate the treaty.

The fact that the treaty is doomed doesn’t mean that Israel will immediately find itself at war with Egypt – although the prospect can no longer be ruled out. The US’s continued leverage against the regime – like NATO’s leverage against Turkey – may very well convince the Egyptians to maintain a ceasefire with Israel.

On the other hand, US leverage may end after November’s elections. The Muslim Brotherhood and its allies are expected to win a parliamentary majority and the presidency.

Given the explosiveness of the situation, it is imperative that the US not repeat its rush to action from January where without considering the consequences of its actions, Washington hurriedly sided with the Tahrir Square mob against Mubarak. The US shouldn’t support elections or oppose them. It shouldn’t cut off aid or increase it. It shouldn’t condemn the junta or embrace it.

The Americans should simply monitor the situation and prepare for all contingencies.

As for Israel, it must prepare for the possibility of war. It must increase the size of the IDF by adding a division to the Southern Command. It must train for desert warfare. It must expand the Navy.

Thankfully, all Israeli personnel were safely evacuated from Cairo. But this happy circumstance must not blind anyone to the dangers mounting in Egypt. Read more at www.jpost.com

 

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Cristãos abandonam cristãos do mundo islâmico

Destaque:
«I am not a Catholic – indeed, I am not even a believer (...). But in recent years it has become increasingly difficult not to notice a failing at the heart of the Catholic – indeed the whole Christian – world’s outlook. Years of intimidation, thuggery and violence have succeeded in silencing criticism not only of Islam but of violence committed in the name of Islam against Christians. This now amounts to one of the great moral failings of our time.»

Amplify’d from www.catholicherald.co.uk

It is five years now since Pope Benedict gave his celebrated address at Regensburg on faith and reason. Deeply thought and beautifully expressed, it is largely remembered for neither of these things. Rather, it is remembered for a single line in which Pope Benedict quoted a 14th-century Byzantine emperor making a disobliging remark about the way in which Islam is spread by violence.

Benedict XVI did not say that he agreed with the line. Indeed, he went out of his way before quoting it to distance himself from it, remarking, among other things, on its “brusqueness”. But this was to no avail.

Around the world, political and religious leaders in Muslim majority countries demanded apologies and threatened repercussions. More striking was the impact on the ground. Across what President Obama calls “the Muslim world”, there were protests and attacks against Christians and Christian sites. In the Palestinian areas and elsewhere churches were attacked and Christians targeted. In the Somali capital, Mogadishu, an Italian nun was shot and killed in an Islamist ambush at a hospital.

By 2006, so soon after the Danish cartoons controversy, the world had got used to this. And it expected the inevitable stand-down. Within days the Pope was effectively forced to issue an unprecedented apology.

Culturally and civilisationally, the aftermath of Regensburg was a far greater disaster than the mass-murder in New York and Washington 10 years ago this same month. Such successful intimidation of the head of the Catholic Church by elements of the Islamic faith has had a palpable effect, all but silencing the rightful concern of Christians for their co-religionists.

I am not a Catholic – indeed, I am not even a believer– but I have great respect for the current Pope and for many activities of the Catholic Church worldwide. But in recent years it has become increasingly difficult not to notice a failing at the heart of the Catholic – indeed the whole Christian – world’s outlook. Years of intimidation, thuggery and violence have succeeded in silencing criticism not only of Islam but of violence committed in the name of Islam against Christians. This now amounts to one of the great moral failings of our time.

Not a week, in fact not a day, goes by when Christians are not somewhere in the world the victims of Islamist violence. You can pluck a week, any week, and the story is the same: burnings, lootings, rapes, murders. Every one of the most degrading and terrifying things that one group of people can perform on another is performed by Islamists against Christians.

At the very start of this year, in the once-wonderful city of Alexandria, the Egyptian Coptic Christian community were the target of a massive car bomb placed outside their church as they left New Year’s Eve Mass. Twenty-three worshippers were killed and almost 100 injured.

At Easter this year it was once again Christians in Iraq who were targeted. This time it was a bomb at the Catholic church of the Sacred Heart in Baghdad. Every day the same, or similar, stories occur. Persecution of Christians is so routine that in much of the western press it rarely even appears as “News in Brief” material.

Just this month so far, the Iranian authorities finally released a Christian they have had in detention for 359 days. His “crime”? He was accused of spreading Christianity and of having ties with Christian organisations. As Muslim leaders around the world continue to campaign at the United Nations and elsewhere to try to make illegal – and punishable – any criticism of Islam, restrictions of the rights of Christians continue unnoticed. The government of Kazakhstan is this month preparing to introduce a new law further limiting the rights of Christians.

In other countries often described as “allies” of this one, the rights of Christians are already formally and informally deemed of no significance. Just a few days ago two Pakistani Christians were beaten with iron rods and left for dead by a group of young Muslim men because they refused to convert to Islam. As in many other countries, Christians in Pakistan are regularly threatened with death for so-called “apostasy” or “blasphemy”. Last month a Christian girl was reportedly tortured and sexually abused after refusing to convert, while a 38-year-old Christian was shot dead in a Christian suburb.

Across the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and much of Africa, wherever Christians are in a minority and Muslims in a majority, Christians are subjected to oppression, murder and violence. In Somalia the terrorist group al-Shabaab is attempting to carry out a genocide against the Christians of Somalia. Similar efforts are ongoing in Nigeria and elsewhere. In other places the effort to “religiously cleanse” whole areas of Christians is more subtle. In Bethlehem the local Christian community has been decimated. Not by the Israelis, but by Palestinian Muslims. Since the Palestinian Authority took control of Bethlehem 16 years ago the local Christians have gone from a majority to a minority community. It is a familiar pattern. Around the region I have spoken to many of these victims. I have heard their stories and seen their tears. And the same question always occurs. The world is often unconcerned. But why are their fellow Christians not doing anything?

There are of course some Christian organisations – notably the wonderful Barnabas Fund – which persist in trying to raise awareness and assist persecuted Christians. But the cause is one of the most unpopular and unacknowledged of our day.

After the bombing in Alexandria at New Year, tenuously, carefully, the Pope expressed concern not only for the Copts of Egypt, but also for the Muslims of Egypt. From the leading imam of Egypt this drew a swift response. The Pope was accused of “bias” and “unacceptable interference in the affairs of Egypt”.

This has become one of the librettos of our time. And it is high time that it changed. Read more at www.catholicherald.co.uk

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1ctb5

A Guerra Fria e a Guerra contra o supremacismo islâmico

Amplify’d from www.nationalreview.com

One unfortunate current in the commemorations of the tenth year after 9/11 has been a widely promoted narrative that we lashed out, overreacted, and — through Afghanistan, Iraq, and the war on terror — not only lost our post-9/11 unity and “civility,” but supposedly alienated most of the world while playing into the hands of al-Qaeda.

In truth, the first ten years of the war on terror in eerie fashion resemble the first decade of the Cold War, with all the familiar actors making a return. Then too the Henry Wallace/Adlai Stevenson liberal wing of the Democratic party insisted that we had overreacted to the fear of Communism, clumsily demonized our long-suffering WWII ally Russia, missed out in reaching out to a naturally receptive, but unfortunately alienated Mao’s new China, and in general had thrown away the good feeling and national unity following the end of World War II by committing Americans to a costly, endless, mindless and amorphous war against global Communism while fostering a witch hunt at home. To suggest that Chinese and Russian Communism had slaughtered millions of their own, and might easily do so again beyond their borders, was as blasphemous then as is now the warning about the innate evil of radical Islamism and the dangers of a 21st-century existential enemy that does not require conventional bombers, guided missiles, tanks, and huge armies to kill tens of thousands.

How familiar all that sounds in the current context of decrying our war on radical Islamic terrorism, and how instructive in our present difficulties to marshal the will and sustained sense of purpose are those early Cold War years. And, as in the case of the final implosion of the Soviet-led Communist world, so too the effort to neutralize radical Islamists will take a long time and be constantly caricatured—until the personas of a ranting bin Laden and Dr. Zawahiri are rendered as ridiculous to history as are today the old Communist apparatchiks of yesteryear. Read more at www.nationalreview.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1crhy

Hoje é 11 de Setembro de 2001

Ou o venenoso esquecimento.

Amplify’d from sultanknish.blogspot.com

September 11. A day when we discharge our obligation to remember and honor something very important and move on.

September 11 is the day we lost.

The first loss is what they did to us. The second loss is what we did to ourselves.

But what if you never get angry and stay shocked. Then what happened to you never takes on any meaning. You remain helpless and hurt.

September has become the day of permanent shock and enduring hurt, where we struggle with our pain because the nation has been told not to get angry, warned not to judge or lay blame for the atrocities of the day on its perpetrators. It has become the day we stare at our televisions, at our screens or at the ground in front of us and try to make sense of why we were hit in the back of the head.

The same useless questions go round and round and the same events are relived over and over again in a national purgatory of pain. Unlike Pearl Harbor, Iwo Jima, Belleau Wood, Gettysburg, there is never any sense to it because there is no larger meaning. Only the remembrance of the day when we were attacked by people we shouldn't talk about for reasons that don't bear examining. And there is nothing but the pain.

Endless pain is helplessness which can't be healed, only repressed and eventually forgotten. And so we dedicate one day, one week, to reliving the events to the extent that we are allowed to relive them, and then the wound must be scabbed over and off we go to work, shopping and cheerfully greeting our Muslim neighbors who are in no way associated with the events of the day. "Hi there!" "Salaam Aleikum."

But still there is the ache in the back of the head that won't go away. Someone hit us. Who. Why. What can we do about it? We can line up and take off our shoes and let the nice man grope us in the hope that people whose identities we don't discuss won't find a way to kill us on this flight. It's just another day in another week in the tenth year after our lives changed in ways we don't talk about.

Repression makes healing impossible. It fills us with a poison that turns us against ourselves. To be helpless is to learn self-loathing and then when you are hit on the head, you nod because you know why you were hit. Because you deserved it.

Self-hatred is one answer to the larger questions of pain and evil. If you accept that you are an awful person and deserve everything that is coming to you, then there is no longer any shock, only the slow atonement of pain and suffering. The more you are hit, the more you deserve it for all your support of tyrants and arms sales to Israel, women who walk in front of a man and cartoons that mock prophets. Hit me again, I deserve it.

Another day. Another appeasement. A Ground Zero mosque, what a fine idea. What better way could there be to repress the knowledge of what actually happened than with such glorious constitutional masochism.

The calendar flips, and the shock is still there. It is only when you get angry that the shock lifts and the helplessness goes away with it. It is only when you realize who hit you and get angry over it that you become yourself again. Until then there are tears and bewilderment, grief and sorrow at this terrible tragedy. Why did they have to die? Who knows. We don't talk about it. No one is supposed to talk about it.

Brush away the repression of the political center and the masochism of the political left, and you find the angry heart of a nation beating underneath. It's deeper in Europe, there you have to dig for days to come up with more than clenched teeth of people who have been taught for generations to grit their teeth and grumble quietly about inconsequential things.

Americans though have not learned to be silent. The self-censorship so common in Europe is found here only in a small educated class that has spent too much time sitting through faculty meetings and attending sensitivity seminars. Instead there is the bafflement of people who have been lied to over and over again, and know that they are being lied to,  but still can't quite understand why they are being lied to and how deep the lies go.

Who are you going to believe, your common sense-- or the media and politicians of both parties, academics, writers, poets, pundits, billionaires, CEO's, diplomats, generals, princes, celebrities and everyone else who is important but you've never met in person? Could they all be lying to you? And if they are-- isn't that as big of an attack as September 11. If not even bigger?

Choosing between the solipsism of common sense and the consensus of self-deceit is a tough one. It is easier not to choose, to immerse yourself in grief while doing your best to be reasonable about it. And the anger sinks into that porridge of confusion and grief-- the murky waters of the commemorations officiated over by sorrowful politicians who use words like courage and tragedy, who remind us that we can recover from anything. And we have, haven't we?

Sure the Twin Towers aren't coming back. There will be tall buildings there, but they won't be them. Because we're moveon.orging past all that. We don't need the Towers rebuilt and we don't need to smash those behind this. It's enough that we killed some of them and took out their leader. And if we line up when we're told and drop our pants on command and always carry our ID's-- then maybe next time they'll fail. Because that's what courage means, doesn't it?

“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven,” Giuliani read. And what time and season is it now, and what purpose do they serve?

There was a time when we were angry and we were told not to be angry anymore. There was a time when we went to war, but then we decided it was more important to build nations. And now all we have is an endless craving for peace as we look down into the sight of mass death and come away with nothing but more pain. More shock and sorrow.

"When do we win this?" millions of Americans wonder. When do we finally declare victory. But how can we win when we don't even know who we're fighting? How do we win when we're not even allowed to be angry.

As shock turned to anger, and anger turned to the quiet bafflement of a nation waiting to move on. But where is there to move on to? We have gone to Afghanistan and Itaq, to the holes in the ground at Ground Zero. Over and over again we have laid the wreaths and bodies down in the sand and earth. We have laid our tears down and wept. And where do we go now?

Another day is here. September 12, 2011. Once again we can march away from the memorials and the memories and go back to work, shop in malls and say hello to our friendly Muslim neighbors. "Hi there!" "Salaam Aleikum."

But through all the pain and sorrow, throughout all the remembering and the minutiae of detail, it is not over.

September 11 is every day. Every day that we walk through the security forces of a frightened inept government to board a plane. Every day that a terror alert sends us scrambling to expect the worst. Every day that soldiers come home dead. Every day that another one of our Muslim neighbors plots to kill us. Every day is September 11.

We cannot leave it behind by grieving and remembering for a single day. We cannot escape it in a few years of war. There is no leaving it behind in appeasement or in tears. It cannot and will not be left behind until we deal with it. Until we deal with what it really means. Today is September 11. Tomorrow will be September 11. It will be September 11 every day of every year until we are either destroyed or we wake up. It is the day we repeat over and over again until we wake up. Today is September 11, 2001. Read more at sultanknish.blogspot.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1cqlj

Muros

Amplify’d from pajamasmedia.com

Let me insert here a metaphor for understanding contemporary Arab politics. Arab nationalists have been hitting their heads against a stone wall for 60 years, trying to destroy Israel, defeat the West, and reestablish a great empire. The few moderate pragmatists propose to stop this madness. Instead, the Islamists explain that the way to piety, glory, and total victory is to spend 60 years more battering their heads against that stone wall much harder. Guess who is winning the debate?

One such wall, a flimsy fence actually, marks the Egypt-Israel border. A group of terrorists recently cut through it so they could attack and kill Israeli civilians on a nearby road inside Israel.

Since the terrorists sought to exterminate Israel and stage a revolution in Egypt, this was the kind of event that should bring neighboring countries to work together against a common threat. That would have happened during the Mubarak regime. Now, however, with that government gone, a junta fearful of the mob, partly sharing its views, and denied the tools of repression stands aside.

Well, in Israel’s case that band is located in Egypt, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Lebanon, Iran, and in several other places (including a surprising number of Western university campuses) and is now opening a new franchise in Turkey.

Some other walls and murderous bands are within Egypt itself. These include protective walls built by Christians around churches.  Mobs of Egyptian Muslims attack these walls as police or soldiers stand by and don’t intervene, albeit ready to spring into action to shoot or arrest the Christians defending themselves. There is a word in Jewish history for such situations: pogroms.

The underlying basis of these attacks is Sharia, Islamic law, that mandates no synagogue or church can be built anew or repaired in lands (or, as we are starting to see in Europe, even urban neighborhoods) ruled by Islam. Why? Because the Sharia’s “tolerance” is merely a form of patience: let the non-Muslim places of worship crumble; those people will lose their religion, and eventually become Muslims.

Of course, such Sharia laws have often gone unenforced over the centuries, or were circumvented by bribes. That’s why there are still lots of churches despite the Sharia’s dictates. Why is today different? Not because Islam is eternal, unchanging, and inevitably oppressive. but precisely because a “modern” systematic ideology called Islamism insists that Sharia must be interpreted and enforced in a consistent, intransigent manner. And have no doubt that in an Egypt largely dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood those laws will be enforced. An actual Muslim individual can be flexible due to different interpretations, pragmatism, sloth, liberality, ineptitude, or venality; an Islamist Muslim cannot.

Now, the wall around the Israeli embassy, undefended by the police and security forces, fell to the assault. The mob’s minimal goal, a symbolic target or a preface to what they intend to do to Israel itself — was to tear down Israel’s flag. Americans know something about the significance of such situations. They even incorporated one into their national anthem:

“Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?”

If the flag had come down over Fort McHenry, the British could perhaps have conquered America entirely, the treaty of recognition they had signed a quarter-century earlier might have been torn up. But Egypt is not at war with Israel. Under international law, the Egyptian authorities are responsible for defending the embassy but didn’t do so because that is unpopular with the mob. After the elections, the mob will be in charge.

As part of their attack on Israel’s embassy, the demonstrators broke pieces from the nearby statue “Egypt’s Awakening.” The symbolism is perfect. Egypt’s Awakening is equated with killing the Jews, yet it is in fact Egypt’s Awakening being sacrificed in the obsessive, ultimately suicidal, hatred against Israel.

This reminds me of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the 1857 Dred Scott case upholding the legality of slavery. The chief justice explained that those with black skin were “So far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

Unfortunately, that is how Jews and Christian minorities are seen in Egypt and the other lands in the region: they have no rights that a Muslim or Arab is “bound to respect.” Those who make peace with Israel, and the agreements themselves, are by definition illegitimate, to be overturned as soon as possible, with any gains used legitimately to wipe Israel off the map. The land must always remain Muslim and Arab.

Such views are not completely inevitable but they are extraordinarily powerful. Moderate Arabs or Muslims can reject that view — as King Hussein of Jordan and Presidents Sadat and Mubarak did — but moderates nowadays are few in number and even fewer in power.  And no matter what their pretense or Western gullibility, no populist regime or Islamist can defy the lynch mob.

As Egyptian mobs assault the walls protecting Christian churches and Israel’s embassy, the “international community” assaults the  borders and policies protecting Israel. How can anyone still seriously claim that there will be a two-state solution, all strife will end, and everyone will live happily ever after? The dream of prosperity, social progress, peace, or better lives for one’s children — none of these things can withstand the demand for revenge, raw hatred, denial of any rights to the “other.” What you in the West think matters nothing — look with your eyes, listen with your ears, and see what the reality is. Read more at pajamasmedia.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1cqat

Não esquecer os que cairam

No dia 11 de Setembro de 2001, as televisões que acompanhavam em directo e retransmitiam periodicamente nos noticiários as consequências dos atentados terroristas decidiram não mostrar imagens dos desesperados que caiam ou se atiravam das Torres Gémeas em brasa. Porque eram muito violentas, dizem.

Eu prefiro saber como foi.
Para que não seja esquecido o desespero dessas almas, alguns videos:

Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine et lux perpetua luceat eis.