Filhos de emigrantes muçulmanos na Suiça querem mudar a bandeira

Grande ideia. Também podemos retiras as quinas da nossa, último vestígio da cruz azul em fundo branco, nossa primeira bandeira nacional.

Amplify’d from www.religionenlibertad.com

Musulmanes exigen en Suiza que desaparezca la cruz de la bandera nacional

El diario suizo alemán Aargauer Zeitung ha informado que inmigrantes de segunda generación en Suiza exigen eliminar la cruz de la bandera suiza, y afirman que la bandera de Suiza no corresponde a un país multicultural. Este colectivo exige que ya que hay musulmanes en Suiza y la cruz tiene un trasfondo cristiano, Suiza debe respetar la separación de religión y política, y tener un nuevo símbolo que no sea cristiano, sino que sea aceptable para los inmigrantes musulmanes. Este colectivo de musulmanes no ha pedido que los países musulmanes de los cuales proceden eliminen la media luna de sus banderas, ni han exigido que estos países separen religión y política. NOTAS http://www.aargauerzeitung.ch/schweiz/weg-mit-dem-kreuz-secondos-fuer-neue-schweizer-fahne-113290242 Read more at www.religionenlibertad.com

 

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ONU: loca infecta

Alguém ainda atribui alguma credibilidade a este antro de violadores e de protectores de violadores?

Amplify’d from pajamasmedia.com

I want to discuss the kind of human beings who are employed at the UN, how they treat each other on the job, but especially how they treat the vulnerable civilians who are under their protection. In other words: I want to focus on the professional ethics of the people who are voting on such weighty, global issues, and on the institutionalized crimes they commit under the auspices of the UN.

In 1973, Shirley Hazzard, an Australian civil servant who had worked for the UN Secretariat for a decade in New York, published a book about it. In Defeat of an Ideal: A Study of the Self-Destruction of the United Nations, Hazzard described a level of mediocrity, incompetence, petty despotism, corruption, hypocrisy, and overall impotence, which was so non-redeemable that, in her view, the otherwise lofty UN ideals were “being defeated by the manner in which the present body executes, or claims to execute them.”

And in 1990, Hazzard wrote another book, Countenance of Truth: The United Nations and the Waldheim Case, in which she indicted the UN again, explaining that the “problem” of the Austrian (and one-time Nazi) UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim was merely “symptomatic of the (ongoing) structural defects” at the UN which include non-accountability, non-transparency, incompetence, cowardice, and exaggerated self-importance. Only in such a setting, Hazzard writes, could such a

deceitful figure be presented as a paragon, his very deficiencies exalted into talents, and his fawnings on tyrants rationalized as consummate diplomacy throughout ten of this world’s most cruel and dangerous years.

In the early 1970s, Detective Frank (“police corruption”) Serpico was the torchbearer for whistleblowers. He passed that torch along to Karen (“plutonium”) Silkwood in the 1980s and to Erin(“hexavalent-chromium”) Brockovich in the 1990s. One 21st century heroic torchbearer, Kathryn (“United Nations sex traffickers”) Bolkovac, like her three predecessors, is now the subject of a film. Bolkovac also wrote a book on her experience.

In 1999, Bolkovac, originally a cop from Nebraska, became a UN peacekeeper in Sarajevo, where she discovered that the UN peacekeepers, the UN- hired military contractor (DynCorp), and the local police had been trafficking underage female sex slaves into Sarajevo both for profit and for their own twisted pleasure. Their savage treatment of these frightened, mainly East European and Russian girls, which included routine torture, gang-rape, semi-starvation, overwork, primitive living and “working” conditions, is standard behavior for pimps, traffickers, and obviously for UN staff as well.

In the film version, Bolkovac tried to save some girls. This only led to their being more severely tortured, while the other girls were forced to watch — and then murdered. Bolkovac, like others, tried to hold the UN accountable for these enormous crimes. The result? She was threatened and her employment terminated. Bolkovac went public with the information — which was heroic but which changed nothing.

Like Hazzard, I also once worked at the United Nations; I have some skin in the game. I am, therefore, quite familiar with the UN culture in which civil servants and diplomats hold onto the passports of their home-country domestic servants/slaves, and make them work sixteen hour days, seven days a week, for no money and for very little food; the culture in which the same UN personnel sexually harass and assault their female colleagues and subordinates and when reported, even sued, get off, at most, with the proverbial slap on the wrist; a culture in which UN “peacekeeping” troops rape and traffic the very girls, boys, and women they are supposed to be protecting from war-zone atrocities — for example, the use of rape as a weapon of war. Given the UN’s general level of ineffectiveness (other than in legalizing Jew hatred), the body is also remarkably effective in protecting their barbarian and un-trained employees.

For example: In 1988, Luis Maria Gomez, the Argentine assistant secretary general at the UN, was sued by his assistant, American citizen Catherine Claxon. She filed a sexual harassment complaint. As a result, Claxon was barred from a promotion and her employment was terminated. She took her case to the UN Administrative Tribunal. Although the numerous courts and tribunals acknowledged that her claim was supported by strong evidence, Claxon’s case was eventually blocked by Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar. Gomez was granted diplomatic immunity and returned to Argentina.

In 2003, Joumana Al-Mahayni, an employee working in the office of the United Nations Development Programme in Kuwait, filed a similar claim against her male boss and, of course, received similar results. Again, the UN protected her boss, Mr. Yusuf Mansur; again, there was ample evidence that he had sexually assaulted his subordinate. Nevertheless, and predictably, Ms. Al-Mahayni’s employment was terminated. Many years later, she received a settlement of $10,000; she was never reimbursed for her legal fees or given a severance package. Mr. Mansur resigned and avoided litigation. The UN did not make any follow-up charges.

In 2007, the American Civil Liberties Union charged a UN diplomat from Kuwait, Major Waleed Al Saleh, and his wife with abusing their three female domestic servants from India. The ACLU stated that

the women were forced to work every day from 6:30 or 7:00 a.m. until late in the night, sometimes as late as 1:30 a.m…the women…never received any of the money.…They were subjected to threats and verbal and physical abuse, including one particularly violent incident in which Sabbithi (one of the servants) was knocked unconscious after being thrown against a counter by Al Saleh. The women were often not allowed time to eat or to use the bathroom and were frequently deprived of food. Two of them were allowed one hour off a month to attend church.  The workers had their passports taken away and were isolated from contact with the external world.

Ultimately the case was dismissed on the grounds of diplomatic immunity.

Was Bolkovac’s experience unique? Were UN peacekeepers particularly awful only in Sarajevo? On the contrary. UN peacekeepers were also accused of “sexual misconduct” not only in Kosovo/Serbia/Bosnia in the 1990s, they were similarly accused in Sierra Leone (2002), Liberia (2003-2004), the Congo (2004), Haiti (2005-to the present day), and in the Sudan (2005-to the present).

How does the UN defend their dastardly peacekeepers? They argue that the troops often come from and serve in countries which have “poor records” in terms of “gender based violence.” This is offered as a culturally relativist explanation or excuse for that old canard, “Must Boys be Boys?” In Bolkovac’s case, the troops came from 45 different countries, and many of them could not use computers, write reports, or drive cars.

In addition, in terms of redress, the legal loopholes are gigantic — herds of elephants can easily spend their long lives grazing there.

Neither the UN nor the countries in which UN employees actually commit the crimes can legally punish these men. Only their own home countries may do so — but why would they? The countries in which the UN operates are not responsible for the actions of foreign employees. One Haitian feminist group has accused UN peacekeepers of “ bringing their bad habits with them.” The group is referring to an “increase in prostitution.”

Yes, there are ways the UN can feed already traumatized girls and women other than forcing them to provide sex services to UN peacekeeping troops as their only or best way of survival.

In her excellent report for Refugees International, “Must Boys Be Boys?” Sarah Martin describes a culture of fear and intimidationamong UN peacekeepers in the Congo (2004) which effectively silenced staff members who wanted to “report sexual misconduct by colleagues because they fear(ed) being stigmatized and punished as ‘whistle-blowers.’” UN peacekeepers had sex with Congolese children and women, including Congolese adult female UN colleagues, simply because the practice was already pandemic. They did not view their role as stopping such violence or as refraining from joining it.

As the UN peacekeepers ribaldly frolicked in the Congo, the UN orgy was also on in Liberia. An internal UN document was exposed in the mainstream media. In Liberia, UN peacekeeping troops had sex with

girls as young as 12 years of age (who) are engaged in prostitution, forced into sex acts and sometimes photographed by UN peacekeepers in exchange for $10 or food or other commodities.

Might the rape of a male child or a young man by a UN peacekeeper make the front pages and lead to an effective prosecution?

Well — no. In July of 2011, an 18-year-old Haitian male rape victim accused a UN peacekeeper of “sexually assaulting” him.  The rape was videotaped. A physician confirmed physical evidence of the rape — the evidence was clear even five weeks later. The UN found the man guilty, not of “sexual misconduct,” but of allowing a civilian to enter the UN compound. The UN dismissed this as “the actions of only a few,” and claimed that the UN “does its utmost to prevent such abuses from occurring” by “training troops to sensitize them to respect human rights.”

The Wilsonian-influenced ideals of the UN are not realistic or realizable. In turn, the UN is predicated on the myth — nay, the lie — that UN diplomats and civil servants are morally upright, fair, decent, rational — and, not the vicious tyrants, bullies, thugs, liars, egomaniacs, cowards, and grifters that they truly are. Nor does the UN have a transparent system in place that would hold their mightily flawed personnel accountable for the crimes they commit.

I am told we live in a post-feminist age. Thus, the information is in about what rape is and what rape does. We know that repeated public gang-rape and repeated rape is no longer just a spoil of war but is now a weapon of war. We know that prostitution is not a “victimless” crime, that the prostituted child or woman are the victims; they must become alcoholics and drug addicts in order to deaden their torment, they are given foul diseases by their “customers” who are sometimes their murderers because they infect them with AIDS; both their working lives and how long they actually live are significantly shorter than those who are not prostituted. The UN (ironically enough) has estimated that over 32 million people are enslaved around the world and that the majority (80% or more) are sex slaves. We now know that sex trafficking is estimated as a $32 billion global business, that girls and women are kidnapped, sold by their parents, or tricked into it and rarely escape alive.

Why is the United States funding rapists, criminals, pimps, brothels, and sex traffickers? Why are we funding orgies? Why are we funding the most heinous betrayal of the world’s most vulnerable civilians in war zones? Why are we overpaying for UN peacekeeping? Read more at pajamasmedia.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1d7ya

Notícias como esta ajudam a explicar o ódio que a esquerda tem a Ratzinger, como aos homens da Igreja em geral.
Revelam também o grau de infiltração dos inimigos da Igreja no seu seio:

Amplify’d from www.zenit.org

Documentos secretos da Stasi: Ratzinger, “um feroz opositor”

Polícia secreta da antiga Alemanha Oriental espionou futuro papa

Por Edward Pentin

ROMA, segunda-feira, 19 de setembro de 2011 (ZENIT.org) – Em 1974, um Trabant sacolejava pelos campos da Turíngia, na Alemanha Oriental. Ao volante sentava-se o padre Joachim Wanke, assistente do seminário local, o único da Alemanha comunista. De carona, o professor Joseph Ratzinger. Os dois padres, escreve Rainer Erice, jornalista da rádio alemã Mitteldeutsche Rundfunk Thüringen (MDR), faziam uma excursão às históricas cidades de Jena e Weimar. Era um momento de descanso na breve visita do padre Ratzinger à República Democrática da Alemanha, onde daria uma série de palestras a estudantes e teólogos de Erfurt.

O que deu importância à visita, porém, é que ela marcou o começo da vigilância da Stasi, a polícia secreta da Alemanha Oriental, sobre o padre Ratzinger.

Que o professor Ratzinger foi espionado pelos informantes da Stasi já se sabia. Em 2005, revelou-se que os agentes da Alemanha do Leste tinham mantido arquivos sobre o agora eleito papa. Nesta semana, novos arquivos descobertos pelo MDR esclarecem um pouco mais o que a polícia secreta pensava do futuro pontífice e quem eram os informantes que o espionavam.

Os documentos revelam que, em 1974, aStasi era muito consciente de que o padre Ratzinger tinha futuro na Igreja, mas não havia espiões adequados para vigiá-lo. Tudo o que sabiam então, por um informante não oficial chamado Birke, empregado do bispo de Meissen, era que o professor Ratzinger tinha dado palestras sobre teologia moderna para estudantes e acadêmicos durante aquela visita.

Esforços renovados

À medida que o papel do professor crescia na Igreja, a polícia da Alemanha Oriental começou a se interessar mais pelas suas atividades, segundo o informe de Erice. Na época em que Dom Joseph Ratzinger, arcebispo de Munique, visitou Berlim, em 1978, para encontrar o cardeal Alfred Bengsch, presidente da Conferência Episcopal, o departamento de assuntos exteriores da segurança alemã oriental já tinha assumido a tarefa de espioná-lo com a ajuda de numerosos informantes não oficiais em ambas Alemanhas.

O serviço secreto da RDA considerava o professor Ratzinger como “conservador, reacionário e autoritário”, escreve Erice, e assumia que João Paulo II encarregara o então cardeal de organizar “a contrarrevolução na Polônia”. Outros documentos da Stasi revelam que Ratzinger era considerado “um dos mais ferozes opositores ao comunismo”; achavam que ele apoiava a dissuasão nuclear entre os blocos militares do Leste e do Oeste e que considerava o pacifismo “pouco realista”.

Mas Erice acrescenta que, apesar das “centenas de páginas” sobre Joseph Ratzinger, havia “pouca informação significativa”, e os informes individuais de espionagem estrangeira foram “destruídos quase na totalidade”. Os documentos descobertos se relacionam somente com “a informação básica do autor e o motivo pelo qual a informação foi reunida”.

Os documentos, no entanto, revelam detalhes interessantes sobre os agentes da Stasiencarregados de informar sobre Joseph Ratzinger. Erice escreve que “havia ao menos uma dúzia de empregados não oficiais” encarregados dessa tarefa. Estavam no grupo dois professores universitários da Alemanha Oriental considerados pela Stasicomo “de confiança”: o agente “Aurora”, professor de ateísmo científico em Jena e Warnemünde, e o agente “Lorac”, que trabalhava como professor de teologia em Leipzig. Além deles, o agente “Georg” estava no comitê executivo da Conferência Episcopal de Berlim e, aparentemente, era bem informado sobre os assuntos internos da Igreja.

Na Alemanha Ocidental, a rede da Stasi incluía um monge beneditino em Trier, cujo codinome era “Lichtblick” (Raio de Esperança). Lichtblick espionou para a Stasidurante décadas e, segundo Erice, “fez informes extensos e fiáveis sobre os acontecimentos no Vaticano”. Outro agente não oficial conhecido como “Antonius” era um jornalista da agência católica alemã de notícias, a KNA, que enviou para a Stasi vasta informação sobre o papa, o cardeal Ratzinger e o Vaticano.

Outro jornalista foi contratado em Munique com o codinome “Chamois”, enquanto um espião especialmente importante era um político da União Social Cristã e antigo confidente de Franz Josef Straus, que fora líder desse mesmo partido. O agente era chamado de “Lion” e “Trustworthy”. A rede ultrapassava as fronteiras da Alemanha. Na Itália, a Stasi empregou o agente “Bernd”, que fornecia informação sobre a política exterior da Santa Sé.

Tímido, mas encantador

Com todos esses informantes, a Stasi estava bem organizada quando Joseph Ratzinger viajou a Dresden em 1987, para um encontro com um grupo de católicos. “A Stasi fez um grande esforço para vigiar o encontro”, diz Erice, esforçando-se para que a vigilância passasse despercebida em especial na fronteira. “As forças de segurança receberam instruções para dar a ele um tratamento preferencial e educado quando cruzasse a fronteira”, dizem os informes, e acrescentam que incômodos como os registros de bagagem, usualmente aplicados aos visitantes ocidentais, “deveriam ser suprimidos”.

Apesar dos esforços, Erice diz que aStasicometeu erros básicos. Escreveu errado o nome da cidade natal do papa, Merkl em vez de Marktl. E, mesmo querendo retratá-lo negativamente, não conseguiram evitar algumas observações positivas. Além de louvar a sua grande inteligência, destacaram: “Ele pode parecer tímido no começo de uma conversa, mas tem um encanto que cativa”.

Bento XVI não é, evidentemente, o primeiro pontífice que passou boa parte da vida vigiado por agentes secretos. O beato João Paulo II foi espionado pela KGBe pela SB, polícia secreta polonesa. Segundo o estudo de George Weigel em seu recente livro “O final e o começo”, essas agências começaram a se interessar pelas atividades de Karol Wojtyla quando ele era bispo auxiliar de Cracóvia, em 1958.

Weigel recorda que, entre 1973 e 1974, as autoridades polonesas consideraram prender Karol Wojtyla com a acusação de sedição. A polícia secreta o perseguia em suas viagens e tentou comprometer os seus colaboradores mais próximos. E não foi apenas o papa quem esteve na sua mira: o próprio Vaticano também esteve.

“O que mais me surpreendeu foi a magnitude de seus esforços, que exigiram milhões de horas de trabalho e bilhões de dólares”, disse Weigel, em uma entrevista ao National Catholic Register no ano passado. “Também desconhecia a quantidade de vezes que as agências de inteligência soviética tentaram manipular o Concílio Vaticano II para seus propósitos e o quão inconsciente o Vaticano parecia ser disso (e continuou sendo até 1978).

As revelações dessa semana acontecem dias antes da visita de Estado que Bento XVI realizará à Alemanha, de 22 a 25 de setembro, que inclui uma visita a Erfurt. Nessa cidade, ele será recebido pelo atual bispo da diocese, seu guia na vista de 1974, Joachim Wanke. Read more at www.zenit.org

 

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A demagogia fiscal de Obama (e da esquerda em geral)

Excerto conclusivo: «So this Buffet Rule is a great populist proposal if the president wants to score some political points, but it has little practical value. It might provide the government a little bit of additional revenue, but unless extremely aggressive, it wouldn't make a dent in the nation's deficit problem. To do that, you'll need to cut entitlements and/or raise taxes much more broadly.»

Amplify’d from www.theatlantic.com

So how much would the so-called Buffett Rule bring in? It's hard to say, because Obama didn't define precisely how it would work. But he did say it would create a tax rate floor for those who make more than $1 million per year. So let's use 2009 tax return data from the IRS to imagine some possible scenarios for how much additional tax revenue the new tax could bring in. Here's a chart:

Let me explain what's going on here. I used IRS data for 2009* adjusted gross income (which I know isn't perfect, but it was the best they had). I then calculated the effective tax rate based on its data to be 29.1% for all Americans who earned more than $1 million. I consequently took the total income of the group and multiplied by different tax rates (as shown). I subtracted the taxes already paid (at the 29.1% effective rate) to figure out how much additional revenue they'd provide to the U.S. government at those new tax floors.

As you can see, the short answer is: some, but not enough to make a dent in the deficit. If you put a floor at their current marginal tax rate of 35%, the government would obtain $37 billion more dollars. That might sound like a lot, but it amounts to just 2.5% of the 2009 $1.5 trillion deficit (which is the red line shown). If you increase the floor to the pre-Bush-tax-cut marginal rate of 39.6%, the additional revenue grows a bit -- to $66 billion, or 4.5% of the year's deficit.

Even if you get really aggressive, it doesn't help much. Even a tax floor for these individuals at 75% would cover less than 20% of the year's deficit. And, of course, even most populist among us probably worries that a tax rate that high could do more harm to the U.S. economy than good. All of these calculations also assume that these wealthy individuals wouldn't find new and creative ways to ensure that their income was shielded from very high tax rates. (They would.)

So this Buffet Rule is a great populist proposal if the president wants to score some political points, but it has little practical value. It might provide the government a little bit of additional revenue, but unless extremely aggressive, it wouldn't make a dent in the nation's deficit problem. To do that, you'll need to cut entitlements and/or raise taxes much more broadly. Read more at www.theatlantic.com

 

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Atentado suicida com explosivos no turbante

Pergunta Marisol pertinentemente: «Which causes more global outrage: a cartoon of a turban bomb, or real turban bombs causing real casualties?»

http://media.patriotpost.us/img/ref/cartoon11.jpg

Amplify’d from www.jihadwatch.org

"Former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani assassinated," by Laura King for the Los Angeles Times, September 20:

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan— Former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani was killed by a suicide bomber on Tuesday in his home in the capital, the latest in a series of high-profile assassinations to rock the country in recent months.

Rabbani was the head of a government panel set up last year to try to begin negotiations with the Taliban, and his death was seen as a serious blow to those still-nascent efforts.

The bomber, who apparently had explosives concealed in his turban, entered Rabbani's home in an upscale Kabul neighborhood on the pretext of visiting him, said Gen. Mohammed Zaher, the head of criminal investigation for the Kabul police.

The powerful blast injured at least two other people, Zaher said, possibly including at least one other member of the High Peace Council, as the reconciliation body was known.

The Associated Press reported that four of Rabbani's bodyguards were also killed, but that could not be immediately confirmed.

President Hamid Karzai's office said the Afghan leader was cutting short a visit to the U.N. General Assembly to return home.

Afghanistan's political climate, always violent, has become much more so in recent months.

Karzai's younger half-brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, was assassinated by a close family associate in July. A close Karzai aide, Jan Mohammed Khan, was killed that same month, as was the mayor of the southern city of Kandahar, Ghulam Haidar Hamidi. Read more at www.jihadwatch.org

 

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O feto e o camarão

Amplify’d from www.ncregister.com

Marc Barnes recently met a girl he thought he might be interested in...until he found out that she was a pro-choice vegetarian. He goes on to dissect the silliness of this viewpoint, which, from the Catholic perspective, is basically an exercise of shooting fish in a barrel. It’s such an obviously inconsistent position that many of my Catholic friends are baffled by how someone could hold both of those views simultaneously: How can you respect animal life but not human life? they wonder. To me, it makes sense. In fact, I used to be a pro-choice vegetarian. And while I now vehemently disagree with at least the pro-choice part of it, I still find the vegetarian/pro-choice position to be an intellectually consistent—if chilling—part of the atheist-materialist worldview.

The way I used to see it, all life is just chemical reactions, no one type of life any more inherently special than the next. In this view, the only reason that a human being would be considered more valuable than, say, a squirrel is because the human has higher levels of intelligence and consciousness than his furry friend. The “truth” of this position seemed obvious. For example, most of us would have no problem killing a simple lifeform like a gnat, but we would be opposed to killing a more intelligent lifeform like a dog. Increased intelligence equals increased value.

I would ponder this sort of thing whenever I ate meat, imagining what must have gone through the pig’s mind before it was slaughtered to provide the meat for my BLT sandwich. Maybe it didn’t experience the level of fear that an adult human would, but it had enough intelligence to know that something bad was happening. I began to do research into the conditions of modern slaughter houses, and was disturbed by what I found. I decided to adopt a mostly vegetarian diet. The few exceptions I made were based on the animals’ low levels of consciousness: I ate shrimp and shellfish as a protein source, justifying this choice on the grounds that their brains were not as complex as those of mammals and birds.

My intentions were good, and my views were internally consistent. But the implications for human life were chilling.

While I donated money to PETA and other animal rights organizations to help save pigs and cows, I also donated money to Planned Parenthood to support the abortion industry. I had not the slightest qualm about the idea of an early-stage abortion. On my spectrum of worthiness of life, adult humans were on the far right side; fetuses were on the left. Unborn humans were somewhere around shrimp and worms in terms of value, because they could not display any intelligence. And so it seemed unfair to ask women to turn their lives upside down for a lifeform that had all the value of a crustacean.

Even though it would be years before I would come to see that this entire understanding of human life was founded on a lie, I would occasionally get a glimpse of the chilling implications of this view. For example, one time in college I heard a professor make the statement that it would be more ethical to kill a newborn baby than a pig, since pigs are more intelligent and aware of their surroundings. I scoffed at the absurdity of such a notion. Yet when I tried to argue against it, I realized that he was actually using my own worldview to justify his position.

Also in college, I heard a classmate (who was a vegetarian too) make the case that severely mentally disabled people should be euthanized. I thought it to be one of the most offensive, disgusting statements I’d ever heard. I was even able to come up with some defense about it being wrong because we’re evolved to protect members of our own species…but such a coldly scientific argument sounded lame and hollow. There was absolutely nothing in the atheist lexicon that allowed me to articulate just how morally repugnant such an idea really was.

When I began researching Catholicism, one of the many things that immediately resonated as true was the Church’s teaching on the dignity of man. This idea that every single one of us has dignity—a dignity that exists simply by virtue of being human, regardless of our of size, intelligence, consciousness, or any other observable traits—was like an articulation of a truth that had been written on my heart all along. Somewhere deep down inside, I had known that that this was true, which is why I’d been so horrified by the professor and the classmate’s statements. As with so many other things in life, Catholicism took all my well-meaning energy and channeled it in a healthy way: I maintained a compassion for animals, but came to see that the members of my own species were in an entirely different category than other lifeforms, because we are the only ones made in the image and likeness of God.

These days I’ve gone back to eating meat, though I try to support local farms and other organizations that treat their animals humanely. I maintain respect for vegetarians, and understand why a lot of people choose to go that route. What’s troubling, however, is that this idea of intelligence = value is increasingly prevalent in our culture. It might make a certain amount of sense when applying it to other animals, but when we evaluate people by this standard, throwing out the millennia-old concept of the inherent value of human life, the results are chilling indeed. Read more at www.ncregister.com

 

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Um decapitador e amputador saudita

Eis uma profissão com futuro, a ter em atenção face ao desemprego crescente no Ocidente: uma vez que o islão alastra por todo o mundo, na Europa a um ritmo alucinante, e que a xariá se vai instalando no seio das comunidades islâmicas europeias, com a criação de tribunais de xariá, os jovens devem ter em consideração esta via profissional:

Interview: Muslim Saudi Arabian Executioner Part 1 - For more funny videos, click here

Interview: Muslim Saudi Arabian Executioner Part 2 - Funny blooper videos are here

Os desmandos turcos e o colapso dos estados árabes

Amplify’d from pajamasmedia.com

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan brings to mind the story about the housewife who calls her husband during rush hour. “Be careful driving home on the Beltway, dear,” she advises. “The news says that there’s a maniac driving in the wrong direction.” “What do you mean, ‘a maniac’?,” he replies. “Everybody’s driving in the wrong direction!”

The Arab world is in free fall. Leave aside Syria, whose regime continues to massacre its own people, and miserable Yemen, and post-civil war Libya. Egypt is dying. Erdogan’s “triumphal” appearance in Egypt served as a welcome distraction to Egyptians — welcome, because what they think about most of the time is disheartening. What’s on the mind of the Egyptian people these days? According to the Arab-language local media, it’s finding enough calories to get through the day.

Egypt imports half its caloric consumption, the price of its staple wheat remains at an all-time high, and most Egyptians can’t afford to buy it. The government subsidizes bread, but according to the Egyptian news site Youm7 (“The Seventh Day”), the country now faces “an escalating crisis in subsidized flour.” Packages of subsidized flour are not reaching the intended recipients, in part because the Solidarity Ministry hasn’t provided the promised shipments to stores, and in part because subsidized flour and bread are diverted to the black market. A small loaf of government-issue bread costs 5 piasters, or less than one U.S. cent, but it can’t be found in many areas, as the Solidarity Ministry, provincial government, and bakers trade accusations of responsibility for supply problems. Poor Egyptians get ration cards, but flour often is not available to card-holders. Rice, a substitute for wheat, also is in short supply, and the price has risen recently to 5.5 Egyptian pounds per kilo from 3.75 pounds.

Most Egyptians barely eat enough to keep body and soul together, and many are hungry. That is about to get much, much worse: The country is short about $20 billion a year. The central bank reports that the country’s current account deficit in the fiscal year ended July 1 swung from a $3.4 billion surplus in the fiscal year ended July 2010 to a deficit of $9.2 billion in the fiscal year ended July 2011. Almost all of the shift into red ink occurred since February, suggesting an annualized deficit of around $20 billion. Egypt’s reserves fell about $11 billion since the uprising began in February. Who’s going to cough up that kind of money? Not Turkey, whose own balance-of-payment deficit stands at 11% of GDP and whose currency is collapsing, as shown in the chart below:

It doesn’t occur to liberals that there are problems for which solutions might not exist; the notion that cultures and countries may suffer from tragic flaws does not enter into consideration, because if that were true, there would be no need for liberals.

consider how Tayyip Erdogan must feel. His economic boom is about to come to a crashing end, and his country is doomed demographically to split up when Kurds outnumber Turks not long from now, as I argued here recently. And his ambitions for Turkish hegemony in the Muslim world have run directly into an existential crisis that is long past solution. That would make anyone crazy. Don’t think of the Turkish leader as an outpatient who lost his meds. In the spirit of political correctness, we might call him “existentially challenged. ”

It would be easy to overestimate just how dangerous Erdogan might become. The estimable David Warren calls him “the man who could trigger a world war.” That seems alarmist. Whom is Erdogan going to fight? Any military provocation would lead to a further collapse of the Turkish currency, and a deep setback for the Turkish economy. Read more at pajamasmedia.com

 

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Direito ao aborto é direito humano

Destaque:
«En el documento se afirma que (...) la prohibición o la limitación del “acceso al aborto”, se califica como “violatoria de las leyes internacionales", como "discriminatoria contra la mujer" y como "una violación del derecho a vivir libre de tortura".»
Livre de tortura? Será a gravidez e a maternidade uma tortura? O que é que eu não estou a perceber no meio disto tudo?

Amplify’d from www.noticiasglobales.org

ONU: EL CRIMEN DE DEFENDER LA VIDA.

Por Juan C. Sanahuja

El 13 de septiembre se inauguró el 66 período de sesiones de la Asamblea General de Naciones Unidas. La imposición del aborto como derecho humano y entre los Objetivos del Milenio para el Desarrollo no se limita a algunas agencias de la ONU, sino que es política de toda la organización.

En el marco del logro de los Objetivos del Milenio para el Desarrollo y del respeto y la profundización de los derechos humanos, la Asamblea General de Naciones Unidas tratará el informe anual del Alto Comisionado para los Derechos Humanos, la sra. Navi Pillay. El informe se titula Practices in adopting a human rights-based approach to eliminate preventable maternal mortality and human rights (A/HRC/18/27; 08-07-11). En él se insta a los Estados a eliminar las leyes contra el aborto.

En el documento se afirma que las leyes que impiden o limitan el aborto son un obstáculo para la reducción de la mortalidad materna (Objetivo del Milenio n° 5) y son contrarias a los derechos humanos. En concreto, la prohibición o la limitación del “acceso al aborto”, se califica como “violatoria de las leyes internacionales", como "discriminatoria contra la mujer" y como "una violación del derecho a vivir libre de tortura".

Ni derechos de los padres, ni objeción de conciencia

Entre las llamadas “limitaciones para el acceso al aborto” se incluyen la “necesidad del consentimiento paterno”, en el caso de menores solteras, y la “necesidad del consentimiento del esposo”, en el caso de mujeres casadas. Se entiende también como una limitación que se debe eliminar, la objeción de conciencia de los médicos, y se instruye a los Estados para "organizar los servicios de salud a fin de que el ejercicio de la objeción de conciencia por los profesionales de la salud no impida que las mujeres obtengan acceso a los servicios de salud", entre los que se considera el aborto.

Conviene recordar que estas medidas se encuentran explícitamente enunciadas en la Recomendación General n° 24 del Comité de seguimiento de la Convención de toda forma de Discriminación contra la Mujer de 1999, y en la Observación General n° 14 del Comité del Pacto de Derechos Económicos, Sociales y Culturales de 2000. Por lo que es lógico afirmar que el sistema de derechos humanos de la ONU está corrompido desde hace mucho tiempo. (Vid. Sanahuja, J. C., El Desarrollo Sustentable. La nueva ética internacional, Vortice, Buenos Aires 2003) Read more at www.noticiasglobales.org

 

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Julgamento de terroristas não-alinhados

Destaque: «The suspects also confessed to perpetrating additional stabbing and shooting attacks with the declared goal of murdering Jews. They were not believed to have been affiliated with an organized terrorist group.

Shin Bet sources said that the suspects succeeded in entering Israel through gaps in the security barrier near the settlement of Beitar Illit south of Jerusalem. “They decided they wanted to kill someone that day,” a Shin Bet source said in January.»

Amplify’d from www.jpost.com

The trial began on Sunday for two of the main suspected terrorists responsible for murdering American Kristine Luken in a terror attack in December of last year while she was hiking in the Jerusalem forest with her friend Kay Wilson. The attackers also attempted to kill Wilson, who barely managed to escape with her life. Wilson’s testimony to the police after the attack provided enough information to break up a ring of 13 Palestinian terrorists responsible for two murders, two attempted murders, at least one rape, and a series of other violent crimes.

The two main suspects, Ayad Fasafa and Kafah Animat, both from villages around Hebron, were arrested less than 48 hours after the attack and confessed to the crime. Forensic evidence, including a small penknife that Wilson used to stab one of her attackers, also implicated the men in the crime. In moving testimony on Sunday, Wilson recounted the events of December 18, 2010 while staring straight at the men accused of murdering Luken.

She recalled how the two had been hiking outside of Beit Shemesh in the forest when two men attacked them, binding their hands behind their backs with shoelaces, gagging them with parts of a fleece jacket, and stabbing them multiple times with a serrated knife 30 cm long. Wilson, who played dead,  was stabbed12 times and suffered several broken ribs, a punctured lung and a broken sternum. Luken was stabbed to death. Wilson described the heart-wrenching decision she had to make, whether to stay with Kristine for Luken’s last breaths, which meant Wilson would also bleed to death, or to try to make it to the path so someone would know what happened. Bleeding heavily, she staggered for more than 1,200 meters barefoot to a parking lot where a picnicking family alerted the authorities and paramedics.

The suspects were arrested on December 21, 2010 in a joint IDF-Shin Bet operation and during their interrogation confessed to perpetrating the attack and reenacted it in the field. During their interrogation, one of the suspects, Kafah Animat, confessed to another murder in February of 2010 of Neta Blatt, a teacher who was found dead near Beit Shemesh and had been considered a suicide. The suspects also confessed to perpetrating additional stabbing and shooting attacks with the declared goal of murdering Jews. They were not believed to have been affiliated with an organized terrorist group. Shin Bet sources said that the suspects succeeded in entering Israel through gaps in the security barrier near the settlement of Beitar Illit south of Jerusalem. “They decided they wanted to kill someone that day,” a Shin Bet source said in January. Read more at www.jpost.com

 

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Noruega: cartoonista fora, terrorista dentro

Amplify’d from pajamasmedia.com

Cowardice: Norway Ejects Danish Cartoonist, Welcomes Jihadist Kurt Westergaard gets sent home, but a jihadist kicked out of Saudi Arabia is allowed in Oslo. September 15, 2011 - 9:36 am - by Bruce Bawer

If you’ve seen the now-iconic image of Muhammed with a bomb in his turban, then you’ve experienced the work of Kurt Westergaard, the most famous of the Danish cartoonists whose 2005 drawings of the Muslim prophet for the newspaper Jyllands-Posten led to worldwide mayhem.

That one drawing changed Westergaard’s life. After Danish police arrested three Muslims in 2008 for plotting to kill him in retaliation for the cartoon, he was put under surveillance and a panic room was installed in his house. That room saved his life on New Year’s Day 2010, when another Muslim broke into his home wielding an axe and screaming about revenge.

Fast forward to September 9, 2011. Westergaard and his wife traveled to Oslo, where four days later he was to take part in a press conference at a cultural center called Litteraturhuset. The occasion: the publication of a new children’s book for which Westergaard had done the illustrations. But on September 12, the day before the event, Westergaard flew home.

The reason given to Litteraturhuset — and to the press — was that Westergaard, 76, had taken ill. But almost immediately it was reported that he had left the country at the behest of the Norwegian Police Security Service (PST).

PST communications director Trond Hugubakken refused to address this report directly, saying only that “Westergaard lives with a death threat hanging over him and is a vulnerable person.”

As soon as Westergaard was back in Denmark, however, he confirmed in an interview with the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) that he had indeed been told by Norwegian officials to go back to Denmark. The PST, he explained, had made the decision in concert with the Danish Security and Intelligence Service:

I was informed that we were to return home at once. … The official explanation is that I had heart problems. You must decide for yourself whether you believe that or not.

Curiously enough, Westergaard’s Danish publisher, John Lykkegaard, stuck to the cover story:

He didn’t feel well. That was why he went home.

Meanwhile, Westergaard’s collaborator on the children’s book, Geirr Lystrup, offered his own rather odd comment:

I think these are strange times we’re living in. I think that this can’t be serious. But then it is serious, and maybe I didn’t entirely understand that when I made contact with Kurt Westergaard to ask him to do the drawings for the book.

Huh?

It goes without saying that Kurt Westergaard should not have to take part in an event at which he might take the risk of being killed. But that decision should have been his to make, not the PST’s. On the contrary, it is the job of the PST to make it possible for a man like Westergaard, whose work has antagonized a substantial, and vocal, portion of the population of Oslo, to continue to speak in public without putting his life at risk. By shipping Westergaard back to Denmark, the PST was taking the easy route, shirking its responsibility, and sending out a signal that it really does not care very much about protecting freedom of expression.

This is the same PST, by the way, that did absolutely nothing when it was informed by Interpol Norwegian Customs earlier this year that a young man named Breivik — who would later be arrested for the atrocities in Oslo and Utøya — had purchased suspicious chemicals abroad.

On September 14, under pressure for having sent Westergaard out of the country, the PST passed the buck: Hugubakken said it was the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) that had made the decision to cancel Westergaard’s appearance and send him back to Denmark. However, in an interview (also posted on September 14) with the editors of Sappho, the website of the Danish Free Press Society, Westergaard seemed to confirm that the decision had indeed been made by the PST.

But that’s not all, folks. As it happened, on September 12 — the day Westergaard returned to Denmark from Oslo — a devout young Muslim activist named Mohyeldeen Mohammad arrived in Oslo from Saudi Arabia. This was the same fellow who, in February of last year, gave a speech at a huge Oslo rally protesting a cartoon of the prophet Muhammed (not Westergaard’s) that had appeared in Dagbladet. “When will Norwegian authorities and their media understand the seriousness of this?” Mohyeldeen Mohammed had thundered before a highly receptive audience of around 3000 Muslims in Oslo’s University Square. “Perhaps not before it is too late. Perhaps not before we get a September 11 on Norwegian soil.” He added, unpersuasively: “This is no threat, this is a warning.”

(After the cancellation of Westergaard’s appearance at Litteraturhuset, one could not help reflecting that the same PST which put the kibosh on it had allowed that rally in University Square to go on without a hitch.)

In the year and a half since his now-famous speech, Mohammed, who immigrated to Norway with his Iraqi parents at age three, had publicly praised Osama bin Laden, declared that gays and infidels deserve the death penalty, and celebrated the death of Norwegian soldiers in Afghanistan. Then, in early September, he flew to Saudi Arabia to study the Koran. He was arrested at the airport in Medina, and after being detained and questioned for several days, was sent by Saudi authorities back to Norway, arriving at Oslo Airport, as noted above, on September 12.

No reason was given for his detention and return. The natural conclusion, however, was that Mohammed, while not too extreme for Norway, is too extreme for Saudi Arabia.

This, then, is Europe in the year 2011. On the very day that Norwegian officials hustle a hero of free speech out of the country for fear that his exercise of that freedom will lead to violence, they welcome back home an outspoken champion of violence and a sworn enemy of liberty who has just been deported by one of the world’s most oppressive nations.

The PST’s cowardice and lack of moral responsibility are — to put it mildly — deeply dispiriting. And with this sad episode, the ever-darkening long-term prospects for the survival of freedom in Norway grow even dimmer.

Bruce Bawer's most recent books are While Europe Slept and Surrender. Read more at pajamasmedia.com

 

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English Defence League: racistas ou resistentes à invasão islâmica?

Via Vlad Tepes.