Greenfield: a tentativa e criação do estado da Palestina em contexto

Deixo aqui apenas o princípio do artigo. Não deixe de o ler na íntegra:

Amplify’d from sultanknish.blogspot.com

The End of Palestine

In the spring of 1964, while the Vietnam War was underway, the space program had brought close up photos of the moon, and the Beatles were topping the charts; the Arab League convened to try and find a way to complete the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Israel. They had tried it once before in 1948, with incomplete results. Back then, the Arab forces had managed to capture and ethnically cleanse the eastern half of Jerusalem, as well as seizing and annexing the West Bank and Gaza. But for 16 years, Israel had managed to frustrate their designs by stubbornly continuing to exist.

What the Arab governments wanted was a terrorist organization that could cross the border and carry out attacks inside Israel. And they wanted plausible deniability so that Israel and the UN couldn't hold them responsible for those attacks. And so cloaked in a lot of smoke and mirrors about "Palestinian Arab nationhood", the Palestine Liberation Organization was born. The PLO had three tasks, to harass Israel through terror, to cultivate a fifth column inside the country that would come into play in an invasion, and to make it seem as if the Arab world wasn't a bunch of genocidal maniacs, but wanted to destroy Israel in the name of "Palestinian rights". The Arab League had never believed in an independent Palestinian state. Even while they were creating the PLO, Jordan had already annexed the West Bank. And Gaza was in Egyptian hands. The PLO's purpose was not to liberate these areas, or even to govern them. Its own charter made that abundantly clear. Article 24. This Organization does not exercise any regional sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, in the Gaza Strip or the Himmah area. Its activities will be on the national popular level in the liberational, organizational, political and financial fields. The PLO's own founding charter had already conceded that the West Bank was not part of Palestine, and instead recognized Jordan's annexation of the area. When the PLO talked about "liberating" Palestine, it only meant the parts of Israel that the Arab League members had not succeeded in seizing in 1948. When the PLO talked about liberating Palestine, up until 1967, it had nothing to do with the West Bank or Gaza, it simply meant destroying Israel. It was not until 1967, when the latest Arab League attempt to "drive the Jews into the sea" failed, that the PLO began talking about their rights to Gaza and the West Bank. Previously they had staged terrorist attacks on Israel from bases in Gaza and the West Bank, under the sponsorship of Egypt and Jordan. After Israel reclaimed Gaza and the West Bank, and reversed the ethnic cleansing of Jews carried out in 1948, the PLO began focusing on the territories that their sponsors had lost in 1967, rather than just those they had lost in 1948. Read more at sultanknish.blogspot.com

 

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«Quatro mitos esquerdistas sobre Israel»

Eis o primeiro. Leia tudo:

Amplify’d from sultanknish.blogspot.com

Four Left Wing Myths About Israel

Myth 1: "Israel was created because Europe felt guilty about the Holocaust."

This left wing myth has been widely repeated, most recently by Desmond Tutu. While blatantly false on a level that even the most serious anti-Israel historian can recognize, it persists because its function is to delegitimize Israel as the product of post-war colonial guilt, rather than longstanding Israeli national aspirations.

Israel was not created in 1947. By 1947, Israel already was a functioning country with a language, culture, agriculture, universities, newspapers and military forces which proved capable of defending against the armies of several Arab nations. The only thing that happened after the Holocaust was a UN vote in 1947 for a partition plan that was never implemented because the Arab world instead chose to try and destroy Israel. Israel however would have declared independence and fought for its own survival, with the same exact outcome, regardless of UN Resolution 181. This vote is often described as creating Israel, but it was more accurately an attempt to settle the borders of Israel. An attempt that failed because of Arab genocidal hostility which expressed itself not only toward Israel, but toward the Jews living in Arab lands. Nor did post-war European colonialism create Israel. Britain, which was the colonial power in the region, was against Israel's independence and abstained in the UN vote. The majority of votes for Resolution 181 came from non-European countries, primarily in Latin America and Eastern Europe, such as Bolivia, Brazil, Panama, Peru and Poland, Ukraine and the Soviet Union. 7 European countries voted Yes, most of them Northern European states such as Sweden and Denmark, which experienced only a limited impact from the Holocaust. 12 Latin American countries voted Yes. Twice that number. And these were countries that had their own national aspirations and had successfully fought against colonialism. Post-Holocaust guilt was not the reason Resolution 181 passed. Less than a third of the 33 votes came from countries where the Holocaust had taken place. Their reasons were varied and different. Some Latin American countries identified with Israel's national aspirations and some sought economic ties. Truman was influenced by the desire for Jewish votes in an upcoming election. The Soviet Union wanted to sabotage Britain's colonial program. The motives of different countries were more complex, than pity, let alone guilt. Iran for example voted against the resolution and yet became the second country to recognize the new State of Israel. Left wing activists may insist that Resolution 181 was a racist act, but in fact half the countries who voted for it were non-white, and most of the countries who voted for it were non-European. Therefore the myth that Israel was created after the Holocaust by guilty Europeans, a myth that has been bandied about by everyone from Desmond Tutu to Wallace Shawn to Barack Obama is just that, a myth. Israel would have existed regardless of the Holocaust or UN Resolution 181, which was voted for primarily by non-European countries. Those who repeat the myth are therefore demonstrating either ignorance or a willingness to perpetuate a lie in order to undermine the legitimacy of Israel. Read more at sultanknish.blogspot.com

 

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Greenfield: Israel tem que mudar de estratégia e passar à ofensiva

Amplify’d from sultanknish.blogspot.com

Israel's Lose-Lose Scenario

No matter the outcome of the statehood bid for the Palestinian Authority, the only sure loser in this scenario is an Israeli government which has once again allowed itself to react to events, rather than dictating them. The price for defeating the statehood bid is almost certain to be more concessions. Whether Abbas gets his UN vote or gets blocked at the gate by Obama, he can still count on more Israeli territory extracted under pressure.

The terrorist game has always been fairly simple, create a crisis and force Israel to react, and then collect their winnings. The Israeli game has been to point at the terrorism and lawbreaking on the enemy side and expect the world to finally acknowledge that the Palestinian Authority has lost its credibility and force it to negotiate honestly. After decades of terror and lies this clearly isn't going to happen, but that hasn't stopped the Israeli government from playing that one card over and over again.

Israel is full of engineers and generals all pointed at the wrong goal, and easily undermined by a shift of terrain that once again forces them to make concessions to enemies that are dumber, but who do take the initiative.

The difference between the magnificent triumph of the Six Day War and the near apocalypse of the Yom Kippur War was the difference between taking the initiative and waiting behind passive defenses for the approval of the international community before taking action. The lesson of both wars is that Israel does not have enough territory, population or resources to be passive. But its current hyper-passive alertness is nearly as awful as pure passivity would be.

Over and over again, the enemy counts on provoking an Israeli reaction and leading it into another lose-lose scenario in which whatever it does, it loses. Passivity allows the enemy to claim victory and a last minute overreaction results in condemnation and forces Israel to write more checks in the form of concessions.

Israel made the mistake of paying too much attention to its image problems and not enough to its military ones. It hasn't won the image war and it's rapidly losing the military one. No Muslim army ever succeeded in cutting Israel in half, even during the Yom Kippur War, but it is on the verge of allowing itself to be pressured into creating a contiguous Palestinian state that will cut it in half.

No Muslim army has managed to seize half of Jerusalem since 1967, but that too is now a mandate on the table. The negotiations and concessions have already cost Israel more territory than any war since 1948 when it was low on weapons, had militias instead of an army, was under an arms embargo and was also on the edge of civil war.

Israel's problem isn't its image, it has an image problem because it has a terrorist problem. If Israel were Sri Lanka or Turkey, then the world might shrug and the story would be reported on Page 5B, but Israel's enemies are an alliance of Islamist petrodollars and the red brigades of the left who have more people, access and resources. The longer the situation drags on, the more material they have to work with, and the more they can make this seem like a raw bloody wound that has to be solved for the sake of regional and world peace. And the more Israel debates, the more it inflates.

Israel has lost its own left, it isn't going to win over the international left, or the Jewish left, the majority of whom with a few exceptions think the world would be a better place if it were to be destroyed.

The American and European foreign policy establishments can't let go of Israel, but they can't stop torturing it either. It's a powerful piece in a game that they don't dare commit to, and in the game of half-measures that they play, it's a piece that does more harm than good. And the Israeli government is playing that same game of half-measures, which also do more harm than good. Everyone wants to keep their options open, to take the high road and kiss the olive branch-- but that road leads down to the abyss.

What Israel needs to do most of all is stop talking, stop reacting and stop playing defense while waiting for a referee to recognize all the fouls committed by the other side and call the game in its favor. The only referee likely to do that is the omnipotent One, and there's no word on when He intends to to blow the whistle. The more Israel reacts to the disruptions, the more they persist and trap it in a game of Catch 22 ball that it can't win.

The peace is not winnable, the war is, and only war can bring about some kind of manageable peace. As long as Israel holds on to the belief that passive defenses, barriers and blockades and bar lev lines will maintain some sort of liable status quo, its position will keep on degrading until it is at risk of being unsalvageable.

Israel has trapped itself in a lose-lose scenario, it needs a strategy that doesn't depend on illusions, on the failures of the other side finally becoming apparent or on tinkering with the status quo so it doesn't hurt so much. It needs to plan for victory, rather than looking for ways to manage defeat. And it may have to get much more desperate before it is ready to commit to the kinds of risky strategies that it has become famous and infamous for.

Bad leadership and international pressure has trapped Israel in a downward strategic spiral of reactive policies leading to image problems, leading to more reactive policies, leading to more disruptive assaults, and more image problems. Breaking out of that spiral will take hard work and risks, but it isn't impossible. What it requires is serious thinking of how to secure a future for Israel that does not depend on the goodwill of its enemies. That is the fundamental error and question that it faces today. And it will likely not find its way to that new independence until its back is once again up against the wall. Read more at sultanknish.blogspot.com

 

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Rubin: a liderança islâmica

Amplify’d from pajamasmedia.com

Still, Erdogan is making his leadership bid. Here he is at the Arab League foreign minister’s meeting: “It is time for us to take responsibility for our common future….We are entitled to meet the righteous demands of our people using any legitimate means.”

Note two phrases: “our common future” means forget about Arab nationalism. All us Muslims got to stick together. Seeing Turks as Europeans is an obsolete notion for him. Ninety years of secular, Western-oriented nationalism is over.

“Any legitimate means” means the right and need to go to war against Israel. Of course, the U.S. government still acts as if nothing has changed, that Turkey is not just a reliable ally but an especially honored role model, star ally.

Incidentally, don’t waste any time on the lies and denials, here’s Turkey’s foreign minister explaining the new policy of Turkey being leader of the Middle East as he secretly expressed it to a meeting of high-level ruling party officials and as made available to us by Wikileaks.

And let’s not forget Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser; and Syria’s Assad dynasty; and, of course, Nobel Peace Prize winner Yasir Arafat. All of them also had the same basic program. All of them failed miserably and left their people worse off.

There were some others—King Abdallah of Jordan; Anwar al-Sadat of Egypt; Bashir al-Gemayel of Lebanon. They were all murdered, though, by other locals. King Hussein of Jordan isn’t around any more. So let’s see, demagogues who back terrorism and violence, hate the West, and refuse compromise fail miserably and become heroes. Moderates who want to focus on economic progress (including here Husni Mubarak) and peacemaking are jeered and killed or deposed by their own people.

Might there be a pattern here?

Meanwhile, like Bart Simpson, President Barack Obama and other Western leaders keep writing on the blackboard one hundred times: Now, if only we prove to them we’re their friends they’ll like us.

Maybe, say the Europeans, if we recognize a Palestinian state they will like us! Maybe if we say enough things about Muslims they’ll like us! After all, it is all our fault, or Israel’s fault, that they are angry. They couldn’t possibly want a revolution based on a radical ideology followed by a repressive dictatorship because that’s what they really want!

In other words,  Western leaders aren’t protecting their interests. They’re auditioning for the role of Middle East hero against those who can say they are a Muslim or even an Arab. Guess who’s going to get the part? Are they going to persuade the producers that they hate Israel more than Qaradawi or Erdogan or Fadlallah? That they will promote Islam as well as people like that? That they will kick the West (that is, themselves) out of the Middle East?

In contrast, a Gulf Arab, who hates all this stuff, gave the alternative in a private conversation: “I don’t want an American president to behave like an Arab. I want an American president who will behave like an American.” Read more at pajamasmedia.com

 

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Estado Palestiniano deixaria de fora 45% dos palestinianos

Ou como se prova que o objectivo não é defender o interesse do povo palestiniano, mas o objectivo mais amplo do islão de se afirmar como única religião no mundo, a começar pelos locais que já dominou; a aniquilação de Israel é só um passo pouco mais que simbólico nesse processo.

Via O Insurgente: http://oinsurgente.org/

Amplify’d from www.commentarymagazine.com

“Palestine” to Deny Citizenship to 45 Percent of its Palestinian Residents

consider the shocking interview the PLO’s ambassador to Lebanon, Abdullah Abdullah, gave the Lebanese Daily Star last week:

The ambassador unequivocally says that Palestinian refugees would not become citizens of the sought for U.N.-recognized Palestinian state…

This would not only apply to refugees in countries such as Lebanon, Egypt, Syria and Jordan or the other 132 countries where Abdullah says Palestinians reside. Abdullah said that “even Palestinian refugees who are living in [refugee camps] inside the [Palestinian] state, they are still refugees. They will not be considered citizens.”

Abdullah said that the new Palestinian state would “absolutely not” be issuing Palestinian passports to refugees…

“When we have a state accepted as a member of the United Nations, this is not the end of the conflict. This is not a solution to the conflict. This is only a new framework that will change the rules of the game.”

The Palestinian Liberation Organization would remain responsible for refugees, and Abdullah says that UNRWA would continue its work as usual.

This is simply unbelievable. For years, the world has backed a Palestinian state on the grounds Palestinians are stateless people who deserve a country of their own. And now, a senior Palestinian official has announced once they have received a state, most Palestinians will still be stateless – even those who actually live in “Palestine.”

Moreover, the new state won’t provide these residents with any services: It expects UNRWA – or, more accurately, the American and European taxpayers who provide the bulk of that organization’s funding – to continue providing their schooling, healthcare, welfare allowances, etc.

According to UNRWA, some 689,000 of the  West Bank’s 2.4 million Palestinians and 1.1 million of Gaza’s 1.5 million Palestinians are refugees. Thus, aside from the 2.9 million Diaspora refugees, a whopping 45  percent of the new state’s residents will also remain stateless, deprived of both citizenship and services by the country the world fondly imagines is being created to serve their needs.

But of course, the PA doesn’t want a state to serve its people’s needs; it wants a state to further its goal of destroying Israel. Hence the refugees can’t be given citizenship; that would undermine its demand to resettle them in Israel, thereby destroying the Jewish state demographically. Read more at www.commentarymagazine.com

 

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Informação contra a contra-informação sobre a execução de Troy Davis

Não se pretende fazer uma apologia da pena de morte, tão somente contrariar alguma informação errónea que tem vindo a ser divulgada nos merdia portugueses:

Amplify’d from townhall.com

It's nearly impossible to receive a death sentence these days -- unless you do something completely crazy like shoot a cop in full view of dozens of witnesses in a Burger King parking lot, only a few hours after shooting at a passing car while exiting a party.

That's what Troy Davis did in August 1989. Davis is the media's current baby seal of death row. After a two-week trial with 34 witnesses for the state and six witnesses for the defense, the jury of seven blacks and five whites took less than two hours to convict Davis of Officer Mark MacPhail's murder, as well as various other crimes. Two days later, the jury sentenced Davis to death.

Now, a brisk 22 years after Davis murdered Officer MacPhail, his sentence will finally be administered this week -- barring any more of the legal shenanigans that have kept taxpayers on the hook for Davis' room and board for the past two decades.

It has been claimed -- in The New York Times and Time magazine, for example -- that there was no "physical evidence" connecting Davis to the crimes that night. Davis pulled out a gun and shot two strangers in public. What "physical evidence" were they expecting? No houses were broken into, no cars stolen, no rapes or fistfights accompanied the shootings. Where exactly would you look for DNA? And to prove what? I suppose it would be nice if the shell casings from both shootings that night matched. Oh wait -- they did. That's "physical evidence."

It's true that the bulk of the evidence against Davis was eyewitness testimony. That tends to happen when you shoot someone in a busy Burger King parking lot. Eyewitness testimony, like all evidence tending to show guilt, has gotten a bad name recently, but the "eyewitness" testimony in this case did not consist simply of strangers trying to distinguish one tall black man from another. For one thing, several of the eyewitnesses knew Davis personally. The bulk of the eyewitness testimony established the following: Two tall, young black men were harassing a vagrant in the Burger King parking lot, one in a yellow shirt and the other in a white Batman shirt. The one in the white shirt used a brown revolver to pistol-whip the vagrant. When a cop yelled at them to stop, the man in the white shirt ran, then wheeled around and shot the cop, walked over to his body and shot him again, smiling. Some eyewitnesses described the shooter as wearing a white shirt, some said it was a white shirt with writing, and some identified it specifically as a white Batman shirt. Not one witness said the man in the yellow shirt pistol-whipped the vagrant or shot the cop. Several of Davis' friends testified -- without recantation -- that he was the one in a white shirt. Several eyewitnesses, both acquaintances and strangers, specifically identified Davis as the one who shot Officer MacPhail. Now the media claim that seven of the nine witnesses against Davis at trial have recanted. First of all, the state presented 34 witnesses against Davis -- not nine -- which should give you some idea of how punctilious the media are about their facts in death penalty cases. Among the witnesses who did not recant a word of their testimony against Davis were three members of the Air Force, who saw the shooting from their van in the Burger King drive-in lane. The airman who saw events clearly enough to positively identify Davis as the shooter explained on cross-examination, "You don't forget someone that stands over and shoots someone." Recanted testimony is the least believable evidence since it proves only that defense lawyers managed to pressure some witnesses to alter their testimony, conveniently after the trial has ended. Even criminal lobbyist Justice William Brennan ridiculed post-trial recantations. Three recantations were from friends of Davis, making minor or completely unbelievable modifications to their trial testimony. For example, one said he was no longer sure he saw Davis shoot the cop, even though he was five feet away at the time. His remaining testimony still implicated Davis. One alleged recantation, from the vagrant's girlfriend (since deceased), wasn't a recantation at all, but rather reiterated all relevant parts of her trial testimony, which included a direct identification of Davis as the shooter. Only two of the seven alleged "recantations" (out of 34 witnesses) actually recanted anything of value -- and those two affidavits were discounted by the court because Davis refused to allow the affiants to testify at the post-trial evidentiary hearing, even though one was seated right outside the courtroom, waiting to appear. The court specifically warned Davis that his refusal to call his only two genuinely recanting witnesses would make their affidavits worthless. But Davis still refused to call them -- suggesting, as the court said, that their lawyer-drafted affidavits would not have held up under cross-examination. With death penalty opponents so fixated on Davis' race -- he's black -- it ought to be noted that all the above witnesses are themselves African-American. The first man Davis shot in the car that night was African-American. Read more at townhall.com

 

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Armas como prémio de recitação do Alcorão

Alcorão quer dizer isso mesmo: A Recitação. Quem o lê fica estupefacto com a violência e o ódio, com as invectivas à guerra aos infiéis.
Por isso, não surpreende esta notícia:

Amplify’d from clix.visao.pt

Crianças recebem armas e bombas como prémio por recitação do Alcorão

Três crianças da Somália, vencedoras de um concurso de recitação do Alcorão, receberam como prémios armas, bombas e livros religiosos, entregues por uma estação de rádio com ligações à Al-Qaida

A estação de rádio Andulus, administrada pela milícia al-Shabab, anunciou na segunda-feira que o vencedor do primeiro prémio do concurso tinha ganho uma espingarda e 700 dólares (514 euros), o segundo uma espingarda e 500 dólares (367 euros) e o terceiro duas bombas.

As três crianças receberam ainda livros religiosos. Read more at clix.visao.pt

 

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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

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1d7pq

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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