Saturday, October 16, 2010

Dando truque nos evangélicos: um dia depois do 1º turno, governo prorroga convênio com grupo que quer legalizar o aborto

Por Leandro Colon, no Estadão:
A postura da candidata Dilma Rousseff (PT) em prometer aos eleitores não mudar a lei do aborto contradiz a atuação do próprio governo que representa. O Ministério da Saúde publicou, em 4 de outubro, um dia depois do primeiro turno, a prorrogação de um convênio que estuda mudanças na sua legislação. O projeto, segundo o contrato publicado no Diário Oficial da União, chama-se “Estudo e Pesquisa - Despenalizar o Aborto no Brasil”.

Dilma divulgou ontem uma carta em que diz ser contra o aborto e promete não tomar “iniciativa de propor alterações de pontos que tratem da legislação” sobre o assunto. O objetivo dela é diminuir a resistência de grupos religiosos que pregam voto contra a petista, por ter defendido no passado a descriminalização do aborto.

Só que a promessa vai na contramão da atuação do Ministério da Saúde nos últimos anos e tem incomodado entidades que atuam em parceria com o governo. Esse recente convênio, prorrogado até fevereiro de 2011, foi fechado no ano passado com a Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, do Rio, e faz parte do Grupo de Estudo sobre o Aborto, que reúne desde 2007 entidades civis dispostas a debater o assunto com o Executivo, o Judiciário e o Legislativo. O governo desembolsou, só para a Fiocruz, R$ 121 mil para incentivar a discussão.

Coordenador desse grupo de estudos em todo o País, o médico Thomaz Gollop lamenta a carta de Dilma e o rumo da discussão sobre o tema no segundo turno. “O enfoque está errado, inadequado, seja para qual for o candidato. O Brasil precisa se informar. Nas alturas dos acontecimentos, isso virou uma discussão de posicionamento radical”, diz. “Acho muito ruim que esse tema seja motivo de barganha. É completamente inadequado que o candidato diga o que vai ser feito.”

O projeto apoiado pelo governo trata, segundo extrato do Diário Oficial, de estudo para “despenalizar” o aborto, ou seja, não aplicar penas às mulheres que adotam essa prática, condenada por lei. Mas, segudo o coordenador, a idéia é ir mais longe e não fazer mais do aborto um crime.
(…)

Friday, October 15, 2010

Dilma defende aborto em Sabatina da Folha

Durante sabatina realizada pela Folha de São Paulo em outubro de 2007, Dilma Rousseff defendeu a desciminalização do aborto.





Aqui, a verdade sobre Dilma e o aborto. Não é um boato anônimo da Internet. Ela defendeu a legalização

Se a página não for tirada do ar, a entrevista em que a candidata petista à Presidência, Dilma Rousseff, defende a legalização do aborto está aqui. Foi concedida a Carla Gullo e Maria Laura Nevesm da revista Marie Claire. O título é “A mulher do presidente”. Eu cometi um engano aqui. Havia escrito que a entrevista era de 2007. Não é, não! É de abril de 2009, há pouco mais de um ano.

Dali a alguns meses, a Casa Civil tornaria publico o decreto com o Programa Nacional dos Direitos Humanos, que trazia a legalização do aborto como um… “direito humano”, o que certamente assombra as áreas da política, da filosofia, da religião, da moral e da lógica. E Dilma estava muito à vontade porque, como se nota, falava com interlocutoras que concordavam com ela.

Quando as tais “pesquisas qualitativas” indicaram que essa opinião poderia não trazer votos e até tirar, então a “mulher do Lula” resolver mudar de idéia e se comportar como “a mulher do pastor” — não dá pra dizer “mulher do padre” porque não fica bem…

Então não venham agora alguns coleguinhas escrever coisas como: “O PT combate o boato de que Dilma defende a legalização do aborto…” Ou: “Há uma corrente na Internet segundo a qual Dilma defenderia a legalização do aborto”…

Calma lá!

Em abril do ano passado, já candidata oficiosa, Dilma defendeu a legalização do aborto. Não é boato! O futuro do pretérito, a depender do caso, pode ser só o tempo verbal da história reescrita.

Trecho da revista:
MC Uma das bandeiras da Marie Claire é defender a legalização do aborto. Fizemos uma pesquisa com leitoras e 60% delas se posicionaram favoravelmente, mesmo o aborto não sendo uma escolha fácil. O que a senhora pensa sobre isso?
DR - Abortar não é fácil pra mulher alguma. Duvido que alguém se sinta confortável em fazer um aborto. Agora, isso não pode ser justificativa para que não haja a legalização. O aborto é uma questão de saúde pública. Há uma quantidade enorme de mulheres brasileiras que morre porque tenta abortar em condições precárias. Se a gente tratar o assunto de forma séria e respeitosa, evitará toda sorte de preconceitos. Essa é uma questão grave que causa muitos mal-entendidos.

Friday, July 30, 2010

White Liberals and Politically Correct Racism

This is a cross-post by Edmund Standing

The white liberal is an unhealthy type of creature that you will undoubtedly have encountered, if not in real life, certainly via the media. By ‘liberal’, I do not mean simply someone who has a generally liberal outlook, in the sense of a ‘live and let live’ philosophy, nor do I mean liberals in the sense of the classical liberals of the conservative tradition. By ‘white liberal’, I mean a white Western individual who is likely to come from a middle class background and have a university education, considers him or herself to be both ‘left-wing’ and socially ‘liberal’, and almost certainly reads The Guardian or The Independent. White liberals espouse an artificial and pretentious form of ‘egalitarianism’, a patronising and hypocritical approach to ethnic minorities and non-Western cultures, and – in a re-hash of the notion of the ‘white man’s burden’ – devote themselves to a delusional Messianism in which they seek to ‘save the world’ through protesting against war (in real terms, protesting against non-white people having a chance at freedom and democracy), Israel (the one truly liberal society in the Middle East), globalisation (thereby opposing the one great vehicle by which poorer nations can develop), and so on, while making themselves feel and look ‘good’ by flaunting their pious support for campaigns to end poverty in the Third World (which will do no such thing, as Dambisa Moyo, Stephen Pollard, Marian L. Tupy, and others rightly point out ), and boasting about how ‘progressive’ they are by showing ‘solidarity’ with genocidal Islamists in Gaza.

White liberals, despite viewing themselves as intelligent and open-minded, are actually some of the most illiberal and narrow-minded people in society today. Their reactions to the idea that anyone might think differently to them range from gut-wrenching despair to pure hatred of the kind seen in the most fanatical of ‘true believers’. White liberals are, by and large, incapable of serious adult debate (preferring innuendo and accusations of bigotry), or of dealing with the fact that not everyone will agree with them (despite their supposed love of pluralism and a multiplicity of different ‘voices’), and tend to see any view which deviates from their cultic leftist script as a form of irredeemable moral evil. White liberals do not base their world-view on rational analysis and sensible argument, but instead on an almost religious faith that they possess the ‘truth’, and just as we see in so many fundamentalist religious cults and sects, the devotees of the white liberal faith burn with hatred for the ‘sin’ that surrounds them, and indeed, all too often for the ‘sinners’ themselves. White liberals, who are the intellectual equivalent of stroppy, rebellious teenagers, have sought to subvert and undermine Western civilisation, and some offer support for authoritarian and even terrorist movements as part of their attack on ‘racism’ and ‘colonialism’.

White liberals approach issues of race and racism from an essentially irrational, moralistic standpoint. White liberals do not simply judge racism to be based on bad thinking and criticise it for its illogical collectivism. Instead, white liberals make the issue of racism, as with other issues, all about them. White liberals have colonised the discourse of racism and anti-racism because it offers them an opportunity to boast of the superiority of their virtue and to demonstrate their purity and holiness through ostentatious and vacuous public displays of self-flagellation. Just as early Christianity imbued adherents with a deep sense of guilt and sinfulness, so the white liberal finds in reflecting on the history of white racism the opportunity to both revel in the guilt of the sinner and to make atonement through ‘anti-racist’ initiatives, thereby offering them the opportunity to further present themselves as a holy elite tasked with saving the world. And just as at various points in the history of Christianity an overarching sense of guilt derived from an intense awareness of, and obsession with, the supposedly inherent sinfulness of human beings and of the ‘world’ led ‘holy’ men and women to conclude that the path to holiness is found in the hatred of self, world, and the human condition, white liberals indulge in a form of self-hatred which is designed to project the image of penitence and sanctity, while actually being transparently pretentious, self-aggrandising, and destructive.

Ideological white racists are collectivists who adopt the irrational position that white people form some kind of world-wide ‘brotherhood’ with a unified history and culture. The huge variations in the historical and cultural experiences and manifestations of the various majority white nations is seen to be of little importance in the bigger picture. Ideological white racists are frequently people who have made little or no personal contribution to the development and advancement of Western civilisation. You won’t find many ground-breaking inventors and innovators, great scientists, artists, composers, and so on in the ranks of the modern white supremacist movement, but you will find many bitter and insecure individuals who make themselves feel important by piggy-backing on the achievements of others. When white racist activists and ideologues talk of ‘white unity’ and ‘white pride’, they almost always claim to be ‘proud’ of the ‘superior’ achievements of white people throughout history. Ideological white racists will point to great men and women of the past and present who happen to share their skin colour and state how great the ‘white race’ is. So, you will find the absurd phenomenon of drug dealing, dole scrounging morons who somehow feel Shakespeare and Mozart can be claimed by them as great men of ‘their race’. Clearly, stating yourself ‘proud’ of things that you have not made or done just because they were made or done by people who look or looked similar to you has no rational basis.

On this point, white liberals will agree. However, at the same time, white liberals advocate an inverse form of the same collectivist nonsense by proposing that whites should feel collective guilt for the negative actions of white people of the past. It’s clearly stupid for a skinhead thug to claim to feel ‘proud’ of the works of Beethoven, yet it is also equally stupid for a white liberal to claim to feel ‘guilty’ for the actions of white slave traders or marauding white colonialists. But the white liberal simply will not accept this. White liberals hold an almost universally negative view of the history of Western civilisation and claim that modern Western whites should apologise and make amends for the actions of whites of previous generations and even previous centuries. If a Mayor of London made a public speech tearfully extolling the superior virtues of white people who happened to live in London in the past most people would be shocked by this act of collectivist posturing and irrational bigotry. However, when the tables are turned and a Mayor of London makes a tearful ‘apology’ for long dead Londoners’ involvement in the slave trade, this is seen by white liberals to be a moral and righteous act.

Here’s how The Guardian reported a 2007 case of exactly this collectivist irrationality:

Ken Livingstone yesterday marked the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade with an emotional and tearful ceremonial apology on behalf of the capital city and its institutions. The London mayor wept as he told a commemorative service of the cruelties inflicted on the millions transported from Africa and the legacy that confronts them today.

Before an audience of politicians, writers and dignitaries, he twice paused during his address. As he voiced the apology, the US civil rights leader the Rev Jesse Jackson walked over and placed his arm around the mayor. Mr Livingstone completed the long awaited statement, dabbing tears from his eyes, his voice shaky.

Ken Livingstone – known as ‘Red Ken’ for the far-left views he espoused for many years of his political career – took it upon himself to express collective guilt on behalf of an entire city in his role as Mayor of London. In doing so, he acted as the archetypal masochistic white liberal idiot.

As is so often the case with white liberals, Livingstone’s pathological sense of white guilt has also affected his ability to think rationally about people who happen to have a darker shade of skin than him. For white liberals like Red Ken, criticism of any non-white person is suspected to be a cover for ‘racism’, ‘imperialism’, and so on. Consequently, when Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi – an Islamist ‘scholar’ who advocates the death penalty for gay people, the beating of wives by their husbands, and calls Hamas terrorists ‘martyrs’ – came to London in 2004, Livingstone, acting in his official capacity of Mayor of London, publicly welcomed him and went so far as to embrace him before the cameras of the media.

Rational criticism of this disgusting act of grovelling to a retrograde theocratic ideologue had no effect on Livingstone. Taking white liberal idiocy to its logical conclusion, he went so far as issuing yet another of his vacuous apologies, stating that ‘On behalf of the people of London, I would like to apologise to the Sheikh for the outburst of xenophobia in sections of the media’. Livingstone’s decision to ignore Al-Qaradawi’s reactionary views was typical of the kind of double standard adopted by many white liberals. Livingstone seems to be one of the white liberal drones who thinks that while white people have been – and continue to be – somehow collectively responsible for an endless list of crimes and transgressions, the same cannot possibly be said for someone of another ethnicity. If a white leader advocated the same things as Al-Qaradawi, white liberals like Livingstone would be up in arms, denouncing the evils of homophobia, sexism, and any other ‘ism’ that could be thrown at them, and would probably go on to issue tearful apologies and dredge up issues like slavery.

Speaking of the similar attitudes of white liberals in Canada, liberal Muslim author Tarek Fatah nailed it when he told the Canadian Jewish News:

there is a tremendous amount of white guilt. The intelligentsia in this country in a selfish way tries to assuage this guilt. It caters to the most idiosyncratic behaviour of the immigrant and practices the racism of lower expectations. It sets standards of behaviour for our community, but when dealing with immigrants and especially the Muslim community, it does not expect them to live by the same standards.

Meanwhile, the Syrian-born Muslim scholar Bassam Tibi has told Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine that ‘Europeans have stopped defending the values of their civilization’ because ‘they confuse tolerance with relativism’. White guilt is an irrational, intellectually and culturally crippling pathology, yet white liberals who embrace this nonsense have a huge influence in almost all the powerful and influential sectors of our society.

For white liberals, the fear of being accused of racism is a matter of constant concern. The idea that someone might be a racist has taken second place only to the idea that someone might be a paedophile. Racism continues to be a highly contentious issue, and one in which white liberals take a particularly keen interest. However, as with everything else, most white liberals get this issue completely wrong and in doing so greatly hinder the development of an intellectually honest and rational society, and a society in which racial collectivism and prejudice is eradicated.

A good working definition of racism would be that it is the belief that one or more ethnic groups are inherently, biologically inferior to another. Racists work on the deterministic assumption that people can be collectively viewed as a single group based on ethnic ancestry alone and that membership of this group connotes certain fixed, unchanging, and unchangeable factors, such as intelligence, character, and aspirations. Racists are race essentialists – they do not see individuals but rather view ethnic groups as monolithic groups whose cultures, traditions, religions, and so on in some sense spring from their genetic make-up. While I’m far from an Ayn Rand acolyte, her analysis of racism in The Virtue of Selfishness is spot-on:

Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage — the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.

Racism claims that the content of a man’s mind (not his cognitive apparatus, but its content) is inherited; that a man’s convictions, values and character are determined before he is born, by physical factors beyond his control. This is the caveman’s version of the doctrine of innate ideas — or of inherited knowledge — which has been thoroughly refuted by philosophy and science. Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes. It is a barnyard or stock-farm version of collectivism, appropriate to a mentality that differentiates between various breeds of animals, but not between animals and men.

Like every form of determinism, racism invalidates the specific attribute which distinguishes man from all other living species: his rational faculty. Racism negates two aspects of man’s life: reason and choice, or mind and morality, replacing them with chemical predestination.

When it comes to racism, a sensible approach would be to say that as the central assumptions which underpin it are false, racism is irrational and consequently a belief system that is of no value and is positively harmful. Many white people are hard-working and make a positive contribution to society; however, many do not. The same applies across all ethnic groups. A sensible approach to the issue of race is to judge individuals on their personal merits, not on the colour of their skin or their country of ethnic ancestry. The white racist would prefer to live next to a white dole scrounger than a hard-working Asian. This fact illustrates the fundamental irrationality of racism, and the indiscriminate collectivism upon which it is based. Racists are often seen as people who ‘discriminate’. In reality, they show themselves to be fundamentally incapable of discrimination, given the fact they see only undifferentiated masses termed ‘races’, instead of vastly differing individuals.

White liberals take a very different approach to the issue of racism than the one outlined above. White liberals do not predominantly base their positions on reason, but rather on emotions, moralism, and an almost religious devotion to concepts such as egalitarianism and ‘human rights’ (although their support for human rights varies according to whose rights are at stake). As moralists, white liberals see racism as evil and essentially ‘sinful’, and for them racism violates the holy precepts of ‘rights’ and ‘humanity’. White liberals are incapable of logically and adequately addressing issues of race and racism, because their moralism is not rationally founded.

In the Hebrew Bible, we find the idea of generational curses, in which God punishes the descendants of transgressors. For example, in Exodus 20:5, God is said to have stated: ‘I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation’. White liberals approach racism from a similar perspective. As we have seen, white liberals feel an almost pathological sense of guilt over the white racism of the past and this is central to their overwhelmingly negative assessment of the West and its history.

This combination of moralism and guilt has resulted in white liberals going from one extreme to the other. In attempting to avoid the mistakes of the past and to somehow atone for the sins of their forefathers, white liberals have adopted a position towards ethnic minorities and non-Western cultures in which they feel that it is not morally permissible for white people to criticise any non-white groups, belief systems, cultural phenomena, and so on. Consequently, white liberals are – for example – wholly opposed to asserting the superior values of Western modernity over the comparative backwardness of the so-called Islamic world, and indeed devote much of their time to promoting the idea that the West is in fact grossly deficient and shot through with ‘racism’.

Multiculturalism is the inevitable result of this white liberal outlook. Unable to assert the particular value of Western civilisation and the developments of modernity, white liberals have encouraged multiculturalism because a large part of their flawed ‘anti-racist’ strategy is the promotion of cultural relativism. Cultural relativism is the irrational position that no culture – or aspect of cultural belief or practice – can in any sense be stated to be better than another, and it is an important aspect of the pseudo-religion of ‘equality’. The simplistic idea underpinning cultural relativism is the view that if all cultures are seen as equal, then all races will be seen to be equal, and never again can whites assert racial superiority over non-whites. However, the white liberal approach to racism is wrong on two fundamental levels: firstly, it is irrational, and secondly, it is actually based on racist ideas.

The white liberal notion that ‘discrimination’ is an intrinsic evil involves an abuse of the concept of discrimination and the application of a moral principle that makes no sense, and is not even consistently followed by white liberals. Despite the fact the word is now so loaded it automatically conjures up images of bigotry and injustice, discrimination is a perfectly normal and legitimate concept. To discriminate is simply to choose one option from a series of options. The fact that railway companies no longer build steam locomotives is the result of superior advances in rail technology. When building new trains, rail companies could choose to build a new fleet of steam locomotives. Of course, they do not do this as to do so would be a step backwards and would be commercially harmful. In choosing to build trains using the latest technology, rail companies are using a process of discrimination. Go and see the managers of a rail company and try telling them that all trains are ‘equal’ and that they should not ‘discriminate’ against steam locomotives, but should rather use equal numbers of steam and electric locomotives. They would probably laugh in your face and call you an idiot. And they would be right. Even white liberals would find the notion of railway locomotive ‘equality’ completely absurd and irrational. However, when it comes to looking at beliefs, cultural practices, ways of ordering society, and so on, white liberals suddenly adopt the same irrational argument as used in my train example. All cultures are ‘equal’, they assert. To think otherwise is immoral and bigoted and shows that you are a ‘racist’.

In reality, white liberals do not really consider all cultures to be equal. They may say they do, but even white liberals are not actually that stupid. White liberals to do not want to live in a society ruled on theocratic lines; they don’t want to be enslaved to following ancient writings of ignorant men; they don’t want their daughters to be genitally mutilated; they don’t want to be forced into arranged marriages; they don’t believe men should be in a position of ‘authority’ over women; they don’t accept sexism, misogyny, and anti-gay prejudice; they don’t think the answer to criminality is to enact barbaric laws involving public whippings, amputation, stoning, and beheading; they don’t think people should be executed for ‘crimes’ such as homosexuality and ‘sorcery’. The West was once based around all these principles, however, a slow development away from rule by religious authority and unelected leaders, and a society ordered along brutal feudal lines and permeated with superstition, took place in the West over a number of centuries, and was particularly accelerated thanks to the Enlightenment. The often hysterical reaction to Christian fundamentalists exhibited by white liberals, and their support for the notion that harshly criticising and even ridiculing Christianity is admirable and ‘progressive’, shows where they stand when it comes to traditional Western religion and religious authority. Because of its long history in the West, white liberals tend to perceive Christianity as somehow a ‘white’ religion (despite the majority of practising Christians in the world today being non-white and non-European), and as a result are more than happy to see it dissected, neutered, and pilloried. Naturally, white liberals do not consider criticism of Christianity and theocratic Christian groups to be a form of ‘anti-white racism’, and they are right, as it isn’t, and has nothing to do with race.

Given white liberals are very clear about the way in which they wish to live, and the rights they consider essential – free speech and expression, freedom from sexism, freedom from homophobia, democratic rights, individual rights, freedom from religious authority, freedom from State oppression, and so on – you might expect them to take the position that every citizen in the West (and indeed the whole world) should share a respect for, and enjoy the benefits of, these freedoms. However, because of white liberals’ bizarre misunderstanding of what racism is, they suddenly throw out any universal commitment to such values when they find that non-white societies and ethnic minority groups in majority-white societies do not respect these freedoms. The clearest example of this bizarre and hypocritical attitude is currently found in the way white liberals approach Islam and Muslims. According to the white liberal anti-racist creed, to criticise Islam, to state that Muslims living in the West should abide by the social mores of the West, and even to criticise political Islam (Islamism) is an act of ‘racism’. How can this be perceived to be racism? According to white liberals, criticism of Islam is ‘racist’ because the majority of Muslims in the world – and in the West – are non-white, and Islam is a religion that emerged in a non-white land (the Arabian peninsula). For the white liberal, criticism of Islam, because it is a predominantly non-white belief system, must by definition in fact be based on racist contempt for non-white people, because Islam is ‘their culture’ and to criticise ‘their culture’ is to criticise ‘them’. White liberals, haunted by memories of slavery, colonialism, and white supremacist ideologies of the past, have concluded that cultures and races are integrally intertwined. Islam, they believe, is a non-white and ethnic minority belief system, which is therefore an extension of the non-white and ethnic minority communities that adhere to it. In the light of the white colonialism and racism of the past, white liberals claim, white people have no right to pass judgement on other cultures, and to do so is to engage in a racist ‘cultural imperialism’.

The notion that criticism of a culture, cultural practice, or ideology is a form of racism is, ironically enough, actually predicated on a racist outlook. When white liberals cry ‘cultural racism’, they are merely engaging in a politically correct form of a racist idea which originally formed the basis of many theories of white supremacy. Early Western proponents of notions of the inferiority of non-white people, racial hierarchies, and so on, initially based their beliefs on assumptions derived from anthropology, before going on to create full-blown pseudo-scientific racial theories that drew on such bogus ‘scientific’ methods as craniology and phrenology. These anthropological racists came into contact with various non-white peoples through exploration and colonialism. Upon finding that many non-European peoples were living in societies bereft of the technological and philosophical advances found in the West, white supremacists concluded that the reason these peoples lived in primitive conditions which lacked any evidence of modernity was not that they – for various geographical and sociological reasons – had yet to go through the radical changes from living in pre-modern societies to living in modern technological and industrialised nations that had recently occurred in the West, but rather was a result of an inherent intellectual and sociological deficiency in their ‘race’ that derived from their genetic make-up. According to the Western theorists of white supremacy, the cultures of non-white peoples were external manifestations of an innate racial essence, and it was quite impossible to hope that these peoples would ever advance from the state in which they were found, because they were biologically incapable of ever advancing or developing. Such thinking provided an ‘intellectual’ justification for slavery, for example, in that it adjudged black people to be a lesser form of being, lacking intellectual potential and aspirations, and consequently a being whose ‘natural’ role was to live in subservience to white people. When white liberals claim that criticism of Islam or Islamic politics – so-called ‘Islamophobia’ – is a form of racism, they are making exactly the same connection between culture and race. In this white liberal form of racism – the racism of lower expectations – it is seen to be bigoted to suggest that non-white people should leave behind the very same primitive ideas that once held sway in the West (fanatical devotion to religion, intolerance of critical thinking and other beliefs, persecution of gay people, and so on). Yet the true bigot here is the white liberal, who assumes that cultural ideas that have developed in non-white societies are somehow integrally intertwined with, and innately derived from, the racial groups in those societies. The racism of lower expectations views non-white people as inferior to white Westerners, but masks this racist assumption in politically correct language about ‘diversity’ and ‘respect’ for cultures.

If white liberals really believed that all cultures are ‘equal’, you would expect to see them spreading out across the world, queuing up to gain entry to countries such as Iran or Saudi Arabia. In fact, most white liberals certainly do not hike off around the world, seeking to make their homes in Islamic States. The major traffic between Islamic States and the West comes in the form of a steady flow of immigrants trying to gain entry to the West because they know they will have a better life here. Societies that attempt to organise themselves using Islam as their foundational philosophical basis are demonstrably vastly inferior to the West. One need only glance at the human rights records of Islamic States such as Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Iran to see that this is the case. None of these States has a properly functioning democracy or the freedoms we take for granted in the West such as freedom of speech and expression, freedom of belief and religious adherence, freedom of association, gender equality, and freedom of choice in personal and sexual relationships. The legal systems in these States are barbaric, prejudiced, and corrupt. Law enforcement does not adhere to any proper system of due process. Saudi Arabia is ruled with an iron fist and is marked by institutional superstition, as seen, for example, in its execution of people accused of ‘witchcraft’ and ‘sorcery’. Yemen fiercely clamps down both on individual freedom and the rights of political groups. Arbitrary house searches and arrests are common, and capital ‘crimes’ include homosexuality. Child marriage, meanwhile, is promoted by Yemeni clerics, who cite Muhammad’s marriage of a child as the authoritative precedent for this practice. Iran is governed by a Holocaust-denying Islamist lunatic who incites hatred of the West and grants police the right to detain individuals for such bogus ‘crimes’ as ‘Satanism’ or having the wrong hairstyle. Iran also executes gay men, including teenagers.

To state that life in Western democracies is demonstrably better than life in Islamic States should hardly be controversial, yet many white liberals cannot bring themselves to acknowledge what they must logically believe to be the case, because to do so would be to ‘discriminate’ and to engage in ‘cultural imperialism’, ‘Islamophobia’, and ‘racism’. Yet who is the racist here? – The honest individual who notes that modern Western civilisation is superior to that of Islamic States, or the white liberal who enjoys the freedoms of the West but claims that we cannot ‘impose’ our ‘Eurocentric’ perspective on others, because to do so would be to claim that peoples and races living in Islamic States are themselves inferior? The subtext is rather clear in the white liberal’s cultural relativism: Islamic States are the way they are because they are the creation of non-white peoples, and therefore to criticise political Islam is to pass judgement on the ethnic groups in those States. A sensible person who is not clouded by racial prejudice should be able to see that Islam and Islamic States have nothing to do with race, and everything to do with culture. Culture does not derive from race, and therefore to criticise a culture cannot be seen as a racial criticism (unless that criticism is articulated in the language of genuine ideological racism). To assume that it can be seen as that is actually to endorse the view that culture does derive from race and that therefore the backward, superstitious, and authoritarian nature of Islamic societies is actually the result of non-white peoples being inherently backward and superstitious.

The same issue applies to white liberals’ approach to Islamists living in the West. When Islam, Islamism, and Islamists are criticised, many white liberals work themselves into a frenzy, frothing at the mouth about supposed ‘Islamophobia’ and ‘racism’. In doing so, white liberals seem to be seriously proposing that non-white immigrants and children of immigrants are inherently predisposed towards theocratic and illiberal outlooks. White liberals practice the racism of lower expectations in their dealings with immigrant communities. When Islamic groups are shown to be sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-freedom, and anti-Western, white liberals do not oppose them – instead they support the bigotry and backwardness of Islamic extremists in immigrant communities by announcing that such prejudices and anti-freedom views and ideologies are ‘their’ culture and are no better or worse than the predominant culture in the West. The fact that white liberals are being racist in doing this is easily illustrated by the fact that when white racist parties and organisations promote anti-democratic views and hatred for minorities such as gay people, white liberals immediately condemn them. When the Christian Right comes out with views that are backward, superstitious, and opposed to personal freedom, white liberals start ranting about theocracy and ‘fascism’. White liberals are happy to attack bigotry, irrationalism, and extremism when it comes with a white face – they don’t claim that ‘far-right’ homophobia and anti-Semitism is somehow ‘different but equal’ to white liberal views, nor do they start making excuses about ‘understandable grievances’ when white supremacists rave about Jewish conspiracies or Christian extremists bomb abortion clinics. If virulent criticism of white racist ideologies and religiously conservative Christianity is not seen by white liberals to constitute a form of ‘anti-white racism’, then why on earth should criticism of political Islam be seen as a form of ‘racism’? The only way in which opposing political Islam can be spun as a form of ‘racism’ is to claim that Islam constitutes an expression of a racial ‘essence’, as opposed to being one cultural form among many. To claim that criticism of Islam is ‘racist’ is to claim that Islam is derived from biology. This is nonsense. It is the same as the white supremacist claim that Western civilisation is great because the ethnicity of its progenitors is great. When white liberals claim criticism of Islam or any other non-white belief or culture is racist they show themselves to be racist to the core. White liberals have a condescending approach to non-white people because in actual fact they do not view them as equals at all. White liberals are the true racists, and their ‘tolerance’, relativism, and obsession with calling other people racists is in fact an attempt at covering up this very fact.

Friday, June 25, 2010

KURDS VS ARAB 'PALESTINIANS'

IT PAYS TO BE ILLEGITIMATE & MURDEROUS "PALESTINIAN" THAN TO BE A LIGITIMATE PEACEFUL KURD


As the world's about to give yet another state [Jordan ain't enough?] for the [group of immigrant Arabs into Israel that call themselves as] "Palestinians", that have never behaved and do not merely fight for a 'homeland' which Israel was never theirs anyhow, but have their goal of eliminating Israel, ethnic cleansing and racist genocide, the poor Kurds still sink under oppression by Turkey, by Arab racism in: Syria, Iraq, and by Islamic fascists regime of Iran.


THE KURDS
REAL PEOPLE, WITH REAL ASPIRATION OF A HOMELAND - THE LEGITIMATE
VICTIMS OF OPPRESSION & ARAB RACISM

Hiding Arab Racism, May 1, 2005
By Adel Makhoul


This book, like Culture and Imperialism, is essentially about Western prejudice against Islam. Said condemns intellectuals in the West who in his eyes are "agents of exploitation". Yet Said himself is an agent of racism: Arab Racism.

A Pan Arabist, he always supported Arab unity and "Islam" at the expense of non-Arab and non-Moslem peoples. Said directs and manipulates the Western taste for self criticim, and all that does is deflect the world's attention from Arab and Moslem attrocities committed against Christians, Kurds, Jews, Israelis, Coptic Christians, non-Arab Sudanese, etc.

Thus, reading Said, you would never realize that Sadam Hussein's poisoning of the Kurds has never been condemned by one Arab intellectual or leader. This is because a racist prevalent attitude in the Arab mind is that the entire Middle East should be Arab. This also explains the attitude towards Israel, a country that is predominantly non-Moslem and speaks a Middle Eastern language other than Arabic.

The pity is that Said himself is a Christian, yet he never spoke on behalf of Coptic Christians in Egypt, or the right of Christians to practice their faith in Saudi Arabia and probably other places in the Arab World. He is facilitating the overall aim of PanArab Nationalists by distracting the West from what is happening in the Arab world.

For a better understanding of relations between the West and Islam, I recommend books by Bernard Lewis, such as "The Moslem Discovery of Europe" and the "Jews of Islam". I also recommend books by the Egyptian scholar and Jewish refugee Yael Bat Yeor, such as "The Dhimmi".

Idea Portal: Kurds under oppression in Iran, Kurds under oppression in Iran. You can easily find more than ten top film festivals around the world from Italy to Chicago...
http://shauheen.ngareh.com/archives/000146.html

The Unknown Oppression of the Kurds, The Unknown Oppression of the Kurds .... Iran had used the Kurdish parties of northern Iraq during its war with Iraq. So, all these countries benefit from ...
http://web.mit.edu/thistle/www/v12/2/kurds.html -

Kurdish Oppression in Turkey Goes On; Short-Lived Republic - New ...Kurdish Oppression in Turkey Goes On; Short-Lived Republic ... The Kurdish Republic of Mahabad in northern Iran survived only from December 1945 to December ...
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CEED61539F934A35757C0A967958260

What Really has happened in Halabja and The Racism of so-called Arab Intellectuals towards Kurds and the Kurdistan: The case of Mr. Mohammed Al Obaidi ...

http://home.cogeco.ca/~kurdistan5/3-1-05-opinion-hadi-halabja-arabs-racism.html

He Has Gassed His Own People
"Saddam Hussein is a man who is willing to gas his own people, willing to use ... and Iran--were responsible perhaps for the gassing of civilian Kurds. ...
http://hnn.us/articles/862.html

Iran: Kurdish journalists face executionT his case provides yet another example of the current climate of severe oppression in the Kurdish region of Iran. Mr Butimar wrote articles for agricultural ...
http://www.indexonline.org/en/news/articles/2007/3/iran-kurdish-journalists-face-execution.shtml

Kurds in Syria is between 2 to 2.5 million. ... murder, torture, discrimination and terror to keep the Kurds under control. ...
http://home.cogeco.ca/~kurdistan2/14-3-04-opinion-badrakhan-freedom-for-kurds-w-kurdistan.html


Stop the Syrian Violence against the Kurds in Syria - Reform Party ...The Kurds are for the Autonomy within Syria framework, is explained by the ... Islamic Barbarism, colonialism and national oppression, our people call on ...
http://www.reformsyria.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=296&Itemid=67

Second- Citizens...
For Many, Not Citizens at All

Erasing Ethnic Identity.

Syrian Kurds were banned from giving their children names reflecting their ethnic identity.
Pary Karadaghi, Director of Kurdish Human Rights Watch in Washington, says one of the most basic ways of showing Kurdish identity was taken away. "The campaign of 'Arabization' actually replaced the Kurdish names," she says. "People could not have Kurdish names on cities, buildings [and] businesses. Children's names could not be Kurdish."

Syria's Kurds struggled for years to survive despite government oppression on many fronts. They closely watched their Iraqi counterparts, who achieved a measure of autonomy in the 1990s, and pressed Damascus for their own rights. Their demands were ignored or sometimes met with waves of repression.
http://www.khrw.org/advocate/2005/syrias_kurds_struggle_for_rights.htm

_____________

THE FAKE 'NATION' CALLED: "PALESTINIANS" THE ILLEGAL GROUP SINCE THEY THAT DEFIED UN'S PARTITION PLAN IN 1948 WITH GENOCIDAL GOALS

ROOTS

Who Are the Palestinians? At DePaul, Don't Ask and Don't Tell September 1, 2005 Historically, Palestinian Arabs were not a distinct nationality. Though not all Muslims are terrorists, most major international terrorism today is committed by Muslims. .
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=22&x_article=1028


Never forget this one point: There is no such thing as a Palestinian People, there is no Palestinian entity ...
http://www.peacefaq.com/palestinians.html


What is a Palestinian? Arabs have been flocking to Israel ever since it was created and even before, coinciding with the wave of Jewish immigration into Palestine prior to 1948. ...
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=22564


Illegal Arab immigration into "Palestine" - part of OsloT, he Arab Legion never allowed a census of Palestinian refugees. .... Israel doesn't enforce immigration laws (and other laws) in Arab communities. ...
http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~jkatz/immigration-oslo.html


How the Israel-Palestine Problem Came to Pass Trying to force Britain to convert Palestine immediately into an Arab state, ... Jewish immigration into Palestine was going to be limited to a total of ...
http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/02/how_the_israelpalestine_proble.html


History of Israel and Palestine in VERY Easy To Understand Maps The Arab countries occupy 640 times the land mass as does Israel and ... The Jews had already begun mass immigration into Palestine in the 1880's in an ...
http://www.masada2000.org/historical.html



Is Jordan Palestine? That homeland is Trans-Jordan, or Eastern Palestine.... A second Palestinian state to the west of the River is a prescription for anarchy.
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/298


Jordan, Transjordan - The Peace FAQ Transjordan being to the east of the River Jordan, it formed in a sense, the interior of Palestine." - King Hussein, writing in his Memoirs ...
http://www.peacefaq.com/jordan.html


1950 - Transjordan changes its name to Jordan and begins to call Judea and Samaria the West Bank. 1964 - The Palestine Liberation Organization (P.L.O.) is ...
http://www.infoisrael.net/cgi-local/text.pl?source=3/b/050820021


American Thinker: Palestine - Partition and Propaganda, It was then called Trans-Jordan, it comprised 77% of the territory administered by Great Britain under the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/06/palestine_partition_and_propag.html


Jordan is Palestine In other words, Jordan is Palestine. Arab Palestine. There is absolutely no difference between Jordan and Palestine, nor between Jordanians and...
http://christianactionforisrael.org/isreport/janfeb04/jordan.html


Jordan is Palestine In other words, Jordan is Palestine. Arab Palestine. There is absolutely no difference between Jordan and Palestine, nor between Jordanians and...
http://christianactionforisrael.org/isreport/janfeb04/jordan.html


Palestinian people do not exist, In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, ... the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand ...
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=28222


"PALESTINIAN" IDENTITY AS PROPAGANDA DEVICE In deference to this non-assertion of "Palestinian" Arab ethnic identity, the League of .... In reality, Today, there is no difference between Jordanians, ... ...
http://www.rosenblit.com/Palestine.htm


-----


GOAL


Israel Has Always Faced Arab Genocide
http://www.tzemach.org/fyi/docs/beres/sept02-03.htm


Israel not only has the moral right to do so, but legal rights as well. ... that the resolution "was an invitation to genocide against the Jewish people. ...
http://www.freeman.org/m_online/dec97/shustef1.htm


Israel's Survival... Historically, the Islamic world's orientation to genocide against the Jews has not been limited to idle phrasemaking. Even before Israel came into existence ...
http://www.freeman.org/m_online/jun00/beres.htm


Teach Kids Peace – Sharansky: ‘PA Promotes Genocide’But are such depictions laying the groundwork for genocide? Natan Sharansky, Israel’s minister for Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs, called a news conference
http://www.teachkidspeace.org/doc1015.php


Hamas Issues Islamic Call For Genocide on PA Television - Defense …Israeli news covered by the Arutz Sheva news team bringing news briefs and in-depth stories covering Israeli politics, the Arab-Israeli conflict, …
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/122094


The Palestinian War of Annihilation of the Jewish State The PLO mission is “the elimination of Zionism in Palestine! ... accommodation with Israel; only a renewed war of annihilation - the combined PLO-Arab state ...
http://www.ortzion.org/archnws07_2.html


February poll 75 of palestinians don't give Israel a right to exist... IMRA - Friday, February 16, 2007 NEC 12-15 February Poll: 75% of Palestinians do not think that Israel has the right to exist ...
http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=33100


Fatah-Controlled TV Promises Elimination of Israel - Inside Israel ...The lyrics of the latest PA video calling for Israel's elimination, as recorded from PA TV on October 23, 2007 and translated by PMW, are as follows: ...
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/124079


Tuesday, June 01, 2010

The Gaza Flotilla Op

Special Alert: Flotilla Battle Unleashes Anti-Israel Wave

Thomas Lifson

The latest elaborate operation put into effect to marginalize Israel, as a predicate to destroying it, has succeeded. William A. Jacobson of Legal Insurrection puts it all into perspective

The left-wing blogosphere is full of useful idiots, who pretend that the flotilla which just was stopped by Israel was a humanitarian mission.

The flotilla was organized by the Islamist government in Turkey to aid Hamas with the goal of opening up shipping channels for Turkey's new friend, Iran, to ship more and better weapons as it is doing to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran is busy turning Lebanon and Syria into one large missile launching pad against Israel, and a southern base in Gaza will complete the encirclement of Israel for the coming crisis over Iran's nuclear program.

The Europeans on the ships were cover, and the placement of an 18-month old child on these ships was the utmost cynical use of a human shield.

If getting humanitarian supplies to Gaza really was the goal, this flotilla was not necessary. The supplies would have been off-loaded in Eqypt or Israel and then shipped in by land after being checked for hidden weapons.

And that is the rub, only sea-based shipping would provide Iran with the mechanism for almost unlimited armament of Hamas. There is a limit to the quantity and size of missiles and other armaments which can be smuggled through tunnels from Egypt. That is why the sea blockade must be broken for Iran to get what it wants.

But the useful idiots (no offense to idiots) in the left-wing blogosphere ignore this reality, and use the incident for their ultimate goal, which is the cut off of U.S. support for Israel.

The Op must be counted a success, for the world is blaming the Israelis, who did not initiate violence but were rather victims of it. This will increase pressure on Israel to stop enforcing its legitimate blockade to prevent the instruments of its destruction being positioned on its borders. There will another Gaza flotilla to test the defenses of Israel. Her enemies feel the wind at their back.

Richard Baehr adds:

Facts:

From Memri: some on the flotilla were looking for martyrdom.

Bookworm with video of what happened.


From Haaretz -- note the charming "peace activist" with the knife, and the camera crew behind him, ready to record bad deeds by Israel.

From the Israel Project, the facts on Israel's provision of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

This was an ambush, which the flotilla crowd planned, and wanted to happen. They were ready to record any injuries or death to their shipmates from any Israeli military actions (which in this case, occurred ENTIRELY in self defense), for a ready and willing international media circus on board, and at the ready at their desks.

Despite all the facts, it won't likely matter in the court of international opinion. My guess is that President Barack Obama, who never utters a critical word about Islamic radicals, or jihad, or the Muslim Brotherhood (which now effectively runs not only Gaza, but Turkey), probably sympathizes with the flotilla protestors far more than with Israel.

Gaza Clash: Turkish Charity’s Terror Links

The United Nations Security Council can’t decide how to sanction Iran or punish North Korea over killing 46 South Korean Sailors in last month’s unprovoked attack on one of its submarines. But on Monday, the UN called an emergency session to take Israel to task over the boarding of a Turkish registered boat on its way to deliver aid to Gaza which led to at least nine deaths following violent altercations between Israeli forces and a significant number of armed protestors.

Yet the Turkish group that funded and ran the boat the Mavi Marmara, where the confrontation occurred is documented as having ties to terrorists, was named in federal court papers as playing a role in the failed millennium bomb plot and is named in a C.I.A. report in 1996 as having links to terrorist groups. The Foundation for Human Rights and Humanitarian Relief (IHH) is a Muslim charity and non-government organization (NGO) that was formed in 1992 with the goal of assisting Muslims in Bosnia. Since then it has branched out to many places including Lebanon, Pakistan, Sudan, Somalia and the Palestinian territories.

According to a report by the Israeli based Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, IHH is a “radical Islamic Organization with an anti-Western orientation.” Written by Jonathan Fighel, the report says “besides its legitimate philanthropic activities, it supports radical Islamic networks, including Hamas, and that at least in the past, even global jihad networks.”

Fighel’s report also notes that the C.I.A. report that was declassified in 2001 and titled “International Islamic NGOs and Links to Terrorism” states that the IHH had links with extremist groups in Iran and Algeria and was either active or facilitating activities of terrorist groups operating in Bosnia.

IHH's Oguzan Ulas, told Fox News from its headquarters in Istanbul, Turkey that his organization has “no relation to radical Islamic groups,” and that it was “a rubbish accusation.” Ulas blamed this on a smear campaign by the Israelis against his group. As to his organization’s support of Hamas he said that it disagrees with the U.S. government’s designation of Hamas as a terrorist group and that IHH “openly accepts Hamas.”

Steve Emerson, a leading terrorism expert, tells Fox News that IHH was banned by Israel in 2008 for its affiliation with Hamas and the so-called “Union of Good.” The Union of Good is a coalition of Islamic groups led by Muslim Brotherhood leader Yousef Al Qaradawi who has issued Fatwas calling for the killing of Americans and Jews.

Emerson who heads the Investigative Project on Terrorism points to U.S. Court documents which reveal IHH played “an important role” in the Millennium bomb plot. The Millennium bomb plot was foiled following the arrest of Ahmed Ressam who had planned to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport.

During Ressam’s trial, federal prosecutors called Jean Louis Brugiere, a French counter-terrorism expert and Magistrate, to testify. As part of his testimony he told the court that “The IHH is an NGO (non-governmental organization), but it was kind of a type of cover-up in order to obtain forged documents and also to obtain different forms of infiltration for Mujahideen in combat. And also to go and gather these Mujahideens. And finally, one of the last responsibilities that they had was also to be implicated or involved in weapons trafficking.”

According to court documents, he went on to say when talking about the cell involved in the Millennium plot that the apartment they used was “a conspiratorial flat.” All this was based on phone calls placed from that apartment “particularly to Turkey and Istanbul and I am talking about the IHH.”

IHH has offices in Gaza and the West Bank and according to reports in Israel has transferred money to Hamas in support of its goals. IHH leadership has also met with Hamas Chairman Khaled Mashal and other top Hamas leaders. Hamas is on the U.S. State Department list of designated terrorist organizations.

Emerson says IHH’s financial and political support for Hamas is “very troubling” and told Fox News that “it’s surprising that IHH has not been designated (as a terrorist group) by the U.S. government.”

Late last night the U.N. Security Council issued a Presidential Statement which condemned yesterday's action and called for an investigation into yesterday's events.