Spain's Feminized War on Terror

In what has been called the best book on Spanish bullfighting in the English language, Ernest Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon (1932) analyzes the metaphysics of the sport that Spaniards call tauromaquia. And what he tells us is that bullfighting is not primarily a contest between a man and a bull. Much rather, it is the embodiment of a more fundamental struggle that involves man's conquest of his own fear. Thus the contest is not really about the matador triumphing over the bull, but over himself

Lately, however, some Spanish bullfighters appear to have succumbed to their own fear. Indeed, an increasing number of them have been engaging in a scandalous practice known as ‘shaving', in which the horns of the bull are illegally altered by sawing off a few centimeters. As a result, the bull loses its ability to coordinate its movements, and the bullfight is tilted decisively in favor of the matador. Post-modern Spanish bullfighting is therefore degenerating into a rigged spectacle that critics say has very little in common with the ‘heroic' sport that Hemingway once knew.

In many ways, the feminization of bullfighting reflects the broader changes taking place in Spanish society as a whole. And nowhere is this more evident than in the anti-terrorism policies of Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, a self-proclaimed feminist who lately has committed a number of blunders so outrageous that Spaniards of all political leanings now fear that he has made Spain more, not less, vulnerable to terrorism.

For many Spaniards, including his supporters, Zapatero is an accidental political leader who was thrust into the prime minister's office by the Islamic terrorists who set off a series of train bombs in Madrid that killed 191 people only three days before the 2004 general elections. Although the incumbent Popular Party (PP) was widely expected to win another term in office, Zapatero benefited from the hysteria fomented by Spain's left-leaning mass media in the hours before voters went to the polls. With the aid of a motley hodge-podge of leftist and nationalist parties, Zapatero, who failed to win an absolute majority, was able to cobble together a coalition government. Thus Zapatero, who is dogmatically attached to the ideas of the European left, is beholden to the extreme left in order to remain in power.

Setbacks on the International Arena

A few days after taking office, Zapatero withdrew the 1,300 Spanish troops that were deployed to Iraq by the previous government of José Maria Aznar. Opponents of the withdrawal accused Zapatero, who broke his own campaign pledge that Spanish troops would remain in Iraq until the United Nations voted on the matter later that summer, of naively thinking that the Al-Qaeda terrorist problem exists only because of the war in Iraq. And although it is true that a majority of Spaniards opposed the intervention in Iraq, many also believed that Zapatero's precipitous action smacked of appeasement that not only weakened Spanish national security, but also destroyed the international credibility and stature that Spain had built up during the Aznar government.

Although the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq did not make much of a strategic difference in terms of the war effort, the move sent a symbolic message that represented a major victory for Al-Qaeda. Because what Zapatero did not seem to understand was that Islamic radicals still consider four-fifths of Spain to be Muslim land (Stop the Occupation of... Spain?) that must be liberated from the Spanish infidels who drove out the Moors in what is known as the Reconquista (711-1492). Thus by appearing to give in to the demands of medieval-minded Islamic extremists, Zapatero reinforced the perception that it is the terrorists, not the government, that sets the agenda in Spain.

Confirming the growing suspicion that Zapatero's post-modern approach to fighting terrorism lacks a basis in reality, he told TIME Magazine in September 2004 that ‘sexual equality is a lot more effective against terrorism than military strength'. At the same time, he announced an ill-defined initiative he calls the ‘Alliance of Civilizations', which borrows heavily from the ‘Dialogue of Civilizations' concept promoted by Islamic radicals in Iran during the 1990s; in its essence, the initiative calls on the West to negotiate a truce with Islamic terrorists, and on terms set by the latter.

Indeed, Zapatero seems to believe that multilateral group therapy is the best way to work out his differences with the Islamic extremists who want to take over his country. But the prime minister's initiative has been widely criticized in Spain and elsewhere because of its failure to comprehend that Al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremists are at war not just with Spain or other individual states, but with the very ideals of Western society...and especially with hyper-secularists like Zapatero himself.

But now that Zapatero has had three years in office to test his feminist approach to fighting terrorism, has it brought any tangible benefits for Spain? A Google-search on Zapatero will show that he is almost universally held up as the epitome of a post-modern appeaser. Even those on the political left in a Europe that is awash with like-minded equivocators have expressed serious doubts about the wisdom and efficacy of Zapatero's anti-terrorist policies.

But what do the terrorists think? They seem to understand Zapatero better than Zapatero understands himself. Indeed, in March 2007, Al-Qaeda launched new threats against Spain, this time over its military deployment in Afghanistan. In a video, a hooded man said the presence of Spanish troops in Afghanistan "exposes Spain again to threats" unless they withdraw their troops from the country. "The Spanish people have been tricked by a socialist government which withdrew troops from Iraq and sent 600 to Afghanistan," the man proclaimed. So much for Zapatero's truce with Islam.

The irony, however, is that Zapatero, who is deathly afraid of the domestic political fallout of military casualties abroad, has placed so many restrictions on Spain's presence in Afghanistan that in the over three years that they have been there, Spanish troops have almost never left their bases (which, not surprisingly, are located in the most pacific region of Afghanistan). In fact, as everyone familiar with the embarrassing reality knows, Spanish troops do not serve any meaningful purpose in Afghanistan because they focus all of their efforts on keeping out of harm's way. Indeed, Zapatero has so neutered the Spanish military of its original purpose that it now has more in common with Spain's post-modern bullfighters than it does with its NATO allies.

In any case, most Spaniards now fear that Zapatero's appeasement tactics have left Spain dangerously susceptible to terrorist intimidation and coercion. Indeed, polls show that many voters believe Spain is much more of a target for terrorists today than before. In fact, Zapatero's ruling Socialist Party has fallen behind the opposition PP for the first time in 18 months in opinion polls.

Setbacks on the Domestic Front

Notwithstanding the embarrassing setbacks for Spain on the international arena, however, Spaniards have reserved their fiercest criticism of Zapatero due to his domestic anti-terrorism policies.

And critics across the political spectrum say that nowhere has the prime minister erred as much as when, in June 2006, he agreed to begin a dialogue with ETA, the Basque separatist group, without first requiring that the group disarm. ETA, which is listed as a terrorist organization by both the European Union and the United States, has killed almost 900 people over the past four decades in its quest for an independent Basque state in seven parts of northern Spain and southwest France.

To initiate his dialogue with ETA, however, Zapatero pulled out of an agreement that he himself had proposed in 2000 with the PP not to talk with ETA unless it agreed to disarm. ‘Any normal person understands you can't negotiate with someone whose negotiating weapon is as powerful and hard to argue with as a pistol,' PP leader Mariano Rajoy said at the time. The PP also opposed any talks with Batasuna, the outlawed political front of ETA.

This split between Spain's two main political parties had the effect of limiting public support for a negotiated settlement; it also left the PP positioned to gain politically should the peace process break down. Zapatero, on the other hand, made the peace process the centerpiece of his political agenda in the hopes that a resolution to the Basque conflict would help him secure an easy re-election victory in early 2008. This highly risky proposition, however, also made him acutely vulnerable to intimidation from ETA.

Indeed, during the final months of 2006, ETA began complaining that the peace process had stalled because Madrid was refusing to make preliminary concessions. For example, ETA has long demanded that more than 400 of its prisoners, who are being held in locations across Spain, be moved closer to the Basque region. ETA has also insisted that the government stop arresting ETA suspects and that it legalize Batasuna.

Undeterred, Zapatero said at a year-end news conference on December 29 that his peace initiative was making progress. "Are we better off now with a permanent cease-fire, or when we had bombs, car bombs and explosions?" he asked. "This time next year, we will be better off than we are today."

The very next morning, ETA set off a powerful car bomb at Madrid's Barajas International Airport, killing two people and bringing to a dramatic end nine months of a so-called ‘permanent cease-fire'. The bombing caught Zapatero completely by surprise and shattered his attempt to solve the 40-year Basque conflict through dialogue. It also sent hundreds of thousands of Spaniards onto the streets in rallies to protest the attack and left a reeling Zapatero fighting for his political future.

The attack has produced a profound split within Spain: on the one hand, there are those on the left who remain open to the idea of re-establishing a form of dialogue with ETA in the future; on the other hand, there are those on the right who believe that ETA must be forced into an unconditional surrender.

But by far the most controversial decision Zapatero has made since taking office was to convert the prison sentence of Iñaki de Juana Chaos, a high-profile member of ETA, to house arrest. De Juana began a hunger strike in November 2006 to protest a second jail sentence, which he received for ‘inciting terrorism' (he had already completed an 18-year term for the murder of 25 people). In March 2007, when de Juana was reportedly near death after more than 100 days without eating, Zapatero agreed to transfer de Juana to his home in the Basque Country, where he will finish his sentence.

The popular outcry was immediate, with spontaneous anti-government demonstrations held across Spain. In response to the criticism, however, the Zapatero government justified its decision with an incredible statement that encapsulates the moral confusion of the post-modern mindset:

"One of the differences between terrorists and us is that for us, life is important, no matter whether the person is a terrorist or not, and this is where our moral legitimacy derives," said Interior Minister Alfredo Rubalcaba.

Many Spaniards argue that it was not morals that guided the decision, but weakness and deception. Indeed, critics of the government say that although the Madrid bombing was to have brought an end to the fledgling peace process, it did not, in fact, diminish Zapatero's willingness to negotiate with terrorists. Some believe he still hopes that a resolution to the Basque conflict will earn him another term. Others argue that Zapatero allowed himself to be blackmailed by ETA, and that he caved in to that blackmail.

Whatever the rationale behind Zapatero's decision to free de Juana, it has dramatically divided Spain in a way not seen since the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War. And that, say critics, is precisely the problem. Because when Spain is divided, terrorists are strengthened.

Indeed, in Zapatero's Spain, the terrorists seem to have more influence than the government. And like Spain's post-modern bullfighters, Zapatero has been conquered by his own fear...his fear of opinion polls. The terrorists, in any case, have taken notice. Many Spaniards now fear it's only a matter of time until they strike again.

Myths & Facts Online

Preface
Israel’s Roots
The Mandatory Period
Partition
The War of 1948
The Road to Suez
The 1967 Six-Day War
Between the Wars
The War of Attrition, 1967-1970
The 1973 Yom Kippur War
Boundaries
Israel and Lebanon
The Gulf War
The United Nations
The Refugees
The Treatment of Jews in Arab/Islamic Countries
Human Rights in Arab Countries
Human Rights in Israel and the Territories
The Palestinian Uprisings
Jerusalem
U.S. Middle East Policy
The Peace Process
Settlements
The Arms Balance
The Media
Canada-Israel Relations
Online Exclusives
Arab/Muslim Attitudes Toward Israel
Index of Myths
Key Documents
Vital Statistics
______________________________________
Rewriting History in Textbooks (1993)

Executive Summary
Outright ErrorsIslamic Tolerance
The Holocaust
Apologists for Authoritarianism
Jewish Invaders
Spontaneous Combustion
Refugees and Revisionism
Searching for Terrorists
The Heroic Intifada
War Erupts
Israel as the Obstacle to Peace
Conclusion
What Can Be Done?
Bibliography

Global Warming Swindle

By Thomas Sowell

Britain's Channel 4 has produced a devastating documentary titled "The Great Global Warming Swindle". It has apparently not been broadcast by any of the networks in the United States. But, fortunately, it is available on the Internet.

Distinguished scientists specializing in climate and climate-related fields talk in plain English and present readily understood graphs showing what a crock the current global warming hysteria is.

These include scientists from MIT and top-tier universities in a number of countries. Some of these are scientists whose names were paraded on some of the global warming publications that are being promoted in the media -- but who state plainly that they neither wrote those publications nor approved them.

One scientist threatened to sue unless his name was removed.

While the public has been led to believe that "all" the leading scientists buy the global warming hysteria and the political agenda that goes with it, in fact the official reports from the United Nations or the National Academy of Sciences are written by bureaucrats -- and then garnished with the names of leading scientists who were "consulted," but whose contrary conclusions have been ignored.

There is no question that the globe is warming but it has warmed and cooled before, and is not as warm today as it was some centuries ago, before there were any automobiles and before there was as much burning of fossil fuels as today.

None of the dire things predicted today happened then.

The British documentary goes into some of the many factors that have caused the earth to warm and cool for centuries, including changes in activities on the sun, 93 million miles away and wholly beyond the jurisdiction of the Kyoto treaty.

According to these climate scientists, human activities have very little effect on the climate, compared to many other factors, from volcanoes to clouds.

These climate scientists likewise debunk the mathematical models that have been used to hype global warming hysteria, even though hard evidence stretching back over centuries contradicts these models.

What is even scarier than seeing how easily the public, the media, and the politicians have been manipulated and stampeded, is discovering how much effort has been put into silencing scientists who dare to say that the emperor has no clothes.

Academics who jump on the global warming bandwagon are far more likely to get big research grants than those who express doubts -- and research is the lifeblood of an academic career at leading universities.

Environmental movements around the world are committed to global warming hysteria and nowhere more so than on college and university campuses, where they can harass those who say otherwise. One of the scientists interviewed on the British documentary reported getting death threats.

In politics, even conservative Republicans seem to have taken the view that, if you can't lick 'em, join 'em. So have big corporations, which have joined the stampede.

This only enables the green crusaders to declare at every opportunity that "everybody" believes the global warming scenario, except for a scattered few "deniers" who are likened to Holocaust deniers.

The difference is that we have the hardest and most painful evidence that there was a Holocaust. But, for the global warming scenario that is causing such hysteria, we have only a movie made by a politician and mathematical models whose results change drastically when you change a few of the arbitrarily selected variables.

No one denies that temperatures are about a degree warmer than they were a century ago.

What the climate scientists in the British documentary deny is that you can mindlessly extrapolate that, or that we are headed for a climate catastrophe if we don't take drastic steps that could cause an economic catastrophe.

"Global warming" is just the latest in a long line of hysterical crusades to which we seem to be increasingly susceptible.

Jean-François Revel

Europe's Anti-American Obsession

What picture of American society is likely to be imprinted on the consciousness of average Europeans? Given what they read or hear every day from intellectuals and politicians, they can hardly have any choice in the unpleasant particulars, especially if they happen to be French. The picture repeatedly sketched for them is as follows:


American society is entirely ruled by money. No other value, whether familial, moral, religious, civic, cultural, professional, or ethical has any potency in itself. Everything in America is a commodity, regarded and used exclusively for its material value. A person is judged solely by the worth of his bank account. Every U.S. President has been in the pockets of the oil companies, the military-industrial complex, the agricultural lobby, or the financial manipulators of Wall Street. America is the "jungle" par excellence of out-of-control, "savage" capitalism, where the rich are always becoming richer and fewer, while the poor are becoming poorer and more numerous. Poverty is the dominant social reality in America. Hordes of famished indigents are everywhere, while luxurious chauffeured limousines with darkened windows glide through the urban wilderness.

Poverty and inequality like this should cause Europeans to cringe in horror, especially since (we have it on good authority) there is no safety net in America, no unemployment benefits, no retirement, no assistance for the destitute--not the slightest bit of social solidarity. In the U.S. "only the most fortunate have the right to medical care and to grow old with dignity," as one writer recently put it in Libération. University courses are reserved only for those who can pay, which partly explains the "low level of education" in the benighted USA. Europeans firmly believe these sorts of caricatures--because they are repeated every day by the elites.

Another distinctive feature of the United States: the pandemic violence. Everywhere you go, violence reigns, with uniquely high levels of delinquency and criminality and a feverish state of near-open revolt in the ghettos. This last is the inevitable result of the deep-rooted racism of American society, which sets ethnic "communities" against one another, and ethnic minorities as a whole against the oppressive white majority. And the unpardonable cowardice and venality that has prevented American leaders from banning the sale of firearms results in regular bloodbaths in which teenagers mercilessly gun down their teachers and fellow students in the classroom. Criticisms of the U.S. system of law bounce back and forth between the idea that it is paralyzed by legalism and the claim that the nation is a lawless jungle.

Yet another universally held conviction is that these social ills are unlikely to ever be cured since Americans make it a point of honor to elect only mental defectives as Presidents. From the Missouri tie salesman Harry Truman to the Texas cretin George W. Bush, not to mention the peanut farmer Jimmy Carter and the B-movie actor Ronald Reagan, the White House offers us a gallery of nincompoops. Only John F. Kennedy, in the eyes of the French, rose a little above this undistinguished bunch, probably because he had the merit of having married someone of French extraction; naturally, this union could not fail to raise President Kennedy's intelligence to at least average level--but doubtless still too high for his fellow citizens, who never forgave him and ended up assassinating him.

In any case, everyone knows that the USA is a democracy only in appearance: In the 1950s, the real face of the American political system was revealed during the McCarthy episode, which remains the truest revelation of the inner essence of the regime created by the Constitution of the United States. It is forgotten that the House Committee on Un-American Activities was originally created in 1937 to combat the Ku Klux Klan, which was considered an anti-American organization because it rejected the Constitutional contract that lies at the heart of the American system.

In 2002, France experienced the humiliation of seeing a demagogic populist of the extreme right take second place behind Jacques Chirac, thus going on to a runoff. What was the reaction from E.U. deputy and professor Olivier Duhamel, one of France's leading commentators? "Now we are catching up with the degenerate democracies of the type of the United States." Strangely, it is always America that is described as degenerate and "fascist," while it is solely in Europe that actual dictatorships and totalitarian regimes spring up.

The verdict delivered in Europe against U.S. foreign policy (particularly by France, which wields the loudest bullhorn on this subject) is a curious one. It alternates between criticizing the Americans for being too aggressive ("unilateralism") and being too withdrawn ("isolationism"). When former French foreign minister Hubert Védrine deplores America's "unilateralism" for causing the U.S.--how dreadful!--to "base her decisions on her own worldview and on the defense of her own interests," we should note that this is an excellent definition of the "independent" foreign policy so forcefully espoused by General de Gaulle, and adhered to by his French successors since then. Meanwhile, all across Europe, foreign policy intellectuals make ritual denunciations of American "arrogance." The very wealth of the U.S., they insist, disqualifies her from speaking in the name of human rights.

Many Europeans sneer that America, a society still in a primitive state, ruled by violence and criminality, couldn't possibly have a mature culture. American literature and cinema is said to be an arid desert, devoid of original talent or great creators. They apparently never heard of Poe, Melville, Hawthorne, Henry James, Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, or Scott Fitzgerald. Piercing analysts like Theodore Dreiser, Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis, Frank Norris, John Steinbeck, John Dos Passos, and Tom Wolfe are conveniently ignored. And never mind that American film and television are far more willing to confront sensitive social or political issues than are European productions.

On the whole, American society is sweepingly condemned as practically the worst association of human beings in history. Fresh evidence can do nothing to dispel such views, which, filled with distortion as they are, reflect little on the true strengths and failures of American society. But they tell us a great deal about the psychological problems of those Europeans who proffer the criticisms.

I watched the United States from France and Italy during the 1950s and '60s, and formed my opinion about it through the filter of the European press--which means my opinion was unfavorable. Europeans at this time saw America as the land of McCarthyism and the execution of the Rosenbergs (who we then believed innocent), of racism and the Korean War, and a stranglehold on Europe itself. Then Vietnam became the principal reason to hate America. Even during this period when Europeans completely relied on the United States to protect them against Soviet imperialism, anti-Americanism was almost as virulent as it is today.

For European leftists and the majority of intellectuals--who were likely to adhere to communist ideas--anti-Americanism was rational. This crowd identified America with capitalism, and capitalism with evil. What was less rational was their wholesale swallowing of the most flagrant and stupid lies about American society and foreign policy, with a concomitant flight from accurate knowledge of the political systems that the U.S. was battling.

A third of a century later, we witnessed something similar. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the vast majority of French people expressed sympathy with the U.S. But there were plenty who didn't. On September 16, delegates from the Confédération Générale du Travail, the communist trade union, booed a speaker who called for three minutes of silence in memory of the murdered Americans. Followers of Jean-Marie Le Pen on Europe's extreme right celebrated with champagne in offices of the National Front as they watched televised images of the Twin Towers collapsing. So gathered together under the banner of anti-Americanism were all manner of ideological partisans.

A nadir of intellectual incoherence was achieved. After the first gushings of emotion and crocodile condolences, the murderous assaults were depicted as a justified retaliation for evil done by the United States. It's not so surprising that this was a reaction in many Third World countries. Here we see the habitual escape hatch of societies suffering from chronic failure, societies that have completely messed up their evolution toward democracy and economic growth: Instead of looking to their own incompetence and corruption as the cause, they finger the West in general and the United States in particular. And, after a discreet pause of a few days, claims of American culpability also surfaced in Europe in the press, among intellectuals, and among politicians of the Left and the Right--in France above all.

Declarations multiplied demanding that the U.S. not launch a war against terrorism. A gang of suicidal fanatics, indoctrinated, trained, and financed by a powerful and rich multinational terrorist organization, had murdered more than 3,000 Americans, yet it was the victim who was almost immediately called the aggressor. Shouldn't we ask about the "root causes" that had pushed the terrorists toward their destructive acts? Wasn't the United States in part responsible for what had happened?

Obsessed by their hatred, and floundering in illogicality, Europe's anti-American dupes completely forget that when the U.S. acts against terrorists in her own self-interest, she is also acting in the interest of Europeans, and in the interest of many other countries threatened, or already subverted, by terrorism.

Today's anti-American disinformation is not the result of pardonable, correctable mistakes, but of a profound psychological need to make the U.S. the villain responsible for others' failures.

Take crime, a subject Europeans love to whip the United States over, while closing their eyes to their own rapidly rising crime levels. The fact is that during the final 15 years of the twentieth century, crime diminished dramatically in the United States. In New York City, Rudolph Giuliani cut crime by half in five years. In Europe, disorder has skyrocketed. In France, crime and delinquency doubled between 1985 and 1998, and has galloped ahead even faster since then.

Giuliani was mocked in certain French newspapers as "Giussolini." But after having refused for decades to even recognize the existence of a crime problem in their country, French Leftists have finally confessed their "naïve optimism" and leniency toward antisocial behavior. To finally acknowledge 20 years of error is impressive. Yet the minister of justice, Marylise Lebranchu, insisted on doing so with the haughty proclamation that, nonetheless, "The government has no desire to copy the American model." One has one's pride and one's scruples, after all. Overwhelmed by their failure to combat the steadily climbing disorder, and unable to hide from the obvious forever, French authorities in 2001 were forced to sheepishly adopt many American methods of crime fighting. Here and elsewhere, anti-Americanism simply served to cover government incompetence, ideological backwardness, and social disorder.

For skeptics of democratic capitalism, the United States is, quite simply, the enemy. For many years, and still today, a principal function of anti-Americanism has been to discredit the nation that stands as the supreme alternative to socialism. More recently, Islamists, anti-modern Greens, and others have taken to pillorying the U.S. for the same reason. To travesty the United States as a repressive, unjust, racist society is a way of proclaiming: Look what happens when modern democratic capitalism is implemented!

This is the message of critics not only in Europe, but also in the United States itself, where anti-Americanism continues to prosper among university, journalistic, and literary elites. But in Europe, these ideological reasons for blaming America first are multiplied by simple jealousy of American power. The current American "hyperpower" is the direct consequence of European powerlessness, both past and present. The United States fills a void caused by our inadequacies in capability, thinking, and will to act.

Americans might ask themselves what interest the United States could have in plunging into the bloody quagmire of the Balkans, that centuries-old masterpiece of Europe's matchless ingenuity. But Europe found herself incapable of bringing order by herself to this murderous chaos of her own making. So it devolved upon the United States to take charge of operations in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Macedonia. The Europeans thanked the Americans afterwards by calling them imperialists--although they quake with fright and accuse the Americans of being cowardly isolationists the moment they make the slightest mention of bringing their soldiers home.

Certainly America, like all societies, has many defects and deserves criticism. But the intentional ignoring of facts begins with sociological preconceptions of the U.S.--the alleged absence of social protection, the notorious "poverty line," the supposed unemployment level. The fact that unemployment in the U.S. fell to below 5 percent in the 1990s, whereas in France it shot up to 12 percent, implied nothing good about America according to our commentators, who reassured us with the myth of America's omnipresent minimum-wage jobs!

At the advent of America's 2001 economic slowdown, French newspapers ran gleeful headlines announcing "The End of Full Employment in the USA." At the same time, the French government was frenetically heaping praise on itself for reducing unemployment levels to 8.7 percent--almost twice the American level (not counting the tens of thousands of the effectively unemployed who in France are artificially excluded from the statistics). By September 2001, unemployment in France had already climbed back to over 9 percent.

"The End of the American Economic Dream" was Le Monde's headline when there was a pause of the practically uninterrupted 17-year period of U.S. economic growth from 1983 to 2000. In truth, the U.S. has led a technological revolution without precedent, creating tens of millions of jobs while absorbing a tremendous population increase (from 248 million in 1990 to 281 million in 2000). All this was but a "dream"? Americans are regularly reproached for wanting to "impose their economic and social model" on others. But whenever there is an economic slowdown, other countries anxiously await an American-led "recovery."

While the U.S. is vilified and blamed, its financial and military aid is universally desired. America is the sole power at once capable of saving Mexico from economic collapse (in 1995), dissuading communist China from attacking Taiwan (repeatedly), mediating between India and Pakistan in the matter of Kashmir, and working with some chance of success toward the reunification of the two Koreas under a democratic regime. When the European Union sent a delegation, headed by the Swedish prime minister, to Pyongyang in May 2001, the delegation could find nothing better to do than grovel before Kim Jong Il, the criminal chief of one of the last totalitarian jails on the planet.

The fundamental role of anti-Americanism in Europe in general, and particularly among those on the Left, is to absolve themselves of their own moral failings and intellectual errors by heaping them onto the monster scapegoat, the United States of America. For stupidity and bloodshed to vanish from Europe, the U.S. must be identified as the singular threat to democracy (contrary to every lesson of actual history). Thus, during the Cold War, it was dogma among Europeans from Sweden to Sicily, from Athens to Paris, that the "imperialistic" power was America, even though it was the USSR that annexed Eastern Europe, made satellites out of several African countries, and invaded Afghanistan, even though it was the People's Republic of China that marched into Tibet, attacked South Korea, and subjugated three Indochinese countries. A similar dynamic applies today in the war on terror.

One example of how little credit the U.S. is allowed by the rest of the world is the way the belief spread, and was quickly accepted as fact, that the United States was bent on imposing censorship after September 11.

The Qatar-based television network Al-Jazeera, and subsequently CNN, had aired a statement by Osama bin Laden in which he gloated over the thousands killed and called for further massacres. According to both American and French terror experts, the tirade may have contained coded messages to "sleepers" in the United States or in Europe relating to projected terrorist attacks. It seemed prudent for the U.S. administration and Congress to appeal to television and radio managers not to broadcast such communiqués.

Such steps ought to have been understood as legitimate cautionary measures. Instead, a chorus of imprecations was raised around the world. America had imposed censorship, suppressed freedom of the press, violated the First Amendment. The feverish Le Monde headline "Propaganda Rages in the American Media" (October 3, 2001) was typical.

The legions of Muslims living in countries that have never known democracy or the slightest whiff of media freedom apparently felt well qualified to defend these liberties against the only country on the planet where they have never been suppressed. As for the French, they have evidently already forgotten how radio and television were subject to vigilant censorship by the state during the Algerian War, and that scarcely a week went by without a police raid on some newspaper office or other to seize printed material that might "undermine the army's morale."

Other measures adopted after September 11 to thwart terrorist attacks (similar to those taken in Europe, by the way) raised protests on both sides of the Atlantic. Surveillance of suspects, access to e-mail and bank accounts, giving police the right to open car trunks--were denounced as "totalitarian" by the French League of Human Rights, as well as American civil liberties organizations. Of course, the measures were designed precisely to protect democracy from its totalitarian enemies.

After the 1998 terrorist attacks on U.S. embassies in Africa, Congress set up a National Commission on Terrorism (NCT) to redefine anti-terrorist policy. The commission's report emphasized that "the threat of attacks causing massive loss of human life within our borders continues to grow." On the report's cover was a photo of the Twin Towers, as if by premonition. Predictably, a swarm of leagues, associations, and organizations leapt to block any countermeasures on the grounds that they would "mortally endanger" civil liberties. A group representing Arab-Americans bewailed a "return to the darkest days of McCarthyism." The civil rights chief in the Clinton administration deplored that Americans of Arab origin were unjustly fingered by the commission--though there is not a single mention of Arab-Americans in the NCT report. The resistance was so noisy that the bill which would have mandated certain security measures was effectively buried, never to become law--with results we all know.

The fact that defenders of human rights and liberty wouldn't take into account the right to national defense meant that sensible, foresighted warnings were dismissed as the racist ravings of hawkish fanatics. How did this ingenious propensity for suicide entitle Europeans to brandish slogans denouncing a supposed evaporation of American liberties? Why is the USA casually accused of "fascism," when it is a land that has never known a dictator over the course of two centuries, while Europe has been busy making troops of them?

The American military operation in Afghanistan, the first major response to September 11, was derided as a specimen of aggressive unilateralism by global elites, as if no prior event could explain this "imperialistic" reflex. Europeans--governments and the public--had generally showed unqualified solidarity with the United States right after September 11. But important minorities--in the parties of the Left, the Greens in particular, the enemies of globalization, and a near majority among European intellectuals--were quick to exhibit their old fixations. Hostilities really began, they say, only with the American retaliation. The initial aggression was simply dismissed by large numbers of people.

A group of 113 French intellectuals launched an appeal against the "imperial crusade" in Afghanistan: "In the name of the law and morality of the jungle" (not because 3,000 people had been murdered), "the Western armada administers its divine justice." Of course, if any parties in this entire affair believed themselves to be divine, it was the Islamists--the kind that murders thousands of innocent civilians in the name of Allah, or the kind that, in Nigeria and Sudan, massacres Christians for being unwilling to submit to sharia. In two months alone, several hundred Nigerian Christians were exterminated by Muslims. Our 113 intellectuals had nothing to say about it.

In the best cases, the Ameriphobes put the jihadists and those who would resist them on an equal plane, not pronouncing in favor of either. Hundreds of thousands of pacifists demonstrated on October 14, 2001 brandishing banners: "No to Terrorism. No to War." Which is about as intelligent as: "No to Illness. No to Medicine." We have seen this before. In 1939, when the Nazi armies were only months from occupying Paris, French communists, fixated on the alleged evils of capitalism, exhorted armaments workers to sabotage their factories and soldiers to desert their regiments.

Today's unilateralist pacifists condemned the American counterattack against the Taliban in Afghanistan precisely because it was a counterattack. The United States, they said, had given in to base desires for revenge and launched an air assault that would lead inevitably to the deaths of Afghan civilians. What they should have done was negotiate a political solution. Well, of course! Democracies always refuse to negotiate; only sanguinary fanatics are eager to compromise.

The pacifists deliberately ignored that the purpose of the American reaction was not revenge but defense--the squelching of future terrorism. Was it the fault of the United States if Afghanistan was where the jihadists' mastermind was hiding? The intervention in Afghanistan, despite all the precautions taken, could not be without danger to civilians; but when the conflict had first begun on 9/11, it was in New York, not Kabul, that thousands of civilian lives were lost. It seems that for some humanitarians, civilian casualties are indeed acceptable--if they are American.

To avoid being transformed into "aggressors," the Americans would have had to abstain from any retaliation whatsoever against the international terror networks. It wasn't the Afghan people who were targeted, but the Taliban's military installations. Yet after a few days, all we heard was incessant talk of U.S. air attacks and Afghan civilian casualties. The statistics so loudly trumpeted by Europeans were provided by--the Taliban themselves.

And why wasn't it made clear that the United States had been, from 1980 to 2001, the principal supplier of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan and that 80 percent of the aid distributed by private charities within the framework of the World Food Program was paid for by Americans? Because to concede as much would have called for a modicum of intellectual integrity.

The real cause of September 11 unquestionably lies in the resentment against the United States, which grew apace after the collapse of the USSR, and America's emergence as the "sole global superpower." This resentment is particularly marked in the Islamic lands, where the existence of Israel, which is blamed on America, is an important motivator. But the resentment is also more quietly present over the entire planet. In some European capitals, the sense of grievance has been raised to the status of an idée fixe, virtually the guiding principle of foreign policy. Thus the
U.S. is charged with all the evils, real or imagined, that afflict humanity, from the falling price of beef in France to AIDS in Africa and global warming everywhere. The result is a widespread refusal to accept responsibility for one's own actions.

As for the American "hyperpower" that causes Europeans so many sleepless nights, they should look to their own history and ask how far they themselves are responsible for that predominance. For it was they who made the twentieth century into the grimmest in history. It was they who brought about the two apocalypses of the World Wars and invented the two most absurd and criminal political regimes ever inflicted on the human race. If Western Europe in 1945 and Eastern Europe in 1990 were ruined, whose fault was it? American "unilateralism" is the consequence--not the cause--of the diminished power of the other nations. Yet it has become habitual to turn the situation around and constantly indict the United States. Is it surprising when such an atmosphere of accumulated hate ends in pushing fanatics to compensate for their failures by engaging in carnage?

The refrain of German Greens, French organizations like ATTAC, magazines like Politis, Latin American intellectuals, and African editorial writers is that anti-American terrorism can be explained--indeed justified--on the grounds of the "growing poverty" caused by global capitalism, whose forces are orchestrated by the United States. The radical Left in the United States has also made this its rallying cry. The Italian Nobel laureate and novelist Dario Fo, a literary non-entity, put it bluntly: "What are 20,000 deaths [sic] in New York compared with the millions caused every year by the big speculators?"

Of course, the Muslim world includes countries that are among the wealthiest on the planet (especially Saudi Arabia, which finances al-Qaeda and other Islamist organizations). Islamic terrorism is the offspring of religious fanaticism; it has nothing to do with poverty; and it cannot possibly lead to any improvement in the lot of backward societies. Islamists utterly reject all measures that might contribute to improvement: democracy, pluralism, intellectual freedom and critical thought, equality for women, and openness to other cultures.

In the two months after 9/11, the phobias and fallacies of traditional anti-Americanism massively intensified. The clumsiest of them was an attempt to justify Islamist terrorism by claiming that America has long been hostile to Islam. The United States' actions historically have been far less damaging to Muslims than those of Britain, France, or Russia. These European powers have conquered Muslim countries, occupied and indeed oppressed them over decades and even centuries. Americans have never colonized a Muslim nation. Americans evince no hostility toward Islam as such today; on the contrary, their interventions in Somalia, Bosnia, and Kosovo, as well as the pressure exerted on the Macedonian government, were designed to defend Muslim minorities. And the U.S.-led coalition that removed the Iraqi army from Kuwait during the first Gulf War acted to defend a small Muslim country against a secular dictator who had used chemical weapons against Muslim Shiites in the south and Muslim Kurds in the north.

Another myth strenuously maintained since 9/11 is that of a moderate and tolerant Islam. The dominant idea in the Muslims' worldview, in truth, is that all humanity must obey the rules of their religion, whereas they owe no respect to the religions of others. Indeed, showing such respect would make them apostates meriting instant execution. Anxious to show tolerance, the Pope encouraged the erection of a mosque in Rome, the city where Saint Peter is buried. No Christian church could be built in Mecca, or anywhere in Saudi Arabia, for that would profane the land of Mohammed. There is no ambiguity about al-Qaeda-style intentions: It is quite simply to convert the whole of humanity to Islam by force. Murder and mayhem is justified in the eyes of the terrorists because it strikes at the infidels who refuse to embrace Islam. We deceive ourselves if we think we can negotiate with the al-Qaeda fanatics and their ilk.

The day after 9/11, Le Parisien-Aujourd'hui published an account of the jubilant atmosphere the previous evening in the eighteenth arrondissement of Paris, home to a large Muslim community. "Bin Laden will nail all of you!" was among the more moderate remarks hurled at passersby who didn't appear to be North African. Or: "I'm going to celebrate big time tonight! Those guys were real heroes. That'll teach those American bastards--and all you French are next!" Snippets of this sort were ignored by almost all media.

A spokesman for British Muslims named al-Misri likewise called the attacks on the World Trade Center acts of "legitimate self-defense." Another spiritual authority, Omar Bakri Mohammed, launched a fatwa commanding the assassination of the president of Pakistan because the latter had sided with President Bush against bin Laden. "Islam will Dominate the World" was the slogan on signs held aloft by Islamist demonstrators of British nationality as they marched in October 2001 north of London. Meanwhile, there was not the slightest whisper of protest from all those "moderate" Muslims in Britain or France supposedly opposed to this sort of extremism. The notion that the "immense majority" of Muslims settled in Europe are peacefully inclined must be viewed for what it is: a mirage.

Western Europe's antagonism was hardly limited to its Muslim communities. Stunned by the magnitude of the 9/11 crimes and reduced to silence by the wave of solidarity with the U.S., even most long-time America-haters were quiet for a few days. But for a few days only.

The day after 9/11, the editor of Le Monde, Jean-Marie Colombani, ran the famous "We Are All Americans" editorial. Hostile reactions to the piece and the headline were numerous and immediate, both among readers of Le Monde and on the editorial board. This stemmed from the Left's disinclination, even right after the massacres in New York and Washington, to renounce its demonized image of the United States, an image that it needs all the more since socialism has ended in shipwreck.

Shortly after 9/11 a French spokesman for the activist group ATTAC quoted the adage: "He who sows the wind shall reap the whirlwind." French prime minister Lionel Jospin seemed to be pointing in this direction when he asked, "What lesson are the Americans going to draw from what has happened?" The lesson, Jospin indicated, should be for the U.S. to moderate her unilateralism. For Cardinal Karl Lehmann, president of the German Bishops' Conference, the lesson to be drawn from terrorism was that "the West must not seek to dominate the rest of the world."
Soon, many European elites insinuated that the jihadist attacks had some moral justification. These anti-American views began to circulate well before the campaign to dislodge the Taliban kicked off on October 7. The bombing which became the most frequently invoked reason to take sides against the U.S. had not yet even begun.

One of the most dishonest objections raised against the campaign in Afghanistan was that Americans had made use of mujahedin during the Afghans' war of resistance against the USSR. What was so reprehensible about Ronald Reagan accepting the services of all those willing to oppose the Soviet Union? Was it necessary to wait until all Afghans and Saudis had read Montesquieu and converted to Christianity? Imagine what it would have meant for India, Pakistan, and the Gulf countries--for all of us--if the Soviets had been able to achieve a permanent takeover of Afghanistan. There would have been no Gorbachev, no glasnost, and no perestroika. Coming from the Europeans, who at the time of the Soviet Afghan invasion quivered with cowardice and debated only if they should or shouldn't participate in the Moscow Olympics, this critique has something, one might say, backward about it.

Tens of millions of immigrants have streamed into the United States. If the picture of America drawn by the European press is accurate, then those immigrants from all parts of the world were deluded fools. Why choose the American capitalist jungle with all its evils, rather than the lands of peace, plenty, and liberty they came from? Why didn't they write their families and friends basking in the paradises of Ukraine, Calabria, and Greece warning them of the perils of poverty, precariousness, and oppression in America?

The success and originality of American integration stem precisely from the fact that immigrants' descendants can perpetuate their ancestral cultures while thinking of themselves as Americans in the fullest sense, sharing basic ideals across racial and ethnic barriers. In France, the characteristic attitude of newcomers from North Africa, Turkey, and sub-Saharan Africa is predominantly one of alienation, confrontation, rejection, and hatred.

As immigration trends suggest, anti-Americanism is not deeply rooted as a popular prejudice. In Europe, anti-Americanism is much more a hobgoblin of the political, cultural, and religious elites. According to a SOFRES survey of May 2000, only 10 percent of French feel dislike for the U.S. After September 11, according to another poll, 52 percent of French people interviewed said they had always felt warmly toward the U.S., against 32 percent who said the opposite. Historian Michel Winock concludes that "anti-Americanism is not an attitude of the average French person; it is typical of a certain segment of the elites."

The great irony of this anti-American obsession is that it aggravates the evil that it aims to extirpate, namely the go it-alone impulse famously ascribed to the U.S. By criticizing the Americans whatever they do, on every occasion--even when they are completely right--Europeans (we are not alone in this, but we lead the dance) compel Americans to disregard our objections--even when we are right. The American reflex, conditioned by the constant avalanche of anathemas coming at them, causes them to keep thinking: "They're always blaming us, so why consult them at all? We already know they'll vilify us."

And so America's enemies and allies alike, valuing animosity toward the U.S. over influence on her, condemn themselves to impotence. In the process they strengthen the American superpower.

Jean-Francois Revel[RIP] is the author of How Democracies Perish, The Totalitarian Temptation, Without Marx or Jesus, and Anti-Americanism.

Virginia Tech, 2 artigos e a indigência intelectual (da esquerda) brasileira

A tragédia americana ou "Alô, Ali Kamel! Who let the dogs out?"
Reinaldo Azevedo (http://veja.abril.com.br/blogs/reinaldo/)

Alô, Ali Kamel, chame a corrocinha. Who let the dogs out? Who let the dogs out?

Kamel é diretor executivo de jornalismo da TV Globo e um dos jornalistas mais competentes do país, o que deixa os cães morrendo de raiva. Deve ter uns 44, 45 anos, a minha idade, jovem para o cargo que ocupa, o que desperta também inveja e despeito, elementos importantes no jornalismo, acreditem. Pausa. Ontem, participei de um Roda Viva com o ministro da Saúde, José Gomes Temporão. Comento depois. Alguns colegas quiseram saber se não é um pouco chato e solitário fazer um blog, se não sinto falta da redação... Até eu gosto de gente às vezes. Sinto falta, claro. Mas também há suas compensações. Por exemplo: não tenho de passar vergonha. Kamel certamente ficará envergonhado quando vir o que fizeram no Jornal Hoje. Explico-me.

O jornal fez uma reportagem sobre o massacre na Universidade da Virgínia. O correspondente Luís Fernando Silva Pinto informou: “[O assassino] é Cho Seung-Hui, um aluno de inglês de 23 anos da Coréia do Sul que tinha “green card”, o documento de residência permanente nos EUA. Ele chegou ao país aos oito anos de idade. A polícia encontrou digitais dele nos dois locais do crime, mas ainda apura quais os motivos que o levaram a matar colegas e professores.” Aí voltamos para o estúdio.

Uma das manias do jornalismo é ouvir “especialistas”. A tentativa, bem-intencionada, é tirar o fato da esfera da banalidade e do simples impressionismo, buscando eventuais motivações de alcance teórico, que expliquem o fato numa dimensão mais profunda. O Jornal Hoje chamou uma certa Sandra Dias para comentar o caso (veja vídeo aqui). Leia a íntegra da conversa entre a professora e o jornalista e apresentador Evaristo Filho:

JH - O que motiva um gesto tão brutal como esse? O Jornal Hoje convidou a doutora em psicologia e professora da PUC-SP Sandra Dias, que coordenou várias pesquisas sobre violência nas escolas. Quando pensamos que a escola é um lugar seguro, vemos uma cena dessas. O que acontece? Os pais, que tem filhos na escola, ficam ainda mais preocupados. O que aconteceu?
Sandra Dias: Nos EUA, vamos fazer uma diferença entre os EUA e o Brasil. Os EUA são uma cultura em que a lógica capitalista impõe um imperativo do consumo. O que quer dizer isso? O consumo se impõe para um sujeito. Você é cidadão na medida em que você consome. A sua cidadania é medida pelo seu grau de consumo. E todo mundo tem que ser o primeiro. Atividades sociais simples na escola americana se constituem de uma forma a ser um objeto de consumo. Vou dar um exemplo: o jovem popular. O que é o jovem popular nos EUA? Ou é o jogador que ganha todos os jogos, ou é o jovem que tem uma agenda com o maior número de telefones dos quais ele pode convidar o maior número de pessoas para as festas.

JH: Mas não é popular sair atirando.
Sandra Dias: Pois é. Mas em uma cultura onde o consumo é impositivo, a coletividade vai se colocar como uma massa de consumidores. E como um sujeito vai se marcar diferentemente? Como ele vai marcar o lugar dele, o lugar de um sujeito? Ou seja, o lugar que não é dos consumidores? Sempre por um ato heróico. Nós podemos entender que um jovem que sai atirando na coletividade está fazendo um ato heróico, mesmo que negativo.

JH - Os produtores do Jornal Hoje conversaram com o estudante brasileiro Francisco Müller, que estava na universidade americana na hora do massacre:
Francisco Müller - “A cidade deve estar muito triste hoje, vai ter uma homenagem na universidade às duas horas, eu devo estar lá, aí eu vou saber mais como está o clima lá. Mas o clima que a gente via pela TV e nas entrevistas é todo mundo muito triste, mas querendo superar, e ninguém falando em desistir, em sair daqui. Eu acho que uma coisa assim nunca aconteceu aqui, nem próximo disso, quer dizer, isso nunca aconteceu em lugar nenhum uma coisa tão grande, mas a cidade é bem pequena e tranqüila. Então acredito que eu ainda me sinta seguro aqui, apesar do que aconteceu. Foi horrível!”

JH – Bom, seguro, provavelmente, ninguém se sente depois que vê um massacre desse. A facilidade de acesso às armas também facilita esse tipo de coisa?
Sandra Dias: Facilita, porque a sociedade americana, ela, ao liberar a arma, você vai ter um objeto de consumo e se você oferta objeto você tem que consumir objeto. Então isso já é um ponto. O outro ponto é que, se você tem um objeto, você vai usá-lo. Então o adolescente, o jovem, vai ver o pai atirando, o vizinho atirando, o colega falando de armas. Então isso facilita sim.

JH: Passa a ser uma questão cultural também?
Sandra Dias: Passa a ser uma questão cultural.


Voltei
I-na-cre-di-tá-vel!!!

Segundo aquela senhora, há dois responsáveis pelo massacre: o capitalismo e as vítimas. Sim, vocês viram: a sociedade americana é culpada pelos assassinatos. Como foi a culpada também pelos atentados terroristas do11 de Setembro.

Nos Estados Unidos, como vocês sabem, é muito mais fácil comprar uma arma do que nos Brasil. A professora Sandra é contra essa facilidade. No ano do tal referendo, lembram-se?, 37 armas legais foram vendidas em nosso país. Daí decorre a paz social em que vivemos, a servir de exemplo para o mundo. É isto: por que os EUA não adotam a nossa legislação, seguindo um modelo que deu certo, não é mesmo?

Se o seu filho for aluno da professora Sandra Dias, ela vai dizer essas coisas pra ele, com a autoridade de quem ensina, armada com o seu título de “doutora”. Quem praticou o massacre na universidade? A sociedade de consumo. O que fazer para que coisas assim não se repitam? Ora, eliminar a sociedade de consumo. Aonde ela não chegou — Sudão, por exemplo —, esse tipo de coisa não acontece. Não se matam três dezenas de pessoas dentro de uma universidade. Matam-se logo 200 mil no genocídio de Darfur. Mas não foi a sociedade de consumo, certo? Pensemos no mais de milhão de mortos nos conflitos entre tutsis e hutus. Foi o capitalismo? Não. Ao menos isso. São mortes muito mais limpas. Como foram muito mais morais os 70 milhões de assassinatos de Mao Tse-Tung ou os 35 milhões de Stálin.

Tudo bem, entendo. Onde há uma desocupada para falar o que lhe dá na telha na hora do almoço? Bem, melhor não levar ninguém. Nem mesmo ocorreu a esta senhora que, se há uma circunstância a ser relevada no episódio, é a da tolerância: afinal, ali estava um imigrante, com visto permanente, integrado à comunidade acadêmica. Mas a “doutora”, tanto no physique du rôle como na, digamos, “psique” du rôle, prefere imitar, de forma suburbana, a delinqüência mental do Michael Moore de Tiros em Columbine. Só faltou ela acusar o Jorjibúxi...

Alô, Ali Kamel, who let the dogs out?

Noto que o coleguinha Evaristo Costa também não ajudou. Reparem: o estudante ouvido por telefone, Francisco Müller, chama a atenção para a excepcionalidade do episódio e diz que se sente seguro. Mas Costa não se conforma. Quase dá uma bronca no rapaz: “Bom, seguro, provavelmente, ninguém se sente depois que vê um massacre desse”. E oferece uma chave para a glossolalia de Sandra: “Passa a ser uma questão cultural também”. O quê? Os americanos, mesmo quando são coreanos, se matam por “tradição cultural”, é isso? Quando eles pretendem exercer o seu estoque antropológico, saem massacrando pessoas?

Ainda bem que a gente é brasileiro, né?, livre, portanto, daquele horror. Temos muito a ensinar aos EUA sobre a índole pacífica dos nossos quadrúpedes.

Alô, Ali Kamel: who let the dogs out?

Eu sinto muita vergonha de pertencer, de algum modo, à mesma comunidade a que pertencem certos inteliquituais. Penso sempre em tomar outro banho. Mas sei que não adianta. No Brasil, morrem assassinadas, por ano, 50 mil pessoas, 36 mil das quais por arma de fogo. E, com efeito, comprar um revólver, dentro da lei, no Brasil, é uma dificuldade. Mas, como se sabe, pode ser adquirido em qualquer esquina. Leiam o trecho que copio de um relatório da ONU que, notem bem, quer a extinção das armas de fogo:

“No contexto internacional, analisando os dados correspondentes a 57 países, para os quais contamos com informações sobre o tema, o Brasil, com uma taxa de 21,7 óbitos por armas de fogo em 100.000 habitantes, ocupa o segundo lugar, logo depois da Venezuela. Com esse índice o Brasil encontra-se bem distante, inclusive, de outros países onde impera uma ampla circulação de armas de fogo, como os EUA, que ostenta uma taxa de 10,3 mortes em 100.000 habitantes: menos da metade do Brasil. E bem mais distante ainda de países com conflitos armados, como Israel que, apesar do conflito com os palestinos, apresenta uma taxa de óbitos por armas de fogo oito vezes inferior à brasileira. Nossa taxa fica muito longe das de países como Cuba ou Irlanda (que beirando uma vítima de armas de fogo em cada 100.000 habitantes, resulta 21 vezes menor que a taxa brasileira). E muito, mas muito mais longe ainda das de Hong Kong, Coréia ou Japão, que com uma taxa de aproximadamente 0,1 mortes por armas de fogo em 100.000 habitantes, ostentam uma taxa 217 vezes menor que a brasileira!” (íntegra aqui).

Mas e daí? Doutora Sandra não quer saber disso, não. O negócio dela não é analisar a tragédia ocorrida na Universidade da Virgínia. Sobre isso, ela não tem nada a dizer. Ela está lá para ser juíza do capitalismo e enfiar o dedo na cara dos americanos: “Vocês são os culpados pelos seus mortos”.

Alô, Ali Kamel! Who let the dogs out?
______________________________
O Pato Sentado
Olavo de Carvalho (midiasemmascara.com.br)

Resumo: Crimes como os do jovem sul-coreano Cho Seung-Hui são o produto acabado de um longo e meticuloso esforço de engenharia social, o mesmo esforço que leva esquerdistas hipócritas e despreparados a fazer comentários absurdos sobre o episódio na mídia brasileira.


Vocês conhecem a expressão americana Sitting Duck ? É o pato sentado, o alvo mais fácil até mesmo para o atirador inepto. As escolas da Virginia estão repletas de patos sentados, porque uma lei demagógica, maliciosa e, a rigor, criminosa, proíbe o porte de arma aos professores e funcionários em serviço nessas entidades e até aos pais de alunos que por ali transitem.

Qualquer maluco que deseje iniciar uma carnificina sabe qual é o lugar mais seguro onde montar o espetáculo. Se apontasse uma arma para um caixa do WalMart, para um garçom de restaurante ou para um vendedor de cachorro quente numa praça de Richmond, levaria chumbo de dez fregueses ao mesmo tempo.

Mas para que o sujeito há de correr esse risco, se logo na esquina há uma multidão de trouxas desarmados, entregues à sanha dos assassinos por legisladores iluminados? O massacre de anteontem foi na Virginia Tech, mas podia ter sido em qualquer outra instituição de ensino do “Old Dominion”.

Mais ou menos um ano atrás, a Assembléia Geral da Virginia vetou uma emenda legal que, voltando atrás no desarmamentismo insano, devolvia aos professores, funcionários e alunos devidamente qualificados o seu antigo direito de portar armas no local de trabalho e estudo.

Na ocasião, o representante da Virginia Tech, Larry Hinckler, disse em entrevista ao jornal Roanoke Times (tão fanaticamente desarmamentista quanto a Folha e o Globo) que estava muito feliz com a derrota da emenda: “Tenho a certeza de que a comunidade universitária está agradecida à Assembléia, porque sua decisão ajudará os pais, estudantes, professores e visitante a sentir-se seguros no nosso campus.”

O resultado aí está.

As escolas têm sido há décadas um dos instrumentos principais de que se servem os agentes do globalismo para dissolver o tradicional espírito americano de altiva independência e implantar uma nova cultura em que o cidadão se torna cada vez mais indefeso, mais boboca, mais dependente da proteção estatal.

Até os anos 60, os EUA tinham as melhores escolas do mundo, e nenhum ministério da Educação. Desde a criação do ministério e da adoção dos “parâmetros curriculares” politicamente corretos ditados pela ONU, não só a qualidade da educação caiu formidavelmente, mas a delinqüência infanto-juvenil cresceu na mesma proporção.

Leiam, a respeito, The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America , de Charlotte Thomson Iserbit (Ravenna, Ohio, Conscience Press , 2001).

As provas que a autora aí apresenta são tantas, que a conclusão se segue inevitavelmente: crimes como os do jovem sul-coreano Cho Seung-Hui são o produto acabado de um longo e meticuloso esforço de engenharia social.

Muita gente por aqui reclama que os burocratas esquerdistas que dominam o sistema sistema oficial de ensino estão empenhados numa guerra cultural contra os EUA, destruindo a educação e a moral para em seguida atribuir os resultados medonhos de suas próprias ações à “lógica do sistema”.

Na mídia de todos os países do mundo há sempre uma multidão de papagaios prontos para repetir esse chavão de propaganda. Na infalível Rede Globo , incumbiu-se disso uma psicóloga da PUC, Sandra Dias, segundo a qual o morticínio foi “um ato heróico” por voltar-se contra “o consumismo americano”.

Também não faltaram na mídia brasileira as ponderações de sempre sobre a “cultura americana da violência” – as quais, vindas de um país do Hemisfério Sul que é recordista mundial de assassinatos, equivalem moralmente e geograficamente a cuspir para cima.

Um Amigo Chamado Pedro

Artigo muito interessante sobre uma faceta pouco conhecida (até pensei em dizer que é desconhecida até dos próprios brasileiros, mas... e o que não é?) do Emperador D. Pedro II. O texto fala de sua relação íntima com a cultura judaica, judeus e judaísmo.

Diz o velho ditado que todos os caminhos levam a Jerusalém. No meu caso alguns caminhos levaram-me a Petrópolis. Lendo um artigo sobre a cultura judaica de D. Pedro II, tive conhecimento também da existência do Rabino Mossé de Avignon na Provença Francesa e fiquei encantada com a grande amizade que mantiveram até o fim de suas vidas. Decidi ir a Petrópolis visitar o Museu Imperial. Muito interessada no que vi, voltei lá três vezes.

Apreciei o manto, o cedro e a coroa imperial que pertenceram ao Imperador. Resolvi conhecer melhor a cultura judaica de Pedro e o respeito e a admiração que ele tinha pelos judeus. Anotações daqui e dali resultaram neste trabalho, pois achei que devia contar o que foi visto e pesquisado. No final concluí que em outro tempo mais antigo, em outra dimensão no espaço de nossas vidas eu tive também um Amigo Chamado Pedro.

No arquivo em Petrópolis, achamos mais uma carta que o rabino Mossé dirigiu ao imperador em 9 de agosto de 1889, enviada juntamente com a biografia "Dom Pedro II, Empereur du Brésil", cuja autoria e até existência do autor tinham sido postas em dúvida por d'Escragnolle. A missiva, em estilo muito floreado, fecha com o seguinte parágrafo:

"Uma das mais belas retribuições de minha vida será apresentar, como historiador francês, o maior dos modernos imperadores, D. Pedro II. Com os sentimentos de minha devota admiração, imploro Sua Majestade aceitar esta nova oferenda e as mais profundas homenagens de seu humilde e respeitoso servo, discípulo de Moisés e dos profetas, que invoca para Sua Majestade, Sua Augusta Família e seu Povo, a graça divina do Supremo Criador, para que Ele o proteja contra os ataques dos insetos e o coloque à sombra das Suas Asas (em hebraico:) que os anjos o acompanhem em todas Suas andanças!" - Benjamin Mossé Grão-Rabino Oficial da Instituição Pública (WOLF, Egon e Faria, 1983).

A História do Povo Judeu, tão ligada à religião e as tradições seculares, é uma história muito especial. A história dos judeus tão diversa da de outros povos é, no entanto a história de toda humanidade.

As narrativas bíblicas esclarecem os caminhos da humanidade desde a época nômade, desde as tribos, até a formação de nações construídas com leis próprias. As histórias dos profetas, reis, e patriarcas, são um patrimônio de conduta para todas as crenças e todos os homens. A história judaica mesclou-se à história de inúmeros povos e países onde os judeus viveram, incluindo o princípio da História do Brasil desde o descobrimento. Cabral, Fernando Noronha, Pedro da Gama, tantos que para cá vieram, aqui estiveram em paz enquanto durou a repressão à inquisição pelo Marquês de Pombal. Com a chegada da corte portuguesa em 1808, os portos foram abertos à imigração e os judeus que chegaram a partir daí não tinham a ver com os anteriores cristãos novos.

O Brasil Império florescia sob o reinado do jovem Imperador Pedro II. E aqui propriamente começa a nossa história: o imperador amigo e admirador do povo da história e da língua hebraica, deixou uma grande profusão de documentos sobre o assunto, e registrou de próprio punho em seus diários, o bom relacionamento e as amizades que tinha e cultivava com os judeus do Brasil e de outras terras.

No museu de Petrópolis, encontra-se todo um acervo desta face pouco conhecida do Imperador D. Pedro, que foi coroado com 15 anos, falava francês e inglês, era culto e foi sempre dedicado ao estudo durante a vida apesar dos seus deveres para com o Brasil. Em 1830 seus estudos incluíram latim, música, dança, caligrafia, geometria, matemática, geografia e, em 1839 ele dedicou-se ao alemão e italiano. Depois D. Pedro aprendeu com perfeição o grego, hebraico, sanscrito, árabe, provencial e a língua tupi.

Em 1891, D. Pedro publicou um livro de versões de poesias judaicas declarando então, que se dedicara ao hebraico, para conhecer a história e literatura dos judeus e os livros dos profetas. Seu primeiro professor, foi o judeu sueco Aker Blom por volta de 1860 e depois os judeus Koch, Henning e Seybold.

Em 1887, viajando à Europa, D. Pedro declara ser o hebraico sua língua preferida e, em seu diário, ele anota suas traduções do hebraico, assinala que ministrou aulas de hebraico , depois registra "Traduzi Nehemias com facilidade, não tenho esquecido o hebraico".

Até depois de abdicar, D. Pedro continuou estudando sempre a língua hebraica. Traduziu Camões para o hebraico, passou partes do Velho Testamento do hebraico para o latim, dentre elas o Cânticos dos Cânticos, Isaías, Lamentações e Jó. D. Pedro foi o precursor dos estudos hebraicos no Brasil e por causa dele muitos estudiosos passaram a cultivar a língua hebraica. O Imperador deixou um trabalho de 19 páginas que está no Museu de Petrópolis com o significado de palavras hebraicas do livro dos Salmos e do Gênesis, sendo que ele as traduziu para o inglês e o grego, não para o português. Este documento contém o hebraico escrito de seu próprio punho.

D. Pedro tinha amigos judeus aos quais freqüentava e que também recebia no Paço Imperial. Quando o Imperador criou a Ordem da Rosa vários judeus a receberam no Brasil, como o Coronel Francisco Leon Cohn, Henry Nestor, Dreifus e outros israelitas residentes em outros países também foram honrados. Abraão Bernel, por exemplo, recebeu a ordem por serviços humanitários no Brasil. Firmas inglesas a receberam, todas elas relacionadas aos Rothschild. O coronel Francisco Leon Cohn chegou a Tenente Coronel da Guarda Nacional em 1876. Um judeu, Morris N. Kohn, americano, fez a planta para a instalação da luz elétrica no Palácio da Quinta da Boa Vista. Este judeu que veio residir no Brasil foi o inventor da cama patente. Quem lembra ?

Em 1869, chegou ao Rio o maestro e pianista judeu Gottischalk. e entre muitas apresentações houve uma solene dedicada ao Imperador, composta de 20 músicos sob a regência do maestro, e foi apresentada à Grande Marcha Solene, variações do Hino Nacional. A Lista de artistas israelitas que aqui vieram foi enorme e tiveram sempre o apoio de sua Majestade: Harold Hime, Paula Bucheim, Max Lichtenstein, Ida e Helena Goldsmith e muitos outros.

Quando a Independência do Brasil foi proclamada, a Constituição declarou a religião romana como a religião do Império, mas permitia outras religiões. D. Pedro viajou muito e por onde passava visitava as sinagogas; assim foi nas duas sinagogas principais de Londres, sendo, que em uma delas o rabino Marks abriu a Torá a seu pedido, e no Sábado lá estava D. Pedro assistindo ao culto onde recebeu benções para si e toda a família Imperial. Em S. Francisco a Torá lhe foi apresentada e o Imperador a leu fluentemente, leu o livro de Moisés e traduziu o texto com desembaraço para surpresa dos presentes. E assim visitou as sinagogas das cidades onde esteve nos Estados Unidos. fez o mesmo na Europa.

No seu diário ele registra a passagem pela sinagoga de Bruxelas, esteve também na sinagoga de Toledo fazendo anotações sobre a música e o canto assistindo aos shabat invariavelmente. O Imperador foi à Palestina . Esteve numa sinagoga Samaritana em Sebastia e ele anota que a Torá que lhe foi apresentada era de pele de gazela, muito antiga e tinha o Pentateuco escrito em letras fenícias ou cananéias usadas antes do exílio Babilônico.

Em Damasco procurou os judeus e os visitou. Na Palestina esteve em Cafarnaum e anotou: "Estudei a Bíblia quanto pude", e trouxe uma pedra das ruínas da Sinagoga. Foi nesta viagem, várias vezes à Jerusalém. E anotou: "Vou ao Monte das Oliveiras e vou ver os judeus orando junto à Muralha do Templo".

E voltando ao Brasil, D. Pedro sempre ligado aos seus amigos judeus, continuou mantendo vasta correspondência sobre o hebraico. Havia um especial: Ernest Renau, filósofo, professor de hebraico e sânscrito, era escritor, mas os livros por ele publicados sobre religião não interessaram a D. Pedro, visto que os pontos de vista de Renau não coincidiam com o sentido religioso do Imperador. D. Pedro era religioso, o estudo do hebraico, o interesse pelas sinagogas e os judeus, estão alinhados com ele, que declarava: "Creio em D-us, sempre tive fé".

O Brasil seguia seu caminho, e o Império negociava com o exterior, o Brasil tornava-se conhecido e o Imperador recebia publicações de várias partes do mundo. Assim foi-se formando a biblioteca Imperial. Dos Estados Unidos, chegou um livro em hebraico de autoria do rabino Halish e também um manuscrito de Jerusalém enviado por Salomon Henvitz. Muitas cartas em hebraico, poemas, um livro sobre Judah Helevy vieram ao Castelo D'EU quando o Imperador já estava no exílio.

No exílio, D. Pedro dizia aos jornalistas que o abordavam: "não me chamem Vossa Majestade, mas Monsieur d'Alcantara".

As anotações de D. Pedro depois que perdeu o Império são diferentes. Ele foi para França depois que a esposa morreu, e continuou freqüentando os meios judaicos. As anotações em seu diário são variadas referentes aos seus contatos com os israelitas radicados em setores diversos: professores, médicos, escritores, rabinos etc...

Seis semanas antes de sua morte, ele enviou carta ao professor Max Pettenkoper, agradecendo as poesias em hebraico. D. Pedro foi amigo do rabino Benjamin Mossé de Avinhão, que lhe sugeriu que traduzisse os poemas litúrgicos daquela região da provença, pois ele dominava os dois idiomas. Os poemas eram escritos de maneira especial, eram piuts, escritos uma linha em hebraico, outra em provencal. D. Pedro fez a tradução ao seu modo. O texto hebraico foi para o francês e o provençal para caracteres latinos e assim D. Pedro fez muitas traduções para o rabino de Avinhão, incluindo o aramaico.

As publicações religiosas do rabino denominadas " La Famille de Jacob" estão documentados os trabalhos de D. Pedro. A Biblioteca Nacional de Paris possui esses exemplares, as bibliotecas judaicas na França e em Israel não os têm, embora constem documentos franceses as traduções feitas pelo Imperador dos "Treze atributos de D-us" do rabino Salomon bem Isaac de Troyes, no Brasil não há nenhum documento a respeito.

D. Pedro recebeu em 15/09/1873 o grande Diploma de Honra por seus trabalhos por intermédio do rabino Mossé que, juntamente com o Barão do Rio Branco, escreveram uma biografia do Imperador.

A morte de D. Pedro aos 68 anos foi um choque para o rabino de Avinhão e ele escreveu um necrológio no seu jornal "La Famille de Jacob". D. Pedro II d'Alcantara, cuja biografia um modesto rabino teve a honra de escrever com a colaboração de um sábio brasileiro Barão de Rio Branco, foi uma das mais admiráveis figuras de nossa época moderna. Fundador e organizador do imenso Império brasileiro foi amigo das letras. Conhecedor a fundo do hebraico, era certamente mais fluente nesta língua que muitos filhos de Israel. Ele não somente amava nossa língua mas nos amava, elogiava as virtudes de nosso povo e indignava-se com o anti-semitismo.

A última obra em que o monarca trabalhava era judaica, uma manifestação ressoante em favor do judaísmo que guardara para sempre sua memória.

O povo judeu que encontrou tanto desamor através dos séculos também teve amigos sinceros, e entre eles um muito especial: Pedro João Leopoldo Salvador Babiano, Francisco Xavier de Paula Leopoldino Miguel, Gabriel Gonzaga de Alcantara Orleãns e Bragança, Imperador do Brasil.


Referências Bibliográficas:

Wolf, Egon e Frieda. D. Pedro II e os Judeus. Ed. B'nai B'rith. 1983

Wolf, Egon e Frieda. O Imperador e o Rabino ^ Resenha Judaica. Arquivo do Museu Imperial de Petropólis.

_____
Escrito por: Rachel Stoianoff

The Left and Gun Control

www.conservativegirl.com
BUSH, THE NRA, AND REPUBLICANS ARE TO BLAME!!!!!

It didn't take long, did it? Not that I am surprised.

Rather them place the blame on the shoulders of the man, a South Korean on a visa, who killed more than thirty people in cold blood, we would blame the weapon he used.

Because, as we all know, murder was not invented until the gun was invented. Furthermore, people do not kill people, guns kill people. Anyone who thinks otherwise is obviously a moron. Europe, and our liberal friends, know best and anyone who loves freedom and liberty, and who believes in the Constitution and the 2nd amendment, has blood on their hands.

Congressman Jim Moran (D-VA) blames Republicans and President Bush for massacre

Moran suggested Republicans were to blame for Monday's tragedy at Virginia Tech, which left 33 dead and injured another 30. The anti-gun congressman said Republican policies made it easy for the shooter to obtain a gun.

When the show's host tried to suggest that the gunman may have been hellbent on killing regardless of the law, Moran turned the conversation back to the GOP, complaining that the United States needs a national registry to track all firearms purchases and more stringent gun-control laws. Moran then blamed Bush and Republicans in Congress for opposing such measures at the behest of the NRA.

... European newspapers are blaming the lack of gun control measures in the United States and implying that Charlton Heston is indirectly responsible for the scope of the killings.

Across the continent on Tuesday, European media rubber-neck at Monday's massacre in the United States. Most seem to agree about one thing: The shooting at Virginia Tech is the result of America's woeful lack of serious gun control laws.

Yet, in this sea of anti-gun insanity the voices of sanity remain.

Below is a link to an article EVERYONE should read. I posted a link about this story yesterday, and John Tabin connects the dots further.

A Disarmed Campus

______________________________________________

God Wants Gun Control-The 'religious' Left exploits the Virginia Tech murders. More>

Wanted: A culture of self-defense

Virginia Tech's Gun-Free Zone Left Cho Seung-Hui's Victims Defenseless

Armas e massacres...

U.N. IV - Israel & Anti-Semitism

http://www.eyeontheun.org/facts.asp


Click here for an updated chart of the 22 anti-Israel resolutions at the current 61st UN General Assembly.

Demonization of Israel: "Zionism is Racism"

An alien observing the United Nations' debates, reading its resolutions, and walking its halls could well conclude that a principal purpose of the world body is to censure a tiny country called Israel.

Beginning in the late 1960's, the full weight of the UN was gradually but deliberately turned against the country it had conceived by General Assembly resolution a mere two decades earlier. The campaign to demonize and delegitimize Israel in every UN and international forum was initiated by the Arab states together with the Soviet Union, and supported by what has become known as an "automatic majority" of Third World member states.

The campaign reached new strength in wake of the Arab oil embargo of 1973, when many African states were pressured into severing relations with Israel. In 1975, following a steady drumbeat of anti-Israel declarations pushed through the International Women's Year Conference in Mexico and then the Organization of African Unity, the majority of the General Assembly adopted the "Zionism is Racism" resolution. At the same time, it instituted a series of related measures that together installed an infrastructure of anti-Israel propaganda throughout the UN. Years later, after strenuous efforts by democratic forces, the infamous resolution was repealed.

Legacy of 1975: Anti-Israel Infrastructure Remains

However, the legacy of 1975 remains fully intact: UN committees, annual UN resolutions, an entire UN bureaucratic division, permanent UN exhibits in New York and Geneva headquarters -- all dedicated to a relentless and virulent propaganda war against the Jewish state. Together, they have made the UN into Ground Zero for today's new anti-Semitism, which is the irrational scapegoating of Israel with the true intended target being Jews. Not only do these anti-Israel measures incite hatred against Israelis and Jews everywhere, but they have done not a thing to help the Palestinian situation. On the contrary: they give strength and succor to extremists.

Paradoxically, one of the greatest violators of the UN Charter's equality guarantee has been the UN body charged with establishing and enforcing international human rights, the Human Rights Council. (For more on the bias of this body, formerly known as the Commission on Human Rights, click here.)

Anti-Israel Bias in the UN System

The UN's discrimination against Israel is not a minor infraction, nor a parochial nuisance of interest solely to those concerned with equal rights of the Jewish people and the Jewish state. Instead, the world body's obsession with censuring Israel at every turn directly affects all citizens of the world, for it constitutes (a) a severe violation of the equality principles guaranteed by the UN Charter and underlying the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and (b) a significant obstacle to the UN's ability to carry out its proper mandate.

None of this means Israel should be above the law. Every country, including every democracy, commits human rights violations, and states should be held to account accordingly, both domestically and internationally. Yet Israel does have the right to be treated equally under the law. The UN Charter and the rules of natural justice demand no less. It is legitimate for UN bodies to criticize Israel, but not when they do do so unfairly, selectively, massively, sometimes exclusively, and always obsessively.

Likewise, it is perfectly legitimate to call attention to the rights of the Palestinian people and their often difficult conditions. But it is something else entirely to abuse their cause for the sole objective of scapegoating Israel and the Jewish people.

General Assembly Ignored Sudan, But Condemned Israel 22 Times

The countless anti-Israel resolutions and related debates consume an astonishing proportion of the UN community's precious resources. This year, during the 61th Session of the General Assembly (2006-2007), the time spent by ambassadors on enacting the 22nd anti-Israel resolution of the year was time not spent on passing a single resolution on Sudan's genocide in Darfur. Diplomats at foreign ministries or UN missions have a limited amount of time to devote to any particular UN session. Because every proposed UN resolution is subjected to intensive review by various levels and branches of government, a direct result of the anti-Israel texts is a crippling of the UN's ability to tackle the world's ills.

UN bias against Israel is overt in bodies such as the General Assembly, which each year passes some nineteen resolutions against Israel and none against most other member states, including the world's most repressive regimes. The World Health Organization, meeting at its annual assembly in Geneva in 2005, passed but one resolution against a specific country: Israel was charged with violating Palestinian rights to health. Similarly, the International Labour Organization, at its annual 2005 conference in Geneva, carried only one major country-specific report on its annual agenda -- a lengthy document charging Israel with violating the rights of Palestinian workers.

In the summer of 2004, the UN's International Court of Justice at The Hague issued an advisory opinion that followed the script of a political campaign orchestrated by the PLO representative at the UN, Nasser al-Kidwa. The busiest corridor of the Palais des Nations, the European headquarters of the UN in Geneva, displays no less than ten larger-than-life panels devoted to the Palestinian cause. The clear message, that the Palestinians are the world's greatest human rights victim; the clear implication, that Israel is the world's greatest human rights abuser.

There are three special UN entities dedicated to the Palestinian cause. The oldest is the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories, created in 1968. In 1975, the General Assembly added the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People. Supporting its work is the Division for Palestinian Rights. Lodged within the UN Secretariat, the Division boasts a sixteen-member staff and a budget of millions, which it devotes to the constant promotion of anti-Israel propaganda throughout the world.

Although Secretary-General Kofi Annan has made important pronouncements against anti-Semitism, and even -- before a Jerusalem audience -- against some aspects of the UN's anti-Israel bias, his regular statements on the Arab-Israeli conflict are disproportionately critical of Israel. Senior aide Lakhdar Brahimi publicly described Israel as a country whose policy constitutes "the great poison in the region."

Time to Take Action to End Bias and Injustice at the UN

The anti-Israel apparatus within the UN, therefore, is of considerable magnitude, and cripples the functioning of the organization. The overt bias practiced against one state undermines the UN's credibility and integrity. Anyone who truly cares about the UN must take action to end this gross injustice and criminal distraction from world pandemics such as disease and poverty. Given the current period of UN reform, now is the time. Many more UN officials, member states, NGOs, and others need to speak out and actively oppose this longstanding inequality. To begin taking action, click here.


Israel wiped off the map at the UN

The Complete Story of UN-Palestinian Solidarity November 29, 2005 and beyond

UN Conference Features a Call for the End of the Jewish State

UN Claims Map Erasing Israel Just "Historical"

Update on UN Map Without the State of Israel: The Deception Grows

Hamas and a map with no Israel, April 2, 2006

The exclusion of Israel from full UN participation

The Religion of Peace VII - Islamic Sesame Street

Muslim Sesame Street I: do the "Death to America" thing

Muslim Sesame Street II:The Birds and the Bees...and suicide

Muslim Sesame Street III : Iranian TV cartoon contest

Muslim Sesame Street IV: "A" is for Angels, "S" for Suicide

Muslim Sesame Street V: Pepsi Cola, the Apes, Pigs and Jews

Teaching hatred of the US and Israel - Lebanon and Palestine

Teaching Hatred to Palestinian Children

The opressed 'palestinians'

http://godhelpbritain.blogspot.com/


Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b2QhQQpHck

An Australian woman reveals how she discovered dead bodies are torn, photographed and used as anti-Israeli propaganda, claiming the victims were tortured. She also states all boys aged between 10 and 16 are soldiers.

Of course, the Palestinians are the underdog and therefore must be suffering unjustly mustn't they?

Feel the Peace and Tolerance

MUSLIM RIOTS IN FRANCE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66wbKjC-u58

MUSLIM MAYHEM IN FRANCE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dog1p47rHFM

MUSLIM RIOTS IN BRUSSELS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHK-Rc5HvpY

MUSLIM RIOTS IN INDIA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lndg3hV-cfA

MUSLIM RIOTS IN SWEDEN

Continue reading "Riots in Malmö continue"

The riots have reached Malmö in Sweden
I almost missed this, but it looks like Muslim riots similar to the ones that hit France and Australia in late 2005 have now reached Sweden as well (via Jihad Watch).

See also this item written by Fjordman over on Dhimmi Watch.