Palestinians - Fausta's Blog

February 5, 2016 By Fausta

Brazil: Palestinian Authority opens embassy in Brasilia

The first one in our hemisphere, and designed to make a statement (emphasis added):

Built on a piece of land that is more than 17,000 square feet and donated by the Brazilian government when it was led by former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the space is considered large in comparison to other diplomatic missions. Topped with a golden dome, the building resembles the famous mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas laid the cornerstone for the building in 2011.

Lula donated a strategic location in his own country’s capital: There’s a security component,

The inauguration of the embassy comes as Brazil and Israel tussle over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s nominee to fill the vacant Israeli envoy position.

The closeness of the new embassy to major Brazilian governmental buildings, including the Planalto Palace, Congress, Supreme Court and ministries, has been widely criticized due to security concerns.

“Diplomats and their vehicles cannot be checked. The embassy is a sovereign Hamas area now,” an unnamed military source told Brazil’s Veja magazine in an article published last year. “The site is strategic. Terrorists could access the whole governmental structure in a half an hour.”

For decades the Brazilian government has ignored Hezbollah’s activities in the Tri-Border Area. Now Hamas and the PA have a strategically-important spot in the middle of Brasilia.

What could possibly go wrong?

UPDATE
Linked to by Babalu. Thank you!

I also linked to it in today’s post.

May 2, 2009 By Fausta

Ahmadinejad’s upcoming visit to Brazil

ECUADOR-CORREA-INAUGURATION-LULA-AHMADINEJAD

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is visiting Brazil this Wednesday May 6, along with 110 representatives from 65 Iranian companies.

The Israel Project has a comprehensive article, Ahmadinejad Set to Visit Brazil as Iran Increases Influence in Latin, South America, which lists Iranian influence, country by country in South America. Here’s the section on Brazil (the numbers refer to the article’s footnotes)

On May 6, Ahmadinejad is scheduled to travel to Brazil. [18] The visit comes as the Islamic Republic and Brazil upgrade their bilateral ties on numerous levels. In November 2008, Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said Brazil had made developing relations with Iran a foreign policy priority. [19]

In addition to the controversial bolstering of economic and diplomatic relations between Brazil and Iran, a country that has been sanctioned by the UN Security Council for its non-compliance regarding its uranium enrichment program, the United States and other Western nations are concerned by Iran-backed Hezbollah, a terrorist organization, that is “gaining strength and momentum” [20] in Latin America, particularly in Brazil.

• During a visit to Brazil in March 2009, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki announced: “The two countries [Brazil and Iran] are on the threshold of beginning of a new chapter in relations.” Furthermore, he stressed his wish to raise the bilateral trade volume between both countries up to $3.0 billion in the coming years. [21]

• “Iran affords South America major priority in its foreign policy and Brazil enjoys a special position in this respect,” said Mottaki during a meeting with Amorim in Tehran. [22]

• Iran’s trade volume with countries from Latin America reaches more than $20 billion, $2 billion of which come from trade with Brazil. [23]

• Brazil’s exports to Iran reached over $1.5 billion in 2007. [24]

• During his visit to Brazil, Mottaki spoke of his desire for bilateral cooperation in the fields of agricultural research, science, technology, power, oil and gas. During his meeting with Foreign Minister Mottaki Brazil’s Minister of Defense, Nelson Jobim, said: “Iran is our friend with which we are highly interested to expand ties.[…] So, we can have good cooperation in all areas, in the energy sector in particular.” [25]

• Mottaki proposed a “roadmap” for energy cooperation between Iran and Brazil, particularly in the oil sector and producing electricity. Brazilian Energy Minister Edison Lobao said: “Iran is our friend which we deeply like to develop relations with.” [26]

• “Iran and Brazil are two countries in line with the south-south cooperation and Brazil has always been benefiting from relations with Iran,” said Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim during a joint press conference with his Iranian counterpart. [27]

• In November 2008, Brazil asked for the UN Security Council to “shelve Iran’s nuclear dossier and allow the normalization of the country’s enrichment case.” [28]

• In March 2009, the commander of U.S. forces in Latin America, James Stavridis, warned of the increased Iranian and Hezbollah activities throughout the region: “We see a great deal of Hezbollah activity throughout South America, in particular. The tri-border of Brazil is a particular concern, as in Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina, as well as [other] parts of Brazil and in the Caribbean Basin.” [29]

• Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva publicly announced his support for Iran’s nuclear energy program in September 2007. [30]

There are several demonstrations scheduled for this week in Brazil, organized by Jewish, Christian, gay, human rights, and womens’ groups protesting the visit.

Ahmadinejad is scheduled to visit Venezuela after Brazil. In advance of his trip to Venezuela, Iran’s Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammed Najjar last week signed a a Memoradum of Understanding on Iranian-Venezuelan mutual defense.

While in Venezuela, DEBKA reports that Najjar allegedly met with visiting Palestinian Authority officials, led by Palestinian foreign minister Riyadh al-Mal

If true, this would signal a drastic policy turnabout by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas away from Cairo and over to the radical Tehran and Damascus. The Ramallah-Tehran opening, if confirmed, could help bury the hatchet between the warring Fatah and Hamas and pave the way for a Palestinian unity government governed by rejectionist ideology.

This would shut the door to future Palestinian negotiations with Israel’s Netanyahu administration.

Najjar’s visit to Caracas was formally presented as a move to strengthen “defense cooperation” between Iran and Venezuela.

More posting on the Venezuelan demonstrations later today.

May 6, 2008 By Fausta

Murder mystery in Texas?

My friend Mary Madigan has a most interesting article at Pajamas Media today, A ‘Non-Violent’ Palestinian Activist Dies in Texas

On April 16, the body of teacher and activist Riad Hamad was spotted floating in Lady Bird Lake in Austin, Texas. Witnesses said the man’s body had been “wrapped with duct tape.” According to News Radio 590, the police were not sure if foul play was involved. When Hamad was reported missing, the family mentioned that he was experiencing suicidal thoughts.

And then there’s the matter of $500,000…

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March 12, 2008 By Fausta

Chile: Palestinians look for a new future in South America

A group of 117 Palestinian refugees trapped in the no-man’s land between the Syrian and Iraqi borders are migrating to the Chilean capital, Santiago, to begin a new life.

The refugees, expected to arrive in Chile on 17 March, all come from Iraq and some were expelled from Syria after seeking refuge there.

The group are the first of three accepted by the Chilean government after a plea from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Initially they will get financial help:

“The refugees will be given economic aid for two years, which will decrease as the months go by, and the amount will be proportional to the size of the family”, said Gonzalez to AKI.

“This money will take into consideration basic sustenance, healthcare needs, education, job training and recreational activities.”

The newly-arrived refugees will be given an intensive one-year Spanish course and will be taught about Chilean society.

Chile is believed to have the largest community of Palestinians outside the Arab world, consisting of five percent of the population.

Palestinians and their descendants, most of them Christian, now number over 300,000 people, making it the largest community outside the Arab world.

Palestinians are also well integrated into Chilean economic, political and cultural life.

It will be interesting to see how the new arrivals adapt to modern Chilean society.

(h/t insubria)

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June 23, 2007 By Fausta

Victor Davis Hanson goes fishing with his son

I adore VDH’s writing, and this post is particularly good,
World Gone By
Some 20 years ago I went fishing in the California mountains and had the best trout ever, and would eat the trout I fish now (rather than throw it back in the water), which obviously means I’m of the “older generation” mindset. But not to worry, I’ll continue lying about my age for as long as I’m able to lie.

Hanson also has a few thoughts on Gazitis,

Any examination of the multimillionaire spoiled brat Bin-Laden, or the aristocratic and snobbish Egyptian Dr. Zawahiri, or the other middle-class 9/11 killers might suggest that poverty is no requisite for jihadism. In fact, most of the worst of the this very sad bunch are affluent and have had exposure to the Western affluence and liberality.
…
One should read about the life of Sayyid Qutb, intellectual architect of the Muslim Brotherhood that we now apparently wish to embrace. He hated the very thought of Jews, though he had seen few if any in Egypt, and was only to encounter them in any real number in America. This middle-class Egyptian—subsidized generously by his own government, treated well and embraced by Americans—grew to detest the West for its liberality, its equality of the sexes, its material wealth, its friendship with the Jews.

In other words, his wretched life reminds us that envy, jealousy, anger at lost stature, these primordial emotions fuel jihadism. They may be enhanced by general misery, acerbated by statist failures and authoritarian governments, but ultimately the nihilist rages are attributable to the lethal mix of Middle East tribalism and Islam’s utter failure to account for and live with modernity.

Thinking that radical Islam will soften itself or evolve is analogous to a victorious Confederacy voluntarily ending slavery about 1870, a kinder, gentler Soviet Union without the gulags, Hitler in his dotage dismantling Auschwitz, or Tojo in the 1950s turning his old zeal to flooding the Co-Prosperity Sphere with cars and radios.

And VDH also has an installment of his novel.

Good stuff.

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Dr Krauthammer calls it the Last chance for Abbas.

I disagree. For as long as the UN and the EU sympahtize with Fatah, there will always be another chance.

June 22, 2007 By Fausta

Sicko, and Friday round-up

Updated
Via Larwyn, Prepare to be Sickened by SiCKO

Literally every day, the mainstream media in the countries whose government-run medical systems Moore holds up as superior models publish stories documenting the failure of mandatory, no-opt-out, state-run medical care. The laundry list of ills, in the U.K. alone, includes patients waiting months or even years for critical drugs and treatments (sometimes becoming disabled or dying because of the delay or lack of care), people denied therapies altogether because of rationing or cost (see, for example, an article last February in The Scotsman, “Cancer patients told life-prolonging treatment is too expensive for NHS”), an explosion in the size of the medical bureaucracy, and thousands of physicians taking to the streets earlier this year to protest.

One bottom line, so to speak, is particularly telling: Moore, who is obese, would most likely be denied a number of common health care procedures and treatments in one of his favored government-controlled socialist medicine systems, the U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS), because of his excessive weight. Recently, the cash-strapped NHS actually started limiting or prohibiting therapies for residents who are fat or who smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol.

In Princeton, the Public Library has been banging the drum on socialized health care for a while, inviting Paul Krugman to ignore the facts about the French healthcare system and featuring a film on Cuba’s healthcare at the Princeton Human Rights Film Festival, by which they not only managed to ignore Cuba’s huuman rights record but also Cuba’s apartheid health care system, even when three members of the audience tried to talk about it.

I expect the PPL will be showing SICKO soon.

Update: Michael Moore’s Shticko: His health care jeremiad won’t win any converts

And I won’t be surprised if Sicko has wonderful things to say about the Venezuelan healthcare; too bad Michael didn’t bring along any Norwegian reporters

Speaking of Venezuela,
Remember the fallen viaduct in Caracas?

Well, a new one’s up.

In other Venezuelan news, The constitutional changes draft has been leaked: the path to an eternal Chavez dictatorship and kiss what’s left of your private property good-bye. Update Dymphna has more on Hugo’s latest.

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Joe finds some Academic Fantasies Exploited

Abbas: Hamas Creating ‘Empire of Darkness’ unlike Fatah’s sweetness and lignt. The Guardian blames the US and Israel, of course.

Tony Blair’s going to Rome

Head-to-toe Muslim veils test tolerance of secular Britain. Indeed.

El Cafe Cubano continues the Friday fast for all political prisoners

Unlike the Brits who allowed themselves to be taken hostage, the Aussies repelled an Iranian attempt to capture a boarding party. Update: Richard North has more on the story and how it’s covered by the blogs and by the MSM.

——————————————————–
Via Irwin, June 20, 2007 Paul Krugman Four Years Ago Today. Krugman’s wrong on things other than French healthcare, too.
——————————————————–
Via Bob, Harvard Dean of Freshmen Advertises “Scintillating and Sexy” Talk, since college students don’t think of sex at all.
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George not-in-my-back-yard Clooney

technorati: SICKO

Every day when I first wake up I pray a Rosary in thanks, for I live a most privileged life filled with blessings.

Some of it may have to do with my name.

In Spanish, the name Fausta is most unusual for a woman. There are many Faustos, but women are usually named Faustina, which carries a softer connotation as the ina ending is also used as a diminutive. There are very few diminutive aspects to my personality, as those who know me well will tell you.

Faust in any language, to anyone familiar with Western opera and literature, connotes being gypped by unsavory characters. Frequently the person inquiring about my name is not fully familiar with the Faustian plot, and I have been asked if I was named after the devil. (I have developed a number of cutting remarks which have come in handy for those inquiries, thanks. Some day I’ll post about that.) Classical scholars do know that Fausta was the wife of Constantine the Great, and she was up to no good. Probably becasue of this, many new visitors to this blog think Fausta is a pseudonym, when it actually is my real name.

I’m happy to report that I have not engaged in any Faustian dealings and that I was named after my grandma, a nice little old lady with flawless fair skin and snow-white hair, not after any conniving Roman empresses.

Fausta, on the other hand, is also an adjective in Spanish, meaning fortuitous, and also, happy in a splendid way. So I have been blessed with the life my name invokes.

Granted, mine is a simple mind and I derive great joy from the simplest things. Like stair-climbing, for instance.

Yesterday I went up and down four flights of stairs several times during the day. It was a hot and humid day and I was perspiring heavily (almost as much as that time I went to the aerobic yoga class, but not quite). To me it is a wonder that I can actually do that. It is an outright miracle. Several years ago I was really sick and despaired of ever doing such a simple thing again.

So there I was yesterday, going up the stairs for the umpteenth time (yes, the building has an elevator, but I wanted to go up the stairs because I could) and my heart was singing. No, it wasn’t palpitations. It was sheer delight. As I reached the fifth floor, I nearly said to a lady who was heading down, Look, I can do this!.

I’ll never know if I woul feel that way if I hadn’t been so ill. All I know is that I do now. I can not go back to find out, since there is no going back.

I derive a great deal of enjoyment from the most common things.

A fresh peach, eaten on the balcony overlooking the ocean.

The smell of the early morning.

The feel of cool clean linens.

The sight of a four year old hosing off the sand from his bellyboard.

The sound of a groom and his best man hugging each other in silence, just before they head to the wedding.

Blogging and podcasting are two other things I truly enjoy. Blogging and podcasting enrich my life in many wonderful and surprising ways. If I weren’t blogging I would have never witnessed this wonderful event yesterday, for instance.

Yes, I have a most privileged life filled with blessings.

Since I’m on vacation I have had a chance to ponder these things while I haven’t been keeping up on the news as much as usual, but I have heard from friends who do. Several of these friends I have met because of blogging, and they are very well informed.

They are expecting that things are not going to get better; indeed, they are expecting things to get a lot worse for a long time. Several of those friends are preparing for the worst.

They certainly have good reason to.

A glance at the so-called newspaper of record shows the complicity of the mainstream media with crackpot Communist dictators.

Academia has debased itself into a morass of dogmatism and moral blindness to the point where 87 faculty members of a major university judge three young men as guilty by “reason” of their race and background.

Unprincipled secular societies in the West can not ever begin to understand fundamentalist Islamists because they are unable to fill a void with a void.

We are in an existential struggle and Democrat candidates are running on the premise that there is no war at all. Listen up, democrats, look at what really happened in the Middle East. There have been 8,638 terrorist attacks since September 11, 2001. It’s not Methodists doing it.

The leadership in Washington is faltering in ever-worse ways. Both parties are out to find the most disastrous way in the least time.

Even when I’m not keeping up with the news I know that the US and Israel will be arming Fatah. Have they lost their minds? We are arming our enemies. The enemy of my enemy will turn against us. They have before and will again.

So while I’m enjoying everyday pleasures and posting about them, I too have the temptation of wanting to go back to the the age of 1990s blindness, where a corrupt president was lauded by the media and where terrorist attack after terrorist attack was ignored and pushed aside because it didn’t fit the script of Clintonian happiness so many want to return to today.

They think that by bringing back the same-old same-old and singing the new campaign song it’s all going to be

Happy days are here again
The skies above are clear again
So lets sing a song of cheer again
Happy days are here again,as if the words alone would make it so. It didn’t happen in the 1930s. Then, as now, appeasement didn’t work. But oh, those words would make anyone feel so good.

The problem is, words alone are not cutting it. Being blessed with a name does not alone make for a happy life as of itself. Ignoring an enemy set on destroying our very culture where I can write these words will not win a war.

There are many things I don’t know, but there is one thing I know: there is no going back.

Don’t close your eyes to reality.

Enjoy every moment you have.

And pray.