COMENTÁRIO SOBRE AS DECLARAÇÕES DE UM SHEIKH

Este artigo, publicado na revista australiana, Quadrant, aparece no site

de Roger Sandall

Sexualizing everyday life

from Mann and Nabokov to Sheik al-Hilaly

Roger Sandall

My first question is this: was the mad Mufti right?

When Sheik Taj al-Din al-Hilaly said that half-clothed Australian women went around like “exposed meat” inviting rape there was an immediate uproar from all enlightened opinion. Unbelievable! How could anyone say such a thing? Shock-horror was general, and the ugly imagery confirmed a growing suspicion that our Islamic leadership is stuck in the Dark Ages.

But it’s less clear that the Sheik was entirely wrong. Perhaps he could even be seen as a kind of messenger bringing bad news. What he was complaining about, if we’re honest, was a process that has been going on so long, and has now gone so far, that it has become the water we swim in and the air we breathe: a sexually heightened moral environment far removed from any known culture in the past, in which everyday activities like buying a paper or visiting a supermarket continually present us with acres of erotica and exciting flesh—along with once forbidden instincts, thoughts, and desires now normalized and routine.

My second question is this: Has a moral tsunami left our middle classes, the erstwhile custodians of civil order and decency, in ruins? What has been the corrupting role we ourselves have played in this state of affairs—every one of us that is, from the sensation-mongering media at the bottom, to our most celebrated cultural paragons at the top? Recently the papers have been filled with scandalised reports of paedophilia in a surprising variety of milieus. Have the works of even our most gifted artists and exalted writers contributed to a climate in which this too has become inevitable? The Sheik’s comments were tasteless. His language was brutal. But can we truly say he was unprovoked?

Art and innocence

“The kingdom of art increases and that of health and innocence declines.”

So wrote Thomas Mann, and he knew what he was talking about. Moral degeneration and civilisational decline, he argued, come with the ascendancy of the modern artist and the subversive role of art in modern life, a doctrine fully explicit in his novella Tonio Kröger. There he tells us that today’s artists are estranged from life, pursue goals hostile to life, work continually to subvert and destroy the bourgeois firmament, and jeer when it comes tumbling down.

The weird thing is that nobody saw what was happening. The middle classes thought Communist revolution in Russia was out to ruin them—and it certainly made every effort to do so. But capitalism proved more easily debauched than overthrown, and the western bourgeoisie more vulnerable to moral than political subversion. The possibility that the libertine values of artistic bohemia might be more dangerous in the long run, however, never seems to have entered their giddy heads. Artists were exciting. Artists were creative. Artists were free and uninhibited, and art was a raison d’etre much more noble than trade and commerce. As part of this delusion the bourgeoisie came to believe that the counter-cultural creators of beautiful paintings and music must also have beautiful souls.

But this was nonsense. The so-called artist’s ‘gift’, wrote Thomas Mann, has dark roots in a poisoned psyche. “It is a very dubious affair and rests upon extremely sinister foundations.” The world should know that most artists today are sick in mind and spirit, a danger to decent people and heedless of the damage they cause. Plumbers and carpenters and other tradesmen were reliable friends. But artists were the enemy. And because he understood this so clearly, the eponymous Tonio Kröger (the character of a writer in the book who speaks for Mann himself) was embarrassed to find complete strangers sending him letters of praise:

…I positively blush at the thought of how these good people would freeze up if they were to get a look behind the scenes. What they, in their innocence, cannot comprehend is that a properly constituted, healthy, decent man never writes, acts, or composes…”

Literature is not a calling, it is a curse, believe me! It begins by your feeling yourself set apart, in a curious sort of opposition to the nice, regular people; there is a gulf of ironic sensibility, of knowledge, scepticism, disagreement, between you and the others; it grows deeper and deeper, you realize that you are alone; and from then on any rapprochement is simply hopeless! What a fate!

The rise of the paederaesthetic

If art increases as innocence declines, is it a matter of cause and effect? In that case Mann would seem to be supporting Rousseau’s view in the First Discourse that literature and the arts are actually making the world worse. It certainly sounds like that. In Mann’s view the writer stands in permanent moral opposition, sceptical and ironic and relentlessly gnawing away. Worse still: having found a role in Art he may have lost a useful role in Life. The sense of being set apart in an alien moral universe is overwhelming:

You can disguise yourself, you can dress up like an attaché or a lieutenant; you hardly need to give a glance or speak a word before everyone knows you are not a human being, but something else: something queer, different, inimical.

Sexually inimical too—or sexually perhaps most of all. “Is an artist a male, anyhow? Ask the females! It seems to me we artists are all of us something like those unsexed papal singers. We sing like angels; but…” Here Kröger/Mann breaks off. Perhaps from weariness or boredom. Perhaps also because the angelic songs of yearning can hardly be named for what they are. Readers of Death in Venice will however take his meaning. In that story the ageing writer Aschenbach lusts after the youth Tadzio, and the ironic sensibility so ably described, the scepticism, the irony, the extreme narcissism, is combined with the mysterious obsessions of the paedophile—such obsessions being those of the author himself.

* * *

Thomas Mann was a towering figure, intellectually in touch with the major currents of thought in his time, and to try and reduce him to his erotic interests would be ridiculous. His diaries for 1933 and 1934 reveal an observer whose understanding of European realities was second to none. Under the Nazis, he wrote, the Germans were becoming a “wretched, isolated, demented people, misled by a wild, stupid band of adventurers whom they take for mythical heroes.” In his entry for December 15, 1933, Mann reported Max Planck’s meeting with the Führer:

Planck had requested a personal interview with Hitler regarding anti-Semitic dismissals of professors. He was subjected to a three-quarter-hour harangue, after which he returned home completely crushed.

He said it was like listening to an old peasant woman gabbling on about mathematics, the man’s low-level, ill-educated reliance on obsessive ideas; more hopeless than anything the illustrious scientist and thinker had ever heard in his entire life.

Two worlds coming together as the result of the one’s rise to power: a man from the world of knowledge, erudition, and disciplined thought is forced to listen to the arrogant, dogmatic expectorations of a revolting dilettante, after which he can only bow and take his leave.

Stephen Spender wrote of the diaries that “Thomas Mann is a monumental figure of our time. Reading these journals one feels that this monument is made of very hard, resistant, almost cruel material: but under the surface there is a human being who, together with Freud, was the greatest human being this century.”

Under the surface, too, unmentioned by Spender, was a pederastic interest that pervades his work and accurately reflects his inclinations. There is far more to his stories than that. And we might note that he appears to have spent most of his life in chaste frustration. But with their adored ‘Hermes’ (and their slight and ridiculous women) the tales he spun probably helped to disinhibit, to condone, and to legitimise predatory behaviour that mothers with children can only regard with dread.

Mann and Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov once joked that if Lolita had been about a man and a boy he would have had no American publishing problems—and that this was considered a joking matter is almost as revealing as anything else to do with the book. It would of course be ludicrous to suggest a direct connection between the works of these authors and what is now going on in the media and the streets. The self-conscious complexities of literary style alone would exclude all but the most determined reader from the experiences Mann and Nabokov publicise.

Still, there it is, an unbudgeable fact of literary history: two of the most distinguished writers of the 20^th century, the most relentlessly cerebral and self-conscious writers, and the most academically admired and studied writers with whole shelves of earnest research devoted to their books, gave what I shall call “paederaesthetics”—the world of belief and feeling embodied in erotically idealised juveniles frankly treated as sexual prey—an important place. A widely used Simon & Schuster reader’s guide for college students from 1995 tells us that

Lolita, with its murder, paedophilia, sadism, masochism, and even hint of incest, clearly struck a nerve in our society by violating a number of its strongest taboos.

I’d have thought that any healthy society very reasonably should have taboos against murder, paedophilia, sadism, and incest. I am neither a prude nor a killjoy, yet rules against these things seem sensible to me. But the author of this student guide to Lolita apparently feels otherwise, suggesting, in accord with bohemian principles, that the proper function of literature is to overcome such taboos. And perhaps in the case of paedophilia it has succeeded.

The sexualising of everyday life

Our culture is deeply divided. Should we be in favour of public copulation or might that be OTT? If it’s okay for Paris Hilton to make a video of herself having sex and to share it about in cyberspace, why shouldn’t our very own Susie and Jim make one too? A glance at any newspaper shows how each libertine advance ratchets up another without anyone knowing where to stop.

A mass-market color supplement to Sydney’s Sun-Herald for October 29 2006 has the Hilton sisters on the cover, while inch-high yellow lettering shouts “Hedonism is Back, How to Party Celebrity Style”. The following 30 pages promote celebtrashery as a way of life.

Spectrum, a literary supplement of the Sydney Morning Herald edited and written largely by women, moves up a cultural notch and features a story about the female author “of a best-selling erotic novel”. This cites “a man who wishes women would make more noise in bed, and a divorcee in her 50s finding sex on the internet.” Reviews follow, a scene from the film Suburban Mayhem showing a chesty chick with thigh-high boots who, we are told, is “mistress of the SMS, and the local boys are her Praetorian Guard.” Reviewer Sandra Hall reports that “Wanna Fuck? is their call to arms” and that the young woman in question “usually obliges.”

Some relief from this brazen brutishness is provided by the writer Elizabeth Farrelly. Her essay “In search of a cure for paradise syndrome” questions the concept of illimitable human desires, and quotes Raymond Tallis’s thoughts on this subject. But only pages later there’s a full-colour cartoon of a pole dancer getting her rocks off—if that’s the expression I need. This illustrated a contribution by Mr David Marr.

Not wanting to unfairly target a single Sydney newspaper I looked at The Weekend Australian Magazine for November 11-12. The cover is a bold come-on for an article asking if it is right or wrong for women teachers to seduce male pupils. No particular moral stance is adopted, and a number of court cases are examined. Yet by only the second paragraph we are treated to a vivid description of a 37-year-old woman who “wound up in the front seat of her car giving one of her boys oral sex… His friends thought he was ‘a bit of a legend’. He let them in on juicier details, like her glasses fogging up.”

* * *

Now then. Let us stop for a moment and consider. Put yourself in the position of conventionally respectable immigrants from some traditional culture—Sri Lankan Buddhists, Colombian Catholics, Greek Orthodox from the Ukraine—who are used to certain standards of dress and decorum, who go to buy a weekend newspaper, and who are confronted with this sort of thing. We might also mention the good Rabbi and the pious Lubavitchers over my back fence, whose views of female decorum are in all important respects indistinguishable from the Sheik’s.

What conclusion can they possibly draw from the daughters of billionaires fornicating on the web, cries for more noise in bed, shouts of “Wanna Fuck?” from movie stars, a female pole dancer engaged in public masturbation, and Australian women teachers who seduce their pupils and provide them with oral sex? Sheik al-Hilaly may be a boor and a pest. He doubtless has a wider political agenda. But I ask you: if these are not examples of white western women aggressively calling for action, what exactly are they?

Philip Rieff has suggested that we ourselves are the counter-culture now. If that is true, with the values of bohemia saturating the mass media and barely distinguishable from those of the general populace, then we can probably find the reasons for the Mufti’s outburst by gazing thoughtfully in the nearest mirror.

Civility and common sense

Getting the balance right between the animal and the civil has been a problem since civilization began. It hasn’t been easy. There has been a perpetual strain between the puritan tendency and the libertine, in China, in Japan, in India, and in the West as well. Some cultures and some eras veered to the one; some to the other. Alexander Pope saw this perplexity as part of Man’s condition. Created half to rise and half to fall,

He hangs between, in doubt to act or rest;

In doubt to deem himself a God or Beast;

In doubt his mind or body to prefer;

Born but to die, and reasoning but to err;

Alike in ignorance, his reason such,

Whether he thinks too little or too much;

Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;

Still by himself abused or disabused…

For Europe’s educated classes the situation in the 18^th century may have been as near as we are likely to come to a secular world where mind and body, thought and passion, were in some kind of balance—the various worlds of Hume and Rousseau, of Gibbon and Voltaire, of the Baronne de Warens and the Marquise du Deffand—a world where both the conventional Johnson and the promiscuous Boswell could separately thrive and flourish.

* * *

Be that as it may, the usual way of dealing with this matter involved a common sense separation of realms. You didn’t publish entertaining accounts of oral sex provided by female teachers for their male pupils in family magazines. You didn’t have leading novelists advertising the joys of paedophilia. Though one should expect, in a free country, that such matters may be discussed and argued about—the pros (few) and the cons (many)—it has usually also been assumed that this would be constrained by a thoughtful choice of time, place, and occasion.

That’s where we seem to have gone wrong. An abandonment of the common sense rules to be found in hundreds of traditional cultures, and a foolish refusal to confine the sexual world to where it belongs, has led to its being indiscriminately mingled with everything else, 24/7. A burly Middle Eastern peasant in a nightshirt may seem an improbable source of moral guidance, yet in a way that’s what the outspoken Sheik really is—and he’s calling the shots as he sees them. But shooting the messenger is hardly the answer. Sheik Taj al-Din al-Hilaly and his followers are what they are. We are what we have fatefully become.

END

O DEBATE CONTINUA E ATINGE A CASA BRANCA

Para ler o que diz a 'oposição'

'Homosexuality Isn't Natural or Healthy'

Bush's Choice for Top Doc Compared Human Genitalia to Pipe Fittings and Said Homosexual Practices Can Cause Injury or Death

By JAKE TAPPER

June 7, 2007 —

President Bush's nominee for surgeon general, Dr. James W. Holsinger Jr., wrote a paper in 1991 that purported to make the medical argument that homosexuality is unnatural and unhealthy. Doctors who reviewed the paper derided it as prioritizing political ideology over science, and Democratic aides on Capitol Hill say the paper will make his confirmation hearings problematic, if not downright bruising.

Holsinger, 68, presented "The Pathophysiology of Male Homosexuality" in January 1991 to a United Methodist Church's committee to study homosexuality. (Read the paper here.) The church was then considering changing its view that homosexuality violates Christian teaching, though it ultimately did not do so. Relying on footnotes from mainstream medical publications, Holsinger argued that homosexuality isn't natural or healthy.

"A confirmation fight is exactly what the administration does not need," said David Gergen, a former adviser to Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton, who predicted the paper would cause a "minor storm" among Democrats on Capitol Hill.

"You have to wonder given the quality of some of the nominations that have gone forward recently, whether the selection group in the White House has gone on vacation," Gergen said. "There has been a growing criticism the administration favoring ideology over competence, and this nomination smacks of that."

White House Avoids Direct Response to Paper

In its response to the controversy Thursday, the White House avoided directly discussing the controversial paper.

"Dr. Holsinger has dedicated his life to the care of others and public service and his respect for all is evidenced by his actions and his career ," said White House spokesman Emily Lawrimore. "On numerous occasions, he has taken up the banner for under represented populations and he will continue to be a strong advocate for these groups and all Americans. Dr. Holsinger is a highly respected, well-qualified physician and educator. His impressive medical background, which includes leading one of the Nation's largest healthcare systems, decades of service in the armed forces, along with his commitment to combating childhood obesity, will serve him well as Surgeon General. We urge the Senate for a swift confirmation."

HHS: Paper Not Reflective of Holsinger's Thinking

But Holly Babin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Heath and Human Services -- the agency that will take the lead on trying to achieve Holsinger's confirmation -- insisted that the paper was by no means reflective of Holsinger's thinking.

"That paper was a survey of scientific peer-reviewed studies that he was asked to compile by the United Methodist Church, it's not that he was saying 'this is what I believe,'" Babin said. "It's a reflection of the available scientific data from the 1980s. It should be noted that in 1991, homosexuals were banned from the military and several years before that, homosexuality and Haitian nationality were considered risk factors for HIV/AIDS. Over the last 20 years, a clearer understanding of these issues has been achieved.

Asked about medical experts who disputed that Holsinger's paper expressed opinions timely in 1991 and pressed to explain what Holsinger's views on homosexuality are currently , Babin said, "we look forward to the confirmation process, where we can share Dr. Holsinger's qualifications and views."

Advocacy Groups Protest Nomination

Those answers will likely not quell the controversy. Critics say the paper certainly seems to be written from Holsinger's point of view.

Noting that Holsinger also belongs to a church that offers a ministry to "cure" gays of the sexual orientation, gay and lesbian rights advocates immediately protested Holsinger's nomination. "His writings suggest a scientific view rooted in anti-gay beliefs that are incompatible with the job of serving the medical health of all Americans," said the Human Rights Campaign in a statement. "It is essential that America's top doctor value sound science over anti-gay ideology."

Democrats will likely be sympathetic to such arguments. Holsinger's confirmation hearing, which has yet to be scheduled, will be heard by the Senate Health Committee, chaired by longtime gay rights advocate Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass. Members of the committee include three Democratic presidential contenders -- Sens. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., Chris Dodd, D-Conn., and Barack Obama, D-Illinois -- eager to prove their bona fides during the primary season to the gay and lesbian community.

Holsinger, a professor of preventive medicine at the University of Kentucky College of Public Health, did not return calls for comment.

When announcing his nomination on May 24, Bush said that as "America's chief health educator, [Dr. Holsinger] will be charged with providing the best scientific information available on how Americans can make smart choices that improve their health and reduce their risk of illness and injury."

What Holsinger's Paper Argues

Holsinger's paper argued that male and female genitalia are complementary -- so much so "that it has entered our vocabulary in the form of naming pipe fittings either the male fitting or the female fitting depending upon which one interlocks within the other." Body parts used for gay sex are not complementary, he wrote. "When the complementarity of the sexes is breached, injuries and diseases may occur."

Holsinger wrote that "[a]natomically the vagina is designed to receive the penis" while the anus and rectum -- which "contain no natural lubricating function" -- are not. "The rectum is incapable of mechanical protection against abrasion and severe damage ... can result if objects that are large, sharp or pointed are inserted into the rectum," Holsinger wrote.

The cardiologist details many different diseases gay men can catch, and several sexual practices they may engage in, including "anal eroticism," which can lead to injuries and even death. "From the perspective of pathology and pathophysiology, the varied sexual practices of homosexual men have resulted in a diverse and expanded concept of sexually transmitted disease and associated trauma ?"

In the context of the larger argument in his church as to whether homosexuality should be accepted, Holsinger presented a medical and scientific argument that anal intercourse was not natural.

"It is absolutely clear that anatomically and physiologically the alimentary and reproductive systems in humans are separate organ systems, i.e., the human does not have a cloaca," he said, referring to the posterior orifice that serves as the one opening for genital, urinary and intestinal tracts in amphibians, birds and reptiles. The surgeon general nominee wrote that "even primitive cultures understand the nature of waste elimination, sexual intercourse and the birth of children. Indeed our own children appear to 'intuitively' understand these facts."

A Political Agenda?

Professor Eli Coleman, Director of the Program in Human Sexuality at the University of Minnesota Medical School said that the paper seems to have a pre-1970s view of human sexuality. "I an't imagine that any scientific journal would be able to publish this material because of its very narrow views of homosexuality," he said.

In fact, if one of his students handed the paper in, Coleman would give it a failing grade, he said. "I find it rather outdated in terms of its scientific knowledge and also narrow in its view of homosexuality," Coleman said. "It concerns me because I think our public policy really should be based upon best available science."

"It's a totally faulty paper. The man doesn't know anything about human sexuality," said June M. Reinisch, Ph.D., director emeritus of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender & Reproduction. "There's clearly a political agenda in this paper. This is not a scientific paper."

Paragraph by paragraph, Reinisch said Holsinger presents faulty arguments. Many homosexuals do not engage in the sexual act he criticizes; 40 percent of heterosexuals do. "It seems to me he's arguing the only way reproduction happens is in a loving heterosexual environment which is of course not true," Reinisch said, noting artificial methods, rape and one-night stands.

Reinisch, who was director of the Kinsey Institute when Holsinger wrote this paper, said that if Holsinger "is going to come up with this position in 2007 I think I can clearly say that he is not qualified to be surgeon general."

Holsinger holds a doctorate in anatomy and physiology and an M.D. from Duke University. He spent much of his career working for the Veteran's Health Administration. From 2003 to 2005 he was Kentucky's secretary of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services.

Copyright © 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures

PATHOPHYSIOLOGY OF MALE HOMOSEXUALITY

PATHOPHYSIOLOGY OF MALE HOMOSEXUALITY

Prepared for the
Committee to Study Homosexuality of The United Methodist Church
by James W. Holsinger Jr., M.D.
Committee Member
January 14, 1991

During the course of the meetings of the Committee to Study Homosexuality, biology has come to mean the nonpsychological causation of homosexuality. However, biology also means “the division of physical science which deals with organized beings or animals and plants, their morphology, physiology, origin, and distribution” (Oxford English Dictionary, 1971). I believe that we must seriously consider the scientific disciplines of anatomy (structure or morphology), physiology (function), pathology (abnormal anatomy), and pathophysiology (abnormal function). Not to do so would simply fail to be true to our charge as a committee. There is absolute consensus in the scientific community concerning the structure and function of the human alimentary [pertaining to the digestive tract] and reproductive systems. These two systems are absolutely separate since the human does not possess a cloaca. Reproduction can occur only by utilizing the reproductive system, requiring both the female ovum (egg) and the male sperm. Ova are fertilized naturally in the fallopian tubes of women following sexual intercourse by the sperm which transits through the vagina and uterus following release from the penis. Although artificial methods are available and used, the anatomy and physiology of humans have resulted in a natural means for conception. The structure and function of the male and female human reproductive systems are fully complementary. Anatomically he vagina is designed to receive the penis. It is lined with squamous epithelium and is surrounded by a muscular tube intended for penile intromission. The rectum, on the other hand, is lined with a delicate mucosal surface and a single layer of columnar epithelium intenuea primarily for the reabsorption of water and electrolytes. The rectum is incapable of mechanical protection against abrasion and severe damage to the colonic mucosa can result if objects that are large, sharp, or pointed are inserted into the rectum (Agnew, 1986). The anus and rectum, unlike the vagina contain no natural lubricating function. Thus insertion of unlubricated objects or inadequate dilation of the anus before insertion of a large object can result in tissue laceration. “The internal and external anal sphincters are elastic rings of muscle which generally remain tightly constricted except during defecation. The anal sphincters are also intended for material to pass through them in a direction that leads out of the body. When an attempt is made to insert something in the reverse direction, the muscles of the sphincter constrict” (Agnew, 1986). From the perspective of pathology and pathophysiology, the varied sexual practices of homosexual men have resulted in a diverse and expanded concept of sexually transmitted disease and associated trauma. “Four general groups of conditions may be encountered in homosexually active men: classical sexually transmitted diseases (gonorrhea, infections with chlamydia trachomatis, syphilis, herpes simplex infections, genital warts, pubic lice, scabies); enteric diseases (infections with Shigella species, Campylobacter jejuni, Entamoeba histolytica, Giardia lamblia, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, hepatitis non-A, non-B, and cytomegalovirus); trauma (fecal incontinence, hemorrhoids, anal fissure, foreign bodies, rectosigmoid tears, allergic proctitis, penile edema, chemical sinusitis, inhaled nitrite burns, and sexual assault of the male patient); and the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)” (Owen, 1985). A study of sexually transmitted diseases in heterosexuals, bisexuals and homosexuals reported from Copenhagen in 1988 (Christopherson), demonstrated that the profile of diseases was strongly correlated to sexual lifestyle. “Amoebiasisa and giardiasis were found respectively in 31.9% and 13.8% of homosexuals. None of the heterosexuals had pathologic protozoa … Among males with homosexual partners, 14% had rectal infections. Gonococcal and chlamydial infections were equally frequent. Three percent had symptomatic anorectal herpes simplex infection and 11% anal warts…Urethral gonorrhea and/or chlamydia infections were diagnosed in 39% of heterosexuals compared to only 10% of homosexuals and bisexuals. Twelve percent of the homosexuals had untreated early syphilis, whereas syphilis was exceptional among heterosexuals. The total burden of infections expressed as the actual number of infections was largest among homosexuals, 40.4%, 22.4%, and 5.3% having one, two, and three infections respectively.” In addition to infection, trauma and tumors are the primary problems related to the anorectum in homosexual men. “Consensual penile-anal intercourse can be performed safely provided there is adequate lubrication. Few anorectal problems and no evidence of anal-sphincter dysfunction are found in heterosexual women who have anal-receptive intercourse. However, forceful anal penetration without lubrication against a resistant sphincter will result in abrasive trauma, causing fissures, contusions, thrombosed hemorrhoids, lacerations with bleeding, pain, and psychic trauma” (Bush, 1986). The most severe type of anorectal trauma follows fist fornication which during the 1970s was practiced by approximately 5% of the male homosexual population (Geist, 1988). It should be noted that this activity is occasionally practiced by heterosexual and lesbian couples. This technique of anal eroticism involves having the partner insert their hand and forearm into the rectum for erotic stimulation. “The insertion of such a large object as a hand or fist creates the potential for rupture of the rectum or severe damage to the anus or rectal walls” (Agnew, 1986). “Participants frequently use drugs to produce inhibition or relaxation, thereby clouding appropriate responses to painful stimuli. Injuries sustained in this sexual activity generally tend to be severer and account for most sphincter injuries, as well as a disproportionate number of the lacerations, perforations, and deaths seen in connection with anal eroticism” (Geist, 1988). In addition to infections and trauma, tumors are a definlte rlsk for homosexual men. “Homosexual behavior in men is a risk factor for anal cancer. Squamous-cell anal cancer is also associated with a history of genital warts, an association suggesting that papillomavirus infection is a cause of anal cancer” (Daling, 1987). Anal warts are commonly found among individuals who practice anal intercourse and only rarely found among heterosexuals practicing vaginal intercourse. “In one series of 260 homosexual men seen by proctologists, 134 (51.5 percent) had anal warts. They may occur anywhere in the anal-genital area but are particularly common in the anus of homosexual men” (Quinn, 1984). This infection appears to be correlated with the higher incidence of anal cancer in homosexual men. At our Boston meeting, we spent some time discussing the complementarity of the human sexes. Although one could gather from the discussion of the consultants in scripture, theology, and Christian ethics that there may be some lack of assurance that the human sexes complement each other, I believe that it is possible to argue succinctly from an anatomical (structure) and physiological (function) point of view that the human sexes are indeed complementary. It is absolutely clear that anatomically and physiologically the alimentary and reproductive systems in humans are separate organ systems; i.e., the human does not have a cloaca. Likewise it is clear that even primitive cultures understand the nature of waste elimination, sexual intercourse, and the birth of children. Indeed our own children appear to “intuitively” understand these facts. I think we should note that these simple “scientific” facts are the same in any culture — patriarchal or matriarchal, modern or primitive, Jewish or gentile, etc. The anatomic and physiologic facts of alimentation and reproduction simply do not change based on any cultural setting. In fact, the logical complementarity of the human sexes has been so recognized in our culture that it has entered our vocabulary in the form of naming various pipe fittings either the male fitting or the female fitting depending upon which one interlocks within the other. When the complementarity of the sexes is breached, injuries and diseases may occur as noted above. Therefore, based on the simplest known anatomy and physiology, when dealing with the complementarity of the human sexes, one can simply say, Res ipsa loquitur — the thing speaks for itself! January 14, 1991 BIBLIOGRAPHY Agnew, Jeremy, Hazards Associated with Anal Erotic Activity. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 15:307-314, 1986. Barone, James E. and Nealon, Thomas F., Jr., Management of Foreign Bodies and Trauma of the Rectum. Surgery,Gynecoloqv and Obstetrics, 156:453-457, 1983. Busch, David B. and Starling, James R., Rectal Foreign Bodies: Case Reports and a Comprehensive Review of the World’s Literature. Surgery, 100:512-519, 1986. Bush, Robert A., Jr., and Owen, William F., Jr., Trauma and Other Noninfectious Problems in Homosexual Men. Medical Clinics of North America, 70:549-566, 1986. Christopherson, Jette, et al, Sexually Transmitted Diseases in Hetero-, Homo- and Bisexual Males in Copenhagen. Danish Medical Bulletin, 35:285-8, 1988. Daling, Janet R., et al, Sexual Practices, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, and the Incidence of Anal Cancer. New England Journal of Medicine, 317:973-977, 1987. Eckert, William G., And Katchis, Steven, Anorectal Trauma. American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Patholoqy, 10:3-9, 1989. Elam, A.L., and Ray, V.G., Sexually Related Trauma: A Review. Annals of Emergency Medicine, 15:576-584, 1986. Geist, Richard F., Sexually Related Trauma. Emerqency Medicine Clinics of North America, 6:439-466, 1988. Patton, Harry D., et al, Textbook of Physiology, 21st ed., Philadelphia, W. B. Saunders Co., 1989, pp. 1263-1460. Quinn, Thomas C., and Holmes, King K., Proctitis, Proctocolitis, and Enteritis in Homosexual Men. IN: Sexuallv Transmitted Diseases, ed. by Holmes, King K., et all New York, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1984, pp. 672-691. Torre, Carlo, Delayed Death from “Fisting.” American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology, 8:91, 1987. Williams, Peter L., et al, Gray’s Anatomy, 37th ed., Edinburgh, Churchill Livingstone, 1989, pp. 1369-77, 1424-47. Zinner, Stephen H . , Sexually Transmitted Diseases in Homosexuals. Chapter 8 , IN: STDs: Sexually Transmitted Diseases, New York, Summit Books, 1985, pp. 102-114.

COMPORTAMENTO SEXUAL E SAÚDE

SODOMY: A PUBLIC HEALTH RISK MEN: - A 1997 study in British Columbia found the life expectancy of men who engage in sodomy to be comparable to that of the average Canadian man in 1871. Researchers estimate that nearly half of the 20 year old men currently engaging in sodomy will not reach their 65th birthday.1 - Ninety-five percent or more of the AIDS infections among gay men result from receptive anal intercourse.2 - The risk of anal cancer "soars" by nearly 4,000% for men who have sex with men. The rate doubles again for those who are HIV positive. A Michigan homosexual newspaper admits there is no such thing as "safe sex" to prevent this "soaring" cancer risk. Condoms offer only limited protection.3 - Homosexual men face a significantly higher risk of HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, anal cancer, gonorrhea and gastrointestinal infections as a result of their sexual practices.4 - Men who engage in sodomy are 860% more likely to contract a sexually transmitted disease (STD), increasing up to 500% their risk of contracting HIV/AIDS. Men who commit acts of sodomy with men have large numbers of anonymous partners, which can result in rapid, extensive transmission of STDs. Control of STDs is a central component of HIV infection prevention in the United States; resurgence of bacterial STDs threatens national HIV infection prevention efforts.5 - Anal Human Papillomavirus (HPV) infection is nearly universal among HIV-positive homosexual or bisexual men and about 60% in HIV-negative men exhibiting the same sexual behavior.6 WOMEN: - Many innocent victims suffer the health consequences associated with sodomy as a result of blood transfusions, rape and having normal sexual relations with those who have committed unnatural relations with others. While men of all ages who commit sodomy with other men remain at an alarming risk, young bisexual men are said to be a significant "bridge" for HIV transmission to women.7 - Women who commit sex acts with other women face a significantly higher risk of bacterial vaginosis, breast cancer and ovarian cancer than heterosexual women.8 - The spread of Human Papilomavirus (HPV) is not prevented by condoms. The persons most susceptible to cancer associated with HPV are young women (under 20) and people who practice anal intercourse.9 - Women who engage in receptive anal sex are at a higher risk for contracting anal cancer. In fact, in the U.S. general population, anal cancer is more prevalent among women than men — between 1.5 and 2 times more common, perhaps because more women than men engage in receptive anal sex.10 - The following chart provides a broad synopsis of medical problems related to sodomy:11 Sex Practice: Potential Consequences: 1. Close Body Contact 1. Pubic lice 2. Scabies (mites) 3. Fungal Infections 2. Performer of Oral Sex 1. Oral gonorrhea 2. Oral lesions from herpes, HPV (warts), chancroid, lymhogranuloma venereum, or granuloma inguinale. 3. Nongonolococcal pharyngitis from chlamydia, other STD's 4. Syphilis 5. Hepatitis B 6. Enteric (intestinal) infections 3. Receptive Anal Intercourse 1. Traumatic proctitis 2. Rectal gonorrhea 3. Anal warts 4. HIV/AIDS 5. Nonspecific procitis (from chlamydia and other STDs) 6. Anorectal herpes 7. Anorectal syphilis 8. Hepatitis B 9. Rectal trichomoniasis 10. Lymphogranuloma venereum 11. Anorectal granuloma inguinale 12. Anorectal chancroid 13. Cytomegalovirus 14. Anorectal candidiasis 4. Receptive Manual-Anal Intercourse 1. Enteric (intestinal) infections 5. Receiver of Oral Sex 1. Physical abrasions 2. Bites 3. Herpes 4. Urethritis from various STDs 6. Insertive Anal Intercourse 1. Nongonococcal urethritis 2. Genital herpes 3. Molluscum contagiosum 4. Genital warts 5. Syphilis 6. Trichomoniasins 7. Epididymitis and/or proctitis 8. Fungal infections 9. Lymphogranuloma vencreum 10. Granuloma inguinale 11. Chancroid 12. Hepatitis B 13. HIV/AIDS 7. Oral-anal Intercourse 1. Enteric (intestinal) infections 2. Shigellosis 3. Campylobacter fetus (bacteria) 4. Enterogenic E. coli bacteria 5. Hepatitis (A, B, and others) 6. Amebiasis 7. Giardiasis 8. Salmonellosis 9. Enterobius vermicularis (parasite) 10. Oral warts 11. Oral gonorrhea 12. Syphilis 13. Lymphogranuloma venereum 14. Oral granuloma inguinale 15. Oral chancroid 16. HIV/AIDS 17. Herpes 18. Anorectal meningococcal infection 1. International Journal of Epidemiology, Vol 26, 657-661, "Modelling the Impact of HIV Disease on Mortality in Gay and Bisexual Men."" 2. Michael Fumento, "AIDS: Are heterosexuals at Risk?" Commentary 84, (November, 1987) pp. 22-23. 3. Between the Lines, "Anal Cancer and You," Sept. 29, 2000. 4. Medical Institute of Sexual Health, "Health Implications Associated with Homosexuality," 1999. 5. Centers for Disease Control, "Resurgent Bacterial Sexually Transmitted Disease Among Men Who Have Sex With Men," September 10, 1999. 6. Infectious Disease News, "Because of HPV, anal cancer screening indicated for certain high-risk groups," October, 1997 7. Manila Bulletin (Philippines), "Bisexuals Serve as 'Bridge' Infecting Women With HIV," July 30, 2000 8. Medical Institute of Sexual Health, "Health Implications Associated with Homosexuality," 1999. 9. WebMD Forum: "HPV and Cervical Cancer with John R. Diggs, Jr., M.D.," April 7, 2000. 10. Infectious Disease News, "Because of HPV, anal cancer screening indicated for certain high-risk groups," October, 1997 11. DG & Altman Ostrow, "Homosexual Behavior and Sexually Transmitted Diseases." New York: McGraw Hill, 1990. pp. 61-69. Family Policy Network: http://familypolicy.net/us

CASO PARA RIR? OU MATA MESMO?

O artigo aqui reproduzido trata da questão levantada no meu comentário n'O Insurgente ao post de Pedro Sette Câmara, 'Bem No Alvo'. Explica em mais pormenor porque o comportamento da maioria dos homosexuais constitui um perigo para eles próprios e para a saúde pública.

STRATEGY in the TRENCHES

The following was written as a response to a response to an email on hate-crime laws.

If you are one who supports homosexuality as a legitimate lifestyle, please tell the public just what that lifestyle entails. The attached *.pdf article gives a shot at it. Also available in *.html at http://theroadtoemmaus.org/RdLb/22SxSo/BroSx/Html/Strtgy1pg.htm

The article notes sexual behaviors typical of homosexual persons:

Around 99% of homosexual males engage in oral sex;

91% engage in anal sex;

82% engage in 'rimming', touching the anus of one's partner with one's tongue and inserting the tongue into the anus;

22% engage in 'fisting', inserting one's fist into the rectum of the partner;

23% engage in 'golden showers', urinating on each other;

4% engage in 'scat', the eating of feces, and in 'mud rolling', rolling on the floor where feces have been deposited.

These above figures are from one of the largest studies on the subject by two homosexual authors, not by rigid, right-wing, fundamentalist Christians.

Some, perhaps all, of these listed behaviors are being taught openly in Massachusetts public schools to children as young as 14, and maybe younger -- proving that all this is not just about what happens in someone's bedroom. It is about what happens in lots of public places.

Visit http://www.article8.org/ and http://www.parentsrightscoalition.org/ for more details. Search, e.g., for 'fistgate'.

The goal of homosexual activists is that of Alfred Kinsey and SIECUS, unlimited sexual freedom cradle-to-grave.

I understand that homosexual persons engage in many activities other than these, but it is only the sexual behaviors that are in question.

Love is not an issue between us, neither is compassion or inclusiveness, if defined consistently with the law and grace of God. Only specifically sexual behavior. I applaud that homosexual men form choirs, have clubs, eat meals together, and love each other. I love my father and my brothers, and they love me. None of those is the issue at stake if they are not sexualized.

Clarity always favors truth, unclarity always favors falsehood. The public must have clarity on the item homosexual persons want the public to approve (in this case homosexual behavior) or the public discussion cannot proceed (and has not proceded) either rationally or compassionately.

So please tell the public whether these are the behaviors you understand to be more or less typical of homosexual persons. If this list is not accurate, please supply the public with the accurate list, and explain why the two authors noted above gave us this one (for starters).

And, please tell the public which of these behaviors you think God wants to bless, and which you think the Church ought to bless.

If the above list is accurate, can you tell the public what the health consequences are of relating sexually in these ways?

And concerning hate-crime laws, the law is engineered to make it illegal to have an honest discussion of the issues. One cannot challenge the homosexual agenda without having the enforcing gun of the law pointed at one. That is commandeering the law of the land in a treasonous manner -- to subvert our constitution and the most precious aspect of a democratic republic -- the protection by law of open, honest, uncoerced public discussion of public issues. The homosexual agenda is all about public policy, and hardly at all about one's bedroom.

If the facts show that I am wrong, I will change my mind.

I offer a challenge to homosexual supporters: You and I are on opposite sides of the homosexual issues. But if the evidence should show that God approves of homosexual behavior, and that that is a safe way to engage sexually, then I will stand with you. On the other hand, if the evidence should show that God does not approve of such behavior, or that such behavior is health-eroding, not health-promoting, I ask, would you be willing to reconsider your position?

You can read much more at http://theroadtoemmaus.org/EM/ShpMl/WinSxWrs.htm

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SOBRE A FALSA CLIMATOLOGIA

THE GLOBAL WARMING SCAM (Reprinted from Melanie Phillips’ Diary, by permissio and with thanks)

You know how we’re told sixty times per minute that man-made global warming is no longer just a theory but it’s now demonstrable fact, and that anyone who contradicts this is clinically insane because there’s a consensus of all scientists that it’s happening and only about 2.5 scientists on the entire planet disagree and they’re in the pay of Big Oil anyway so we can forget about them; and so the debate is TOTALLY OVER, says the BBC, which has been told that it is authoritatively by Very Important Scientists, so that the ‘impartial’ and ‘objective’ BBC says that it no longer needs to give us a balanced argument about climate change because there just isn’t any reputable scientific opposition to the proven facts about seas rising and ice melting and hurricanes happening, all because of the human race and its foul and filthy habits of combustibles, cars and capitalism?

Well, read this remarkable article in Canada’s National Post by R. Timothy Patterson, professor and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre, Department of Earth Sciences, Carleton University. This is what Prof Patterson says:

In a series of groundbreaking scientific papers starting in 2002, Veizer, Shaviv, Carslaw, and most recently Svensmark et al., have collectively demonstrated that as the output of the sun varies, and with it, our star’s protective solar wind, varying amounts of galactic cosmic rays from deep space are able to enter our solar system and penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere. These cosmic rays enhance cloud formation which, overall, has a cooling effect on the planet. When the sun’s energy output is greater, not only does the Earth warm slightly due to direct solar heating, but the stronger solar wind generated during these “high sun” periods blocks many of the cosmic rays from entering our atmosphere. Cloud cover decreases and the Earth warms still more. The opposite occurs when the sun is less bright. More cosmic rays are able to get through to Earth’s atmosphere, more clouds form, and the planet cools more than would otherwise be the case due to direct solar effects alone. This is precisely what happened from the middle of the 17th century into the early 18th century, when the solar energy input to our atmosphere, as indicated by the number of sunspots, was at a minimum and the planet was stuck in the Little Ice Age. These new findings suggest that changes in the output of the sun caused the most recent climate change. By comparison, CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet’s climate on long, medium and even short time scales. In some fields the science is indeed ‘settled.’ For example, plate tectonics, once highly controversial, is now so well-established that we rarely see papers on the subject at all. But the science of global climate change is still in its infancy, with many thousands of papers published every year. In a 2003 poll conducted by German environmental researchers Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch, two-thirds of more than 530 climate scientists from 27 countries surveyed did not believe that ‘the current state of scientific knowledge is developed well enough to allow for a reasonable assessment of the effects of greenhouse gases.’ About half of those polled stated that the science of climate change was not sufficiently settled to pass the issue over to policymakers at all. Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the Little Ice Age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada.

When you’ve digested that, allow your gaze to settle mid-text on the list of previous Post articles in its series about the ‘deniers’, the scientists who are outside this fabled ‘consensus’ on global warming. Read those articles and you will discover, as did to his astonishment the journalist who wrote them and who had previously accepted the ‘consensus’ as true and settled fact, that more and more of the most distinguished names in climate science around the world are saying that the theory is total junk — and who, moreover, have given devastating evidence of the way the global warmers have falsified the evidence to create an entirely spurious, anti-scientific and deeply dishonest panic.

There’s this article, for example, about Duncan Wingham, Professor of Climate Physics at University College London and Director of the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling.

Last summer, Dr. Wingham and three colleagues published an article in the journal of the Royal Society that casts further doubt on the notion that global warming is adversely affecting Antarctica. By studying satellite data from 1992 to 2003 that surveyed 85% of the East Antarctic ice sheet and 51% of the West Antarctic ice sheet (72% of the ice sheet covering the entire land mass), they discovered that the Antarctic ice sheet is growing at the rate of 5 millimetres per year (plus or minus 1 mm per year). That makes Antarctica a sink, not a source, of ocean water. According to their best estimates, Antarctica will ‘lower [authors’ italics] global sea levels by 0.08 mm’ per year.

Then there’s this article on Christopher Landsea of the Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory. Chair of the American Meteorological Society’s committee on tropical meteorology and tropical cyclones and a recipient of the American Meteorological Society’s Banner I. Miller Award for the ‘best contribution to the science of hurricane and tropical weather forecasting’, Landsea was a lead author on the subject for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — until he discovered that that the IPCC was falsley stating that global warming was causing hurricanes to happen. He wrote:

Where is the science, the refereed publications, that substantiate these pronouncements? What studies are being alluded to that have shown a connection between observed warming trends on the earth and long-term trends in tropical cyclone activity? As far as I know, there are none.

But since the IPCC

seems to have already come to the conclusion that global warming has altered hurricane activity and has publicly stated so. This does not reflect the consensus within the hurricane research community

Landsea resigned.

Then there is this article on Professor Paul Reiter, head of the Insects and Infectious Disease Unit at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, an officer of the Harvard School of Public Health, a member of the World Health Organization’s Expert Advisory Committee on Vector Biology and Control, and lead author of the Health Section of the U.S. National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change. This was his experience with the IPCC’s handling of his special area of expertise:

In one of the IPCC’s most egregious errors, in its Second Assessment Report chapter on human population health, it created the scare — repeated by scientists with a popular following such as David Suzuki — that global warming could lead to 80 million additional cases of malaria per year worldwide. The IPCC scientists’ ‘glaring ignorance’ dumbfounded Prof. Reiter and his colleagues. For example, the IPCC claimed that malarial mosquitoes cannot ordinarily survive temperatures below 16C to 18C, not realizing that many tropical species do and that many temperate species survive temperatures of –25C. Likewise, IPCC scientists didn’t know at what altitudes mosquitoes can be found. As Prof. Reiter testified to a U.K. parliamentary committee in 2005, ‘The paucity of information was hardly surprising: Not one of the lead authors had ever written a research paper on the subject! Moreover, two of the authors, both physicians, had spent their entire career as environmental activists. One of these activists has published “professional” articles as an “expert” on 32 different subjects, ranging from mercury poisoning to land mines, globalization to allergies and West Nile virus to AIDS. Among the contributing authors there was one professional entomologist, and a person who had written an obscure article on dengue and El Nino, but whose principal interest was the effectiveness of motorcycle crash helmets (plus one paper on the health effects of cellphones).’

Then there’s Dr Claude Allegre. In 1967 Dr Allegre became director of the geochemistry and cosmochemistry program at the French National Scientific Research Centre; in 1971, he became director of the University of Paris’s Department of Earth Sciences; in 1976, he became director of the Paris Institut de Physique du Globe. He is an author of more than 100 scientific articles, many of them seminal studies on the evolution of the Earth using isotopic evidence, and 11 books. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the French Academy of Science. Dr. Allegre was among the 1500 prominent scientists who signed ‘World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity,’ a highly publicized letter stressing that global warming’s ‘potential risks are very great’ and demanding a new caring ethic that recognizes the globe’s fragility in order to stave off ‘spirals of environmental decline, poverty, and unrest, leading to social, economic and environmental collapse.’ He was therefore part of the fabled Consensus. But now look at what Dr Allegre is saying, as a result of looking at the evolving scientific evidence:

His break with what he now sees as environmental cant on climate change came in September, in an article entitled ‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro’ in L’ Express, the French weekly. His article cited evidence that Antarctica is gaining ice and that Kilimanjaro’s retreating snow caps, among other global-warming concerns, come from natural causes. ‘The cause of this climate change is unknown,’ he states matter of factly. There is no basis for saying, as most do, that the ‘science is settled.’… Calling the arguments of those who see catastrophe in climate change ‘simplistic and obscuring the true dangers’, Dr. Allegre especially despairs at ‘the greenhouse-gas fanatics whose proclamations consist in denouncing man’s role on the climate without doing anything about it except organizing conferences and preparing protocols that become dead letters.’

If I were part of the man-made global warming ‘consensus’, right now I’d be fingering my professional collar.

ANTI-SEMITISM AS A DISEASE OF THE SOUL

VINTE CONSIDERAÇÕES SOBRE UMA DOENÇA DA ALMA

O anti-semitismo como defeito moral e intelectual

TWENTY PROPOSITIONS ABOUT A DISEASE OF THE SOUL

Anti-semitism as a moral and intellectual defect

Publicado primeiro em O INSURGENTE do 25 de Abril de 2007

First published in O INSURGENTE on April 25, 2007

Now available here with English translation

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1. O anti-semitismo, como qualquer outra obsessão xenófoba é uma doença da alma, porque corrói e subverte os nossos sentimentos de solidariedade humana.

Anti-semitism, like any other xenophobic mania, is a sickness of the soul because it corrodes and undermines our feelings of human solidarity.

2. O anti-semitismo, porém, é a pior dessas doenças porque é a mais antiga e a que mais estragos e sofrimento têm causado tanto às vítimas como aos perseguidores.

Anti-semitism is, however, the worst of these sicknesses because it is the oldest and the one which has caused the most damage both to its victims and to its authors.

3. O preconceito contra os judeus tem a sua origem no ódio persistente da sociedade pré-industrial ao capitalismo.

Prejudice against the Jews originates in the persistent hatred of pre-industrial society for capitalism.

4. Os judeus, tendo sido expulsos da sua terra pelos romanos como castigo pela sua revolta contra o império, espalharam-se por todo o mundo conhecido e sobreviveram através do comércio.

The Jews, having been expelled from their land by the Romans in punishment for revolting against the empire, spread all over the known world and survived through trade.

5. Sendo um povo em que todos eram alfabetizados, foram muito bem sucedidos nos negócios.

Being a literate people they were very successful in commerce.

6. Sendo um povo monoteísta e com as suas sagradas escrituras tinham um cimento poderoso para conservar a sua identidade e as ligações entre as suas comunidades.

Being a monotheist people with their divine scriptures they had a powerful cement for conservating their identity and links among their communities.

7. Os camponeses de maneira geral odeiam e invejam os mercadores e os intrusos.

Peasants generally hate and envy traders and intruders.

8. Os nobres improdutivos e dedicados à caça e à guerra sempre procuraram empréstimos onde havia dinheiro, quer dizer entre os judeus.

Unproductive nobles devoted to hunting and war always sought loans where there was money, that is to say among the Jews.

9. O devedor de maneira geral não gosta do credor.

The debtor generally dislikes the creditor.

10. A melhor maneira de liquidar as dívidas era de incitar os camponeses (que também tinha as suas próprias dividas) a pilhar os bens dos judeus e correr com eles. Daí a frequência dos pogroms.

The best way to liquidate debts was to incite the peasants (who also had their own debts) to plunder and expel the Jews. Hence the frequency of pogroms.

11. Foi o próprio Marx quem disse que os judeus sentiram no capitalismo como peixes na água.

Marx himself said that the Jews took to capitalism like ducks to water.

12. Foi o florescimento do capitalismo que trouxe a emancipação dos judeus.

It was the flowering of capitalism that brought emancipation to the Jews.

13. O saudosismo dos tempos medievais pré-capitalistas anda muitas vezes em paralelo com o anti-semitismo.

Nostalgia for the pre-capitalist Middle Ages often goes hand-in-hand with anti-semitism.

14. A expulsão dos judeus da península ibérica foi uma das principais causas da decadência das outrora grandes potências: foi a expulsão da sua classe média. Quem veio a beneficiar foram os países baixos e a Inglaterra.

The expulsion of the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula was one of the main causes of the decay of the two once-great powers: it signified the expulsion of its middle class. Those who benefited were the Netherlands and England.

15. As contribuições materiais, morais, culturais e científicas dos judeus para o progresso de humanidade, proporcionalmente ao seu número excedem de longe as contribuições de qualquer outro povo.

The material, moral, cultural and scientific contributions made by the Jews to the progress of humanity in proportion to their humber far exceeds that of any other people.

16. A doença do anti-semitismo, quando encontrada em gente culta tem geralmente a sua origem no sentimento de inveja e a consciência de mediocridade. São estes impulsos atávicos que explicam o histerismo antijudaico dos islamistas.

The disease of anti-semitism, when encountered among educated people usually has its origin in a sentiment of envy and consciousness of mediocrity. These atavistic impulses explain the anti-Jewish hysteria of islamists.

17. A expressão anti-anti-semitismo é um nonsense. O que existe é a aversão ao anti-semitismo, uma posição perfeitamente fundamentada e partilhada por todas as pessoas sensatas. O que não quer dizer que seja desejável que essa aversão fosse traduzida em legislação. Não se pode legislar sobre os preconceitos ou a imbecilidade.

The expression anti-anti-semitism is nonsense. What exists is aversion to anti-semitism, a perfectly justified position and one that is shared by all people of good sense. Which is not to say that it is desirable that this aversion be translated into legislation. It is impossible to legislate about prejudice and imbecility.

18. Em toda a parte os judeus são os melhores imigrantes, com a mais baixa taxa de criminalidade e das mais altas de produtividade.

Jews everywhere are the best immigrants, with the lowest rates of criminalitiy and the highest of productivity.

19. Israel é uma pequena ilha ocidental e de progresso num oceano medieval.

Israel is a tiny island of the western world in a medieval ocean.

20. O dever de todas as pessoas de bem é de defender Israel e o seu povo.

It is the duty of all people of good will to defend Israel and its people.