Faça sua Própria Caricatura de Maomé.

Que idea genial do Journal de Montreal! 

Preencha os pontinhos. Muito bom.

(Agradeço a indicação do cartoon ao site Weasel Zippers)

O que o Mundo deve fazer contra Terrorismo Islâmico? É Simples.

O primeiro ministro do Canadá, Stephen Harper, de forma simples, óbvia e direta, explica o que deve-se fazer em relação ao terrorismo islâmico. Em apenas 1 minuto.

Ah, se Harper tivesse mais poder e fosse mais ouvido, enquanto temos um completo imbecil na Casa Branca e um Papa que insiste em "diálogo" com a espada de Maomé.

Enquanto também entre os 50 países que mais perseguem cristãos no mundo, 40 têm maioria islâmica, como mostra todo ano a organização Open Doors. Ainda vamos continuar fazendo de conta que os versos de guerra do Alcorão não existem?

BRICs será IC se Brasil e Rússia não Melhorarem, diz criador do BRICs

Ele já disse que se arrepende de ter criado a sigla BRICs, agora diz que a sigla vai acabar ficando apenas IC. Vejamos a nova de Jim O'Neill que saiu no site da Bloomberg.

The BRICs Will Be Cut to the ICs if Brazil and Russia Don't Shape Up, Warns Phrasemaker O'Neill 
By Bloomberg News  Jan 8, 2015 2:01 PM GMT-0200 

Brazil and Russia’s membership of the BRICs may expire by the end of this decade if they fail to revive their flagging economies, according to Jim O’Neill, the former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. chief economist who coined the acronym.

Asked if he would still group Brazil, Russia, India and China together as emerging market powerhouses as he did in 2001, O’Neill said in an e-mail “I might be tempted to call it just ’IC’ or if the next three years are the same as the last for Brazil and Russia I might in 2019!!”

The BRIC grouping will be dragged down by a 1.8 percent contraction in Russia and less than 1 percent expansion in Brazil, according to the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. China is seen growing 7 percent and India 5.5 percent.

The BRICs were still booming as recently as 2007 with Russia expanding 8.5 percent and Brazil in excess of 6 percent that year. The bull market in commodities that helped propel growth in those nations has since ended, while Russia has been battered by sanctions linked to the crisis in Ukraine and Brazil has grappled with an unprecedented corruption scandal involving its state-owned oil company.

“It is tough for the BRIC countries to all repeat their remarkable growth rates” of the first decade of this century, said O’Neill, a Bloomberg View columnist and former chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management International. (GSGEPPA) “There was a lot of very powerful and fortuitous forces taking place, some of which have now gone.”

Growth Recovery

The growth slump this year isn’t a new normal though and O’Neill sees expansion in Brazil and Russia partially recovering, helping the BRICs average about 6 percent growth per annum this decade -- still more than double the average for the Group of Seven nations.

Their share of global gross domestic product will “rise sharply,” he said. O’Neill had previously estimated average annual growth of 6.6 percent for the BRICs this decade.

Unlike Brazil and Russia, China is embracing economic change while India, after the election ofNarendra Modi as prime minister and benefiting from low oil prices and a young labor pool, may have brighter prospects this decade than last, O’Neill said.

With China and India spurring growth, the BRICs will remain the most dominant and positive force in the world economy “easily,” said O’Neill.

China, India

China growing at 7 percent will add about $1 trillion nominally to global output every year, O’Neill said. When measured by purchasing power parity, China’s growth adds twice as much as the U.S.’s, he said. India expanding at 6 percent will add twice as much as the U.K. in those terms, he said.

“Their consumption is increasingly key for global consumption and which markets were amongst the world’s strongest in 2014? China and India both were up significantly,” he said. “So many investors are herd like, they probably have already forgotten the BRIC’s but it is silly. They are the most important influence in the world.”

A prediction in his book, “The Growth Map,” that the BRICs economies would overtake the U.S. in size this year will be delayed likely until 2017 primarily by the drag from Russia, O’Neill said.

The founding of the BRIC’s Development Bank signals the group’s influence in global economic affairs will rise, O’Neill said.

By 2035, the BRICs will be as big as the Group of Seven nations while China is in “a reasonable position” to be bigger than the U.S. in 2027 and India may overtake France to become the world’s fifth biggest economy by 2017, “certainly before 2020,” he said.

Estado Islâmico está Contratando Banqueiros.

O site da rede Al Jazeera diz que o Estado Islâmico deseja desesperadamente se legitimar internacionalmente, mesmo não tendo um território, apenas domínios de certas cidades. Procuram especialmente fazer incautos muçulmanos formados em universidades ocidentais que o Estado Islâmico é um estado como qualquer outro. Eles acham que todo estado que se preza tem que ter um banqueiro.

Vejam parte do texto da Al Jazeera.

Can you imagine opening the financial pages of your local news website and reading about the latest financial news from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant? Well, if ISIL is to be believed, that is exactly what the group envisages happening.

Reports that the group has opened its first bank in the Iraqi city of Mosul and ‎delivered a budget for the territory that it controls are difficult to confirm, but a Mosul religious leader speaking to Al-Araby Al Jadeedwebsite says that is exactly what they have done. And it shouldn't surprise you.

ISIL is desperate to move beyond its image of a terrorist organisation and consolidate its aim of becoming a legitimate state. ‎The budget is reportedly around $2bn with a $250m surplus. It includes salaries for its fighters and the kinds of civil services it provides in territories in Iraq and Syria: things like construction, waste management and education.

It seems that the group's thinking is to act like a nation state to become a nation state.

For Mahjoob Zweiri, a professor of Middle Eastern History at Qatar University,  history may provide a reason for ISIL's budget.

"Look at Afghanistan and the Taliban government there. They made similar moves, issuing budgets which helped legitimise them. Of course, Afghanistan was a recognised state with borders. ISIL doesn't have those borders and the state is split between Iraq and Syria," he said.

"However we can say that with this and other actions, including the propaganda videos that they release, a strategy to make concrete decisions and actions to create a nation state is in place."

Crucial comparision

The comparison with the Afghan Taliban is crucial. Both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia had recognised that government and set up consulates ‎for the group in both countries. Pakistan and the Saudis had provided assistance to the Taliban government which helped the group gain legitimacy, albeit limited, internationally.

But it is unclear who is advising ISIL. What we do know is that it has an advisory board known as the Shura Council and all decisions regarding ISIL are taken using that mechanism.

Unlike the Taliban, ISIL has one crucial advantage: they have money from captured oilfields, and revenue from the cities which they control and are able to deliver a budget.

The message, according to Professor Zweiri, seems to be clear: "I think ISIL is developing a message to sympathisers outside of Iraq and Syria. That it can provide jobs and lives for people wishing to move to the terroritories it controls and that's always been an ISIL aim, to get Muslims to move to the Islamic State. What must be questioned is whether they have the knowledge and ability to deliver what they have promised."

Clearly absolute legitimacy may well be impossible, but the group ambitions have never been small scale.

Cristianismo Impulsiona Capitalismo (honesto) e Desenvolvimento na China

Para mim, qualquer explicação sobre o sucesso econômico dos Estados Unidos deve começar com a primeira frase do segundo parágrafo da Declaração de Independência do país: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.

Os direitos dos americanos vinham de Deus, eles não vêm do Estado, do monarca. Os americanos então primeiro devem agradecer e se sujeitar aos mandamentos divinos.

Parece que a China está vendo o quanto isto é importante.Vejam parte de um excelente artigo de Brian Grim publicado na revista First Things.

Wang and Lin find that Christianity boosts China’s economic growth. Specifically, they find that robust growth occurs in areas of China where Christian congregations and institutions are prevalent.

Using provincial data from 2001 to 2011, Wang and Lin investigated the effect of religious beliefs on economic growth. Among the different religions analyzed, they found that Christianity has the most significant effect on economic growth.

Why might that be? Wang and Lin note that Christian congregations and institutions account for 16.8 percent of all religious institutions, more than three times larger than the share of Christians in the general population (about 5 percent).

Such institutions elsewhere tend to stimulate economic growth for individuals and communities, according to studies led Prof. Ram Cnann of the University of Pennsylvania. There’s no reason to believe that they don’t have the same effect in China.

The economic benefits of religious institutions include direct spending for goods, services and salaries, as well as a broader “halo effect.” This includes the real but often unmeasured benefits of religious congregations, such as the safety net and networks provided to individuals, the magnet effect of attracting everything from lectures to weddings, and valuable public spaces that provide communities with centers of cultural, ethical, spiritual and even recreational value.

Wang and Lin argue that Chinese Christianity’s social doctrines may also have economic impact. They suggest that Christian ethics emphasize the overall development of human beings, not just economic development. For instance, they observe that the Christian obligation to be accountable to God and their fellow believers tends to result in legal and rational investment behavior rather than illicit or wild speculation.

It may be that the impact of Christianity identified by Wang and Lin might even reinforce the economic impact of Confucianism identified by Zhao. In a public dialogue at Peking University in November 2010, world-renowned Confucian scholar, Tu Weimin of Harvard, and Christian theologian, Jürgen Moltmann of the University of Tübingen, found commonalities between Confucianism and Christianity. For instance, Confucius’s famous silver rule, “Do not do to others what you don’t want to be done to you,” is a pragmatic mirror image of Jesus’s more demanding golden rule, “Do to others whatever you would have them do to you.”

Wang and Lin also note positive, though inconsistent economic effects from China’s other major faiths, including Buddhism, Islam and Taoism. (Confucianism wasn’t included in their study, and is not counted as an official religion by the government.)

Wang and Lin conclude that the implication is not for the country to favor one faith above another, but to “build a better-informed economics, and in the long run, better policy.”

One clear implication is that the government policy of highly restricting religion, including allowinglocal government officials to destroy and deface churches in Wenzhou—often called China’s Jerusalem—must be reconsidered. Such restrictive policies may undermine an important source of China’s economic success. Just as China has radically deregulated its economy with successful outcomes, further deregulation of religion would be one way to keep China’s economic miracle alive for decades to come.

Brian J. Grim is founder and president of the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation, as well as an affiliated scholar at Georgetown and Boston Universities, and a member of the World Economic Forum’s global agenda council on the role of faith.

Venezuela pede Ajuda à China e OPEP. Falta Tudo.

O site Zero Hedge descreve o desespero do povo venezuelano para comprar qualquer coisa, mesmo papel higiênico e sabonete.

Enquanto o governo também desespera e procura ajuda internacional da China e países da OPEP.

Uma hora dessas, ele já deve ter pedido ajuda ao Brasil. Alô, é o BNDES?

Caracas (AFP) - Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro begins a trip to China and OPEC member countries late Sunday in search of financial support as his country reels from falling oil prices and a tattered economy.

The South American oil giant confirmed Tuesday that it has entered recession, while annual inflation topped 63 percent, exacerbating the outlook for an economy already hit by global crashing oil prices and import shortages.

"It's a very important tour... to tackle new projects to address the circumstances affecting our country, including the depletion of revenues due to plummeting oil prices," Maduro said in a radio and television address from the Miraflores presidential palace.

Maduro said he would discuss economic, financial, energy, technological, educational and development projects with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Maduro had been expected to announce exchange measures to address these issues. Instead, the president announced the creation of a strategic reserve, appointed a new board for the entity that manages currency exchange controls and created new agencies to control the distribution of commodities.

The price of Venezuelan oil has dropped more than 50 percent since June 2014, trading at $46.97 at the end of December.

China: Tem mais Cristão do que Comunista

O governo chinês considera o Natal como "poluição espiritual ocidental". O departamento de educação baniu qualquer celebração cristã. A perseguição aos cristãos só tem piorado nos últimos anos.

Mas o cristianismo vai vencendo na China e o número de cristãos já supera o número de filiados do maior partido ateu do mundo, o Partido Comunista Chinês. China será, se já não é, o maior país cristão do mundo.

Vejam o texto do Dr. Thomas Williams publicado no site americano Breibart.

CHRISTIANS NOW OUTNUMBER COMMUNISTS IN CHINA

by THOMAS D. WILLIAMS, PH.D.29 Dec 2014

Though the Chinese Communist Party is the largest explicitly atheist organization in the world, with 85 million official members, it is now overshadowed by an estimated 100 million Christians in China. It is no wonder Beijing is nervous and authorities are cracking down on Christian groups.

Christianity is growing so fast in China that some predict that it will be the most Christian nation in the world in only another 15 years. By far, the greatest growth is coming outside the official state-sanctioned churches, which are rightly considered subservient to the Communist Party. Numbers are increasing, rather, in unofficial Protestant “house churches” and in the underground Catholic church.

“By my calculations China is destined to become the largest Christian country in the world very soon,” said Fenggang Yang, a professor of sociology at Purdue University and author of Religion in China: Survival and Revival under Communist Rule.

Although at least on paper the People’s Republic of China recognizes freedom of religion since 1978, party members are explicitly forbidden to believe in any religion. In 2011, Zhu Weiqun, executive vice minister of the United Front Work Department, wrote, “Party members shall not believe in religion, which is a principle to be unswervingly adhered to.”

According to the annual report of the human rights group China Aid, persecution of Christians worsened dramatically in 2013, in line with a constant trend of deteriorating religious freedom over the past eight years. Most recently, the oppression of Christians has especially targeted Protestant groups, leaving most Catholics alone, which many feel reflects Beijing’s strategic goal of reestablishing diplomatic relations with the Vatican. According to reports, hundreds of Protestant churches in the eastern province of Zhejiang have been targeted for demolition in the past year.

Unrecognized Christian groups have been subject to crackdowns for years, but observers say the atmosphere is getting worse as their numbers increase and the governing Communist Party takes a more nationalist tone under President Xi Jinping.

Particularly hard hit has been a Beijing Christian group called Shouwang. “Things have got worse this year because the police started to detain us. I was detained for a week,” said Zhao Sheng, 54, musical organizer for the group’s Christmas service.

“But Christmas is still a happy time. No matter what happens, God is with us,” he added with a smile.

Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter @tdwilliamsrome.