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The U.S., Indonesia & the New York Times

2012-01-25T01:39:00.001-08:00

From: Riza Sihbudi <rizasihbudi@yahoo.com>

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Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2012 20:25:17 -0800 (PST)

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Subject: [aipi_politik] The U.S., Indonesia & the New York Times

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/24/the-u-s-indonesia-the-new-york-times/

The '65 Massacres: Complicity and Cover-Up

The U.S., Indonesia & the New York Times

by CONN HALLINAN

Why is the New York Times concealing the key role that the United States played in the 1965 coup in Indonesia that ended up killing somewhere between 500,000 and 1 million people? In a story Jan. 19—"Indonesia Chips Away At the Enforced Silence Around a Dark History"—the Times writes that the coup was "one of the darkest periods in modern Indonesian history, and the least discussed, until now."

Indeed it is, but the Times is not only continuing to ignore U.S. involvement in planning and carrying out the coup, but apparently doesn't even bother to read its own clip files from that time that reported the Johnson administration's "delight with the news from Indonesia." The newspaper also reported a cable by Secretary of State Dean Rusk supporting the "campaign against the communists" and assuring the leader of the coup, General Suharto, that the "U.S. government [is] generally sympathetic with, and admiring of, what the army is doing."

What the Indonesian Army was doing was raping and beheading communists, leftists, and trade unionists. Many people were savagely tortured to death by the military and its right-wing Muslim allies in the Nahdlatul Ulama and the Muhammadiyah. A number of those butchered were fingered by U.S. intelligence.

According to a three-part series in the July 1999 Sidney Morning Herald, interviews with Indonesian political prisoners, and examinations of U.S. and Australian documents, "Western powers urged the Indonesian military commanders to seize upon the false claims of a coup attempt instigated by the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), in order to carry out one of the greatest civilian massacres of the 20^th century and establish a military dictatorship."

General Suharto claimed that the PKI was behind the assassination of six leading generals on the night of July 30, 1965, the incident that ignited the coup. But the Herald series included interviews with two of the men involved in the so-called July 30 putsch, both of who claim the PKI had nothing to do with the uprising. At the time, the PKI was part of a coalition government, had foresworn violence, and had an official policy of a "peaceful transition" to socialism. In fact, the organization made no attempt to mobilize its three million members to resist the coup.

The U.S. made sure that very few of those communists—as well as the leaders of peasant, women, union, and youth organizations— survived the holocaust. According to U.S. National Security Archives published by George Washington University, U.S. intelligence agents fingered many of those people. Then U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia, Marshall Green, said that an Embassy list of top Communist leaders "is being used by the Indonesian security authorities that seem to lack even the simplest overt information on PKI leadership at the time…"

The U.S. was well aware of the scale of the killings. In an April 15, 1966 telegram to Washington, the Embassy wrote, "We frankly do not know whether the real figure [of PKI killed] is closer to 100,000 or 1,000,000, but believe it wiser to err on the side of the lower estimates, especially when questioned by the press."

Besides helping the military track down and murder any leftists, the U.S. also supplied the right-wing Kap-Gestapu movement with money. Writing in a memo to then Assistant Secretary of State McGeorge Bundy, Green wrote "The chances of detection or subsequent revelation of our support in this instance are as minimal as any black bag operation can be."

States News Service reporter Kathy Kadane interviewed several former diplomats and intelligence agents and found that the list turned over to the Indonesian security forces had around 5,000 names on it. "It was really a big help to the Army," former embassy political officer Robert J. Martens told Kadane. "They probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but that is not all bad. There is a time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment."

At the time, Washington was beginning a major escalation of the Vietnam War, and the Johnson administration was fixated on its mythical domino theory that communists were about to take over Asia. The U.S. considered Indonesia to be a strategically important country, not only because it controlled important sea passages, but also because it was rich in raw materials in which U.S. corporations were heavily invested. These included Richfield and Mobil oil companies, Uniroyal, Union Carbide, Eastern Airlines, Singer Sewing Machines, National Cash Register, and the Freeport McMorRan gold and copper mining company.

At the time, Indonesian President Sukarno was one of the leaders of the "third force" movement, an alliance of nations that tried to keep itself aloof from the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The 1955 Bangdung Conference drew countries from throughout Asia and Africa to Indonesia to create an anti-colonialist, non-aligned movement. It also drew the ire of the U.S, which refused to send a representative to Bangdung.

In the polarized world of the Cold War, non-alignment was not acceptable to Washington, and the U.S. began using a combination of diplomacy, military force and outright subversion to undermine countries like Indonesia and to bring them into alliances with the U.S. and its allies. The CIA encouraged separatist movements in the oil-rich provinces of Sumatra and Sulawesi. The British and the Australians were also up to their elbows in the 1965 coup, and France increased its trade with Indonesia following the massacre.

The relations between Jakarta and Washington are long and sordid. The U.S. gave Indonesia the green light to invade and occupy East Timor, an act that resulted in the death of over 200,000 people, or one-third of the Timorese population, a kill ratio greater than Pol Pot's genocidal mania in Cambodia. Washington is also supportive of Indonesia's seizure of Irian Jaya (West Papua) and, rather than condemning the brutality of the occupation, has blamed much of the violence on the local natives.

The Cold War is over, but not U.S. interests in Asia. The Obama administration is pouring military forces into the region and has made it clear that it intends to contest China's growing influence in Asia and Southeast Asia. Here Indonesia is key. Some 80 percent of China's energy supplies pass through Indonesian-controlled waters, and Indonesia is still a gold mine—literally in the case of Freeport McMoRan on Irian Jaya—of valuable resources.

So once again, the U.S. is turning a blind eye to the brutal and repressive Indonesian military that doesn't fight wars but is devilishly good at suppressing its own people and cornering many of those resources for itself. The recent decision by the White House to begin working with Kopassus—Indonesia's equivalent of the Nazi SS—is a case in point. Kopassus has been implicated in torture and murder in Irian Jaya and played a key role in the 1999 sacking of East Timor that destroyed 70 percent of that country's infrastructure following Timor's independence vote. Over 1500 Timorese were killed and 250,000 kidnapped to Indonesian West Timor.

It appears that Indonesians are beginning to speak up about the horrors of the 1965 coup. Books like Geoffrey Robinson's "The Dark Side of Paradise" and Robert Lemelson's documentary film, "40 Years of Silence: an Indonesian Tragedy," are slowly grindingg away at the history manufactured by the military dictatorship.

But the U.S. has yet to come clean on its role in the 1965 horror, and the New York Times has apparently decided to continue that silence, perhaps because once again Indonesia is pivotal to Washington's plans for Asia?

CONN HALLINAN can be read at dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com and middleempireseries.wordpress.com. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion.

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Christians alarm: forbidden to celebrate Christmas in Java

2011-12-21T15:37:00.001-08:00

ASIA/INDONESIA - Christians alarm: forbidden to celebrate Christmas in Java

Bogor (Agenzia Fides) - Thanks to an unfortunate alliance between the civil authorities and Islamic extremist groups, the Catholic faithful of the Church of St. John the Baptist in Parung, south of Jakarta (in the Diocese of Bogor), cannot celebrate Christmas Mass.

A garrison of Islamic extremists appeared a few days near the church. A banner reads ominously: "We, the Muslim people of Parung, support and will put into practice the decree of Regent No 453.2/556, which orders to stop the religious activities of the Catholic Church of St. John the Baptist".

Local sources of Fides confirm that the Regency of Bogor (administrative unit) has issued an order "prohibiting Christians public religious activities " and, in fact, does not allow the Christians to celebrate Christmas, citing "security reasons".

"It is a story that repeats itself and that also took place last year when we celebrated Christmas in a parking lot," says a Catholic from Parung to Fides. The faithful are scared of violence and fear those who approach the church.

Christmas celebrations and any public expression of religion will not be allowed, even to the "Indonesian Christian Church" (Gereja Kristen Indonesia, GKI) in Bogor. The GKI, Protestant denomination with a strong presence on the island of Java, continues its struggle for the rule of law: though having received regular approval to build a church in Bogor, the realization of the work is hindered by the Islamic militants and also by the Mayor of Bogor, Diani Budiarto, who issued an order revoking the permit (see Fides 23/07/2011).

The unfavorable climate towards Christians also extends to the churches already built. Fr. Emanuel Harja, National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies (PMS) in Indonesia, explains to Fides: "There is unrest in the area of West Java for the presence of Islamic militants Defenders Front (FPI).

During 2011 there have been several incidents of violence. For many in the Christian communities the right to worship and practice their faith is severely limited or denied. Extremist groups are small but strong, and would only like an Islamic nation and to impose the Sharia law. But this goes against the Constitution, against the Pancasila (the five basic principles of the country) and against pluralism that is a fundamental character of Indonesia.

The authorities have the obligation to stop them, but sometimes this does not happen". The PMS National Director concludes: "We express our solidarity to the Christians in Bogor. A road that can be taken to try to overcome the problem is dialogue and interaction between Christian and Muslim leaders, to desist extremists from their intentions " . (PA) (Agenzia Fides 21/12/2011)

By: Ignatius Ismartono
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VERY TRUE and VERY WISE WORDS

2011-11-23T15:52:00.001-08:00

VERY TRUE and VERY WISE WORDS .... Keep this in your mind ....

Someone has written these beautiful words. Must read and try to understand the deep meaning of it.
They are like the ten commandments to follow in life all the time.

1] Prayer is not a "spare wheel" that you pull out when in trouble, but it is a "steering wheel" that directs the right path throughout.

2] So a Car's WINDSHIELD is so large & the Rear view Mirror is so small? Because our PAST is not as important as our FUTURE. So, Look Ahead and Move on.

3] Friendship is like a BOOK. It takes few seconds to burn, but it takes years to write.

4] All things in life are temporary. If going well, enjoy it, they will not last forever. If going wrong, don't worry, they can't last long either.

5] Old Friends are Gold! New Friends are Diamond! If you get a Diamond, don't forget the Gold! Because to hold a Diamond, you always need a Base of Gold!

6] Often when we lose hope and think this is the end, GOD smiles from above and says, "Relax, sweetheart, it's just a bend, not the end!

7] When GOD solves your problems, you have faith in HIS abilities; when GOD doesn't solve your problems HE has faith in your abilities.

8] A blind person asked St. Anthony: "Can there be anything worse than losing eye sight?" He replied: "Yes, losing your vision!"

9] When you pray for others, God listens to you and blesses them, and sometimes, when you are safe and happy, remember that someone has prayed for you.

10] WORRYING does not take away tomorrow's TROUBLES, it takes away today's PEACE.

" Our blessings are not the fruits of our prayers alone,
but those of another praying for
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A CHAT WITH JESUS CHRIST...

2011-10-14T03:11:00.001-07:00

Jesus: Hello. Did you call me?
Man: Called you? No. Who is this?
Jesus: This is Jesus. I heard your prayers. So I thought I will chat.
Man: I do pray. Just makes me feel good. I am actually busy now. I am in the midst of something.
Jesus: What are you busy at? Ants are busy too.
Man: Don't know. But I can't find free time. Life has become hectic. It's rush hour all the time.
Jesus: Sure. Activity gets you busy. But productivity gets you results. Activity consumes time. Productivity frees it.
Man: I understand. But I still can't figure out. By the way, I was not expecting YOU to buzz me on instant messaging chat.
Jesus: Well I wanted to resolve your fight for time, by giving you some clarity. In this net era, I wanted to reach you through the medium you are comfortable with.
Man: Tell me, why has life become complicated now?
Jesus: Stop analyzing life. Just live it. Analysis is what makes it complicated.
Man: why are we then constantly unhappy?
Jesus: Your today is the tomorrow that you worried about yesterday. You are worrying because you are analyzing. Worrying has become your habit. That's why you are not happy.
Man: But how can we not worry when there is so much uncertainty?
Jesus: Uncertainty is inevitable, but worrying is optional.
Man: But then, there is so much pain due to uncertainty.
Jesus: Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.
Man: If suffering is optional, why do good people always suffer?
Jesus: Diamond cannot be polished without friction. Gold cannot be purified without fire. Good people go through trials, but don't suffer. With that experience their life become better not bitter.
Man: You mean to say such experience is useful?
Jesus: Yes. In every term, Experience is a hard teacher. She gives the test first and the lessons afterwards.
Man: But still, why should we go through such tests? Why can't we be free from problems?
Jesus: Problems are Purposeful Roadblocks Offering Beneficial Lessons (to) Enhance Mental Strength. Inner strength comes from struggle and endurance, not when you are free from problems.
Man: Frankly in the midst of so many problems, we don't know where we are heading.
Jesus: If you look outside you will not know where you are heading. Look inside. Looking outside, you dream. Looking inside, you awaken. Eyes provide sight. Heart provides insight.
Man: Sometimes not succeeding fast seems to hurt more than moving in the right direction. What should I do?
Jesus: Success is a measure as decided by others. Satisfaction is a measure as decided by you. Knowing the road ahead is more satisfying than knowing you rode ahead. You work with the compass. Let others work with the clock.
Man: In tough times, how do you stay motivated?
Jesus: Always look at how far you have come rather than how far you have to go. Always count your blessing, not what you are missing.
Man: What surprises you about people?
Jesus: When they suffer they ask, "why me? When they prosper, they never ask "Why me" Everyone wishes to have truth on their side, but few want to be on the side of the truth.
Man: Sometimes I ask, who I am, why am I here. I can't get the answer.
Jesus: Seek not to find who you are, but to determine who you want to be. Stop looking for a purpose as to why you are here. Create it. Life is not a process of discovery but a process of creation.
Man: How can I get the best out of life?
Jesus: Face your past without regret. Handle your present with confidence. Prepare for the future without fear.
Man: One last question. Sometimes I feel my prayers are not answered.
Jesus: There are no unanswered prayers. At times the answer is NO.
Man: Thank you for this wonderful chat. I am so happy to start the day with a new sense of inspiration.
Jesus: Well. Keep the faith and drop the fear. Don't believe your doubts and doubt your beliefs. Life is a mystery to solve not a problem to resolve. Trust me. Life is wonderful if you know how to live.
Man: Thank you so much.
Jesus: You are always welcome. Have a good day my friend.
" Always remember, God's Word is the Word for YOU...
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PRESS RELEASE FOR GENERAL RELEASE: World Citizen Garry Davis and the “99%” movement

2011-10-13T23:15:00.000-07:00

PRESS RELEASE FOR GENERAL RELEASE

October 8, 2011

World Citizen Garry Davis and the "99%" movement

"The best way to forecast the future is to invent it."

Steve Jobs

The late Steve Jobs lived, worked, designed and produced in the Here & Now. He did not march in crowds. To the contrary, he was alone when he invented the miraculous tools you and I use daily which amazingly unite us as one wherever and whoever we are throughout our one world. And by his inventions, he "created" the future in which we now live.

In short, he thought of himself as the "center" of the world which he – and hosts of sage humans in the past - accepted as one and without artificial divisions.

Realize that you also are not actually "in" the United States for it does not exist in reality. It is a political fiction created 224 years ago to cope with a largely pre-industrial agricultural world for 3 millions humans when the horse was the fastest means of transportation.

You and I here and now are members of a race living on the planet we call Earth. (Fellow members are circling it every hour-and-a-half at 17,000 mph.)

No human, therefore, in the 21st century, is "in" a nation-state. First technology, then electronics, then nuclear, and finally space have rendered nations obsolete. Their dysfunction was startlingly revealed as of 1914 when so-called world wars (between nations) erupted planet-wide.

Now, humanity itself faces nuclear annihilation through sheer ignorance of who we are as a species. In short, we cling anxiously to the very national deathtraps which can only promise omnicide.

Yet you, who have gathered in New York's Wall Street and indeed around the world are ironically demanding "justice" and "democracy" which, in politics terms, are called sovereign human rights sanctioned by the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, from the same nations which endorsed it unanimously December 10, 1948.

Therefore, you already "outrank" the politicians from which you are demanding justice. Buckminster Fuller wrote that ""You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."

A world government of, by and for the citizens of the world was declared over 58 years ago mandated by over 750,000 citizens throughout the world and based on articles 21(3) and 28, UDHR. (See: worldservice.org)

Finally, the geo-dialectic codes of human society – identified historically as "the one and the many," or morally, "do unto others as you would they do unto you" has now reached the global level where the "One and the many" – i.e. the individual citizen allied dynamically with humanity - are united in time and space representing a historic "shift" in consciousness and in human society itself.

The result is finally world peace, world freedom and world abundance as Buckminster Fuller, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, etc predicted in their earthly lives.

—30—

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RIP Steve Jobs: You've got to find what you love,' Jobs say

2011-10-05T23:17:00.001-07:00

Steve Jobs, Commencement address di Stanford University Juni 2005 RIP Steve Jobs, your inspiring legacy will stay with us….

SOURCE: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc

You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says This is a prepared text of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005. I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college.

Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots. I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college. And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting. It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example: Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later. Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 emp

Foreign Occupation Leads to More Terror

2011-09-13T02:59:00.000-07:00

by Rep. Ron Paul, September 13, 2011

Ten years ago shocking and horrific acts of terrorism were carried out on U.S. soil, taking over 3,000 innocent American lives. Without a doubt, this action demanded retaliation and retribution. However, much has been done in the name of protecting the American people from terrorism that has reduced our prosperity and liberty and even made us less safe. This is ironic and sad, considering that the oft-repeated line concerning the reasoning behind the attacks is that they hate us for who we are — a free, prosperous people — and that we must not under any circumstances allow the terrorists to win.

Though it is hard for many to believe, honest studies show that the real motivation behind the Sept. 11 attacks and the vast majority of other instances of suicide terrorism is not that our enemies are bothered by our way of life. Nor is it our religion, or our wealth. Rather, it is primarily occupation. If you were to imagine for a moment how you would feel if another country forcibly occupied the United States and had military bases and armed soldiers present in our hometowns, you might begin to understand why foreign occupation upsets people so much. Robert Pape has extensively researched this issue and goes in depth in his book Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It. In fact, of 2,200 incidents of suicide attacks he has studied worldwide since 1980, 95 percent were in response to foreign occupation.

Pape notes that before our invasion of Iraq, only about 10 percent of suicide terrorism was aimed at Americans or American interests. Since, then however, not only is suicide terrorism greatly on the rise, but 91 percent of it is now directed at us.

Yes, the attacks of 9/11 deserved a response. But the manner in which we responded has allowed radicals in the Muslim world to advance a very threatening narrative about us and our motivation in occupying their lands. Osama bin Laden referred to us as "crusaders" with a religious agenda to convert Muslims, Westernize their culture, and take control of their resources. If we had targeted our response to only the thugs and criminals who attacked us, and refrained from invading countries that had nothing to do with it, this characterization would seem less plausible to the desperate and displaced. Blaming Islam alone is grossly misleading.

Instead, we chose a course of action that led to the further loss of 8,000 American lives, left 40,000 wounded, and has hundreds of thousands seeking help at the Veterans Administration. We are three to four trillion dollars poorer. Our military is spread dangerously thin around the globe, at the expense of protection here at home. Not only that, but we have allowed our freedoms to be greatly threatened and undermined from within. The PATRIOT Act, warrantless searches and wiretapping, abuse of habeas corpus, and useless and humiliating searches at airports are just a few examples of how we've allowed the terrorists to "win" by making our country less free.

Suicide terrorism did not exist in Iraq before we got there. Now it does. There are no known instances of Iranians committing suicide terrorism. If we invade and occupy Iran, expect that to change, too.

Sometimes it can be very uncomfortable to ask the right questions and face the truth. When a slick politician comes along and gives a much more soothing, self-congratulating version of events, it is very tempting to simply believe what we would like to hear. But listening to lies does not make us safer, even though it might make us feel better about ourselves.

The truth is that ending these misguided wars and occupations will make us safer, more prosperous, and more free.

(AIPI mailing list)

9/11 and the Decline of Brand America

2011-09-12T08:37:00.001-07:00

By Reza Pankhurst

September 10, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- Twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall fell. But the optimism and triumphalism within the United States after the collapse of Communism, the end of the Cold war, and the establishment of the 'New World Order' are now in scarce supply.

Ten years after the start of the War of Terror, Francis Fukuyama has been forced to revise his proclamation of the "End of History". Whilst George W Bush's "Mission Accomplished" and "Iraq is Free" look, in hindsight, so premature that the obstetric term 'miscarriage' would be more appropriate.

"Brand America", in a political sense, has become toxic all over the World. Once upon a time, people in the Muslim world looked at America and Western Europe as their role models. They aspired for their own countries to be Muslim Capitalist democracies, with varying degrees of Islam thrown in to satisfy the religiosity of the masses.

But a combination of long standing support for Israel, Desert Storm/Iraq '91, and the 10 year-long War of Terror – Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan – has diminished the standing of the United States and its allies across the whole world.

This is particularly true in the Middle East, where recent polling showing that across six Arab countries, an average of only 15% of the people gave America a favorable rating. The fact that the lowest ratings were in Egypt (5%), and the highest in Saudi Arabia (30%), should be a further cause for reflection. About 12% considered that America contributed to peace in the Middle East, and only 8% agreed with the policies pursued by Obama—tiny minorities amongst the overwhelmingly negative perceptions, which also extended to views regarding both the American conduct in the killing of the alleged sponsor of 9/11, Osama Bin Laden.

Bush had claimed that the 9/11 attackers hated America because of their "freedoms". But it has not been lost on Muslim populations the world over that these American "freedoms" are for America alone (and even that is under scrutiny due to legislation such as the Patriot Act) – since successive administrations have, for the purpose of securing material and strategic interests, been on the side of the dictators in the Middle East, who have been responsible for suppressing any political dissent and expression for decades. The Obama administration has continued rather than broken from these policies, as evidenced by their actions throughout the Arab Spring.

But it is not just "Brand America" which has suffered since 9/11. The whole systemic range of "Brand Capitalism" is also doing badly. Just as violent, inhumane and repressive policies employed used to secure a 'Pax Americana', 'human rights' and 'freedom' damaged "Brand America" and Western-promoted liberal democracy, the financial crisis of 2008 and subsequent economic downturn, and currency crises of the last few years have shattered worldwide confidence in the so-called free market philosophy, which has once again been exposed as a useful stick to employ by the elite when seeking markets to exploit (such as the various diktats issued to less developed economies by the IMF in the 80's and 90's) but quickly discarded when their own interests are at stake.

BBC polling in 2009 showed only 11% across 27 countries believed that Capitalism was doing well, with almost a quarter believing it to be fatally flawed. It is surprising these numbers are not even more negative given that people across Europe and America were (and continue to be) direct witnesses to how little the majority reaped of the profit in times of growth with the justification that the market decides, while, in contradiction to those same free market principles which would have seen the banks allowed to fail, that same majority have been forced to pay the price of private sector failure in the time of decline through the imposed funding of bailouts.

While American and British aggression post-9/11 exposed the hollowness of claims by these governments to human rights and moral values, the reaction to the financial crisis exposed the emptiness of the adoption of the mantra of the free market as governments clamored to make their citizens pay for the sins of the financiers. Growing social unrest in the West due to the huge disparity in wealth between the rich and poor is likely to further undermine the lure of the Western economic model which has seen bankers and their colleagues maintain their privileges while the general population mostly suffers in silence.

Ten years on, the vulnerability that America felt as a result of 9/11 is compounded today by the economic crisis that it faces. And yet the proposed 2012 budget allocates a lop-sided 19.7% for "Defense". To put the amount in context, the United States spent more on its military in 2010 than the next 19 in the top 20 of largest spenders combined (with 20th on the list being Greece), highlighting the staggering extent of the American war machine. It is not inaccurate to state that they are now paying for their imperial overstretch, something that is surely unsustainable in the future and which is driving the pace of the drawdown in Afghanistan—a retreat necessitated by financial and domestic considerations rather than meeting any apparent strategic or military objectives. "Mission accomplished", yet again. But this time remotely operated predator drones will remain and continue to murder the natives whether in Afghanistan or Pakistan— a much cheaper option financially, politically and morally than keeping American boots on the ground and meet their opposition face to face.

At the same time, the financial crisis, made in America, has been exported elsewhere. By printing more money to offset the huge expenditure to bail out banks, the United States has affected the wealth of people who had saved in dollars or US Treasury bonds. The modern financial system has allowed speculation and trade in food that has seen global food prices rise, which costs lives in other parts of the world. When America sneezes, everyone catches a cold.

Ten years after 9/11, the unipolar age of the American hyper-power is over; US-style Capitalism and its professed free-market ideology which has been exposed as a myth is now being challenged by state-Capitalism; the West, in particular the United States, has been greatly diminished in the eyes of the world.

Dr. Reza Pankhurst is Editor of online political journal New Civilisation and is a contributing writer on Foreign Policy Journal. He has a Masters in the History of International Relations and a PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science, Government department. He was a political prisoner of the previous Mubarak regime in Egypt, spending 4 years in jail between 2002 and 2006. He lives in the UK where he is currently completing work on his forthcoming book.

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Journalism as a Weapon of War in Libya

2011-07-04T04:23:00.001-07:00

By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

July 02, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- The truth has been turned on its head in Libya. NATO and the Libyan government are saying contradictory things. NATO says that the Libyan regime will fall in a matter of days, while the Libyan government says that the fighting in Misrata will end in about two weeks.

During the night the sound of NATO jets flying over Tripoli can be heard in the Mediterranean coastal city. Tripoli has not been bombed for a few days, but the sound of the flyovers have been numerous. The Atlantic Alliance deliberately picks the night as a means to disturb the sleep of residence in an attempt to spread fear. Small children in Libya have lost a lot of sleep during this war. This is part of the psychological war being waged. It is meant to break the spirit of Libya. This is all additional to the severing wound imposed on Libya through trickery and sedition.

In the same context, the media war against Libya has continued too. The Rixos Hotel in the Libyan capital of Tripoli, where the majority of the international press is located, is a nest of lies and warped narratives where foreign reporters are twisting realities, spinning events, and misreporting to justify the NATO war against Libya. Every report and news wire being sent out of Libya by international reporters has to carefully be cross-checked and analyzed. Foreign journalists have put words in the mouth of Libyans and are willfully blind. They have ignored the civilian deaths in Libya, the clear war crimes being perpetrated against the Libyan people, and the damage to civilian infrastructure, from hotels to docks and hospitals.

One group of Libyan youth explained in a private conversation that when speaking to reporters they would interview in twos. One would ask a question followed immediately by another one. In the process the answer to the first question would be used as the answer for the second question. In the Libyan hospitals the foreign reports try not to take pictures of the wounded and dying. They just go into the hospitals to paint the image of impartiality, but virtually report about nothing and ignore almost everything newsworthy. They refuse to tell the other side of the story. Shamelessly in front of seriously injured civilians, the type of questions many foreign reporters ask doctors, nurses, and hospital staff is if they have been treating military and security personnel in the hospitals.

CNN has even released a report from Misrata by Sara Sidner showing the sodomization of a woman with a broomstick which was conducted by Libyan soldiers (which it refers to as Qaddafi troops as a means of demonization). In reality the video was a domestic affair and from prior to the conflict. It originally took place in Tripoli and the man even has an accent from Tripoli. This is the type of fabrications that the mainstream media is pushing forward to push for war and military intervention.

There are now investigations underway to show that depleted uranium has been used against Libyans. The use of depleted uranium is an absolute war crime. It is not only an attack on the present, but it also leaves a radioactive trace that attacks the unborn children of tomorrow. Future generations will be hurt by these weapons too. These generations of the future are innocent. The use of depleted uranium is the equivalent of the U.S. planting nuclear weapons in Germany or Japan during the Second World War and leaving timers for them to detonate in 2011. This is an important and newsworthy issue in Libya and all the foreign journalists have heard about it, but how many have actually covered it?

The Ionis, a ship from Benghazi that docked in Tripoli on June 26, 2011, was carrying over 100 people who wanted to leave Benghazi to be unified with their families in Tripoli. Foreign reports were there en masse from all over the world. CNN, RT, and Reuters were amongst them. Amongst the foreign reports there were many who had no clue about the situation in Libya and were working on the basis of misinformation carried forward from their respective stations and countries. In informal discussion when these reporters were challenged about the basis of their assessments they failed to answer and sounded ridiculous. One reporter from Western Europe said that the defections at the governmental level in Tripoli where snowballing, but when challenged by a colleague she could only cite the so-called defection of a Libyan athlete.

The arrival of the passenger ship was significant, because it is a symptom that the political partition of Libya is underway. When families and individuals are being shuttled to different sides of Libya, it is an indicator that some sort of dividing line will be drawn either temporarily or permanently.

The Roman Catholic Church in Libya has also been disrupted and hurt. The position of Father Giovanni Martinelli, the Bishop of Tripoli, is in contradiction to that of the U.S. and NATO. Contact has been lost with the Roman Catholic churches and communities in Benghazi and its environs. Bishop Martinelli has also lost dear friends in the war who have nothing to do whatsoever with any combat or hostility. What have foreign journalists and news agencies said about this?

Journalists have a responsibility to tell the truth and report all newsworthy issues. Some do, but their stories either get edited or never get published or aired. Others say nothing and instead concoct stories. It is now the responsibility of the public to look at the reports coming out of Libya from all sides with a grain of salt. Diversity of news is just one starter.

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya Canadian-based sociologist and scholar. Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), specializing in geopolitical and strategic issues.

Copyright © Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Global Research, 2011

14 Propaganda Techniques Fox "News" Uses to Brainwash Americans

2011-07-04T04:21:00.001-07:00

By: Dr. Cynthia Boaz

July 02, 2011 "Truthout" --- There is nothing more sacred to the maintenance of democracy than a free press. Access to comprehensive, accurate and quality information is essential to the manifestation of Socratic citizenship - the society characterized by a civically engaged, well-informed and socially invested populace. Thus, to the degree that access to quality information is willfully or unintentionally obstructed, democracy itself is degraded.

It is ironic that in the era of 24-hour cable news networks and "reality" programming, the news-to-fluff ratio and overall veracity of information has declined precipitously. Take the fact Americans now spend on average about 50 hours a week using various forms of media, while at the same time cultural literacy levels hover just above the gutter. Not only does mainstream media now tolerate gross misrepresentations of fact and history by public figures (highlighted most recently by Sarah Palin's ludicrous depiction of Paul Revere's ride), but many media actually legitimize these displays. Pause for a moment and ask yourself what it means that the world's largest, most profitable and most popular news channel passes off as fact every whim, impulse and outrageously incompetent analysis of its so-called reporters. How did we get here? Take the enormous amount of misinformation that is taken for truth by Fox audiences: the belief that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and that he was in on 9/11, the belief that climate change isn't real and/or man-made, the belief that Barack Obama is Muslim and wasn't born in the United States, the insistence that all Arabs are Muslim and all Muslims are terrorists, the inexplicable perceptions that immigrants are both too lazy to work and are about to steal your job. All of these claims are demonstrably false, yet Fox News viewers will maintain their veracity with incredible zeal. Why? Is it simply that we have lost our respect for knowledge?

My curiosity about this question compelled me to sit down and document the most oft-used methods by which willful ignorance has been turned into dogma by Fox News and other propagandists disguised as media. The techniques I identify here also help to explain the simultaneously powerful identification the Fox media audience has with the network, as well as their ardent, reflexive defenses of it.

The good news is that the more conscious you are of these techniques, the less likely they are to work on you. The bad news is that those reading this article are probably the least in need in of it.

1. Panic Mongering. This goes one step beyond simple fear mongering. With panic mongering, there is never a break from the fear. The idea is to terrify and terrorize the audience during every waking moment. From Muslims to swine flu to recession to homosexuals to immigrants to the rapture itself, the belief over at Fox seems to be that if your fight-or-flight reflexes aren't activated, you aren't alive. This of course raises the question: why terrorize your own audience? Because it is the fastest way to bypasses the rational brain. In other words, when people are afraid, they don't think rationally. And when they can't think rationally, they'll believe anything.

2. Character Assassination/Ad Hominem. Fox does not like to waste time debating the idea. Instead, they prefer a quicker route to dispensing with their opponents: go after the person's credibility, motives, intelligence, character, or, if necessary, sanity. No category of character assassination is off the table and no offense is beneath them. Fox and like-minded media figures also use ad hominem attacks not just against individuals, but entire categories of people in an effort to discredit the ideas of every person who is seen to fall into that category, e.g. "liberals," "hippies," "progressives" etc. This form of argument - if it can be called that - leaves no room for genuine debate over ideas, so by definition, it is undemocratic. Not to mention just plain crass.

3. Projection/Flipping. This one is frustrating for the viewer who is trying to actually follow the argument. It involves taking whatever underhanded tactic you're using and then accusing your opponent of doing it to you first. We see this frequently in the immigration discussion, where anti-racists are accused of racism, or in the climate change debate, where those who argue for human causes of the phenomenon are accused of not having science or facts on their side. It's often called upon when the media host finds themselves on the ropes in the debate.

4. Rewriting History. This is another way of saying that propagandists make the facts fit their worldview. The Downing Street Memos on the Iraq war were a classic example of this on a massive scale, but it happens daily and over smaller issues as well. A recent case in point is Palin's mangling of the Paul Revere ride, which Fox reporters have bent over backward to validate. Why lie about the historical facts, even when they can be demonstrated to be false? Well, because dogmatic minds actually find it easier to reject reality than to update their viewpoints. They will literally rewrite history if it serves their interests. And they'll often speak with such authority that the casual viewer will be tempted to question what they knew as fact.

5. Scapegoating/Othering. This works best when people feel insecure or scared. It's technically a form of both fear mongering and diversion, but it is so pervasive that it deserves its own category. The simple idea is that if you can find a group to blame for social or economic problems, you can then go on to a) justify violence/dehumanization of them, and b) subvert responsibility for any harm that may befall them as a result.

6. Conflating Violence With Power and Opposition to Violence With Weakness. This is more of what I'd call a "meta-frame" (a deeply held belief) than a media technique, but it is manifested in the ways news is reported constantly. For example, terms like "show of strength" are often used to describe acts of repression, such as those by the Iranian regime against the protesters in the summer of 2009. There are several concerning consequences of this form of conflation. First, it has the potential to make people feel falsely emboldened by shows of force - it can turn wars into sporting events. Secondly, especially in the context of American politics, displays of violence - whether manifested in war or debates about the Second Amendment - are seen as noble and (in an especially surreal irony) moral. Violence become synonymous with power, patriotism and piety.

7. Bullying. This is a favorite technique of several Fox commentators. That it continues to be employed demonstrates that it seems to have some efficacy. Bullying and yelling works best on people who come to the conversation with a lack of confidence, either in themselves or their grasp of the subject being discussed. The bully exploits this lack of confidence by berating the guest into submission or compliance. Often, less self-possessed people will feel shame and anxiety when being berated and the quickest way to end the immediate discomfort is to cede authority to the bully. The bully is then able to interpret that as a "win."

8. Confusion. As with the preceding technique, this one works best on an audience that is less confident and self-possessed. The idea is to deliberately confuse the argument, but insist that the logic is airtight and imply that anyone who disagrees is either too dumb or too fanatical to follow along. Less independent minds will interpret the confusion technique as a form of sophisticated thinking, thereby giving the user's claims veracity in the viewer's mind.

9. Populism. This is especially popular in election years. The speakers identifies themselves as one of "the people" and the target of their ire as an enemy of the people. The opponent is always "elitist" or a "bureaucrat" or a "government insider" or some other category that is not the people. The idea is to make the opponent harder to relate to and harder to empathize with. It often goes hand in hand with scapegoating. A common logical fallacy with populism bias when used by the right is that accused "elitists" are almost always liberals - a category of political actors who, by definition, advocate for non-elite groups.

10. Invoking the Christian God. This is similar to othering and populism. With morality politics, the idea is to declare yourself and your allies as patriots, Christians and "real Americans" (those are inseparable categories in this line of thinking) and anyone who challenges them as not. Basically, God loves Fox and Republicans and America. And hates taxes and anyone who doesn't love those other three things. Because the speaker has been benedicted by God to speak on behalf of all Americans, any challenge is perceived as immoral. It's a cheap and easy technique used by all totalitarian entities from states to cults.

11. Saturation. There are three components to effective saturation: being repetitive, being ubiquitous and being consistent. The message must be repeated cover and over, it must be everywhere and it must be shared across commentators: e.g. "Saddam has WMD." Veracity and hard data have no relationship to the efficacy of saturation. There is a psychological effect of being exposed to the same message over and over, regardless of whether it's true or if it even makes sense, e.g., "Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States." If something is said enough times, by enough people, many will come to accept it as truth. Another example is Fox's own slogan of "Fair and Balanced."

12. Disparaging Education. There is an emerging and disturbing lack of reverence for education and intellectualism in many mainstream media discourses. In fact, in some circles (e.g. Fox), higher education is often disparaged as elitist. Having a university credential is perceived by these folks as not a sign of credibility, but of a lack of it. In fact, among some commentators, evidence of intellectual prowess is treated snidely and as anti-American. The disdain for education and other evidence of being trained in critical thinking are direct threats to a hive-mind mentality, which is why they are so viscerally demeaned.

13. Guilt by Association. This is a favorite of Glenn Beck and Andrew Breitbart, both of whom have used it to decimate the careers and lives of many good people. Here's how it works: if your cousin's college roommate's uncle's ex-wife attended a dinner party back in 1984 with Gorbachev's niece's ex-boyfriend's sister, then you, by extension are a communist set on destroying America. Period.

14. Diversion. This is where, when on the ropes, the media commentator suddenly takes the debate in a weird but predictable direction to avoid accountability. This is the point in the discussion where most Fox anchors start comparing the opponent to Saul Alinsky or invoking ACORN or Media Matters, in a desperate attempt to win through guilt by association. Or they'll talk about wanting to focus on "moving forward," as though by analyzing the current state of things or God forbid, how we got to this state of things, you have no regard for the future. Any attempt to bring the discussion back to the issue at hand will likely be called deflection, an ironic use of the technique of projection/flipping.

In debating some of these tactics with colleagues and friends, I have also noticed that the Fox viewership seems to be marked by a sort of collective personality disorder whereby the viewer feels almost as though they've been let into a secret society. Something about their affiliation with the network makes them feel privileged and this affinity is likely what drives the viewers to defend the network so vehemently. They seem to identify with it at a core level, because it tells them they are special and privy to something the rest of us don't have. It's akin to the loyalty one feels by being let into a private club or a gang. That effect is also likely to make the propaganda more powerful, because it goes mostly unquestioned.

In considering these tactics and their possible effects on American public discourse, it is important to note that historically, those who've genuinely accessed truth have never berated those who did not. You don't get honored by history when you beat up your opponent: look at Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln. These men did not find the need to engage in othering, ad homeinum attacks, guilt by association or bullying. This is because when a person has accessed a truth, they are not threatened by the opposing views of others. This reality reveals the righteous indignation of people like Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity as a symptom of untruth. These individuals are hostile and angry precisely because they don't feel confident in their own veracity. And in general, the more someone is losing their temper in a debate and the more intolerant they are of listening to others, the more you can be certain they do not know what they're talking about.

One final observation. Fox audiences, birthers and Tea Partiers often defend their arguments by pointing to the fact that a lot of people share the same perceptions. This is a reasonable point to the extent that Murdoch's News Corporation reaches a far larger audience than any other single media outlet. But, the fact that a lot of people believe something is not necessarily a sign that it's true; it's just a sign that it's been effectively marketed.

As honest, fair and truly intellectual debate degrades before the eyes of the global media audience, the quality of American democracy degrades along with it.

Dr. Cynthia Boaz is assistant professor of political science at Sonoma State University, where her areas of expertise include quality of democracy, nonviolent struggle, civil resistance and political communication and media. She is also an affiliated scholar at the UNESCO Chair of Philosophy for Peace International Master in Peace, Conflict, and Development Studies at Universitat Jaume I in Castellon, Spain. Additionally, she is an analyst and consultant on nonviolent action, with special emphasis on the Iran and Burma cases. She is vice president of the Metta Center for Nonviolence and on the board of Project Censored and the Media Freedom Foundation. Dr. Boaz is also a contributing writer and adviser to Truthout.org and associate editor of Peace and Change Journal.
First posted at Truthout

How do you categorize India,......?

2011-06-28T03:54:00.001-07:00

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/06/24/poor_little_rich_country Poor Little Rich Country
How do you categorize India, a nation that is at once fantastically wealthy and desperately poor?
BY PATRICK FRENCH | JUNE 24, 2011

In May, the Indian government announced that it was giving $5 billion in aid to African countries in the interest of helping them meet their development goals. "We do not have all the answers," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said, "but we have some experience in nation-building, which we are happy to share."

The British could be forgiven for being annoyed with Singh's largesse. Britain, after all, currently gives more than $450 million a year in aid to India, and has plans to continue doing so for at least the next few years. The British economy is bumping in and out of a recession, while India's gross domestic product is growing at more than 8 percent a year. This has put the British government in the rather bizarre position of having to sell bonds in order to donate money to Asia's second-fastest-growing economy, even as the latter is itself getting into the philanthropy business.

Once Upon a Time in Bombay
An FP Slide Show

The policy is unpopular with most of the British press, which argues that because India has a space program and some flamboyant billionaires, it does not need aid -- especially when Britain cannot really afford it. (When the Labour government was voted out at last year's general election, the departing Finance Minister Liam Byrne left a one-line note on his desk for his successor: "I'm afraid there is no money." It was a joke -- but it was also true.) Nevertheless, Britain still sees itself as a donor nation, with all the obligations and international prestige that entails. This comes in part from a sense of postcolonial guilt: Prime Minister David Cameron spoke recently of a "sense of duty to help others" and the "strong moral case" for giving aid.

The situation suggests just how dramatically the economic rise of Asia has undone centuries of experience, and the expectation that the West will retain the hegemony it has had for the past 400 years. It is increasingly difficult to classify whether a nation is rich or poor, and terms such as "the Global South" and "the Third World" have to be heavily qualified to take into account the fact that large sections of the population in countries like China, Brazil, and India now have a purchasing power matching that of people in "the West."

In 1951, the American diplomat Bill Bullitt described the condition of India in Life magazine: "An immense country containing 357 million people," he wrote, "with enormous natural resources and superb fighting men, India can neither feed herself nor defend herself against serious attacks. An inhabitant of India lives, on average, 27 years. His annual income is about $50. About 90 out of 100 Indians cannot read or write. They exist in squalor and fear of famine." Today, it would be hard to make such an absolute statement about India. Poverty certainly remains a chronic problem, but it exists alongside pockets of substantial wealth. An Indian's life expectancy at birth now stands at 67 years, and continues to rise. It is necessary perhaps to think in a different way, and to see that a country like India, like Schrödinger's cat, exists in at least two forms simultaneously: rich and poor.
The most important change of the last two decades, since the beginning of economic liberalization, has been the transformation of middle-class Indian aspiration. Although the stagnant days of the controlled economy and the "Permit Raj" -- when important decisions depended on a bureaucrat's authorization -- had their own stability, they also stifled opportunity and individual talent. Members of the professional middle class frequently preferred to seek their fortune in more meritocratic societies abroad.

The modern Indian middle class has a new chance to shape its own destiny in a way that was not previously possible. You can move to your own house using a home loan and live outside the joint family; you can buy a car that is not an Ambassador or a Fiat; you can travel abroad and see how people in other countries live; you can watch your politicians accept bribes or dance with prostitutes on television in local media sting operations while surfing your way to Desperate Housewives or Kaun Banega Crorepati, an Indian adaptation of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Businesspeople who have succeeded on their own merits overseas, such as PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi, are presented as national heroes.

n the 20th century, the world's personal wealth was held in American, European, Arab, and occasionally East Asian hands. By 2008, four of the eight richest people alive were Indian, and 2011 is the first year in which more billionaires have come from the BRICs -- Brazil, Russia, India, and China -- than from Europe. In earlier times, India's rich were princely rulers or members of extended business families who had made a fortune in textiles or manufacturing. Industrialists would hoard capital, and there was a limited expectation of seeking to outbid your neighbors in gross ostentation. Since liberalization, many of the new flock of billionaires who have made fortunes in areas such as construction, real estate, steel, and technology are no longer the scions of well-connected families. An unbound social elite has grown with extraordinary speed.

At times this new wealth has provoked intense resentment. In Mumbai, the industrialist Mukesh Ambani recently built the world's most expensive private residence, a 27-story confection housing three floors of gardens, swimming pools, a "cool room" (which, in the ultimate Himalayan dream, blows flurries of fake snow), three helipads, a six-story parking garage, and several "entourage rooms" -- because who travels without an entourage? The steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal, who lives in London and is presently the richest person in Britain, is today the only Indian richer than Ambani. In 2006, Mittal Steel's hostile bid for Europe's largest steelmaker, Arcelor, was met with dismay on the continent. The head of the latter firm, Guy Dollé, said sorrowfully that the predatory company was "full of Indians" and his own Luxembourg-based operation had no need for "monnaie de singe" -- an expression meaning "money without value," but a phrase that has the unfortunate direct translation of "monkey change." Lakshmi Mittal won the battle, Dollé was ousted, and Arcelor Mittal is now the world's largest steel company.

During this global financial shift, about one-quarter of India's population has so far gained almost nothing from the country's economic transformation. Those who live outside the cash economy, in hills and jungles and on land that is increasingly sought after for its natural resources, have not shared the benefits of national growth at all. The journalist Mark Tully, who has been reporting on India for nearly 50 years, once said that the crocodile tears shed over India's poor would flood the Ganges. Today, as inequality grows and some Indians become exceptionally rich, the arguments over the country's poverty -- its extent and depth and the best means of alleviating it -- are fiercer than ever. Surjit Bhalla, who runs an economic research and asset management firm in New Delhi, has argued that the numbers of India's least fortunate are massively exaggerated: In his analysis, a "conservative estimate" suggests the poverty level in India in 1999 was under 12 percent, and is surely even lower today. But a first-time visitor to India will notice at once that many people there are painfully poor, and that the suggestion that they number scarcely 1 in 10 of the population -- or lower -- is absurd.

Doubtful statistics are also used by those who dislike liberal economic policies and the effects of globalization. It is commonly claimed that 77 percent of Indians live on less than 20 rupees (about $0.50) a day. This figure has an interesting lineage, and first came to public notice in a report issued in 2007 by the left-wing economist Arjun Sengupta, which he claimed was based on data from India's National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), an official body. On closer inspection, it would appear Sengupta used average monthly per capita consumer expenditure for the year 2004-05, which came out at 559 rupees for rural India and 1,052 rupees for urban India. But what commentators who widely circulate this data do not point out is that consumer expenditure figures collected by the NSSO have consistently been low -- possibly because of under-reporting -- and are very difficult to square with the fact that other measures of consumption in India have grown steadily over the past few years.

Using more current data, the Indian government's Planning Commission announced a few weeks ago that in fact, 41.8 percent of the rural population and 25.7 percent of the urban population now live on 20 rupees a day or less -- suggesting either that India's poverty has been more than halved in just six years, or (more likely) that Sengupta's original figure was wrong, and should never have been publicized without extensive qualification. But obtaining accurate data on poverty and interpreting it reasonably is a difficult task; an additional problem is that India's state governments routinely overestimate their poverty levels in order to get more money from New Delhi.

In any case, even cautious figures suggest that a substantial portion of India's population remains desperately poor. The basic argument about whether economic liberalization has been good or bad for India is today largely conducted outside the country. In India itself, the debate ran itself into the ground in the late 1990s, when it became apparent that growth rates were higher even than the reformers had expected. All major political parties are now in broad agreement that it would be a mistake to return to centralized, socialist planning; after all, back in the 1970s per capita GDP in India was growing more slowly than at any point in the preceding 100 years. The crucial question now is, how to narrow the gulf between the rich and the poor? The Indian government has made some progress with social programs in recent years, but is moving interminably slowly, and corruption and weak governance at the centre remain a pressing problem. In the short term there is no harm in countries like Britain continuing with their aid projects, but India has the money to fund its own poverty alleviation programs. Whether it will choose to do so, is another question.

The West Is Terrified of Arabic Democracies - Noam Chomsky

2011-06-23T03:36:00.000-07:00

Noam Chomsky is one of the major intellectuals of our time. The eighty-two-year-old American linguist, philosopher and activist is a severe critic of US foreign and economic policy. Ceyda Nurtsch talked to him about the Arabic spring in its global context

June 22, 2011 - - Mr. Chomsky, many people claim that the Arab world is incompatible with democracy. Would you say that the recent developments falsify this thesis?
Noam Chomsky: The thesis never had any basis whatsoever. The Arab-Islamic world has a long history of democracy. It's regularly crushed by western force. In 1953 Iran had a parliamentary system, the US and Britain overthrew it. There was a revolution in Iraq in 1958, we don't know where it would have gone, but it could have been democratic. The US basically organized a coup.

False friends: Iran' democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh during a visit in the US in 1951, two years before the CIA's coup d'état that ousted him
In internal discussions in 1958, which have since been declassified, President Eisenhower spoke about a campaign of hatred against us in the Arab world. Not from the governments, but from the people. The National Security Council's top planning body produced a memorandum – you can pick it up on the web now – in which they explained it. They said that the perception in the Arab world is that the United States blocks democracy and development and supports harsh dictators and we do it to get control over their oil. The memorandum said, this perception is more or less accurate and that's basically what we ought to be doing.

That means that western democracies prevented the emergence of democracies in the Arab world?
Chomsky: I won't run through the details, but yes, it continues that way to the present. There are constant democratic uprisings. They are crushed by the dictators we – mainly the US, Britain, and France – support. So sure, there is no democracy because you crush it all. You could have said the same about Latin America: a long series of dictators, brutal murderers. As long as the US controls the hemisphere, or Europe before it, there is no democracy, because it gets crushed.

So you were not surprised at all by the Arab Spring?
Chomsky: Well, I didn't really expect it. But there is a long background to it. Let's take Egypt for instance. You'll notice that the young people who organized the demonstrations on January 25th called themselves the April 6th movement. There is a reason for that. April 6th 2008 was supposed to be a major labour action in Egypt at the Mahalla textile complex, the big industrial centre: strikes, support demonstrations around the country and so on. It was all crushed by the dictatorship. Well, in the West we don't pay any attention: as long as dictatorships control people, what do we care!

"Efforts to create democracy": On 6 April 2008 Egyptian workers, primarily in the state-run textile industry, striked in response to low wages and rising food costs. Strikes were illegal in Egypt, and the protests were eventually crushed
But in Egypt they remember, and that's only one in a long series of militant strike actions. Some of them succeeded. There are some good studies of this. There is one American scholar, Joel Beinen – he is at Stanford – he has done a lot of work on the Egyptian labour movement. And he has recent articles and earlier ones, in which he discusses labour struggles going on for a long time: those are efforts to create democracy.

Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, claimed to cause a domino effect of freedom with his policy of the "New Middle East". Is there a relation between the uprisings in the Arab world to the policy of George W. Bush?
Chomsky: The main theme of modern post-war history is the domino effect: Cuba, Brazil, Vietnam… Henry Kissinger compared it to a virus that might spread contagion. When he and Nixon were planning the overthrow of the democratically elected Allende in Chile – we have all the internal materials now – Kissinger in particular said, the Chilean virus might affect countries as far as Europe. Actually, he and Brezhnev agreed on that, they were both afraid of democracy and Kissinger said, we have to wipe out this virus. And they did, they crushed it.
Today it's similar. Both Bush and Obama are terrified of the Arab spring. And there is a very sensible reason for that. They don't want democracies in the Arab world. If Arab public opinion had any influence on policy, the US and Britain had been tossed out of the Middle East. That's why they are terrified of democracies in the region.

The well-known British Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk recently stated that Obama and his policy is irrelevant for the developments in the region…
Chomsky: I read the article, it's very good. Robert Fisk is a terrific journalist and he really knows the region well. I think what he means is that the activists in the April 6th movement don't care about the United States. They have totally given up on the US. They know the United States is their enemy. In fact in public opinion in Egypt about 90 per cent think that the US is the worst threat that they face. In that sense the USA is of course not irrelevant. It's just too powerful.

Some criticize the Arab intellectuals for being too silent, too passive. What should the role of the Arab intellectual be today?
Chomsky: Intellectuals have a special responsibility. We call them intellectuals because they are privileged and not because they are smarter than anyone else. But if you are privileged and you have some status and you can be articulate and so on we call you an intellectual. And it's the same in the Arab world as anywhere else.

Ceyda Nurtsch
© Qantara.de 2011
Editor: Lewis Gropp/Qantara.de

Why Jews Are Powerful & Muslims Less by Dr. Farrukh Saleem A Muslim’s View On Why Jews Are Powerful & Muslims Less

2011-06-17T09:28:00.001-07:00

Unbelievable Facts: A Synopsis! (Islamic columnist on Jews)
By: Dr Farrukh Saleem
The writer is the Pakistani Executive Director of the Center for Researchand Security Studies, a think tank established in 2007, and anIslamabad-based freelance columnist.
Why are Jews so powerful?
There are only 14 million Jews in the world; seven million in theAmericas , five million in Asia, two million in Europe and 100,000 inAfrica . For every single Jew in the world there are 100 Muslims.
Yet, Jews are more than a hundred times more powerful than all theMuslims put together.
Ever wondered why? Jesus of Nazareth was Jewish. Albert Einstein, the most influential scientist of all time and TIMEmagazine's 'Person of the Century', was a Jew. Sigmund Freud -- id, ego, superego -- the father of psychoanalysis was a Jew. So were Karl Marx, Paul Samuelson and Milton Friedman.
Here are a few other Jews whose intellectual output has enriched thewhole humanity: Benjamin Rubin gave humanity the vaccinating needle. Jonas Salk developed the first polio vaccine.Albert Sabin developed the improved live polio vaccine.Gertrude Elion gave us a leukemia fighting drug.Baruch Blumberg developed the vaccination for Hepatitis B.Paul Ehrlich discovered a treatment for syphilis (a sexuallytransmitted disease).Elie Metchnikoff won a Nobel Prize in infectious diseases.Bernard Katz won a Nobel Prize in neuromuscular transmission.Andrew Schally won a Nobel in endocrinology (disorders of theendocrine system; diabetes, hyperthyroidism) .Aaron Beck founded Cognitive Therapy (psychotherapy to treat mentaldisorders, depression and phobias).
Gregory Pincus developed the first oral contraceptive pill.
George Wald won a Nobel for furthering our understanding of the human eye.Stanley Cohen won a Nobel in embryology (study of embryos and their development). Willem Kolff came up with the kidney dialysis machine.Over the past 105 years, 14 million Jews have won 15-dozen Nobel Prizes while only three Nobel Prizes have been won by 1.4 billionMuslims (other than Peace Prizes).
Why are Jews so powerful?
Stanley Mezor invented the first micro-processing chip.Leo Szilard developed the first nuclear chain reactor;Peter Schultz, optical fibre cable;Charles Adler, traffic lights;Benno Strauss, Stainless steel;Isador Kisee, sound movies;Emile Berliner, telephone microphone;Charles Ginsburg, videotape recorder.Famous financiers in the business world who belong to Jewish faithincludeRalph Lauren (Polo),Levis Strauss (Levi's Jeans),Howard Schultz (Starbucks) ,Sergey Brin (Google),Michael Dell (Dell Computers),Larry Ellison (Oracle),Donna Karan (DKNY),Irv Robbins (Baskin & Robbins) andBill Rosenberg (Dunkin Donuts).
Richard Levin, President of Yale University, is a Jew. So are HenryKissinger (American secretary of state), Alan Greenspan (Fedchairman under Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush), Joseph Lieberman (USSenator), Madeleine Albright (American secretary of state), Maxim Litvinov( USSRforeign Minister), David Marshal ( Singapore 's first chiefminister), Issac Isaacs (governor-general of Australia ), BenjaminDisraeli (British statesman and author), Yevgeny Primakov (RussianPM), Barry Goldwater (US Senator), Jorge Sampaio (president ofPortugal ), John Deutsch (CIA director), Herb Gray (Canadian deputyPM), Pierre Mendes (French PM), Michael Howard (British homesecretary), Bruno Kreisky (chancellor of Austria ) and Robert Rubin(American secretary of treasury).In the media, famous Jews include Wolf Blitzer (CNN), BarbaraWalters (ABC News), Eugene Meyer (Washington Post), Henry Grunwald(editor-in-chief Time), Katherine Graham (publisher of The WashingtonPost), Joseph Lelyveld (Executive editor, The New York Times), andMax Frankel (New York Times).
Can you name the most beneficent philanthropist in the history of the world?
The name is George Soros, a Jew, who has so far donated a colossal$4 billion most of which has gone as aid to scientists anduniversities around the world.
Second to George Soros is Walter Annenberg, another Jew, who hasbuilt a hundred libraries by donating an estimated $2 billion.At the Olympics, Mark Spitz set a record of sorts by winning seven goldmedals.Lenny Krayzelburg is a three-time Olympic gold medalist.Spitz, Krayzelburg and Boris Becker (Tennis) are all Jewish.Did you know that Harrison Ford, George Burns, Tony Curtis, CharlesBronson, Sandra Bullock, Billy Crystal, Woody Allen, Paul Newman,Peter Sellers, Dustin Hoffman, Michael Douglas, Ben Kingsley, KirkDouglas, Goldie Hawn, Cary Grant, William Shatner, Jerry Lewis andPeter Falk are all Jewish?As a matter of fact, Hollywood itself was founded by a Jew. Amongdirectors and producers, Steven Spielberg, Mel Brooks, Oliver Stone,Aaron Spelling ( Beverly Hills 90210), Neil Simon (The Odd Couple),Andrew Vaina (Rambo 1/2/3), Michael Man (Starsky and Hutch), MilosForman (One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest), Douglas Fairbanks (TheThief of Baghdad ) and Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters) are all Jewish.
So, why are Jews so powerful?
Answer: EDUCATION.
_________________________________________
Why are Muslims so powerless?
There are an estimated 1,476,233,470 Muslims on the face of theplanet: one billion in Asia, 400 million in Africa, 44 million inEurope and six million in the Americas .Every fifth human being is a Muslim;for every single Hindu there are two Muslims,for every Buddhist there are two Muslims andfor every Jew there are one hundred Muslims.
Ever wondered why Muslims are so powerless?
Here is why: There are 57 member-countries of the Organisation ofIslamic Conference (OIC), and all of them put together have around500 universities; one university for every three million Muslims.The United States has 5,758 universities and India has 8,407.
In 2004, Shanghai Jiao Tong University compiled an 'Academic Rankingof World Universities' , and intriguingly, not one university fromMuslim-majority states was in the top-500.
As per data collected by the UNDP, literacy in the Christian worldstands at nearly 90 per cent and 15 Christian-majority states have aliteracy rate of 100 per cent.
A Muslim-majority state, as a sharp contrast, has an average literacyrate of around 40 per cent and there is no Muslim-majority state witha literacy rate of 100 per cent.
Some 98 per cent of the 'literates' in the Christian world had completed primary school, while less than 50 per cent of the 'literates' in the Muslim world did the same. Around 40 per cent of the 'literates' in the Christian world attendeduniversity while no more than two per cent of the 'literates' in theMuslim world did the same.
Muslim-majority countries have 230 scientists per one million Muslims.The US has 4,000 scientists per million and Japan has 5,000 per million.In the entire Arab world, the total number of full-time researchersis 35,000 and there are only 50 technicians per one million Arabs.(in the Christian world there are up to 1,000 technicians per onemillion).
Furthermore, the Muslim world spends 0.2 per cent of its GDP onresearch and development, while the Christian world spends aroundfive per cent of its GDP.Conclusion: The Muslim world lacks the capacity to produce knowledge!Daily newspapers per 1,000 people and number of book titles permillion are two indicators of whether knowledge is being diffused in asociety.
In Pakistan, there are 23 daily newspapers per 1,000 Pakistanis whilethe same ratio in Singapore is 360. In the UK , the number of booktitles per million stands at 2,000 while the same in Egypt is 20.
Conclusion: The Muslim world is failing to diffuse knowledge.
Exports of high technology products as a percentage of total exportsare an important indicator of knowledge application.
Pakistan 's export of high technology products as a percentage oftotal exports stands at one per cent.The same for Saudi Arabia is 0.3 per cent; Kuwait , Morocco , andAlgeria are all at 0.3 per cent, while Singapore is at 58 per cent.
Conclusion: The Muslim world is failing to apply knowledge.
Why are Muslims powerless?
.....Because we aren't producing knowledge,.....Because we aren't diffusing knowledge.,.....Because we aren't applying knowledge.
And, the future belongs to knowledge-based societies.
Interestingly, the combined annual GDP of 57 OIC-countries is under$2 trillion.
America , just by herself, produces goods and services worth $12 trillion;
China $8 trillion,
Japan $3.8 trillion and
Germany $2.4 trillion (purchasing power parity basis).Oil rich Saudi Arabia , UAE, Kuwait and Qatar collectively producegoods and services (mostly oil) worth $500 billion;Spain alone produces goods and services worth over $1 trillion,Catholic Poland $489 billion andBuddhist Thailand $545 billion...... ( Muslim GDP as a percentage of world GDP is fast declining ).
So, why are Muslims so powerless?
Answer: Lack of education.
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Nine Things Successful People Do Differently

2011-06-07T16:53:00.001-07:00

Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D

Why have you been so successful in reaching some of your goals, but not others? If you aren't sure, you are far from alone in your confusion. It turns out that even brilliant, highly accomplished people are pretty lousy when it comes to understanding why they succeed or fail. The intuitive answer — that you are born predisposed to certain talents and lacking in others — is really just one small piece of the puzzle. In fact, decades of research on achievement suggests that successful people reach their goals not simply because of who they are, but more often because of what they do.

1. Get specific. When you set yourself a goal, try to be as specific as possible. "Lose 5 pounds" is a better goal than "lose some weight," because it gives you a clear idea of what success looks like. Knowing exactly what you want to achieve keeps you motivated until you get there. Also, think about the specific actions that need to be taken to reach your goal. Just promising you'll "eat less" or "sleep more" is too vague — be clear and precise. "I'll be in bed by 10pm on weeknights" leaves no room for doubt about what you need to do, and whether or not you've actually done it.

2. Seize the moment to act on your goals. Given how busy most of us are, and how many goals we are juggling at once, it's not surprising that we routinely miss opportunities to act on a goal because we simply fail to notice them. Did you really have no time to work out today? No chance at any point to return that phone call? Achieving your goal means grabbing hold of these opportunities before they slip through your fingers.

To seize the moment, decide when and where you will take each action you want to take, in advance. Again, be as specific as possible (e.g., "If it's Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, I'll work out for 30 minutes before work.") Studies show that this kind of planning will help your brain to detect and seize the opportunity when it arises, increasing your chances of success by roughly 300%.

3. Know exactly how far you have left to go. Achieving any goal also requires honest and regular monitoring of your progress — if not by others, then by you yourself. If you don't know how well you are doing, you can't adjust your behavior or your strategies accordingly. Check your progress frequently — weekly, or even daily, depending on the goal.

4. Be a realistic optimist. When you are setting a goal, by all means engage in lots of positive thinking about how likely you are to achieve it. Believing in your ability to succeed is enormously helpful for creating and sustaining your motivation. But whatever you do, don't underestimate how difficult it will be to reach your goal. Most goals worth achieving require time, planning, effort, and persistence. Studies show that thinking things will come to you easily and effortlessly leaves you ill-prepared for the journey ahead, and significantly increases the odds of failure.

5. Focus on getting better, rather than being good. Believing you have the ability to reach your goals is important, but so is believing you can get the ability. Many of us believe that our intelligence, our personality, and our physical aptitudes are fixed — that no matter what we do, we won't improve. As a result, we focus on goals that are all about proving ourselves, rather than developing and acquiring new skills.

Fortunately, decades of research suggest that the belief in fixed ability is completely wrong — abilities of all kinds are profoundly malleable. Embracing the fact that you can change will allow you to make better choices, and reach your fullest potential. People whose goals are about getting better, rather than being good, take difficulty in stride, and appreciate the journey as much as the destination.

6. Have grit. Grit is a willingness to commit to long-term goals, and to persist in the face of difficulty. Studies show that gritty people obtain more education in their lifetime, and earn higher college GPAs. Grit predicts which cadets will stick out their first grueling year at West Point. In fact, grit even predicts which round contestants will make it to at the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

The good news is, if you aren't particularly gritty now, there is something you can do about it. People who lack grit more often than not believe that they just don't have the innate abilities successful people have. If that describes your own thinking .... well, there's no way to put this nicely: you are wrong. As I mentioned earlier, effort, planning, persistence, and good strategies are what it really takes to succeed. Embracing this knowledge will not only help you see yourself and your goals more accurately, but also do wonders for your grit.

7. Build your willpower muscle. Your self-control "muscle" is just like the other muscles in your body — when it doesn't get much exercise, it becomes weaker over time. But when you give it regular workouts by putting it to good use, it will grow stronger and stronger, and better able to help you successfully reach your goals.

To build willpower, take on a challenge that requires you to do something you'd honestly rather not do. Give up high-fat snacks, do 100 sit-ups a day, stand up straight when you catch yourself slouching, try to learn a new skill. When you find yourself wanting to give in, give up, or just not bother — don't. Start with just one activity, and make a plan for how you will deal with troubles when they occur ("If I have a craving for a snack, I will eat one piece of fresh or three pieces of dried fruit.") It will be hard in the beginning, but it will get easier, and that's the whole point. As your strength grows, you can take on more challenges and step-up your self-control workout.

8. Don't tempt fate. No matter how strong your willpower muscle becomes, it's important to always respect the fact that it is limited, and if you overtax it you will temporarily run out of steam. Don't try to take on two challenging tasks at once, if you can help it (like quitting smoking and dieting at the same time). And don't put yourself in harm's way — many people are overly-confident in their ability to resist temptation, and as a result they put themselves in situations where temptations abound. Successful people know not to make reaching a goal harder than it already is.

9. Focus on what you will do, not what you won't do. Do you want to successfully lose weight, quit smoking, or put a lid on your bad temper? Then plan how you will replace bad habits with good ones, rather than focusing only on the bad habits themselves. Research on thought suppression (e.g., "Don't think about white bears!") has shown that trying to avoid a thought makes it even more active in your mind. The same holds true when it comes to behavior — by trying not to engage in a bad habit, our habits get strengthened rather than broken.
If you want change your ways, ask yourself, What will I do instead? For example, if you are trying to gain control of your temper and stop flying off the handle, you might make a plan like "If I am starting to feel angry, then I will take three deep breaths to calm down." By using deep breathing as a replacement for giving in to your anger, your bad habit will get worn away over time until it disappears completely.

It is my hope that, after reading about the nine things successful people do differently, you have gained some insight into all the things you have been doing right all along. Even more important, I hope are able to identify the mistakes that have derailed you, and use that knowledge to your advantage from now on. Remember, you don't need to become a different person to become a more successful one. It's never what you are, but what you do.

Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D. is a motivational psychologist, and author of the new book Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals (Hudson Street Press, 2011). She is also an expert blogger on motivation and leadership for Fast Company and Psychology Today. Her personal blog, The Science of Success, can be found at www.heidigranthalvorson.com. Follow her on Twitter @hghalvorson

Thanks & Regards, G Hidayat Tjokrodjojo (milis pendidikan)

Fw:Lyrics When The Children Cry "... one united world"

2011-06-02T02:55:00.000-07:00

When The Children Cry

Artist(Band):White Lion

little child
dry your crying eyes
how can I explain
the fear you feel inside
cause you were born
into this evil world
where man is killing man
and no one knows just why
what have we become
just look what we have done
all that we destroyed
you must build again

when the children cry
let them know we tried
cause when the children sing
then the new world begins

little child
you must show the way
to a better day
for all the young
cause you were born
for all the world to see
that we all can live
with love and peace
no more presidents
and all the wars will end
one united world
under god

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Courtesy: world_citizen mailing list

Peace on Zionism’s Terms: Obama is the wrong target

2011-06-01T09:03:00.001-07:00

By Alan Hart
May 31, 2011 "Information Clearing House" ---- When I was reflecting on Netanyahu's domination and control of the Congress of the United States of America, the first headline that came into my mind for this article was Goodbye to peace. I'll now explain why I think the headline above is more appropriate.
Because of its flirtation with the proposition that peace between an Israeli and Palestinian state must be based on pre-1967 borders with mutually agreed land swaps, President Obama's speech on Middle East policy principles did one useful thing. And it was Ha-aretz's Gideon Levy, the conscience of Israeli journalism, who put his finger most firmly on it. We should be grateful to Obama, he wrote, because his speech "exposed the naked truth – that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not want peace."
The Gentile me almost always agrees with Gideon but on this occasion, and leaving aside the fact that it was Netanyahu's rejection of what Obama said initially that exposed the naked truth, I think Gideon's version of it needs two clarifications.
One is that the truth was exposed like never before only to those who have not been brainwashed by Zionist propaganda – only a minority of Americans, for example.
The other boils down to this. What Netanyahu does want, and only because of his concern about Israel's growing isolation in the world, is peace on Zionism's terms, which means the Palestinians giving up their struggle for an acceptable minimum of justice and accepting crumbs from Zionism's table in the shape of three or four Bantustatans on about 40% of the West Bank, and which they could call a state if they wished. That's what Netanyahu meant but did not say when, at his arrogant, insufferably self-righteous and devious best, he assured both houses of the U.S. Congress that "We'll be generous about the size of the Palestinian state." Put another way, what Netanyahu doesn't want is peace on terms the vast majority of Palestinians and most other Arabs and Muslims could accept – a complete end to Israel's 1967 occupation and a contiguous and viable Palestinian mini state on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with Jerusalem an open city and the capital of two states.
The only question of interest about Netanyahu is this. Does he really believe the nonsense he speaks about the alleged threats to Israel's security or is he a smooth-talking but diabolical salesman, selling what he knows to be Zionist propaganda lies as truth?
Obama's speech also exposed (again) the weakness of his own position on policy matters for Israel/Palestine when he said: "Ultimately it is up to the Israelis and the Palestinians to take action. No peace can be imposed upon them – not by the United States, not by anybody else."
As things are that means Israel remains free to continue its criminal ways:
- defying UN Security Council resolutions and international law;
- pushing ahead with more and more illegal settlements to consolidate its hold on those parts of occupied West Bank it intends to keep for ever;
- oppressing the occupied Palestinians in the hope that, out of complete despair, they will either give up their struggle for an acceptable minimum amount of justice and be prepared to accept crumbs from Zionism's table or, better still from Zionism's perspective, will abandon their homeland and seek a new life elsewhere in the Arab world and beyond; and
- resorting to state terrorism (attacks on neighbouring Arab countries and possibly Iran) whenever its leaders feel the need to impose their will on the region.
Because of Israel's dependence on the U.S. in a number of ways, not the least of them being the American veto of Security Council resolutions not to Israel's liking, Obama does have the leverage to impose a Middle East peace on terms that would provide the Palestinians with an acceptable amount of justice without any risk to Israel's security. And there's a very compelling case for saying he ought to do so if only to best protect America's own interests. I believe Obama knows this, so the question of real interest about him is this. Why won't he act?
The answer of almost all of his critics who call and campaign in various ways for justice for the Palestinians is that he's a willing tool of the Zionist lobby. I don't believe this to be the case. I think the reality of Obama's position was best summed up by Professor John J. Mearsheimer. To Al Jazeera recently he said this:
" The sad fact is that Obama has remarkably little manoeuvre room on the foreign policy front. The most important item on his agenda is settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and there he knows what has to be done: Push both sides toward a two-state solution, which is the best outcome for all the parties, including the United States. Indeed, he has been trying to do just that since he took office in January 2009. But the remarkably powerful Israel lobby makes it virtually impossible for him to put meaningful pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is committed to creating a Greater Israel in which the Palestinians are restricted to a handful of disconnected and impoverished enclaves. And Obama is certainly not going to buck the lobby – with the 2012 presidential election looming larger every day… The bottom line is that the US is in deep trouble in the Middle East and needs new policies for that region. But regrettably there is little prospect of that happening anytime soon. All of this is to say that there was no way that Obama could do anything but disappoint with Thursday's speech, because he is trapped in an iron cage."
This cage is, of course, the Zionist lobby's control through its many stooges in Congress of policy for Israel-Palestine. It's the cage in which post Eisenhower every American president has been trapped. As former ambassador Chas Freeman put it in a recent interview with Russia Today, Israeli leaders don't have to listen to the president because they know their lobby can block him in Congress.
And that's why, despite the fact that like Ilan Pappe I am sick and tired of Obama's rhetoric, I've come to the conclusion that no useful purpose is served by supporters of justice for the Palestinians attacking him. He's the wrong target. The right target is America's pork-barrel system of politics which puts what passes for democracy up for sale to the highest bidders. In this context I say, have always said, that I don't blame the Zionist lobby for playing the game the way it does. It is only playing by the rules. It's the rules that need to be changed if Obama in a second term, or any future American president, is going to be able to escape from the cage and use the leverage he has to oblige Israel to be serious about peace on terms virtually all Palestinians and most other Arabs and Muslims everywhere could accept.
Some members of Congress who applauded Netanyahu in a scene that reminded me of the enthusiasm for Hitler at Nazi rallies accused Obama of betraying Israel. There has indeed been a betrayal, but what has been betrayed is democracy in America. The many members of Congress who read from Zionism's script and dance to its tune in order to secure election campaign funds and organized Jewish votes in tight races are not merely stooges. Because they are putting the interests of a foreign power above those of their own country, it's time to call them what they really are – traitors.
In my view exposing them as such should be given the highest priority by all who campaign in various ways for justice for the Palestinians and peace for all.
Footnote:
Memo to all concerned in Congress and the White House.
Israel is not a "Jewish state". How could it be when about a quarter of its citizens are Arabs and mainly Muslim? Israel is a Zionist state. It will only be a Jewish state when it has completed its ethnic cleansing program.
http://www.alanhart.net/

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Jl. Kapten P. Tendean Kav. 12 - 14 A, Jakarta 12790
Phone: 7917-7000, 7918-4544 ext. 3542, Fax: 79184558, 79184627

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"Orang boleh pandai setinggi langit, tapi selama ia tidak menulis, ia akan hilang di dalam masyarakat dan dari sejarah..." (Pramoedya Ananta Toer)

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Corruption worsens in Indonesia: survey

2011-05-27T06:46:00.000-07:00

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/corruption-worsens-in-indonesia-survey-20100309-pvmq.html

Corruption worsens in Indonesia: survey
Bernice Han
March 9, 2010
AFP

Indonesia remains the most corrupt country in Southeast Asia and graft is getting even worse, a poll of businessmen says, dealing a blow to the president's efforts to clean up the country.

The news comes as President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is under mounting pressure with his vice-president and finance minister facing a criminal probe into their role in the controversial bailout of a troubled bank.

The annual poll by the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC), made available to AFP on Tuesday, put Southeast Asia's biggest economy last in a table of regional economies with a score of 9.27 out of the worst possible 10.

Indonesia also came last in 2009 but with a marginally better score of 8.32.

Cambodia was ranked the second most corrupt regional nation with a grade of 9.10, followed by Vietnam and the Philippines.

Singapore remained top of the list with a score of 1.42, while Australia was second with 2.28 and Hong Kong third on 2.67.

Zero means the country or territory is seen to suffer the least corruption among politicians and civil servants, PERC said in the report.

The Hong Kong-based consultancy said Indonesian lawmakers' call for a criminal probe into the Yudhoyono government's bailout of Bank Century in 2008 reflected attempts by a corrupt establishment to maintain the status quo.

"Corruption has become a charge being used by corrupt people to protect themselves and to stifle reform," PERC said.

"The whole fight against corruption is in danger of being corrupted," it said.

Vice President Boediono and Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati, who both authorised the $US724 million ($A796.3 million) bailout, have consistently ranked as among the most respected figures in Yudhoyono's cabinet among foreign investors.

The probe into their decision to rescue Bank Century may cost them their jobs, but "is entirely manipulated and entirely political", PERC said.

Yudhoyono, a liberal ex-general who first came to power in 2004, was re-elected in 2009 on promises to root out corruption, which riddles every aspect of Indonesian public life, from the courts to the customs office.

Hong Kong slipped a place from a year ago, with PERC saying questionable tactics by powerful property developers in the Chinese territory likely dragged it down.

"There are still criticisms of some practices, particularly in the real-estate sector, concerning tactics used by developers that, to be generous, play on a lack of transparency that would not be allowed in many other markets," PERC said.

"This could account for why a number of perceptions this year for Hong Kong are slightly worse than last year. However, overall Hong Kong has maintained its favourable ranking in our survey," it said.

The United States - included for comparison purposes - was fourth with a score of 3.42, followed by Japan (3.49), Macau (4.96), South Korea (5.98), Taiwan (6.28), Malaysia (6.47) and China (6.52).

"Measuring the level of corruption (in China) is nothing more than guesswork," PERC said.

"What is fairly clear is that the problem of corruption is more severe at the local level of government and business, particularly state-owned enterprises, than at the national level, although there are plenty examples of graft at the national level too," it said.

PERC's poll was conducted from December to February, and involved 2,147 mid-level and senior Asian and expatriate business executives working in the 16 economies.

© 2011 AFP

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Top 10 End of the World Prophecies

2011-05-21T17:21:00.001-07:00

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What Would Jesus Do: Florida Church to Pray Sunday for Osama bin Laden

2011-05-20T07:10:00.001-07:00

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Death Comes for the Master Terrorist: Osama bin Laden (1957-2011)

2011-05-02T03:32:00.001-07:00

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Palm Sunday Plea: Let Priests Marry

2011-04-17T20:24:00.001-07:00

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Suicide Bomber Hits Indonesian Mosque

2011-04-15T05:27:00.001-07:00

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Indonesia: Bali Struggles amid a Surge in Tourism

2011-04-05T03:37:00.000-07:00

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God is my source

2011-03-11T18:55:00.001-08:00

Today, we're fasting from the thought that says, "I just don't make enough money at my job." While your salary may not be what you would like it, THIS IS A WRONG WAY OF THINKING AND MUST BE CHANGED.

Let's change it TODAY:

1. Your job is not your 'source'. God is your source. Philippians 4:19 says, "My God shall supply all your need according to His riches...in Christ Jesus." Notice, He meets your need according to His riches, not according to your salary.

2. See your job as your SEED capital. Remember, SEED meets NEED. (Genesis 8:22) THIS THINKING MUST PENETRATE OUR LIVES. Our SEED is what determines our harvest. Our job provides us with seed to sow into God's Kingdom.

3. THINK SUPERNATURAL. Don't let life brainwash you into NATURAL EXPECTATIONS. Believe in the supernatural provision of God. Ephesians 3:20 says God is able to do exceeding abundantly ABOVE AND BEYOND, ALL you can ask or think.

4. Don't forget to ASK big, and think big! (Ephesians 3:20)

5. EXPECT harvests. If you have tithed, sowed, given—you have stored up harvests that will come. Galatians 6:6-9 says "In due season, you shall reap..."

6. Expect stolen things restored 7-fold! (Proverbs 6:31-32) Identify money, opportunities or blessings that have been stolen from you by the devil. And demand that he give it back. (Matthew 18:18)

Think It & Say It:
God's riches are available to me, as I put Him first in my life. God is my source. I will not be limited by my salary. I expect SUPERNATURAL harvests from all the good seeds I've sown. God IS doing beyond what I have asked or thought. I command all stolen opportunities, money and blessings to be returned to me, in Jesus' Name! Pastor Gregory Dickow
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Indonesian Authorities Vow Inquiry After Attack

2011-02-08T07:39:00.000-08:00

Published: February 08, 2011

JAKARTA - The gruesome video is as disturbing for what is not happening as much as for what is.

Hundreds of shouting Muslim villagers carrying machetes and sticks march on a house where about 20 members of Ahmadiyya, a minority Muslim sect, are holed up. Roof tiles and windows explode in a hail of rocks until, surging forward in greater numbers, the villagers break through.

Those not lucky enough to escape are brought outside and dumped, beaten, stripped and muddied on the ground. As crowds surge, angry villagers hit and stomp on their apparently lifeless bodies.

Throughout the video shot on Sunday - despite a few desultory attempts at intervention - thoroughly outnumbered police officers simply look on as three Ahmadis are killed and half a dozen wounded. The crowd goes home, with no arrests.

The violence in a village in the Indonesian province of Banten is the latest incident in what advocates say is a rising tide of oppression against the Ahmadiyya sect, which originates in South Asia and has been denounced as "deviant" by Indonesia's top clerics and subject to a government decree restricting its activities.

Advocates say the attack, in full view of the authorities, is a clear sign, advocates say, that the government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is turning a blind eye to mob violence against a range of religious minorities stoked by a vocal Islamist fringe.

"The police have done nothing from the beginning," said Bonar Tigor Naipospos, the vice chairman of the Setara Institute, a Jakarta organization that promotes religious tolerance. "No preventative action from police, not just yesterday, but in every case related with religious conflict."

"They think they're above the law so they can do anything without sanction, without action from law enforcement," he said.

The latest incident is the bloodiest in an increasing number of attacks against Ahmadiyya, which is detested by some mainstream Muslims who see the sect's founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, as a heretic for claiming he was a prophet.

There were 50 incidents of religious oppression against Ahmadis in 2010, up from 33 in 2009 and 15 in 2008, according to the Setara Institute. Even more incidents have occurred involving attacks by Muslims on Christian houses of worship deemed to lack the proper permits.

Responding to pressure from hardliners to disband Ahmadiyya, the government of Mr. Yudhoyono in 2008 passed a compromise decree banning Ahmadis from proselytizing. The government insists the ban is essential for averting conflict, but liberals say it merely provides a pretext for further violence. Conservatives, including the religious affairs minister, Suryadharma Ali, have argued that the government should go further and break up Ahmadiyya.

Officials publicly condemned the Sunday attack and pledged to crack down on those behind it.

Mr. Yudhoyono on Monday ordered a special investigation and called for harsh punishment for those involved, including any government officials and police officers found negligent.

A spokesman for the National Police, Col. Boy Rafli Amar, said the police had done everything in their power to prevent violence between villagers and Ahmadis, which had been simmering for days. But when villagers suddenly charged at the home of a local Ahmadi leader, the police were simply surprised and outnumbered. Eight people had been taken in for questioning as witnesses but none had so far been declared suspects, he said.

"There were efforts but it was just that there weren't enough police to balance out the community. This village is far away, isolated, in the interior," Colonel Amar said.

"Police will act strongly against anyone who commits violence, who violates the law, especially if it involves people getting killed. So, no need to worry. We'll look for whoever is involved up there."An initial investigation showed that "provocateurs" had incited villagers to violence, Colonel Amar said, but it was too early to say if the mob had been directed by members of an Islamic group.

Radical groups, like the Islamic Defenders Front, have been able to intimidate minorities with impunity, rights groups say.

But Firdaus Mubarik, a spokesman for Ahmadiyya in Jakarta, said it was clear that the police were tolerating violence against Ahmadis and Christians as part of a broader approach by Mr. Yudhoyono of refusing to tackle Islamists, who are a slim but vocal minority in Indonesian politics.

"The police and the state are consistently allowing violence against Ahmadiyya," Mr. Mubarik said. "Every time, the police don't catch the offenders. Even those who are arrested are only the followers, not the instigators, and they're punished extremely lightly.

"I believe SBY knows what's happening to Ahmadiyya and he's letting it happen," he said, referring to the president by his initials.

To back his claim that the Sunday attack was coordinated and premeditated, Mr. Mubarik pointed out that the mob arrived without uniforms, but wore blue ribbons to differentiate themselves from the Ahmadis.Throughout the attack, members of the mob appeared to show little fear of being caught and punished, he said.

One piece of supporting evidence, according to Mr. Mubarik: at one point during a video of the clash, as rocks fly back and forth, one attacker notices he is being filmed, and turns to the camera. Pressing his palms together in front of his face in a position of prayer, he looks at the camera, and offers a wide smile.

Source:
(http://mobile.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/world/asia/08iht-indo08.xml)
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Churches destroyed after blasphemy sentence handed down

2011-02-08T06:42:00.000-08:00

Feb 8, 2011 12:50 GMT

Three Christian churches in Indonesia were destroyed by an angry mob during clashes with police Tuesday that erupted after a local court handed down a verdict against a Christian man accused of blasphemy against Islam, authorities said. The man was given a five-year sentence, said national police spokesman Col. Boy Rafli Amar, but the protesters wanted him to face a stiffer penalty.

The destroyed churches were in Temanggung, Central Java, Amar said. "The scene is now under police control," he said. "It's calm but security is high." Security personnel are searching for those responsible for the attack on the churches, and authorities are "asking local religious leaders to stay calm and find diplomatic ways to solve the problem."

The attacks were the second violent incident against minority religious groups in Indonesia in the past three days. On Sunday, a mob of about 1,000 people, wielding knives and stones, attacked about 25 members of the Muslim minority sect, Ahmadiyah, in Cikeusik village in West Java's Banten province.

Three people were killed and six others injured. The crowd opposed the presence of the Ahmadiyah in the village and demanded the group stop its activities. Amateur video of the incident obtained by Human Rights Watch showed people pummeling what looked like lifeless bodies with sticks and rocks. The video has been posted on the internet, fueling public outrage.

In a televised statement Monday, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono condemned the violence against Ahmadiyah and ordered a thorough investigation. Human rights activists, however, are calling for the government to revoke a ministerial decree issued in 2008 that bans the community's religious activities.

"How many Ahmadiyah have to die at the hands of mobs before the police step in?" said Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "The Indonesian government should end this wave of hate crimes and immediately revoke the 2008 anti-Ahmadiyah decree, which encourages these vicious attacks."

The Setara Institute for Peace and Democracy, a local think tank, noted in a recent report a marked increase in the number of attacks against Ahmadiyah and other minority religions in Indonesia in recent years.

The most populous Muslim country in the world, Indonesia has previously been touted as an example of tolerance and democracy in the Islamic world. But a 2009 study from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life in Washington suggested it was actually among the most restrictive countries when it comes to religion.
(CNN.com)
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Lee Kuan Yew Urges Muslims to 'Be Less Strict

2011-01-31T22:40:00.000-08:00

http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/home/lee-kuan-yew-urges-muslims-to-be-less-strict/418667

Lee Kuan Yew Urges Muslims to 'Be Less Strict'

January 24, 2011

Singapore's Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew speaking at the launch of his book titled "Lee Kuan Yew: Hard Truths to keep Singapore going", in Singapore on Friday. Lee urged Singaporeans to preserve racial and religious harmony, saying the city-state was still "a nation in the making" despite its rapid rise to prosperity. (AFP Photo)Singapore. Singapore's founding father Lee Kuan Yew has urged local Muslims to "be less strict on Islamic observances" to aid integration and the city-state's nation-building process.

Singapore has a predominantly Chinese population, with minority races including Muslim Malays and Indians, and Lee has always stressed the importance of racial harmony.

"I would say today, we can integrate all religions and races except Islam," he said in "Lee Kuan Yew: Hard Truths to Keep Singapore Going," a new book containing his typically frank views on the city-state and its future.

"I think we were progressing very nicely until the surge of Islam came and if you asked me for my observations, the other communities have easier integration - friends, intermarriages and so on..." he stated.

"I think the Muslims socially do not cause any trouble, but they are distinct and separate," Lee added, calling on the community to "be less strict on Islamic observances.

"During the book's launch on Friday, the self-described "pragmatist" warned Singaporeans against complacency, saying the largely ethnic Chinese republic was still a nation in the making.

Describing Singapore in the book as an "80-storey building on marshy land," Lee said it must contend with hostility from larger Muslim neighbors.

"We've got friendly neighbors? Grow up... There is this drive to put us down because we are interlopers," he said, citing alleged Malaysian and Indonesian efforts to undermine Singapore's crucial port business.

Singapore was ejected from the Malaysian federation in 1965 in large part due to Kuala Lumpur's preferential policies for ethnic Malays, and has since built up Southeast Asia's most modern military to deter foreign aggression.

Turning to local politics, Lee said the ruling People's Action Party, which has been in power since 1959 when Singapore gained political autonomy from colonial ruler Britain, will someday lose its grip on power.

"There will come a time when eventually the public will say, look, let's try the other side, either because the PAP has declined in quality or the opposition has put up a team which is equal to the PAP ... That day will come."

"In the next 10 years to 20 years, I don't think it'll happen. Beyond that, I cannot tell."Lee said that despite a survey showing the contrary, he believed Singaporeans were not yet ready for a non-ethnic-Chinese prime minister.

"A poll says 90 percent of Chinese Singaporeans say they will elect a non-Chinese as PM. Yes, this is the ideal. You believe these polls? Utter rubbish. They say what is politically correct," he stated.

He also defended the policy of promoting marriage between highly-educated Singaporeans, a policy seen by critics as a form of social engineering, and dismissed the notion of love at first sight.

"People get educated, the bright ones rise, they marry equally well-educated spouses. The result is their children are likely to be smarter than the children of those who are gardeners," he said.

"It's a fact of life. You get a good mare, you don't want a dud stallion to breed with your good mare. You get a poor foal."People who are "attracted by physical characteristics" may regret it, he said.

Lee also revealed that he had donated to charity all his earnings of S$13 million ($10 million) since stepping down as prime minister in 1990 after 31 years in power.

Singapore's cabinet ministers are the highest paid in the world as part of a strategy to prevent corruption and attract talent from the private sector.

Lee, who holds the special title Minister Mentor, now serves as an adviser to his son Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who came to power in 2004.Amid all the hard-edged talk, Lee showed his tender side when asked about his late wife Kwa Geok Choo, who died aged 89 in October last year.

"It means more solitude. No one to talk to when the day's work is done," Lee said in the book, the result of exclusive interviews with journalists from the country's leading daily, the Straits Times.
Agence France-Presse

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Top Islamic Scholars Suspend Talks With Vatican

2011-01-21T02:25:00.000-08:00

January 20, 2011

Egypt's Al Azhar University, the world's leading center of Sunni Islamic thought, has suspended talks with the Vatican in protest over the "insulting remarks" by Pope Benedict XVI—a reference to the Pope's statement that Egypt should protect Coptic Christians from mob violence.

The Pope's protest against a massacre in Alexandria was "unacceptable interference" in Egypt's affairs, a spokesman for Al Azhar said. At a January 20 meeting, the spokesman said, the scholars of Al Azhar decided to break off all talks with the Vatican "indefinitely."

The Islamic leader said that his institution is "still waiting for an apology" from the Pontiff for his remarks about the massacre of Copts and for his comments on Islam in his Regensburg address of 2006. He added that in his January 1 message for the World Day of Peace, in which he condemned violence against Christians, the Pope should also have condemned violence against Muslims in Iraq.

The announcement from Cairo apparently caught Vatican officials by surprise. Father Federico Lombardi, the director of the Vatican press office, said that the Vatican remained open to dialogue with any willing Islamic partners.

The rebuff from Al Azhar is a serious blow to hopes for Catholic-Muslim dialogue. The Egyptian institution had been one of the few Islamic centers willing to engage in discussions with the Holy See, joining with Vatican officials in annual talks that had produced joint statements condemning religious violence. Last year, upon the death of the head of Al Azhar, Sheik Mohammend Sayyed Tantawi, Pope Benedict remembered the deceased Islamic leader as "a valued partner in the dialogue between Muslims and Catholics."

John Paul II Named World Youth Day Patron

2011-01-18T02:21:00.000-08:00

Cardinal to Young People: It Is Worthwhile

MADRID, JAN. 17, 2011 (Zenit.org).- A standing ovation greeted the news that Pope John Paul II has been named a patron of the next World Youth Day, which will take place Aug. 16-21 in Madrid.

Cardinal Stanis³aw Ry³ko, president of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, the Vatican dicastery in charge of World Youth Days, made this announcement on Friday to a group of over 230 delegates gathered in Madrid for the organization of the forthcoming event.

The announcement came shortly after the Vatican communiqué that John Paul II, who initiated the first youth days during his pontificate, will be beatified on May 1 by Benedict XVI.

The cardinal recalled how Karol Wojtyla regarded himself as a "friend of young people" and said he was very happy "to be able to communicate the news during this meeting of delegates."

The delegates, representing 84 countries and 57 ecclesial realities worldwide, held a four-day organizational meeting that ended Saturday outside Madrid.

Cardinal Ry³ko presided over the meeting along with Archbishop Antonio Maria Rouco Varela of Madrid.

Auxiliary Bishop César Franco of Madrid, general coordinator of the 2011 World Youth Day, explained that John Paul II is added to the list of other patrons for the event: St. Isidore the Worker, St. Francis Xavier, St. John of the Cross, St. John of Avila, St. Rose of Lima and St. Rafael Arnaiz.

Decisive stage

Cardinal Ry³ko, in a press conference about last week's gathering, stated that they are in "a decisive stage in the itinerary of spiritual, organizational and logistical preparation of Madrid's 2011 World Youth Day."

Later, to a group of volunteers, he stated, "It will be very important for many young people coming from all corners of the world to see your capacity for hospitality, your spirit of sacrifice during World Youth Day, at times in hidden tasks, but not because of that less important."

The cardinal added, "Don't say to your friends, 'You must come to World Youth Day,' but 'It is worthwhile!'"

Cardinal Rouco Varela noted the "lively, agile and dynamic" nature of the meeting, where delegates were given "firsthand information on their needs and expectations."

The meeting participants were given information on the various aspects of the event's organization: housing, maintenance, transportation, registration, visas and volunteer work.

They also visited the main venues for the event ceremonies: the Cuatro Vientos airfield, and the surroundings of Cibeles Square.

Barbara Koorbanally, a South African representative, mentioned several initiatives of the young people of her country in preparation for the event. For example, she noted that a replica of the World Youth Day Cross -- which has been going across Spain since September of 2009 -- is being taken throughout South Africa to prepare young people for the event in Madrid.

Tiago Oliveira, a delegate from Brazil, pointed out that young Brazilians "see in Spain a sister country, so they are very excited." Some 20,000 young people from this country are expected to attend the event.

Would you run like others did?

2011-01-18T02:11:00.000-08:00

Ask yourself the question

"WOULD YOU RUN?" after you read this!!! Imagine this happening to you...

One Sunday morning during service; a 2000 member congregation was surprised to
see two men enter...both covered from head to toe in black and carrying
sub-machine guns.

One of the men proclaimed,
"Anyone willing to take a bullet for Christ remain where you are"

Immediately the choir fled...

The deacons fled...

And most of the congregation fled...

How about you?

Out of 2000 there only remained 20

Then the man who had spoken took off his hood...
He then looked at the preacher and said :

Okay pastor, I got rid of all the hypocrites...
Now you may begin your service. Have a nice day!
And he turned and walked out.

It's funny how simple it is for people to trash God
And then wonder why the world is in the condition it is today...

Funny how everyone wants to go to heaven..
Provided they do not have to believe, think, say, or do anything the bible says.

Funny how someone can say :"I believe in God",
but still follow Satan (who, by the way, also "believes" in God)

Funny how can you sen a thousand 'funny joke' through email and they spread like
wildfire...
But when you start sending the message regarding to Lord, you think twice about
sharing.

Funny how the lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene pass freely through cyberspace..
But the public discussion of Jesus is suppresses in the school and work place.

Funny, isn't it?

Funny how someone can be so fired up for Christ on sabbath / Sunday...
But be an invisible christian the rest of the week.

Funny how when you go to forward this message, you will not send to many on your
address list because you're not sure what they believe...
Or what they will think of you by sending it

Funny how I can be more worried about what other people think of me... than what
God thinks of me.

will you share this?

Indonesia: Christian Churches Under Attack

2011-01-15T03:49:00.000-08:00

UN Official Condemns Rising Religious Fanaticism

JAKARTA, Indonesia, JAN. 13, 2011 (Zenit.org).- Christian communities in Indonesia are reporting multiple attacks on churches and places of worship in 2010, while U.N. officials are calling for the cessation of sectarian violence and discriminatory laws that lead to interreligious conflict.

Theophilus Bela, secretary general of the Indonesian Committee on Religion and Peace and president of Jakarta Christian Communication Forum, was part of a delegation last month to the United States to raise awareness of the anti-Christian persecution in his country.

The delegation met with religious leaders, government leaders in the White House, National Security Council, and State Department, and U.N. officials.

Bela noted that Navanethem Pillay, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, stated that attacks on religious minorities in places like Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan and Indonesia should serve as a wake-up call to authorities everywhere to combat rising fanaticism. She underlined the duty of all countries to protect the freedom of religion by eradicating sectarian violence and rooting out discriminatory laws that can lead to conflict.

Assaults

Among the attacks on Christian places of worship, Bela reported that the Catholic chapel of Christ the King in Desa Blimbing was hit by a homemade bomb on Dec. 7.

A homemade bomb was also found at a Marian shrine in Prambanan at the end of November.

The Catholic chapel of St. Joseph in Pare was set on fire on Oct. 12.

On Sept. 11, a group attacked the Catholic parish church "Alleluya" in Tanah Grogot and broke the windows.

Similarly, the windows were broken at St. Bellarminus Catholic School in Jatibening by a mob of radical Muslims on May 7. The next day, the mob returned, but police were able to avert another assault.

The Catholic hospital "Brayat Minula" in Banjarsari was hit with stones, and a window was broken on the same day that Cardinal Julius Darmaatmadja, former archbishop of Jakarta, was due to visit for the inauguration of a new building for the institution.

A Catholic chapel in Capar was threatened on Feb. 18 by members of the Muslim Reform Movement.

The Catholic church of St. John the Baptist in Parung was prohibited from celebrating Mass on the feast of the Ascension due to a radical cleric from the local Muslim Ulama Council who often speaks out against the church.

Another radical Muslim cleric closed access to the building site of the Catholic church of St. Mary Immaculate in Kali Deras, halting progress on the construction.

Local authorities closed a place of Catholic pilgrimage in honor of Mary in Desa Jati Mulya due to protests by local Muslims.

Other radical Muslim organizations pressured local authorities to prohibit the celebration of Mass at the Catholic retreat center "Wisma Semadi Klender" in Jakarta, though the decision was later reversed through the intercession of Bela.

Radical Muslims also protested at the rectory of the Catholic parish of St. Mary the Immaculate Heart in Cicurug, and the pastor was forced to sign a letter promising that the house would be only be used as his residence and not for worship.

The Catholic chapel of Rancaekek of the parish of St. Odilia in Cicadas was closed down by local authorities.

Local authorities halted the building of St. Mary Catholic church in Purwakarta due to fear of the local radical Muslim groups.

Protestant churches

Bela's report also included attacks on various Protestant Christian churches over the past year.

This included violence against the Huria Kristen Batak Protestant congregation in Pondok Timur, which was forced to begin celebrating services outdoors on an empty lot after authorities closed and sealed the church in July. The congregation suffered various assaults during their Sunday services, and on Sept. 12, a group of aggressors on motorcycles stabbed a 50-year-old man and beat the pastor over the head.

Bela reported that five Protestant Christian churches were burnt down and demolished, including in some cases the homes of the pastors and workers. Some ten other churches suffered mob attacks with stones, guns or threats by radical Muslim groups. Another 14 churches were closed by local authorities.

The report concluded by stating that there have been more anti-Christian attacks, but without sufficient data on details.

__._,_.___

Christianity Under Siege in the Muslim World

2011-01-05T08:17:00.000-08:00

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Interesting article on TIME Mobile: The Real War on Christmas: The Failure to Teach Religion

2010-12-23T03:02:00.000-08:00

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Freedom of Religion

2010-12-23T02:50:00.000-08:00

Christians and Moslem can not live together in harmony. Altough, uur country accept the principle "freedom of religion" (as formulated in Constitution), but the freedom is always limited by the mayority of moslem population.

I think that moslems and christians can not live together in harmony forever except all people become Mohammedan followers.

Is it true that a religion bring peace to the world?

One of story about this disharmony, here it is, I quoted from Kompas.com newspaper.

MUI: Christmas Decor in Indonesia 'Excessive'

JAKARTA, KOMPAS.com - Indonesia's top Islamic body said Thursday that Christmas decorations in malls, amusement centers and public places were "excessive and provocative" in the Muslim-majority country.

Christmas ornamentation had been put up in an "excessive and provocative way," said Muhyidin Junaedi, one of the chairmen of the Indonesia Ulema Council, or MUI.

"It should be done in a proportional manner as Muslims are the majority here, otherwise it will hurt their feelings," he said.

He said the MUI issued a recommendation urging mall and recreation center managers to act proportionally in decorating their premises.

"We received complaints from a number of malls' employees who are forced to wear Santa Claus costumes, which are against their faith. Such things should not have happened," he said.

"We need to restrain Muslims from joining the festivities," Junaedi said.He said the body had no plan to turn the recommendation, made on Tuesday, into an Islamic edict. Nearly 90% of Indonesia's 234 million people are Muslims.

Editor: Jimmy Hitipeuw Source : AFP
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Interesting article on TIME Mobile: In Pakistan, Christianity Earns a Death Sentence

2010-12-05T03:50:00.000-08:00

I think it is a bad thing to build life in peace between religion. Sent from TIME Mobile. To get the free TIME Mobile application on your own BlackBerry device today, visit http://app.time.com

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Interesting article on TIME Mobile: Transcript: TIME Interview with WikiLeaks' Julian Assange

2010-12-01T16:59:00.000-08:00

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Exclusive: Google, CIA Invest in ‘Future’ of Web Monitoring

2010-08-01T17:50:00.001-07:00

By Noah Shachtman

July 29, 2010 "Wired" -- The investment arms of the CIA and Google are both backing a company that monitors the web in real time — and says it uses that information to predict the future.

The company is called Recorded Future, and it scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, organizations, actions and incidents — both present and still-to-come. In a white paper, the company says its temporal analytics engine “goes beyond search” by “looking at the ‘invisible links’ between documents that talk about the same, or related, entities and events.”

The idea is to figure out for each incident who was involved, where it happened and when it might go down. Recorded Future then plots that chatter, showing online “momentum” for any given event.

“The cool thing is, you can actually predict the curve, in many cases,” says company CEO Christopher Ahlberg, a former Swedish Army Ranger with a PhD in computer science.

Which naturally makes the 16-person Cambridge, Massachusetts, firm attractive to Google Ventures, the search giant’s investment division, and to In-Q-Tel, which handles similar duties for the CIA and the wider intelligence community.

It’s not the very first time Google has done business with America’s spy agencies. Long before it reportedly enlisted the help of the National Security Agency to secure its networks, Google sold equipment to the secret signals-intelligenc e group. In-Q-Tel backed the mapping firm Keyhole, which was bought by Google in 2004 — and then became the backbone for Google Earth.

This appears to be the first time, however, that the intelligence community and Google have funded the same startup, at the same time. No one is accusing Google of directly collaborating with the CIA. But the investments are bound to be fodder for critics of Google, who already see the search giant as overly cozy with the U.S. government, and worry that the company is starting to forget its “don’t be evil” mantra.

America’s spy services have become increasingly interested in mining “open source intelligence” — information that’s publicly available, but often hidden in the daily avalanche of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos and radio reports.

“Secret information isn’t always the brass ring in our profession,” then CIA-director General Michael Hayden told a conference in 2008. “In fact, there’s a real satisfaction in solving a problem or answering a tough question with information that someone was dumb enough to leave out in the open.”

U.S. spy agencies, through In-Q-Tel, have invested in a number of firms to help them better find that information. Visible Technologies crawls over half a million web 2.0 sites a day, scraping more than a million posts and conversations taking place on blogs, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon. Attensity applies the rules of grammar to the so-called “unstructured text” of the web to make it more easily digestible by government databases. Keyhole (now Google Earth) is a staple of the targeting cells in military-intelligen ce units.

Recorded Future strips from web pages the people, places and activities they mention. The company examines when and where these events happened (“spatial and temporal analysis”) and the tone of the document (“sentiment analysis”). Then it applies some artificial-intellig ence algorithms to tease out connections between the players. Recorded Future maintains an index with more than 100 million events, hosted on Amazon.com servers. The analysis, however, is on the living web.

“We’re right there as it happens,” Ahlberg told Danger Room as he clicked through a demonstration. “We can assemble actual real-time dossiers on people.”

Recorded Future certainly has the potential to spot events and trends early. Take the case of Hezbollah’s long-range missiles. On March 21, Israeli President Shimon Peres leveled the allegation that the terror group had Scud-like weapons. Scouring Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s past statements, Recorded Future found corroborating evidence from a month prior that appeared to back up Peres’ accusations.

That’s one of several hypothetical cases Recorded Future runs in its blog devoted to intelligence analysis. But it’s safe to assume that the company already has at least one spy agency’s attention. In-Q-Tel doesn’t make investments in firms without an “end customer” ready to test out that company’s products.

Both Google Ventures and In-Q-Tel made their investments in 2009, shortly after the company was founded. The exact amounts weren’t disclosed, but were under $10 million each. Google’s investment came to light earlier this year online. In-Q-Tel, which often announces its new holdings in press releases, quietly uploaded a brief mention of its investment a few weeks ago.

Both In-Q-Tel and Google Ventures have seats on Recorded Future’s board. Ahlberg says those board members have been “very helpful,” providing business and technology advice, as well as introducing him to potential customers. Both organizations, it’s safe to say, will profit handsomely if Recorded Future is ever sold or taken public. Ahlberg’s last company, the corporate intelligence firm Spotfire, was acquired in 2007 for $195 million in cash.

Google Ventures did not return requests to comment for this article. In-Q-Tel Chief of Staff Lisbeth Poulos e-mailed a one-line statement: “We are pleased that Recorded Future is now part of IQT’s portfolio of innovative startup companies who support the mission of the U.S. Intelligence Community.”

Just because Google and In-Q-Tel have both invested in Recorded Future doesn’t mean Google is suddenly in bed with the government. Of course, to Google’s critics — including conservative legal groups, and Republican congressmen — the Obama Administration and the Mountain View, California, company slipped between the sheets a long time ago.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt hosted a town hall at company headquarters in the early days of Obama’s presidential campaign. Senior White House officials like economic chief Larry Summers give speeches at the New America Foundation, the left-of-center think tank chaired by Schmidt. Former Google public policy chief Andrew McLaughlin is now the White House’s deputy CTO, and was publicly (if mildly) reprimanded by the administration for continuing to hash out issues with his former colleagues.

In some corners, the scrutiny of the company’s political ties have dovetailed with concerns about how Google collects and uses its enormous storehouse of search data, e-mail, maps and online documents. Google, as we all know, keeps a titanic amount of information about every aspect of our online lives. Customers largely have trusted the company so far, because of the quality of their products, and because of Google’s pledges not to misuse the information still ring true to many.

But unease has been growing. Thirty seven state Attorneys General are demanding answers from the company after Google hoovered up 600 gigabytes of data from open Wi-Fi networks as it snapped pictures for its Street View project. (The company swears the incident was an accident.)

“Assurances from the likes of Google that the company can be trusted to respect consumers’ privacy because its corporate motto is ‘don’t be evil’ have been shown by recent events such as the ‘Wi-Spy’ debacle to be unwarranted,” long-time corporate gadfly John M. Simpson told a Congressional hearing in a prepared statement. Any business dealings with the CIA’s investment arm are unlikely to make critics like him more comfortable.

But Steven Aftergood, a critical observer of the intelligence community from his perch at the Federation of American Scientists, isn’t worried about the Recorded Future deal. Yet.

“To me, whether this is troublesome or not depends on the degree of transparency involved. If everything is aboveboard — from contracts to deliverables — I don’t see a problem with it,” he told Danger Room by e-mail. “But if there are blank spots in the record, then they will be filled with public skepticism or worse, both here and abroad, and not without reason.”

Source: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/07/exclusive-google-cia/

RELIGION FOR HUMANITY

2008-07-14T19:06:00.001-07:00

By Pormadi Simbolon

Witnessing many religious cases in Indonesia, we can see that some people of certain religion has used physical force to defend their interest in the name of religion. Their way to reach their purpose had made people of other religion intimidated. In this point, it is necessary to question, what is the function of religion? Why do a religion destruct humanity?

As the feeling of reverence which men entertain towards a Supreme Being, religion is should be reject the way of cruelty. Religion is the way to recognize of God as an object of worship, love, obedience and piety. Logically, if a religion is a way to respect God (Supreme Being), it means the people of religion should respect God’s creatures, include human being.

Destruction of religion

Abd A’la, an expert from Religious Reform Project (RePro) said, physical force is contrary to every single of religion, included Islamic values. Harshness which showed by some people of Islamic radicalism is opposed to Islamic teachings (Suara Pembaruan Daily, July 4, 2008). The physical force to other people can not be tolerated.

The main question is, why some people of religion should do cruelty to others who having different faith? I think that most of people of every single religion do not internalized yet the main substance of a religion. In fact, the main substance of every religion is LOVE. The people of religion should be teached to love God and to love neighbours.

It is clearly, substance of loving God also mean accepting any differences of other people in ethnic groups, religion, race, ideology and so on. The destruction of humanity also be the destruction of the face of religion.

Duty of religious leaders

We used to hear that there are some religious leaders who teach their people hatred to other religions. Its results are conflicts in togetherness. The people of this religion are not ready to live together with other people of different religions. Basically, this hatred is opposed to universal values e.g. human rights as United Nation Organisation declared 1948.

It is the main duty of every single leader of religion to build this country as a place for people of different religion can live together. It is the time for religious leaders to realize it in this globalization spirit.

One of the main way is making the substance of religious teachings to be internalised by people of religions. What are the religious values, they should be showed first to the people. According to our positive thinking, any system of faith must be a respect to God and so it should be a respect also to humanity.

The other way is spreading the universal values of every single religion. Religion is not a system of worship only, but also a system of behaviors to other people in daily life as the result of them. I mean, the love to God is not celebrated in a church or in a masjid, and other religious place only, but it should be manifested in daily life’s attitude to others. Hurting other people is also hurting his/her creator.

Besides, the existential principle of Republic Indonesia is Pancasila, the five principles. Pancasila teaches how to live together between people from any cultural background in Indonesia. The values of Pancasila has verified by the founding fathers to be the principles of life for Indonesian people. Pancasila should be the supreme direction to live in peace and tolerance.

And finally, it is a task for religious leaders and for all of religious people to build a pluralistic world civilization where different religious traditions can co-exist and mutually reinforce the cause of peace and human dignity. It is a challenging task for people of religion.

It is the time for people of religions to realize that religion is not for God only, but it is also for humanity too. Destruction of humanity is the destruction of religion too. Franz Magnis Suseno, a philosopher of Dryarkara in Jakarta said, “Do not make faith (religion) to be a cause of harshness!” We hope that people of different religions can live together in peace and tolerance.

The writes is a former student STFT Widyasasana Malang.
He can be reached at: pormadi.simbolon@gmail.com

Shut down your mind!

2008-06-26T00:51:00.000-07:00

THIS is a lingering question that keeps haunting me time and again: ifI want to be good Muslim, should I shut down my mind and submit myselftotally to God? Can I be a good servant of God while still reservingsome space for doubt, question, and skepticism?

The way Islam is presented in the modern discourse of Islamistliterature is very interesting. Take for example the popular work byAbul A'la Maududi, the founder of Jamaat-i Islam-i in Pakistan, entitled Towards Understanding Islam. I stumbled upon this book long time ago while I was still a young student in madrasa in Indonesia.

Islam, in the Maududian discourse, means literally submission. "Muslim"means some one who submits and surrenders. Islam is an act ofsubmission. God has laid down for humanity a set of rules that willlead them to the path of salvation. To be a Muslim means to submityourself to God's sovereignty.

Islam, for Maududi, is not a religion as it is usually understood bywestern people, i.e. a personal conviction and faith that has nobearing on the public life. Islam is a faith plus a system; a religionthat unfolds in the history of humankind in the form of completecivilization.

The mission of the prophet, according to Maududi, is not simply toproduce individuals who adhere to moral teachings, but also politicalsystem in the modern sense of the word. In other words, Muhammad, inMaududian discourse, is not merely a teacher of moral life in the wayBuddha is, but also Constantine who is taking upon himself a tremendoustask of erecting an empire, a political system, a state, a dawla.

Submission in Islam is not simply an act of personal piety, but rathera "public" act to submit to a certain divinely sanctioned system. Thatis the system of God. For people like Maududi, God is not a solitary"father" in the dark corner of the world who cares so little about themundane affairs. God acts in the same manner as a CEO in the moderncompanies who is busy as hell with the minutiae of human affairs,ranging from state administration down to the trivial affairs such ashow you enter the bathroom. (Yup, even your CEO won't care how andwhere the hack you pee!)

God's rule is so complete and comprehensive that it leaves no singleaspect in human life unattended. To be a good Muslim is to placeyourself under this complete and totalitarian rule of God. Yes, God hasequipped humankind with the faculty of reason. But, watch out: reasonis given by God to test human truthful allegiance to his rule.

If we use our mind to challenge and question divine rule, that amounts to an act of rebellion against divine sovereignty.

In other words, if you want to be a good Muslim, you have no choice butshut down your mind. Of course, Maududi and the likes would do theirbest to repudiate any accusation that Islam is a religion thatcontravenes human reason. He will show you, of course apologetically,that Islamic history is ripe with the best instances where reason andrevelation coexists harmoniously producing the fruit of civilizationthat benefit all humankind. Even Europe owes Islamic civilizations agreat deal of debt.

Sound good argument, doesn't it?

But I don't buy it, AT ALL. Yes, Muslim generations over centuriesdeveloped a rich and magnificent civilization. But the standard bearersof that civilization were people of totally different breed. They arethe champions of humanism and rationalism. They were even the victim ofpeople of yore whose religious view was not so different from Maududi:totalitarian, anti-intellectual, and so hostile to the "other". IfMuslim philosophers and scientists like Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Ibn Rushd(Averroes), Ibn Baja (Avempace) and many others were ever resurrectedagain from their grave, they would definitely disown people likeMaududi outright!

JOHN Shelby Spong, a Christian theologian from the US, is one of my favorite writer. In a book that he published recently, Jesus for the Non-Religious, he said something about religion that resonates so deeply with my understanding of Islam. Listen to him as follows:

The Christianity that is now emerging in America and in the ThirdWorld is something with which I do not choose to be identified. I donot want to be filled with competing claims or disturbing anger. I donot want to worship a God that I cannot challenge, or be loyal to atradition that requires me to shut down my mind. (p. 7)

Spong is definitely a courageous man of religion. He chooses a thornypath: a God we are able to challenge, not God who judges our allegianceto him by how far down in the slope we can go to shut our mind down.

Of course, this is not what Maududi thinks about God. Maududi's God isa totalitarian God. Spong's God is a God of dialogue, a God with whom Ican negotiate.

I submit to this type of God.[] Ulil Abshar Abdalla (courtesy: Milis Pluralitas)

Republican Jewish Coalition responsible for mailing anti-Muslim film

2008-06-15T22:34:00.000-07:00

The Republican Jewish Coalition is responsible for a mailing received by Reform rabbis and other Jews that included a DVD of the controversial anti-Muslim film Obsession, JewsOnFirst. org has learned. At least part of the mailing was sent under the postal permit of Christians United for Israel, a leading Christian Zionist organization. The DVD was packaged inside a book by David Brog (see scan below, at right), CUFI's executive director. The package also contained a letter by a former Israeli ambassador to Washington, endorsing Brog's book and calling on Jews to accept an alliance with Christian Zionists. CUFI's media representative told JewsOnFirst. org that the package was "mailed out" by the Republican Jewish Coalition. The representative, Juda S. Engelmayer, was unable to specify a particular mailing list the coalition used, but said he believed the recipients came from "a combination of various lists." Informal surveys by JewsOnFirst and others determined that the mailing was received by many rabbis, and also many members of the Jewish community. A staffer at the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the organized rabbinate of Reform Judaism, said that the organization had neither made its list available for the mailing nor sent the package through its mailing house.

Book cover altered
The Republican Jewish Coalition's media officer asked that a request to confirm the group's role in the mailing be emailed. She has not responded to the email or subsequent phone messages. Engelmayer of CUFI told JewsOnFirst that he did not know what motivated the Republican Jewish Coalition's involvement, but that the mailing was intended to reach "the broadest spectrum of Jewish community members." It is likely however, that Obsession was added to the book specifically for the mailing. The cover of Brog's book, Standing with Israel, that arrived in the mailing is different than the cover currently advertised on his website. The cover in the packages received this week indicates that the DVD of Obsession is inside (see scan above). The original cover, copied this morning from Brog's website and shown here below the book cover from the mailing, has no reference to Obsession. A knowledgeable source who asked not to be identified said that the Republican Jewish Coalition dictated the contents of the mailing as a condition of getting CUFI's message to the Jewish audience that CUFI wished to reach. The Republican Jewish Coalition is a national organization, headquartered in Washington, DC, with revenue of $4 million in 2005. It calls itself "the pre-eminent Republican organization in the Jewish community." On February 14th, the group's website had a news releaseslamming Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama's plan to try to bridge the widening gap between Muslim and Western nations." Rabbi Joan Friedman a professor of Religion and Jewish Studies at the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio, said it would be a mistake for Jews to involve themselves in the enduring contention between Islam and Christianity. "There is a long history between Christianity and Islam but if the Christians want to get on an anti-Islamic hobby horse, I think it is a mistake to buy into that," said Friedman, who received the mailing this week. (You can listen to our recorded conversation with Friedman here.) CUFI displaying link to Obsession trailer

Responding to a question about the thinking that went into sending the anti-Muslim film Obsession to Reform rabbis, who are often engaged in interfaith work, Engelmayer, CUFI's representative, said that CUFI also engages in interfaith work. Engelmayer added that CUFI has nothing to do with the film. In response, JewsOnFirst noted that CUFI's contact with Muslims is limited to harsh critics of Islam like Walid Shoebat-- and that CUFI's websitedisplays a link to the Obsession trailer, using the photo below. Rabbi Steven B. Jacobs, founder of the Progressive Faith Foundation, who has been active in efforts at Jewish-Muslim bridge-building, said in an interview with JewsOnFirst. org that Obsession "offers an inflammatory portrayal of Islam and stigmatizes all Muslims as potential terrorists." Jacobs expressed concern that the film is "going to blow up the bridge that many of us have worked hard to establish." (You can listen to our recorded conversation with Jacobs here.) The film has sparked controversey around the country; critics have challenged its thinly disclaimed portrayal of Muslims as violent and hostile. Campus screenings have sometimes been canceled, in one instance because of fears that the film would provoke anti-Muslim hate crimes. Florida Attorney General screened film for staff
Recently Florida's Attorney General Bill McCollum prompted an outcry from Muslim and civil liberties groups when he screened Obsession three times for his staff during business hours, in government buildings. Earlier this week Muslim leaders, civil rights leaders, and Rabbi Jacobs met with McCollum about the screenings. Jacobs told JewsOnFirst that, while McCollum did not require his staff of 400 to see the film, "it was quite intimidating" for staffers to refuse to see the film and the few Muslims on his staff were "quietly threatened." As a result of the meeting, McCollum agreed to establish a Muslim advisory panel and to educate his staff about Islam.
However, Jacobs noted, with the widespread mailing of Obsession into the Jewish community "many more will see the film" and "we've got an enormous responsibility to tell truths and not set a people up the way we were set up. In my opinion the Muslims are the new Jews of America in terms of being scape-goated and being hated. And we know that as well as anybody and we need to challenge this film."

Israeli ambassador urges U.S. Jews to embrace Christian Zionists
In the cover letterincluded in the mailing, former ambassador Daniel Ayalon praised CUFI's David Brog for his work with Christians and urged Jews to overcome their antipathy to Christian Zionists. "For the first time in Israel's history, we are seeing the emergence of a significant pro-Israel movement outside of the Jewish community," wrote Ayalon, who was ambassador to the U.S. between 2002 and 2006.

Rabbi Philip Bentley of Agudas Israel Congregation in Hendersonville, North Carolina, said that Reform Movement organizations ought to protest Ayalon's intervention in U.S. politics. "The Central Conference of American Rabbis and the Union for Reform Judiasm ought to register a strong protest against this mailing and against former Ambassador Ayalon for lending himself, his organization, and his title to the Hagee organization, " Bently said. "If we are silent we have only ourselves to blame if Hagee makes inroads into our movement." As does Ayalon in his letter, Brog (who is Jewish) argues in Standing with Israel that Jews should appreciate -- not shun -- Christian Zionist support for Israel. Christian Zionism not an easy sell
Many Jews reject allying with Christian Zionists because of their fundamentalist domestic positions. CUFI's executive board and its directors include some of the biggest names on the religious right -- Gary Bauer, Jonathan Falwell and Rod Parsley, to name a few. In the two-plus years that CUFI has been in existence, local Jewish federations have pressured rabbis to participate in CUFI's "Nights to Honor Israel." These programs usually feature televangelist John Hagee, CUFI's founder and chairman, who typically presents a big donation to the local federation and sometimes to an Israeli settlement project as well. Some Jews reject the Christian Zionists' credo that Israel will be the scene of the "Battle of Armageddon" that presages the return of Jesus. Rabbi Bill Leffler, vice president of MoneyWatch Financial Advisors, said he found Brog's book "a sorry commentary on why we should appreciate the religious right's support of Israel which has to do with the rapture and not the intrinsic worth of Israel. Politics can make for strange bedfellows!" Recently CUFI has been trying to downplay Hagee's promotion of endtimes prophecy. CUFI's represenatitve Engelmayer emphasized that Hagee has said "countless times" that he does not believe Jesus' return is imminent. But Hagee has been promoting a U.S. attack on Iran in an end-times context. Additionally, CUFI has gone out of its way to oppose Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that might lead to Israeli concessions. That causes some who believe it is in Israel's interest to negotiate a settlement with the Palestinians, to question the value of CUFI's support for Israel. "If they want to contribute money to build hospitals, it is hard to argue with that, said Prof. Joan Friedman. But, she continued, "their contributions are not so innocent. They support groups that are inimical to the peace process." The opinions and views articulated by the author do not necessarily reflect those of Israel e News.

http://www.israelenews.com/view. asp?ID=1124

Target Iran: Christian Fundamentalists' Road To The End Of The World

2008-06-12T02:12:00.000-07:00

By Yoginder Sikand

11 June, 2008Countercurrents. org

It is not only because of insatiable greed for oil, orbecause of America's addiction to war or because ofBush's obvious mental instability that America and itsallies now seem hell-bent on attacking Iran, althoughthese factors are certainly important. Equallycrucially, the current wave of fervent war-mongeringin the West directed against Iran owes to the enormousclout wielded by Western Christian fundamentalistorganizations who, following the invasion anddestruction of Iraq, which they had so ferventlyabetted, are now calling for a repeat performance,this time in Iran. These blood-thirsty votaries of thecult of unmitigated violence consider Iran to be themajor challenge to American and Zionist imperialism,which they regard as enjoying divine blessing.Insisting that America and Israel should invade Iranat once, they regard this as a Christian necessity.They also believe that this would herald a global warof cosmic proportions that would, so they believe,usher in the end of the world and Jesus' SecondComing, something that they passionately await.

A key American Christian fundamentalist ideologue isthe Texas-based televangelist John Hagee. He is noinsignificant crank, although his views are, to put itmildly, wildly outlandish. He is said to be close totop leaders of the American Republic Party as well asIsraeli intelligence officers and politicians. He isthe pastor of The Cornerstone Church based in SanAntonio, and also heads the multi-million dollarGlobal Evangelism media company that broadcasts hisdaily programmes on 172 television and 82 radiostations throughout the USA and around the world. Hisfervent appeals to Christian simplicity obviously arenot intended to apply to himself: he is said to be oneof the wealthiest men in his city, and the trust thathe has named after himself, The John Hagee RabbiTrust, includes among its various assets a ranchspread over almost 8000 acres.
Hagee is one of the principal ideologues of what iscalled Christian Zionism, which is said to be thefastest growing religious cult in America today. Hageeis known for his fervent support for Israel, for heconsiders this a Biblical duty binding on Christians,and has been opposed to any peace deal that mightcause Israel to give up back any occupied land to thePalestinians. He works closely with several Americanand Israeli Jewish groups, and is one of thearchitects of a Christian evangelical- Zionistalliance. Recently he was in the news for bringingtogether 400 Christian evangelical leaders,representing as many as 30 million Christians, for a'Summit on Israel', which resulted in the formation ofa new pro-Israeli lobbying group called ChristiansUnited for Israel, which intends to establish a50-state rapid-response network that aims to reachevery senator and congressman in America.

Author of numerous Christian fundamentalist texts,Hagee's latest book, 'Jerusalem Countdown: A Precludeto War' encapsulates the Christian fundamentalists'case for a joint American-Israeli invasion of Iran. Inorder to build up his argument, he portrays Iran inthe most lurid colours. 'Iran', he insists, withoutadducing any evidence (for in Christian fundamentalistcircles-and in the West more generally-such evidenceis not needed) 'is the command post for global terror'(p.vii). Under President Ahmadinijad, Hagee argues,Iran is building up a nuclear stockpile, which itintends to share with the rest of the Islamic world.Since Iran, so he claims, is motivated by hatred forIsrael and America 'without limitation', it might usethese weapons to attack both these countries and theirallies and to completely destroy Western civilisation(pp.4-5). Hence, before this can happen, America andIsrael, he insists, must invade Iran and destroy thenuclear bombs that it supposedly possesses.

As Hagee and his ilk see it, Iran's opposition toAmerica and Israel has nothing whatsoever to do withAmerican aggression and imperialism or to Zionistoccupation and Israeli crimes against humanity.Rather, this opposition is attributed squarely to thefact that most Iranians are Muslims. It is, Hageeclaims, Islam as a religion that is the cause of thesupposed hatred of Muslims (including Iranians)towards America and Israel. Here, he convenientlyignores the fact that most ruling regimes in Muslimcountries, some of which, such as Saudi Arabia, spareno effort to display their supposedly 'Islamiccredentials' , are decidedly pro-American and arelittle more than appendages of the West. Obviously,conceding this inconvenient fact would seriouslyundermine his argument.

Tracing the cause of anti-Westernism simply to Islam,Hagee claims that Jews and Christians, on the onehand, and Muslims, on the other, are presently engagedin nothing less than the final battle for globaldomination, and that, in fact, World War III hasalready begun. Since this is, as he characterises it,a religious war, a war, as George Bush describes it,between 'good' and 'evil', there can be no compromiseor settlement between the supposedly contendingparties. It is a war to the finish, even if it bringsabout the destruction of the world and the entirehuman race through nuclear conflagration. In fact,Hagee seems to clearly suggest (and this is somethingthat he appears to share with numerous otherinfluential Christian fundamentalist ideologues) thatthis grand, final war must be speeded up by allpossible means, for only then, he believes, will Jesusreturn to the world, destroy all non-Christians anddispatch all 'good' Christians, like Hagee himself, toever-lasting bliss in heaven.

In order to justify what is nothing short than aglobal anti-Islamic crusade, in which a proposedinvasion of Iran is just one step, Hagee repeats manyof the worn-out, tired clichés about Islam that were,and still are, part of the stock vocabulary ofChristian fundamentalism. Islam and Christianity arepoles apart, he insists. He claims that Muslims andChristians do not even worship the same God, and thatAllah is actually 'the moon god of Mecca' (p.2). WhileChristianity is said to teach peace and love, Islam,he contends, does precisely the opposite. He claimsthat Islam was spread by the sword by the ProphetMuhammad and his followers, while, ignoring thecenturies of Christian aggression, he writes thatChristianity was spread through love and charity.Islam, he claims, insists that Muslims must kill allnon-Muslims if they do not accept to accept Islam.Muslims, are by definition, 'terrorists' , he says,because their religion allegedly teaches them thatthis is precisely what they should be. Muslims, hegoes on, are driven to hate non-Muslims because theirreligion allegedly tells them to do so. Islam, hewrites, has an 'absolute commitment' to 'violence, tomurder and to terror'. (p.70). Muslims' supposedhatred of the West, he claims, is because the West(supposedly) champions democracy, freedom, women'srights, men's respect for women, education, the loveof life, equality and so on, all of which, so Hageewants his readers to believe, Islam stronglyproscribes (p.28).

The ultimate aim of Muslims, Hagee claims, is todestroy the West, kill all Jews and Christians,because, he writes, this is 'their ticket to heavenand the seventy-two virgins that await them there'(p.23). Muslims, he argues, aim to conquering thewhole world and establishing a one-world Islamicgovernment (pp.6-16). He terrorizes his readers intobelieving that a massive Muslim 'religious army,unlike anything the Western world has seen since thesawn of civilization' is now preparing for war againstthe West, intending to conquer it and force Christiansand Jews into slavery if they do not accept Islam.(p.6)

Iranian/Muslim opposition to America and Israel thusbeing said to be entirely a result of alleged Islamicteachings, rather than having any political oreconomic causes, the solution that Hagee offers isalso expressed in religious terms: unleashing what isvirtually a second crusade against Muslims the worldover. The first step that America must do in thisregard, he argues, is to admit and announce that it isengaged in a religious war against Islam, which hesays, 'is totally dedicated' to America's destruction(p.35). Accordingly, he advises that the Americangovernment must firmly tighten control on Muslimimmigration to that country. He even goes so far as tosuggest that all American Muslims are real orpotential 'terrorists' or terrorist-sympathis ers, andclaims that 'sleeping terrorist cells' have been setup in mosques and Islamic centres across the country.(p.63). 'The Islamic army is not coming .it's here.Quietly living next door, they are waiting for thephone to ring for orders to attack', he says withregard to Muslims living in America. (p.35)

This veiled argument for justifying government-backedwitch-hunts directed against Muslims in America isaccompanied by equally frightening steps that Hageeadvocates against Muslims living elsewhere. Americamust continue, and even step up, its war in Iraq, heinsists, and must not bow to any pressure to withdrawfrom that country for that , he says, would be'perceived as a victory for radical Islam' which mightembolden Muslims to bring the war into America itself.(p.35). Simultaneously, he argues, with unconcealedglee, America must attack Iran and destroy itssupposed nuclear warheads.

This attack on Iran, Hagee writes, would be asingularly crucial event of cosmic proportions. Itwould, he claims, be nothing less than a major 'partof a much bigger picture-that of God's plan for thefuture of Israel and the entire world'. It would, infact, he says, unleash a chain of bloody anddevastating wars, the like of which humankind worldhas never witnessed before, and which would soon causethe destruction of the entire world. (p.37) The readeris not left without a strong feeling that this isprecisely what Hagee and his war-mongering fellowChristian fundamentalists actually desperately cravefor.

Hagee sketches out the chain of events that wouldfollow from the American attack on Iran which heclaims the Bible predicts in fine detail. No soonerdoes America invade Iran than a massive Muslim army,hundreds of thousands strong, will attack Israel withRussian assistance in order to destroy it. This armywould unleash nuclear weapons against America andIsrael, and, in this way, would cause what he calls 'anuclear Armageddon'. (p.53). This, Hagee insists, isnot something that can at all be prevented. In fact,he seems to suggest that this global war is somethingto be wildly celebrated by Christians because, heclaims, it has been ordained by none other than GodHimself. 'God is making it clear that He is draggingRussia and its allies into Israel', Hagee writes(p.145). The purpose: So that God can 'crush them [theRussian-Muslim alliance] so that the Jews of Israel asa whole will confess that He is the Lord!". By allcounts, nasty, brutal way for the god of Hagee'simagination to seek to convince the Jews of hisexistence.

The combined Russian-Muslim force that attacks Israelas soon as America and Israel attack Iran will causewidespread death, Hagee says, but then God willintervene and cause his 'fury [to] explode' againstthose who have gathered against the Jews, for God,Hagee claims, considers the Jews 'His chosen people'.But no sooner has the Russo-Muslim army been quashedthan another major opponent appears: this time in theform of the Anti-Christ, the Son of Satan, who will,through his powers of black magic, conquer the entireworld. He will enter into a seven-year peace treatywith the Jews ostensibly in order to protect them fromthe Muslims and the Russians, but after three and ahalf years have passed he will break the treaty andwill turn on the Jews, seeking to obliterate them. Inthis task, Hagee writes, he will be assisted by whatthe Bible calls the 'Man from the East', which heidentifies as China.

This represents the culmination of the final battlethat heralds the end of the world, so Hagee (likeother Biblical literalists and Christian extremists)believes. In this war against the Anti-Christ andChina, the West will join forces with the Jews, at aplace call Armageddon, a narrow valley outsideJerusalem, which the Bible describes in considerablegory detail.

Just before the battle is about to begin, a miraclewill appear, so Hagee ardently believes. Quoting theBook of Revelations, the last chapter of the ChristianBible, he writes, Jesus will descend to earth from theskies, clothed in a garment dipped in blood and seatedon a white horse. He will be followed by a heavenlycavalry to assist him. His task, Hagee quotes the Bookof Revelations as saying, will be to judge and makewar. With the sharp sword that he wields in his mouth,Jesus shall 'strike the nations' that have gatheredagainst Israel, killing the Anti-Christ and the 'Manfrom the East' and sending them-literally hundreds ofmillions of people-all non-Christians, that is-toeternal torment in hell. The blood of those slain byJesus, Hagee approvingly refers to the Book ofRevelations as announcing, would create a virtual 'seaof human blood' that will be 'two hundred miles long'.

Jesus would then ascend his throne in Jerusalem, fromwhere he would rule the entire (and, if Hagee is to bebelieved, the by-then entirely Christian) world for athousand years. A 'Golden Age of Peace' is how Hageecharacterizes this era, although how non-Christianscould ever consider it so is something that heobviously does not bother about. 'Rejoice and beglad', he excitedly announces, celebrating the gorychain of events that he describes with such passionthat he says will unfold in the wake of an Americaninvasion of Iran, 'The best is yet to be!'.
That 'best' that Hagee and his fellow Christianextremists so fervently pine for, is nothing less thanthe destruction of the entire world.
http://countercurre nts.org/sikand11 0608.htm

Bill Gate's Rule of Life

2008-06-12T01:21:00.000-07:00

Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a High School about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!

Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

(FOF)

The President of India DR. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam's Speech in Hyderabad

2008-06-07T05:20:00.000-07:00

Agree 110 % ! Please forward to other fellow Indonesians around the world

The future of Indonesia is in our hands. We can start it small, start with ourselves but start it now.

Wise words that can apply too to us " The Indonesian.. ."

The President of India DR. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam's Speech in Hyderabad *

Got 10 minutes for our country? If yes, then read; otherwise, choice is yours.

Why are we in India so embarrassed to recognize our own strengths, our achievements? We are such a great nation. We have so many amazing success stories but we refuse to acknowledge them. Why?

We are the first in milk production.

We are number one in Remote sensing satellites.

We are the second largest producer of wheat.

We are the second largest producer of rice.

Look at Dr. Sudarshan , he has transferred the tribal village into a self-sustaining, self-driving unit. There are millions of such achievements but our media is only obsessed in the bad news and failures and disasters. I was in Tel Aviv once and I was reading the Israeli newspaper. It was the day after a lot of attacks and bombardments and deaths had taken place. The Hamas had struck. But the front page of the newspaper had the picture of a Jewish gentleman who in five years had transformed his desert into an orchid and a granary. It was this inspiring picture that everyone woke up to. The gory details of killings, bombardments, deaths, were inside in the newspaper, buried among other news.

In India we only read about death, sickness, terrorism, crime. Why are we so NEGATIVE? Another question: Why are we, as a nation so obsessed with foreign things? We want foreign T. Vs, we want foreign shirts. We want foreign technology.

Why this obsession with everything imported. Do we not realize that self-respect comes with self-reliance? I was in Hyderabad giving this lecture, when a 14 year old girl asked me for my autograph. I asked her what her goal in life is. She replied: I want to live in a developed India . For her, you and I will have to build this developed India . You must proclaim. India is not an under-developed nation; it is a highly developed nation. Do you have 10 minutes? Allow me to come back with a vengeance.

Got 10 minutes for your country? If yes, then read; otherwise, choice is yours.

YOU say that our government is inefficient.

YOU say that our laws are too old.

YOU say that the municipality does not pick up the garbage.

YOU say that the phones don't work, the railways are a joke.The airline is the worst in the world, mails never reach their destination.

YOU say that our country has been fed to the dogs and is the absolute pits.

YOU say, say and say.

What do YOU do about it? Take a person on his way to Singapore . Give him a name - YOURS. Give him a face - YOURS. YOU walk out of the airport and you are at your International best. In Singapore you don't throw cigarette butts on the roads or eat in the stores. YOU are as proud of their Underground links as they are. You pay $5 (approx. Rs. 60) to drive through Orchard Road (equivalent of Mahim Causeway or Pedder Road) between 5 PM and 8 PM. YOU come back to the parking lot to punch your parking ticket if you have over stayed in a restaurant or a shopping mall irrespective of your status identity... In Singapore you don't say anything, DO YOU? YOU wouldn't dare to eat in public during Ramadan, in Dubai . YOU would not dare to go out without your head covered in Jeddah. YOU would not dare to buy an employee of the telephone exchange in London at 10 pounds (Rs.650) a month to, 'see to it that my STD and ISD calls are billed to someone else.'YOU would not dare to speed beyond 55 mph (88 km/h) in Washington and then tell the traffic cop, 'Jaanta hai main kaun hoon ¡ (Do you know who I am?). I am so and so's son. Take your two bucks and get lost.' YOU wouldn't chuck an empty coconut shell anywhere other than the garbage pail on the beaches in Australia and New Zealand .

Why don't YOU spit Paan (sirih) on the streets of Tokyo ? Why don't YOU use examination jockeys or buy fake certificates in Boston ??? We are still talking of the same YOU. YOU who can respect and conform to a foreign system in other countries but cannot in your own. You who will throw papers and cigarettes on the road the moment you touch Indian ground. If you can be an involved and appreciative citizen in an alien country, why cannot you be the same here in India ? Once in an interview, the famous Ex-municipal commissioner of Bombay , Mr. Tinaikar, had a point to make. 'Rich people's dogs are walked on the streets to leave their affluent droppings all over the place,' he said. 'And then the same people turn around to criticize and blame the authorities for inefficiency and dirty pavements. What do they expect the officers to do? Go down with a broom every time their dog feels the pressure in his bowels?

In America every dog owner has to clean up after his pet has done the job. Same in Japan . Will the Indian citizen do that here?' He's right. We go to the polls to choose a government and after that forfeit all responsibility. We sit back wanting to be pampered and expect the government to do everything for us whilst our contribution is totally negative. We expect the government to clean up but we are not going to stop chucking garbage all over the place nor are we going to stop to pick a up a stray piece of paper and throw it in the bin. We expect the railways to provide clean bathrooms but we are not going to learn the proper use of bathrooms. We want Indian Airlines and Air India to provide the best of food and toiletries but we are not going to stop pilfering at the least opportunity.

This applies even to the staff who is known not to pass on the service to the public. When it comes to burning social issues like those related to women, dowry, girl child! and others, we make loud drawing room protestations and continue to do the reverse at home. Our excuse? 'It's the whole system which has to change, how will it matter if I alone forego my sons' rights to a dowry.

'So who's going to change the system? What does a system consist of? Very conveniently for us it consists of our neighbours, other households, other cities, other communities and the government. But definitely not me and YOU. When it comes to us actually making a positive contribution to the system we lock ourselves along with our families into a safe cocoon and look into the distance at countries far away and wait for a Mr. Clean to come along & work miracles for us with a majestic sweep of his hand or we leave the country and run away.Like lazy cowards hounded by our fears we run to America to bask in their glory and praise their system. When New York becomes insecure we run to England . When England experiences unemployment, we take the next flight out to the Gulf. When the Gulf is war struck, we demand to be rescued and brought home by the Indian government. Everybody is out to abuse and rape the country. Nobody thinks of feeding the system. Our conscience is mortgaged to money.

Dear Indians, The article is highly thought inductive, calls for a great deal of introspection and pricks one's conscience too.... I am echoing J. F. Kennedy's words to his fellow Americans to relate to Indians.....

'ASK WHAT WE CAN DO FOR INDIA AND DO WHAT HAS TO BE DONE TO MAKE INDIA WHAT AMERICA AND OTHER WESTERN COUNTRIES ARE TODAY

'Let's do what India needs from us.Forward this mail to each Indian for a change instead of sending Jokes or junk mails.

Thank you,

Dr. Abdul Kalaam

6 Rules of Life

2008-06-01T03:57:00.000-07:00

Waiting for democracy's dividend

2008-05-28T22:37:00.000-07:00

Waiting for democracy's dividend
By Marianne Kearney in Jakarta

For many poor Indonesians life has actually got harder since Suharto's fall [GALLO/GETTY]A decade after the upheaval that swept Indonesia's former president Suharto from power, many Indonesians feel that the advent of democracy has brought few positive changes.

Despite 10 years of political and economic reforms – a process known as reformasi – there is a widespread disillusionment among the country's poor.

In depth

Ten years after Suharto's ruleWatch Al Jazeera's Indonesia coverageThe experience of 48 year–old Suni is typical of millions.

In the late 1990s Suni had his own small business selling snacks and cigarettes and earned a respectable wage of between $10 and $30 a day.
Today, working as a motorcycle taxi driver, he rarely makes the equivalent of $5 a day - a sum he says is not enough to eat and pay his rent.

"Since reformasi the prices of everything have just got worse and worse. Everything is too expensive, it's not controlled by the government," he says.

The student-led reformasi movement began as protests against the Suharto government's failure to deal with the effects of the Asian financial crisis.

Anger at perceived high-level corruption remains widespread [EPA]Then the country was wracked by spiralling inflation, food shortages, skyrocketing unemployment and the plunging value of the national currency, the rupiah.

Since then Indonesia has become increasingly democratic; holding fair elections, creating one of Asia 's freest press, providing greater protection for human rights, and reducing the role of the once all-powerful military.

But for Suni, many of these so-called freedoms have just led to more instability, and violence.

He points to frequent media reports of crime, high-level corruption as well as sectarian, ethnic and political violence.

Under Suharto, the tightly-controlled press rarely reported such news.

"Our nation can't be given freedom, because we have minimal education," he says, repeating a line frequently used during the Suharto era.

"If we're given freedom – everyone will do their own thing. Those who benefit are just those with brains."

"In 10 years of reformasi there has been no change, except life is more difficult"
Suryiadi,DriverWhat Indonesia needs, he says, is a strong leader and democracy has failed to produce a leader of Suharto's calibre.

"Since Suharto, there hasn't been anyone like him, no one to replace him."

At a nearby snack stall, 35-year-old Suryiadi also gives a sobering analysis of the economic and political changes wrought by the reform movement.

"In 10 years of reformasi there has been no change, except life is more difficult," he says.

Broken promises

Many of Jakarta's poor need to work second jobs simply to survive [EPA]"This democracy, it's just about promises, and promises, but then the politicians never keep their promises."

Echoing a familiar lament, Suryiadi says that under the former president, known affectionately as Pak Harto, ordinary workers found it much easier to make money and feed their families.

"It was good during the Pak Harto era. Things were cheap then, now everything is expensive," he says.

Back then, Suryiadi had a car washing business in which he employed four people, making at least $10 a day. It was enough to support his family, send his two children to school and pay the rent.

Today he works two jobs – as a driver for a dentist and as a motorcycle taxi driver - but it still is not enough to pay the bills.

The only positive development, he says, is that under the current president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the worst corruptors are being prosecuted and jailed.

During the Suharto era corruption was rampant, with the former president's family stealing $35bn, according to Transparency International.

"The price of everything has gone up and us little people have been destroyed"
Khulifah,Traffic "jockey'But on the streets of Jakarta , few people see reason to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Suharto's downfall.

Thirty-year old Khulifah is another part of the army of informal workers that have appeared on Jakarta' s streets over the last decade, struggling to eke out an existence from the most marginal occupations.

A mother of one, she scratches a living as a "jockey" - an occupation that did not even exist 10 years ago.

Every morning she tries to hitch a ride in commuters' cars, so the owners can get around traffic regulations requiring vehicles travelling on main roads to carry at least three people during peak hours.

Jockeying is risky: if Khulifah is caught by the frequent police raids she could be jailed for a month, or forced to pay a fine equal to a month's wages.

Despite the risks, competition is tough. Every evening and morning, hundreds of jockeys line roads leading to Jakarta 's main roads.

With so many jockeys lining Jakarta ’s streets, Khulifah is only occasionally able to hitch a ride.

On a good day she can make $10-$20, but it is not enough to feed herself, she says, and so she, like many other jockeys, has a second job as a maid.

No improvement

A failure to deliver improvements means many have lost faith in government [EPA]Like Suryiadi and Suni, Khulifah can see little benefit from the political freedoms wrought by reformasi, and the direct election of Yudhoyono, popularly known as SBY.

"SBY is the worse, because the price of everything has gone up and us little people have been destroyed," she says.

Economists agree that the reform movement has brought few improvements, with the World Bank reporting almost half the population living on $2 a day or less.

"For common people we don't see much improvement compared to before the crisis," says Umar Juoro, an economics analyst with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta .

"At that time poverty was around 17 per cent and now it's 17 per cent, but food is much more expensive than at that time."

Ten years on from the downfall of Suharto , Indonesia in 2008 looks a lot like Indonesia in 1998.

Food prices are spiralling, rising 15.7 per cent in April, cooking oil has doubled in price, and the cost of tempe , a soya bean cake that is a popular source of protein for the poor, has soared.

Reformasi has not helped the poor, but it has drastically altered Indonesia' s business landscape and created a more competitive business environment, says Juoro.

The country's bloated crony conglomerates, which grew wealthy as a result of Suharto’s patronage, have had their power and influence sharply reduced.

"For the big conglomerates, unless they're good companies it's difficult for them to survive," Juoro says.

Boom time for some

But the government says the opening up of Indonesia 's economy has lured foreign investors back to Indonesia , creating the sharpest economic growth in a decade.

Last year, it says, economic growth hit 6.3 per cent and a million people entered the workforce.

A quick tour around the capital confirms that middle class and upper middle class Indonesians have more money than ever.

The property market is booming, with cranes dotting the skyline building new malls, apartment complexes and office towers.

No less than three new luxury malls have been built in central Jakarta over the past 18 months while sales of cars and motorcycles have hit new highs.

The government also says that its pro-poor policies, which include a planned cash handout to 19 million people this year, as well as welfare benefits for the poor who keep their children in school, have helped reduce poverty levels.

But Fauzi Ichsan, chief economist with Standard Chartered Bank, agrees with the motorcycle taxi drivers.

The political and economic changes of the last decade, he says, have mostly benefited the middle class and upper classes, or foreign investors.

"Reformasi benefited Indonesia politically, benefiting civil society, non-government groups, the media, labour unions," he says. "But on the other hand democratisation has not ensured just, equitable growth."

Economic reforms have attracted foreign investors into the banking, telecom and retail industries, as well as investment in local stocks, he argues. But they have failed to improve the lives of Indonesia 's poorest.

"The problem with reforms they make - they're good for investors, particularly foreign investors - but for poor, the standard of living has not increased dramatically. In fact it has deteriorated. "

Source: Al Jazeera
http://english. aljazeera. net/NR/exeres/ 4A1C3868- 8FEC-485B- 9637-9FED07B55A4 A.htm

----A Military Commissions Cheat Sheet

2008-05-27T18:56:00.000-07:00

http://writ.news.findlaw. com/mariner/ 20080521. html

By JOANNE MARINER ----
Wednesday, May. 21, 2008
In the more than six years since President George Bush first announced the creation of military commissions to prosecute detainees allegedly responsible for terrorism, war crimes, and other misdeeds, there has not been a single full-blown military commission trial. (An Australian prisoner accepted a plea bargain last year and received a short sentence, which he served back in his home country.)

This should change in the next few months. The trial of Guantanamo detainee Salim Hamdan is now set to start on July 21, with motions hearings beginning on July 14. A few other detainees have already been arraigned; others are awaiting arraignment. In all, thirteen defendants are currently facing trial. (Charges had also been sworn against another defendant, Mohammed al-Qahtani, but he was so badly tortured while in US custody, tainting any statements that he made, that the Pentagon decided to drop his prosecution. )

Former chief military commissions prosecutor Moe Davis has testified to the political pressures that his office faced to push cases forward this year, particularly cases involving defendants implicated in the September 11 attacks. There was a strong feeling, he explained, "that if we didn't get this thing rolling before the election it was going to implode." Davis left the military commissions office last year.

Eight days ago, charges were referred against five detainees, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who were among the group of 14 transferred to Guantanamo from CIA custody in September 2006. A sixth so-called high value detainee, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, is also facing charges for his alleged involvement in the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Tanzania.
Below is a cheat sheet summarizing basic information about the defendants, the charges against them, and the key developments in their cases.

The First Cases
Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a 37-year-old Yemeni, was captured by Afghan forces and handed over to the US military in late 2001. He is charged with conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism based on claims that he served as Osama bin Laden's driver and transported weapons and other supplies to aid in fighting against US and coalition forces in Afghanistan.

Hamdan was previously charged with conspiracy before a military commission in July 2004, under the original military commissions system established by President Bush. He challenged the legality of the commissions, and won in a landmark Supreme Court ruling in June 2006. Yet three months later, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which authorized a new system of military commissions, under which Hamdan and the other detainees listed here are now being tried.

New charges against Hamdan were referred on May 10, 2007, and he was arraigned on December 5, 2007. (He had been scheduled to be arraigned on June 4, 2007, but at that hearing the judge dismissed the charges against him and another detainee, Omar Khadr (discussed directly below), without prejudice.)

Omar Khadr, a 21-year-old Canadian, was just 15 when he was captured and seriously injured in a firefight in Afghanistan on July 27, 2002. The US has accused Khadr of throwing the grenade that killed US Army Sergeant First Class Christopher Speer and injured two others. He is charged with murder, attempted murder, conspiracy, providing material support for terrorism, and spying.

Even though Khadr was a juvenile at the time of his capture, the United States has refused to acknowledge his status as a minor, or to apply universally- recognized standards of juvenile justice in his case. Both US and international law allow for detention of juveniles only as a last resort, require juveniles to be provided educational opportunities and housed separately from adults, and mandate a prompt determination of all cases involving children. Yet Khadr has been incarcerated with adults, reportedly subjected to abusive interrogations, and not provided any educational opportunities. In addition, he was detained for more than two years before he was provided access to an attorney, and for more than three years before he was charged. He was initially charged in the first round of military commissions, which were struck down by the Supreme Court. Another two years passed before he was re-charged before the current military commissions.

New charges against Khadr were referred on April 24, 2007, and he was arraigned on November 8, 2007.
Mohammed Jawad, a 23-year-old Afghan, has been in US custody since he was 17. He is charged with attempted murder and intentionally causing serious bodily injury. The US government alleges that while in Afghanistan in 2002 he threw a grenade at a military vehicle, injuring two US soldiers and their interpreter.

As with Omar Khadr, the US has ignored the fact that Jawad was a juvenile at the time of his alleged offense. Whereas other children detained at Guantanamo were given special housing and education programs, and were eventually released to rehabilitation programs in Afghanistan, Jawad was housed with adults, was not provided rehabilitation assistance, and was held for over six years prior to being charged. Jawad has told a panel of US military officers that he falsely confessed after being beaten and tortured by Afghan police when first taken into custody in 2002.

Charges against Jawad were referred on January 30, 2008, and he was arraigned on March 12. At his arraignment he told the judge, "I am innocent and I want justice and fairness."

Other Pending Cases
Ahmed Mohammed Ahmed Haza al-Darbi, a 33-year-old Saudi who has been in US custody since 2002, is being charged with conspiracy to commit terrorism and material support for terrorism based on alleged connections to al-Qaeda that date back to 1996.
The issue of evidence obtained through abuse is likely to be a central concern in this case. Al-Darbi was held in the US detention center at Bagram, Afghanistan, for eight months in late 2002 and 2003, during the period when some of the worst abuses took place there. Al-Darbi has said that while at Bagram, US soldiers kicked him, beat him, dragged him around by his calves, and hung him by his wrists for days on end.

Charges against al-Darbi were referred on March 3, 2008, and he was arraigned on March 13. Further proceedings in his case are scheduled for late May.

Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al-Qosi, a 47-year-old Sudanese national, is charged with conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism. The US government alleges that from 1996 to 2001 he served as a driver and armed guard for Osama bin Laden, and that from 1998 until 2001 he provided security, transportation and supply services for an al-Qaeda compound in Afghanistan. The US also claims that he fought with al-Qaeda as part of a mortar crew.
Al-Qosi has alleged that he was subject to abuse at Guantanamo, including sexual humiliation and brutal interrogation. In a lawsuit filed in 2004, al-Qosi stated that female interrogators rubbed their bodies suggestively against detainees and that US soldiers or interrogators performed sex acts in front of prisoners and displayed hardcore pornography. He also said that detainees were strapped to an interrogation room floor, wrapped in an Israeli flag, and then subjected to "constant pounding of deafening music." An FBI agent in August 2004 reported in an email that he observed a detainee at Guantanamo sitting in an interview room "with an Israeli flag draped around him, loud music being played and a strobe light flashing."
Charges against al-Qosi were referred on March 5, 2008, and he was arraigned on April 20. At his arraignment, he read a statement describing his plans to boycott his trial, explaining that he viewed the proceedings as illegitimate and unjust. Further proceedings in his case are scheduled for late May.

Ali Hamza Ahmad Suliman al-Bahlul, a 37-year-old Yemeni, was one of the first detainees to be transferred to Guantanamo when the facility opened in 2002. He is charged with conspiracy and solicitation to commit murder, attack civilians, attack civilian objects, destroy property, commit terrorism, and provide material support for terrorism, based on claims that he received military training in Afghanistan and acted as a "media secretary" for Osama bin Laden.

During al-Bahlul's initial appearance before the first round of military commissions in 2005 he requested permission to choose a lawyer from Yemen, his home country, but the request was denied. When he appeared again a year later, he requested permission to represent himself, stating that he had no expectation of justice from a system created by his American enemies—that request was also denied.

The first case against him was thrown out when the Supreme Court declared the initial military commissions unlawful, but the US government referred new charges against him in the revamped military commissions on February 26, 2008, and was arraigned on May 7. At his arraignment, Bahlul declared that he would be boycotting his trial. He also indicated that he wanted to represent himself, but it was not clear whether he would participate in future proceedings in any way.

Mohammed Kamin, an Afghan estimated to be about 30, is charged with providing material support for terrorism, based on claims that, among other things, he received arms training at al-Qaeda camps. Charges against Kamin were referred on April 7, 2008, and he is scheduled to be arraigned on May 21.

The Prosecutions for the September 11 Attacks
Charges of involvement in the September 11 terrorist attacks were referred against five defendants—all of them former CIA prisoners—a little more than a week ago. The five prisoners are currently scheduled to be arraigned on June 5. Given the enormous complexity of these cases, both factually and legally, the understaffing and lack of preparedness of military defense counsel—and the fact that all of the defendants face a possible sentence of death—it is unlikely that these cases will make great progress this year.

Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, a citizen of Pakistani, has been charged with conspiracy, attacking civilians and civilian objects, causing serious bodily injury, murder, destruction of property, hijacking, terrorism and providing material support for terrorism, based on claims that he ordered flight simulation and training videos and transferred large sums of money to the 9/11 hijackers in the US.

Abdul Aziz Ali was arrested in April 2003, but (like his co-defendants) he was not transferred to Guantanamo until September 2006.

Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarek bin 'Attash, a Yemeni national, has been charged with conspiracy, attacking civilians and civilian objects, causing serious bodily injury, murder, destruction of property, hijacking, terrorism and providing material support for terrorism. Bin 'Attash is specifically accused of having been instructed by Osama bin Laden to obtain a US visa so he could travel to the US and receive pilot training in order to participate in the eventual hijacking. It is also alleged that he applied for a US visa in 1999 but was denied, after which the government claims he continued to do research for al-Qaeda and facilitated travel for the 9/11 hijackers.

Although bin 'Attash arrested and placed in US custody in April 2003, he was not transferred to Guantanamo until September 2006. In the interim he was held incommunicado in secret CIA detention facilities, where he was effectively "disappeared. "

Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, a Yemeni national, has been charged with conspiracy, attacking civilians and civilian objects, causing serious bodily injury, murder, destruction of property, hijacking, terrorism and providing material support for terrorism. The US government claims that Binalshibh was chosen by bin Laden to be one of the participants in the 9/11 hijackings, but was unable to enter the United States because his repeated requests for a US visa were denied.
Although Bin al-Shibh was arrested in Pakistan in September 2002 and transferred to US custody, he was not sent to Guantanamo until four years later. In the interim he was believed to have been interrogated and held incommunicado in secret CIA detention facilities, where he was effectively "disappeared. " A Jordanian former detainee, who claims that he spoke to Bin al-Shibh in detention, said that Bin al-Shibh was rendered to Jordan for some period of time, where he was badly tortured with electric shocks, sleep deprivation, and other abuse.
Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi, originally from Saudi Arabia, has been charged with conspiracy, attacking civilians and civilian objects, causing serious bodily injury, murder, destruction of property, hijacking, terrorism and providing material support for terrorism. The government claims that Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi helped research flight schools for the 9/11 terrorist attacks and administered bank accounts for several of the hijackers.
Al-Hawsawi was reportedly arrested and transferred to US custody in March 2003, but was not transferred to Guantanamo until September 2006. In the interim he was held incommunicado in secret CIA detention facilities, where he was effectively "disappeared. "
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, an approximately 44-year-old Kuwaiti, has been charged with conspiracy, attacking civilians and civilian objects, causing serious bodily injury, murder, destruction of property, hijacking, terrorism and providing material support for terrorism, for his alleged role in planning the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He is believed to be the main architect of the attacks, and he admitted responsibility for them in a 2002 interview with Al Jazeera journalist Yosri Fouda.

Mohammed was indicted in New York in 1996 for his alleged involvement in a Philippines- based plot to blow up 12 US-bound commercial airliners in a 48-hour time period. The indictment, which was made public in 1998, and federal arrest warrant provide details of how he operated within al Qaeda.

Mohammed was arrested in March 2003 and held in secret CIA custody for more than three years. During his Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) hearing at Guantanamo, held on March 10, 2007, Mohammed claimed that he was tortured while in CIA custody and that as a result, he made false confessions about both himself and others. In addition, he alleged that his young children were detained and abused as well, a story that others have reported.
The details of Mohammed's allegations from the transcript of his CSRT hearing are redacted, but the CIA acknowledged on February 5, 2008, that the agency had subjected him and two other detainees to "waterboarding" in the period of 2002 to 2003. Waterboarding, a torture technique in which a prisoner is made to feel like he is drowning, violates both the federal anti-torture statute and the War Crimes Act. Although the CIA videotaped the interrogations in which terrorism suspects were waterboarded and subjected to other "severe interrogation techniques," the CIA confirmed that at least two videotapes documenting the interrogations had been destroyed in 2005. Several officials said that the tapes were destroyed in part because officers were concerned that the video could expose agency officials to legal liability.

The Embassy Bombing Prosecution
Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian believed to be about age 34, has been charged with murder, attacking civilians and civilian objects, causing serious bodily injury, destruction of property, terrorism, and conspiracy for his alleged involvement in the August 1998 bombing of the US Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The US is seeking the death penalty in his case.
Ghailani was previously indicted by US federal prosecutors for his role in the embassy bombings. Four co-defendants were put on trial in federal court in 2001 and sentenced to life without parole, but Ghailani was a fugitive at the time. He was arrested in Pakistan in 2004, held incommunicado in secret CIA detention for two years, where he was essentially "disappeared, " and transferred to Guantanamo in September 2006.

He is now slated for trial by military commission. The only new charge contained in the military commission indictment alleges that Ghailani continued to provide material support and resources to al-Qaeda from 1998 until 2004.

Charges were sworn against Ghailani on March 31, 2008, but they have not yet been referred against him (the convening authority of the military commissions has the option of amending or dropping the charges during this period).

Interested readers may also want to consult the Pentagon's military commissions page. – Ed.

World food prices soar as a wealthier Asia consumes more

2008-05-26T01:26:00.000-07:00

By Russell Blinch and Brian Love
Reuters
Monday, March 31, 2008

WASHINGTON: Food prices are soaring; a wealthier Asia is demanding better food and farmers cannot keep up. In short, the world faces a food crisis and in some places it is already boiling over.

Around the globe, people are protesting and governments are responding with often counterproductive controls on prices and exports - a new politics of scarcity in which ensuring food supplies is becoming a major challenge for the 21st century.

Damaged by severe weather in producing countries and plundered by a boom in demand from fast-developing nations, global wheat stocks are at 30-year lows. Grain prices have been on the rise for five years, ending decades of inexpensive food.

Drought, a declining dollar, a shift of investment money into commodities and use of farm land to grow biofuel crops have all contributed to food woes. But population growth and the growing wealth of China and other emerging countries are likely to be more enduring factors. World population is set to hit 9 billion by 2050, and most of the extra 2.5 billion people will live in the developing world. It is in these countries that the population is demanding dairy and meat, which require more land to produce.

“This is an additional setback for the world economy, at a time when we are already going through major turbulence, but the biggest drama is the impact of higher food prices on the poor,” Angel Gurría, head of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, said.
In Gurría’s native Mexico, tens of thousands took to the streets last year over the cost of tortillas, a national staple whose price rocketed in tandem with the price of corn.

Global food prices, based on United Nations records, rose 35 percent in the year to the end of January, markedly accelerating an upturn that began, gently at first, in 2002. Since then, prices have risen65percent.

In 2007 alone, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s world food index, dairy prices rose nearly 80 percent and grain 42percent.”The recent rise in global food commodity prices is more than just a short-term blipping,” the British research group Chatham House said in January. “Society will have to decide the value to be placed on food,” it added, and how “market forces can be reconciled with domestic policy objectives.” Many countries are already facing these choices.

After long opposition, Mexico’s government is considering lifting a ban on genetically modified crops to allow its farmers to compete with the United States, where high-yield, genetically modified corn is the norm.

The European Union and parts of Africa have similar bans that could also be reconsidered.
A number of governments, including Egypt, Argentina, Kazakhstan and China, have imposed restrictions to limit grain exports and keep more of their food at home.

This knee-jerk response to food emergencies can result in farmers producing less food, and it threatens to undermine years of effort to open up international trade.

“If one country after the other adopts a ’starve-your-neighbor’ policy, then eventually you trade smaller shares of total world production of agricultural products, and that in turn makes the prices more volatile,” said Joachim von Braun, director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington.

In Argentina, a government tax on grain led to a strike by farmers that disrupted grain exports. Vietnam and India, both major rice exporters, announced further curbs on overseas sales Friday, sending rice higher on U.S. futures markets. Other food commodities retreated from record highs in recent days, but analysts attributed that less to fundamentals and more to profit-taking by investors.

In the next decade, the price of corn could rise 27 percent, oilseeds like soybeans by 23 percent and rice by 9 percent, according to tentative UN and OECD forecasts in February.
Waves of discontent are already starting to be felt. Violent protests hit Cameroon and Burkina Faso in February. Protesters rallied in Indonesia recently and media reported deaths by starvation. In the Philippines, fast-food chains were urged to cut rice portions to counter a surge in prices.

Trade Minister Kamal Nath of India said Monday that the government was looking to cut duties on food items to rein in rising prices.
“We are looking to cutting our duties on many products on the food front,” he said, ahead of a cabinet committee meeting to consider ways to contain prices. Earlier this month, the government cut the import duty on crude palm oil to 20 percent from 45 percent, and on refined palm oil to 27.5 percent from 52.5 percent.

Last year, the central bank of Australia - where minds were focused by a two-year drought - asked whether the surge in commodity prices could be one of the few really big ones in world history, like those of the mid-1930s or the 1970s.

Real commodity prices remained flat or even fell during the rapid industrialization of the United States and Germany in the early 20th century. But the industrialization of China, with 1.3 billion people, is on a totally different scale, the Reserve Bank of Australia noted.

“China’s population is proportionately much larger than the countries that industrialized in earlier periods and is almost double that of the current G-7 nations combined,” the central bank said. The emergence of China’s middle class is adding hugely to demand not just for basic commodities like corn, soybeans and wheat, but also for meat, milk and other high-protein foods.
The Chinese, whose rise began in earnest in 2001, ate just 20 kilograms, or 44 pounds, of meat per capita in 1985. They now eat 50 kilograms a year.

Each pound of beef takes about seven pounds of grain to produce, which means land that could be used to grow food for humans is being diverted to growing animal feed.
As the West seeks to tackle the risk of global warming, a drive toward greener fuels is compounding global food problems. It is estimated that one in four bushels of corn from the U.S. corn crop this year will be diverted to make fuel ethanol.

“Turning food into fuel for cars is a major mistake on many fronts,” said Janet Larsen, director of research at the Earth Policy Institute, an environmental group based in Washington. “One, we’re already seeing higher food prices in the American supermarket. Two, perhaps more serious from a global perspective, we’re seeing higher food prices in developing countries where it’s escalated as far as people rioting in the streets.”

Similarly, prices for palm oil are at records because of demand to use it for biofuel, causing pain for low-income families in Indonesia and Malaysia, where it is a staple.But despite the rising criticism of biofuels, the U.S. corn-fed ethanol industry enjoys wide political support because it helps farmers, who suffered years of low prices, and that support is likely to continue.
John Bruton, the European Union’s ambassador to the United States, predicts that the world faces 10 to 15 years of steep rises in food costs. And it is the poor in Africa and, increasingly, Southeast Asia, who will be most vulnerable.

The director of the UN World Food Program, Josette Sheeran, is on a global tour in search of donations to fill a $500 million funding gap caused by the rising prices. The largest U.S. aid program, Food for Peace, has seen its commodity prices jump 40 percent and may have to curtail donations.

But aid and many policy options available to governments for helping the hungry distort markets and cause pain elsewhere in their economies, according to proponents of free markets.
“I was involved in a government that introduced food subsidies in Ireland and we had the devil’s own job to get rid of them,” said Bruton, who was prime minister of Ireland from 1994 to 1997.
Others trust that better fertilizers and higher-yielding crops – some of them genetically modified - will keep production in line with demand.

Bruce Babcock, an economist at Iowa State University, said the rising markets were a signal to farmers that they needed to raise production.
“It’s actually the greatest time in the world to be a farmer around the world,” Babcock said. “We are going to see fairly substantial increases in production because farmers have never had such a large incentive to increase production.”

But others note that expensive seeds and fertilizers are out of reach of farmers in poor countries.
Around the beginning of the 19th century, the British political economist Thomas Malthus said population had the potential to grow much faster than food supply, a prediction that efficient farming consistently proved wrong. Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, some are revisiting his predictions.

Responses to ‘Fitna’ film

2008-05-26T01:21:00.000-07:00

Geert Wilders is a die-hard masochist who enjoys dispensing “Dutch treat”.NENNETH CHENJakarta

Muslims only wonder why Wilders disrupts the quiet of others while he is never interrupted. I think he is just seeking fame for himself by sacrificing the peace. Congratulation, Wilders. See you in hell.HM SABAR SS PRAYAJakarta

In fact the protests against the anti-Islam film have been going on not only at Jakarta’s Dutch Embassy but also at the Dutch Consulate in Medan.

It is not a matter of maturity or immaturity of Indonesian Muslims, but the feeling of togetherness and brotherhood with Westerners, mainly Europeans, as a part of the global community that should be maintained.
The incorrect opinion on Islam must be buried to create a global life of harmony.ABDUL RAHIMTangerang, Banten

The less violent protests against Fitna do not indicate the growing maturity of Indonesian Muslims. It indicates the growing faithless of them.RIZWAN DARMAWANBandung

Being a Muslim, I hate people who humiliate Islam without any knowledge about it. Fitna is mockery, reflecting the producer’s madness for popularity.SUYADIJambi

I’m a Christian and absolutely condemn Fitna as made based on like and dislike. I hope Muslim clerics still continue to give cool and fresh sermons (da’wah).L.L. BIEPurwodadi, Central Java

I think Fitna will hurt Muslims and it may spark conflicts.SETYO DEWI UTARIBandung
The government bans Fitna, but Ahmadiyah followers in many areas like Lombok in West Nusa Tenggara and Kuningan, West Java, still get harassed even by officials of local governments.RIKAJakarta

Until now, seven mosques belonging to Ahmadiyah Muslims, located in Kuningan, West Java, are still closed by the local government, claiming for the sake of safety.
It is ridiculous. While the government and Muslims in this country condemn the film Fitna, they still allow violence against Ahmadiyah followers.GUNAWAN AHMADTangerang
(thejakartapost.com)

ISLAM AND THE WORLD

2006-10-10T03:57:00.000-07:00

Islam and the World

Hello, My name's Pormadi Simbolon, the former student of philosophy and theology in Catholic College. I'm an Indonesian. I'm a Roman Catholic. I face many difficulties with the culture of some people of Muslim in Indonesia.

As a Christian, I was disappointed with the people who is named Front Pembela Islam - FPI (Defenders of Islam).

FPI makes people of non-Muslim so scared because of the way of violence they've ever done (e.g. destroy some churches). What do you think about the Islam? Is this a religion who bring peace as the meaning of "islam"? Is this statement, “where there is Islam, there is always war" true?

1. randyw (123)
1 month ago
Welcome to myLot, pormadi!Personally, I don't know enough to have an informed opinion. But this topic fascinates me, and I'd like to learn more. Please tell us more of your thoughts and views on this issue. You obviously have seen things that make you feel the way you do. I'd love to learn more. Please share!

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2. ashraf83 (133)
1 month ago
it not islam to be blamed, it's people in your country, indonesian are always known for their extreme attitude for religion. see your neighbour country, Malaysia. we are islamic country, but do we has this type of trouble? no because we malaysian are always know for modest behaviour, we respect and accept other belief, Trust,respect and understanding one culture is really is important. so please dont blame it on Islam. it's annoy me*mutter mutter*
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cyrux004 (787)
4 weeks ago
Plese donot quote out of context. Islam never preaches war until its for selfdefence and please dont ask modest. What did US do to coutnries like iraq and afghnistan. Nobody in the whole world protested becuase they have no guts. Islam always teaches peace, but there are black sheeps in every society
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pormadi (372)
4 weeks ago
I agree tha Islam preach the peace to all of human being. The problem is who is the doer and interpreter of the Bible or Quran. Thanks.
noorasie
4 weeks ago
Mightymore statements are blasphemy against islam and Muhammad (PBUH)...... This idiot is referencing the Quraan without context... and don't know this is the blasphemy... I will request all the mightymor like members of my lot to stop such idiot comments about the religions and sacred personality.....
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ashraf83

1 week ago
agreed noorasie, mightor need to be bann because he played with religion sensitivity. that not how is it in Quran!

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3. naidugopal (888)
1 month ago
By the name of jihaad the islams always commiting nuisance, but not all islams are bad, some of the islamis monks are always thinking in short routes so that i thought never ends
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ashraf83 (133)
1 month ago
Muslim was first be called to jihad when western invade their country ancient ago. Jihad is mostly like a call to defend the homeland and islamic faith, it's not holy war to spread islam. Extremist uses it just to gain support in their cause and make their member braver by promising paradise.*mutter mutter*
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shajeen (120)
4 weeks ago
jihad..all tat is crap..it has always been political..alll these killin and war takin place around the world is all for personal intrest only..those losers dont want to or will think abt wat the are doin to the innocent ppl..
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cyrux004 (787)
4 weeks ago
True, all these killings are political...
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ashraf83 (133)
1 week ago
yeah including killing in palestine and lubnan, oh and even in iraq wait wait almost forgot, dont forget to add afganistan:)

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4. priyanka_s (388)
1 month ago
Pls share more on this topic,I know little about the Islam and they are "Katter" i dont know the english word sorry. And the thing you have faces is very common.They luv to do like that.I know it is terrible....
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liong_kwei_cun (106)
4 weeks ago
But there are muslims still moderately and tolerantly with non-Muslim.
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pormadi (372)
4 weeks ago
thank you for your opinion.
sibananda (590)
4 weeks ago
QURAN SAYS THERE IS NO GOD( VIRTUAL) BUT THERE ISGOD( ACTUAL) ISLAM MEANS TO SURRENDER AT FEET OF GOD HOWCONSCIENCE WILL SAY SURRENDERING AS A SINNER IN THE NAMEOF RIGHTOUSNESS AND JUSTICE BUT THERE ARE MANY MUSLIM WHOREALLY UNDERSTAND THE ISLAMIC WISDOM
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fizza10 (637)
4 weeks ago
basically ppl just have a one sided image of muslims that they r evil or bad or something unusal.....but in a broader aspect it is not like this.....u can only know abt anyone else's religion if u go into its depth n study abt it rather than hear ghost stories abt it.......many a ppl said various things to b abt christians n hindus....but when i came to read their books n gain knowldge abt them it all turned out to b quite different.....no wonder yes there r extremists everywhere.....our God is just the same as of Christians or anyone....have u urself ever seen GOd wid ur own eyes?no God is something only 2 b felt....noo one on earth can claim that they have see Him or touched Him rite....if u come n share some of ur time wid muslims u'd come to know how tremendous a religion it is.......but unfortunately some ppl have shattered it's image n thus u can't c it's brighter part n just look at the extremist part.....jihad doesnt only mean that go n kill.......no it has various other things in it.......there r different types of jihad's.....that r .....jihad(basically means to fight 4 self)...jihad against sins...2 not to commit them.....jihad 4 a man is that he shld earn n give a healthy living to his family....jihad 4 a woman is she shld keep the house n raise gud children in her family.....jihad 4 a child is to remain obedient to his parents n teachers.......jihad 4 an individual is that he/she shld offer their prayers on time n take care of poor or needy....jihad 4 country is to save ur honor n keep the minority following community(i.e hindus,christians,jews,buddhists n all)in save hands....fulfill their rights,take care of those who can't due to any unfortunate reason...keep peace in the region...so u c my frds jihad is just not abt swords only....each one of u who is fulfilling these duties is doing a jihad in their own way b it from any religion....n if u talk abt afghanistan.....my dear's it is an un educated country.....under the destruction of war since ages.......what can u expect from them.......theose poor souls r just zombies...who can't cant help themselves....cant u c due to no employment or any facility even by the ignorance of the world.....that had to survive....n thus the only way out of all this was the accept whatever osama n his allies had said as they were giving them the protection...n supplies....now question urselves rather than commenting abt anyone else's religion that what would u do if ur family was in sucha a situation?wouldn't u go through any sort of sufferance in order to provide a single piece of bread for them.....u would undoubtefully u would.....now no matter weather u say u won't i won't agree coz than it will mean u ain't listening 2 ur hearts.....don't blame islam 4 all of our ignorance coz each one of us here is responsible 4 all this destruction n sufferance.......v can sit n pass comments but none can come n help in the fields wid love n hope 4 a better world....it's no use passing comments on each other religion like this.....coz all the religions have the same basics.....it's v humans who r corrupted.....where were v all when ppl of afghanistan were suffering....n thus choose the wrong path.....9/11 was something huge but what abt the innocent souls being daily lost in de world in the name of religion?or cast or creed?
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fizza10 (637)
4 weeks ago
yeah v do bow down n put our head on the ground when v pray(sajda)....but don't u hindus do the same when u go 2 ur temples....in order to show respect n show that u urself r nothing but ur God is the Supreme one.....don't u join ur hands together n pray as if asking in front of someone.....don't the christians go down on their knees n pray to God to show Him respect.......so if v muslims do the same thing by putting our heads in submission wha wrong is that.....v all submit ourselves to God in our ways coz it is understood that no one is as great as Him....v all show our helplessness when v pray so y can't v muslims do so?

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5. mightor (49)
4 weeks ago
Islam spread rapidly under Muhammad and his successors through jihad ("holy war"). Muhammad himself planned 65 campaigns and personally led 27 involving naked aggression and treachery. This incredible "evangelism" made "converts" by the millions at the point of a sword. At its peak, Islam had conquered all of North Africa and almost took over Europe. Islam continues its conquest worldwide. Today's invaders are millions of immigrants who make converts to Islam through misrepresentation. One sees on TV well-coifed and fashionably dressed women who claim to be converts to Islam and testify to its joys and peace-loving ways. Yet in a Muslim country they would have to be veiled with only their eyes showing, would have to wear plain black full-length robes, could not drive a car, could be one of four wives habitually mistreated by their husband, to be divorced by his mere denunciation, virtual slaves under shari'a. Oddly enough, Hillary Clinton, National Organization of Women (NOW), and other outspoken champions of women's rights are silent about Islam's notorious abuse of women.
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fizza10 (637)
4 weeks ago
my dear i dunno from where u r or who u r.....but so much of poison is not good in one....i guess u'd better go n read Quran n than read a few more books....n if further u need any guidance than i cant refer u some books.....but i know it's all going to invain coz u have turned ur ears deaf n r not ready to even c things in a better way
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ashraf83 (133)
1 week ago
islam dont drive a car? funny! i think someone need to be locked up in someplace before he started to kill someone
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6. mightor (49)
4 weeks ago
Islam's earnest goal, set forth in the Koran (references given herein are from three versions) and hadith (Islamic written tradition), remains the same: to bring all mankind into submission (that's what "Islam" means) and to kill or enslave all "infidels"(i.e., unbelievers in Allah and Muhammad his prophet--Surah 2:190-92;4:76;5:33;9:5,29,41;47:4, etc.). Islam (in obedience to the Koran and Muhammad's example) is the driving force behind most terrorism today. Muhammad declared, "The last hour will not come before the Muslims fight the Jews and the Muslims kill them."
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pormadi (372)
4 weeks ago
Would explaine me more clearly the point you want to say.
ashraf83 (133)
1 week ago
he was saying that he reall hate muslim, and wont think twice to kill them if he has a chance...
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7. Jong_Java (3)
4 weeks ago
I'm an Indonesian too,and yor statement in the last paragraph is rather annoyed me.. always remember is this:if you hurt by other you have THE RIGHT to fight but, BUT it is better if you FORGIVE the one that hurt you... I've lot friend from Cristian too, and so far my relationship my friend from a different religion is just fine, coz we respect each other .... And about FPI, I've no comment coz I don't know what motif behind their action . Peace for all human being and all God Creation
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pormadi (372)
4 weeks ago
Thank you very much for your response. The last question is a question. Maybe it's not a truth. Salam persaudaraan.
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When I was in Carmelite Order (Religious Life)

2006-08-10T18:43:00.000-07:00

MY TRULY STORY
My name is PORMADI PATERNUS SIMBOLON, born on 09.08.1975 at PARSIROAN, a village in the parish of TIGALINGGA, arcdiocese of Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia.

My present mailing address is : Jalan Nusa Indah I/IX/149 B

Perumnas Klender

Jakarta Timur 13460

Indonesia

Email: permadi_2003@yahoo.com

Mobile ph.: +6285216070048

I’ve been born in a reallyy cahtolic family of farmers, of a sufficient economic condition. I received my first education at home from my birth untill 1988. At the age of 13 years I left my village and went to SIDIKALANG, where I lived at a boardinghouse of the parish of the town and studied at the junior high school there for three years (1988-1991).

Then I went ti the Minor Seminary at PEMATANG SIANTAR for the following four years (senior high school) from 1991-1995. There I asked to enter the novitiate of the Carnelites at Batu (East Java). I was accepted and entered there officially on 31 August 1995. There, too after two years of novitiate I made my first religious profession in the Order of Carmel at 10 August 1997. My solemn profession in the same Order I made at 15 August 2002 in the parish church of Sacred Heart in Malang, and on 27 February 2003 I was ordained deacon at the Cathedral of Malang.

I made my higher studies of Philosophy and Theology and got my degree of baccalaureate at the SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY “WIDYA SASANA”, Jalan Terusan Rajabasa 2, MALANG. But after having finished my studies being a deacon solemly professed in the Indonesian Province of The Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, I left the Order. After being ordained deacon I’ve exercised for several months the office of deacon at the parish of KEPANJEN, diocese of Malang.

From the time I was at the Minor Seminary of Pematang Siantar, North Sumatra, after the time I left, I often asked permission to leave because I never felt really fully “the vocation for the religious life and the priesthood” and because of difficulty of celibacy.

First of all there there was a strong pressure of my parents to become a priest. At the Minor Seminary and at the monastery I was always given the counsel to try it again and my self I did not have enough courage to make a decision different from the strong desire of my parents and the counsel I received at th Seminary and the monastery. So my my motivation to enter the Order and to make my first and solemn profession was almost the same: I would try as good possible, but was always unsure and doubtful. There was no any real problem in leving the religious life, no difficulty about faith, but I was just afraid to stay and afraid to leave, especially because of the celibacy. I did my best, seriously. I understood well the meaning and the consequences, but I was always afraid of not being capable to live chastely. And I always have spoken about these questions with my formators, i.e. about my doubts with Fr. F.J.M. Kutschruiter and Fr. C. Verbeek, about the celibacy with Fr. Yulius Sudharnoto. Some months after having made my final vows on 15 August 2002 I’ve spoken with Fr. C. Verbeek about my doubts concerning my vocation and he gave me the counsel that I should not ask to be ordained deacon. But I felt rather sure for a moment and so I asked to be ordained deacon, what happened at 27 February 2003. Afterwards I asked to postpone priestly ordination for one year, but finally after some months I decided to leave (11 July 2003). I know that at time I signed the declaration that I was receiving the ordination of deacon with full knowledge and freedom, I was still doubting in my heart. After the ordination as deacon I spoke about my difficulties too with Fr. Thomas Gheta, the priest who was in charge of the parish where I assisted as deacon for several months. After leaving the monastery I did not exercise the ministry, but I have a job provide for my living. And after receiving dispensation I should like to marry.

The following persons can give testimony about my case:

Father Heribertus Heru Purwanto, O.Carm., provincial at the time;

Father F.J.M. Kutschruiter, O.Carm., my spiritual director;

Father Yulius Sudharnoto, the prior and magister studentium for the last two years;

Father Th. Gheta, parish priest of Kepanjen and

Father C. Verbeek, for several years spiritual director.

Jakarta, 6 Juni 2006

EFFICIENT MEMORY

2006-04-27T12:06:00.000-07:00

EFFICIENT MEMORY

Memory is a complex thing. It is difficult to find a single universally definition of what it is and how it works. Generally speaking, memory consists of three elements: acquiring whatever it is we want to remember, storing it and recalling it. In this section, we shall see what can be done to improve accessibility.
The basic objectives you should have (though you should of course, add some specific objectives of your own to the list) are:

· Having a better understanding of how memory works in practice;
· Deciding what you need to remember;
· Selecting the most appropriate method in memorising different kinds of information;
· Learning a variety of mnemonic (memory aiding) tecniques.

These several ways to ensure that impression is made stronger. They are:

1. Repetition helps to strenghen the impression that something has made.
2. Writing things down reinforces them.
3. We remember information better if we used it.
4. Discussion is a very powerful reinforcing agent. We remember things better if we have discussed them with others.
5. In addtition to reinforcing information, we need to provide ourselves with ‘trigger’ which will prompt the recall of material we require.

Over of period of time, the benefits of improving your memory skills can be incalculable.

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Summarized by Pormadi Simbolon from STEPS FOR SUCCESS, Gordon Wainwright, Jaico Publishing House : 2004, p.33-44

DIVERGENT THINK*

2006-04-26T13:12:00.000-07:00

DIVERGENT THINK*

Divergent think is about creative, insightful, mainly unpredictable thinking.

Divergent thinking follows few rules. It does not seek a single correct answer, nor indeed necessarily any answer at all. Starting from a problem, a stuation, or a body of information, it diverges, explores, seeks and examines things form as many viewpoints as possible. It is curious, provocative, controversial, and even ridiculuous (it was the odd idea of an eccentric that put the Plimsoll line an ships, for example). We use it especially to find new ways of doing things and different approaches to a wide variety of concerns. It is unpredictable both in method and results. It is most effective where there is insufficient information for us to use them, or their use is inappropriate for any one of a number of reasons.

The basic objectives you should have (through you should, of course, add some specific ones of your own to the list) are:

· Recognising divergent thinking opportunities;
· Trying to put divergent thinking tecniques into practice;
· Using methods appropriate to the precise nature of the problem, situation or issue in order to generate novel solutions and responses;
· Getting as much practices as possible in using divergent techniques

These techniques are:

1. Producing ideas (any ideas): find as many ways as possible of doing or cooking of something. Reject nothing. However unpromising an idea look at first, it may acquire significance later.

2. Questioning what happens at present: Is it really like this? Does it have to be like this? Is there really a problems? Could we look at things in some other way?

3. Achieving a new perspective: turn things completely round or upside down.

4. Making comparisons: Compare the problems, situations or issues to another. They need not be related for this techniques to work.

5. Allowing ridiculuous ideas: The motor car, aeroplane and submarine were once ridiculous ideas (not to mention going into space)

6. Waiting for inspirations: Doing nothing or allowing a periods of mental ‘incubation’ as a useful creative thinking techniques because once we have stated the problem and defined it the brain will continue to work on it and possible solutions may come to mind at the most unexpected times. Solutions discovered in this way are often revolutionary and yet highly practical.

7. Being ready for sudden and unexpected insights. This involves readiness twenty-four hours a day for the solution to present itself. If it does, we should note it down straightaway Many good ideas thought of at 1 a.m have vanished by 8 a.m.. This method differs from waiting for inspiration in that we actively think about the problem, situations or issues from time to time. When illumination comes, you are ready for it.

8. Repeating the process: Ging over the same ground again often produces an additional idea which turn out to the one that will work.

Remember, divergent thinking techniques are the most use in finding new things of doing things, new interpretaions and new outlooks. They are invaluable not only in promoting change and development, but also in indicating precisely where and in which ways change and development can take place.

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* Summarized by Pormadi Simbolon from STEPS FOR SUCCESS, by Gordon Wainraight, Jaico Publishing House: 2004, p.21-31.

CONVERGENT THINKING

2006-04-24T13:05:00.000-07:00

CONVERGENT THINKING

Convergent is about logical, analytical, often predictable thinking.

Convergent thinking follows the rules of logic and tends to look for a single correct answer. As we study a problem, for instance, we converge, as it were, upon the answer. This kind of thinking is ussually used where we can quantity things. We can therefore, often foretell the results of convergent thinking, one we can see where our thingking lead us.

How well we think depends largely on how clearly we think. If our thinking is faulty, then what we say or write will be faulty. There are logical processes which thinking should follow if it is to show the proper connections between ideas or between different pieces of informations. It must also follow these processes if it is to show the true relationship between one idea, fact, object or event and another.

(summarized from: Gordon Wainwright, STEPS for Succes, Jaico Publishing House: 2004, p.7-9)

Questioning the self-integrity of apparatus of the republic

2006-04-17T20:48:00.000-07:00

Questioning the self-integrity of apparatus of the republic

Pormadi Simbolon,Jakarta

It is interesting to see many issues of our country problems. They are palpable progress in the areas of government corruption, supremacy of law, education, poverty, social and economic injustice, unemployment, displaced person about five years untill now. They are the hardships that life bring to people.

The people of Indonesia are entitled to expect, in fact to demand a great change since period of Megawati Soekarnoputri’s government and especially from Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his new government. But the people still complain about the hardships of the life in this republic. The question is why the apparatus of government can not change the life of people?

I think that the main thing to reflect is the self-integrity of our apparatus and elites of government. They should serve the people with self-integrity. Self-integrity is a must for them.

The Reformasi 1998 changed all that by removing the center of power of the structure. People is the center of the power. However, because there was no proper self- integrity, the apparatus can not do their duties to the people.

In fact, the apparatus of government can not accept this statement. They may be confess confidently that they had had self-integrity. We hope they do have self-integrity or credibility in serving people. But why the problems be more complex and serious?

Again, the question, had they serve the people with the truly self-integrity? If they had the self-integrity, why the republic of Indonesia still be one of most corrupted in the world?

What our apparatus of the Republic seem to have failed to have is that they do not realized and understand the nature of self integrity. Stll, indications, were clear, corruption still be the first problem from the central government till to the provinces goverments. The issues e.g. corruption, supremacy of law, social and economic injustice can not be solved till now. Still, there are no significant signs.

The question is do they really had self-integrity in serving people? Do they had credibility in do their duties? Ho about their self-integrity?

Self-integrity is a balance of the universal polarities of personality, known as love, assertion, weakness and strength in giving their dedicatiom to the republic.

Love is the glue in relationships and service to the people, which provides compassion, attraction, tenderness to serve the people. Through love, the apparatus will serve the people as the center of their duties naturally.

Assertion enables the apparatus to confront injustice and harrassment that exist in the mid of people. Throug assertion, they experience the courage to serve the people. It is also needed to manifestate the dedication to our country.

Through weakness, they confess their inability or incapability in doing their sevice. They could ask any help from the people the way to solve any problem. It is healthy weakness. It allows the apparatus to discuss their weakness and failure without feeling humiliated. It also provides them the continuing opportunity for personality transformation in dedicating the republic.

Strength reflects self worth and fosters adequacy, competence and identity of the apparatus. Through strength, they can serve the people professionally. It makes them confidently in giving their contribution and dedication to the people of Indonesia.

Balancing the universal polarities of personality, they will find theirselves as a good apparatus of government. They should be confident and strong. The apparatus of government will have good reputation in this country and international.

This is the real self-integrity, I think. We hope that the apparatus of new government really have self-integrity so that the hope for a better life for the people can be manifestated.

Still, the question is do the apparatus of our government have the self-integrity?

Pormadi Simbolon,
Almamater fo STFT Widya Sasana Malang,
Lived in Jakarta

MAKING THE LIFE WORTH

2006-04-17T18:46:00.000-07:00

MAKING THE LIFE WORTH

Pormadi Simbolon

Experiences are part of our daily life. They give us how to learn and to live the life. They tell us how to face our daily problem. Everything that we have coming from experiences in our life.

Nowadays, life is complex. The problem in front of us is more complex too. But how to face and overcome are the main things. The first of all is goals in our life. If we have goals, we will be active to reach them. If we have dreams, we must get them. If we think we can, we can do it. So the goals is the most important in the life.

As we know, we live in the world of higher technology and information era. We are in the global village. Like media said: this era is globalization. The era of globalization creates new problems.

The problems must be solved. We can not run from our daily life problems. If we can pass them, these are the best teacher for us in the future. So experience is the best teacher.

In addition, the main thing of life is love. If we love the life we will live it well. Love is a clue in relationships with others and God. We can live together because of love. Love makes us having a compassion with ourselves and others.
****

Eveyone was born to live the life from God. Life is a grace. It is a gift from God to us. So we should live the life well. We should give thanks to Lord for the life He has given to us. As religious person, we believe that God gives us the power to live.

As a grace, the life also be a struggle. We have to face anything about life like variety of experiences. Both happiness and sufferings are parts of our life.

Experience contents of both sweetness and bitterness. The happiness make us energic to go on the life. Bitterness is that we should reflect and take a values of them.

For some people, the life is hard because many problem come on and on to them. But, although the life is hard, it should be face patiently.

As a part of life, experience make us growing well. Experiences need the integrity of ourselves. We ourselves should realize that the instruments of our personality. They are love, strength, weakness and assertion within ourselves.

Anyway, the important thing in the life is how to give the meaning to all of our experiences. And so, the life is how to take worth of them. I mean that the experience is the best teacher for us. We will not fall to the same foolishness or mistakes if we could take the values from our experiences.

I want to say in this section, the experiences of our life is complex but also beautiful. It tells us many learning from our social life. It teaches us facing the life with the others. It means we can grow perfectly if we live with our neighbour. The perfect of life can be reach only by living with others. It is social life.

******

There are many problems in my life. One of them is how to fullfil the needs of my family. I should send my children to school. I must give them good education. These are also my duties as parents to them.

Sometime I ask myself, how should I look for some money. How should I get a good salary from my job. The questions make me reflecting about my life.

But I ever think that I will never be able to fullfill all of the needs of my family. Should I do a bad way? Is it enough asking myself only? What should I do to become a succes person in life? I can reach nothing if I am too lazy, lack of knowledge, and lack of faith. I can not be a succes person if talking only without action. Finally, I make a decision that the best for me is action and action in my life.
*****

The life will be nothing if it is not planned. It will be worth if we can live it as grace and struggle. There is not again “No Action, Talking Only” (NATO).

Planning is the best way to make life well. It means we should make a real goal of our life. The goal is the most important to live the life.

What do goals for me? They help me set priorities. Something become vitally important, while others cease to have any importance.

Goals help me set my schedule and efforts, not only over long periods of time, but daily. A person with goals does not want to waste time.

Goals help me balance my life. Staying healthy and feeling good – which involve proper nutrition, adequate sleep, times of relaxation and recreation, and daily exercise – become important because they are linked to the ability to accomplish goals.

Goals that I have planned are how to get a good salary and how to fullfil the needs of my family and how could I be a succes person in the life. They are my priorities.

Where there is a will, there is a way, like people know. By sharing my problem to my leader in my workplace, I was offered a free college’s fund.Then one of my solution is going to college for getting a higher degree so that I can get a better salary. I think this is grace from God to me. I thank God for blessing me.

Solving a problem, I should know to praise the Lord ang give thanks to Him and I ask a help from Him. As a religious people, I can do nothing without bleesings from God.

In fact, the goals also mean to know where we should go. First, we find out where we are now. Then we decide a real goal to the future. We try to visualize point of end of our goal. Next, we begin doing after making an action plan. I begin from the first step and then the others. Action plan should be done with discipline. It is also done by evaluating our action plan daily.
******

Experience is the best teacher. I live my life well because I make plannings and goals. I do myself making decisions. The life must has goals.

I can tell everybody that the life will not be worth without goals. There are a lot of reasons. A person without goals generally has no excitement in his life. He has no enthusism for getting up in the morning. He has no ambition to make the most of everyday. Nothing energizes him.

A person without goals is wasting time and without a sense of direction. The life as it comes and passes it without something new.

A person without goals is often very critical of others, especially those who are succesful or who are working hard to achieve particular goals. The person without goals basically does not like himself very much. He does not believe that the life is grace and struggle. To make himlsef better, he tend to criticize others, hoping to bring them down to his level.

I think that everybody must choose a life with goals, not life without goals. It is because the life is grace and struggle. We live with happiness and suffer experiences. We know the life is only once, so we should live it well.

As a religious people, I believe that everything that we have is come from the God. So I thank to God for His blessings. I ask a help from the Almighty God. I need a mercy of God to me.

It is important to build relationship with God, so that I can live happily. I become patient in this life because of He gives a power to live. By loving God, I also love the others in my social life. Loving God makes me growing in the social life. My life be worth because live the life as grace and struggle.

Writer, an employee in Department of Religion,
Central Jakarta

THE AIMS OF STUDYING?

2006-04-09T21:19:00.000-07:00

The Aim of Studying?

Have we ever asked ourselves why we must go to school? We will probably say that go to school to learn languages, mathematics, geography, religion and many other subjects. That answer is quite correct. However, why do we have to learn those subjects? And do we only study those things at school?

When we study the Indonesian language, we wish to be able to tell others clearly about what we know and understand, and also to comprehend what others tell us. We learn foreign languages, for instance English, in rder to be able to understand what people in other countries have written and said. We also try to communicate with them. We study matematics in order to be able to compute or count better.

When we go to school, in fact, we learn something more than those subjects. We never realize that when we go to school, we also keep on learning ‘how to learn’ so that when we leave to school, we can keep on learning by ourselves. A person who knows how to learn will always be succesful.

To conclude, the most important aim of studying is to know how to learn and to be able to keep on learning. In other words, studying at school helps us to learn more in our lives. I think the motto LIVE AND LEARN should be applied. Do you agree?

By Pormadi Simbolon,

a student at Seminari Menengah Pematang Siantar, North Sumatera, Indonesia
On DIALOGUE, An English magazine for everybody to enjoy, vol. 03/ XXI-1995