NO GARBAGE ZONE

A history of seductive drugs.

2012-02-16T17:00:00.000+07:00

By Jacqueline Detwiler, The Fix

1) Alcohol: Ancient SumeriaThisFans of alcohol are in good company; this is a drug that's been in use since the dawn of human time—if carbon dating of jugs found in Jiahu, China to around 8,000 BC is to be believed. But it wasn’t until we settled into agricultural societies that the wine really got flowing. Written records from ancient Sumeria document the uses and quantity of the beer—called "kash"—that was brewed. They even indicate that Sumerians had regulated drinking places similar to modern-day bars. The booze, for its part, was considered worthy of offering to the gods, and even thought to have a civilizing effect: The Epic of Gilgameshmentions a wild man named Enkidu who was seduced to join civilization after he drank seven jugs of beer, “became expansive and sang with joy.” (A harlot was also, apparently, involved.)
2) Peyote: Mexico
Mescaline—the psychoactive ingredient in the peyote plant that's native to Mexico and the Southwest US—has probably been used in religious ceremonies since 3780–3660 BC, according to carbon dating of dried buttons found in a cave on the Rio Grande in Texas. Written records began once Catholic Spanish conquerors arrived in Mexico and were alarmed by the practice of eating or drinking peyote during religious festivals. In an effort to discourage use, priests were in the habit of asking their new congregationalists to confess to having experienced the drug’s hallucinogenic effects, right after they asked “Have you eaten the flesh of man?” and “Do you suck the blood of others?”
3) Marijuana: Siberia
Think medical marijuana is a new phenomenon? Not exactly. Chinese emperor Shen Nung first recommended brewing the leaves into a tea to relieve the symptoms of menstrual cramps, rheumatism, gout, malaria and even—hilariously—absentmindedness back in 2737 BC. Scythians, a people that lived in Siberia around the 7th century BC, were more into the drug for the fun; they were known to throw marijuana seeds onto stones that were heated during funeral ceremonies, inhaling the fumes to become intoxicated. Russian archeologists began to suspect that both male and female Scythians smoked marijuana regularly for pleasure when they found primitive pot pipes in tombs in 1929.
4) Opium: Greece
Those Sumerians were really into their substances. In addition to brewing beer, they also cultivated the opium poppy, which they called “the joy plant.” The Sumerians passed on their knowledge of opium-induced joy to the Assyrians, who in turn passed it on to Babylonians, Egyptians and Greeks. By the time of the Greek classical period, farmers on the island of Cyprus had invented harvesting knives of surgical quality to get the most out of the poppies, and extracts of the flower were a common additive to the poison hemlock cocktail used in executions. During this period, poppies were considered of such usefulness in inducing sleep and forgetfulness that they are often depicted as part of the clothing or possessions of three gods of the Greek pantheon: Hypnos (sleep), Nix (night), and Thanatos (death).
5) Coco: Peru
Early use of coca leaves resulted from a fortuitous correlation between optimal growing weather and the high altitudes in the South American Andes Mountains. From the reign of the Inca until the South American revolutionary wars, native laborers and soldiers chewed the leaves to increase alertness and oxygen intake, helping them fight, ferry goods or messages over long distances, or mine without requiring much food or rest. As one European visitor noted in later years, “Where Europeans would have halted and bivouacked, the ill-clad, barefooted Indians merely paused, for a short interval, to chew their Coca.”
6) Laudenum and Morphine: Great Britain/USA

The opium poppy may have been discovered in the Near East, but the processing of it into innocuous-seeming salts, injections and liquids was a product of the industrial revolution in the West. In the 1800s, white women in particular were fond of a liquid opium preparation called laudanum that was sold through mail order companies and at local apothecaries. This preparation was also a favorite of English writer Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who may have been inspired to pen his poem Kubla Khan while in a laudanum-induced dream. After the US civil war, injured soldiers with morphine habits expanded the need for opium products, and opium-smoking dens started popping up in major cities like New York and San Francisco.
7) Cocaine: Austria
Once Coca was synthesized into cocaine and introduced to the world at large in the late 1800s, it found an unlikely proponent in the world’s most famous psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud. Even after attempting to cure a friend’s morphine habit by introducing him to the drug (the man died, addicted to both drugs, within seven years), Freud touted cocaine as a cure for everything from headaches to depression to sexual impotence. Not unexpectedly, he used quite a bit of the white lady himself, writing licentious letters to his fiancée containing such passages as: “When I come, I will kiss you quite red and feed you till you are plump. And if you are forward, you should see who is the stronger—a gentle little girl who doesn't eat enough, or a big, wild man who has cocaine in his body... I am just now busy collecting the literature for a song of praise to this magical substance.”
8) Amphetamine: Germany
German scientist Lazăr Edeleanu first synthesized amphetamine in 1887, and it became a useful cold remedy and diet pill throughout the world over the next 50 years. Once World War II broke out, however, amphetamine—along with injectable methamphetamine produced in Japan—became a weapon on a par with submarines and fighter planes. Thousands of soldiers on all sides of the conflict were issued drugs to keep them awake during all-night bombings, and Japanese kamikaze pilots used methamphetamine before every flight. The German blitzkreig, in particular, is well known for having been influenced by the use of meth among pilots. By the end of 1940, however, the German army had cut back substantially, having determined that the substance was incredibly addictive.
9) MDMA: USA
Though it was discovered in 1912 by a chemist working for Merck, not much was known about the psychoactive effects of MDMA until an eccentric chemist named Alexander Shulgin synthesized it as part of a pet project at Dow Chemical in 1967. When Shulgin gave a small gift of the drug to a psychologist friend, it became the focus of therapeutic zeal in the psychology community, with one doctor even calling it “penicillin for the soul.” Soon after, MDMA popped up in the club dance scene in Dallas, and the DEA held hasty meetings to add the drug to the illegal schedule—fighting tooth and nail with psychologists all the way. Shulgin, meanwhile, wrote and published a book called PIHKAL, short for Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved, which is still known worldwide as a club drug cookbook.
10) Benzodiazepines: New Jersey

While researching potential tranquilizers for Hoffman-LaRoche in New Jersey in the 1930s, Polish American scientist Leo Sternbach discovered the benzodiazepine that came to be known as Librium. Next came Valium and Klonopin—both of which were also discovered by Sternbach. Before long, the high anxiety culture of the mid-20th century led to increased use of benzos and thousands became addicted. Sternbach, meanwhile, continued his successful career, likely because he never developed an addiction to the drugs himself. “My wife doesn't let me take [them],” he once told the New Yorker.

Former neuroscientist Jacqueline Detwiler edits a travel magazine by day, but moonlights as a science writer. Her work has appeared in Wired, Men's Health, Fitness and Forbes.

The hypocracy of believers.

2012-02-13T13:34:00.001+07:00

Did you see the photo of the Syrian president Assad praying to his Allah? Does he and millions of other Muslims really believe that God is so stupid that He wouldn't have noticed the horrendous crimes they have committed against their fellow humans and if He did that he could be placated by praying to him? By flattering him with such utterances as GOD IS GREAT or by bowing to him in a mosque?

I have met quite a few hypocrites in my life (some closely related to me) so I don't really need to be made aware of bastards like Assad, Bush, Blair, Gaddafi, the catholic priests, and all the monks and imams who deface our planet!

--
AZIZ ANOM

Read these Doctor's Comments about Drugs.

2012-01-31T20:43:00.000+07:00

"The person who takes medicine must recover twice, once from the disease and once from the medicine." William Osler, M.D.

"The cause of most disease is in the poisonous drugs physicians superstitiously give in order to effect a cure." Charles E. Page, M.D.

"If all the medicine in the world were thrown into the sea, it would be bad for the fish and good for humanity." O.W. Holmes, (Prof. of Medicine Harvard University)

"Every drug increases and complicates the patients condition." Robert Henderson, M.D.

"In sickness the body is already loaded with impurities. By taking drug - medicines more impurities are added, thereby the case is further embarrassed and harder to cure." Elmer Lee, M.D.

"The necessity of teaching mankind not to take drugs and medicines, is a duty incumbent upon all who know their uncertainty and injurious effects; and the time is not far distant when the drug system will be abandoned." Charles Armbruster, M.D.

Aljazeera watched by open-minded people.

2012-01-30T20:35:00.000+07:00

A study has found that if you are more open-minded or smarter, you are likely to watch Aljazeera English than CNN or BBC. I am inclined to add that fans of Fox News Channel would have turned out to be even more dumb.

Foods that are not good for your sex life.

2012-01-27T18:40:00.000+07:00

Carbohydrate-rich processed foods.

Fried Foods With High Trans Fat Levels, like burgers.

Soy.

Foods with high levels of oxalic acid, such as green leafy vegetables.

Mint.

Its Ron Paul, stupid!

2012-01-25T20:06:00.000+07:00

If Americans knew what was good for them they would get rid of fakes and frauds like Obama and Gingrich and vote for Ron Paul in the upcoming presidential elections. But of course they wouldn't -- such is the level of education in their country.

A speech Obama should have given but didn't.

2012-01-25T19:54:00.000+07:00

The following is taken from an article by Simon Tisdall which appeared in the
guardian.co.uk, on tuesday 24 January 2012.

In his state of the union address, Barack Obama has the opportunity to promulgate a three-pronged 'axis of virtue'.
The best-known, or most notorious, state of the union address of recent times was delivered 10 years ago by George Bush, in January 2002, when he (or rather his speechwriter, David Frum) coined a phrase that has resonated ever since: the "axis of evil". Bush was referring to three "rogue" states: Saddam Hussein's Iraq, which he had already privately earmarked for US-facilitated regime change, Iran and North Korea. "States like these, and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world," Bush declared.

Barack Obama's state of the union speech tonight is unlikely to throw up a catchy phrase or soundbite to compare with Bush's portentous effort, although White House aides doubtless toiled until the last minute to try to attract the headline writers. Nor is Obama's election-year address, with a strong emphasis on domestic woes, likely to set the international agenda the way Bush did. After all, much of the decade after 2002 was taken up with US efforts, overt and covert, successful and floundering, to eliminate perceived threats emanating from the terrible trio.

This is a missed opportunity. If Obama really wanted to set the nation and the world talking, and breathe vigorous life into his so far underwhelming bid for a second term, he might do well to try new approaches to old problems. Instead of attempting to manage issues such as Iran's suspect nuclear programme, or skip over difficult challenges such as repeat sub-Saharan food emergencies, he could take a chance and propose radical solutions. Instead of trying to make a media splash, he could try to make a difference. In short, he could promulgate a three-pronged "axis of virtue".

Here are key excerpts from the "axis of virtue" speech Obama probably won't deliver:

1. "My fellow Americans. War with Iran in 2012 is not inevitable. It is not desirable. It is not practicable. And it is not necessary. There is no evidence – not one shred – that Iran has built or acquired a usable nuclear weapon. Nor is there good reason to believe it would use such weapons, against Israel or anybody else, should it obtain them in the future. Iranians are no different from Americans and Europeans. They are not suicidal. They wish to defend themselves against attack. Our job is to assure them they are not under threat.

"So today I announce that my administration will prepare and ask Congress to sign into law a non-aggression pact with the Islamic Republic of Iran. This pact will form the springboard for immediate, unconditional, across-the-board bilateral negotiations on restoring diplomatic and political ties, trade, investment, and people and cultural exchanges between our two great countries. We want to welcome Iran back into the family of nations. It has been absent for too long. For good measure, we are also planning full diplomatic relations with the state of Palestine and with Cuba. The days of big countries bullying weaker ones are over."

A Brief History of America's Dumb Policies Towards Iran.

2012-01-20T18:25:00.000+07:00

The following is by Tom Engelhardt

In more than 50 years, America’s leaders have never made a move in Iran (or near it) that didn’t lead to unexpected and unpleasant blowback.

These days, with a crisis atmosphere growing in the Persian Gulf, a little history lesson about the U.S. and Iran might be just what the doctor ordered. Here, then, are a few high- (or low-) lights from their relationship over the last half-century-plus:

Summer 1953: The CIA and British intelligence hatch a plot for a coup that overthrows a democratically elected government in Iran intent on nationalizing that country’s oil industry. In its place, they put an autocrat, the young Shah of Iran, and his soon-to-be feared secret police. He runs the country as his repressive fiefdom for a quarter-century, becoming Washington’s “bulwark” in the Persian Gulf -- until overthrown in 1979 by a home-grown revolutionary movement, which ushers in the rule of Ayatollah Khomeini and the mullahs. While Khomeini & Co. were hardly Washington’s men, thanks to that 1953 coup they were, in a sense, its own political offspring. In other words, the fatal decision to overthrow a popular democratic government shaped the Iranian world Washington now loathes, and even then oil was at the bottom of things.

1967: Under the U.S. “Atoms for Peace” program, started in the 1950s by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Shah is allowed to buy a 5-megawatt, light-water type research reactor for Tehran (which -- call it irony -- is still playing a role in the dispute over the Iranian nuclear program). Defense Department officials did worry at the time that the Shah might use the “peaceful atom” as a basis for a future weapons program or that nuclear materials might fall into the wrong hands. “An aggressive successor to the Shah,” went a 1974 Pentagon memo, “might consider nuclear weapons the final item needed to establish Iran’s complete military dominance of the region.” But that didn’t stop them from aiding and abetting the creation of an Iranian nuclear program.

The Shah, like his Islamic successors, argued that such a program was Iran's national “right” and dreamed of a country that would get significant portions of its electricity from a string of nuclear plants. As a 1970s adby a group of American power companies put the matter: “The Shah of Iran is sitting on top of one of the largest reservoirs of oil in the world. Yet he’s building two nuclear plants and planning two more to provide electricity for his country. He knows the oil is running out -- and time with it.” In other words, the U.S. nuclear program was the genesis for the Iranian one that Washington now so despises.

September 1980: Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein launches a war of aggression against Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran. In the early 1980s, he becomes Washington’s man, our “bulwark” in the Persian Gulf, and we offer himour hand -- and also "detailed information" on Iranian deployments and tactical planning that help him use his chemical weapons more effectively against the Iranian military. Oh, and just to make sure things turn out really, really well, the Reagan administration also decides to sell missiles and other arms to Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran on the sly, part of what became known as the “Iran-Contra Affair” and which almost brings down the president and his men. Success!

March 2003: Saddam Hussein is, by now, no longer our man in Baghdad but a new “Hitler” who, top Washington officials claim, undoubtedly has a nuclear weapons program that could someday leave mushroom clouds rising over U.S. cities. So the Bush administration launches a war of aggression against Iraq, which like Iran just happens to -- in the words of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz -- “float on a sea of oil.” (Bush officials hope, in the wake of a “cakewalk” of a war to revive that country’s oil industry, to privatize it, and use it to destroy OPEC, driving down the price of oil on world markets.) Nine years later, a Shiite government is in power in Baghdad closely allied with Tehran, which has gained regional strength and influence thanks to the disastrous U.S. occupation.

So call it an unblemished record of a kind not easy to find. In more than 50 years, America’s leaders have never made a move in Iran (or near it) that didn’t lead to unexpected and unpleasant blowback. Now, another administration in Washington, after years of what can only be called a covert war against Iran, is preparing yet another set of clever maneuvers -- this time sanctions against Iran’s central bank meant to cripple the country’s oil industry and crack open the economy followed by no one knows what.

And honestly, I mean, really, given past history, what could possibly go wrong? Regime change in Iran? It’s bound to be a slam dunk and if you don’t believe it, check out Pepe Escobar’s latest, “The Myth of ‘Isolated’ Iran.”

(Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s as well as The End of Victory Culture, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book, The United States of Fear (Haymarket Books), has just been published in November.)

American democracy is a sham.

2012-01-12T13:53:00.001+07:00

These Republican primaries are a sideshow – and so is the presidential election.

By Tom Mendelsohn

While we’re all going doolally over which malignant Republican replicant is the least tragically flawed – a process which will be stretched over the course of six glorious months – the culture wars are still being fought just under the radar.

The fact is, this beauty pageant of machine politics is a total red herring, and a dangerous one at that. None of this historic field of jokers, morons and shills could ever get close to unseating Obama. They’re either too mad to win over the country, or they’re having to pretend to be so mad that they won’t be able to win over the country. See, to win the primaries, they’re having to appeal to the Republican base – a base that has veered painfully hard to the right in the last few decades – using a rightwing narrative of such repugnance that they’ve toxified themselves in the eyes of America’s sane majority.

It once suited the GOP to indulge the fears, prejudices and ignorances of its base. It made delightful political sense; they could chip away at the Democrats and Clinton and Obama with any kind of poison they picked when they were a minority in government. There was practically no lie or obfuscation that the base would not lap up, scoring cheap political point after cheap political point. But eventually the lies got so big and so persuasive that the narrative ran away from the establishment string-pullers, and the lunatics (in the shape of the Tea Party) took over the asylum. Now GOP bigwigs are in thrall to their own monster, forced to pay visible lip-service to the insanity they themselves fermented in the name of political expedience.

The upshot is that we’ll either get a mad’un like Santorum or a pretending-to-be-mad‘un like Romney. And when we do get Romney, he’ll be cut to little gristly shreds in the main election, as the Obama campaign quietly keeps playing clips of him saying all the crazy things he needed to say to win the nomination. Couple that with the huge lack of enthusiasm his own party has in him and all his insincerities, and he won’t come within a parsec of the popular vote.

But here’s the thing: that doesn’t matter. The presidential election is a sideshow. The office of the president is not this all-powerful bully pulpit it’s cracked up to be. The US government is designed to stymie itself, packed as it is with checks and balances. Obama can’t get much of substance done on his own; he has no control over the budget or passage of bills, and precious little over the states. He couldn’t reshape the US into a leftist paradise if he even wanted to.

Which, I hasten to add, he does not. He is not the agent of hope, change and social democracy we all thought. Politically, he’s a hipper David Cameron: he loves financial services and slight regulation, and doesn’t really care about the significant trappings of the welfare state that we decadent pinko Euros thought he did. In any case, he’s as good as powerless, unwilling to act where he could, and unable to act where he wanted. He’s a figurehead, and that’s it.

The real battlegrounds in US politics are lower than the presidency – in Congress and in the states. And while the country may not like the GOP narrative at the top level, in the state houses and in Washington, the rightist agenda still goes great guns.

The states turned alarmingly red during the 2010 elections, and they continue to throb an ominous shade of crimson. There are 29 Republican governors and 20 Democrats, and the former are all pursuing radical right-wing agendas, nigh-on unchecked. Even a governor as unpopular as Scott Walker, who is currently in the throes of a historically unprecedented recall election for his union busting attempts, still clings fairly handily to power.

The fact that these red governors, and their red state assemblies, are still in power shows that the right is not losing the argument on the ground, no matter how wacky their marquee guys may be. They still get voted in and they are still empowered to enact all manner of destructively ideological far-right policies.

The House of Representatives has a huge Republican majority, which they use to thwart all progressive policies. It would take a massive turnaround and significantly higher poll numbers for Obama to even dent this majority. Meanwhile they’ll vote in near lockstep on anything that will hurt their foes and keep the economy faltering on the president’s watch.

The Senate may enjoy a slim Democrat majority, but rightwing obstructionism has choked it into uselessness. Without a ‘supermajority’ of 60 senators, the minority party can and does filibuster with impunity, making it another major thorn in the side of the liberal cause. More blue seats are in play in 2012 than red ones, and many of them are potentially vulnerable – because the GOP still retains credibility in the states that it lacks on a federal level.

On top of all that, the third branch of government, the Judiciary, is also hamstrung by an obstreperous Senate. Obama is struggling to appoint judges at any level in the face of an activist conservative bloc willing to put a filibuster-shaped kibosh on any of his nominations.

He’s not helped by the 5:4 conservative-liberal split in the Supreme Court, which puts a cherry on the eye of this perfect storm. The majority of the court is now openly hostile to liberal democratic aims and lawmaking, making another huge obstacle in the left’s already treacherous path.

So, like I say, all this presidential sound and fury is a red herring. Obama will beat any of the malingerers thrown in front of him, the GOP will take a bit of a hit from being so silly, and America’s inexorable rightward march will continue.

Why is America jailing so many of its citizens?

2012-01-11T17:43:00.001+07:00

This article is from the UK's Guardian, written by Sadhbh Walshe.

We like locking people up in America. If incarceration were an Olympic sport, the United States would come away with every gold medal available and break a few world records in the process. On average, Americans are locked up at a rate four times higher than any other nationality, and we have the world's largest female prison population by a considerable margin.

Before the "get tough" policies adopted in the 1970s, less than 200,000 on average were behind bars. Now that number is closer to 2 million. That may make you feel more safe, or less, if you consider that all of our chances of ending up in prison someday have increased exponentially. With that in mind, we kind of owe it to ourselves to at least know what goes on behind prison walls.

With this new series, we hope to shed some light on what life is like inside our prisons by hearing directly from inmates, their families, correction officers and anyone else whose life is impacted by the practice of incarceration.? So far, my correspondence with inmates has revealed a fascinating world of endurance, resourcefulness, terrible choices, terrible cruelty and a lot of pain and suffering.

The most disturbing aspect of the corrections model, as it currently stands, however, is how much it has failed to either rehabilitate offenders or deter them from re-offending. No matter how harsh the prison stay, at least four in ten inmates will end up back inside soon after their release, usually on a more serious charge and for a longer, and more expensive, stay.

One of my correspondents, who is 20 years into a life sentence he earned for a crime he committed while serving time for a lesser offense, gave me his take on why prisons are often better at turning small-time crooks into full-on felons rather than model citizens.

"We do not live in a civilised society here. It could be, but rather than separate repeat violent offenders and have programs/services designed to show young, confused, antisocial people how to become productive members of society once released, or just allow them to learn enough in a safe enough environment to be able to draw on later when they run out of piss and vinegar, they throw us all together with a pile of bones to fight over like hungry dogs."

It's no surprise that prison yards are brutal places or that overcrowding and deteriorating conditions would lead them to be even more so. What is surprising is that rather than trying to reduce prison populations or improve conditions, the response has been to build tougher, meaner prisons to contain the violence by isolating the so-called "worst of the worst" in Secure Housing Units (SHUs), otherwise known as the "box" or the "hole" ? or, in polite parlance, a solitary confinement cell. My correspondent described how he earned his place in one of these solitary units two years into his prison stay.

"I came to the SHU for being involved in a melee. That's how it was described in my write-up. Doesn't sound so bad right? A donnybrook, a knockabout, a melee, involving myself and five other prisoners. There were some escalating racial tensions on the yard at that time. Several white folks had been stabbed or beaten in previous months.

"I was actually only out there waiting on a transfer to another prison. Had a bus ticket already and I expect the course of my life would have been much different had I caught that bus. But somebody said something somebody else didn't like and the next thing flat, there were four guys on one side and two of us on the other, trying to make the others meet with Jesus. We fought with knives and chains and teeth and claws.

"I got an additional two years added to my sentence, a one-way ticket to the SHU, 40 stitches, a broken hand and a nice little scar as a reminder."

Eighteen years later, he's still in the SHU, and presumably, his chance of inflicting violence on other inmates or being subjected to violence has considerably diminished. Still, the SHU has its downside. Aside from driving many occupants to the insane asylum or to suicide, they come with the rather hefty price tag ? of approximately $75,000 per inmate per year, about three times the cost of a regular prison stay. So far, this guy's prison term has cost the taxpayer around $1,350,000.

One can't help but wonder what a difference it might have made to his life, or to the lives of others like him, had even a fraction of that sum been invested in his well-being before the spectre of prison crossed his horizon.

Not every person who gets locked up has such an extreme experience, nor are they all choir boys who have been falsely accused. But when you consider the degenerative nature of incarceration and the fact that we generally accept that prisons are hellholes that drive both captor and captive to do terrible things, you'd think we'd be doing everything in our power to keep people out of them.

We're not, of course, and for the time being, nearly 2 million people are languishing behind bars, some deservedly so, others not so much. It's easier, I realise, to turn a blind eye, but we should know what goes on inside our prisons. After all, even if you never end up in one yourself, you will be paying dearly for the many others who will.

What if Iran said it already had the bomb...

2012-01-08T11:11:00.000+07:00

What if Iran were to say to the arrogant West and to their Zionist buddy that it has no need to make a nuclear bomb because it has already acquired a finished product (perhaps from Pakistan or North Korea) and is ready to use it if its security is threatened. Will its enemies be prepared to call its bluff? I don't think so. They are more likely to back off.

A vegetarian diet against cancer.

2012-01-04T13:50:00.000+07:00

The following is by

Kathy Freston

a health and wellness expert.

"...the most compelling evidence against eating animal products comes from China, and shows that the carcinogenic nutrient in meat is protein, rather than fat. In one of my favorite books on the subject of health, The China Study: Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-Term Health, author T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D., a Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University, explains that animal protein is the most carcinogenic substance we consume and presents powerful data showing that animal products both cause and fuel cancer and other deadly diseases.

Dr. Campbell's study is the most comprehensive survey of the connection between diet and disease in medical history, and he has looked at all of the clinical, epidemiological, and other evidence, and it all backs up what he documented in China.

His final statement on what we should all be eating?

Here's how he explains it in "Why China Holds the Key to Your Health": "The data from the China Project suggest that what we have come to consider as 'normal' illnesses of aging are really not normal. In fact, these findings indicate that the vast majority perhaps 80 to 90% of all cancers, cardiovascular diseases, and other forms of degenerative illness can be prevented, at least until very old age, simply by adopting a plant-based diet."

These are strong words from a man who was raised on a dairy farm, got his Ph.D. in animal nutrition, and worked on a project to produce animal protein more efficiently.

The Deadly Connection Between Animal Protein, Blood Cholesterol, and Carcinogens:
Dr. Campbell now believes it best to avoid animal protein altogether. According to Campbell, blood cholesterol levels can be reduced by eating plant protein instead. "Some of the plant proteins, particularly soy," he says, "have an impressive ability to reduce blood cholesterol." This might explain a finding released a few months back that "eating tofu can slash ovarian cancer risk."

"At the outset of the China Study," writes Dr. Campbell in his book, "no one could or would have ever predicted the relationship between cholesterol and any of the disease rates. What a surprise we got." Dr. Campbell and his team found that as blood cholesterol levels decrease, a slew of cancers decreases as well, including "cancers of the liver, rectum, colon, male lung, female lung, breast, childhood leukemia, adult leukemia, childhood brain, adult brain, stomach and esophagus (throat)."

According to Campbell, in addition to animal protein causing cancer, it also fuels cancer that exists. So you can have a carcinogen in your body, but it doesn't get "turned on" until you ingest animal flesh. Animal protein causes the carcinogen to grow and spread. Even so-called lean cuts of meat, as well as fish and chicken, are high in fat and protein, and as Dr. Campbell says, animal protein only causes "mischief."

Choose Health: Choose Vegetarian

From animal products doubling your risk of endometrial, to soy foods lowering your risk of contracting ovarian cancer, to carcinogenic arsenic in your chicken (and other meat, though in lower levels), to the news that animal protein is the big cause of dietary cancer (and remember, the American Cancer Society says that about 30 percent of cancer comes from what you eat!), it sure is looking like the "vegan thing" is making a lot more sense in a lot of different ways.

I highly recommend checking out The China Study to get the full scoop, which is full of fascinating information and gripping statistics. I give it out so much that I think I should be getting a commission. The book also gives tips on making the transition to a vegetarian diet, as does my last column, "One Bite at a Time: A Beginner's Guide to Conscious Eating."

aziz anom

Palestine and that crazy Newt Gingrich.

2011-12-14T12:20:00.001+07:00

If the Palestinian identity is largely an invention (as stated by that adulterer, Newt Gingrich) so are many other countries. Britain, France, Italy, Germany, and the United States were all forged over time. The U.S. did not come into existence until 1776 and was not a unified nation until 1865; Italy and Germany were created at roughly the same time. Britain and France had to be forged out of regional identities. The process of creating France, for example, took centuries. Does this lover of Zionism have any brains? What a mess he would create in the world if he were elected to be the next US president!

aziz anom

If you have back pain -- don't eat wheat.

2011-12-14T11:35:00.000+07:00

I have periodically suffered from back pain and over time I have learned that eating whole grain wheat was the culprit. Now I have discovered that it is not just whole grain wheat but any wheat, including the white bread made from it that can cause back pain.

aziz anom

The occupy wall street people should form a party.

2011-12-13T17:29:00.001+07:00

The protesters against corporate greed and corrupt politicians should abandon their sit-ins and start a political party of their own to challenge the status quo. They need also a TV station to spread their message. That is the only way they can ever hope to bring about change.

Britain deserved the ransacking of its embassy in Iran.

2011-12-02T14:05:00.001+07:00

Those who were horrified to witness the ransacking of the British embassy in Tehran should ask themselves if that action was more abhorrent than the behavior of Britain and its allies towards Iran during the past? I am thinking of the overthrowing of the democratically elected government of Mossadeq, the imposition of a Zionist state on their fellow-Muslims in Palestine and now the unprovoked economic sanctions. Britain, along with the rest of the western world, is behaving in a criminal and a childish way towards Iran. Iran has every right to develop nuclear technology and to produce nuclear bombs if it wanted to. If the west wanted it to stop such activities then they should dismantle their own nuclear arsenal first and that of their darling baby, Israel.

aziz anom

Beware of hospitals.

2011-10-25T12:43:00.001+07:00

This article is by Anneli Rufus

Infection: How Hospitals Are Breeding Grounds for Superbugs You've Never Even Heard Of

We don't think of hospitals as places where we can get sick. But that's what they are, far more commonly than the healthcare industry wants us to know.

Hospitalized for pneumonia, Lisa Thayer's mother was suddenly gripped with painful cramps and a bout of diarrhea that Thayer calls "explosive."

"It had a horribly distinctive smell -- a gross almost-sweetness that made me close my eyes. The hospital staff recognized it immediately," says Thayer, a Houston architect. "They said, 'Uh oh. It's C-diff.'"

Thayer had never heard of C-diff, aka Clostridium difficile: a potentially lethal colon-destroying bacteria. It spreads via fecal-oral contact. An infected person's feces contain bacteria that form sturdy disinfectant-resistant spores that can survive in the open for five months. A hand touches a contaminated surface, then enters a mouth. Think you're not eating shit? In hospitals, you quite possibly are.

According to a recent article in American Family Physician, 13 percent of patients hospitalized for up to two weeks catch Clostridium difficile, as do 50 percent of those hospitalized for four weeks or more. But you needn't be a patient to catch C-diff. All you need do is visit a hospital.

Over the last decade, C-diff has morphed into a superbug. A new epidemic strain emerged in 2004 that is now making C-diff ever more virulent, drug-resistant, prevalent and lethal. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that C-diff kills nearly 30,000 people in America every year. Some experts call this a low estimate.

We think of hospitals as places where diseases go away, not as places where we can get sick.

But that's what they are, far more commonly than the healthcare industry wants us to know. In a crisis that costs American hospitals some $40 billion every year, millions of infections are contracted annually within these ostensibly sanitary institutions. Collectively, they're called hospital-acquired infections, nosocomial infections or HAIs. Patients face the gravest risk, but visitors are far from immune.

C-diff is the meanest new microbial kid on the block, but it's not the only one. Another hospital-dwelling superbug is methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, aka MRSA: a drug-resistant staph infection that is on the CDC's "high priority" list and kills about 18,000 every year in the US. Infection rates have skyrocketed since 1980 as MRSA evolves at warp speed, outsmarting antibiotics that now can't kill it. Contracted through cuts in the skin, MRSA can cause deadly bone, blood and organ infections. Nearly 90 percent of MRSA cases originate in hospitals.

Swing by to see Dad after his hip-replacement surgery, and you could catch something that ravages your bowels, causes flesh-eating pneumonia, and/or kills you.
Children, seniors and people with health problems -- especially those taking antibiotics or undergoing chemotherapy -- face the highest risk of contracting C-diff when visiting hospitals.

"But anyone can develop C-diff if the spores enter their mouth," says former New York State Lieutenant Governor Betsy McCaughey, who combats HAIs through her advocacy group, the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths. "Visiting a hospital recently, I saw a child in the elevator eating French fries and touching all the surfaces. I wished that I could explain to the parents that these invisible C-diff spores are on everything."

That is, everything that infected people's feces have touched. And those explosive, watery C-diff feces have a knack for traveling. We're talking walls, sinks, toilets, linens, light switches, furniture, wheelchairs, drapes, handles, knobs, telephones, trays, uniforms, buttons, doors and floors. Standard cleaning methods with alcohol and ammonia products won't kill C-diff spores; pretty much only bleach can.

"Don't bother using alcohol-based hand sanitizers," McCaughey warns. "They won't work. Wash with soap and water -- but even then, you're not killing the germs. Soap doesn't kill them. You're just washing them down the drain.

"Children are especially at risk of infection because when they visit Grandma in the hospital, they don't behave in risk-averse ways. They crawl on the floor. They pick things up and eat them. They touch everything. They're unaware that this is a very perilous environment."

Parents planning hospital visits "should leave their children home. Get a babysitter," McCaughey urges. To protect oneself as well as the patient and fellow visitors, she says, "bring a canister of bleach wipes and rubber gloves instead of flowers or fruit."

C-diff spores and other pathogens can cling to those gifts and cards that pile up in patients' rooms. McCaughey advises never touching these items and, if bringing someone home from the hospital, leaving gifts and cards behind.

"They're infected. Do you want to take those bugs home to your family?"

MRSA bacteria are hardy, too. According to one study, they can survive up to 56 days on polyester-cotton fabric and three months on plastic. Other studies found MRSA bacteria surviving a week on plain cotton fabric and two weeks on terrycloth.

Alcohol can kill MRSA bacteria, but that matters little if surfaces aren't scrubbed.

"Every hospital has a procedure for hygiene," says Lisa Thayer, who remembers watching in horror as an orderly who had just cleaned Thayer's mother opened an ostensibly sterile closet with clearly contaminated hands. "In some, staff are required to wash their hands for two minutes before entering a unit. How many people do you think wash their hands for two solid minutes? That's how these infections spread."

Another study found bacteria in 75 percent of the rooms of patients with MRSA, and on the uniforms of 65 percent of nurses who had performed procedures on patients with MRSA earlier that day. Shockingly, MRSA bacteria was also found on 42 percent of hospital personnel who had not even touched such patients, but had touched contaminated surfaces.

Don't hug the staff.

The HAI risk for hospital visitors "is a really important and underestimated issue," declares McCaughey, who says she once met a woman who had most of her hand amputated after contracting MRSA through a cut while visiting a sick friend.

McCaughey exhorts hospital administrators to enforce rigorous cleaning protocols and discourage children from visiting. She applauds the 27 state laws now on the books requiring hospitals to track and disclose their HAI rates. Delaware's Hospital Infections Disclosure Act, for example, penalizes noncompliant hospitals with fines and yanks their licenses.

"And shame on the CDC for not updating their statistics often enough to show people how bad this crisis really is. They can tell you how many people died last year of heart attacks and the flu, but not how many died of HAIs. That's just wrong. The CDC is not nearly as aggressive about this as it should be."

Picture this: While visiting Dad post-surgery, you sling your backpack over a chair, tap a wall, and/or open the curtains. Then before washing your hands, you idly chew your fingernail or lick donut crumbs off your thumb. It's enough to spawn paranoid fantasies -- which spring from virulent, if microscopic, grains of truth.

Visiting the sick is compassionate. In Judaism, it's considered a mitzvah: a good deed that helps enact tikkun olam, the process of repairing a shattered world.
Perform it at your own risk.

Anneli Rufus is the author of several books, most recently The Scavenger's Manifesto .

Why do Muslim women cover their hair?

2011-10-16T17:09:00.004+07:00

One of the sights that disgusts me is that of a woman with a headscarf. Not very long time ago one rarely saw Muslim females go around with their hair covered. Now they all do it and as time has gone by they even cover their entire face, as well as putting scarves on children. It seems Muslims, instead of being more enlightened, are going backwards, religion having completely taken hold of them . Now I am not concerned here about what their holy book, the Quran, says or does not say. The Quran is definitely not the work of any God; it is the work of Muhammad himself, embellished later on by his followers. There is ample evidence for that if one does a little study of historical documents as well as of the Quran itself. I am simply concerned about the logic of not showing one's hair.

What has hair got to do with how good a person is. Who does the hair of a female offend? God? Certainly not, for if it did the almighty (if he existed), would have made sure that all females were born bald. You cannot give a person hair and then say to them: Don't show them to everybody! That would make God very stupid, wouldn't it and God by definition cannot be stupid.

Certainly hair makes a person attractive to the opposite sex and so the argument goes that that person is more likely to be sexually attacked. If that is so why isn't there an epidemic of sexual assaults against non-Muslim women?

And why are Muslim men not required to wear the scarves? Okay, they are unlikely to be thrown down and raped by a woman. But women do look at attractive men and they have ways to get a man to sleep with them if they wanted to. In fact it doesn't take much to seduce a man, if she really wanted to. So if the purpose was to protect a woman against a man with a headscarf, then a man too should be protected with it against the advances of a woman. All this is just another example of Islam considering women to be inferior to men. The following Quranic text (4.34) actually confirms this. What is more, Islam advocates violence against women:

"Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. Good women are obedient. They guard their unseen parts because God has guarded them. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them. Then if they obey you, take no further action against them. Surely God is high, supreme."

(For a proper understanding of their religion, Muslims should read "Muhammad, a biography of the prophet of Islam" by Maxime Rodinson.)

aziz anom

Why Danes Are So Much Happier Than Americans.

2011-10-13T12:02:00.002+07:00

Kerry Trueman, the author of this article, is the co-founder of EatingLiberally.org

Danish happiness has been attributed to their legendary income equality -- but there's more to it than that

Americans may be deeply divided about what ails our country, but there's no denying we're a nation of unhappy campers.

Danes, on the other hand, consistently rank as some of the happiest people in the world, a fact attributed at least in part to Denmark's legendary income equality and strong social safety net.

Forbes recently cited another possible factor; the Danes' "high levels of trust." They trust each other, they trust 'outsiders,' they even trust their government. 90% of Danes vote. Tea party types dismiss Denmark as a hotbed of socialism, but really, they're just practicing a more enlightened kind of capitalism.

In fact, as Richard Wilkinson, a British professor of social epidemiology, recently stated on PBS NewsHour, "if you want to live the American dream, you should move to Finland or Denmark, which have much higher social mobility."

While we debate whether climate change is real and a tax on unhealthy foods is nanny state social engineering, the Danish are actually trying to address these problems head on.

They can afford to, because they don't spend all their waking hours worrying about whether they're about to lose their job, or their house, or how they're going to pay their student loans, or their health insurance premiums.

Could Danish-style democracy catch on here at home? If the way to a nation's heart is through its stomach, there may be hope. After all, the hottest trend on the culinary horizon these days is the new Nordic Cuisine, "which seeks to turn the culinary dial back toward the natural world," as the New York Times reported a few weeks back.

One of the pioneers of this movement is the dynamic Danish chef and climate change activist Trine Hahnemann, whose latest book is The Nordic Diet. Trine has a genius for creating earthy, easy, elegant meals, but she's equally passionate about cooking up social change while she's at it. I had a chance to get her two cents on our respective cultures when she passed through NYC recently. Following is a condensed version of our conversation:

KT: The cover of your latest book declares that you can "Eat Your Way to Health and Happiness with The Nordic Diet." Americans are so stressed and depressed these days, we're more likely to Eat Our Way to Illness and Misery. And the worse we eat, the worse we feel. Any ideas on how to break out of this vicious cycle?

TH: To change the whole political system takes a long time, so, that's not my first suggestion. Cooking your own meals is essential to staying healthy, because that's the only way you can control your diet. And sharing meals with family and friends, having a sense of belonging, that's a very big part of happiness.

Your meal culture has been blown apart, it's a huge problem. I understand when people say "but I get off work at 8 o'clock and I have to shop and go home and cook," but it's a cycle that just goes around and around and nobody's breaking it. You have to start cooking your own food, and it is doable, even on a lower income.

Danes actually eat a lot of crap, a lot of frozen vegetables, but they cook at home every day and sit down and eat together. This is the main thing in our culture, because take-out and processed convenience foods are more expensive. Fruits and vegetables have to be the cheapest thing, cheaper than eating at McDonald's. It all comes down to economics.

So, we're not these 'holy people' who can manage everything, we just have different ethics. We don't subsidize corn like you do, and also, there is a 25% VAT. And it's socially acceptable to leave work at around 4 or 5 o'clock and pick up your kids from school, go home, share a family meal. From a management point of view, if people have a nice family life, they'll be more productive.

KT: Denmark is famous for having so much less income inequality; do kitchen workers in Danish restuarants make a decent salary?

TH: Yes, a dishwasher in Denmark gets $25 an hour.

KT: Do they get sick days and benefits, too?

TH: Yes, and a pension, and health care, and maternity leave. To me, the more equal your society is, the better it is for everybody. It's not right for a country as rich as yours to have so many poor people. This thing with Americans and taxes, I don't understand it.

I make quite a lot of money, I pay 67% tax on much of it, and I don't mind. I like the idea that the girl who's sitting next to my daughter, whose mother is a cleaning lady, has exactly the same opportunity to get an education that my daughter has. I don't think that's socialism. To me, that's human decency. That girl didn't choose her parents, why shouldn't she have the same opportunities?

KT: The government of Denmark has a very ambitious agenda to eliminate your country's dependence on fossil fuels by 2050. The Danes are early adopters when it comes to conservation and renewable energy.

But Denmark's a relatively small country with a temperate climate, and a homogenous population that doesn't doubt the science on climate change. What lessons do you think the U.S., with all its diversity and division, could learn from your example?

TH: We can't change the world. We're only five million people, but as you say, we're homogenous. Danes trust their government. Over 90% of our population votes. Our news is not as polarized as yours. We're a good place to try out a model.

And cities around the world can draw from our experience. If we don't adapt, there's not going to be water, there's not going to be electricity, why not find solutions now?

KT: How does your role as a climate change activist influence the way you cook?

TH: I use a lot of whole grains, I cut down on meat, I eat very seasonally. In my company, Hahnemann's Køkken, we have a very seasonal profile, our food waste is really low, we use everything that gets into the kitchen.

And I'm working with some engineers to design an energy-efficient professional kitchen. We hope to convince people to buy new equipment. They say, "oh no, it's so expensive," but then you show them how much they could save over ten years on their electricity bill. There are so many old fridges out there that cost a fortune to run.

We need government guaranteed loans to buy new equipment, there are some very interesting models. There's a baker in Germany who has so much leftover bread because people come in at 6 o'clock and demand the same variety he has at 1 o'clock -- that's ridiculous! But he'll lose business if he doesn't cater to that, so all the bread that's left everyday goes into his energy system. He burns it, and that runs the ovens for the next day.

KT: So it's like a kind of biofuel? Does it smell like burned toast?

TH: (laughs) I don't know!

KT: In The Nordic Diet, you note that folks in Denmark bicycle everywhere, to get to work, to go shopping -- entire families routinely go bicycling together, and you don't let lousy weather stop you. You quote the Danish saying, "There is no such thing as bad weather, only wrong clothing."

But even when the weather's fine, you might work up a sweat and get windblown biking around. Here in the U.S., our surgeon general got in hot water when she noted that too many American women don't exercise because they don't want to mess up their hair.

So, is it socially acceptable in Denmark to arrive at one's destination looking like a sweaty, dishevelled mess?

TH: We don't have an obsession with hair like you have over here, we don't have that hair that sits in one place; that's never been in fashion. But if you bicycle ten miles to work on a racing bike, let's say, you'll have your regular clothes in a bag and most work places in Denmark provide a shower and a changing room.

KT: And what about the time that it takes to get changed into your work clothes, are you on the clock? Is it like taking a lunch break?

TH: Yeah, but Danes are like the Swiss, we're always on time. Danes are not late -- being on time is a big part of the culture.

KT: So, it's acceptable to show up with messy hair, but not to be late?

TH: Yes.

KT: How did you feel about the Copenhagen Climate Change talks, and where do you see the climate change movement heading?

TH: I was so disappointed. I was in tears. Our politicians failed us gravely. America and China came with nothing. And Saudi Arabia was working behind the scenes, I'm told, to sabotage it.

It's a shame people aren't more disappointed with the politicians. I am. I'm really disappointed that they can't step up and do the right thing. Why aren't we doing more? I'm not even satisfied with what we're doing in Denmark. I love that we have these goals and I will help to work towards them through the things I can do as a chef and a responsible citizen.

But I think it will have to get much worse before people realize how bad it is. It's potentially just as catastrophic as terrorism -- or worse -- but nobody's paying attention. Everybody's just hoping it will go away.

On the food side, I'm more optimistic, I see a lot of changes, a lot of goodwill, people wanting to cook and eat more ecologically.

We've got to change the way we eat, we've got to change the way we source, we've got to change the way we waste. For me, first of all, it's cutting back on the meat. Eating meat everyday has only been part of our diet since World War II. No matter what, only eat meat twice a week.

And everyone should get a composting bucket, so they can see how much they waste. You could save $2,000 a year if you stopped wasting food. Our grandmothers would never have wasted all that food.

We have to take that older mentality and new technologies and put them together for new solutions. I agree with Food, Inc. director Robert Kenner when he says, "Every time you shop, you vote." That's the best thing you can do as an individual who doesn't hold political office.

aziz anom

Obama, a gigantic fraud, should not be re-elected.

2011-10-04T18:21:00.003+07:00

Americans would be wise not to elect Obama again. To do so would send a wrong signal to future candidates that they could worm their way to the White House by making false promises. Lying to the electorate by making fancy speeches, like Obama did, should have a price. Unfortunately there are not many "straight" candidates in the opposing party who would be able to defeat Obama except perhaps Herman Cain. It is lucky that Cain too is black because to have a white candidate opposing Obama would drive black Americans into voting for Obama whether they like him or not. So let us hope Cain is chosen to challenge Obama and let us hope he doesn't turn out to be another fake.

An update to the above: Recently I have learnt a bit more about Cain. He is in favour of water-boarding, a method of torturing people and several women have accused him of sexual harassment.

A better candidate, I now believe, would be Ron Paul. I like some of his pronouncements. So good luck to him.

aziz anom

Fasting can cure cancer.

2011-10-03T21:20:00.001+07:00

Actually fasting can cure any kind of disease, not just cancer. When we fast, on just fruit or vegetble juice, we give our body a chance to rid itself of all the toxins that have accumulated over the years. Here is a different explanation presented by a certain Tom Coghill from his website at http://www.fasting.ws/juice-fasting/fasting-for-healing/fasting-cancer:

"The wasting away seen in cancer is from the cancer consuming the glucose in the blood. As cancer cells increase, the normal cells get less and less nutrition. At this time, caretakers will try to supply extra calories to slow the wasting process, but this is the opposite of what needs to be done. If cancer requires large amounts of glucose for reproduction, then the first defense needs to be reducing glucose in the blood. Healthy cells can live quite well on small amounts of glucose, while the cancer cells have greater calorie needs and are weakened by the lack of glucose. Fasting reduces glucose in the blood. It works best with a combination of water fasting and juice fasting using 2-5 glasses of juice per day followed by periods of eating small portions of fruits and vegetables. This approach will be the opposite of what doctors recommend, and it may be hard to convince a cancer patient of the wisdom of this. I have watched terminal cancer patients die because they put their faith in modern medicine and gave up any form of natural therapy."

Tony Blair finally upsets the Palestinians.

2011-10-02T15:24:00.001+07:00

I have long said that the war criminal, Tony Blair, is not the right person to be a peace envoy in the middle east. The Palestinians have finally realised this. Their leaders are now accusing him of "parroting" Israeli demands and want him out. I hope that before he goes he gets a kick in his butt.

aziz anom

Hair loss can be caused by electromagnetic radiation.

2011-09-30T16:15:00.002+07:00

Some people in the US have moved out to remote locations to escape Electro-Magnetic radiation from power cables, mobile phones and other electrical appliances. They say these radiations make them sick. I think there is a lot of truth in this because I myself have experienced disturbances within my body while being in the vicinity of such radiation, including hair loss. I would therefore advise people going bald (or suffering some other condition) to forget about cures peddled by doctors and hair specialists and simply move out into the country side, far far away from modern gadgetry. If it is at all possible.

aziz anom

The Price of 9/11.

2011-09-10T10:53:00.001+07:00

This article is by Joseph E. Stiglitz

NEW YORK – The September 11, 2001, terror attacks by Al Qaeda were meant to harm the United States, and they did, but in ways that Osama bin Laden probably never imagined. President George W. Bush's response to the attacks compromised America's basic principles, undermined its economy, and weakened its security.

The attack on Afghanistan that followed the 9/11 attacks was understandable, but the subsequent invasion of Iraq was entirely unconnected to Al Qaeda – as much as Bush tried to establish a link. That war of choice quickly became very expensive – orders of magnitude beyond the $60 billion claimed at the beginning – as colossal incompetence met dishonest misrepresentation.

Indeed, when Linda Bilmes and I calculated America's war costs three years ago, the conservative tally was $3-5 trillion. Since then, the costs have mounted further. With almost 50% of returning troops eligible to receive some level of disability payment, and more than 600,000 treated so far in veterans' medical facilities, we now estimate that future disability payments and health-care costs will total $600-900 billion. But the social costs, reflected in veteran suicides (which have topped 18 per day in recent years) and family breakups, are incalculable.

Even if Bush could be forgiven for taking America, and much of the rest of the world, to war on false pretenses, and for misrepresenting the cost of the venture, there is no excuse for how he chose to finance it. His was the first war in history paid for entirely on credit. As America went into battle, with deficits already soaring from his 2001 tax cut, Bush decided to plunge ahead with yet another round of tax "relief" for the wealthy.

Today, America is focused on unemployment and the deficit. Both threats to America's future can, in no small measure, be traced to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Increased defense spending, together with the Bush tax cuts, is a key reason why America went from a fiscal surplus of 2% of GDP when Bush was elected to its parlous deficit and debt position today. Direct government spending on those wars so far amounts to roughly $2 trillion – $17,000 for every US household – with bills yet to be received increasing this amount by more than 50%.

Moreover, as Bilmes and I argued in our book The Three Trillion Dollar War, the wars contributed to America's macroeconomic weaknesses, which exacerbated its deficits and debt burden. Then, as now, disruption in the Middle East led to higher oil prices, forcing Americans to spend money on oil imports that they otherwise could have spent buying goods produced in the US.

But then the US Federal Reserve hid these weaknesses by engineering a housing bubble that led to a consumption boom. It will take years to overcome the excessive indebtedness and real-estate overhang that resulted.

Ironically, the wars have undermined America's (and the world's) security, again in ways that Bin Laden could not have imagined. An unpopular war would have made military recruitment difficult in any circumstances. But, as Bush tried to deceive America about the wars' costs, he underfunded the troops, refusing even basic expenditures – say, for armored and mine-resistant vehicles needed to protect American lives, or for adequate health care for returning veterans. A US court recently ruled that veterans' rights have been violated. (Remarkably, the Obama administration claims that veterans' right to appeal to the courts should be restricted!)

Military overreach has predictably led to nervousness about using military power, and others' knowledge of this threatens to weaken America's security as well. But America's real strength, more than its military and economic power, is its "soft power," its moral authority. And this, too, was weakened: as the US violated basic human rights like habeas corpus and the right not to be tortured, its longstanding commitment to international law was called into question.

In Afghanistan and Iraq, the US and its allies knew that long-term victory required winning hearts and minds. But mistakes in the early years of those wars complicated that already-difficult battle. The wars' collateral damage has been massive: by some accounts, more than a million Iraqis have died, directly or indirectly, because of the war. According to some studies, at least 137,000 civilians have died violently in Afghanistan and Iraq in the last ten years; among Iraqis alone, there are 1.8 million refugees and 1.7 million internally displaced people.

Not all of the consequences were disastrous. The deficits to which America's debt-funded wars contributed so mightily are now forcing the US to face the reality of budget constraints. America's military spending still nearly equals that of the rest of the world combined, two decades after the end of the Cold War. Some of the increased expenditures went to the costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the broader Global War on Terrorism, but much of it was wasted on weapons that don't work against enemies that don't exist. Now, at last, those resources are likely to be redeployed, and the US will likely get more security by paying less.

Al Qaeda, while not conquered, no longer appears to be the threat that loomed so large in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. But the price paid in getting to this point, in the US and elsewhere, has been enormous – and mostly avoidable. The legacy will be with us for a long time. It pays to think before acting.

Joseph E. Stiglitz is University Professor at Columbia University, a Nobel laureate in economics, and the author of Freefall: Free Markets and the Sinking of the Global Economy.

aziz anom

Can Muslim countries be democratic?

2011-09-07T15:42:00.001+07:00

Look at Muslim countries and ask yourself which ones are truly democratic. My guess is you will say Turkey and Malaysia but you will be wrong. Turkey has made great strides in recent years but it is still autocratic as the long suffering Kurds, among others, will testify. And as for Malaysia, just ask Anwar Ibrahim and the peaceful protesters who were brutally suppressed by the police. Those are not acts we would expect in a democracy. The fact is Muslims are incapable of tolerating viewpoints opposed to their own, particularly as ragards their religion. So how can they have functioning democracies. Just watch and see what happens in Arab countries after they have overthrown their dictators. I wouldn't be surprised if in a few years they are back to square one with new dictators lording it over them.

aziz anom

Corn flakes and sex.

2011-09-05T15:16:00.001+07:00

Seeking to provide sanitarium patients with meatless anti-aphrodisiac breakfasts in 1894, Michigan Seventh-Day Adventist surgeon and anti-masturbation activist John Kellogg developed the process of flaking cooked grains. Hence Corn Flakes. Hence Rice Krispies. Enjoy your breakfast, guys! And don't complain if you can't screw around or screw yourself!

aziz anom

The best movies.

2011-09-01T17:41:00.001+07:00

10 Best Movies Where Humanity Gets Its Comeuppance

By Julianne Escobedo Shepherd

Humanity does terrible things to the earth and to each other. But Hollywood loves to depict our punishment.

August 25, 2011

Photo Credit: ssoosay at Flickr.

Humankind's intelligence combined with our unrelenting desire to live longer and dominate the planet is, ironically, our fatal flaw. Pop culture forever reminds us that we are disgusting creatures with deplorable habits that will ultimately be the end of us, and fortunately for fans of the apocalypse, cinema in particular loves to depict our agonizing deaths in vivid, epic color.

The latest movie to do so, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, shows how animal cruelty—combined with advanced science—could lead us all to early graves. The film follows a team of scientists working on a cure for Alzheimer's disease, who develop an experimental retrovirus that imbues chimpanzees with human-level intelligence. But when one of the chimps breaks out the stungun, there's hell to pay—and the ultimate end of humankind, at least over the course of some sequels. (For more on this, with spoiler alerts, read Sarah Jaffe's funny Tumblr post.)

Since there are a thousand ways for humanity to die, here are some of the more creative films in which terrible, irresponsible humanity gets its final comeuppance. Our end may be imminent, but at least we get to watch some awesome stuff beforehand. Enjoy!

1. The Day After Tomorrow

This recent-classic film about the effects of global warming is so terrifying it should be shown before Congress. The plot: paleoclimatologist Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) is drilling for core samples in Antarctica when an ice ridge, spurred by rising temperatures, cracks and pulls apart, leaving a huge crevice. Hall freaks out and tries to convince a UN panel that the shit is seriously about to hit the fan, but they poo-poo him and send him on his way. Turns out that was a dumb idea, because uh-oh, rapidly melting polar ice is totally making ocean levels rise while dropping their temperature, causing complete weather havoc across the world. That little earthquake on the eastern seaboard this week was nothing: try a massive tsunami washing through Manhattan, and super-sized tornados crushing Los Angeles skyscrapers like twigs. The CGI is awesome! (Amid all this death and destruction, though, perhaps the scariest part is that the guy who winds up being president is disconcertingly Dick Cheney-esque.)

Granted, Day After Tomorrow's vision of climate change coming home to roost is pretty extreme—an accelerated depiction of what might eventually happen to us if we continue on our path. It's hard to imagine giant hurricanes whose eyes freeze everything in their path, Sub-Zero style. But after the spate of recent devastating earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, and droughts around the world, it's a little easier to imagine such a blown-out scenario in 2011 than it was upon the film's release in 2004. Which brings us to....

2. 2012

The crux of 2012 is not man-made per se, but based on the theory of the Mayan Apocalypse, which says the world will end on the day the ancient Mayan calendar ends: December 21, 2012. But the film certainly doesn't waste a chance to scold humanity for its misdeeds to its backdrop of elaborate apocalyptic visual effects, like redwoods-obliterating solar flares and, awesomely, a giant crack in the Sistine Chapel separating God's finger from Adam's. Ultimately the film becomes about the race to reach secret arks in China, created by world leaders to save at least a fraction of humankind in order to propagate the species. Along the way, though, our worst qualities—greed, avarice, selfishness—pop up and threaten to keep the protagonist family, led by ever-likable John Cusack, from surviving. So while it's a movie based on ancient Mayan prophecy, they still managed to sneak in a little Judeo-Christian moralizing. Touche!

3. Outbreak

In the 1990s, slash-and-burn agriculture was one of the issues at the forefront of the environmental movement, as forests across South America and Africa were being decimated by logging and ranching. Deforestation worried climate scientists, but it also alarmed biologists, who argued that the dense rainforest likely contained organisms we've never identified—not just animals and insects, but viruses as well. Enter Outbreak, a cautionary tale against clearing uncharted territory.

The setting is Congo, 1967. A monkey or monkeys carrying a deadly virus has been unleashed in a village. The US, instead of developing a vaccine or cure, opts to completely destroy the infected with napalm (obviously). Fast-forward 30 years, and the virus wasn't gone, just sleeping... and it's soon transmitted to the US by an illegal exotic animal trader who ships an infected monkey to California (sub-moral: don't illegally trade exotic animals). The trader is infected, and spreads it around to several others, including his girlfriend, all of whom die gruesome deaths in which their eyeballs bleed out of their skulls and their internal organs melt like cheese in a microwave. (Clearly, the virus was based upon Ebola, which emerged in the mid-'70s before experiencing a brief renaissance in the 1990s.) Who will save us all? Why, Dustin Hoffman, of course!

4. Children of Men

One of the most profound and best-made films on this list asks a philosophical question: if we knew we were soon to become extinct, how would we behave? The answer is deplorably—our instinct to survive is only dwarfed by our instinct to dominate each other. We are all just piddling animals with tools too advanced for our tiny brains. In Children of Men's grim near-future, it is 2027, and no person on earth has been able to reproduce for two decades. Our end is imminent, and we have become a planet of nihilists. Governments are collapsing, terrorism is rampant, and Britain has devolved into martial law, with troops that hate everyone, but immigrants in particular. There is one hope, though: Kee, a beautiful Ghanaian immigrant (played by Clare-Hope Ashitey, now a real-life anthropologist), who is the first human on earth known to be pregnant in 20 years. Obviously, humans have on the whole lost their compassion, but Theo Faron (Clive Owen) vows to save Kee from crazed revolutionaries, mentally deranged mobs and the British army. Another question: can one child save all humanity?

This is also a good time to point out that Chiwetel Ejiofor, a great actor, is also a veteran of the end-of-days film, having starred in this, 2012, and the reality apocalypse movie Tsunami: The Aftermath. Hopefully there are more in his future!

5. Battle Royale

This Japanese cult classic is a microcosm of what could happen if we all continue procreating willy-nilly... and a warning to children never to trust adults. At the turn of the millennium, amid dire global overpopulation, a group of teenagers embarks on a class trip. As their bus pulls away, they are gassed to sleep, and when they wake up, the once-happy schoolmates have been dispatched to an island and fitted with electrical collars, which will explode if they are tampered with. They are instructed by an impossibly joyful TV host that they have been randomly selected to compete in Battle Royale: a scheme concocted under the "Millennial Education Reform Act," which is in fact a survivalist fight to the death. Each schoolchild is given a random weapon and instructed they must murder each other; the final kid left gets to leave the island, but Japan has become simply too populated to sustain all of the children being born. Creative population control! The cruel game pits best friends and lovers against one another, while others opt for suicide, and portrays humanity at its basest (and goriest). It also casts adults as spiteful, cowardly bastards so cold they would dupe happy teens rather than come up with a more humane way to keep population down. Like, say, birth control? Let this be a lesson to you, conservatives!

Interesting anecdote: Kinji Fukasaku, Battle Royale's director, translated the novel to film because it reminded him of an experience that made him distrust adults forever. In 1945, when he was 15, his class was forced to work in a World War II munitions factory. After the factory was attacked and many of his classmates died, the survivors were made to clean up the bodies, and he realized the Japanese government had been lying about its involvement in WWII.

6. Knowing

Oh, Nicholas Cage, how wonderful and over-the-top you are! He should probably star in every end-of-days film from now until... the end of days. When his sweet, deaf son begins going into trances and writing down indecipherable numerical sequences, Cage's character goes on a mission to figure out what they mean. Telling too much of the plotline would involve multiple spoilers—barring the fact that this film is the second on this list involving the dread solar flare—but let's just say this guy can now predict the dates of disasters, humanity has been messing up, and whomever gave us all this wonderful technology we've got (starting from the pyramids, clearly) is about to take it away since we cannot play nice. Also, Christians are not feeling it!

7. Dr. Strangelove, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

A Cold War-era classic, it's nice to know that after the Cuban Missile Crisis there was room for a little gallows humor in America. Directed and written by the genius Stanley Kubrick, the film follows crazed Air Force General Jack Ripper as he tries to start a war with the USSR over fluoride in the water. (Hey, countries have been bombed for less.) Meanwhile, a coalition of rather more sane military leaders and, um, the president (who's been duped out of red-button jurisdiction thanks to an obscure rule that transfers powers to the military in wartime) attempts to stop Ripper—but his main roadblock is the Russians' "Doomsday Device," which will obliterate all life on earth should the Soviets be bombed. Kubrick, plus genius actor Peter Sellers, really put the nuclear establishment to the needles with this one, ridiculing the arbitrary rules of war and the stupid power-hunger of the government—while transforming the nation's fear of end times into a real laugh riot. If there was a remake (there shouldn't be), Dr. Strangelove should make his grand exit to Lenny Kravtiz's "It's Not Over Till It's Over."

8. Soylent Green

Before Nicholas Cage, there was Charlton Heston. Try to separate yourself from his politics and imagine this dystopia: the world is overpopulated, violent, struck by famine. New York, of course, is the garbage dump of the world, and in 2022, the population of the city has skyrocketed to 40 million. Solar flares (again!) are imminent. But before the world ends, Heston's character, an NYPD detective, must discover why a wealthy businessman was killed in his apartment... and how he was able to obtain so much pricey food. Another classic example of how we are vile.

9. The Day After

As the Cold War entered the 1980s, this little TV movie was the first to depict the horrors of nuclear folly in any close-to-accurate terms. If the Soviets finally decided to unleash the big ones, it asks, what would happen 24 hours later? If you're unfortunate enough to be far away from ground zero, the answer is: gross radiation poisoning, looting, severe grotesque burns, painfully slow death. Et cetera. As a kid in the early 1990s, I accidentally saw on satellite television a video of an anti-nuke protester getting his legs severed by a train carrying nuclear weapons (he survived, thankfully). Shout out to that guy for keeping us from worse.

Reportedly, Ronald Reagan watched this film before it aired and it forced him to change his concept of nuclear war—proving culture really does have an impact.

10. The Happening

Mother Nature is pissed at us. We have become a "surface nuisance," as George Carlin once put it, and "the planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas." Only in The Happening, instead of shaking us off, the earth induces us to off ourselves. Spurred by a ripple in the trees—an electromagnetic current, perhaps, or an imperceptible soundwave?—people across the Northeastern US begin killing themselves, one by one. A girl in Central Park shoves a pencil into her ear, impaling her brain. Dozens of hapless suits climb to the roof of a building and leap to their deaths. (Its release date was seven years after 9/11, but that one felt a little too soon.) Turns out, after centuries of mistreatment, the planet is releasing a deadly neurotoxin to eradicate us so it can save itself. Can protagonists Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel lead their family to safety?

Frankly, this is probably the worst movie in this list, and certainly the most painful M. Night Shyamalan film, which is saying a lot. But it's worth watching for the sheer creativity of the concept—just one more way to visualize humanity going down, not with a bang but with a very pathetic whimper.

aziz anom

Petrodollar Scam.

2011-08-22T15:10:00.001+07:00

I have no idea who the author of the following is. I leave it to the reader to decide what to make of it.

"
1.
Petrodollar Scam .
2.
The fall of US Dollar
3.
Back in 1971, the USA printed and spent far more paper money than it could cover by gold.
4.
Few years later , French demanded redemption of its paper-dollar holdings in gold . But the USA rejected as it actually didn't have enough gold for the dollars it had already printed and spent all over the world, thus committing an act of bankruptcy .
5.
So the USA went to the Saudis and cut a deal – OPEC denominate all sales of oil in US dollars.
6.
From that point, every nation that needed to buy oil had to firstly hold US dollars , which meant that they exchanged their goods and services for dollars, which the Americans just printed.
7.
The Americans bought their oil literally for free by printing those dollars. The ultimate free lunch for the Americans at the expense of the rest of the world.
8.
However, the scam began to unravel when Saddam Hussein started selling Iraq's oil directly for Euro , abrogating the cozy arrangement the Americans had with OPEC. Thus Saddam had to be stopped. How?
9.
USA concocted a pretext to wage war (drama of twin tower blast) and invade Iraq and the first thing the Americans did was to revert sales of oil back to dollars . The currency crisis was averted for the moment.
10.
But Hugo Chavez (Venezuela President) also started selling Venezuelan oil for currencies other than dollars , so there were a number of attempts on his life, traceable right back to the CIA. The petrodollar cat was out of the bag.
11.
Iran President (Ahmedinejad), watching all of this, decided to kick The Great Satan in the arse and do the same thing - sell oil for every currency EXCEPT US dollars .
12.
The game is coming to an end for the Americans. As the nations of the world find that they can buy oil for their own currencies instead of holding paper US dollars , more OPEC nations will abandon the dollar.
13.
The worst thing for the Americans is that eventually, they will also have to buy their oil with Euro or Rubles instead of just printing paper money to get it.
14.
That will be the end of the American Empire, the end of funding for the US military and the destruction of the US economy.

The great scam is coming to an end and there is not a lot that the USA can do about it, except start another world war!!!
Wait and Watch… Only few years/months ahead. "

The stupid Egyptians and the stupid Turks.

2011-08-21T20:32:00.001+07:00

Why are the Egyptians and the Turks so naive and acting as though the evil deeds of the occupiers of Palestine, the Zionists, can be excused. The Turks saw what kind of animals the Israelis are when nine of their flotilla activists got murdered some months ago and now five Egyptian soldiers lost their lives while doing their guard duties on their side of the border. The Turks and the Egyptians still want to have relations with these inhuman bastards! Can you imagine yourself wanting to do that if you had suffered the same act of violence at the hands of somebody? Certainly not me. I would break off all relations with such an evil entity. I would tell them to go to hell.

It seems only Iran has the right attitude towards the Zionists.

aziz anom

India is totally corrupt.

2011-08-20T13:14:00.001+07:00

The following is by Jason Burke writing in the Guardian. UK.

Corruption in India: 'All your life you pay for things that should be free'

As Anna Hazare leaves prison to continue his protest, residents in Delhi explain how bribery forms part of everyday life

Vishal is an ordinary man with an ordinary story of corruption in India. He lives in east Delhi, part of the traffic-choked sprawl of India's capital. He owns a fried chicken takeaway similar to thousands of others that have sprung up in recent years to serve the new tastes of the burgeoning middle class.

And he faces an ordinary Indian daily routine of petty corruption. The number of people Vishal has to pay off is bewildering. There are the local beat constables who take free lunches, and the more senior police officers who can cause problems with opening hours. They take 10,000 rupees (£130) on the 10th of each month to allow Vishal to stay open late.

Then there are the officials from various local authorities who also receive regular payments – around £50 per month – to ensure that health, safety and hygiene inspections go smoothly.

"Of the 40,000 rupees (£520) I earn a month from my restaurant, I pay at least a third in bribes," Vishal, 26, said. But bribery also extends into his personal life. Vishal has two young children and to get the eldest in to the best local school he paid a "donation" of 25,000 rupees (£3,400) in cash to the headmaster.

A driving licence needed another bribe. Getting an appointment with a competent public doctor cost a substantial amount. And then there are the traffic police. Every other week Vishal says he is stopped, told he has committed an offence and made to pay 100 rupees (£1.25), the standard fee to avoid "too much bother".

"I am so disappointed [about] everything you have to pay," he said. "And no one does anything. The politicians won't do anything because they are all corrupt too."

Such sentiments are widespread in India and explain the sudden outpouring of anger over recent days as tens of thousands of people took to the streets across the country to protest about the arrest of anti-corruption campaigner Anna Hazare.

Though a string of major corruption scandals such as the telecoms licence scam that cost the country up to £26bn, and the alleged fraud surrounding the high-profile Commonwealth Games in Delhi, has fuelled some of the fury, it is the grinding daily routine of petty corruption that is at the root.

"You pay for a birth certificate, a death certificate," said Varun Mishra, a 30-year-old software engineer and one of thousands who marched in Delhi to support Hazare. "All your life you pay. And for what? For things that should be free."

Hazare, 74, has harnessed this grassroots frustration to launch a popular movement. Having been jailed as a threat to public order, he went on hunger strike and refused to leave prison when released. He has finally left jail, having been granted permission to hold a 15-day fast in a public park.

His public relations team has run rings around clumsy and slow official spokesmen. India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh, has an impeccable reputation for personal probity but has looked distant and out of touch.

Hazare is campaigning for a powerful new anti-corruption ombudsman with the right to investigate senior politicians, officials and judges. His critics say this would be undemocratic, and worry about the division of powers. But for people like restaurateur Vishal, Hazare is a hero. "At least he is doing something," he said. "No one else is."

Though bribery, or "graft", is a fact of life for more or less everybody in India, the demonstrators are largely urban, educated and relatively well-off. "What you are seeing on the street is a middle-class rebellion," said Mohan Guruswamy, a former senior official in the ministry of finance and founder of the Centre for Policy Alternatives thinktank.

There are reports in local media that call centres and other back office operations in IT hubs such as Gurgaon, a satellite town of Delhi, and Bengaluru, the southern city, have faced staffing problems with up to half of workers joining the protests. Teachers, lawyers and medical professionals have also featured prominently.

Support for Hazare is particularly strong among those who have benefited most from India's recent breakneck economic development but are frustrated by a largely unreformed public sector that delivers poor and haphazard services. They are often the young.

Many of those who waited outside Tihar jail in Delhi to greet Hazare on his triumphant exit were in their teens or even younger. One 12-year-old carried a placard saying "save my future".

Tens of millions of school and college-leavers pour into the Indian jobs market each year. State institutions have not kept pace with aspirations raised by years of rapid economic growth and with skill levels low and good jobs scare, unrest could rise.

Senior Congress party politicians this week argued that some level of graft was "inevitable" in a developing economy. However, analysts said the extent of the problem in India – which ranks at 87 out of 178 on the campaign group Transparency International's index of corruption – is unique. "India is comparable to China, doing better than Russia, less well than Brazil," said Robin Hodess, the group's research director. "But bureaucratic and petty corruption is extreme in India."

Some say India's generally patchy law enforcement is to blame. "We are politically advanced in terms of institutions," said Guruswamy. "We have courts, a parliament and a long tradition of democracy ... but very few people are ever held to account." Last week a senior judge faced unprecedented impeachment proceedings 25 years after the alleged offence.

Others say those who pay the bribes are to blame too. One supreme court lawyer who refused demands for commissions in return for sanctioning payment for work he had done for the government, said giving in to corruption could be down to "deep powerlessness" or simply a "I just want to get on with my day" type of attitude. "As Indians we see corruption as something that permeates our lives, like air pollution, but we need to think much more carefully about it," he said.

Raghu Thoniparambil, who runs the website ipaidabribe.com, pointed out that corruption in the private sector was just as prevalent. "All these protests are very inspiring but will people really change? I don't know," he said.

Less ambitious and spectacular measures could have more impact than the ombudsman office Hazare and his followers want to create, Thoniparambil argues.

As well as perceptions of general corruption, Transparency International also compiles an index of nations where bribes are paid most frequently, particularly in business. India ranks 19 out of 22, above Mexico, Russia and China.

Manu Joseph, editor of the news magazine Open, speaks of "hypocrisy". "The Indian relationship with corruption is very complex and politicians are representative of society as a whole," he said.

But the widespread anger is also due to a sense that modern India not only deserves better but needs to at least moderate rampant corruption to compete on the world stage.

The most high profile cases have already damaged the nation's image sufficiently to slow economic growth. One text message circulating in India last week focused on the huge sums of "black money" illegally stashed by wealthy Indians in overseas assets and bank accounts. The return of these funds could pay for "Oxford-like universities", borders stronger than "the China wall" and roads "like in Paris", it said.

"We want a great country, stronger than the US, UK and Australia," said 18-year-old Sushil Kumar as he waited for the protest march from Hazare's jail to start. "India will be great, with its traditions, its culture. But we have to beat corruption."

The anti-bribery website

Launched last October, ipaidabribe.com is the brainchild of Raghunandan Thoniparambil, a retired official from the elite Indian Administrative Service.

By Friday 12,076 people had posted their personal stories of graft for all to see. They included businessmen forced to pay 50 rupees (70p) to traffic police, 300 rupees (£3.20) paid for a passport verification, 40,000 rupees (£540) handed over to have property registered, 5,000 rupees (£67) for a birth certificate and travellers who had to give 100 rupees (£1.30) to get berths on otherwise full express trains. Software takes names off the site.

"The aim is not to identify people but to identify the problem," Thoniparambil said. In June, after a BBC report about ipaidabribe.com several similar sites opened in China. Within two weeks they were shut down.

"In India we are sometimes a little slow or dysfunctional but civil society, simple democracy can make a huge difference," added Thoniparambil.

aziz anom

Dr. Zakir Naik. popular with less educated Muslims.

2011-08-17T15:53:00.004+07:00

This man, I understand, belongs to a sect of Islam that resembles the one in Saudi Arabia, and he is hated by a lot of educated Muslims. Some of my relatives have fallen prey to him and, aware that I have given up Islam and am now an agnostic, they constantly bombard me with the writings of this idiot. It irks me a lot, especially because one of these relatives, the head of that household, is a Muslim only in name, his obnoxious behaviour having alienated him from a large section of the Memon community in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Dr Naik, 43, a medical doctor from Mumbai and president of the Islamic Research Foundation, came into the limelight only recently when, at the urging of some clerics, the Uttar Pradesh government of India barred him from addressing meetings in Allahabad, Kanpur and Lucknow.

"I do not consider him a Muslim," said Maulana Hashim Kachauchwi, a Sunni scholar in Lucknow, India.

Is Islam compatible with capitalism?

2011-08-11T18:37:00.001+07:00

Guy Sorman: Is Islam Compatible with Capitalism?

Guy Sorman, a City Journal contributing editor, is the author of Children of Rifaa: In Search of a Moderate Islam and many other books.

The moment you arrive at the airport in Cairo, you discover how little Egypt—the heart of Arab civilization—is governed by the rule of law. You line up to show your passport to the customs officer; you wait and wait and wait. Eventually, you reach the officer . . . who sends you to the opposite end of the airport to buy an entry visa. The visa costs 15 U.S. dollars; if you hand the clerk $20, though, don't expect any change, let alone a receipt. Then you make the long hike back to the customs line, where you notice that some Egyptians—important ones, apparently—have helpers who hustle them through. Others cut to the front. It's an annoying and disturbing welcome to a chaotic land, one that has grown only more chaotic since the January revolution. It's also instructive, effectively demonstrating why it's hard to do business in this country or in other Arab Muslim lands, where personal status so often trumps fair, universally applied rules.

Why is London burning?

2011-08-10T18:02:00.001+07:00

If you are not one of the pink-colored Caucasians from Europe or America you would know the answer to the above question. It is called racial discrimination and it has existed in England since the beginning of colonization and beyond. The following quote is from the website Alternet giving the point of view of the 'rioters':

People have no idea what it is like to grow up in a community where there are no jobs, no space to live or move, and the police are on the streets stopping-and-searching you as you come home from school. The people who do will be waking up this week in the sure and certain knowledge that after decades of being ignored and marginalized and harassed by the police, after months of seeing any conceivable hope of a better future confiscated, they are finally on the news. In one NBC report, a young man in Tottenham was asked if rioting really achieved anything:

"Yes," said the young man. "You wouldn't be talking to me now if we didn't riot, would you? Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you."

Fox News, OReilly and the T-shirts.

2011-08-10T16:01:00.000+07:00

If you have (by mistake) watched the very unfair and very unbalanced TV channel Fox news you would know that one of its presenters, a man who likes to opine but does not listen to his guests, Bill O'Reilly, has made some T-shirts with the logo on them that screams "Navy Seals 1 -- Bin Laden 0". It is a celebration of the killing of Bin Laden by US military's Navy Seals. Let us tell this man that it is time to update that logo. It should now scream: "Navy seals 1 -- Bin Laden 22", after the shooting down by Bin Laden's friends of a helicopter carrying some 31 soldiers, among them 22 Navy Seals.

aziz anom

swines pretending to be saints.

2011-08-10T15:25:00.000+07:00

Just imagine Saudi Arabia and Bahrain criticizing Syria for its violent crackdown on peaceful demonstrators demanding democracy. Have these two dictatorships forgotten how they employed even worse methods to quash a similar uprising in Bahrain? Such humbugs! So sickening.

aziz anom

America's secret wars.

2011-08-06T16:14:00.001+07:00

Last year it was reported in the Washington Post that U.S. Special Operations forces were deployed in 75 countries, up from 60 at the end of the Bush presidency. By the end of this year that number will likely reach 120.This global presence is far larger than previously acknowledged. Is it any wonder that America has so many enemies? All that country has to do is to stop interfering in other people's affairs and it wouldn't have to spend so much money fighting. Just look at some other western countries, like Denmark or Austria; are they not living in peace and enjoying a much better lifestyle than the US? But I suppose that's too much to ask because violence is in America's blood. It all began, as we all know, with the slaughter of native Americans.

aziz anom

Do viruses enter the body through our ears?

2011-08-02T16:01:00.001+07:00

In 1927 Richard Simmons, M.D. hypothesized that colds and/or the flu virus enter the body through the ear canal and not through the eyes, nose or the mouth . He started putting one or two drops of 3% H2O2 in the ears of his young patients. The patients recovered quickly. He practiced this technique in his clinic for several months. When he wrote a paper on the results, the medical community dismissed his findings. Were they justified in doing so?

Ramadan fasting.

2011-07-31T13:22:00.001+07:00

The month of fasting has arrived for the Muslims. It is a healthy practice for it rids the body of all the junk that has accumulated over the preceding months. The question that runs through my mind though is: Is it a good idea to fast even without water? I don't think it is. Some health specialists go even so far as to say that it might be dangerous.

aziz anom

Proof that halal slaughter is painful.

2011-07-30T19:10:00.001+07:00

A study proving Jewish and Islamic methods of slaughtering animals are painful has led to renewed calls for a ban in Britain

By Tim Edwards

LAST UPDATED 6:23 PM, OCTOBER 16, 2009

Scientists are used to being attacked by anti-vivisectionists for causing unnecessary suffering to animals in the course of research. But a new study into the pain felt by dying animals has animal rights groups on side – and has led to renewed calls for Islamic and Jewish slaughter rituals to be brought into line with secular practices.

UK law requires that all livestock be stunned prior to slaughter – with the exception of those animals intended for consumption by members of certain religions. Islamic halal and Jewish kashrut law require that animals are slaughtered by having their throat cut – a relatively slow means of death. The Sikh ritual – chatka – is much quicker when done correctly, involving a clean sword strike to the neck.

Practitioners of ritual slaughter say the animal must be alive to facilitate the draining of blood – and that throat slitting is humane.

But the new research suggests otherwise. Dr Craig Johnson and his colleagues at New Zealand's Massey University reproduced the Jewish and Islamic methods of slaughter in calves. The calves were first anaesthetised so although their pain responses could be detected, they wouldn't actually feel anything. They were then subjected to a neck incision. A pain response was detected for up to two minutes following the cut, although calves normally fall unconscious after 10 to 30 seconds.

The team then stunned the calves five seconds after cutting their throats: the pain signal detected by electroencephalography ceased immediately.

Johnson told the New Scientist he thought this work was "the best evidence yet that [ritual slaughter] is painful". However, he observed that the religious community "is adamant animals don't experience any pain so the results might surprise them".

The findings have earned Johnson the inaugural Humane Slaughter Award from the Humane Slaughter Association. Dr James Kirkwood, the charity's chief executive, said: "This work provides significant support for the value of stunning animals prior to slaughter to prevent pain and distress."

Adam Rutherford, an editor of Nature, wrote on the Guardian website: "It suggests that the anachronism of slaughter without stunning has no place in the modern world and should be outlawed. This special indulgence to religious practices should be replaced with the evidence-based approaches to which the rest of us are subject."

Some European countries, such as Sweden, require all animals to be stunned before slaughter with no exception for religions. But such a ban in Britain would be hugely controversial – and would draw inevitable comparisons with the ban on kashrut enacted by Nazi Germany in 1933.

Johnson thinks the way forward is best exemplified by Muslims in New Zealand, who use a reversible form of electrical stunning that animals can recover from if they are not immediately slaughtered. This proves the animal is alive when killed and is therefore halal.

aziz anom

The Big Lie At The Heart Of Rupert Murdoch's Media Empire

2011-07-25T17:45:00.001+07:00

The following article is by Jay Rosen

Watching the phone hacking crisis crack wide open over the last few weeks has left me puzzled about its ultimate causes: what is it about News Corp that has produced these events?

I don't think we understand very much about this. We can say things like, "Ultimate responsibility goes to the man at the top," meaning Rupert Murdoch, chairman and CEO. And that sounds right, but it still doesn't explain how any of it happened. "The key people are criminals, liars, or willfully blind..." We could say that, but then we would have to explain how so many of them ended up at one company.

Puzzles like these have led many people to the conclusion that there's a culture inside News Corp that is in some way responsible, and I basically agree with that. Mark Lewis, lawyer for the family of Milly Dowler, said after Rebekah Brooks resigned: "This is not just about one individual but about the culture of an organization." Carl Bernstein agrees. He wrote this in Newsweek a few days ago:

As anyone in the business will tell you, the standards and culture of a journalistic institution are set from the top down, by its owner, publisher, and top editors. Reporters and editors do not routinely break the law, bribe policemen, wiretap, and generally conduct themselves like thugs unless it is a matter of recognized and understood policy.

Private detectives and phone hackers do not become the primary sources of a newspaper's information without the tacit knowledge and approval of the people at the top, all the more so in the case of newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch, according to those who know him best.

Bernstein tells us that one of his sources is a former executive at News Corp, who says: "Murdoch invented and established this culture in the newsroom, where you do whatever it takes to get the story, take no prisoners, destroy the competition, and the end will justify the means."

I think this is correct as far as it goes, but now I want to introduce my theory of how this culture works and why it exists in the first place.

When the news broke that the Murdochs had hired the Edelman firm to handle public relations in the UK, I thought to myself, "Edelman has a crisis response practice, but do they have a denial division?"

Because to me that is the most striking thing about the way News Corp has reacted to these events from the beginning. Denial! Not only in the sense of deflecting questions with "move along, nothing to see here..." (when, in fact, there is something) but that deeper sense of denial we invoke when we say that a woman is in denial about her unfaithful husband or a man about his coming mortality.

Denial is somehow built into the culture of News Corp, more so than any normal company. It isn't normal for the CEO to say, as Murdoch said on July 15, that his company had handled the crisis "extremely well in every way possible," making just "minor mistakes," when the next day the executive in charge (Rebekah Brooks) resigns, then a day later gets arrested, followed by Murdoch's closest aide, Les Hinton, who also resigned in hopes of reversing the tide of defeats.

Your top people don't quit for minor mistakes, but no one in News Corp seemed troubled by that July 15 statement. The Wall Street Journal reported it without raising an eyebrow. Murdoch was confronted with his "minor mistakes" quote in Tuesday's parliamentary hearing but he turned down the chance to take it back. Where does denial so massive come from?

Here's my little theory: News Corp is not a news company at all, but a global media empire that employs its newspapers – and in the US, Fox News – as a lobbying arm. The logic of holding these "press" properties is to wield influence on behalf of the rest of the (much bigger and more profitable) media business and also to satisfy Murdoch's own power urges.

However, this fact, fairly obvious to outside observers, is actually concealed from the company by its own culture. So here we find the source for the river of denial that runs through News Corp.

Fox News and the newspapers Murdoch owns are described by News Corp, and understood by most who work there as "normal" news organisations. But they aren't, really. What makes them different is not that they have a more conservative take on the world – that's the fiction in which opponents and supporters join – but rather: news is not their first business. Wielding influence is.

Scaring politicians into going along with News Corp's plans. Building up an atmosphere of fear and paranoia, which then admits Rupert into the back door of 10 Downing Street.

But none of these facts can be admitted into company psychology, because the flag that its news-related properties fly, the legend on the licence, doesn't say "lobbying arm of the Murdoch empire." No. It says "First Amendment" or "Journalism" or "Public Service" or "news and information."

In this sense the company is built on a lie, but a necessary lie to preserve certain fictions that matter to Murdoch and his heirs. And that, I believe, explains how it got itself into this phone hacking mess. All the other lies follow from that big one.

Strangely, I do not think that News Corp people like Rebekah Brooks and James Murdoch are being insincere when they pledge allegiance to the values of good journalism. On the contrary, they believe that this is what their newspapers are all about. And this is the sense in which denial is constitutive of the company, a built-in feature that cannot be acknowledged by any of the major players because self-annihilation would be the result.

America's anti-muslim hatemongers.

2011-07-25T17:02:00.002+07:00

Bill French
Brigitte Gabriel
P. David Gaubatz
Pamela Geller
David Horowitz
John Joseph Jay
Terry Jones
Debbie Schlussel
Robert Spencer
David Yerushalmi

Watch out for these ten animals.

Auto Shaping

2011-06-29T14:18:00.003+07:00

The fundamental principle in behavioural psychology says that an organism only behaves in order to acquire a reward or a reinforcement of some kind or other. That stands to reason doesn't it? For why should we waste our time and energy doing something and getting nothing out of it. However, in an experiment by Williams and Williams (1966), pigeons who were put in a cage where a key could be pecked for food continued to peck even though pecking did not result in food being delivered. In fact pecking was a useless behaviour because it was so arranged that food pellets dropped into the cage only when the birds desisted from pecking. How does one explain this in terms of the reinforcement theory? Back in the seventies there was an American guy working as a lecturer in the psychology department of the university of Copenhagen, Denmark. His name was Melvin Lyon and he had written a paper in a fancy journal in Sweden with an outlandish theory which purported to explain this phenomenon. He sent a copy of it to me because I was a student there. He got quiet offended when I criticized it in my own paper which I submitted to the university as part of an exam, so much so that even though he had previously privately approved my exam paper he now rejected it during the official examination. When I pointed to his duplicity he angrily asked me to explain Auto Shaping. Luckily I had studied Auto Shaping and fired back the following very simple explanation.

The birds, I proudly told him and the censor who was watching intently, were simply pecking and waiting for the reward, which was fully in keeping with the Law of Reinforcement.. Mr. Lyon didn't look happy at all that day. To his credit he sent me a letter of apology.

aziz anom

The worst countries for women.

2011-06-15T12:04:00.002+07:00

According to a survey, they are:

Afghanistan
India
Congo
Pakistan
Somalia.

The women in Afghanistan resort to self-immolation after an atrocity.
Domestic violence is endemic in India
Congo is the rape capital of the world
Females are at the receiving end of acid attacks in Pakistan.
And, according to observers, there are no happy women in Somalia.

Turkey and the Kurds.

2011-06-11T16:25:00.001+07:00

The Turkish government is speaking out against the human rights abuses in Syria, calling on the despot Assad to introduce reforms in his country. What I would like to ask Erdogan and others in his country is: What about the human rights abuses that you yourself are carrying out against the Kurds in your country, not allowing them even to use their language in public life?? Aren't you a bunch of hypocrites?

aziz anom

Bahrain medical staff 'tortured for confessions'.

2011-06-07T15:11:00.002+07:00

The following is from the Independent, UK.

By Patrick Cockburn

"Doctors and nurses put on trial in Bahrain yesterday told relatives they were beaten with hoses and wooden boards embedded with nails and made to eat faeces. They also had to stand without moving for hours, or even days, and were deprived of sleep in order to force them to sign false confessions.

The Bahraini authorities have put on trial 47 doctors and nurses before a security tribunal, accusing them of trying to overthrow the government, though they say all they did was treat injured pro-democracy protesters. Relatives of the health workers, who were allowed to speak to them for 10 minutes after the hearing, said the accused alleged that they had been psychologically and physically abused during their confinement."

Anthony Weiner, a very stupid congressman.

2011-06-07T13:48:00.002+07:00

Anthony Weiner whose name I understand is a slang for penis sent a girl a lewd photo of himself in his bulging underwear. For a public figure like a US congressman to send something like that on the net shows the level of intelligence of American politicians. The guy has now apologised and says he is firm in his determination to be upright in future. Apparently a stiff task for him.

It's Not Just Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the IMF Itself Should Be on Trial

2011-06-06T19:40:00.003+07:00

The following is by By Johann Hari published in the UK's Independent.

So the fact that Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), is facing trial for allegedly raping a maid in a New York hotel room is – rightly – big news. But imagine a prominent figure was charged not with raping a maid, but starving her to death, along with her children, her parents, and thousands of other people. That is what the IMF has done to innocent people in the recent past. That is what it will do again, unless we transform it beyond all recognition. But that is left in the silence.

To understand this story, you have to reel back to the birth of the IMF. In 1944, the countries that were poised to win the Second World War gathered in a hotel in rural New Hampshire to divvy up the spoils. With a few honorable exceptions, like the great British economist John Maynard Keynes, the negotiators were determined to do one thing. They wanted to build a global financial system that ensured the money and resources of the planet were forever hoovered towards them. They set up a series of institutions designed for that purpose – and so the IMF was delivered into the world.

The IMF’s official job sounds simple and attractive. It is supposedly there to ensure poor countries don’t fall into debt, and if they do, to lift them out with loans and economic expertise. It is presented as the poor world’s best friend and guardian. But beyond the rhetoric, the IMF was designed to be dominated by a handful of rich countries – and, more specifically, by their bankers and financial speculators. The IMF works in their interests, every step of the way.

Let’s look at how this plays out on the ground. In the 1990s, the small country of Malawi in Southeastern Africa was facing severe economic problems after enduring one of the worst HIV-AIDS epidemics in the world and surviving a horrific dictatorship. They had to ask the IMF for help. If the IMF has acted in its official role, it would have given loans and guided the country to develop in the same way that Britain and the US and every other successful country had developed – by protecting its infant industries, subsidising its farmers, and investing in the education and health of its people.

That’s what an institution that was concerned with ordinary people – and accountable to them – would look like. But the IMF did something very different. They said they would only give assistance if Malawi agreed to the ‘structural adjustments’ the IMF demanded. They ordered Malawi to sell off almost everything the state owned to private companies and speculators, and to slash spending on the population. They demanded they stop subsidising fertilizer, even though it was the only thing that made it possible for farmers – most of the population – to grow anything in the country’s feeble and depleted soil. They told them to prioritise giving money to international bankers over giving money to the Malawian people.

So when in 2001 the IMF found out the Malawian government had built up large stockpiles of grain in case there was a crop failure, they ordered them to sell it off to private companies at once. They told Malawi to get their priorities straight by using the proceeds to pay off a loan from a large bank the IMF had told them to take out in the first place, at a 56 per cent annual rate of interest. The Malawian president protested and said this was dangerous. But he had little choice. The grain was sold. The banks were paid.

The next year, the crops failed. The Malawian government had almost nothing to hand out. The starving population was reduced to eating the bark off the trees, and any rats they could capture. The BBC described it as Malawi’s “worst ever famine.” There had been a much worse crop failure in 1991-2, but there was no famine because then the government had grain stocks to distribute. So at least a thousand innocent people starved to death.

At the height of the starvation, the IMF suspended $47m in aid, because the government had ‘slowed’ in implementing the marketeeing ‘reforms’ that had led to the disaster. ActionAid, the leading provider of help on the ground, conducted an autopsy into the famine. They concluded that the IMF “bears responsibility for the disaster.”

Then, in the starved wreckage, Malawi did something poor countries are not supposed to do. They told the IMF to get out. Suddenly free to answer to their own people rather than foreign bankers, Malawi disregarded all the IMF’s ‘advice’, and brought back subsidies for the fertiliser, along with a range of other services to ordinary people. Within two years, the country was transformed from being a beggar to being so abundant they were supplying food aid to Uganda and Zimbabwe.

The Malawian famine should have been a distant warning cry for you and me. Subordinating the interests of ordinary people to bankers and speculators caused starvation there. Within a few years, it had crashed the global economy for us all.

In the history of the IMF, this story isn’t an exception: it is the rule. The organisation takes over poor countries, promising it has medicine that will cure them – and then pours poison down their throats. Whenever I travel across the poor parts of the world I see the scars from IMF ‘structural adjustments’ everywhere, from Peru to Ethiopia. Whole countries have collapsed after being IMF-ed up – most famously Argentina and Thailand in the 1990s.

Look at some of the organisation’s greatest hits. In Kenya, the IMF insisted the government introduce fees to see the doctor – so the number of women seeking help or advice on STDs fell by 65 per cent, in one of the countries worst affected by AIDS in the world.

In Ghana, the IMF insisted the government introduce fees for going to school – and the number of rural families who could afford to send their kids crashed by two-thirds. In Zambia, the IMF insisted they slash health spending – and the number of babies who died doubled. Amazingly enough, it turns out that shoveling your country’s money to foreign bankers, rather than your own people, isn’t a great development strategy.

The Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz worked closely with the IMF for over a decade, until he quit and became a whistle-blower. He told me a few years ago: “When the IMF arrives in a country, they are interested in only one thing. How do we make sure the banks and financial institutions are paid?... It is the IMF that keeps the [financial] speculators in business. They’re not interested in development, or what helps a country to get out of poverty.”

Some people call the IMF “inconsistent”, because the institution supports huge state-funded bank bailouts in the rich world, while demanding an end to almost all state funding in the poor world. But that’s only an inconsistency if you are thinking about the realm of intellectual ideas, rather than raw economic interests. In every situation, the IMF does what will get more money to bankers and speculators. If rich governments will hand banks money for nothing in “bailouts”, great. If poor countries can be forced to hand banks money in extortionate “repayments”, great. It’s absolutely consistent.

Some people claim that Strauss-Kahn was a “reformer” who changed the IMF after he took over in 2009. Certainly, there was a shift in rhetoric – but detailed study by Dr Daniela Gabor of the University of the West of England has shown that the substance is business-as-usual.

Look, for example, at Hungary. After the 2008 crash, the IMF lauded them for keeping to their original deficit target by slashing public services. The horrified Hungarian people responded by kicking the government out, and choosing a party that promised to make the banks pay for the crisis they had created. They introduced a 0.7 per cent levy on the banks (four times higher than anywhere else). The IMF went crazy. They said this was “highly distortive” for banking activity – unlike the bailouts, of course – and shrieked that it would cause the banks to flee from the country. The IMF shut down their entire Hungary programme to intimidate them.

But the collapse predicted by the IMF didn’t happen. Hungary kept on pursuing sensible moderate measures, instead of punishing the population. They imposed taxes on the hugely profitable sectors of retail, energy and telecoms, and took funds from private pensions to pay the deficit. The IMF shrieked at every step, and demanded cuts for ordinary Hungarians instead. It was the same old agenda, with the same old threats. Strauss-Kahn did the same in almost all the poor countries where the IMF operated, from El Salvador to Pakistan to Ethiopia, where big cuts in subsidies for ordinary people have been imposed. Plenty have been intimidated into harming their own interests. The US-based think tank the Center for Economic and Policy Research found 31 of 41 IMF agreements require ‘pro-cyclical’ macroeconomic policies – pushing them further into recession.

It is not only Strauss-Kahn who should be on trial. It is the institution he has been running. There’s an inane debate in the press about who should be the next head of the IMF, as if we were discussing who should run the local Milk Board. But if we took the idea of human equality seriously, and remembered all the people who have been impoverished, starved and killed by this institution, we would be discussing the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission – and how to disband the IMF entirely and start again.

If Strauss-Kahn is guilty, I suspect I know how it happened. He must have mistaken the maid for a poor country in financial trouble. Heads of the IMF have, after all, been allowed to rape them with impunity for years

A bomb drops on Saleh.

2011-06-06T14:45:00.001+07:00

Saleh, the shameless tyrant of Yemen, was praying to his Allah when a rocket slammed into him. Apparently God didn't think much of his prayers. Muslims (as well as Christians, Jews, Hindus and others) continue to believe that their particular God must be a bloody fool, that He will not notice the dirty behaviour they display towards their fellow men. Let us hope that Saleh's burnt face and chest will make them think again.

aziz anom

Frequent urination can be caused by Nutritional Deficiencies.

2011-06-02T13:41:00.002+07:00

Elsewhere on this blog I have reported that dates are good for combating frequent urination. It now appears that I might have been right because dates are packed with vitamins and minerals. Nutritional deficiency is what causes frequent urination and the dates are helping you to overcome that deficiency. In other words dates are filling the role of nutritional supplements. Lack of vitamin B12 is a known trigger that causes frequent urination. Other nutrients that give you back your bladder control include magnesium, calcium and vitamin C.

Ratko Mladic -- a modern day Hitler.

2011-05-31T13:16:00.006+07:00

Did you see the picture of this animal after he was finally arrested. You would think it was some other man. Years on the run and perhaps a little guilt had taken a toll on his body. One wonders what suffering he would have endured while looking constantly over his shoulder. He need not have worried too much for his fellow citizens, the Serbs, would not have given him up were it not for their eagerness to join the EU. Generally speaking the Serbs are a wicked lot. I know that because I have been to Belgrade and experienced their behaviour personally.

Laughing baby.

2011-05-23T15:24:00.002+07:00

International criminal court -- a tool of the powerful.

2011-05-23T14:07:00.005+07:00

Have you noticed how the International Criminal Court picks on weak and poor countries and leaves alone the crimes committed by countries such as the US, Britain, France, China and Russia. That's because the court is a baby of the big powers and follows their dictates. This body should be disbanded and replaced by a truly neutral court which can mete out justice without fear of anybody, big or small.

Poor Anwar Ibrahim.

2011-05-20T14:12:00.003+07:00

His first trial was, by all accounts, a joke, designed to find him guilty by hook or by crook. The one going on now is no different. Yet another Muslim country behaving in a barbaric way. Is it only lip service these people are paying to their religion? That is not unusual of course. Justice and fair play are usually only for those who wield power -- and to hell with the promised heaven in the afterlife!

Zionists versus Arabs.

2011-05-20T13:58:00.002+07:00

Did you ever imagine the followers of Muhammad, the Muslims, showing such brutality towards their own people in the autocratic countries now undergoing an upheaval. Are they any different from the Zionists persecuting the Palestinians? Yes, in one little respect: the Jews persecute others, not their own people.

Good riddance to Bin Laden.

2011-05-03T15:26:00.002+07:00

This bastard inflicted enormous suffering on innocent people all over the world with his indiscriminate bombings. He didn't even care if his fellow Muslims got blown up. The tragedy is that his disciples will continue to do his dirty work. They will continue even if the Americans were suddenly to declare that they no longer wish to interfere in Muslim affairs and even if the Jews were to declare that they were dismantling Israel and were going back to the countries they came from. For these ignorant fanatics will very likely not rest until they get their Sharia laws in place. Satan, if he does exist, must be sitting back with a huge smile on his evil face.

Why you should eat apples.

2011-05-03T14:45:00.006+07:00

Bone Protection: French researchers found that a flavanoid called phloridzin that is found only in apples may protect post-menopausal women from osteoporosis and may also increase bone density. Boron, another ingredient in apples, also strengthens bones.

Asthma Help: One recent study shows that children with asthma who drank apple juice on a daily basis suffered from less wheezing than children who drank apple juice only once per month. Another study showed that children born to women who eat a lot of apples during pregnancy have lower rates of asthma than children whose mothers ate few apples.

Alzheimer's Prevention: A study on mice at Cornell University found that the quercetin in apples may protect brain cells from the kind of free radical damage that may lead to Alzheimer's disease.

Lower Cholesterol: The pectin in apples lowers LDL ("bad") cholesterol. People who eat two apples per day may lower their cholesterol by as much as 16 percent.

Lung Cancer Prevention: According to a study of 10,000 people, those who ate the most apples had a 50 percent lower risk of developing lung cancer. Researchers believe this is due to the high levels of the flavonoids quercetin and naringin in apples.

Breast Cancer Prevention: A Cornell University study found that rats who ate one apple per day reduced their risk of breast cancer by 17 percent. Rats fed three apples per day reduced their risk by 39 percent and those fed six apples per day reduced their risk by 44 percent.

Colon Cancer Prevention: One study found that rats fed an extract from apple skins had a 43 percent lower risk of colon cancer. Other research shows that the pectin in apples reduces the risk of colon cancer and helps maintain a healthy digestive tract.

Liver Cancer Prevention: Research found that rats fed an extract from apple skins had a 57 percent lower risk of liver cancer.

Diabetes Management: The pectin in apples supplies galacturonic acid to the body which lowers the body's need for insulin and may help in the management of diabetes.

Weight Loss: A Brazilian study found that women who ate three apples or pears per day lost more weight while dieting than women who did not eat fruit while dieting.

Peace be upon him.

2011-05-02T17:32:00.003+07:00

Muslims, when they refer to their "Prophet Muhammad" always end it with the phrase "Peace be upon him" or PBUH. Is there any need for this when they already believe that he was a holy man bringing God's message to mankind? I mean God surely must have taken care of him, provided him with all the comforts in his after-life, including, as promised in the Quran, young virgins that he coveted so much in this life? So I say to all those unthinking Muslims: Don't worry, brothers, Muhammad is living in peace -- and probably laughing his head off at having pulled off one of the biggest scams in human history.

Royal wedding, a frivolous spectacle.

2011-05-02T17:18:00.002+07:00

Millions of people around the world watched the royal wedding in england. The question we need to ask is: Are the brains of all these people filled with sand?

Writing a will at no cost.

2011-05-02T15:06:00.002+07:00

Did you know that you don't have to go to an expensive lawyer to get a will written? In fact you don't have to go to a lawyer at all. You can write the will yourself. There are some sites on the Internet where you can download all the appropriate forms, fill them out, sign them and get two witnesses to insert their signatures.

Just go to Google and search for free legal documents.

Bollywood song 4

2011-04-26T14:04:00.000+07:00

The death of a criminal guru.

2011-04-25T17:41:00.003+07:00

This Indian guru called Sai Baba was a sexual exploiter of innocent believers, like so many prophets and messiahs of the past. Let no one cry for him. Tell the fools in the world of cricket and Bollywood and elsewhere who are mourning him to go home and rejoice instead. The world has rid itself of yet another fraud and a scum.

Difficulty swallowing sweet drinks.

2011-04-25T17:23:00.005+07:00

Do you find it difficult to swallow sweet liquids? Well, you might be suffering from an inability to digest carbohydrates. It happened to me and after some experimenting on myself I pointed to excessive sugar consumption as the culprit. A search in Google confirmed my finding.

Difficulty in swallowing food in general can also be the result of an iron deficiency, so make sure your diet includes a lot of iron-rich foods such as raisins, leafy green vegetables (like spinach and broccoli), red meat (liver is the highest source), fish, poultry, eggs (yolk), legumes (green peas and beans), chick peas, almonds, apricots, beet root, pomegranate, dates, figs, and whole grain bread. It is important to note that absorption of iron is disrupted by phytin, tea, coffee, milk and other calcium-rich foods.

Several oral iron supplements are also available over the counter. The best absorption of iron is on an empty stomach. Vitamin C helps increase iron absorption

Is there a doctor in the house? Tell him to get lost.

What's with Goodluck Jonathan?

2011-04-22T13:01:00.002+07:00

Why does this newly elected President of Nigeria go around wearing a hat? Does he wear it at home, perhaps even while having sex or doing his business in the bathroom? He is probably hiding something. Perhaps he is bald and doesn't want to appear old and ugly. Not that all bald people appear old or ugly. Just look at William Haig, the foreign minister of Britain. Doesn't that man look good, despite exposing his hairless head? Anyway I think one should not trust a man who is hiding the truth from the public. He will in all likelihood turn out to be as devious and fraudulent as Barack Obama. Nigerians should watch out.

Sexual behaviour of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam.

2011-04-19T15:41:00.006+07:00

I once mentioned to a Muslim that Muhammad, their "prophet" had sex with a nine year old girl and he became angry, asking me for proof. So for his benefit and for the benefit of all other Muslims out there I offer the following from the religionofpeace.com: Muhammad, it seems, had many more sexual adventures than just violating an innocent child. So, you believers, prepare for the unpleasant truth -- and don't spring up from your prayer rugs in a fit of rage, shouting 'lies, lies!'.

"Muhammad had sex with just about anyone he pleased, thanks to Allah's extraordinary interest in his personal sex life, as immortalized in the Qur'an.

Although the Qur'an didn't appear to have enough space for topics like universal love and brotherhood (which Muslims sometimes insist are there, but aren't), the list of sexual partners that Muhammad was entitled to is detailed more than once, sometimes in categories and sometimes in reference to specific persons (Zaynab & Mary).

Muhammad was married to thirteen women, including eleven at one time. He relegated them to either consecutive days or (according to some accounts) all in one night. He married a 9-year-old girl and even his adopted son's wife. On top of that, Muhammad had a multitude of slave girls and concubines with whom he had sex - sometimes on the very days in which they had watched their husbands and fathers die at the hands of his army.

So, by any realistic measure, the creator of the world's most sexually restrictive religion was also one of the most sexually indulgent characters in history.

Allah managed to hand down quite a few "revelations" that sanctioned Muhammad's personal pursuit of sex to the doubters around him. Interestingly they have become part of the the eternal, infallible word of the Qur'an, to be memorized by generations of Muslims for whom they have no possible relevance.

Qur'an (33:37) - "But when Zaid had accomplished his want of her, We gave her to you as a wife, so that there should be no difficulty for the believers in respect of the wives of their adopted sons, when they have accomplished their want of them; and Allah's command shall be performed." No doubt millions of young Muslims, trying to outdo one another at memorizing the Qur'an, have wondered about what this verse means and why it is there. In fact, this is a "revelation" of convenience that Allah just happened to hand down at a time when Muhammad lusted after his daughter-in-law, Zaynab, - a state of affairs that disturbed local customs. The verse "commands" Muhammad to marry the woman (following her husband's gracious divorce). As for why this should be part of the eternal word of God...?

Qur'an (33:50) - "O Prophet! surely We have made lawful to you your wives whom you have given their dowries, and those whom your right hand possesses out of those whom Allah has given to you as prisoners of war, and the daughters of your paternal uncles and the daughters of your paternal aunts, and the daughters of your maternal uncles and the daughters of your maternal aunts who fled with you; and a believing woman if she gave herself to the Prophet, if the Prophet desired to marry her-- specially for you, not for the (rest of) believers; We know what We have ordained for them concerning their wives and those whom their right hands possess in order that no blame may attach to you; " This is another special command that Muhammad handed down to himself that allows virtually unlimited sex, divinely sanctioned by Allah. One assumes that this "revelation" was meant to assuage some sort of disgruntlement in the community over Muhammad's hedonism.

Qur'an (33:51) - "You may put off whom you please of them, and you may take to you whom you please, and whom you desire of those whom you had separated provisionally; no blame attaches to you; this is most proper, so that their eyes may be cool and they may not grieve, and that they should be pleased" This is in reference to a situation in which Muhammad's wives were grumbling about his preference for sleeping with a slave girl (Mary the Copt) instead of them. Accordingly, Muhammad may sleep with whichever wife (or slave) he wishes without having to hear the others complain... as revealed in Allah's literal and perfect words to more than a billion Muslims.

Qur'an (66:1-5) - "O Prophet! Why ban thou that which Allah hath made lawful for thee, seeking to please thy wives?..." Another remarkable verse of sexual convenience concerns an episode in which Muhammad's wives were jealous of the attention that he was giving to a Christian slave girl. But, as he pointed out to them, to neglect the sexual availability of his slaves was against Allah's will for him!

Qur'an (4:24) - "And all married women (are forbidden unto you) save those (captives) whom your right hands possess." Allah even permitted Muhammad and his men to have sex with married slaves, such as those captured in battle.

FROM THE HADITH:

Muslim (8:3309) - Muhammad consummated his marriage to Aisha when she was only nine. (See also Bukhari 58:234)

Bukhari (62:18) - Aisha's father, Abu Bakr, wasn't on board at first, but Muhammad explained how the rules of their religion made it possible. This is similar to the way that present-day cult leaders manipulate their followers into similar concessions.

Muslim (8:3311) - The girl took her dolls with her to Muhammad's house (something to play with when the "prophet" was not having sex with her).

Bukhari (6:298) - Muhammad would take a bath with the little girl and fondle her.

Muslim (8:3460) - "Why didn't you marry a young girl so that you could sport with her and she could sport with you, or you could amuse with her and she could amuse with you?" Muhammad posed this question to one of his followers who had married an "older woman" instead.

Bukhari (4:232) - Muhammad's wives would wash semen stains out of his clothes, which were still wet from the spot-cleaning even when he went to the mosque for prayers. Between copulation and prayer, it's a wonder he found the time to slay pagans.

Bukhari (6:300) - Muhammad's wives had to be available for the prophet's fondling even when they were having their menstrual period.

Bukhari (93:639) - The Prophet of Islam would recite the 'Holy Qur'an' with his head in Aisha's lap, when she was menstruating.

Bukhari (62:6) - "The Prophet used to go round (have sexual relations with) all his wives in one night, and he had nine wives." Muhammad also said that it was impossible to treat all wives equally - and it isn't hard to guess why.

Bukhari (5:268) - "The Prophet used to visit all his wives in a round, during the day and night and they were eleven in number." I asked Anas, 'Had the Prophet the strength for it?' Anas replied, 'We used to say that the Prophet was given the strength of thirty men.' "

Bukhari (60:311) - "I feel that your Lord hastens in fulfilling your wishes and desires." These words were spoken by Aisha within the context of her husband having been given 'Allah's permission' to fulfill his sexual desires with a large number of women in whatever order he chooses. (It has been suggested that Aisha may have been speaking somewhat wryly).

Tabari IX:137 - "Allah granted Rayhana of the Qurayza to Muhammad as booty." Muhammad considered the women that he captured and enslaved to be God's gift to him.

Tabari VIII:117 - "Dihyah had asked the Messenger for Safiyah when the Prophet chose her for himself... the Apostle traded for Safiyah by giving Dihyah her two cousins. The women of Khaybar were distributed among the Muslims." He sometimes pulled rank to reserve the most beautiful captured women for himself.

Tubari IX:139 - "You are a self-respecting girl, but the prophet is a womanizer." Words spoken by the disappointed parents of a girl who had 'offered' herself to Muhammad.

Additional Notes:

Muhammad's sexual antics are an embarrassment to those Muslims who are aware of them. This is particularly so for their prophet's marriage to Aisha when she was 9-years-old. The thought of a 52-year-old man sleeping and bathing with a young girl is intensely unpleasant and it reflects the disgusting character of a sexual glutton rather than a holy man. Critics even allege that Muhammad was a pedophile.

Some Muslims respond by denying the hadith itself, which is a mistake. The accounts of Muhammad sleeping with a 9-year-old are no less reliable than those on which the five pillars of Islam are based. They have been an accepted part of tradition and did not become controversial until social mores began to change with the modern age.

The charge of pedophilia may or may not be true, depending on how it is defined. Technically, Muhammad did have a sexual relationship with a child, but Aisha was also the youngest of his twelve wives. Zaynab was in her 30's when she attracted the unquenchable lust of the prophet. We don't know the age of Muhammad's sex slaves. They may or may not have been as young as Aisha, but there is no point in speculating.

Prior to the medical advances of the last century, marriage occurred at a much younger age across all societies. When life expectancy was in the mid 20's (or lower), it made no sense to wait until 19 before having children. Otherwise, one ran the risk of not being around to raise them. In short, childhood as we know it was abbreviated by the reality of the times.

Another strong piece of evidence against Muhammad being a pedophile is that, according to the same Hadith, he waited from the time Aisha was six (when the marriage ceremony took place) until she turned nine to consummate the relationship. Although the text doesn't say why, in all probability it was because he was waiting for her to begin menstrual cycles - thus entering into "womanhood." It is unlikely that a pedophile would be concerned about this.

On the other hand, Muhammad passed down revelations from Allah that clearly condoned sleeping with underage girls, even by the standard of puberty. Qur'an (65:4) lays down rules for divorce, one of them being that a waiting period of three months is established to determine that the woman is not pregnant. But the same rule applies to "those too who have not had their courses," meaning girls who have not begun to menstruate. (In our opinion, this would have been a great time for Allah to have said something else instead like, "a real man is one who marries a real woman"... but that's just us).

Thanks to Muhammad's extremely poor judgment (at best) and explicit approval of pedophilia, sex with children became deeply ingrained in the Islamic tradition. For many centuries, Muslim armies would purge Christian and Hindu peasant villages of their menfolk and send the women and children to harems and the thriving child sex slave markets deep in the Islamic world. The Ayatollah Khomeini, who married a 12-year-old girl, even gave his consent to using infants for sexual pleasure (although warning against full penetration until the baby is a few years older). In April, 2010, a 13-year-old Yemeni girl died from injuries suffered to her womb during intercourse.

Muhammad's penchant for girls so much younger than him was such that at least two of his father-in-laws (Abu Bakr and Omar, the first two Caliphs) were actually younger than him as well. This disappointing pattern is very much at odds with the sort of sexual discipline that one might expect of a true "prophet of God."

Muhammad's pursuit of Zaynab, the wife of his adopted son is almost as tough for Muslims to explain. This is because it not only raises a similar question of moral character, but also casts suspicion on whether his so-called prophecies were really divine revelation or dictates of personal convenience. According to one biographer, even Aisha appears to be somewhat doubtful of Muhammad's claim that Allah commanded him to marry Zaynab, wryly remarking, "Truly Allah seems to be very quick in fulfilling your prayers."

So controversial was Muhammad's desire to marry his adopted son's wife that he had to justify it with a stern pronouncement from Allah on the very institution of adoption, which has had tragic consequences to this day. Verses 33:4-5 are widely interpreted to imply that Islam is against adoption, meaning that an untold number of children in the Islamic world have been needlessly orphaned - all because Muhammad's lustful desires for a married woman went beyond even what the other six wives that he possessed at the time and a multitude of slaves could satisfy.

Some Muslims deny that Muhammad was married to more than four women at a time, merely on the basis that the Qur'an only gives permission for marrying four. Unfortunately, Muslims historians disagree. Only one of Muhammad's last eleven wives died before him (Zaynab bint Khuzayma). The rest outlived him by many years.

Muhammad forbade his ten widows from remarrying, even making sure that this "divine" order was forever preserved in the eternal word of Allah - Qur'an (33:53). To add insult to injury, they were all summarily disinherited from Muhammad's estate by his successor (courtesy of another divine order "given" to Abu Bakr from Allah).

In summary, Islam's holiest texts portray Muhammad not as a perfect man, but as a sexual hedonist. Not only did he become fat from indulging in food, but his pursuit of sex was no less gluttonous. On top of it all, he used personal "revelations" from Allah to justify his debauchery to the gullible masses which, to this day, continue to be venerated and memorized as if they are the holiest of utterances."

This is Israel.

2011-04-18T13:20:00.000+07:00

Can the Egyptians trust their military?

2011-04-12T13:47:00.004+07:00

Apparently not! The military government has just sentenced a blogger to 3 years in prison for "insulting the army" The case against Sanad was based on a blog post titled "The People and the Army Were Never Hand in Hand," questioning the military's continued allegiance to Mubarak; as well as Facebook postings reporting allegations of abuse. Soldiers have also stormed a protest camp to break up a sit-in, killing at least one demonstrator and wounding dozens. The protesters had been critical of the military.

I suppose one should not be surprised by all this. These thugs in uniform, who are really Mubarak's men, cannot be expected to change their spots overnight. 79-year-old Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, is described in one 2008 US diplomatic cable leaked by WikiLeaks as an opponent of both economic and political reform.

I predict more blood shedding before Egypt is completely free.

What is an Agnostic?

2011-04-11T18:36:00.002+07:00

The following is by Bertrand Russell.

What is an agnostic?

An agnostic thinks it impossible to know the truth in matters such as God and the future life with which Christianity and other religions are concerned. Or, if not impossible, at least impossible at the present time.

Are agnostics atheists?

No. An atheist, like a Christian, holds that we can know whether or not there is a God. The Christian holds that we can know there is a God; the atheist, that we can know there is not. The Agnostic suspends judgment, saying that there are not sufficient grounds either for affirmation or for denial. At the same time, an Agnostic may hold that the existence of God, though not impossible, is very improbable; he may even hold it so improbable that it is not worth considering in practice. In that case, he is not far removed from atheism. His attitude may be that which a careful philosopher would have towards the gods of ancient Greece. If I were asked to prove that Zeus and Poseidon and Hera and the rest of the Olympians do not exist, I should be at a loss to find conclusive arguments. An Agnostic may think the Christian God as improbable as the Olympians; in that case, he is, for practical purposes, at one with the atheists.

Since you deny "God's Law", what authority do you accept as a guide to conduct?

An Agnostic does not accept any `authority' in the sense in which religious people do. He holds that a man should think out questions of conduct for himself. Of course, he will seek to profit by the wisdom of others, but he will have to select for himself the people he is to consider wise, and he will not regard even what they say as unquestionable. He will observe that what passes as `God's law' varies from time to time. The Bible says both that a woman must not marry her deceased husband's brother, and that, in certain circumstances, she must do so. If you have the misfortune to be a childless widow with an unmarried brother-in-law, it is logically impossible for you to avoid disobeying `God's law'.

How do you know what is good and what is evil? What does an agnostic consider a sin?

The Agnostic is not quite so certain as some Christians are as to what is good and what is evil. He does not hold, as most Christians in the past held, that people who disagree with the government on abstruse points of theology ought to suffer a painful death. He is against persecution, and rather chary of moral condemnation.

As for `sin', he thinks it not a useful notion. He admits, of course, that some kinds of conduct are desirable and some undesirable, but he holds that the punishment of undesirable kinds is only to be commended when it is deterrent or reformatory, not when it is inflicted because it is thought a good thing on its own account that the wicked should suffer. It was this belief in vindictive punishment that made men accept Hell. This is part of the harm done by the notion of `sin'.

Does an agnostic do whatever he pleases?

In one sense, no; in another sense, everyone does whatever he pleases. Suppose, for example, you hate someone so much that you would like to murder him. Why do you not do so? You may reply: "Because religion tells me that murder is a sin." But as a statistical fact, agnostics are not more prone to murder than other people, in fact, rather less so. They have the same motives for abstaining from murder as other people have. Far and away the most powerful of these motives is the fear of punishment. In lawless conditions, such as a gold rush, all sorts of people will commit crimes, although in ordinary circumstances they would have been law-abiding. There is not only actual legal punishment; there is the discomfort of dreading discovery, and the loneliness of knowing that, to avoid being hated, you must wear a mask with even your closest intimates. And there is also what may be called "conscience": If you ever contemplated a murder, you would dread the horrible memory of your victim's last moments or lifeless corpse. All this, it is true, depends upon your living in a law-abiding community, but there are abundant secular reasons for creating and preserving such a community.

I said that there is another sense in which every man does as he pleases. No one but a fool indulges every impulse, but what holds a desire in check is always some other desire. A man's anti-social wishes may be restrained by a wish to please God, but they may also be restrained by a wish to please his friends, or to win the respect of his community, or to be able to contemplate himself without disgust. But if he has no such wishes, the mere abstract concepts of morality will not keep him straight.

How does an agnostic regard the Bible?

An agnostic regards the Bible exactly as enlightened clerics regard it. He does not think that it is divinely inspired; he thinks its early history legendary, and no more exactly true than that in Homer; he thinks its moral teaching sometimes good, but sometimes very bad. For example: Samuel ordered Saul, in a war, to kill not only every man, woman, and child of the enemy, but also all the sheep and cattle. Saul, however, let the sheep and the cattle live, and for this we are told to condemn him. I have never been able to admire Elisha for cursing the children who laughed at him, or to believe (what the Bible asserts) that a benevolent Deity would send two she-bears to kill the children.

How does an agnostic regard Jesus, the Virgin Birth, and the Holy Trinity?

Since an agnostic does not believe in God, he cannot think that Jesus was God. Most agnostics admire the life and moral teachings of Jesus as told in the Gospels, but not necessarily more than those of certain other men. Some would place him on a level with Buddha, some with Socrates and some with Abraham Lincoln. Nor do they think that what He said is not open to question, since they do not accept any authority as absolute.

They regard the Virgin Birth as a doctrine taken over from pagan mythology, where such births were not uncommon. (Zoroaster was said to have been born of a virgin; Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess, is called the Holy Virgin.) They cannot give credence to it, or to the doctrine of the Trinity, since neither is possible without belief in God.

Can an agnostic be a Christian?

The word "Christian" has had various different meanings at different times. Throughout most of the centuries since the time of Christ, it has meant a person who believed God and immortality and held that Christ was God. But Unitarians call themselves Christians, although they do not believe in the divinity of Christ, and many people nowadays use the word "God" in a much less precise sense than that which it used to bear. Many people who say they believe in God no longer mean a person, or a trinity of persons, but only a vague tendency or power or purpose immanent in evolution. Others, going still further, mean by "Christianity" merely a system of ethics which, since they are ignorant of history, they imagine to be characteristic of Christians only.

When, in a recent book, I said that what the world needs is "love, Christian love, or compassion," many people thought this showed some changes in my views, although in fact, I might have said the same thing at any time. If you mean by a "Christian" a man who loves his neighbor, who has wide sympathy with suffering, and who ardently desires a world freed from the cruelties and abominations which at present disfigure it, then, certainly, you will be justified in calling me a Christian. And, in this sense, I think you will find more "Christians" among agnostics than among the orthodox. But, for my part, I cannot accept such a definition. Apart from other objections to it, it seems rude to Jews, Buddhists, Mohammedans, and other non-Christians, who, so far as history shows, have been at least as apt as Christians to practice the virtues which some modern Christians arrogantly claim as distinctive of their own religion.

I think also that all who called themselves Christians in an earlier time, and a great majority of those who do so at the present day, would consider that belief in God and immortality is essential to a Christian. On these grounds, I should not call myself a Christian, and I should say that an agnostic cannot be a Christian. But, if the word "Christianity" comes to be generally used to mean merely a kind of morality, then it will certainly be possible for an agnostic to be a Christian.

Does an agnostic deny that man has a soul?

This question has no precise meaning unless we are given a definition of the word "soul." I suppose what is meant is, roughly, something nonmaterial which persists throughout a person's life and even, for those who believe in immortality, throughout all future time. If this is what is meant, an agnostic is not likely to believe that man has a soul. But I must hasten to add that this does not mean that an agnostic must be a materialist. Many agnostics (including myself) are quite as doubtful of the body as they are of the soul, but this is a long story taking one into difficult metaphysics. Mind and matter alike, I should say, are only convenient symbols in discourse, not actually existing things.

Does an agnostic believe in a hereafter, in Heaven or Hell?

The question whether people survive death is one as to which evidence is possible. Psychical research and spiritualism are thought by many to supply such evidence. An agnostic, as such, does not take a view about survival unless he thinks that there is evidence one way or the other. For my part, I do not think there is any good reason to believe that we survive death, but I am open to conviction if adequate evidence should appear.

Heaven and hell are a different matter. Belief in hell is bound up with the belief that the vindictive punishment of sin is a good thing, quite independently of any reformative or deterrent effect that it may have. Hardly an agnostic believes this. As for heaven, there might conceivably someday be evidence of its existence through spiritualism, but most agnostics do not think that there is such evidence, and therefore do not believe in heaven.

Are you never afraid of God's judgment in denying Him?

Most certainly not. I also deny Zeus and Jupiter and Odin and Brahma, but this causes me no qualms. I observe that a very large portion of the human race does not believe in God and suffers no visible punishment in consequence. And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence.

How do agnostics explain the beauty and harmony of nature?

I do not understand where this "beauty" and "harmony" are supposed to be found. Throughout the animal kingdom, animals ruthlessly prey upon each other. Most of them are either cruelly killed by other animals or slowly die of hunger. For my part, I am unable to see any great beauty or harmony in the tapeworm. Let it not be said that this creature is sent as a punishment for our sins, for it is more prevalent among animals than among humans. I suppose the questioner is thinking of such things as the beauty of the starry heavens. But one should remember that stars every now and again explode and reduce everything in their neighborhood to a vague mist. Beauty, in any case, is subjective and exists only in the eye of the beholder.

How do agnostics explain miracles and other revelations of God's omnipotence?

Agnostics do not think that there is any evidence of "miracles" in the sense of happenings contrary to natural law. We know that faith healing occurs and is in no sense miraculous. At Lourdes, certain diseases can be cured and others cannot. Those that can be cured at Lourdes can probably be cured by any doctor in whom the patient has faith. As for the records of other miracles, such as Joshua commanding the sun to stand still, the agnostic dismisses them as legends and points to the fact that all religions are plentifully supplied with such legends. There is just as much miraculous evidence for the Greek gods in Homer as for the Christian God in the Bible.

There have been base and cruel passions, which religion opposes. If you abandon religious principles, could mankind exist?

The existence of base and cruel passions is undeniable, but I find no evidence in history that religion has opposed these passions. On the contrary, it has sanctified them, and enabled people to indulge them without remorse. Cruel persecutions have been commoner in Christendom than anywhere else. What appears to justify persecution is dogmatic belief. Kindliness and tolerance only prevail in proportion as dogmatic belief decays. In our day, a new dogmatic religion, namely, communism, has arisen. To this, as to other systems of dogma, the agnostic is opposed. The persecuting character of present day communism is exactly like the persecuting character of Christianity in earlier centuries. In so far as Christianity has become less persecuting, this is mainly due to the work of freethinkers who have made dogmatists rather less dogmatic. If they were as dogmatic now as in former times, they would still think it right to burn heretics at the stake. The spirit of tolerance which some modern Christians regard as essentially Christian is, in fact, a product of the temper which allows doubt and is suspicious of absolute certainties. I think that anybody who surveys past history in an impartial manner will be driven to the conclusion that religion has caused more suffering than it has prevented.

What is the meaning of life to the agnostic?

I feel inclined to answer by another question: What is the meaning of `the meaning of life'? I suppose what is intended is some general purpose. I do not think that life in general has any purpose. It just happened. But individual human beings have purposes, and there is nothing in agnosticism to cause them to abandon these purposes. They cannot, of course, be certain of achieving the results at which they aim; but you would think ill of a soldier who refused to fight unless victory was certain. The person who needs religion to bolster up his own purposes is a timorous person, and I cannot think as well of him as of the man who takes his chances, while admitting that defeat is not impossible.

Does not the denial of religion mean the denial of marriage and chastity?

Here again, one must reply by another question: Does the man who asks this question believe that marriage and chastity contribute to earthly happiness here below, or does he think that, while they cause misery here below, they are to be advocated as means of getting to heaven? The man who takes the latter view will no doubt expect agnosticism to lead to a decay of what he calls virtue, but he will have to admit that what he calls virtue is not what ministers to the happiness of the human race while on earth. If, on the other hand, he takes the former view, namely, that there are terrestrial arguments in favor of marriage and chastity, he must also hold that these arguments are such as should appeal to the agnostic. Agnostics, as such, have no distinctive views about sexual morality. But most of them would admit that there are valid arguments against the unbridled indulgence of sexual desires. They would derive these arguments, however, from terrestrial sources and not from supposed divine commands.

Is not faith in reason alone a dangerous creed? Is not reason imperfect and inadequate without spiritual and moral law?

No sensible man, however agnostic, has "faith in reason alone." Reason is concerned with matters of fact, some observed, some inferred. The question whether there is a future life and the question whether there is a God concern matters of fact, and the agnostic will hold that they should be investigated in the same way as the question, "Will there be an eclipse of the moon tomorrow?" But matters of fact alone are not sufficient to determine action, since they do not tell us what ends we ought to pursue. In the realm of ends, we need something other than reason. The agnostic will find his ends in his own heart and not in an external command. Let us take an illustration: Suppose you wish to travel by train from New York to Chicago; you will use reason to discover when the trains run, and a person who though that there was some faculty of insight or intuition enabling him to dispense with the timetable would be thought rather silly. But no timetable will tell him that it is wise, he will have to take account of further matters of fact; but behind all the matters of fact, there will be the ends that he thinks fitting to pursue, and these, for an agnostic as for other men, belong to a realm which is not that of reason, though it should be in no degree contrary to it. The realm I mean is that of emotion and feeling and desire.

Do you regard all religions as forms of superstition or dogma? Which of the existing religions do you most respect, and why?

All the great organized religions that have dominated large populations have involved a greater or less amount of dogma, but "religion" is a word of which the meaning is not very definite. Confucianism, for instance, might be called a religion, although it involves no dogma. And in some forms of liberal Christianity, the element of dogma is reduced to a minimum.

Of the great religions of history, I prefer Buddhism, especially in its earliest forms, because it has had the smallest element of persecution.

Communism like agnosticism opposes religion, are agnostics Communists?

Communism does not oppose religion. It merely opposes the Christian religion, just as Mohammedanism does. Communism, at least in the form advocated by the Soviet Government and the Communist Party, is a new system of dogma of a peculiarly virulent and persecuting sort. Every genuine Agnostic must therefore be opposed to it.

Do agnostics think that science and religion are impossible to reconcile?

The answer turns upon what is meant by `religion'. If it means merely a system of ethics, it can be reconciled with science. If it means a system of dogma, regarded as unquestionably true, it is incompatible with the scientific spirit, which refuses to accept matters of fact without evidence, and also holds that complete certainty is hardly ever impossible.

What kind of evidence could convince you that God exists?

I think that if I heard a voice from the sky predicting all that was going to happen to me during the next twenty-four hours, including events that would have seemed highly improbable, and if all these events then produced to happen, I might perhaps be convinced at least of the existence of some superhuman intelligence. I can imagine other evidence of the same sort which might convince me, but so far as I know, no such evidence exists.

In praise of Aljazeera.

2011-04-07T16:46:00.002+07:00

The following is an article by Panu Aree:

Even though the news about the air strikes on Libya by a coalition of Western allies may not be as big as the attack on Iraq 10 years ago, the most interesting aspects are the fact that France, not the US, has been the leader in the operation, and the participation of Qatar, a small, wealthy Gulf nation that has exerted its role in the world prominently.

Qatar stepped up the campaign to make its presence felt in the mid-1990s, with the establishment of Al Jazeera, the cable news network that has since grown to become a distinctive voice in global broadcasting. When it was announced, Al Jazeera was quickly sneered at as nothing more than a rich man's toy, a spare change distraction of oil billionaires who had too much money and time in their hands.

But less than two decades later, the detractors have been silenced. Al Jazeera is now one of the highest quality news channels in the world. It did a praiseworthy in-depth report on 9/11 _ providing an alternative perspective to the domination of US networks. Right now, when the Arab world finds itself in great turmoil, Al Jazeera has been the first on the ground, the first to zoom in on the nerve centre of the conflict and dispatch the latest updates, from Libya, Yemen and Bahrain.

Al Jazeera is often noted for its neutral coverage and its focus on the smaller voices. The Qatari channel has rarely been accused of biased reporting, or of being a mouthpiece of vested interests, a charge that even respected networks like the BBC or CNN sometimes face. The obvious example is the coverage of Thailand's political riots last May. While both sides clamoured to assert their versions of the story, while CNN, the BBC and local stations struggled to get the truth out, Al Jazeera was the only channel that was more or less accepted by all parties in the conflict for its fair and insightful coverage.

The Al Jazeera multimedia section, featuring short documentaries on a wide range of social and political issues, provides a very good example of how a news agency uses moving images to explore sensitive issues and explore their hidden implications. For instance, the network's coverage of Thailand's southern conflict has been eye-opening; take a look at the recent video reporting on the allegation ''from human rights groups that Thailand's military have been torturing prisoners.'' The title of the report is ''Thailand's Tropical Gulag.'' We haven't seen this from any other news agency, especially local ones.

Thus the current situation in the Arab world will continue to highlight the role of Al Jazeera _ and of Qatar as a serious player in global geopolitics. But the oil-rich country seems determined to be more than that. In the world of sports, Qatar showed its potential first by hosting the Asian Games in 2006, and recently, it scored one of the biggest surprises in the world of football when Doha has been picked by Fifa to stage the World Cup in 2020. On top of that, Mohammad Bin Hannam, now the president of the Asian Football Federation, is pushing for the top Fifa position. In the following years, it's possible that Al Jazeera will put more effort into sports, now that its headquarters have received one of the highest honours in the sports world.

When Qatar first rose to our attention, some observers credited that to its wealth and oil reserves that enabled this small nation to invest in risky projects, Al Jazeera included. But look closely and we can see that the main difference between this Bedouin state and the rest in the Gulf is Qatar's unique stance on the map of world's politics: While Saudi Arabia, Bahrain or the Emirates choose to follow the lead of the Western power, Qatar remains independent in terms of policy. That's perhaps one of the reasons it has gone far ahead of other bigger nations with Western allies.

When the bubble burst in Dubai, Qatar was selling its fanciful dream of building a massive air-con system that would turn its desert climate into European springtime for the comfort of players and fans in the World Cup 2020. When 2020 actually comes, Qatar might become a member of the UN Security Council. And we may all be watching Al Jazeera instead of CNN.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Panu Aree is a documentary filmmaker.

You want to be healthy? Then read this.

2011-03-30T16:54:00.002+07:00

It is from "The Hoax of Modern Medicine" by Mike Adams:

Fact 1: Doctors know virtually nothing about nutrition and are still not taught nutrition in medical schools. Expecting a doctor to teach you about how to prevent disease is sort of like expecting a car mechanic to show you how to perform brain surgery. Although there are some exceptions (doctors who have taught themselves nutrition), most doctors remain so nutritionally illiterate that they have no familiarity with the natural plant-based medicines found in everyday fruits and vegetables.

Fact 2: No pharmaceuticals actually cure or resolve the underlying causes of disease. Even "successful" drugs only manage symptoms, usually at the cost of interfering with other physiological functions that will cause side effects down the road. There is no such thing as a drug without a side effect.

Fact 3: 90 percent of all diseases (cancer, diabetes, depression, heart disease, etc.) are easily preventable through diet, nutrition, sunlight and exercise. None of these solutions are ever promoted because they make no money.

Fact 4: There is no financial incentive for anyone in today's system of medicine (drug companies, hospitals, doctors, etc.) to actually make patients well. Profits are found in continued sickness, not wellness or prevention.

Fact 5: Virtually all the "prevention" programs you see today (such as free mammograms or other screening programs) are little more than cleverly disguised patient recruitment schemes. They use free screenings to scare people into agreeing to expensive and often unnecessary treatments that enrich drug companies. Breast cancer mammography is a complete scam: The machines actually cause cancer!

Remember these facts and you'll know more about health and disease than most people. And for your part, stay healthy! Work to safely get off all prescription drugs, eat a diet of natural, wholesome foods (and avoid processed foods), exercise regularly, avoid toxic chemicals in your home (throw out those toxic laundry detergents and switch to soap nuts), and toss those toxic personal care products (skin creams, cosmetics, shampoo, etc.). Stay natural, healthy and alert. Be well, and you'll be the exception! And please, never be so gullible as to think that your government is going to "save you" with a new health care reform plan. Even if we switch to free health insurance for everyone, the whole system is still based on toxic treatments that cure nothing!

Drag Ali Abdullah Saleh out.

2011-03-23T13:20:00.004+07:00

It seems the only way the tyrant of Yemen will leave the presidency is if someone grabs him by his ear and simply pulls him out of the door and on to the street. These devils think the countries they have shamelessly ruled for decades are their private properties.

Zionist Running Dog Obama.

2011-03-21T11:27:00.000+07:00

Putin, Russia's new Stalin.

2011-03-14T13:04:00.003+07:00

Russia's tragedy is that the alcoholic Boris Yeltsin chose Putin as his successor. It is reported that Yeltsin actually had someone else in mind but for some strange reason Putin was picked. Perhaps Yeltsin was too drunk at the time to realise what he was doing. Be that as it may, Russia today is suffering the consequences of that choice. The poor country is back to square one, with journalists being murdered for criticising the former KGB boss and criminals running amok everywhere, amassing fortunes through corruption.
Vodka, anyone?

BBC staff arrested and tortured in Libya by Gaddafi's thugs.

2011-03-10T14:29:00.004+07:00

(The following is an article from London's Guardian newspaper. It shows how the despot, Gadddafi, rules Libya and why he needs to be hauled before the International Criminal Court.)

"Two journalists working for the BBC in Libya have been arrested, tortured and subjected to a mock execution by security forces of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's regime.

The shocking account of their experiences, including being held in a cage in a militia barracks while others were tortured around them, was made available to media colleagues in Tripoli after the men had been released and left the country.

At one point during their captivity the men say they had shots fired past their heads as they were led into a barracks.

One of the men was attacked repeatedly with fists, boots, rifle butts, a stick and piece of pipe. He also described trying to help other victims of torture whom they saw, some of whom had had their ribs broken during beatings.

The ordeal represents the most serious incident yet involving the targeting of the international media and may offer an insight into the fate of many of those opposition supporters who have been rounded up during the regime's crackdown on its opponents.

It also offers the first real eyewitness depiction of conditions endured by those arrested by the regime, including those whose only crime has been to talk to foreign journalists.

A reporter for the BBC Arabic service, Feras Killani, a Palestinian refugee with a Syrian passport and Turkish cameraman Goktay Koraltan, were arrested on Monday with Chris Cobb-Smith, a British citizen, at a checkpoint in Zahra, six miles from the besieged town of Zawiya 30 miles from Tripoli.

The two journalists say they were kicked and punched and beaten to the floor with rifle butts while being interrogated as suspected "British spies" despite having permission to work in Libya. Cobb-Smith was not assaulted.

Killani described being taken to a "black and white barracks" at first where he was questioned aggressively by a captain with three stars on his shoulders before being taken behind a building and assaulted.

"[There] was lots of bad language," Killani saidon Wednesday. "When I tried to respond he took me out to the car park behind the guardroom.

"Then he started hitting me without saying anything. First with his fist, then boots, then knees. Then he found a plastic pipe on the ground and beat me with that. Then one of the soldiers gave him a long stick. I'm standing trying to protect myself, I'm trying to tell him we're working, I'm a Palestinian, I have a good impression of the country. He knew who we were [that we were journalists] and what we were doing."

"I think there was something personal against me," he added. "They knew me and the sort of coverage I had been doing, especially from Tajoura the Friday before. They don't like us or Arabiya or Jazeera."

Warned by his assailants not to tell the others he had been beaten, he was led back to the room where Koraltan and Cobb-Smith were being held, and told not to say a word.

"The captain asked the other guards to come and started to hit and kick me. They hit me with a stick, they used their army boots on me, and their knees. It made it worse that I was a Palestinian – and they said we were all spies. Sometimes they said I was a journalist who was covering stories in a bad way.

"[Then] they put us in a car and the captain, the one who beat me, told the guard if they say one word kill them."

Taken back to Tripoli under armed guard, the three men were taken to a military barracks, as Cobb-Smith explains: "I thought it was a good sign we were going to a legitimate barracks, it was a compound with an eagle on the gate, but we went past the front gate down a back street.

"There was a building down the side, attached to the barracks and not behind the perimeter wall. It was a dirty scruffy little compound about 100 metres square."

Most chilling was what the men could see in the middle of the compound, a large metal cage. Once again Killani was immediately assaulted, knocked to the ground by four or five men who, when he was on his knees, cocked their rifles as if to shoot him. The three men were then placed in the cage."

Next, Killani was taken into what he thought was a guardroom. "[It was] plain concrete with a heavy door. They took me inside and left me alone for a few minutes and then they started. After 15 minutes they were hitting me and kicking me very hard, the worst since I arrived, they put cuffs on my legs. They put three layers over my face, something like a surgical hat, the thing a nurse would wear but over my face.

"I was on the floor on my side, hands and feet cuffed, lying half on a mattress, and they were beating me. They were saying I'm a spy working for British intelligence, they asked me about the $400 and £60 and some dinars I was carrying. They asked if I was given the money from the intelligence department I worked for."

"I could hear screams," recalled Koraltan. In the meantime Cobb-Smith had managed to discreetly call the BBC at their hotel with a phone he had hidden, and alerted them to the seriousness of their situation.

Killani by now had a mask taped on his face and was struggling to breathe. The two other men were having masks taped to their faces.

Taken out of the cage one by one, Koraltan could hear guns being cocked again and thought he would be executed. "I was really scared, panicked; Chris was trying to say to me it was going to be OK. I thought they were going to kill us and blame al-Qaida or the rebels."

Killani was kept in the cage, but now his captors had taken off the cuffs binding him, apparently believing his protestations that he was a journalist. With him now were other prisoners.

Killani spent the night doing what he could for the other prisoners, who were all handcuffed. Some of them told him they had been arrested because their phone calls had been intercepted – including ones to the foreign media. "I spent the night in a cell. There were 10 to 12 men from Zawiya. Some were in a bad situation, with broken ribs.

"I was looking out of the cage. Cars were coming and going. I saw them bring in a guy and three girls, prisoners, too. Two of them told me they had broken ribs. The four who were masked, I helped them breathe by lifting their masks, saw they had been badly beaten.

"The four who were masked said they had been three days without food and with arms and legs cuffed. They said where they were now was like heaven compared to where they had been. They said they had been tortured for three days, and were from Zawiya. The four all knew each other. They didn't want to talk much. None of them said they were involved in fighting but the guard told me. Their hands were swollen and so were their faces."

The next morning, after a frantic effort by the BBC's team to locate the men and secure their release, they were taken to another barracks. Cobb-Smith could hear screams of pain coming from the second floor and could see people being moved around hooded and handcuffed.

"We were lined up against the wall facing it. I stepped aside to face a gap so they wouldn't be able to smash my face into the wall. A man with a small submachine gun was putting it to the nape of everyone's neck in turn. He pointed the barrel at each of us. When he got to me at the end of the line, he pulled the trigger twice. The shots went past my ear.

"After the shooting incident, one man who spoke very good English, almost Oxford English, came to ask who we were, home towns and so on. He was very pleasant, ordered them to cut off our handcuffs. When he had filled in the paperwork, it was suddenly all over. They took us to their rest room. It was a charm offensive, packets of cigarettes, tea, coffee, offers of food." Finally the men were set free.

A Foreign Office spokesman said: "We were aware of the incident and have been in contact with the BBC throughout, facilitating contacts to ensure the safe release of those detained.

"We condemn the abhorrent treatment of the team. This is yet another example of the horrific crimes being committed in Libya. The regime had invited journalists to Libya to see the truth.

"This truth is even more glaring today than it was before. As we have made clear there will be a day of reckoning for these abuses."

The ugly Americans.

2011-03-09T14:05:00.003+07:00

A CIA agent called Raymond Allen Davis, a former green beret working for the US State Department, was recently arrested by Pakistani police in Lahore after he shot dead two motor cyclists in broad daylight on 27 January. Some 47 eye-witnesses said Davis continued to shoot the two Pakistanis after they had turned to flee. Both were repeatedly hit in the back. Davis stated that he shot them not because they had menaced him with guns but because he believed they were armed.

To try to save his neck, Davis called the US consulate who dispatched a vehicle, an SUV, which came with such frantic speed that it didn't bother to drive on the right side of the road, resulting in the knocking down of a third motor cyclist. That prompted the vehicle to forget about Davis and return to the consulate.

Now the US is demanding that Davis be released because of "diplomatic immunity".

Contrast this case with that of a Pakistani woman called Aafia who was convicted in a New York court for attempting to kill Americans. She was sentenced to 86 years in prison and is being kept in total isolation. The trial was framed in such a way that there would be no mention of her being kidnapped from Karachi or that she and her three children had been tortured in secret prisons.

Apparently, according to the Americans, there should be one form of justice for its citizens and another for Muslim Pakistanis.

Why I am not a Muslim.

2011-03-02T16:21:00.003+07:00

Put yourself in the position of God or Allah. If you had a message for humans on earth, would you be stupid enough to choose one man in one particular part of earth to be the carrier of that message? If you did that, your message certainly wouldn't reach all humanity, would it?

No, the most efficient way to get your message across would be to transmit it directly to all, by whatever means at your disposal. You are after all God and you can do anything, right?

Unfortunately Muslims are so fanatical in their belief that Islam is the true religion they are unable even to think that they might be wrong. One idiot wrote to me to say that God does not reason like man. What a preposterous statement!

The argument against Christianity and other religions.

2011-02-28T20:08:00.002+07:00

Here is Bertrand Russell presenting a case against Christianity which I believe can apply equally well to most other major religions:
http://users.drew.edu/~jlenz/whynot.html

The monster of Bahrain.

2011-02-25T18:54:00.002+07:00

The king of the little island of Bahrain, a scumbag with the name Khalifa, sent his troops at 3 in the morning to Pearl square where peaceful protesters (some with their babies) were sleeping. Without previous warning the soldiers opened fire. In this brutal crackdown at least 5 were killed, including a child, and some 2000 injured. And as if this was not enough, doctors and medics and ambulances and blood donors were prevented from reaching the scene. Now I ask you: Does this Khalifa shit and his family of goons have any right to continue to rule over the people of Bahrain?

The Christian Zionists in Washington.

2011-02-19T15:07:00.003+07:00

Once again the morally debased rulers of America have blocked a resolution in the UN that would have condemned Jewish settlement activity in Palestine. They think they are doing Israel a favour when in fact all they are doing is inciting more hatred towards America and its Zionist master (yes, it is the tail that is wagging the dog). The protests now exploding all over the middle east will eventually result in the disappearance of all the American stooges (traitors to their own people) and the emergence of new leaders who will tell America in no uncertain terms that the game is over and that they should take a hike if protecting Israel's outrageous behaviour is all they are interested in.

Why Are American Cable Viewers Deprived of Al-Jazeera (But Pay for Fox News?) | World | AlterNet

2011-02-15T20:34:00.000+07:00

Why Are American Cable Viewers Deprived of Al-Jazeera (But Pay for Fox News?) | World | AlterNet

The role of Aljazeera in the Egypt uprising.

2011-02-13T15:10:00.003+07:00

I wonder if the successful overthrow of Mubarak would have taken place so easily without Aljazeera's continuous coverage of the street protests. I mean in the old days repressive regimes hid the truth from their people but now, with international TV, everyone knows what is happening around them. More than anything else (Facebook included) I think it is Aljazeera that Egyptians have to be thankful to for their freedom.

Now that the criminal ruler has departed, the job is to rid Egypt of all those Mubarak cronies and recover the money they have stolen from the country. Unfortunately the new military rulers are in no hurry to do that since they themselves have benefited from Mubarak's rule. I predict more street protests. And more uprisings in other countries. To the chagrin of Western countries and the Zionist state.

What kind of friend has Israel been to the US?

2011-02-10T18:44:00.003+07:00

The following is the answer from writer Mark Glenn:

http://crescentandcross.wordpress.com/2006/11/09/israel-we-bless-thee/

Mubarak is just one of many tyrants America loves.

2011-02-06T15:38:00.007+07:00

Some of the others are:

1. Paul Biya, Cameroon
2. Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov (or Berdymukhamedov), Turkmenistan.
3. Teodoro Obiang Nguema, Equatorial Guinea
4. Idriss Deby, Chad
5. Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan
6. Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia
7. King Abdullah Bin Abdul-Aziz, Saudi Arabia (the picture above).

Obama calls Mubarak.

2011-02-02T17:42:00.008+07:00

The telephone rings and Mubarak picks it up.

Obama: "Hello, Hosni."

Mubarak: "Hello Barack, why you call me night time?

Obama: "Did I wake you up?"

Mubarak: "I sleep...."

O: "Sorry Hosni, but things are getting scary for you and for us here in the US."

M: "What you talk about?"

O: "All those protesters calling for your head"

M: "Oh, that...Tomorrow I tell bastards I no stand for re-election."

O: "But if you did that we are both screwed. Come to your senses, man! Who will look after our interests if you disappeared?"

M: "I no disappear...I no fool, Barack!"

O: "What do you mean?"

M: "Tomorrow you know"

O: " Look, just cut the bullshit. We want you to stay in power and carry out meaningful reforms NOW."

M: "Oh, like reform you promise Americans? Don't worry, My promise false also."

O: "Don't insult me, you little shit."

M: "I sorry. Very, very sorry."

O: "Now get back to sleep -- and stay in power. I will continue to make the right noises for you."

M: "I happy you help, Barack."

Mubarak slams the phone down and turns to one of his henchmen: "That black man want I offer HOPE AND CHANGE, like he did."

H: "He harami, sir."

Don't let Mubarak flee Egypt.

2011-01-27T15:48:00.002+07:00

No, the bastard needs to be put on a donkey and taken around Cairo so that the long suffering Egyptians can slap him around. Then he should be flung into prison for the rest of his life.

Have sex and be healthy.

2011-01-27T15:31:00.002+07:00

According to an article somewhere sex is good for you (as if we didn't know). It said the following:

1. Sex helps relieve pain.
2. For the ladies! Semen may be an anti-depressant.
3. For the gents! Sex may reduce the risk of prostate cancer.
4. Sex is a good workout.
5. Sex can help keep colds at bay.
6. Sex helps you sleep.

Keep screwing, folks!

Traitors galore.

2011-01-24T18:45:00.002+07:00

It seems there is no shortage of fools in the Arab world. The latest to join their ranks is Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator in the so-called peace process with the Zionist state. This scumbag, according to the leaked documents published by Aljazeera, offered most of Jerusalem to the Jews in exchange for peace.

The Fatah leaders of PLO are like children. What they don't realize is that Israel is a perfidious state with whom discussions can never yield meaningful results. Iran understands this very well which is why it is arming itself to the teeth for the final battle to come. Hamas understands it too. I just can't wait for the time when all these idiotic and corrupt leaders in the Arab world would have disappeared from the face of the earth -- along with the Zionist occupiers of Palestine.

Video of Sudanese woman being flogged for wearing trousers.

2011-01-19T14:54:00.002+07:00

After Tunisia, the Arab dictators are shaking in their underwear.

2011-01-17T14:09:00.003+07:00

The following article by Robert Fisk appeared in the U.K's Independent newspaper:

"The end of the age of dictators in the Arab world? Certainly they are shaking in their boots across the Middle East, the well-heeled sheiks and emirs, and the kings, including one very old one in Saudi Arabia and a young one in Jordan, and presidents – another very old one in Egypt and a young one in Syria – because Tunisia wasn't meant to happen. Food price riots in Algeria, too, and demonstrations against price increases in Amman. Not to mention scores more dead in Tunisia, whose own despot sought refuge in Riyadh – exactly the same city to which a man called Idi Amin once fled.
If it can happen in the holiday destination Tunisia, it can happen anywhere, can't it? It was feted by the West for its "stability" when Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali was in charge. The French and the Germans and the Brits, dare we mention this, always praised the dictator for being a "friend" of civilised Europe, keeping a firm hand on all those Islamists.
Tunisians won't forget this little history, even if we would like them to. The Arabs used to say that two-thirds of the entire Tunisian population – seven million out of 10 million, virtually the whole adult population – worked in one way or another for Mr Ben Ali's secret police. They must have been on the streets too, then, protesting at the man we loved until last week. But don't get too excited. Yes, Tunisian youths have used the internet to rally each other – in Algeria, too – and the demographic explosion of youth (born in the Eighties and Nineties with no jobs to go to after university) is on the streets. But the "unity" government is to be formed by Mohamed Ghannouchi, a satrap of Mr Ben Ali's for almost 20 years, a safe pair of hands who will have our interests – rather than his people's interests – at heart.
For I fear this is going to be the same old story. Yes, we would like a democracy in Tunisia – but not too much democracy. Remember how we wanted Algeria to have a democracy back in the early Nineties?
Then when it looked like the Islamists might win the second round of voting, we supported its military-backed government in suspending elections and crushing the Islamists and initiating a civil war in which 150,000 died.
No, in the Arab world, we want law and order and stability. Even in Hosni Mubarak's corrupt and corrupted Egypt, that's what we want. And we will get it.
The truth, of course, is that the Arab world is so dysfunctional, sclerotic, corrupt, humiliated and ruthless – and remember that Mr Ben Ali was calling Tunisian protesters "terrorists" only last week – and so totally incapable of any social or political progress, that the chances of a series of working democracies emerging from the chaos of the Middle East stand at around zero per cent.
The job of the Arab potentates will be what it has always been – to "manage" their people, to control them, to keep the lid on, to love the West and to hate Iran.
Indeed, what was Hillary Clinton doing last week as Tunisia burned? She was telling the corrupted princes of the Gulf that their job was to support sanctions against Iran, to confront the Islamic republic, to prepare for another strike against a Muslim state after the two catastrophes the United States and the UK have already inflicted in the region.
The Muslim world – at least, that bit of it between India and the Mediterranean – is a more than sorry mess. Iraq has a sort-of-government that is now a satrap of Iran, Hamid Karzai is no more than the mayor of Kabul, Pakistan stands on the edge of endless disaster, Egypt has just emerged from another fake election.
And Lebanon... Well, poor old Lebanon hasn't even got a government. Southern Sudan – if the elections are fair – might be a tiny candle, but don't bet on it.
It's the same old problem for us in the West. We mouth the word "democracy" and we are all for fair elections – providing the Arabs vote for whom we want them to vote for.
In Algeria 20 years ago, they didn't. In "Palestine" they didn't. And in Lebanon, because of the so-called Doha accord, they didn't. So we sanction them, threaten them and warn them about Iran and expect them to keep their mouths shut when Israel steals more Palestinian land for its colonies on the West Bank.
There was a fearful irony that the police theft of an ex-student's fruit produce – and his suicide in Tunis – should have started all this off, not least because Mr Ben Ali made a failed attempt to gather public support by visiting the dying youth in hospital.
For years, this wretched man had been talking about a "slow liberalising" of his country. But all dictators know they are in greatest danger when they start freeing their entrapped countrymen from their chains.
And the Arabs behaved accordingly. No sooner had Ben Ali flown off into exile than Arab newspapers which have been stroking his fur and polishing his shoes and receiving his money for so many years were vilifying the man. "Misrule", "corruption", "authoritarian reign", "a total lack of human rights", their journalists are saying now. Rarely have the words of the Lebanese poet Khalil Gibran sounded so painfully accurate: "Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpetings, and farewells him with hootings, only to welcome another with trumpetings again." Mohamed Ghannouchi, perhaps?
Of course, everyone is lowering their prices now – or promising to. Cooking oil and bread are the staple of the masses. So prices will come down in Tunisia and Algeria and Egypt. But why should they be so high in the first place?
Algeria should be as rich as Saudi Arabia – it has the oil and gas – but it has one of the worst unemployment rates in the Middle East, no social security, no pensions, nothing for its people because its generals have salted their country's wealth away in Switzerland.
And police brutality. The torture chambers will keep going. We will maintain our good relations with the dictators. We will continue to arm their armies and tell them to seek peace with Israel.
And they will do what we want. Ben Ali has fled. The search is now on for a more pliable dictator in Tunisia – a "benevolent strongman" as the news agencies like to call these ghastly men.
And the shooting will go on – as it did yesterday in Tunisia – until "stability" has been restored.
No, on balance, I don't think the age of the Arab dictators is over. We will see to that."

The Crescent and the Cross

2011-01-11T17:52:00.001+07:00

Children's Day

2011-01-09T19:15:00.001+07:00

Children's day is celebrated around the world on various days of the year and this of course is a good thing. The only question is: Are we doing enough for the children who are not so lucky and growing up in dysfunctional families or no families at all and who suffer abuse at the hands of adults? Just the other day I heard a child crying in a public toilet. Instead of being comforted, the little one was given a loud slap. I do not know whether the man coming out later with the boy was his father or somebody else.

I have met a man who said he had been beaten as a child by his father. And I have known two women who told me that they had been brutally raped early in their lives.

With all these abuses taking place of children, is it any wonder that some one million people commit suicide around the world every year! For make no mistake, the main cause for self-destruction can be found in emotional scars from the past.

How should we protect our children? I do not know the answer to this. I just urge everybody reading this to do their best.

Bollywood films -- what a load of crap.

2011-01-04T18:48:00.001+07:00

One by one Bollywood films are flopping at the box office and still the producers churn out the same sort of garbage, films with flimsy plots and meaningless over-acting. Expensive sets and good looking players do nothing to save the films. On the other hand low budget productions which reflect the real India are becoming more popular. The reason very likely may be that the Indian viewers are not as stupid as studios believe they are. One can count on ones fingers the number of producers and directors who have got it right -- among them Aamir Khan. And I have admiration too for music directors Nadeem Shravan. Good luck to them.

aziz anom

White women in Britain converting to Islam.

2011-01-04T13:09:00.004+07:00

It has been reported that more and more white women in the United Kingdom are embracing Islam -- even taking up the burqa. Have these women gone bonkers or what?! Who in her right mind would want to do that in this modern age of knowledge! But I suppose not everybody in the west has had a proper education. All that anybody who is thinking of becoming a Muslim has to do is to read the first few passages of the Quran, the Muslim "holy" book, to discover that the book, at least in some sections of it, is addressing God and not man. If it had been written by God then surely it would consistently be directed towards human beings.

I wonder if the people who were around Muhammad when he was preaching his concoction would have believed him if they had had some training in critical thinking. Highly unlikely.They would probably have laughed him off and today Muhammad would have been part of a long list of failed "prophets".

Israeli claims that it won its wars on its own is a lie.

2010-12-26T13:09:00.002+07:00

1967 6-day war : A shopkeeper friend of mine was sitting, as he often did, outside his shop in Singapore when a western tourist passed by and fell into conversation with him. The tourist turned out to be an American, a former pilot in the US air force, now retired and living in the Philippines. He revealed that during the 6-day war, most of the Israeli planes and tanks were manned by the Americans, he being one of the pilots, as the Jewish forces invaded Sinai, the Golan Heights and the West Bank.

During this war a US warship called Liberty was bombed by Israel. This deadly attack has never been fully investigated by the US. One can only surmise that Washington simply had to keep a lid on the incident because an investigation would have exposed America's participation in that war, that it was probably a case of friendly fire from planes flown by American pilots.

1973 Yom Kippur war: This war was apparently well planned by the Egyptians and the Syrians. According to a former officer in the Egyptian army whom I met in Scandinavia while he was on some course of study there, the plan to go to war was kept from the Russians who had supplied most of the modern weapons to the Egyptians, including the SAMS (the surface to air missiles). This officer, along with his colleagues, was ordered by Cairo to move the Russian advisers away from the Suez Canal where the SAMS had been installed. Then, according to the officer, the order to launch an attack came from Cairo not by telephone or radio but by a messenger travelling by road from Cairo to the Canal. The order was to first hold their anti-aircraft fire until the Egyptian air force had completed its mission to bomb enemy positions in Sinai and had returned to their bases. After that the SAMS were to shoot down all planes in the sky as the ground forces crossed the canal and took up positions on that side with their anti-tank weapons. Apparently this was a huge success, the Egyptians destroying 40 Israeli planes in the first day of the war as reported by well informed sources at the time. Subsequently, according to a former CIA operative now retired and also living in the Philippines (on the island of Leyte) whom I met when I was in that country, the Israelis lost hundreds of their tanks and were in danger of losing most of their air force. They faced certain defeat and extinction. But the Americans had already stepped in and were bringing in new hardware and pilots and tank crews. This CIA man himself had been sent there to help the Israelis.

If you want to read the full story, go to my other website at:

http://rbt.tripod.com/index-12.html

aziz anom

Huckabee, the fat hypocrite.

2010-12-22T16:49:00.002+07:00

I am fascinated by films such as "Elmer Gentry" with Burt Lancaster which was in theaters many years ago. In it a scoundrel of a man teams up with a female preacher to spread Christianity. There are loads of such characters in real life. One such is the former baptist pastor Mike Huckabee, now showing his true colors every week on the Fox channel. This scum of a man wants to execute Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, and has previously asked why the Zionists should not be allowed to keep on building settlements on the West Bank -- 'on their own land', as he put it.
One can put up with hypocrites but a hypocrite who wears the cloak of religion, that's a bit too much.

aziz anom

Should the Zionists vacate the whole of Palestine?

2010-12-14T19:09:00.003+07:00

Some of the most ardent supporters of the Palestinian people (George Galloway, The Young Turks, etc.) are, to my dismay, reluctant to go the whole hog and say that the Zionist occupiers of Palestine should go back to the countries they came from. They only want the Arabs to set up their state on the West Bank within the 1967 borders. In other words, according to them, if most of the rooms in your house have been occupied by criminals you should not demand that the criminals get the hell out of the house but settle for the rooms left to you. Would any human being be able to do that? Of course not! Get real, people.

Does Iran already have the bomb?

2010-12-12T16:11:00.002+07:00

Iran is reported to have acquired very long range missiles from North Korea. Is it then not likely that it has also bought a few nuclear devices from that country? Buying them is much cheaper than going about making one yourself. Can we therefore assume that what Iran is saying is true, that it is only engaged in producing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes?

Chavez, the true patriot.

2010-12-12T16:00:00.002+07:00

Chavez, the President of Venezuela, has invited his flood-stricken countrymen to move into the presidential palace during the emergency while he himself will move into a tent donated by Gadafi of Libya. Can you imagine another head of state doing this? This man has indeed a heart of gold!

Sex, alcohol, drugs and the Saudi royal family.

2010-12-09T20:26:00.001+07:00

The following is from an article in Britain's Guardian newspaper, describing one of Wikileaks' cables:

"US diplomats describe a world of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll behind the official pieties of Saudi Arabian royalty.

Jeddah consulate officials described an underground Halloween party, thrown last year by a member of the royal family, which broke all the country's Islamic taboos. Liquor and prostitutes were present in abundance, according to leaked dispatches, behind the heavily-guarded villa gates.

The party was thrown by a wealthy prince from the large Al-Thunayan family. The diplomats said his identity should be kept secret. A US energy drinks company also put up some of the finance.

"Alcohol, though strictly prohibited by Saudi law and custom, was plentiful at the party's well-stocked bar. The hired Filipino bartenders served a cocktail punch using sadiqi, a locally-made moonshine," the cable said. "It was also learned through word-of-mouth that a number of the guests were in fact 'working girls', not uncommon for such parties."

The dispatch from the US partygoers, signed off by the consul in Jeddah, Martin Quinn, added: "Though not witnessed directly at this event, cocaine and hashish use is common in these social circles."

The underground party scene is "thriving and throbbing" in Saudi Arabia thanks to the protection of Saudi royalty, the dispatch said. But it is only available behind closed doors and for the very rich."

What a bunch of hypocritical bastards, these royals!

I am sure they are not the only ones in the Muslim world.

aziz anom

Bravo wikileaks!

2010-12-09T16:00:00.004+07:00

I wonder how many men would have Interpol running after them because their condoms broke and they were simply unable to discontinue with the screw, disregarding the pleas of their partners to stop? This scenario is apparently what is emerging in the Assange saga, according to some sources. But then we have to ask: Did the condoms break during sex with both the women? Surely this is highly improbable. Conclusion: The two women are lying.
I say again that the Swedish prosecutor is corrupt and he should be taught a lesson so that others are not tempted to take bribes also from the Americans or anybody else. Supporters of Assange have launched a massive cyber attack on every individual and organization that is complicit in his incarceration and who are trying to put a brake on Wikileaks.

Hats off to Wikileaks.

aziz anom

George Galloway Savages SKY NEWS!

2010-12-07T19:47:00.000+07:00